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The Green-eyed Monster And similar creatures of a 30-something universe

Terry Allen

BEEN THERE: Novelist Laura Zigman '85 (photo by Ben Barnhart) ELISE, THE HEROINE OF Laura Zigman's new novel, Her, seems to have it all. All, that is, that a contemporary cosmopolitan young woman of modest ambitions might reasonably hope for. When we meet her, Elise is a freelancer who has recently left her stressful editing job at Sassy, a magazine aimed at adolescent girls. Burned out on all that glamorous craziness, she plans to get a master’s degree in education at Georgetown so she can do something more socially useful – i.e., teach. Newly engaged to marry Donald, the man of her dreams, she lives with him in a desirable Washington, DC, neighborhood, their house “an adorable wooden bungalow” Donald has renovated with his own capable hands. Poised for a happily-ever-after future, Elise confides to us that she is spending much time “taste-testing cakes, canapés, champagnes; sniffing stationery; fondling tulle” in preparation for her springtime wedding. One evening as the happy couple are discussing how to have the wedding invitations printed – engraved? thermographed? lithographed? – the telephone rings. It is Adrienne, Donald’s former fiancée. At this juncture, Elise knows just enough about Donald’s ex to be mildly wary: Adrienne is “a graduate of Yale, horrifyingly gorgeous, an avid rock and mountain climber (Kilimanjaro, 1995), and recently single.” Thank heaven, the ex lives in Manhattan, faraway Manhattan, the town Elise and Donald have left behind for a saner life. But Elise’s relief is short-lived. Adrienne has phoned because she is about to take a wonderful new job in Washington, where she knows no one but Donald. She wants to re-connect with Donald, who has often spoken admiringly to Elise of his ex-fiancée. Donald seems pleased, really pleased, and prepares to welcome Adrienne to town. He’ll cook dinner for her – something he has seldom done for Elise. He sets about researching outdoor grills and choosing just the right menu. And here the brisk, comic plot takes off. The novel chronicles Elise’s psychic evolution from annoyance to alarm to jealousy to panic to full-bore obsession. That is, from bride-to-be to madwoman. Even before Adrienne’s plane touches down, Elise is rifling Donald’s clothes and drawers and photo albums for evidence that he is having second thoughts about their forthcoming marriage. Once the ex-fiancée is settled in, our once-rational heroine enters upon a quietly hysterical regime of stalking and chicken-calling her nemesis. Sufficiently well-therapized to name it – “ritualistic obsessive-compulsive behavior” – vulnerable Elise is as helpless to stop herself as was the second Mrs. DeWinter, the shrinking, spooked bride of Daphne DuMaurier’s gothic classic, Rebecca. Insecurity, losing at love, jealousy, having to face down your demons – these are garden-variety torments of the young and the not-so-young. They are also the central elements of Laura Zigman’s fictional landscape. Her is the third in a trio of very funny, very wise novels charting the lives and life-issues of contemporary 30-something females. As one might expect, Zigman, has Been There. Now a full-time writer who lives near Boston with her husband and young son, she was for 10 years a publicist for several major New York publishing houses. For a time, she worked in Washington, DC, as well. Not long after her arrival from Massachusetts (via the Radcliffe Publishing Course) to Manhattan, she began to write down aspects of what she observed. Animal Husbandry (1998), Zigman’s best-selling first novel, explores the miserable, near-universal condition of being dumped. She based the book on the experience of having her heart broken. Devastated, but determined to learn from her pain, she shared early drafts of the novel with friends, many of whom were editors and writers. She recalls, “Everyone had a story,” and most were not so different from her own. “Fieldwork,” as Zigman calls this process of information-gathering and corroboration, has been an important component of her fiction, and may account in part for the authentic, almost anthropological feel of Animal Husbandry. It is surely no coincidence that her narrator is Jane Goodall – not, of course, the Jane Goodall, whose lifework has been primate study in the wild. Zigman’s Goodall is an astute observer and comic theorist of advanced primate mating behavior. Dating Big Bird (2000), which came next, tackles the issue of career women who want a child (or children) and who are racing against the relentless biological clock. “Being single, having a career is great,” Zigman says, “but it presents problems. You’re working hard, very hard. It takes time to get your career off the ground. It takes time to meet a guy, especially to meet a guy who wants to have children. And meanwhile the years are ticking away.” HER IS ABOUT THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER of irrational jealousy. Elise’s behavior is slightly exaggerated for comic effect, Zigman says, but “everyone, men and women, young and old, feels intense jealousy at one time or another.” In the not-too-distant future, we may be able to watch as well as read about Elise in full pre-marital meltdown because Julia Roberts’ production company has bought the film rights. The esteemed Mount Holyoke-educated dramatist Wendy Wasserstein has been commissioned to write the screenplay. Fingers crossed. This is not the first time high-profile film types have been seriously interested in Zigman’s material. Animal Husbandry was made into a film called “Someone Like You,” produced by Lynda Obst and starring Ashley Judd. Meanwhile, Zigman, who graduated from UMass in 1985, and first tried her hand at fiction in writing workshops here, is now deep into her next book: “a romantic comedy, with a murder in it, set in Gloucester, Mass.” – where she has spent considerable time. The murder angle is, she admits, “a slight departure for me.” While waiting for the new novel to appear, Zigman fans can try to catch her byline in The New York Times, to which she contributes occasional features (nonfiction, of course) about style and home.

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The Green-eyed Monster

Of grilling and other nice gestures