“In The Marriage Bed, truths long hidden are revealed, not only in Asa, the grieving husband, but others affected by the tragedy at the novel’s center. All are fully human in their flaws and strengths, including characters a lesser writer would depict as mere stereotypes. The Marriage Bed is an exceptional novel—perfectly paced, riveting, unrelentingly honest and wise in its depiction of what William Faulkner called ‘the human heart in conflict with itself.’ A remarkable achievement.” —Ron Rash, author of Serena and The Caretaker
“What a terrific novel this is. With scrupulous and warm honesty, it traces the intricacies of loyalty and betrayal in a long and loving marriage—and the shocks of life in a mortal body. A beautifully accurate book, with its own astute surprises.” —Joan Silber, author of Improvement, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
“Tommy Hays has long been one of my favorite writers working today, and The Marriage Bed only deepens my love for his fiction. No one can tell the stories of old love and young love and the inherent complications of both as well as Hays, and there’s certainly no one who can tell them more poignantly.” —Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home and The Last Ballad
“You know when you’re reading a book and you just can’t put it down? Tommy Hays has written that kind of book. It flows like a river, every page glides into the next page and you just have to find out what happens next. I can’t recommend it enough.” —Jon Mayes, review from Advance Reading Copy Read the complete review
“The Marriage Bed is a novel with an intense and detailed focus on the nature of family, explored through the lens of one particular family.” —Terry Roberts, review from Mountain Xpress Read the complete review
“The Marriage Bed is both powerful and quiet at once, a novel of immense insight into the difficulties and joys of how we try to love one another.” —Lewis Buzbee, review from LitStack Read the complete review
A freak accident comes on the heels of a startling revelation—laying bare the foundation of a marriage, and a husband is left to grapple with the aftermath.
A poetry professor at a small college in Asheville, NC, Asa Flowers, comes home one stormy evening to find his wife Betsy inexplicably distraught. As the evening goes on, the couple end up in a heated argument that sends Asa to sleep out in their garage apartment for the first time in twenty-five years of marriage. The next morning, he wakes to blue sky and an altered world.
Unfolding over a few tense weeks and told from multiple points of view, this novel explores how a tragedy can assume as many shapes as the people it touches. Asa finds himself reckoning with torn feelings about his marriage and confusion about how to proceed in his complicated relationships with his adult children. As he gradually absorbs revelations—so much he didn’t know or understand during his long marriage—he finds himself drawn uneasily toward a new world, one in which he must shed much of his old identity if he is to survive and, more important, rededicate himself to being a father.
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At Ocracoke I like to go for walks, discovering roads and paths I hadn't been down or had just plumb forgotten. Yesterday I wandered down a road I hadn't been down in years. As it wound around, it delivered me to a view of a gray, cedar shingled house that rose out of the marsh grass and faced toward the Pamlico Sound. The way it sat on the hill, the house looked exposed, a little forlorn. The more I stood there taking in the whole landscape, the more I felt like I’d wandered into an Andrew Wyeth painting, with its ache and loneliness and its spare beauty.
For me afternoons are my low point. If I'm depressed or feeling a little down, chances are it's the afternoon. One drizzly afternoon, as I started out on my walk, the world looked and felt bleak, dreary and wet. But as I walked I noticed how the rain had carpeted the sidewalk with white petals from a dogwood tree, how it had heightened the rusty red of a crape myrtle’s bark, and how it had draped a grey gauze over downtown, making it green and dreamy, like a place I’d want to live.
Sad to hear Roberta Flack has died. In 1974. I was a freshman at Furman University, a small Baptist school outside of my hometown of Greenville SC. My friend and fellow English major Sam Hodges and I, along with everyone else, would eat a grim greasy supper in the dining hall (grim and greasy in the way all college food was back then). Afterwards we'd go study or at least feign studying up in the library while mostly watching girls we never dared speak to. Later in the evening Sam and I would wander down to the student center to the grill called the PalaDen, a play on Paladins, the school's mascot. As we drank sweet tea and ate fried apple pies, we'd punch songs on the juke box. Two songs we played almost every night. Ringo's "It Don't Come Easy" and Roberta's "Killing Me Softly with His Song." "Killing Me Softly" broke my heart the first time I heard it. It sounded just how I felt, sad but sad in sort of a good way. I'd never heard anything so beautiful. And to this day every time I hear it breaks my heart a little.
I'd received an email that a group of young people had organized a pro-immigrant protest downtown, and out of concern that the event might be targeted by anti-immigrant folks, it was hoped that some older adults would attend to support the young protesters. So yesterday afternoon, I walked to Pack Square, on a beautiful day, and joined a collection of young and old, warm and friendly people, many carrying signs and many more armed with love and good will. There was music and a great band. As our numbers grew, drivers began to honk and wave, raising their thumbs and shouting their support. We started chanting "Stop the Deportation!" and marched down Biltmore Avenue, where people coming out of the shops and restaurants stopped and watched. Some looked surprised, others smiled and waved. At a restaurant several workers came outside and watched. One of them held his hands together and mouthed "Thank you" to us. The lengthening line of us wound onto Hilliard Avenue, where we arrived at the immense mural "Eres un Orgullo Latino” or “You are Latin Pride” where our hands were painted, then we pressed them onto the mural, our handprints joining many many others.
Today Connie and I walked around Beaver Lake, through the woods and following along the shore, a good walk. When we got back to the car Connie realized she'd dropped her keys somewhere along the way. So I started back around to see if I could find them, figuring chances were slim to none. I'd walked a while when I passed an older couple. I thought I should ask them if they'd seen any keys but I'm not a big initiator when it comes to talking to strangers, so I nodded and started to go on by, but then I turned around and told them we'd dropped our keys, and they were sympathetic. I had scoured the trail a ways when someone called out in the distance. I looked back and could make out the woman. I ran back and she was holding up our keys. She showed me a fence where someone had hung them. She said if you hadn’t spoken to us we would’ve never noticed them. As an introvert, I have to regularly remind myself of the pleasures and sometimes very real rewards that come from pushing into the uncomfortable zone, risking talking to strangers. (Renoir–Dance at Moulin de la Galette).
We were the first to arrive at Agavia 53, the cozy narrow slice of a restaurant perched on a hillside. The waiter, a young energetic man, said we could choose wherever we wanted. He led us up the stairs to show us the four floors, each with only a couple of tables. We chose the fourth. It opened onto a breezy patio with a view of the darkening city. We ordered our drinks and then our meal, which the waiter had to retrieve from the first floor. Eventually the restaurant filled and other groups arrived on the fourth floor, so he and a woman waitress brought up more trays, their smiles diminishing with each trip. As the evening deepened, the wind picked up, the lamps swayed and the shadows shifted. The night turned cold and the waiter brought us blankets. The food warmed us and the glasses of pulque, a Mexican mead made from the agave plant, loosened us. The night took on an otherworldly atmosphere. Our hair blew, our talk became louder and our laughter began to sound more like cackling, as our table slipped its moorings, lifted off the patio and drifted out over a glittering city. (Photo by a sculptor at neighboring table).
I always thought it was an elegantly simple lamp. But as lamps are wont to do, it developed a short. If you switched it on carefully and in the right frame of mind, it’d usually come on. The day arrived when the lamp refused to come on at all. So we did what we do best. We ignored it. It stood behind the couch in a big patch of dark. Finally we came to the conclusion there was nothing to do other than get the lamp fixed. I found a place called Biltmore Lamp & Shade Gallery. But on the website it said they’d sustained damage, like so many businesses in Biltmore, during Helene. I called the number and talked to Nate, their lamp specialist. Nate said their shop had been badly flooded but that he was making house calls. So later that day he showed up at our house and within minutes fixed our lamp. He also knew everything about our lamp which he said was made in the 1920’s. He told me it was a great lamp, that if they were buying they’d buy this lamp. He said in getting the lamp we’d “done good.” I felt like I had my own private Antiques Road Show consult. He only charged for the repair and didn’t charge travel. He said their company was offering this as a service and a way to sustain and connect with customers. Next time a lamp goes out at our house we’re not sitting around in the dark for years till we get it fixed.
It was 1980, nearly Christmas. I went to visit my friend Paula who roomed with Connie in Mars Hill. Fell hard for the mountains and got a job in Spruce Pine, editing The Tri-County News and writing feature stories about older mountain people who at the end of the interview would often ask if I wanted to spend “of the night”. I rented a postage stamp of an apartment and lived off Swiss cheese and white bread sandwiches slathered in Duke’s mayonnaise and washed down with gallons of hot tea. I rented from a kind woman who taught English at Mitchell Community College. On Friday nights I’d meet Connie at Micaville Elementary to contradance. I’d either go back with her to Mars Hill or she’d come to my apartment. Midweek when the paper came out, I’d reward myself by buying a record from the little record store on Lower Street. One week I bought Emmylou Harris’s Christmas album. I’d turn out the lights, lay back on my little bed and look out at the night sky and listen to Emmylou sing “Light of the Stable”. I’d get up half a dozen more times to move the needle back to hear it again. Tonight, I’m listening to that very same album, scratches and all.
We arrived home after a week visit with our family in Mexico City. We weren’t prepared for how cold it had turned in Asheville. Neither did we know that airport policy had changed. No longer can you call an Uber and wait in the warmth of the airport. We had to ride a shuttle across the airport road to a remote parking lot where, along with several other shivering exiles, we tried to reach an Uber in the biting wind. Luckily a couple we knew appeared and talked their Uber driver into giving us a ride too. The driver was Ukrainian and depended on his phone to translate what we said and what he said to us. I can’t tell you how warm the warmth of his car felt. He gave us chocolates too. After he dropped off our friends, we realized we didn’t know how to pay him through the ap nor did we have cash to pay him. We tried to direct him to an ATM where we could get cash, but he wasn’t having it. Even though we were taking him miles out of his way, he adamantly refused. He spoke Ukrainian into his phone and then handed it to us. It read, “America took us in and gave us a home. I want to give you a ride for free.” (Painting “Christmas Eve” by Ukrainian Dmytro Dobrovolsky born in Kyiv)