Graham and Audra: What’s Holding Them Together; What’s Tearing Them Apart?

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

Opening line: “It had begun to seem to Graham, in this, the twelfth year of his second marriage, that he and his wife lived in parallel universes.” The wife, Audra, is the kind of person who knows everything about everyone and who talks, talks, talks nonstop about everything and nothing. He is the quiet sort. Their difference of opinion on how to ride in an elevator in their New York City apartment says it all.

Audra complains about Graham’s behavior saying, “We get in there with anyone from the building, and you just stand there, stiff as a soldier! Ignoring people like we don’t all know each other…Flipping through your mail like the other person is not dying for you to say, ‘Now, Mrs. Pomranky, I have been meaning to tell you how nice your hair looks,’ or ‘Mr. Fielder, please tell me all about how your daughter’s getting along in med school.’”

Meanwhile, “[Graham had] always assumed that everyone would rather ride in peace, desperate as they all were to get up to their apartments and have the first whisky of the evening, thereby restoring the will to live.”

Because the author keeps us inside of Graham’s head, we know that his need for whiskey has many causes. Listening to Audra…