This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Allegra Goodman read her story,

A Challenge You Have Overcome, from the January 25th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Allegra Goodman has published two story collections and six novels, including Catterskill Falls,

which was a National Book Award finalist, the cookbook collector, and most recently,

the chalk artist, which came out in 2017.

Now here's Allegra Goodman.

A challenge you have overcome. They were a family of long marriages. You might sleep in

separate bedrooms and wash dishes in a fury. You might find a moldy peach in the

refrigerator and leave it on the counter for three days as evidence in some private trial,

but you would never leave. Dan and Melanie had been married for 30 years. Steve and Andrea were

coming up on 25. Andrea felt a certain vindication about this anniversary because she had married in and her own parents had split when she was young.

Steve's mother, Jean, used to ask Andrea in a melancholy way,

How is your mother?

And then, after a long pause, how is your father?

Clearly, divorce was hereditary and Andrea, a carrier.

Real Rubinstein's had the marriage gene, except for Aunt Sylvia and cousin Richard, who was Sylvia's son.

So there you go.

And yet, despite Andrea's unfortunate heritage,

she and Steve remained married. Were they happy? Yes, of course. They were at least as happy as

everybody else. And why was happiness, the criterion, anyway? They had endured health scares,

...