This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman, 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 in six novels,

including Katterskill 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.

Dad and Melanie had been married for 30 years.

Stephen 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 Rubensines had the marriage gene, except for Anne 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.

...