Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Some divorces feel like a tsunami. The resulting tidal wave hits the whole coastline, but some communities get hit harder than others. Ann Patchett’s impressive new novel, Commonwealth, explores the effects of divorce on two families. Spanning decades, this novel is like a longitudinal study of the psychological effects of divorce on the six children whose lives were altered by the dismantling of their families.
Set in Los Angeles, the novel opens when thirty-year-old Bert Cousins kisses Beverly Keating at a christening party. A drunken mistake? End of story? No, because within a couple of years Beverly divorces her husband Fix, marries Bert, and moves across the country with her two little girls to live near Bert’s family in Virginia. Fix Keating is left alone in Los Angles. Bert Cousins leaves his wife Theresa and their four small children in Los Angeles. Though I wished that Patchett had explored Bert and Beverly's decisions to abandon their two young families, it seems that Patchett is more focused on the fallout for the kids.
Every summer, the Keating kids visit their dad in L.A. and the Cousins kids visit their dad in Virginia. And there are several weeks when all six kids become a version of the “Brady Bunch” sharing two bedrooms and a bathroom at Bert and Beverly’s house in Virginia. Beverly’s daughters welcome the visit of the four Cousin children. Patchett writes “Here was the most remarkable thing about the Keating children and the Cousins children: They did not hate one another, nor did they possess one shred of tribal loyalty. The six children held in common one overarching principle that cast their potential dislike for one another down to the bottom of the minor leagues: they disliked the parents. They hated them.”
And for good reason: these adults create havoc in their children’s’ lives. Bert and Beverly are self-involved and not present even during these summer visits. Taking care of six young kids is exhausting and so Bert and Beverly abdicate their responsibilities and the older kids fill the void. On a family road trip, Bert and Beverly leave a note under the kids’ motel room door; “Have breakfast in the coffee shop. You can charge it. We’re sleeping late.” The narrator offers, “One more document in the ever-growing mountain of evidence that they were on their own.” When the kids sneak down to the lake with a bottle of gin and a gun they find in Bert Cousins’ car, it becomes clear just how ignored they are.
During one of the summers, Cal, the oldest son of Bert and Theresa, dies. No clear picture emerges of the minute-by-minute specifics of what occurred that day. Caroline, now the oldest, instructs the other kids on what to say to the parents. The adults think that Cal died alone. But the other five kids were there and bear some responsibility for his death. In their guilt and youth, the stepkids adhere to the agreed-upon story. Even thirty years later, it is unclear it the parents know what transpired that summer afternoon.
Patchett keeps the emotion on an even keel in describing Cal’s death – almost too even. There must have been crying and chaos, grief and guilt. Moving deftly in time between the stepkids and parents, Patchett allows the characters to share their perceptions of what happened that summer day. Their adult recollections have been shaped and altered by the passing of time. The surviving five kids are haunted by guilt about Cal’s death. They struggle with relationships, employment, and addiction. The most capable of the clan ends up in a meditation center in Switzerland, breathing in and out the troubling memories of her childhood. In adulthood, each of the Keating/Cousins children flees to their own psychic corner. None of the grown kids live in the same town as each other or any of the four parents. Yet they are still a collection of citizens belonging to the commonwealth of their blended family.
One of the stepkids, Franny Keating, shares the story of her childhood with her boyfriend who is an author. The resulting book is a catalyst for the blended family to move their PTSD to the forefront. Patchett’s engaging writing lets the reader witness the complicated dynamics of the blended and extended family members. Only a writer with Patchett’s skill could capture the feelings and development of so many characters over such a long period of time.
For the Keating/Cousins kids, the complicated trajectory of their future lives was set in motion the day Bert Cousins kissed Beverly Keating. I won’t spoil the ending, but Patchett finds some redemption in the connection of the children to each other amidst the detritus of the parents’ poor decisions.