Wizenberg - The Fixed Stars: A Memoir

Praise for
The Fixed Stars

Wizenberg writes with a remarkable openness about being true to herself and to others.... This honest and moving memoir will enlighten and educate those seeking to understand their true selves.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)

The Fixed Stars is that rare thing, a groundbreaking, essential book about sexuality. Wizenbergs incisive, generous laying-bare of her own experience will make many readers feel seen, understood, and not alone. This book is a triumph.

KATE CHRISTENSEN,
author of Blue Plate Special and The Last Cruise

In The Fixed Stars, Molly Wizenberg tackles the ever-shifting issues of marriage, motherhood, and sexual orientation with the same compassion and unflinching honesty that have become the hallmarks of her writing. She makes the everyday extraordinary and brings depth and complexity to the bigger questions in life. A beautiful read.

ERICA BAUERMEISTER,
author of The Scent Keeper

An intimate account... beautifully written.... An essential addition that will resonate with fans of Wizenbergs earlier memoirs and anyone probing the complicated ways that sexuality and traditional family life overlap or diverge.

LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)

Copyright 2020 Molly Wizenberg

For credits, see

Cover 2020 Abrams

Published in 2020 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939896

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4299-6

eISBN: 978-1-68335-892-3

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Abrams Press is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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This book is a memoir, a work of nonfiction that relies primarily on both my memory and my interpretation of events. In some cases, names and identifying details have been changed to respect and guard the privacy of others.

I was grateful for that, too, the commonness of my feeling, I felt some stubborn strangeness in me ease, I felt like part of the human race.

Garth Greenwell, The Frog King

The jury summons came in late spring. Theres an optimism to bringing in the maila small, dinky optimism, but I like it. Its reliable. Leaning against the kitchen counter, I spread out my loot. Wedged between the electric bill and a glossy sheaf of coupons is the jury summons. Its a white trifold, stapled, with block letters announcing its contents. I split the staple from the paper with my thumb. Theres a rhythmic thump behind me, probably June trying to liberate the bin of toys we keep wedged under the sideboard. The afternoons are stretching toward summer now, but the countertop is still cold under my elbows, the way cotton bedsheets are when you first climb in. The summons reads, TUESDAY , 8:30 A.M . We have a babysitter every Tuesday until five, and Brandon will be at the new restaurant site all day, supervising the buildout. If Ive got to have jury duty, I guess a Tuesdays not bad.

The courthouse peers down a sloping grid of streets toward Puget Sound. I ride the elevator up and give my name to a woman in shoulder pads at the reception desk. There are already a few dozen people seated in the assembly room, recipients of the same summons. We wait. I dont mind; Ive brought my laptop and a magazine. I dont want to wind up on a jury, but being stuck in this room presents the pleasant constraints of an airplane in mid-flight: theres nowhere to go and nothing else to do, so I might as well work.

The receptionist begins to read names, and mine comes halfway down the page-long list. I stand and join the crowd thats collecting in the entryway, where another woman appears, announcing herself as the bailiff. She hands us each a numbered sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. Well be going into the courtroom shortly, and were to follow her to the seats in back. We follow her like ducklings, around a wall behind the judges bench and into a fluorescent-lit courtroom. Im pleased that it looks like all the ones on TV, though its missing Sam Waterston. The judge has short feathered hair and wears black robes and a pair of drugstore reading glasses, over which she watches us enter. She gives off the aura of a successful real estate agent from the 1980s, a childhood friends mom who served Lean Cuisine every weeknight without apology. Theres a female prosecutor and two attorneys on the defenses side. The bailiff leads us past them, through a wooden gate, to our seats.

The attorneys stand one by one to introduce themselves and their clients. The prosecutor wears a tailored skirt suit, and the male defense attorney has a swoop of hair that lays across his forehead like a paper fan. The second defense attorney is a woman in a mens suit. I know it is a mens suit because of the way it hangs straight at her hips. When she rises to speak, a smile blooms shyly across her mouth. Her teeth are gardenia-white. Shes said her name already, but I missed it.

The judge presents the case, and then the attorneys ask us questions in rotation, calling us by the numbers in our plastic sleeves, weeding us out. They explain that this process has a name, voir dire, and that theyre looking to uncover our biases. There are so many of us, it takes hours. Finally, the prosecutor calls my number. She smiles and asks where I get my news. We banter a little about NPR. It turns out were both Terry Gross fans. She asks what I do for a living, what kind of writer I am. I am a writer who listens to public radio. Of course Ill be eliminated.

But theyre coming to the end of the numbers, and Im still in the pew. They excuse another number, another. At the end of the day, there are eight of us left, and Im given a new number, Juror #1, assigned to the first seat in the back row of the jury box. Were to reconvene the next morning.

I catch an early bus and find I have a half hour to spare. Ive worn a linen dress that I bought a couple of years before June was born. Usually I only ever wear jeans, but now that Im on a jury, I decide to look like someone who takes this seriously. I sit down in a stripe of weak sunlight on a bench outside the courthouse and pull out a thermos of coffee and my magazine from yesterday. The defendant is arriving, and he sits with his attorneys on a low wall outside the front door. I watch them over my magazine. They huddle like football players, eyes closed. It looks like theyre praying.