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Summary
Summary
Expanding the scope of her storytelling as never before, New York Times bestselling author Joy Fielding delivers the novel that will captivate her devoted fans and win her countless new readers: an exquisitely tender and richly textured love story of astonishing emotional force. Behind the shiny facade of her seemingly idyllic life in Chicago, Mattie Hart feels as if she is falling apart. After sixteen years of marriage, and one beautiful teenage daughter, Mattie has discovered that her husband, Jake, a high-profile defense attorney, is ensconced in yet another love affair. It is only after Jake finally confesses his infidelity and leaves to live with his girlfriend that a far greater crisis descends upon the embattled Hart family -- Mattie receives some devastating news that will alter all their lives. Wracked by guilt at these unforeseen developments, Jake returns home to be with Mattie. Here, in this most daunting and unexpected of circumstances, Joy Fielding deftly ushers her characters through a poignant and heartbreaking drama about love's astonishing power to defy the greatest odds and to heal the deepest wounds. Bearing all the distinctive qualities of a contemporary classic, The First Time is a dazzling illumination of a marriage at the crossroads, where the ties that bind become frayed but refuse to sever, and where a long estranged husband and wife discover, for the first time, exactly what love really means. At once profoundly cathartic and inspiring, The First Time finds Joy Fielding at the height of her powers as she explores the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
Author Notes
Author and actress Joy Fielding was born in Canada in 1945. She received a BA in English literature from the University of Toronto in 1966. While a student, she focused on acting and was one of four stars in a student movie, Winter Kept Us Warm. After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles and appeared on Gunsmoke.
Her first book, The Best of Friends, was published without an agent. She has written numerous novels since then including Don't Cry Now, The Deep End, The Other Woman, Missing Pieces and Now You See Her. The Periodical Distributors of Canada named her book, Kiss Mommy Goodbye, Book of the Year for 1982. She has contributed book reviews to the Toronto Globe and Mail, CBC's The Radio Show, and CBC-TV's The Journal's Friday Night. Her books, See Jane Run and Tell Me No Secrets, have been adapted into films.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Terminal illness becomes a catalyst for change in this generally affecting if sometimes maudlin drama by the bestselling author of Missing Pieces and See Jane Run. At 36, art dealer Mattie Hart seems to be enjoying a perfect life. Her husband, Jake, is a brilliant criminal defense lawyer; her teenage daughter, Kim, is lovely and affectionate; and the Harts have a gorgeous home in the Chicago suburbs. But ever since their hasty marriage 16 years agoÄMattie got pregnant on their first dateÄJake has been chafing at the bit, sleeping around and neglecting his wife. Until now, Mattie has managed to ignore his infidelities. But his most recent affair, with freelance writer Honey Novak, is more serious, and Jake plots to leave Mattie just as she plans to confront him. Matters come to crisis when Mattie is found to have debilitating Lou Gehrig's disease, with the prognosis of only a short time to live. Jake is guilt-ridden; though he has already moved out, he returns home to care for Mattie, meanwhile continuing his liaison with Honey. The complicated emotional situation hurts Kim, who is already struggling with the onset of maturity and the pressures of social popularity. Fielding is good at chronicling the messy tangle of family relationships, delving into Jake's childhood memories of abuse and Mattie's recollections of marital neglect. As the end approaches for Mattie, all three are forced to examine what love really means. None too subtle, the novel nevertheless wins points for honesty and forthrightness, tackling complex issues and gearing readers up for a three-tissue finale. Regional author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Mattie Hart has spent the past 16 years destroying the evidence of an unfaithful husband: she has brushed aside countless scraps of scribbled phone numbers, thrown away hotel receipts she finds in her husband's coat pockets, and ripped up love notes. Finally, with the recent discovery of yet another indiscretion, she realizes that shredding physical evidence has done nothing to prevent her emotional fraying. Yet before Mattie can confront Jake, a high-profile defense lawyer, and come to grips with the fact that he has never loved her, he moves out of their beautiful suburban Chicago home and into his latest young paramour's apartment. And then Mattie receives some devastating news from her doctor: she has Lou Gehrig's disease. Struggling with a guilty conscience, Jake moves back home to care for his wife and repair relations with their angry teenage daughter, Kim. After a bout of furious denial, Mattie finds herself in the compromising position of depending upon a man whom she has never fully trusted. She also must convince Kim that her previously absent father will be there for her in the future. This is rich stuff. While skimping on plot, Fielding has created an adept study of three flawed characters who, after years of playing head games, must learn how to communicate. Despite such heavy psychological drama, the tone lightens as together these three vanquish inner demons. In the end, even as the novel races toward tragedy, Mattie prevails. Fielding has again pushed a seemingly fragile heroine to the brink, only to have her fight back, tooth and nail. This time, though, death is not the greatest threat. --Kristin Kloberdanz
Kirkus Review
Fielding forgoes the criminal emphasis of her recent soccer-mom thrillers ( Missing Pieces , 1997, etc.) to focus on the greatest noncriminal peril of all: an early death sentence. It hasn't all been roses for Mattie Hart. She's never felt close to her mother or the husband who married her because she was pregnant. Now that Jake Hart is making a name in Chicago law circles, the problems continue. He can't stop chasing skirts, and his daughter Kim wants even less to do with him than most 15-year-olds. It all seems to come to a head when Jake announces that he's moving in with his latest lover, novelist Honey Novak. But Jake's desertion is only a warm-up for a far more momentous ordeal: the news that Mattie's been falling down, laughing uncontrollably, and feeling her foot go to sleep recently because she's in the early stages of ALS, the disease that struck down Lou Gehrig in his prime. What can Mattie do with the year (or, if she's lucky, two or three) she has left? Fielding acutely traces her early alternation of impulsive self-indulgence (going on a shopping spree, buying a sports car she soon won't be able to drive, arranging a fling of her own) and dull despair (the most routine tasks take longer, the simplest decisions become monstrously complicated). Along with the annoyingly banal problems she'd have to cope with even if she weren't dying, Mattie now feels a new urgency in her attempts to understand her estranged husband, whose childhood had been even more traumatic than hers. Predictably but magically, the challenge of Mattie's physical degeneration rekindles her love of life and laughter and her errant spouse. It's only in the final stages of the illness, when Mattie's state seems to require some deeper insight, that Fielding comes up short. For the most part, though, a tonic account of how one woman discovers her truest self in the face of supreme disaster.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The First Time By Joy Fielding Atria Books ISBN: 9780743407052 ONE She was thinking of ways to kill her husband. Martha Hart, called Mattie by everyone but her mother, who regularly insisted Martha was a perfectly lovely name -- "You don't see Martha Stewart changing her name, do you?" -- was swimming back and forth across the long, rectangular pool that occupied most of her spacious back yard. Mattie swam every morning from the beginning of May until mid-October, barring lightning or an early Chicago snowfall, fifty minutes, one hundred lengths of precisely executed breast stroke and front crawl, back and forth across the well-heated forty foot expanse. Usually she was in the water by seven o'clock, so that she could be finished before Jake left for work and Kim for school, but today she'd overslept, or rather, hadn't slept at all until just minutes before the alarm clock went off. Jake, of course, had experienced no such trouble sleeping and was out of bed and in the shower before she had time to open her eyes. "Feeling all right?" he'd asked her, already dressed and out the door in a handsome blur before she was able to formulate a response. She could use a butcher knife, Mattie thought now, pushing at the water with clenched fists, slicing the imaginary foot-long blade through the air and into her husband's heart with each rise and fall of her arms. She reached the end of pool, using her feet to propel herself off the concrete, and made her way back to the other side, the motion reminding her that a well-timed push down a flight of stairs might be an easier way to dispatch Jake. Or she could poison him, adding a sprinkle of arsenic, like freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to his favorite pasta, like the kind they had for dinner last night, before he supposedly went back to the office to work on today's all-important closing argument for the jury, and she'd found the hotel receipt in his jacket pocket - the jacket he'd asked her to send to the cleaners - that announced his latest infidelity as boldly as a headline in a supermarket tabloid. She could shoot him, she thought, squeezing the water as it passed through her fingers, as if squeezing the trigger of a gun, her eyes following the imaginary bullet as it splashed across the pool's surface toward its unsuspecting target, as her errant husband rose to address the jury. She watched him button his dark blue jacket just seconds before the bullet ripped through it, his dark red blood slowly oozing into the neat diagonal lines of his blue-and-gold striped tie, the boyish little half-smile that emanated as much from his eyes as his lips freezing, fading, then disappearing altogether, as he fell, face down, to the hard floor of the stately old courtroom. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, have you reached your verdict? "Death to the infidel!" Mattie shouted, kicking at the water as if it were a pesky blanket twisted around her ankles, her feet feeling unexpectedly heavy, as if newly attached to large cement blocks. For a second, Mattie felt as if her legs were foreign objects, as if they belonged to someone else, and had been grafted haphazardly onto her torso, serving no other purpose than to weigh her down. She tried to stand, but the bottoms of her feet couldn't find the bottom of the pool, although the water level was only five feet high and she was almost eight inches taller. "Damn it," Mattie muttered, losing the rhythm of her breathing and swallowing a mouthful of chlorine. She gasped loudly, throwing herself toward the side of the pool, her body doubling up and over the edge of the pool to rest against its border of smooth brown stone, as invisible hands continued to pull her legs, trying to drag her back under. "Serves me right, " she muttered between painful coughing spasms. "Serves me right for having such evil thoughts." She wiped some errant spittle from her mouth, then burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, the laughter mingling with her coughing, one feeding off the other, the unpleasant sounds bouncing off the water, echoing loudly in her ears. Why am I laughing? She wondered, unable to stop. "What's going on?" The voice came from somewhere above her head. "Mom, Mom, are you okay?" Mattie brought her hand up across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun's harsh rays, focused on her like a flashlight, and stared toward the large cedar deck that extended off the kitchen at the back of her red-brick, two-story home. Her daughter, Kim, was silhouetted against the autumn sky, the sun's glare rendering the teenager's normally outsized features curiously indistinct. It didn't matter, Mattie knew the lines and contours of her only child's face and figure as well as her own, maybe better: the huge blue eyes that were darker than her father's, bigger than her mother's; the long straight nose she inherited from her dad; the bow-shaped mouth she'd gotten from her mom; the budding breasts that had skipped a generation, moving directly from fifteen, already a force to be reckoned with. Kim was tall, like both her parents, and skinny, as her mother had been at her age, although her posture was much better than Mattie's had been at fifteen, better, in fact than it is now. Kim didn't have to be reminded to push her shoulders back or hold her head up high, and as she leaned against the sturdy wood slats of the railing, swaying like a young sapling in a gentle breeze, Mattie marveled at her daughter's easy confidence, wondering whether she'd played any part in its development at all. "Are you all right?" Kim asked again, craning her long, elegant neck toward the pool. Her shoulder-length, naturally blonde hair was pulled tightly back against her scalp and twisted into a neat little bun at the top of her head. Her 'Miss Grundy' look, Mattie sometimes teased. "Is someone there with you?" "I'm fine," Mattie said, although her continued coughing rendered the words unintelligible, and she had to repeat them. "I'm fine," she said again, then laughed out loud. "What's so funny?" Kim giggled, a slight, shy sound seeking inclusion into whatever it was her mother found so amusing. "My foot fell asleep," Mattie told her, gradually lowering both feet to the bottom of the pool, relieved to find herself standing. "While you were swimming?" "Yea. Funny, huh?" Kim shrugged, a shrug that said, 'Not that funny, not laugh-out-loud funny,' and leaned further forward, out of the shadow. "Are you sure you're okay?" "I'm fine. I just swallowed a mouthful of water." Mattie coughed again, as if for emphasis. She noticed that Kim was wearing her leather jacket, and for the first time that morning, became aware of the late September chill. "I'm going to school now," Kim said, then didn't move. "What are you up to today?" "I have an appointment this afternoon with a client to look at some photographs." "What about this morning?" "This morning?" "Dad's giving his summation to the jury this morning," Kim stated. Mattie nodded, not sure where this conversation was headed. She looked toward the large maple tree that loomed majestically over her neighbor's back yard, at the deep red that was seeping into the green foliage, as if the leaves were slowly bleeding to death, and waited for her daughter to continue. "I bet he'd really appreciate it if you were to go to the courthouse to cheer him on. You know, like you do when I'm in a school play. For support and stuff." And stuff, Mattie thought, but didn't say, choosing to cough instead. "Anyway, I'm going now." "Okay, sweetie. Have a good day." "You too. Give Dad a kiss for me for good luck." "Have a good day," Mattie repeated, watching Kim disappear inside the house. Alone again, she closed her eyes, allowing her body to sink below the water's smooth surface. Water immediately covered her mouth and filled her ears, silencing the white noise of nature, blocking out the casual sounds of morning. No longer were dogs barking in neighboring yards, birds singing in nearby trees, cars honking their impatience on the street. Everything was quiet, peaceful, and still. There were no more faithless husbands, no more inquiring teenage minds. How does she do it? Mattie wondered. What kind of radar did the child possess? Mattie hadn't said anything to Kim about her discovery of Jake's most recent betrayal. Nor had she said anything to anyone else, not any of her friends, not to her mother, not to Jake. She almost laughed. When was the last time she'd confided anything to her mother? And as for Jake, she wasn't ready to confront him yet. She needed time to think things through, to gather her thoughts, as a squirrel stores away nuts for the winter, to make sure she was well-fortified for whatever course of action she chose to follow in the long, cold months ahead. From the Paperback edition. Excerpted from The First Time by Joy Fielding All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher. Excerpted from The First Time by Joy Fielding All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| 1 She was thinking of ways to kill her husband. |
| Martha Hart, called Mattie by everyone but her mother, who regularly insisted Martha was a perfectly lovely name - "You don't see Martha Stewart changing her name, do you?" - was swimming back and forth across the long, rectangular pool that occupied most of her spacious back yard. Mattie swam every morning from the beginning of May until mid-October, barring lightning or an early Chicago snowfall, fifty minutes, one hundred lengths of precisely executed breast stroke and front crawl, back and forth across the well-heated forty foot expanse. Usually she was in the water by seven o'clock, so that she could be finished before Jake left for work and Kim for school, but today she'd overslept, or rather, hadn't slept at all until just minutes before the alarm clock went off. Jake, of course, had experienced no such trouble sleeping and was out of bed and in the shower before she had time to open her eyes. "Feeling all right?" he'd asked her, already dressed and out the door in a handsome blur before she was able to formulate a response. |
| She could use a butcher knife, Mattie thought now, pushing at the water with clenched fists, slicing the imaginary foot-long blade through the air and into her husband's heart with each rise and fall of her arms. She reached the end of pool, using her feet to propel herself off the concrete, and made her way back to the other side, the motion reminding her that a well-timed push down a flight of stairs might be an easier way to dispatch Jake. Or she could poison him, adding a sprinkle of arsenic, like freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to his favorite pasta, like the kind they had for dinner last night, before he supposedly went back to the office to work on today's all-important closing argument for the jury, and she'd found the hotel receipt in his jacket pocket - the jacket he'd asked her to send to the cleaners - that announced his latest infidelity as boldly as a headline in a supermarket tabloid. |
| She could shoot him, she thought, squeezing the water as it passed through her fingers, as if squeezing the trigger of a gun, her eyes following the imaginary bullet as it splashed across the pool's surface toward its unsuspecting target, as her errant husband rose to address the jury. She watched him button his dark blue jacket just seconds before the bullet ripped through it, his dark red blood slowly oozing into the neat diagonal lines of his blue-and-gold striped tie, the boyish little half-smile that emanated as much from his eyes as his lips freezing, fading, then disappearing altogether, as he fell, face down, to the hard floor of the stately old courtroom. |
| Ladies and gentleman of the jury, have you reached your verdict? |
| "Death to the infidel!" Mattie shouted, kicking at the water as if it were a pesky blanket twisted around her ankles, her feet feeling unexpectedly heavy, as if newly attached to large cement blocks. For a second, Mattie felt as if her legs were foreign objects, as if they belonged to someone else, and had been grafted haphazardly onto her torso, serving no other purpose than to weigh her down. She tried to stand, but the bottoms of her feet couldn't find the bottom of the pool, although the water level was only five feet high and she was almost eight inches taller. "Damn it," Mattie muttered, losing the rhythm of her breathing and swallowing a mouthful of chlorine. She gasped loudly, throwing herself toward the side of the pool, her body doubling up and over the edge of the pool to rest against its border of smooth brown stone, as invisible hands continued to pull her legs, trying to drag her back under. "Serves me right, " she muttered between painful coughing spasms. "Serves me right for having such evil thoughts." |
| She wiped some errant spittle from her mouth, then burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, the laughter mingling with her coughing, one feeding off the other, the unpleasant sounds bouncing off the water, echoing loudly in her ears. Why am I laughing? She wondered, unable to stop. |
| "What's going on?" The voice came from somewhere above her head. "Mom, Mom, are you okay?" |
| Mattie brought her hand up across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun's harsh rays, focused on her like a flashlight, and stared toward the large cedar deck that extended off the kitchen at the back of her red-brick, two-story home. Her daughter, Kim, was silhouetted against the autumn sky, the sun's glare rendering the teenager's normally outsized features curiously indistinct. It didn't matter, Mattie knew the lines and contours of her only child's face and figure as well as her own, maybe better: the huge blue eyes that were darker than her father's, bigger than her mother's; the long straight nose she inherited from her dad; the bow-shaped mouth she'd gotten from her mom; the budding breasts that had skipped a generation, moving directly from fifteen, already a force to be reckoned with. Kim was tall, like both her parents, and skinny, as her mother had been at her age, although her posture was much better than Mattie's had been at fifteen, better, in fact than it is now. Kim didn't have to be reminded to push her shoulders back or hold her head up high, and as she leaned against the sturdy wood slats of the railing, swaying like a young sapling in a gentle breeze, Mattie marveled at her daughter's easy confidence, wondering whether she'd played any part in its development at all. |
| "Are you all right?" Kim asked again, craning her long, elegant neck toward the pool. Her shoulder-length, naturally blonde hair was pulled tightly back against her scalp and twisted into a neat little bun at the top of her head. Her 'Miss Grundy' look, Mattie sometimes teased. "Is someone there with you?" |
| "I'm fine," Mattie said, although her continued coughing rendered the words unintelligible, and she had to repeat them. "I'm fine," she said again, then laughed out loud. |
| "What's so funny?" Kim giggled, a slight, shy sound seeking inclusion into whatever it was her mother found so amusing. |
| "My foot fell asleep," Mattie told her, gradually lowering both feet to the bottom of the pool, relieved to find herself standing. |
| "While you were swimming?" |
| "Yea. Funny, huh?" |
| Kim shrugged, a shrug that said, 'Not that funny, not laugh-out-loud funny,' and leaned further forward, out of the shadow. "Are you sure you're okay?" |
| "I'm fine. I just swallowed a mouthful of water." Mattie coughed again, as if for emphasis. She noticed that Kim was wearing her leather jacket, and for the first time that morning, became aware of the late September chill. |
| "I'm going to school now," Kim said, then didn't move. "What are you up to today?" |
| "I have an appointment this afternoon with a client to look at some photographs." |
| "What about this morning?" |
| "This morning?" |
| "Dad's giving his summation to the jury this morning," Kim stated. |
| Mattie nodded, not sure where this conversation was headed. She looked toward the large maple tree that loomed majestically over her neighbor's back yard, at the deep red that was seeping into the green foliage, as if the leaves were slowly bleeding to death, and waited for her daughter to continue. |
| "I bet he'd really appreciate it if you were to go to the courthouse to cheer him on. You know, like you do when I'm in a school play. For support and stuff." |
| And stuff, Mattie thought, but didn't say, choosing to cough instead. |
| "Anyway, I'm going now." |
| "Okay, sweetie. Have a good day." |
| "You too. Give Dad a kiss for me for good luck." |
| "Have a good day," Mattie repeated, watching Kim disappear inside the house. Alone again, she closed her eyes, allowing her body to sink below the water's smooth surface. Water immediately covered her mouth and filled her ears, silencing the white noise of nature, blocking out the casual sounds of morning. No longer were dogs barking in neighboring yards, birds singing in nearby trees, cars honking their impatience on the street. Everything was quiet, peaceful, and still. There were no more faithless husbands, no more inquiring teenage minds. |
| How does she do it? Mattie wondered. What kind of radar did the child possess? Mattie hadn't said anything to Kim about her discovery of Jake's most recent betrayal. Nor had she said anything to anyone else, not any of her friends, not to her mother, not to Jake. She almost laughed. When was the last time she'd confided anything to her mother? And as for Jake, she wasn't ready to confront him yet. She needed time to think things through, to gather her thoughts, as a squirrel stores away nuts for the winter, to make sure she was well-fortified for whatever course of action she chose to follow in the long, cold months ahead. |
