Leaving Liza

Abstract

This is Chapter Thirteen of Leaving Liza, a novel about life, death, love, friendship, jealousy and lesbian ex-lovers. In the novel, six women are spending the weekend at a beach house in Long Island's Hamptons, where they have gathered to be with their friend Liza, who is battling terminal ovarian cancer. Liza's lover, Jill, has agreed to the house party and helped plan the guest list. But, as she smolders with resentment at the attention Liza is getting and the depth of the women's friendships, she begins to come unraveled. After a severe asthma attack that requires an emergency room visit the day before, Jill conducts a seance, purporting to have contacted another of Liza's ex-lovers, who died a few months earlier. Now, on this last night of the house party, she lets Liza and her friends know what she's really feeling. The editors have asked me to add some “commentary” on the questions this story raises about the roles of ex-lovers. I would hope the scene reflects some of the tensions that can occur when ex-lovers choose to remain friends, particularly when those bonds provoke profound jealousy in both current and ex-lovers. For many of us, the job of assuaging and reassuring the current lover while maintaining intimate friendships with an ex-lover is simply too exhausting and prickly to endure. For others, it is worth the struggle. Liza and her friends clearly think it is. But at what point, they all wonder at this house party, does their hunger for honesty and their anger at being insulted and manipulated become more important than keeping the peace, and possibly their friendship with Liza? Perhaps only Liza's death will free them from this compromising coexistence.