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We never learn either the ex-wife or the new wife’s name, but somehow, in just a few pages, we understand these women intimately. The new wife is obsessed with the ex, beginning with a photograph of her pushing an old black pram and walking a black and white terrier while she was still married to her husband and they lived in France. When the new wife has insomnia, she counts the number of times she, the ex-wife, and her husband made love. The new wife is so obsessed, she begins shopping in the same Manhattan grocery store where she shops. Surprisingly, since she’s nearly 40, employed and seemingly has a life of her own, she goes to phone booths, calls the ex-wife, and hangs up. The story gets progressively creepier when she begins taking French lessons because she, too, wants to go to France.

But by the time her obsession has hit full throttle, we sense something is not right with the marriage. After all, the new wife met her husband while he was still married. After they married, he called out his ex-wife’s name while they made love. He danced with his ex at his daughter’s wedding while his new wife pouted at a separate table, hardly an appropriate way to treat your spouse. He came home from business trips tired and hung over. He even called out another woman’s name in his sleep.

She becomes friendly with her husband’s two children, a son and a daughter. They wish her a happy 40th birthday.

But nothing prepares us for her 40th birthday celebration. Some of the beautifully-written paragraphs seem out of context until, bam, the night of her birthday arrives. So that’s where that other part of the story was headed. Now we get it. But we don’t see it coming.

The prose is engaging. The timing is nice. The story is interspersed with some mathematical theory of Hermann Grassmann and interesting accounts of the pianist and conductor Seymour Lipkin that become relevant at the end of the story.

Tuck puts an odd spin on the universal theme of infidelity. Obsession is universal, too, but we usually think of it as pining over a lover. Obsessing over an ex-wife exists but no one talks about it. Here, the obsession over an ex-wife is split open for all to examine in gut-wrenching detail. It’s not much different from a lover’s obsession.