On March 21, 2020, while quarantining with her family on the Vineyard during the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden received a voicemail from an unknown man: “‘I’m trying to reach Belle.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife.’”
This unexpected and unwelcome call precipitated the dramatic unraveling of her marriage, the details of which Burden reveals in her much-talked-about memoir, “Strangers.”
“Strangers” has struck a chord with readers. The book has emerged as the literary sensation of the season, catapulting Burden, who kept a very low profile prior to the publication of her memoir, into the public eye. She’s been featured in magazines like Elle and Town & Country. She had a sit-down for an interview with Oprah. Her book hit the New York Times bestseller list quickly, and has stayed there. And it was recently announced that Netflix will be adapting the book into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Burden.
About the call, Burden writes, “The words didn’t make sense … I thought, ‘This can’t be true. This must be a mistake. James will explain this.’”
When Burden confronts James, he initially insists the affair meant nothing and that it is over: “I love you and only you. I’m so sorry. I’m so embarrassed.” But shortly after, the husband from the voicemail calls back, telling Burden that his wife attempted suicide, and is in an ambulance. Burden describes her immediate response: “I felt panic then. James’ betrayal was going to cause waves of damage beyond me, beyond our family. This was a crisis we would need to manage together.”
However, the next morning, James declares he wants a divorce and is leaving. And leave he does, saying he doesn’t want custody of the children, nor their apartment, or the Vineyard house. Without warning, James has seemingly wiped his hands clean, abandoning the family, which, until that moment, he appeared to love fervently.
Burden is haunted by never learning what led to James’ affair and not seeing it. “He never told me, not once, that he was discontent in our marriage, unhappy with me, or struggling in our life together. I wonder now, did I make up the love story, the tale of our commitment to each other? … I believe in that narrative.” Burden, though, continues to probe. “But what if the story I told myself wasn’t true? What if he always had a different story?”
Burden reports on James’ behavior throughout the divorce. Although it isn’t pretty, she doesn’t write vindictively, leaving room for us to see him as human, even with his flaws.
We follow Burden through all the stages of grieving, which include examining aspects of herself, such as surrendering her agency in the marriage to James. “And, as he told me often, he was going to take care of me,” she writes, noting that she had been happy to find her knight in shining armor. Part of the ramifications was Burden’s ignorance about their finances. “I lost touch with both the big picture and the details of our financial life, depending on James to tell me what to do … I settled into the vagueness, the luxury, and privilege of not knowing. And part of me liked it, the handing over. James’ care for our money felt like his contribution to our family, the way he showed his love and commitment to me and the kids. There was something romantic about it, too.”
During the divorce, James expects Burden to comply with his decisions, demanding that she do so. We see signs of Burden’s growth. “It would be easier, safer, to let the divorce proceed as James wanted it to. To trust that he would be fair to me in the end … But why should I trust James to be fair to me? Why would it serve me, or my children, to be silent? There was something growing in me, an almost nihilistic desire to set flame to the remaining structures of my former life, to the very safety I clung to, to the fiction that I could depend on anyone other than myself for protection, to the idea that being quiet was the only way to be good.”
Burden explores the origins of her compliance with not speaking out, disagreeing, or standing up for herself. Neither her grandmother nor her mother called out her own unfaithful partner. “Without being conscious of it, as a child and a young adult, I absorbed this legacy of infidelity … I thought I had ended this legacy … but I had repeated it in a spectacular fashion.” By the end of the book, we see how Burden took brave steps to stop the cycle of staying silent.
Burden covers a lot more ground in “Strangers,” including how friends and society treat those whose partners are unfaithful.
Although “Strangers” does not take place exclusively in the Vineyard, Burden anchors her story on the Island through the leitmotif of the osprey couple that returns yearly to her family’s property. These birds, with their loyal mating habits, are greatly loved by Vineyarders, who await their arrival every spring. In “Strangers,” the ospreys and their chicks initially represent Burden’s seemingly idyllic family life and her husband’s role as protector. After his unexpected abandonment, Burden moves from finding the birds painful to witnessing them as a source of comfort and a reflection of nature’s — and thus her own — endurance.
Ultimately, at its core, “Strangers” is Burden’s challenging journey that leads to claiming her voice and embracing herself.
“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” by Belle Burden, is available at Edgartown Books and Bunch of Grapes. Belle Burden will be speaking at this summer’s Islanders Write on Thursday, July 16.