Who Breaks the Bowl?

The golden bowl has been standing on Maggie's mantel all evening, set there like a loaded question. Garth Greenwell calls what happens next pure telenovela, and means it as praise: a smashed crystal, a husband in the doorway, a marriage suddenly out in the open. The strange part is deciding who actually broke it. Fanny's hand is on the cup, but Greenwell keeps asking where the idea came from, and the answer will not sit still. Then, in the wreckage, James tries a kind of speech he has never tried before, and Maggie uses it. Greenwell thinks this chapter is a miracle, and by the end you may too.