The Breakdown Lane (2005), Jacquelyn Mitchard: Summary

The 447-page novel is published by HarperTorch and an imprints of HarperCollinsPublisher New York in 2006 and the originally edition in 2005. Jacquelyn Mitchard is an American writer. Years after I had this novel, I found her name as inspirational woman in Reader Digest. This is a women’s novel, love, suspense, humor, betrayal, motherhood, and the complicated dynamics of family life. The story of an advice columnist Julianne Gillis, who gives wisdom words to her readers while her marriage was in problem. The book is written in free words – based on her son’s journal and her perspective. It’s unique when writer relates each chapter to the books in the Bible.

The Breakdown Lane (2005), Jacquelyn Mitchard: Summary 

Her name was Julianne Ambrose Gillis and her father was popular, bestselling, and yet grudging respected novelist. In the beginning there was Leo Steiner who came to her life. She loved her life and her marriage. Leo’s parents expected him to marry another girl but he chose Julie. It began at college and they loved each other. Leo Steiner had a high IQ. His parents were poor but proud. His mother was a Holocaust survivor. Hannah and Gabe Steiner were the most casual of Jews and Julie’s parents the merest Episcopalians. Leo’s first job was a huge insurance firm in Chicago and Julie got work copyediting at newspaper, the graveyard shift, reserved for desperate, the daylight drunk, and the constitutionally bizarre. Leo worked fourteen- hour days and Julie worked fourteen-hour nights.

Julie’s son, Gabe, was born when Leo’s family business soared. The Steiners retired and began with a little stock-marketeering. They shared their profits to Leo and Julie. They put a down payment on a postwar two-flat so huge and it was two complete houses. The upper floor rented to a Danish couple, Liesel and Klaus, professors in the Department of Entomology, who so often flew off to this or that bug-infested paradise. They were practically benign ghosts who paid Julie’s mortgage.

The advice columnist, Marie Winton, had written “Winona Understands” for forty years and Julie edited her column. One day, Miss Winton went to ladies room and never came out – well. The new editor at her office asked Julie to be the new adviser for a new format – not about a person and called it ‘Excess Baggage.’  Not even one anniversary at the paper and Julie was a columnist. Julie was probably the next Dear Abby (a famous advice column till today).

Years passed. Leo, unemployed, enrolled a law degree and an MBA. Just as he graduated, a job opened up as legal counsel to the chancellor at the town. The money was ever so right. Julie hired someone to landscape the front of the house. They sent their son Gabe to the best school. They lived well and her only real world was Leo and the kids. There were two teenagers Gabe and Caroline Steiner, aka Caro or Cat, and their little sister, two year-old Aurora Borealis Steiner, aka Aury or Rory. Even a neighbor once told she wanted a family like Julie’s. Anyone would have but not Leo. He had odd behavior – sort of have a breakdown. He started to fall apart from stress. Julie’s parents had died the summer before last in a plane crash in Scotland. Julie’s father left Julie’s kids trust funds so they could take out loans and paid them back later.

Cathy’s family therapist whose own family consisted only of her and her dill pickle of an Irish mother but she knew the rope of loss and adjustment too. The thirty five year-old woman lived with her mother. Julie met her and her girlfriend Saren. Then they instantly bonded.  Leo was irrational leaving his wife and kids for six months under any circumstances short of having needs his help to save the family wheat farm, and the matter of fact, he didn’t have. Since Leo left for his sabbatical trip, Julie was in depression. The doctor diagnosed she had multiple sclerosis (MS). It was Cathy who discussed the possibility of anti depressant medication, asked about support groups in the area, told the doctor that she heard that muscle relaxants sometimes helped both with sleep and spastic muscle behavior.

Family’s fund broke. Caroline and Gabe initiated to fix it and tried to find their father. Caro assumed Leo was in midlife crisis. Her father was freaking out and less responsibilities – probably totally homesick. Caro believed Leo would be back and be back to normal. Her grandparents and mother would sell the house to renter Klaus and Liesel. Before Leo left, Caro had downloaded all her father’s saved e-mails. They found some names related to a place it called an ‘intentional community’. The people believed in the same ethical stuff- like universal health insurance, keeping kids in public school, buying all their organic food in big bunches from farmers and sharing it out among the families. 

From reading all the e-mails, there were eight or nine families- co- owned only two vans and a truck as their only vehicles, and one TV, which they used only for a movie and seeing stuff of outrages significance, like the Olympics or 9/11. Before Gabe and his sister left, he got only two sentences into explaining when Cathy began shaking her head. Honor bound by being an adult she immediately vetoed the whole this as irresponsible and nuts. Grandfather Steiner hired a private detective and spent two weeks tracing through Leo’s bank records because he had strict orders not to ask Julie any questions or upset her.

After two days on the bus Gabe and his sister Caro found the community and met India Holloway. Leo wrote lots of letters to her. Holloway admitted Leo was there for several months. Leo was a genuinely nice man but the community had asked him to leave. The Gathering didn’t believe his reason for being there was consistent with their philosophy. Her late husband, Doctor Hamilton Holloway, started the intentional community with simply themselves, their daughters and sons, and one other family, the Godins. Finally Caro and Gabe founded a big square yellow sign that read Breakdown Lane. There was no Leo Steiner around there but in the house that where Joyous Devlin lived, was a man called Leon Stern. They saw Leo, their father, was carrying a little baby who was practically a newborn. Virginia Lawrence, local woman, explained to Leo, she drove his kids there after they had come all the way from Wisconsin on a bus.

Gabe and Caro explained everything to Leo – the house and their mother’s condition. Leo drove the kids back home, the big moment for Julie to find Leo’s face was real in their house. But Julie was so shocked when Leo introduced his new baby born Amos and explained his girlfriend Joyous was pregnant again. Leo was coming back – without Amos – for divorce. Grandpa Steiner was the one who told Gabe that his parent’s marriage was over, officially history. Gabe Senior reminded Gabe that Leo was his father and would never have another- there was a good in him. He made mistakes, he was wrong but he didn’t kill anybody. He has done much in his life for kids, wife and parents. Gabe kept hoping to start feeling weird and sad and drained and sort of nostalgic childhood about Leo. The divorce just seemed like a normal fact now.

It was a note from a guy, Matthew McDougall that fell out of the magazine. Matt was Julies’s classmate and was madly in love. Little Matthew, Julie’s secret seventh-grade crush, was now big-shot surgeon in Boston. He read her column from time to time in the paper, when he saw her poem he decided to write the note. His phone number was on the letterhead, and his name was followed by MD was left. A doctor with a daughter, who’s eighteen, had lost his wife in a car accident that his child thankfully survived.

Caroline left her mother. She loved Julie but it was not just that her mother’s sick but it’s that she was mean to Aury and always depressed. She doesn’t want to live with Julie and her friend lesbian, Cathy. She said she wanted to live in a normal household. Matt believed he married the girl he’d always wanted, Julieanne Gillis, and a father to Aury. They are both on the nether end of their forties then and they signed the paper of adoption a two-year-old girl, who’d been born in Vietnam. They called her Pamela Lang and Julie was certainly the oldest mother at the preschool.  Pamela was her real name, and Julieanne was just the prettiest name for this book. She never lived in Sheboygan, Wisconsin like she wrote in her column and this book. But she lived somewhere in the Midwest. Gabe’s real name was Daniel. Julie’s father was a writer and her ex-husband was a lawyer. The poetry book was sort of just what the agent said it would be. It was Gabe’s idea to combine Gabe’s journal and her mother massage them into a novel. When it was published, Gabe and Julie were on TV, on morning show that the readers would recognize, with a nice man whose name was a household word.

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Sekapur Sirih 

Novel yang diterbitkan HarperTorch pada tahun 2006 lalu dan terbitan originalnya tahun 2005. Setelah membeli novel ini beberapa tahun kemudian profil penulis ini muncul sebagai sosok inspirasional  pada Reader Digest. Gaya tulisannya memang agak berbeda, sebuah warna lain. Berdasarkan narasi, tanya-jawab kolom nasehat, dan jurnal dari putra penulis dan setiap bab dikaitkan dengan kronika buku pada Alkitab (Bible). Awalnya karya ini menurutku agak aneh, karena tidak terbiasa dengan formatnya, namun gaya bahasa ringan dan terkini menjadikan pesona tersendiri.

Ini novel kaum wanita, kisah keluarga, cinta, penghianatan, luka, kepahitan dan dibumbui dengan deskripsi humor yang berujung dengan kebahagiaan dan kesuksesan. Kisah Julianne, seorang wanita penasehat rubrik Koran, yang memberi solusi pada masalah orang lain dari masalah ringan, serius, keluarga, dan pernikahan akan tetapi dia sendiri terlilit dalam masalah.

Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: The Breakdown Lane (2005), karya Jacquelyn Mitchard

Julianne Ambrose Gillis merupakan putri dari seorang novelis laris dan terkenal dan dibesarkan ibunya bersama seorang adik perempuannya. Julie menikah dengan Leo lelaki yang dikenal dan dicintainya semenjak bangku kuliah. Dalam pernikahan mereka yang ke dua puluh tahun mereka memiliki seorsng remaja putra bernama Gabe, putri remaja bernama Caroline (Caro), gadis lucu berumur dua tahun Aury (Rory). Lelaki berdarah Jahudi itu mengawali karirnya sebagai marketing pada penanaman perusahaan modal. Leo sudah menyanggupi keluarganya, namun dia mulai berubah aneh. Berhenti bekerja pada bidang investasi dan kuliah kembali jurusan hukum dan mengambil MBA. Dia pikir dengan masuk bidang hukum membuatnya cepat mendapat uang. Setelah lulus, dia pun membuka kantor konsultasi hukum dan pengacara. Uang pun mengalir dengan mudah, kehidupan mereka membaik. Istrinya dimanjakan dengan benda-benda mewah, halaman rumah tertata rapi dengan rerumput indah, dan putranya Gabe dikirim ke sekolah bagus. Seorang tetangga mereka mengaku ingin memiliki keluarga seperti keluarga Steiner.

Pujian itu tidak untuk Leo Steiner. Perangai Leo makin hari makin aneh, dia bahkan mengambil kursus memotong rambut dan memotongi rambut anak-anaknya. Perselisihan di antara suami istri pun tidak terhindarkan. Sementara Julie masih tetap pada profesinya sebagai staf editing kolom nasehat di harian lokal. Belum genap setahun dia ditunjuk bosnya menjadi penasehat rubrik; dari masalah sepele remaja hingga masalah serious pernikahan. Namun kali ini rubrik itu berganti nama menjadi “Excess Baggage” dan sebelumnya “Winona Understands”. Kolom nasehat ini telah dikelola Nona Winton selama empat puluh tahun dan Julie sebagai editor kolom. Suatu hari Nn. Winton masuk kamar mandi dan tidak pernah keluar lagi. Ambulans pun dipanggil. Semenjak itu Julie dipercaya sebagai pengasuh kolom nasehat dan tanya-jawab itu. Karirnya pun melejit dan kolom itu dirilis berbagai media dan harian terkemuka.

Baik Julie dan Leo memasuki masa krisis paruh umur (midlife crisis). Sebelum Leo meninggalkan rumahnya yang besar, dia bilang dia ingin pencarian ketenangan. Terakhir dia mengatakan ingin membantu saudaranya petani gandum di desa. Padahal semua itu bohong. Sebelumnya  dia kerap bertingkah aneh. Julie sangat terpukul dengan kepergian suaminya dan hanya tergeletak di tempat tidur, sakit kronis. Jiwanya rapuh ketika Leo meninggalkannya untuk enam bulan, katanya sabbatical time. Bulan demi bulan tiada ada kabar berita. Walau mertuanya sudah menyewa detektif swasta mencarinya dengan menelusuri rekaman penarikan bank-nya namun tidak mudah melacak Leo. Gabe dan Caroline akhirnya berinisiasi mencari ayah mereka. Lewat surat elektronik ayahnya dan surat-suratnya mereka mencarinya pada sebuah komunitas masyarakat yang terasing. Ke dua remaja itu menaiki bis selama dua hari mencari ayahnya. Caro sempat mendengar percakapan ibunya dan kakek-neneknya tentang rencana penjualan rumah.

Sesuai alamat pada surat elektronik, kedua bersaudara itu akhirnya menemukan alamat komunitas di mana ayahnya dipercaya berada. Kehidupan di sebuah komunitas terbatas yang memiliki kesamaan filosofi, kebersamaan, kedamaian, dan dekat dengan alam. Ketua komunitas India Holloway membenarkan jikalau Leo Steiner pernah tinggal beberapa bulan di sana. Namun dia tidak diijinkan tinggal lama karena anggota komunitas dilarang berstatus cerai apalagi meninggalkan tanggung jawab terhadap keluarga dan anak-anaknya. Perbedaan filosofi.

Gabe dan adiknya pun menemukan petunjuk dan mengacu pada tempat Breakdown Lane dan dibantu seorang wanita lokal yang mengaku pernah mendengar nama Leon Stener, lelaki yang tinggal di rumah wanita bernama Joyous Devlin. Betapa kaget, kedua anak itu mendapati Leon Stener adalah ayahnya Leo, yang kini tinggal di sebuah rumah bersama seorang wanita muda. Leo memperkenalkan anak-anaknya pada kekasihnya yang tengah mengandung anak ke duanya. Pengacara Leo Steiner mengubah namanya menjadi Leon Stener  tengah menggendong  bayi lelaki bernama Amos ketika kedua anaknya sampai di depannya.

Kedua remaja itu kecewa tetapi berusaha menerima ayah mereka dan Leo pun mengantarkan kembali ke dua anaknya dan bertemu dengan istrinya Julie. Awalnya pertengkaran terjadi, orang tua Leo yang selama ini bangga pada anaknya berubah kemarahan dan kekecewaan. Semenjak ditinggal Leo, kedua orang tua Leo, yang sudah berumur tujuh puluhan, setia merawat menantunya dan ketiga cucunya. Bahkan menjual apartemennya di California, berpindah serta tinggal di sekitar rumah menantunya. Leo pun kembali lagi tetapi tidak membawa Amos putranya, dan sidang pengadilan perceraian pun telah diputuskan. Rumah akhirnya dijual pada pasangan ilmuwan yang sebelumnya penyewa kini menjadi pemilik. Julie dan anak-anaknya pun tetap tinggal di sana berstatus sebagai penyewa. Kakek Steiner mengingatkan Gabe kalau Leo adalah tetap ayahnya. Walau Leo membuat kesalahan karena meninggalkan ibunya dan anak-anaknya demi Joyous, gadis separuh dari umurnya dan lagi kini tengah mengandung anak lagi. Sang kakek membujuk cucunya agar memaafkan Leo.

Kesehatan Julie pun memburuk dan sering emosional sehingga membuat Caroline memutuskan ingin ikut tinggal dengan Leo ayahnya. Remaja perempuan itu mencintai ibunya namun keputusan itu membuatnya merasa lebih baik. Sebuah catatan dari Matthew McDougall, mantan teman sekelas Julie, yang sudah jatuh cinta padanya sejak muda, menyiratkan ketertarikannya pada wanita cantik yang baru saja menjanda itu. Rupanya Matthew kecil kini telah menjadi dokter bedah di kota Boston dan duda dengan seorang putri berusia delapan belas tahun. Istrinya telah meninggal dunia akibat kecelakaan mobil dan beruntungnya putri kecilnya Kelly saat itu selamat. Matt selalu mengikuti kolom dan apalagi puisi yang ditulis oleh Julie dan memberanikan diri mengajaknya bertemu. Dengan proses yang tidak lama keduanya pun menikah dan mengadopsi seorang bayi perempuan berumur dua tahun kelahiran Vietnam.

Julie kembali bahagia, tentu saja dengan suaminya yang baru, Gabe akhirnya kuliah. Adalah ide dari Gabe agar menyatukan jurnalnya dan tulisan kolom ibunya menjadi sebuah puisi. Buku puisi dan novel pun terbit. Julie dan Gabe muncul pada sebuah acara pagi hari di televisi. Pamela adalah nama aslinya, Julieanne dipilih menjadi nama dalam buku ini untuk menyamarkan diri dan sesungguhnya Gabe adalah Daniel. Ayah Julie adalah benar seorang penulis novel dan mantan suaminya seorang pengacara. Dia tidak pernah tinggal di Sheboygan, Wisconsin seperti pengakuannya pada sepanjang cerita dan kolomnya. Bahkan mengunjunginya tidak pernah, dia tinggal di sebuah daerah di Midwest Amerika.

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