Reply #13: Thanks for your input! I have come to the conclusion (through my own self criticism of this story)

[CTyankee]

that my story does not flesh out its male characters but that I wrote it this way for a reason, and that was because it was from a decidedly female perspective. Marital infidelity has been much more a male province, in literature if not in reality, that the lack of a woman's perspective is ultimately unsatisfying for the women reading stories dealing with it. I have been musing on this since Updike's death and some recent reading on the incidence of infidelity in Emily Dickinson's complicated family situation, but the kernel of the story is drawn from my observation of one particular woman in real life, altho there is lot of compositional strands from others.

Thank you so much. You've said good things to me...