This is a story about a long friendship between two men Carl and Jed who grew up in Montana, and are still living in Montana. This is 'Ordinary Wear and Tear' by Thomas McGuane, published in The New Yorker on April 29, 2026.
I don't know what readers are supposed to feel about Carl and Jed, given their differences that was set out right from the start. Carl grew up with financial security and became a lawyer. Jed was adopted by parents who didn't quite care about him and had to enrol in the R.O.T.C (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) to pay for college, and seemed to have a precarious hold on financial success.
Carl went to Pomona College to get away from his home town and his parents, but it only made him love them more. Jed attended the state university and lived off campus, indulging in a cavalcade of liaisons. He needed R.O.T.C. in order to meet his college expenses. By the time Jed got out of the National Guard, where he crewed on helicopters, Carl was already on his way to a comfortable life. Jed got a job at a title company. Two eligible bachelors.
Shirley Crane is a woman from Albuquerque who moved into their town. Her developer-parents bought the savings-and-loan building and turned it into a luxury condominium. I assumed Shirley was a teenager then. The two boys got to know her. She married Carl TWICE. Of course both times, the marriages fell apart. Shirley fleeced Carl for enough money for an apartment in Kauai, Hawaii.
Jed watched; convinced that his friend was mad in drowning in grief over the broken marriage instead of hitting the gym. Jed wasn't interested in marriage very much. But he slept with Shirley Crane a few days before her divorce became final. Somehow, Carl and Shirley got back together and are re-stating their vows, but they split again in ninety days.
Shirley Crane has somehow become a fault line in the men's relationship that crumbled. The friendship was sort of broken after the second divorce. Is it truly about her, or really about them and unresolved issues from way back when. Then Carl got together with his secretary Jenny, and that was a totally new direction in the two men's lives.
“As it should be,” Carl said. He led Jed into the living room, where they sat before a rock fireplace with a gas log, and, above it, a painting of a wagon train, a woman in a bonnet driving the oxen. It hadn’t been there when Jed was last in the house. It must have been a reference to Carl’s pioneer family. What an eyesore. “Jenny and I are getting married,” Carl announced. “We’ve been close since I don’t know when. It’s time to act. In a way, I’m grateful that you disrupted my life. It’s been a long way around the horn, but I’m with the right girl now. We have no secrets.” Carl paused and Jed didn’t speak. “I’m at last coming out of a very dark place. Yes, I’m moving toward the light.” He stared into his coffee for a moment, before lifting his eyes and holding Jed’s gaze. “Jed, I’ve waited all this time to tell you to your face that I hate you.”
“I understand.”
That was it. Carl saw him to the door, clutching his bathrobe as the snow blew in. Jed stopped when it shut behind him. Was this, finally, the end? Still, they had the long years of friendship to overcome this mishap. Jed felt it was inevitable that they would eventually reconcile.
Opportunities in the small town dwindled. Carl and Jenny eventually sold the house and moved away to Helena. Jed stayed in town, and at the end of the story, we kinda see him fall back into the same patterns. No commitment, simple complicated entanglements, and as Jenny had said it years ago, “Jed, your zipper problems have caused so much heartache in this town.”
In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked about the title chosen for this story. The author explained,
It’s a story about mating and its preliminaries, the longing for permanence among unstable humans. Desire is restrained or disorderly, and, in either case, it exacts some toll. That’s hardly unusual; in fact, it’s ordinary.
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