No One's a Mystery, and it's the truth

The characters in "No One's A Mystery" by Elizabeth Tallent each tell a wildly different and interesting tale. The girl in the story, who remains nameless throughout, is eighteen and is convinced that she and her lover are going to get married and have kids and stay together for the rest of their lives. The man, Jack, is significantly older than the girl, married (to someone else), and knows that they won't stay together. Jack tells the girl that she will quickly move on from him once she realizes that she is too good for him, and she won't even remember his name in two years' time. The girl tells him that he is wrong- they will get married and be happy together. The differing views on the relationship could easily be an allusion to the relationship of any young couple.

I think the differing views on how the relationship may or may not turn out are definitely reflective on how a relationship would work for each of the characters. The girl is young. She is naive, and this dude is more likely than not her first serious boyfriend. No matter how morally wrong their entire relationship is, she loves him and she is convinced that she will spend the rest of her life with him.

Jack, on the other hand, tells a truer tale about their relationship. He sees that it will not be a fairy tale. He likely will not leave his wife for her. Even if he did leave his wife, I don't think he would marry the girl. At the end of the story, Jack acknowledges that their relationship is "bittersweet". He is with the girl because she is young and fresh and that would all change if he married her, just the way it changed when he married his first wife. He sees the more cynical side, but also the more realistic side.

The girl's and Jack's views on their future may also be a mirror to just how each one of them works. Jack is convinced that the girl will have moved on in two years, and even forgotten his name. Jack obviously has been able to easily move on from his wife (in a sense) and forget about her and her feelings enough to have had this girlfriend for two years, since she was sixteen. Jack is all that this girl has ever known, and she hope that he is all she'll ever know. That's a part of her innocence: she sees only the good in him and believes that they are soul mates because he's cheating on his wife with her. She thinks she will be the girl to change him. It just isn't so.

The girl is very happy and satisfied with her current situation. Jack, though possibly happy with his current situation, has a gloomy outlook on the future. He knows that he isn't willing to stay with his mistress. Though the relationship is wrong, morals aside the reader is inclined to root for the girl's side of the story early on. But reading farther and farther into the text can only assert that Jack is the wrong choice for the girl, and that she's going to need to move on, just as he says.