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Much of the psychoanalytic literature dealing with emotional loss has focused on the early origins of narcissistic injury. Masterson, for example, speaks of “the mother's libidinal availability for the child's separation-individuation needs” (1981, p. 132). The child is viewed as introjecting a “withdrawing maternal part-object,” with consequent abandonment depression. Whether one relates the resulting intrapsychic structure to borderline or narcissistic personality disorders, the depressive component cannot be ignored. My present purpose is to analyze Ann Beattie's fiction with special reference to emotional loss in the context of adult love relationships. I will also explore links between the sense of abandonment, depression, and a variety of coping mechanisms as described by Beattie. I have chosen Beattie because her work is highly representative of contemporary trends in fiction, in which love relationships are often depicted not only as problematic but as impoverished and filled with loneliness and a sense of loss. To the extent that these trends reflect patterns of behavior in real life—;always difficult to determine—;it is possible that love relationships, family life, and nurturance in contemporary America are undergoing important historic changes of an entropic nature.
Beattie's “A Vintage Thunderbird” is one of many stories that illustrate the theme of irreparable loss, in this case not only the ill-advised sale of a vintage auto but more importantly the damage done to assorted love relationships by misunderstandings, indecisiveness, and self-centeredness. As if gratuitously, Beattie causes her bachelor protagonist to catch a glimpse of a little boy playing with a hula hoop, a reminder, perhaps, of lost opportunities for a normal family life. The symbolic meaning of the child is underscored by the circumstance that one of the female characters, a married friend and short-term mistress of the protagonist, has had an abortion earlier on the same day.
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