Community News
BIG LOCAL LIES
BY KATRINA MEDOFF
What if you were living a seem-ingly
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I AUGUST 2017 23
perfect life in Astoria,
with an amazing husband
and a 3-week-old baby, when you found
out that your husband was living a
double life? What if, as betrayal after
betrayal came to light, you discovered
the unthinkable: your husband fit the
textbook definition of a psychopath?
Former Astoria resident Jen Waite
lived this story, and now, she’s sharing
it with others: her memoir, “A Beautiful,
Terrible Thing,” was released by an imprint
of Penguin Random House on July 11. It’s
been compared to fictional thrillers “Gone
Girl” by Gillian Flynn and “Big Little Lies”
by Liane Moriarty — in Waite’s memoir,
much like in these popular novels, lies
and secrets hide behind fairy tale lives.
“A Beautiful, Terrible Thing” is struc-tured
like a thriller novel, too, alternating
between “before” sections that read like
a love story and “after” sections that are
more of a nightmare.
And much of it takes place right here
in Astoria.
Waite moved to New York City right
after college and spent a couple years
moving from neighborhood to neighbor-hood
before landing in Astoria in 2009.
“Astoria just felt like home,” Waite
said. “Everywhere else I had lived in
NYC, I felt like I was living with a bunch
of other transplants, but it’s just really
nice to have that sense of community
in Astoria. Half of my neighbors were
older people who had lived there their
whole lives and were raising families
there. I felt more at home in Astoria
than anywhere else in the city.”
While working as an actress and
model, she got a job near her apart-ment
as a waitress at a burger place
by Kaufman Astoria Studios (in this
article, as in Waite’s memoir, names
have been changed, and the names of
businesses are not mentioned). There,
she met a great group of friends — and
her future husband, Marco, her coworker
from Argentina.
Waite spent “every second thinking
about Marco” after they started seeing
each other, and she remembers thinking,
“Yes! Yes, this is what real, sing-it-from-the-
rooftops, heart-melting love feels like.”
She met Marco’s precocious 7-year-old
son, Seb; Marco won the approval
of Waite’s family; and the couple got
engaged, then married, eventually earn-ing
Marco his green card.
Soon, Waite and her parents invested
significant amounts of money in a small
gastropub Waite and Marco were open-ing
up in Astoria, in a business partner-ship
with another couple. Later, in their
Astoria apartment, the couple found out
that Waite was pregnant.
Her “before” life ended three weeks
after her daughter’s birth when she
found an email indicating that Marco
had a girlfriend. In the “after” section,
the lies snowball.
As Waite’s marriage unraveled, she
tried to hang on to her life in Astoria
but eventually moved to her hometown
in Maine. (As for the lies, infidelity and
betrayals Waite discovered, we’ll leave
you to read the memoir and find out for
yourself.) She recently bought a house in
Maine and is working in insurance. Her
daughter is now 2 ½ years old.
Waite came back to Astoria for the
book’s launch party, which was held at
Astoria Bookshop, with a crowd full of
Waite’s friends and colleagues, and lots
of local bookworms.
“Astoria Bookshop was a really obvi-ous
choice from the beginning because
half of the memoir takes place in As-toria,”
Waite said. “There are a lot of
Astoria landmarks in the book, though
the names are changed. That’s where I
lived for the majority of time in New York
and it’s still where I think of as ‘home’
when I go back to New York.”
Being in Astoria “felt bitter” back
when everything was falling apart, she
said, “but now that it’s been two years
and I feel more resolved about every-thing,
it still feels like home.”
Plus, since the book’s editor, Kate
Napolitano, and Waite’s literary agent,
Myrsini Stephanides, both live in the
neighborhood, Astoria Bookshelf was
the perfect choice for the launch.
Waite is no longer pursuing acting
and modeling — “that wasn’t the right
path for me,” she explained — so writing
the memoir was a creative outlet for her.
More than that, though, it was thera-peutic:
“Writing helped me to process
it and understand what was happening,”
she said.
While the writing process helped her
heal, she said that sharing the memoir
with the world has been “very, very dif-ficult
… a really humbling, exciting but
scary process.”
But it’s all worth it because women
and men in similar situations have been
able to connect with her story.
“I’ve received hundreds of incredible
messages from a lot of people, mostly
women, who have been through similar
experiences,” she said. “They’ve actually
said in these messages, ‘This book saved
my life.’ Getting a message like that is
very powerful, and the fact that people
are connecting with it so deeply and it’s
resonating with them and helping them
is so amazing.”
Waite has considered pursuing a
graduate degree to become a licensed
therapist, and she hasn’t ruled out pen-ning
another book.
“I’d really love to write a thriller novel,”
she said. “From writing the memoir I
realized that I figured out how to set
up the structure of a psychological
thriller, so if I could get the right story
in my head, I would love to try a novel
next time.”
For now, though, Waite said she is
enjoying a “lull” after her book finally
came out.
“I’m just back to my day-to-day life
now, so it’s funny because we just got
reviewed in The New York Times, which
is amazing, but at the same time I’m just
at an insurance company, taking care
of my daughter on a day-to-day basis,”
Waite said. “For now, it’s a little bit of
down time, which is really, really nice.
I’m enjoying that right now.”
I’ve received
hundreds of incredible
messages from a
lot of people, mostly
women, who have
been through similar
experiences. They’ve
actually said in these
messages, ‘This book
saved my life.’
JEN WAITE
Author
