First volley: Pa's Darling by Louis Auchincloss

Pa's Darling, a story by Louis Auchincloss that opens the Best American Short Stories of 2007, obviously isn't my darling...
I hate to admit this, but I didn't get Pa's Darling. Not one of those things like, "Oh, I don't like it." I had to read it twice (maybe I'm just really out ofshape for reading literature) because I wondered if I missed something. I understood the whole thing that her two husbands mirrored her parents relationship, but I feel like there's some bigger subtext going on here, particularly since this takes place in 1960, 1927, and then 1940. Any ideas? Are they communists?

I think my problem with the story was that I got stuck in the structure. I love the way this writer can put together extraordinarily complex sentences. Did you notice this, too? Maybe it's the tech writer in me but at first I was like, 'Geez, break these sentences down.' But then, I felt like, no, these are actuallybeautiful and really capture the writer's sense of ...I was going to say confusion, but I think this kind of round aboutness of ideals. That is, if you go far enough into love you end up in hate and vice versa. I especially liked that she is able to woo a man with three words and that she's lost that ability by the end of the story.