Exes and others in current New Yorker story

I've admired Antonya Nelson's stories for many years - her empathy for young and often troubled girls, her terrific and quirky sense of humor, her story titles themselves are works of art. I don't think her story, the first husband, in the current New Yorker is one of her best efforts, however. I appreciate the difficult challenge she's set for herself: writing about some v complex family dynamics in this case a late 30s woman and her complex relationship w the children and grandchildren of her first and much older husband - and she uses the good guy current husband as a bit of a foil - she should and does love him more but is troubled by still smoldering attraction to the eponymous first husband who actually does not appear in the story. In brief ex step daughter drops off her children at about 2 am allegedly to search for drunken husband but as we learn in fact to go on a binge of her own. By far most touching moment is woman's - her ridiculous name is lovey - realization that the ex step grandchild so close to her now will grow estranged - as she regrets missed opportunities to have or to raise children of her own. Nelson is exploring some important modern complexities of family dynamics but the problem is that the dynamics of the relationships and the gnarls of the family tree - even the terminology - ex-step - are so sinuous that most of our attention goes to keeping the characters and their relations straight - we lose sight of the action and emotions of the story. Alice Munro can sometimes bring off this kind of trick but even alive the great need more space in which to do so. If I were to edit Nelson's story I would suggest making the family tree a bit simpler - would this story work as well? Better? If the child had been lovey's grandson for example?