The Manny. Holly Peterson

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СКАЧАТЬ want to talk about it. He always talks to me. Always. Especially at night, when he’s going to bed.’ I crinkled the crow’s-feet around my eyes.

      ‘By the way, I know what you’re thinking right now and you look thin and very young for thirty-six, and, secondly, I don’t blame Dylan for not wanting to relive it. Give him a few days. Don’t worry, he’s gonna make it.’

      ‘That was a big moment, Phillip, I told you that last night.’

      ‘Fourth grade is tough. He’s going to move on. I promise, and I’m going to make sure to get him there.’

      ‘You’re so good to try to reassure me. But still. You just don’t understand.’

      ‘I do, too! There was a lot of pressure on the kid,’ Phillip continued. ‘And he freaked out. Let it rest or you’ll make it worse.’ He patted my bottom and walked towards his dressing room. At the door, he turned around and winked at me, his expression full of his easy confidence.

      He peeked back into the bathroom. ‘Enough with Dylan. I have a surprise for you!’

      I knew. The shirts. I tried very, very hard to switch gears.

      Phillip disappeared again into the bedroom and yelled behind him. ‘You’re going to faint when you see what finally arrived!’

      The shirts lay nestled in a large navy felt box on the bed. Phillip had been waiting for them with more anticipation than a child on Christmas Eve. When I returned to the bedroom, he had pulled the first two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar custom-made shirt from the box and was carefully peeling off a sticker that held the red tissue paper wrapping together. The tissue was thick and expensive, soft like a chalkboard on one side and shiny and slick on the other. The paper made a loud, crackling noise as he tore it open to reveal a shirt with wide yellow and white candy stripes. Very British aristocracy and very every other lawyer we knew.

      I had no patience for shirts that morning. I walked down the hall towards the kitchen.

      ‘Jamie! Come back here. You didn’t even …’

      ‘Give me a minute!’

      I came back stirring my coffee and clutching the newspaper under my elbow.

      ‘The kids are getting up. You have two minutes for your little shirt show.’

      ‘I’m not ready yet.’

      I sat in the corner armchair and started reading the headlines.

      ‘Just look at this!’ Phillip, delighted with himself, slipped the yellow shirt on his broad six-foot-two frame. A few wet blond curls covered the top of the back collar and he combed his wavy hair back, and then slicked it down with the palm of his hand. He chuckled to himself and hummed a happy little tune as he buttoned himself in.

      ‘Very nice, Phillip. Nice cloth. Good job on that choice.’

      I went back to my papers and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him head towards his mahogany dressing room with an ever-so-light skip and rummage through a silver bowl that he had won at a sailing regatta in high school. He picked out three sets of cuff links and placed them on top of his bureau – a little ritual that only developed once Phillip began making good money and could afford to have more than one set of good cuff links. He chose his favourite Tiffany gold barbells with navy-blue lapis marbles on either end.

      ‘OK, honey.’ I threw my papers down and headed for the door. ‘We done here? Mind if I …’

      A dark storm cloud appeared out of nowhere. ‘Shit!’

      There was clearly a very big problem with his new shirt. Phillip was trying to jam the cuff links into the holes that were sewn too small. This made him what one might call angry.

      He took off the yellow striped shirt and squinted.

      Our five-year-old Gracie walked in rubbing her eyes. She grabbed him around his slender thigh.

      ‘Pumpkin. Not now. Daddy loves you very much, but not now.’ He shooed her over to me and I picked her up.

      Phillip returned to the bed, no skip in his gait now, and took out another custom-made shirt; lavender and white stripes this time. He paused and breathed rather deeply, kind of like a bull in a Madrid ring before it charges. He held the starched shirt in front of him and cocked his head sideways as if to help him remain positive. Standing there in his blue Oxford cloth boxers, white T-shirt and charcoal socks, he put on the brand-new shirt and again attempted to stuff his lapis barbell cuff links into the holes. Again they didn’t fit. Our Wheaten Terrier Gussie loped in, sat on his hind legs and cocked his head sideways like Phillip had just done.

      ‘Not. Now. Gussie. OUT!!!’ The dog cocked his head in the other direction, but his body, rigid and firm, remained in place.

      I leaned against our bedroom doorway biting my lip, with Gracie in my arms.

      Third-generation Exeter, Harvard, Harvard Law attorneys do not possess tremendous psychological apparatus for dealing with life’s little disappointments. Especially the ones like Phillip who were born and bred on Park Avenue. Nannies have raised them, cooks have served their meals and doormen have silently opened their doors. These guys can win and lose three hundred million of their clients’ dollars in the blink of an eye and retain their cool, but God forbid their driver isn’t where he’s supposed to be after a dinner party. When a glitch discomforts my own husband, his reaction is not, in any scenario in the history of the world, commensurate with the problem at hand. As a rule, it’s the most insignificant events that unleash the most seismic explosions.

      This morning was one of those times. This was also one of those times when Daddy’s strict rules about swear words didn’t apply.

      ‘Fucking Mr Ho, obsequious fucking midget, comes here from Hong Kong, charges me a goddamn fortune for ten fucking custom-made shirts, in two separate goddamn fittings and the guy can’t sew a goddamn buttonhole? Two hundred and fifty dollars can’t get me the right goddamn fucking buttonhole?’ He stormed back into his dressing room.

      I placed Gracie under the covers of our bed, with tightened lips and big saucer eyes. Even at five, she knew Daddy was being a big fat baby. She also knew if she said anything right now, Daddy would not react favourably. Michael, our two-year-old, toddled in and reached his hands in the air next to the bed, signalling he wanted help getting up. I placed him next to Gracie and kissed his head.

      I waited while I struggled with the zipper on the back of my blouse, knowing …

      ‘Jamieeeeeeeeee!’

      When Phillip proposed to me, he told me he wanted a woman with a career, a woman who first and foremost had interests outside the home. He declared himself a modern man, one who didn’t care to have his mundane needs serviced by a wife. A decade later, I beg to differ. I put on the Pinky Dinky Doo tape for the kids and calmly walked towards the voice now in the study, wondering, at that exact moment, how many women across America were dealing with early-morning husband tantrums over absolute nonsense.

      ‘How many times do I have to tell Carolina NOT to touch the contents on my desk? Would you please remind her that she will lose her job if she once again takes the scissors off my desk?’

      ‘Honey. Let’s try to remember we’re just dealing with a cuff-link problem here. I’m sure she didn’t СКАЧАТЬ