The Wishbones. Tom Perrotta

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ this big corny club of middle-aged men that included his father, Julie's father, his uncles, and every scoutmaster, Little League coach, and volunteer fireman he'd ever known. There were some exceptions—Bruce Springsteen and Buzzy came to mind— but in general, marriage seemed to require that a man check his valuables at the door: his dreams, his freedom, all the wildness that had defined the secret part of his life, even if, like Dave, he wasn't all that wild in reality.

      It was easier if you were a woman. Women were supposed to want to get married, to go through life with a husband and children. A man's job, as far as Dave could see, was simply to resist for as long as possible before surrendering to the inevitable. You didn't have to play guitar in a wedding band to know that there was something at least slightly pathetic about a bridegroom.

      Beyond his personal fears, though, he identified a deeper, more philosophical question: Was marriage something you chose, or was it something that happened whether you wanted it to or not, one of those mysterious, transforming events on the order of birth and death? The no-brain answer, of course, was that you chose. You were an adult in a free country; there were no arranged marriages in America. You didn't have to do anything you didn't want to.

      He accepted all that, but on another level, it was hard to say that he and Julie had actually chosen each other in some rational, adult way. Fifteen years ago—half their lifetime—she had walked up to him in the hallway of Warren G. Harding Regional High School and told him that Exit 36 had put on a great show at the spring dance and predicted that they would someday be famous. A week later he took her to see Midnight Express. Two months after that they split a six-pack purchased by her older sister's boyfriend and had sex for the first time. It just happened, in some urgent hormonal haze that had little to do with concepts like choice or intention, and they hadn't been free of each other since. And now, apparently, unless he thought of something fast, they were going to get themselves married.

      Dave's father Sat at the table in his Mr. Speedy baseball cap, reading the Daily News with the almost religious thoroughness he devoted to every edition. It seemed to Dave that he pored over every word of it—the advertisements, the classifieds, the bridge column, all twelve horoscopes. Reading the newspaper filled most of Al Raymond's spare time; it was his version of a hobby.

      “Hey,” he said, looking up with a smile that was surprised and satisfied at the same time. “Congratulations. Your mother told me the good news.”

      “Word travels fast.”

      “You had her worried there for a while, Dave. She didn't think Julie would stick around long enough for you to make up your mind.”

      “It wasn't a matter of making up my mind. I just didn't feel ready.”

      “No one feels ready. It's the same with having kids. You just jump in and start treading water. If everybody waited until they were ready, we wouldn't need express lines at the supermarket.”

      Since his retirement, Al had emerged as something of an armchair philosopher, full of cryptic insights into the workings of the world. It was a development that surprised the whole family. Dave still came home half expecting to find the old Al lurking behind his paper, the grumpy exhausted chief of maintenance at the county courthouse, the human jukebox of grievances.

      “So what do you think about marriage?” Dave asked, sorting through the junk mail on top of the microwave.

      “About what?”

      “Marriage.”

      “Julie's great,” his father replied. “I hope you'll be happy together.”

      “I didn't ask about Julie. I asked what you thought about marriage.”

      “What? The institution in general?”

      “Yeah. I mean, you've been married for thirty-six years. I figure you might have formed an opinion by now.”

      His father studied him for a few seconds, apparently trying to decide if he was serious.

      “Come on,” he said, chuckling uncomfortably. “Quit pulling my leg.”

      Until that evening, Dave had never given serious consideration to the matter of inlaws. He'd known Jack and Dolores Müller for a long time—almost as long as he'd known their daughter—and paid them the wary respect due the parents of the girl you're sleeping with, but it hadn't occurred to him, except in the vaguest, most fleeting way, to think of them as relatives, people whose lives might one day be intimately and inextricably caught up with his own. Inlaws were people you were required to visit on holidays, people whose genes your children would inherit, people who might—it happened all the time, he realized with dismay—end up, for one reason or another, living in your house.

      Mrs. Muller answered the door in a ruffled apron, the bib of which was emblazoned with the image of an eggplant. Despite her manufactured smile, the air between them was instantly thick with embarrassment; Dave had to resist an impulse to place his hands over his crotch. Stepping through the awkwardness into the house, he greeted his future mother-in-law with a clever approximation of a hug.

      “Congratulations,” she said, rallying a little. “We're so pleased.”

      “Thanks. It's kind of amazing, isn't it?”

      “I'll say,” Mrs. Müller agreed, her voice suddenly full of conviction.

      Julie was in the kitchen, tenderly probing a casserole with a very large fork. She was wearing gingham oven mitts and a gingham apron over a black floral print dress that was one of Dave's favorites (she occasionally “forgot” to wear underwear with it, a lapse that thrilled him beyond words). Still clutching the fork, she rushed across the room to embrace him. Her skin was clammy; she smelled of meat and Obsession.

      “You're gonna love this,” she said. “We made all your favorites.

      Dave had never seen her in an apron before, and the effect was disconcerting, especially with her mother standing so close by, also in an apron. The two of them shared a facial resemblance so strong that you could almost imagine them not as mother and daughter, but as the same person at two different stages of life.

      Dave had heard the joke about taking a long hard look at your prospective mother-in-law before deciding to get married, but he'd never given it a second thought. It was one of those pearls of marital wisdom a certain type of middle-aged guy like to dispense, something Henny Youngman probably said on Johnny Carson back in 1963.

      But now he looked at Julie and Dolores and wondered. Was it possible that Mrs. Muller had once possessed a body as curvy and stirring as Julie's? If so, when had it changed? Was it a gradual transformation, or did it happen overnight? He made a mental note to ask Julie to show him the family photo albums. It was never too early to start bracing for the future.

      “So,” he said, gazing around the kitchen with feigned interest, “anything I can do?”

      “I don't think so,” said Julie.

      “Why don't you go downstairs,” Mrs. Müller suggested, in a tone that made it clear he had no choice in the matter. “Jack wants to have a drink with you.”

      Dave shot a quick, pleading glance at Julie, but she refused to save him. Shrugging an insincere apology, she shooed him out of the kitchen with a puffy, checkered hand.

      Downstairs, Mr. Muller was waiting on the couch in a tweed jacket and striped tie. He had a glass СКАЧАТЬ