We Are Water. Wally Lamb

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ so adamant during the divorce negotiations about not selling it? About staying put whether I’d left or not.

       If this is an emergency, please call …

      I was shocked when Orion took Viveca up on her offer to use her beach house for his Cape Cod getaway. He’d refused at first, but then he changed his mind. Why? Whatever’s going on with him, I don’t think he’s shared it with the kids. I talked to all three of them this week, and none of them voiced any worry about their father. Has he met someone? No, that can’t be it. If he had, Marissa would have wormed it out of him and called me. Andrew and Ariane can keep a secret but not their little sister.

      There’s a long, long beep, which means he hasn’t been picking up his messages. “Hey, there. It’s me,” I say. “Have you left for the Cape yet? I just wanted to tell you, in case you haven’t heard, that they’ve been spotting sharks up there. Be careful, okay? I hope you’re well. Call me.”

      Marissa’s probably right. I should learn how to text-message. “Daddy hardly ever answers the phone, Mom. But whenever I text him, he texts me right back,” she told me yesterday. Well, good for her, but I’d prefer to talk to her father—to hear it in his voice that he’s doing okay. Or not. When you’ve been married to someone for as long as Orion and I were, you can hear in a conversation if something’s wrong—not so much in what’s said as the way it’s said. The inflections, the hesitations …

      Is it the wedding? The fact that it will be in Three Rivers? Is that what’s bothering him? I didn’t want to not invite Orion. It’s doubtful that Andrew’s coming, but both of our girls will be there, and I know he’d like to see them. And Donald and Mimsy are driving up from Pennsylvania; Orion’s always liked my brother and his wife and he hasn’t seen them in ages. Still, I don’t want him to feel that he has to attend. Yesterday, Viveca’s assistant e-mailed me the list of who’s coming and who’s declined and apparently Orion hasn’t sent in his response card yet … I was delighted, though, to see Mr. Agnello’s name on the list. I want to introduce Viveca to the man who validated my artistic efforts all those years ago when I was struggling against self-doubt, wondering if I should stop kidding myself and just give up. Mr. Agnello must be in his nineties by now. He and I have exchanged Christmas cards for twenty-something years, and when I didn’t get a card back from him this past Christmas, I was worried that he might have …

      Is it because I’m marrying a woman? Is that why Orion hasn’t responded? He’s never been homophobic, but maybe this strikes too close to home. Bruises his male ego. That time when we met with the lawyers to negotiate the terms of the divorce, he’d already been drinking. I could smell it. And it wasn’t exactly the cocktail hour; it was 11:00 A.M. I’d wanted to say something to him about it after we left, but I didn’t. I was still trying to figure out what the new rules were about such things, now that we were almost divorced. The other day, I tried imagining what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot—if he had left me for a man. It was a ridiculous exercise: picturing two hairy-chested men in bed with each other, one of them Orion. LOL, as Marissa would put it. LMFAO.

      The truth, whether Orion believes it or not, is that I hadn’t left him for Viveca. I’d left him for New York—for the opportunities it offered me, creatively and commercially. What developed between Viveca and me had been unplanned, unpremeditated …

      My “defection,” Orion had called it on that awful Sunday back in Connecticut when I finally admitted that Viveca and I had become involved, that I’d fallen in love with her. I was “a Judas,” he said. I could get my own goddamned ride back to the train station, because he sure as hell wasn’t taking me there. He was through with being “a fucking sap.” I’d had to hire a cab to New Haven, and on the train ride back to the city, I’d kept replaying our argument. If I was Judas, then that made him Jesus Christ, right? Well, maybe he should come down from his cross and take some of the responsibility for the fact that our marriage had failed. Which of us had practically raised Andrew and the girls single-handedly all those years when he’d leave for work early and come home late? Sit in his office all day and into the evening, counseling college kids about their problems? What about my problems? What about the fact that I felt frustrated and neglected all those years while he was playing savior to those troubled students of his and then coming home and feeling sorry for himself because of the toll they took? Drinking his beers and falling asleep by nine when I still had laundry to fold and put away, and three school lunches to make for the next morning, before I could go down to my gloomy little studio and grab a measly hour or two for my work.

      Thank god the bitterness has subsided on both our parts. We have our kids to thank for that and our mutual investment in their lives, our shared worries about their unhappiness and their safety: Ariane’s failed romances, our worries about where Andrew’s military career might take him, where Marissa’s impetuousness might take her. Our concern for our kids’ well-being binds us despite our divorce. Will always bind us. And he’s come around, made an effort with Viveca despite the fact that I can tell he doesn’t like her … Whether Viveca understands it or not, I still care about Orion, which is why I’m worried about him. Why, maybe, I shouldn’t have put his name on the guest list—made the decision myself instead of listening to Marissa’s “Daddy’s an adult, Mom. He can decide if he wants to go or not.” The last thing I want to do is make him feel he has to come if it will be too weird or too painful for him …

      I don’t know. Marriage, parenting, divorce: it’s a complicated equation, but there’s no sense in pretending that we don’t still have feelings for each other, no matter who failed who. Or is it “whom”? Fifty-two years old and I still don’t know the difference. What mistake had I made that time when Marissa, in the middle of her bratty teenage phase, called me on my bad grammar? “Her and I”: that was it. Ariane and I were making supper, and Marissa was leaning against the counter, trying as hard as she could to annoy me. And I was doing everything I could to show her that she couldn’t get my goat. But when I happened to mention that I’d run into Ruth Stanley at the post office, and that “her and I” hadn’t seen each other in ages, Marissa felt obliged to let me know how stupid I was. “It’s she and I, Mother.” Whenever she was mad at me back then—which was most of the time—I was “Mother” instead of “Mom” or “Mama.” She went on to inform me that the way I murdered the English language embarrassed her in front of her friends, and so when they came over, would I please do her a favor and not speak to them? Well, that hit a nerve. I burst into tears, furious with myself for letting her see me cry. But then Ari had jumped to my defense. Had turned to her little sister and demanded that Marissa apologize to me. She did it, too. Ariane’s easygoing for the most part, but she can be fierce in the face of injustice. I’ve often thought she would have made a good lawyer. In the wake of Marissa’s remark, I’d gone out and bought one of those Dummies books on grammar. I studied it, spoke self-consciously for a while. I’m pretty sure it’s no matter who failed whom, now that I think about it, although I don’t remember why …

      Orion and Viveca have that much in common, at least: their intelligence and good educations, the way they know how to say things correctly without having to think about it. Viveca’s fluent in three languages, and he used to do the Times crossword puzzles in pen. Complete them most Sundays. Odd how they both got mixed up with me, the girl with three years of high school and a G.E.D. It’s funny. In all the years Orion and I were together, I can’t remember him ever correcting me. And the only reference Viveca’s ever made was that time, shortly after I started living here, when she kissed me on the forehead and called me her “Eliza Dolittle.” Do little: I’d assumed she was implying that I didn’t help enough around the apartment. But later that same day when she came in and I was running the vacuum, she pulled the plug and reminded me that that was Minnie’s job. It wasn’t until weeks later, when they were showing My Fair Lady on the old movie channel, that I finally got it: in Viveca’s mind, I was unschooled Audrey Hepburn СКАЧАТЬ