Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny

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СКАЧАТЬ can’t eat that,” Matthew said.

      “Sure you can.” Audra put it in front of him. To Graham, she said, “What did she look like? What did she say?”

      “Is it going to be squishy?” Matthew asked. He wouldn’t eat anything squishy, or lumpy, or crispy, or spicy, or really any food that could be described by an interesting adjective.

      “If it is, I’ll make you another one,” Audra said absently. “Tell me, Graham!”

      “Well, she looked the same, only sort of older,” he said slowly. “She still wears her hair the same way.”

      “And?” Audra prompted.

      “And what?”

      Audra made an impatient gesture. “What’s her life like? Is she happy? Why has she never remarried? What does she do for sex?”

      Graham glanced at Matthew, who was, amazingly, eating the soggy waffle.

      “Well, I don’t think I want to know the answers to any of that,” he said finally.

      “Then what was the point of even having lunch with her?” Audra asked. “You could have had a more meaningful conversation with someone at a bus stop!”

      That was Audra’s view. But Graham was not so sure. He thought that sometimes just having a polite conversation with someone, just surviving thirty minutes in that person’s company, just realizing that that person did not dislike you enough to sit at a separate table—sometimes that was a major triumph all on its own.

      In a way, it was very nice having Bitsy live in their den, because she was so good with Matthew. She was unfazed by Matthew’s picky eating, and patient with his slowness at homework, and gentle with his refusal to pick up his room. And she had endless energy for origami and paper airplanes and dominoes, which were Matthew’s main passions, and which Graham and Audra had tired of long ago.

      And in a way it was not very nice having Bitsy live in their den, because Audra knew about the miniskirt girl and Bitsy didn’t. The trick was not to reveal it, but Audra felt they had this responsibility to bring Bitsy around to the idea, slowly and gently.

      “I think that’s Bitsy’s husband’s responsibility,” Graham said.

      “But he’s not doing it!” Audra protested. “He gives her all this nonsense about the sabbatical and she believes him. She’s in denial.”

      And so they had long awkward dinner conversations with Bitsy during which Audra tried to bring Bitsy around to acceptance—a process akin to steering a river with a spatula.

      “Tell me more about Ted’s sabbatical,” Audra would say.

      “I don’t really know,” Bitsy would answer placidly. “He says it’s very private. He does a lot of yoga.”

      “What else?”

      “I think it also involves massage therapy.”

      “I’m sure it does,” Audra would say and Graham would bite back a groan.

      Or Audra would say, casually twirling spaghetti with her fork, “Is it, um, common for bank managers to take creative sabbaticals?”

      “Ted’s the only bank manager I know,” Bitsy said. “His company has been very generous.”

      Twirl, twirl. “Where does he live in Ithaca?”

      “A very small studio,” Bitsy said. “He sleeps on a futon and uses a board on sawhorses for a desk.”

      “That sounds like a young person’s apartment,” Audra said.

      “Yes, it does,” Bitsy agreed calmly.

      “It sounds like, well—like an apartment a girl in her twenties might have.”

      “He’s subletting from a college student.”

      Audra made interested eyes over a mouthful of spaghetti. “A female college student?”

      Bitsy nodded. “Yes, her name is Jasmine.”

      “Jasmine what?”

      “I don’t know,” Bitsy said, cutting her spaghetti. (You sort of knew ahead of time that she was a pasta cutter the way you knew Audra was a pasta twirler.)

      Audra looked disappointed. Graham was sure she’d hoped to do some pleasurable Jasmine cyberstalking. He cleared his throat to indicate a change of topic, but Audra was not so easily diverted.

      “You should go visit Ted,” she said to Bitsy.

      “Oh, no,” Bitsy said. “I don’t want to intrude on his creative process.”

      “A surprise visit!” Audra said. “Think how romantic—”

      “More garlic bread, Bitsy?” Graham asked. “More wine? More water? More butter? No? Matthew, what about you? Well, I know you don’t drink wine—that goes without saying—but water? And tell us about school! What happened today?”

      And on and on, until his voice rasped.

      Later that night in the bathroom, he said to Audra, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

      “Do what?” she asked, clipping her hair back.

      “Have those conversations with Bitsy.” Graham began brushing his teeth and then stopped. “What if she actually agreed to go to Ithaca and surprise Ted? Think of the mess you’d make.”

      “I can’t help it,” Audra said. “She’s so delusional!”

      “You know that business about leading a horse to water,” Graham said, rinsing his toothbrush. “You just can’t make it drink.”

      “But you can pop an ice cube into the horse’s mouth!” Audra protested. “You can moisten the horse’s lips with a wet washcloth! That’s all I’m trying to do here—just prepare Bitsy ever so slightly for the inevitable.”

      She turned on the taps in her sink and began soaping her face.

      There were other questions about Bitsy, lots of them. Was she really so blind when it came to Ted? Would it, in fact, be better for her to know the truth? What if she didn’t want to know the truth? What if they told her and by some miracle, Ted actually was on a sabbatical? How long was Bitsy going to live in their den? Why was Bitsy here if Audra didn’t even like her? Why did someone from Brooklyn belong to a Manhattan book club? Was it true that she could run an eight-minute mile?

      Don’t ask Graham about any of it. He didn’t have a fucking clue.

      To be totally honest, Audra wasn’t the only one who enjoyed a good cyberstalking session. Right now, right this second, Graham was the one settling down at the dining room table with his laptop and that first magical whisky of the evening, preparing to devote half an hour—thirty minutes of his life that he could never ever reclaim!—to cyberstalking СКАЧАТЬ