Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen

Author:Anna Quindlen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

An eerie pewter light fought its way past the sheers into the bedroom, and when Nora went to the bathroom she could see the snow mounded on the pediment of the house next door, a perfect parabola. Downstairs Charlie had not started the coffee. Instead he stood, dripping, in the center of the kitchen, his down jacket on the floor, a pair of old ski pants unsnapped and unzippered at the waist. Nora wondered if this was because he had loosened them or because he hadn’t been able to close them at all. He always gained weight over the holidays, and when he was unhappy.

“No smart-ass comments, all right?” he said, his cheeks red.

“About what?” said Nora, sliding past him and flinching as a slick of cold water was passed from the waistband of Charlie’s pants to the back of her nightgown.

It always took her a few beats in the morning to remember what day it was, to make sense of the headlines in the paper. It had been a nightmare when the twins were small and the hour before they left for school had been full of things that needed attention: permission slips, misplaced homework, snacks that had been promised for a field trip, although not by her. As the coffeemaker began to hiss, Nora realized that Charlie had been digging the car out. The parking lot was still closed, the chain across the entrance secured with a new padlock, but George insisted it would reopen any day, and in the meantime he had persuaded Charlie to join him in parking on the street, as though it would be a defeat to begin to use the enclosed garage again. Charlie was chugging another glass of water as though he’d been running a marathon. “You do understand that you are shoveling snow at seven in the morning because of George?” Nora said.

“I’m well aware of your opinion,” Charlie said, wiping his face with a dish towel. “Meanwhile, I’ve got to get to an off-site in New Jersey.”

“Seriously? An off-site?” One of the things Nora loved about running her own operation was that she never had to authorize a retreat, a team-building day, or an off-site. At her last job there had been two off-sites a year, at which they had heard endless speeches from management gurus, done stress reduction exercises, and attended breakout sessions that consisted of writing your greatest fears on index cards and listening to them being read aloud in an NPR announcer voice by the facilitator: disappointing others (obviously a woman), not being promoted (obviously a man), death (everyone looked around the circle).

“Not ours. The old man thinks they’re a waste of time. It’s an invitation from—” Here Charlie mentioned the name of what was obviously a client with whom she was obviously supposed to be familiar, so Nora nodded and began to make oatmeal. Nodding was good. It was attentive, collegial. Charlie dropped client names as though they were celebrities—although he was unfamiliar with most celebrities, so she supposed it all evened out.

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