American Wife: A Novel by Sittenfeld Curtis

Author:Sittenfeld, Curtis [Sittenfeld, Curtis]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588367532
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN I REMINDED Charlie on Monday morning that the Suttons were coming for lunch—Miss Ruby had called the evening before to confirm, and when I offered to pick them up, she’d said Yvonne would drive—he was shaving in front of the sink in our bathroom, and I was standing in the doorway. “No can do,” he said. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock tee time with Zeke and Cliff.”

“Charlie, I told you about this over a week ago.”

“Lindy, we’re making the offer to the Reismans tomorrow. With eighty-four mill at stake, don’t you think it’d be wise for us to dot some I’s and cross some T’s?”

“That’s what you’ll be doing on the golf course?” I folded my arms in front of me. “Don’t make me be a nag.”

He chortled. “Whether you’re a nag is up to you, but I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment, and it would be unprofessional to miss it.”

I watched as he brought the razor down his right cheek, his mouth twisted to the left, and I felt such an intimate kind of anger. Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes Charlie’s gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.

I said, “If you don’t want to participate in social situations, then don’t, but it’s embarrassing to me and rude to other people when you say you will and then flake out.”

When he glanced at me, I sensed that his mood had deflected my comments completely; my words were like pennies bouncing off him. He said, “But you don’t want to be a nag, huh?”

“I’d think you’d try to go out of your way to be respectful toward Miss Ruby.”

He held his razor under the faucet for a few seconds, then brought it back up to his face. “Who gave her the impression I’d be here? Wasn’t me, darlin’. If this is so important to you, reschedule—see if they can do it next weekend. All’s I know is I’m about to buy a baseball team.”

“We’ll be in Princeton next weekend.” I took a step backward, into our bedroom. I would go downstairs and prepare lunch, and I’d welcome the Suttons to our home, I’d do this even if Charlie wouldn’t deign to be there and his mother didn’t approve. But first, in a voice so snippy I hardly recognized it, I said, “Don’t leave your whiskers in the sink.”

JESSICA SUTTON HAD grown probably a foot since the last time I’d seen her, and I knew as soon as we greeted the Suttons at the front door that she was, if not an adult, no longer a child. Some sixth-graders are still children—boys more than girls—but in other kids that age, you can see a new, unsettled awareness of themselves and the world. In the best cases, the awareness is also a politeness. When

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.