The Bend of the World by Jacob Bacharach

Author:Jacob Bacharach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2014-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

1

You have 1 new friend request from Helen Witold.

2

Birthday dinner with my parents always came after my birthday had passed in order to commemorate, approximately, the date of our release from the hospital and therefore, my mother said, her own contribution to the accomplishment, which was—crunch of an ice cube—significant, you have to admit. So it was the Saturday after my birthday, the week after the party, that Lauren Sara and I met my parents at the Hyeholde, my parents’ favorite restaurant, a venerable fieldstone pile in a stand of willows on some farmland out by the airport. The menu consisted principally of creatures harvested from the forests nearby. I’d actually taken Lauren Sara there once before. This was during a period in which she’d rejected veganism as a first-world affectation that was intolerable in a world in which billions subsisted on a calorie-poor diet. She had a medium-rare rack of venison, and I do remember that we did actually have sex that night. Now, however, and despite our recent rounds with Mark and Helen, I suspected that she wouldn’t eat meat in front of my parents, which threatened to make the whole evening ridiculous. More ridiculous.

And yet, despite the fact that she could never remember her name, or at least pretended never to remember it, I was convinced that my mother actually liked Lauren Sara, or at any rate felt that she served an instrumental purpose, which was, for Mom, effectively the same sentiment. I always suspected that my mother secretly wanted to ensure that her son not end up like his father, a genial, prosperous goof playing second fiddle to a woman of superior achievements, and that Lauren Sara, unlike the girl who preceded her, seemed likely to fulfill these requirements. The more I considered it, the more certain I was that there had been a tugging fear wrapped up in Mom’s ostensible affection for Katherine; she was not, after all, an affectionate woman; and it may have been in part her oddly sentimental approval of that pairing that had nudged me into infidelity. When I’d confessed to my mother that cheating was the cause of Katherine’s and my breakup, she’d been less dismayed than I’d anticipated. Had I detected a flicker of pleasure before she composed her face for disapproval? I sometimes thought I’d been manipulated, the appearance of one thing maneuvering me into achieving its opposite and actually desired outcome. In any case, her tolerance for Lauren Sara felt provisional upon her conviction that Lauren Sara was what Lareun Sara appeared to be, and it pleased me to think that this appearance was itself a bit of a concoction.

Fortunately there was trout on the menu for Lauren Sara, and the Pirates were finally winning, which gave my dad something to murmur on about while we made our way through our salads and our first round of cocktails. Lauren Sara was surprisingly conversant, and I said, When did you become such a baseball fan? I’ve always been a fan, she said.

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.