The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel by Greer Andrew Sean

Author:Greer, Andrew Sean [Greer, Andrew Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2007-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Now the astute reader will be wondering how I ever thought I would get away with this. It’s one thing to disguise oneself for an afternoon tea or carriage ride; it’s quite another to keep a lie for the length of an affair or, more improbably, for the lifetime that I hoped to be with Alice. I might change my looks and words to suit her, but how could she really love me when my truest self was buried under the floorboards? And yet, I’ve heard of long and happy marriages where the wife never knew of his second family, or the husband never learned that her blond hair that he so valued could be bought at any druggist’s. Maybe lies are necessary for love, a little; certainly, I wouldn’t be the first to create a false persona just to seduce a woman. Of course, none of this crossed my mind in the following weeks of my courtship—the visits to the House of Widows, the at homes with Alice and her mother, smiling in their ignorance—never did I consider that I might wear this false mustache for life. The heart plans nothing, does it? No, the only obstacle I ever considered was Hughie.

He was not sad in marriage; he was stable. I have to assume this made him happy, in a way; perhaps marriage was a weight, a paperweight, keeping the heart from flying across the room at every breeze. Of course we never went out to the Barbary Coast—he was married, and the place was nearing its final days—but we never went out together at all. Instead, I was invited to dinner parties hosted by Hughie and his wife. They had bought a new house on O’Farrell, something more appropriate than the Pumpkin, and I would find myself at a table of handsome, rich, and clever people who intimidated me with their clothes and their wit until I discovered they had no imaginations, that their opinions and fashions were copied from magazines they all had read. Hughie seemed perfectly at home in this crowd, but I was always nervous and drank too much. I couldn’t play their games, but what saddened me the most was seeing these glittering bores lean across the wineglasses to whisper into Hughie’s ear, hearing their private laughter, knowing they had supplanted me in his confidence. At least it took a crowd of them to do it.

It was only right, though, that his wife would take over all the parts I was used to playing, and she was a kind young woman, bright and pretty and never pretending to be more clever or fashionable than she really was. She was good to me, and yet we were rarely together; she always found reasons to leave the room or tend to someone else. It wasn’t, as she said, because Hughie and I should be alone; I think, somehow, I scared her. In any case, by the time Alice came back into my life, I was seeing little of either Hughie or his wife; their lives were taken over by their family.

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