The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan

Author:J. Courtney Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 030795871X
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

2003

Delphine stood in the middle of the living room, surveying her work. She had turned the coffee table on its side, just because, and scratched its surface with the sharp points of the scissors in a wild pattern.

She smashed a gorgeous lamp that she had found in an antiques shop in Brooklyn. She and P.J. had fought about that lamp. He said it wasn’t him, as if he had ever had any sense of style or beauty. They were fighting about everything by that point.

In the course of six years of marriage, Delphine and her husband had disagreed on only two things. First, soon after the wedding, Henri decided that he wanted a child. He dreamed of a daughter named Josephine. It was the name of his older sister, who drowned when she was just three. It seemed strange to think of an older sibling who had never made it to her fourth birthday. Delphine doubted that Henri’s parents would want to be reminded of the girl’s name this long after her death, even if she were willing to have a baby, which she wasn’t. She was forty, too old for all that. And though she never said so, she believed her husband was far too old to be a father. At fifty-five, he had no business asking her for a baby.

The other thing they fought over was the Stradivarius.

That violin was her husband’s greatest pride. Whenever they had anyone over for dinner, he brought it to the table even before she served the cheese course. It lit him up in a way that nothing else could. Given a new audience, Henri could talk about Stradivari all night. He would tell their guests that there were many theories for what made a Strad sound so perfect, but in his opinion the most convincing had to do with a strange weather pattern known as the Maunder Minimum, a period lasting from around 1645 to 1715, during Europe’s Little Ice Age. A lack of sunlight during that time made for low temperatures, which slowed tree growth, leading to the existence of abnormally dense wood. If you looked at the growth rings in the wood of any Stradivarius, you’d see it.

“The thickness is perfect at every spot,” Henri would say, holding the violin up, turning it this way and that. “If Stradivari had shaved off even one extra millimeter of wood, the sound would be out of balance.”

Their guests would usually be interested, but her dear husband never knew when to stop. “This is the original varnish. Imagine that. And it’s not just for beauty. No, it impacts the sound. There is the slightest water damage on the lower bout, but it adds character. The 1721 Lady Blunt is probably the best-preserved Strad. It still has gut strings and no bridge. But of course that’s because it’s only ever been in the hands of collectors, hardly even played, which is a crime.”

Delphine was always impressed by the extent of his knowledge on the subject, if slightly amused.

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