The Practice of Deceit by Elizabeth Benedict

Author:Elizabeth Benedict
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

13

The Bridegroom Was a Widower

A HOUSE with two small children in it, not to mention a set of parents working full-time, has its own hyperkinetic energy, its own timetable that is always changing due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. “Chaos” is not an abstraction, or someone else’s problem, but a way of life. The act of rumination—sometimes the act of reading the newspaper—calls out from a distant shore, shimmers on the horizon like an archaic sport or hobby, playing whist or building ships in bottles. Improvisation is all; you must fill the time with clever, stimulating activities, which often devolve into tantrums and time-outs. You must place limits on TV watching, sugar, and bribery, and endure your children’s fevers and injuries. Calamity is always a breath away.

It came to us late Saturday afternoon. Zoe swung too high on the backyard swing at her twin friends’ birthday party and fell off in her giddy abandon. Her knee collided with the sharp end of a gardening tool. Six stitches, Colleen holding her hand in the ER while I stayed home with Sarah Rose. One crisis led to another, and we missed our sultry Saturday-night date. We woke up Sunday morning with both kids in our bed, Sarah Rose begging to have Band-Aids on her knee in the same place Zoe had her bandages.

It was not until late that afternoon, when we arranged for Graciela to take the kids to a movie, that Colleen and I had two consecutive minutes to ourselves. Hoping to talk to her about our fight on Friday, I invited her to the faux diner in the village we liked to go to sometimes for coffee and pie. She said she was tired and wanted to relax with the Sunday Times in the living room. She had spread out the newspaper on the coffee table and taken over the couch next to it, lying down with two or three sections and a pillow to prop her up. My sister was right: there are two papier-mache masks on the wall above her—ornate black and gold concoctions—along with a series of delicate etchings Colleen had bought in a gallery near the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice. The arrangement always seemed to me a sign of her consummate good taste, her knack for juxtaposing slightly hokey souvenirs with lovely, serious pieces of art. I had never looked at the masks as evidence of Colleen’s hidden selves or secret lives, or whatever my sister was accusing her of. But that afternoon, the possibility lingered in my thoughts.

“There’s an article about Venice in the ‘Travel’ section,” she said. “This is perfect. I’ve been thinking we should go for Christmas, while Graciela goes to Manila to see her children.”

“The dead of winter in Venice with two kids and no nanny. I ‘m not sure, Colleen.”

“The only time we’ve gone together is when I was pregnant with Sarah Rose and that was just for a week.”

“It was a lovely week, but it was June. Why don’t

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