The Real Liddy James by Anne-Marie Casey

Author:Anne-Marie Casey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-01T16:55:14+00:00

Peter went night walking for two hours in an attempt to work off his confusion. When he finally returned, Rose was still huddled on the couch feeling sorry for everything (and for herself). It had been one thing to shout her paranoid orders into the mirror in the bathroom, but quite another to let it rip at Liddy in front of Peter and the two boys. Worst of all, Liddy had reacted with such exemplary consideration and calm that Rose found herself in the difficult position of having to explain her behavior, without telling Peter the real reasons for it.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” she said, holding out her arms toward him. “I’m embarrassed for myself. Poor Liddy.”

“Oh, believe me, there’ve been several times I could have murdered her. What happened? What did she do?”

Rose looked away. She wanted to talk about the “Couple Cohabitation Agreement” and giving up work, but Liddy had been right, she was nervous. She feared she would seem distrustful and feeble, and thus unworthy of Peter, whose moral certitude she venerated. So she told Peter of being awoken every morning by terror, and described more palatable fears: of giving birth, of parenting, of menopause with a toddler. Liddy had said the wrong thing at the wrong time, Rose said, and the Liddy-ishness had driven her crazy.

Peter understood. He chuckled. He sat on the couch beside her and held her hand.

“Yes,” he said, “that really is the only word to describe her. She has always seemed to me to be utterly sui generis, unique in her own characteristics.”

Rose relaxed. They appeared to have moved remarkably quickly from the subject of her bad behavior to Liddy’s.

“And Liddy does appear to live in her own self-created reality. We all do it, of course, we all justify our particular choices to a greater or lesser extent; it’s just for her it seems to be a matter of survival. That’s why it was shocking when Cal asked her who his father was. It was a moment of pure truth. She will have to deal with the consequences of her actions, and she may not like the outcome.”

“Why is she like this?” said Rose, anxious to continue the conversation, as she had never heard Peter be so loquacious on the subject before.

He paused for a moment to analyze the question further. When he finally spoke, his reply was considered, but unexpected, and exactly how he would speak in a student seminar.

“We were in Paris once, years ago, before we had Matty. Liddy studied Impressionist art as an undergraduate, so we wrote out a list of pictures that we wanted to see and we went around to galleries, day and night. On about the third evening, we went to the Musée d’Orsay to look at the Monets—in particular his portrait of his young wife, Camille, on her deathbed. It’s an incredible image. Do you know it? She’s lying there imprisoned in brushstrokes that look like a cave of ice.”

Rose shook her head.

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.