The World After Alice by Lauren Aliza Green

Author:Lauren Aliza Green [Green, Lauren Aliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

Seated in her and Nick’s room in Elizabeth Cottage, Caro released this reverie, allowing it to slither back to whatever depth from which it had emerged. She cradled her wet face in her hands, regathering herself. She had put Avery to sleep in the other room and was painfully alone. The sound of revelers down the hall only magnified her desolate condition. She reached up and clutched the necklace Nick had given her for their tenth anniversary—a diamond heart that dangled from a white gold chain. Once, the necklace had brought her comfort. Now it was cold and heavy where it rested against her chest.

Nick, the speech, Linnie—how quickly the deluge overtook her. She felt like a clown.

For over a decade, Caro had been patient, knowing that the path of grieving a marriage was long and arduous. The artist Marina Abramović journeyed three thousand miles along the Great Wall of China to bid her husband goodbye. Caro had given Nick his three thousand miles, or so she’d believed. Yet tonight, when he lifted his champagne glass in pomp, there could be no denying the signature of desire that illuminated his face.

Maybe he had tired of her, like Matisse with his toys. Funny how one day, you were overanalyzing a wink in the copy room, and the next, you’d slept together so many times—thousands, she tallied—that the act had become, God forbid, tedious. She missed the days of their sneaking about, fondling each other in unfamiliar rooms. Neither toys nor lingerie could compensate for the impression that sex had become yet another item on their to-do list, no more exceptional than washing the dishes or walking the dog. But boring didn’t equal unhappy. She and Nick were, for all intents and purposes, happy—weren’t they?

The wine had gone to her head, its impasto obfuscating her thoughts. The darkness around her was thick, webby. Outside, the sea’s surface made maracas of the rain. The clouds parted to reveal a sky staffed with stars and then abruptly swelled back shut. In the nightstand drawer was a red Gideon. She carried it into the bathroom, where the light was better, and flipped to a random page, trying to excavate the long-buried solace such words once provided.

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

A body-rattling sob overtook her. She cursed herself for imagining she could dodge the bill of her old sin; for dreaming that Nick would not come to resent her conventionality, when he had plainly been seeking in her youth a change from the mundane. She hugged herself, unable to prevent her mind from replaying the evening’s awful toast. They had been Chagall’s lovers, yes, but their descent had gone awry. They were tumbling toward earth at the wrong angle, threatening to burn up.

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.