Double Fault by Lionel Shriver Page B

suited his style nor served the sentiment. He raised his V&T. "To the unsung."
      Willy didn't take a sip of her wine.

      Before they were called to dinner, Eric gave Willy a tour of the two-floor condominium. When he showed her his old room, she was struck by its bare walls and bald surfaces. Had his mother cleared all trace of him away?
      "No, I always kept it neat and simple," he explained.
      But the real explanation did not emerge until they ducked into the master bedroom. Prominently displayed across one wall was every award Eric had ever earned: his straight-A report cards, his grade school Advanced Reading Group assignment, the covers of his gold-starred essays from Trinity on Ronald Reagan, a letter of thanks from the Republican National Committee, several blue ribbons in track, eight consecutive dean's list notifications from Princeton, his Phi Beta Kappa certificate dangling with a gold key, and a freshly framed summa BA in mathematics. A table underneath was crammed with sports trophies. Willy stared at the display agog. She was reminded of devout Catholics who kept novena cards, candles, crucifixes, and statues of the Virgin Mary cluttered in a hallowed corner of their homes. No doubt about it: this was a shrine.
      "What is all this doing in your parents ' bedroom?" she asked incredulously.
      "Personally, I count my blessings that this worthless crap isn't plastered all over the goddamned living room." Eric seemed both irritated and embarrassed, but he had shown her this array on purpose. If they were going to be married, there was something he wanted her to understand.
      "But why didn't you want to keep your awards in your own room?"
      "I did, or I tried. I shoved them in my desk, but my father always filched them. When he helped me clear out of my dorm in May, he bullied me into forking over the Princeton stuff, claiming he'd paid for it. And in high school, he got so intrusive that I started throwing little bullshit tributes away. No use. Those blue ribbons in track? He rooted them out of the trash, banana peels and all. See?" Eric pointed. "That one's still grease-stained."
      "Have you always been so humble?"
      "It's not humility; it may be the opposite, to tell the truth. I'm not interested in anything I've already done. I keep my eyes on the next hurdle. Ask any horse what happens when you run looking backwards, congratulating yourself on how well you cleared the last hedge. This is dross, Wilhelm. And rinky-dink dross at that." He sounded disgusted.
      "God, I can't imagine my father even—"
      " Don't ," Eric cut her off sotto voce, "get envious too fast. Sure, these trinkets are in my father's room. Because they're his. You can't imagine that he was bragging about me down there." Eric gestured to the floor. "He was bragging about himself ."

      When they returned downstairs, Eric's three brothers were already seated at the sleek teak dining table, where the two younger boys were fighting over which building was the tallest in the world.
      "Wrong! The Sears Tower! One thousand four hundred fifty-four stories—"
      " Feet , you moron. Think it goes all the way to the moon?"
      " Nobody cares ," Eric interrupted. "You guys? This is Willy. Willy? Robert, Mark, and Steven," he introduced from youngest up.
      They were all roughly attractive boys, though the two older ones had more of Axel's build, short and square. Maybe they'd not grown into themselves yet, but not one of his siblings possessed Eric's arresting angularity and confident ease. They all three turned to Willy with expressions that mingled admiration with resentment. So Eric had brought home another good-looking girl. Big surprise.
      The second eldest, Steven, was perhaps the most homely and about seventeen. Steven began drilling his brother Mark on which five American presidents had been shot, but when Axel arrived, drying his hands, their father took over as referee. "Begins with a G ," Axel