celebration or worry. But instead of her daughter there was crider, with a short message:
Subj: Dream come true?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Because I often imagine you walking along the grape arbor I cannot be sure if it was you, or if I was tricking myself. Either
way, vision or reality, your presence is a joy to me. Did I see you? Charlie
“Ridiculous,” she said, smiling—she was smiling. “You are ridiculous.” She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to herself or to
Charlie. Sally was starting up her singing again, this time the Italian song in praise of her lover’s mouth.
Un bocca bocca bella
, literally “the beautiful mouth mouth,” a mouth so glorious you had to repeat the word. That was the first occasion when
Jenna thought about Charlie’s mouth, the first occasion when she fixed on what she remembered, finding, to her surprise, that
she could see it clearly, the fleshy lower lip, and the thinner peaked line above. Her heart didn’t lurch, but she did feel
an ache, a pull that had old meaning to her, a feeling she’d let go of years before, a feeling, she would have said, that
was foolishness, and a sad one at that.
Chapter 9
LAURA BELIEVED THAT THE BEST PART OF ANY ROMANCE WAS the lead-up, the building of sexual tension even while both parties were uncertain about the feelings of the beloved. She
had watched
Pride and Prejudice
, and she had enjoyed her fright as the attraction between Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and also the panic, escalated.
She happened to like stories where the heroine is in complete shock at the moment when the hero reveals his love: shock, because
her own emotions are unknown to her.
Charlie had told Laura his e-mail password, Beaver, the name of their dead dog, and so she had been privy to Jenna’s messages.
She sometimes wrote back to Jenna, always as Charlie, of course, when he was not around, but more often she composed with
him, her laptop on the kitchen table. At first she wished he wasn’t writing so much on his own, and she tried, tactfully,
to restrain him. “I miss out on the fun when you write to Mrs. Voden without me,” she’d say, or “Let’s write her another poem.
That first one was hilarious.” Or, more bluntly, “I’m feeling left out, Chuck.” She could see, however, that what was developing
between the two of them—or, in actuality, the three of them—was a conversation, and she could understand that when she was
busy and away he felt the need to keep it rolling along.
In her abiding fantasy she had always been the star pupil of Jenna, and although it surprised her in the beginning that Jenna
continued to write back, in a certain way the teacher’s attention felt normal to her. It seemed right. She did on occasion
have to remind herself that she was not Laura who was writing, she was Charlie; this did, now and again, take some effort.
But one of the unexpected perks of the project so far was the fact that she felt closer to Charlie than she had in a long
time, the two of them merged into the single character who was Jenna’s pen pal, who was “crider.” In this regard they were
like Vera Nabokov and her husband, the subjects of a Jenna Faroli program a few years back, spouse and writer working as a
team. Mrs. Voden, she and Charlie called Jenna—Mrs. Voden, their joint creation.
It had seemed right, too, that her husband from the start was worshipful of Jenna. He had always been a romantic person, not
only about love, but about goodness. If there was any quality that was girlish about him, it was that saccharine drip that
ran steadily through his veins; it was a quality that had taken an embarrassingly long time to annoy Laura. She wondered if
a person like Jenna would be scornful of Charlie’s wide-open spigot, the devotion spraying from him, Charlie the gusher, Charlie
the eternal geyser of love. After a few years of courtship, she’d wanted to put
Subj: Dream come true?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Because I often imagine you walking along the grape arbor I cannot be sure if it was you, or if I was tricking myself. Either
way, vision or reality, your presence is a joy to me. Did I see you? Charlie
“Ridiculous,” she said, smiling—she was smiling. “You are ridiculous.” She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to herself or to
Charlie. Sally was starting up her singing again, this time the Italian song in praise of her lover’s mouth.
Un bocca bocca bella
, literally “the beautiful mouth mouth,” a mouth so glorious you had to repeat the word. That was the first occasion when
Jenna thought about Charlie’s mouth, the first occasion when she fixed on what she remembered, finding, to her surprise, that
she could see it clearly, the fleshy lower lip, and the thinner peaked line above. Her heart didn’t lurch, but she did feel
an ache, a pull that had old meaning to her, a feeling she’d let go of years before, a feeling, she would have said, that
was foolishness, and a sad one at that.
Chapter 9
LAURA BELIEVED THAT THE BEST PART OF ANY ROMANCE WAS the lead-up, the building of sexual tension even while both parties were uncertain about the feelings of the beloved. She
had watched
Pride and Prejudice
, and she had enjoyed her fright as the attraction between Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and also the panic, escalated.
She happened to like stories where the heroine is in complete shock at the moment when the hero reveals his love: shock, because
her own emotions are unknown to her.
Charlie had told Laura his e-mail password, Beaver, the name of their dead dog, and so she had been privy to Jenna’s messages.
She sometimes wrote back to Jenna, always as Charlie, of course, when he was not around, but more often she composed with
him, her laptop on the kitchen table. At first she wished he wasn’t writing so much on his own, and she tried, tactfully,
to restrain him. “I miss out on the fun when you write to Mrs. Voden without me,” she’d say, or “Let’s write her another poem.
That first one was hilarious.” Or, more bluntly, “I’m feeling left out, Chuck.” She could see, however, that what was developing
between the two of them—or, in actuality, the three of them—was a conversation, and she could understand that when she was
busy and away he felt the need to keep it rolling along.
In her abiding fantasy she had always been the star pupil of Jenna, and although it surprised her in the beginning that Jenna
continued to write back, in a certain way the teacher’s attention felt normal to her. It seemed right. She did on occasion
have to remind herself that she was not Laura who was writing, she was Charlie; this did, now and again, take some effort.
But one of the unexpected perks of the project so far was the fact that she felt closer to Charlie than she had in a long
time, the two of them merged into the single character who was Jenna’s pen pal, who was “crider.” In this regard they were
like Vera Nabokov and her husband, the subjects of a Jenna Faroli program a few years back, spouse and writer working as a
team. Mrs. Voden, she and Charlie called Jenna—Mrs. Voden, their joint creation.
It had seemed right, too, that her husband from the start was worshipful of Jenna. He had always been a romantic person, not
only about love, but about goodness. If there was any quality that was girlish about him, it was that saccharine drip that
ran steadily through his veins; it was a quality that had taken an embarrassingly long time to annoy Laura. She wondered if
a person like Jenna would be scornful of Charlie’s wide-open spigot, the devotion spraying from him, Charlie the gusher, Charlie
the eternal geyser of love. After a few years of courtship, she’d wanted to put
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