ones.
Ravelstein
wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. He never could beat
Augie March,
which he wrote when he was still in his thirties. I think he must have known he’d never do better, though
Humboldt’s Gift
is very good and
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
is too, but it isn’t really much of a story. Bellow probably thought of himself as a philosopher as much as a novelist.”
“I’ve only read
Seize the Day
and
Herzog.”
Dr. Glass nods. “That’s more than most people. Did you like them?”
“I did, but it’s been a few years. I don’t know how well I remember them.”
He regards her, a small smile on his lips, ones she has thought countless times about kissing in the past week. “So, Dr. Ivins, how about lunch next week? We can talk some more about books. No work chitchat, I promise.”
“I don’t mind talking about work,” she says, nervousness like a weight in her stomach. “I think lunch would be nice. If you really do want to come to Silver Lake, there’s a good Indian place near my house. Or I could come out here again.”
“I’ll come to you. Sunday’s the one day a week that I’m usually a free man. My sons are out with their friends, and my wife goes to see her parents.”
She wonders if he has done this before. If he is serially unfaithful—each year a new intern? Is it something his wife knows about but chooses to ignore because she thinks she is lucky to have married a doctor, one whose earnings have made a certain type of lifestyle possible, one that offers other benefits if not marital fidelity? Or is she a doctor too and busy working with her own interns, having her own affairs? Anna has no idea what Mrs. Glass does, if anything, for a career.
What does she really know of marriage anyway, other than her parents’ flawed one, where so often in the years leading up to the divorce she witnessed her mother’s abject fury, her sorrow and fierce sense of personal affront? And then her father’s subsequent marriage: even more disastrous, his second wife a more or less well-meaning and kind person but so cowed by Anna’s father’s whims and will that after a while, Anna realized that they had probably been doomed to divorce from day one. She knows there must be unorthodox marriages that work, arrangements, tacit or no, where one or both parties are permitted to take lovers. The trick, she suspects, is discretion, no flaunting, no sloppily covered tracks.
Don’t ask and I won’t tell
—this has to be how it’s done.
Nonetheless, the fact that she is considering any of this, she who has only slept with four men in her life, and never a man who had another girlfriend, let alone a wife, is both humbling and a little shocking. When Jill and Celestine call to tell her about their affairs or one-night stands, she advises them to have fun but not to get too serious. What she used to say was not to get involved at all, not to sleep with anyone who had some other woman at home or on speed-dial, because her friends weren’t at all likely to get what they wanted. How many times had they seen it before? The pathetic single girl in tears when the man she witlessly has fallen in love with won’t leave his wife for her? It’s a scenario from countless movies and every single soap opera. Infidelity, along with alcoholism and drug abuse, is ubiquitous, the most prevalent open secret of most Western societies, and it seems almost always to end with something broken.
But Anna’s father, Jill and Celestine have reminded her, is the sort of man who really could have almost any woman he wants, and
he
left his wife for the other woman, didn’t he? “True,” Anna has conceded, “But look what happened. A second divorce and an ex-wife, who, up until a couple of years ago, still called and yelled at him when she was drunk.”
“Is one o’clock good for you?” Dr. Glass asks her now. “Or is noon better?”
“Either would work. I think I’m off all day.”
Before she leaves, he says, “If you
Ravelstein
wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. He never could beat
Augie March,
which he wrote when he was still in his thirties. I think he must have known he’d never do better, though
Humboldt’s Gift
is very good and
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
is too, but it isn’t really much of a story. Bellow probably thought of himself as a philosopher as much as a novelist.”
“I’ve only read
Seize the Day
and
Herzog.”
Dr. Glass nods. “That’s more than most people. Did you like them?”
“I did, but it’s been a few years. I don’t know how well I remember them.”
He regards her, a small smile on his lips, ones she has thought countless times about kissing in the past week. “So, Dr. Ivins, how about lunch next week? We can talk some more about books. No work chitchat, I promise.”
“I don’t mind talking about work,” she says, nervousness like a weight in her stomach. “I think lunch would be nice. If you really do want to come to Silver Lake, there’s a good Indian place near my house. Or I could come out here again.”
“I’ll come to you. Sunday’s the one day a week that I’m usually a free man. My sons are out with their friends, and my wife goes to see her parents.”
She wonders if he has done this before. If he is serially unfaithful—each year a new intern? Is it something his wife knows about but chooses to ignore because she thinks she is lucky to have married a doctor, one whose earnings have made a certain type of lifestyle possible, one that offers other benefits if not marital fidelity? Or is she a doctor too and busy working with her own interns, having her own affairs? Anna has no idea what Mrs. Glass does, if anything, for a career.
What does she really know of marriage anyway, other than her parents’ flawed one, where so often in the years leading up to the divorce she witnessed her mother’s abject fury, her sorrow and fierce sense of personal affront? And then her father’s subsequent marriage: even more disastrous, his second wife a more or less well-meaning and kind person but so cowed by Anna’s father’s whims and will that after a while, Anna realized that they had probably been doomed to divorce from day one. She knows there must be unorthodox marriages that work, arrangements, tacit or no, where one or both parties are permitted to take lovers. The trick, she suspects, is discretion, no flaunting, no sloppily covered tracks.
Don’t ask and I won’t tell
—this has to be how it’s done.
Nonetheless, the fact that she is considering any of this, she who has only slept with four men in her life, and never a man who had another girlfriend, let alone a wife, is both humbling and a little shocking. When Jill and Celestine call to tell her about their affairs or one-night stands, she advises them to have fun but not to get too serious. What she used to say was not to get involved at all, not to sleep with anyone who had some other woman at home or on speed-dial, because her friends weren’t at all likely to get what they wanted. How many times had they seen it before? The pathetic single girl in tears when the man she witlessly has fallen in love with won’t leave his wife for her? It’s a scenario from countless movies and every single soap opera. Infidelity, along with alcoholism and drug abuse, is ubiquitous, the most prevalent open secret of most Western societies, and it seems almost always to end with something broken.
But Anna’s father, Jill and Celestine have reminded her, is the sort of man who really could have almost any woman he wants, and
he
left his wife for the other woman, didn’t he? “True,” Anna has conceded, “But look what happened. A second divorce and an ex-wife, who, up until a couple of years ago, still called and yelled at him when she was drunk.”
“Is one o’clock good for you?” Dr. Glass asks her now. “Or is noon better?”
“Either would work. I think I’m off all day.”
Before she leaves, he says, “If you
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