South, or at least she had been some years ago.
“We moved from New York, but originally I’m from Connecticut, and my husband is from Philadelphia. So, East Coast, I guess. We’re from the East Coast.”
“Mmm,” Margaret said, as though eating something delicious. The full pitcher of iced tea sat untouched between us.
“I think I know where the glasses are,” I said, getting up. “Can I get you a glass?”
Margaret looked longingly at her house like a blind mole searching for its dinner, and was on the verge of protesting as I pried open the first box.
Only a few days before the move to Wisconsin, James caught me in bed with the laptop, emailing building managers in Los Angeles about cozy cottages up by Griffith Park.
Ample room for four-legged friends!
We could find a dog en route—surely there were a thousand ASPCAs between New York and California. Not one of those Hollywood dogs that can fit in your purse; we’d get something big, something like Marmaduke, a dog with jowls and gallons of drool. Shopping for new apartments was like shopping for new lives, an easier fix than dieting or yoga. I could garden, and he could hammer together bookshelves in the garage. He would become an apprentice at a motorcycle shop and we would get tattoos that said
Forever
.
Forever Sophie.
Or maybe something dramatic:
Sophie’s Choice.
People who didn’t know him would ask him about it in restaurants—James would wear tank tops to show it off, along with all the others: the red-scaled koi fish, the winking mermaid.You must really like Meryl Streep, they’d say. James would take a sip of coffee—or no, bourbon, even in the morning—and laugh.
No
, he’d say,
I really like her
, and nod his chin toward me. The other patrons would look at me, and through all the gleaming silver rods and balls sticking out of my nose and ears and eyebrows, they would think that I was beautiful.
Of course, James had no tattoos, no metal objects poking out of his face. He was an academic, the kind of man who had always enjoyed spending his Saturday afternoons in dreary library carrels. We’d come to Wisconsin because he’d gotten a job at a local college, although not the university, which was what people always asked.
He taught two courses in the English department, both of which were supposed to introduce the students to some names they’d heard only as movie tie-ins: Austen and Dickens and Eliot. James had written his dissertation about the role of gossip in
Emma
and
Middlemarch
. A few years in, when he’d started bringing home the glossy tabloids, I’d thought it was some brilliant research, just the ticket. Then he started saying things to me like, “Can you believe they’re getting a divorce? I really thought if anyone had a chance, it would be them.” He would shake his head and have to go to bed early, his thin chest sunken with disappointment. The novels seemed beside the point, unable to rescue him from the harsh facts of the day.
It seemed inevitable that we would spend our lives going from college town to college town, always having the same conversations about departmental politics and the weather. One merely had to adjust to the scale of possible adventures.Red Lobster had an all-you-can-eat lobster tail dinner once a week; the aisles of Home Depot were satisfyingly endless. There were still small excitements in the world, things our friends in New York couldn’t even imagine.
A few weeks in, we got invited over to another professor’s house for dinner. They lived on the other side of town, the side with all the trees and expensive shops.
The professor and his wife
, as a phrase, always bothered me. I refused to let James introduce me as his wife—he had to say my name first, then wife. The order was important; it was easy for people to get the wrong impression.
The conversation at dinner was standard, almost as standard as the food. “I just love salmon,” I told the professor’s wife, whose name I
“We moved from New York, but originally I’m from Connecticut, and my husband is from Philadelphia. So, East Coast, I guess. We’re from the East Coast.”
“Mmm,” Margaret said, as though eating something delicious. The full pitcher of iced tea sat untouched between us.
“I think I know where the glasses are,” I said, getting up. “Can I get you a glass?”
Margaret looked longingly at her house like a blind mole searching for its dinner, and was on the verge of protesting as I pried open the first box.
Only a few days before the move to Wisconsin, James caught me in bed with the laptop, emailing building managers in Los Angeles about cozy cottages up by Griffith Park.
Ample room for four-legged friends!
We could find a dog en route—surely there were a thousand ASPCAs between New York and California. Not one of those Hollywood dogs that can fit in your purse; we’d get something big, something like Marmaduke, a dog with jowls and gallons of drool. Shopping for new apartments was like shopping for new lives, an easier fix than dieting or yoga. I could garden, and he could hammer together bookshelves in the garage. He would become an apprentice at a motorcycle shop and we would get tattoos that said
Forever
.
Forever Sophie.
Or maybe something dramatic:
Sophie’s Choice.
People who didn’t know him would ask him about it in restaurants—James would wear tank tops to show it off, along with all the others: the red-scaled koi fish, the winking mermaid.You must really like Meryl Streep, they’d say. James would take a sip of coffee—or no, bourbon, even in the morning—and laugh.
No
, he’d say,
I really like her
, and nod his chin toward me. The other patrons would look at me, and through all the gleaming silver rods and balls sticking out of my nose and ears and eyebrows, they would think that I was beautiful.
Of course, James had no tattoos, no metal objects poking out of his face. He was an academic, the kind of man who had always enjoyed spending his Saturday afternoons in dreary library carrels. We’d come to Wisconsin because he’d gotten a job at a local college, although not the university, which was what people always asked.
He taught two courses in the English department, both of which were supposed to introduce the students to some names they’d heard only as movie tie-ins: Austen and Dickens and Eliot. James had written his dissertation about the role of gossip in
Emma
and
Middlemarch
. A few years in, when he’d started bringing home the glossy tabloids, I’d thought it was some brilliant research, just the ticket. Then he started saying things to me like, “Can you believe they’re getting a divorce? I really thought if anyone had a chance, it would be them.” He would shake his head and have to go to bed early, his thin chest sunken with disappointment. The novels seemed beside the point, unable to rescue him from the harsh facts of the day.
It seemed inevitable that we would spend our lives going from college town to college town, always having the same conversations about departmental politics and the weather. One merely had to adjust to the scale of possible adventures.Red Lobster had an all-you-can-eat lobster tail dinner once a week; the aisles of Home Depot were satisfyingly endless. There were still small excitements in the world, things our friends in New York couldn’t even imagine.
A few weeks in, we got invited over to another professor’s house for dinner. They lived on the other side of town, the side with all the trees and expensive shops.
The professor and his wife
, as a phrase, always bothered me. I refused to let James introduce me as his wife—he had to say my name first, then wife. The order was important; it was easy for people to get the wrong impression.
The conversation at dinner was standard, almost as standard as the food. “I just love salmon,” I told the professor’s wife, whose name I
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