residential facility and often worked the weekend shift, the only time that he was off. They rarely spent time together and came to realize they didn’t mind. Not that he exited gracefully. A brief and stupid affair with a friend of hers at the very time he and Valerie were making a halfhearted attempt at reconciliation guaranteed that Valerie would feel resentful towards him the rest of their post-married life. Valerie’s friend patched things up with Valerie but turned nasty towards him, even though it was she who had pushed their indiscretion and he who had merely consented, consented because—well, because he wanted to please her. He liked pleasing women. And this is what befuddled him. How was it that, although he loved women so much, his relationships with them inevitably ended with them turning against him? He marveled at Bernard and Virginia.
Alone, Chris wrote his first novel. He sold it after only six months of trying. The advance was small, but, heady with his success, he ditched his job at the Trib. He was a writer now, a real writer. He sublet a friend’s vacation house in rural Massachusetts for a month, then decided to stay put in the area. From the profit on the sale of the house in Westchester, even split two ways, he had enough to live on for more than a year. After Valerie, he had three intense relationships in quick succession, each one begun with the conviction that this was the woman he would spend the rest of his life with.
The first, Julie, was in the landscaping business. She gave him wonderful massages, but she took astrology seriously. The relationship lasted only a few months. The next, Simone, was a reference librarian. She was overqualified for her job at the local library, underpaid, and insufficiently ambitious. That lasted somewhat longer. The third, Susan Pratt, was a rising vice president in the mortgage department of a commercial bank. She had lots of drive, which in hindsight he realized he mistook for passion. Although initially she seemed attracted by the fact that he was a writer, after they were married she grew increasing irritated with his unstructured work schedule and the unpredictability of his income. Within three years they had produced two sons, he had produced two more novels, and he had acquired yet another ex-wife who (unfathomably, he felt) despised him. Susan was more venomous than Valerie, and unlike Valerie she had two weapons to use against him. Samuel and Benjamin (Susan refused to allow them to go by the nicknames Sam and Ben) had inherited their mother’s thin face, but they had his dark, big eyes. It surprised Chris how much he loved them. How unequivocally.
THE MORNING OF HIS COLONOSCOPY, Chris waited in the living room for his sister, Lydia, to turn up. She lived in Boston, two hours away, but had volunteered to pick him up after the procedure. They would only release him into the care of someone who undertook responsibility for him, and one of the excuses he had used to postpone the procedure was he had no one he could ask to do that. And because she didn’t trust that he wouldn’t come up with a last-minute excuse to cancel the appointment, Lydia had planned to drive him to it as well. The sacrifice of time and all the planning required to make this possible should have endeared Lydia to Chris. Certainly she loved him and had his best interests at heart. But Chris—in spite of being something of a hypochondriac—was phobic about medical procedures, and now that he was facing what he believed was one of the world’s most dreaded, he blamed Lydia entirely. He didn’t like the idea of some wire probe snaking itself up inside his body, a miniature light lighting the way and a miniature camera recording everything it saw, invading the privacy of his intestines. Certainly there were dark recesses of his body that were meant to remain mysterious. On their own, they functioned in perfect synchrony. Why provoke them?
Chris’s golden retriever, Maybe, raced
Alone, Chris wrote his first novel. He sold it after only six months of trying. The advance was small, but, heady with his success, he ditched his job at the Trib. He was a writer now, a real writer. He sublet a friend’s vacation house in rural Massachusetts for a month, then decided to stay put in the area. From the profit on the sale of the house in Westchester, even split two ways, he had enough to live on for more than a year. After Valerie, he had three intense relationships in quick succession, each one begun with the conviction that this was the woman he would spend the rest of his life with.
The first, Julie, was in the landscaping business. She gave him wonderful massages, but she took astrology seriously. The relationship lasted only a few months. The next, Simone, was a reference librarian. She was overqualified for her job at the local library, underpaid, and insufficiently ambitious. That lasted somewhat longer. The third, Susan Pratt, was a rising vice president in the mortgage department of a commercial bank. She had lots of drive, which in hindsight he realized he mistook for passion. Although initially she seemed attracted by the fact that he was a writer, after they were married she grew increasing irritated with his unstructured work schedule and the unpredictability of his income. Within three years they had produced two sons, he had produced two more novels, and he had acquired yet another ex-wife who (unfathomably, he felt) despised him. Susan was more venomous than Valerie, and unlike Valerie she had two weapons to use against him. Samuel and Benjamin (Susan refused to allow them to go by the nicknames Sam and Ben) had inherited their mother’s thin face, but they had his dark, big eyes. It surprised Chris how much he loved them. How unequivocally.
THE MORNING OF HIS COLONOSCOPY, Chris waited in the living room for his sister, Lydia, to turn up. She lived in Boston, two hours away, but had volunteered to pick him up after the procedure. They would only release him into the care of someone who undertook responsibility for him, and one of the excuses he had used to postpone the procedure was he had no one he could ask to do that. And because she didn’t trust that he wouldn’t come up with a last-minute excuse to cancel the appointment, Lydia had planned to drive him to it as well. The sacrifice of time and all the planning required to make this possible should have endeared Lydia to Chris. Certainly she loved him and had his best interests at heart. But Chris—in spite of being something of a hypochondriac—was phobic about medical procedures, and now that he was facing what he believed was one of the world’s most dreaded, he blamed Lydia entirely. He didn’t like the idea of some wire probe snaking itself up inside his body, a miniature light lighting the way and a miniature camera recording everything it saw, invading the privacy of his intestines. Certainly there were dark recesses of his body that were meant to remain mysterious. On their own, they functioned in perfect synchrony. Why provoke them?
Chris’s golden retriever, Maybe, raced
Similar Books
