Read Online Attachment by Isabel Fonseca - Free Book Online Page B

caterers, the extra coatracks, the massive floral displays. Jean didn’t have the energy to ask what her work was like now and was mindful, too, of holding a few safe topics like this in reserve. Phyllis, small as a child in the passenger seat, puckered and peered into a compact, reapplying her bougainvillea lipstick. Jean tried to remember why when she was little Phyllis’s public daubing had struck her as nothing less than indecent. She’d felt similarly scandalized whenever she’d seen a square of blotter tissue floating unflushed in her mother’s toilet with a ghostly lipstick-on-your-collar mouth print, like a kiss blown up from the sewer to tell her there was more to this woman than she’d ever know.
    “ Gosh I’m glad to be here,” Phyllis said. “You have no idea how I’ve looked forward to getting some rest.” On the drive home she dozed, and when she intermittently jerked awake she told Jean again how tired she was, how desperate for early nights and quiet days, how advancing age had made drinking alcohol nearly impossible, how she’d given up her evening martini altogether, indeed how sobriety was the secret of human happiness.
    Six hours later, on the Hubbards’ terrace in the moonlight, Phyllis was going strong. She’d switched from champagne to the local firewater—demented cane, as Mark called it—served in thimble-size glasses he’d brought out sometime after twelve.
    “She would’ve stayed up talking all night if I’d let her,” Jean complained in the bathroom the next morning, testing with a finger the watery pouches under her eyes—eyes as red as if she’d spent the night in the ocean, her tongue pale, dry, andscallop edged like St. Jacques’ beaches. “If I could keep up with her,” she said in revision, whispering even though there was no chance her mother could hear. “What was all that about needing a rest ?” No point chastising Mark for hauling out the shot glasses; nobody had made her drink. A world-class pourer, he didn’t believe in saving people from themselves.
    Jean didn’t complain about Phyllis’s frump remark and wasn’t about to remind him. What her mother had said, at 12:40, was “I really admire the way you completely ignore your appearance, Jeannie. You are so cool. And you’re absolutely right: hair, makeup, clothes, they’re totally unimportant, so why not just go for comfort?” And she certainly didn’t tell him about Phyllis’s unsolicited update on Larry Mond, the meteoric lawyer Jean had worked for in New York all those summers ago: the one who got away—or so her mother saw it. But in fact it was Jean who’d gotten away, run away, back to England, just as soon as things started to heat up with Larry, in truth the more likely candidate. At that age “likely” was no different from her mother’s approval: it was an active demerit.
    Phyllis had pronounced the house “adorable,” which Jean chose to be satisfied with. She popped two painkillers—one thousand milligrams of the common anti-inflammatory that had replaced the automatic aspirin of her college hangovers, and this did seem a better fit: a shrinking was just what she needed, of her capacity for emotion, by any means necessary, drugs, caffeine, and the resolve these ritual preparations hailed.
    Before going out to breakfast, she scanned the bedroom shelves for guidebooks and maps. Jean was going to plan her way to an early night. Forget the rum museum, which might offer free tastings. In the coming week they’d visit the picturesque port and the kestrel project, spend a day at a spa hotel, hit the covered market. Phyllis, the professional organizer, was commensurately responsive to any show of forethought. She’d be really impressed if there was both structure and choice, an expedition arranged like a multichambered candy dish set out for guests, and no place fit this bill better than the botanical gardens at Terre Haute.

T he vast gardens , near a ragtag village, radiated