Read Online Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jennifer Weiner
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exposed a simian froth of chest hair.
“So,” she said, and set her drink down on a book-crammed nightstand (there were the familiar textbooks, and a dog-eared copy of Catch -22). “Tell me why you want to be a lawyer.”
He smoothed his hair with the back of his hand and tipped his glass against his mouth. “Ah, the cross-examination begins. How about you go first?”
Sylvie shrugged. “With me it was dynastic. I didn’t really have a choice.” This was true, although she’d never actually proposed an alternate career to her parents. She was smart, she could write, and in light of her mother’s outsize successes, law seemed a given. But even though she was outspoken, and could be funny (and, like Richard, could occasionally even be mean), she had a far more conciliatory nature than Selma. She could sense injustice but lacked her mother’s boundless passion to correct it, to wade into battle over and over again. As a girl, she’d been fascinated with nuns, with the idea that you could go to a place cut off from the world, where your job would be to pray, and make bread, or cheese, or something simple like that. (Of course Selma had turned this knowledge into one of her prize anecdotes. “My daughter,” she’d say to her friends, and the audiences who turned out to honor her, “the first Jewish nun.”) Sylvie finished her drink, feeling the whiskey burn her throat, wondering, a little fuzzily, whether a man could be a cloister, a monastery, a place where you could be enclosed and kept safe from the world.
“How about you?” she asked.
He looked at her thoughtfully from where he stood in the center of the room. He’d kicked his shoes off. Barefoot, he looked even more like an overgrown boy, a kid who’d been allowed to stay up late. “The truth is, I wanna be president.”
She stared at him a moment before starting to laugh. President! That was another surprise. Most of her classmates would have given an answer involving justice. They would have talked about suffering, and the law as a tool to address it; they would have given examples from their years digging latrines in the Peace Corps or their summers interning at Head Start in Harlem, or offered up some anecdote from their own lives: an uncle bankrupted after he couldn’t pay for his wife’s hospitalization, a field or forest despoiled by developers.
“President?” she said, and Richard gave a charming shrug.
“One thing you gotta know about me, Sylvie …” And, in an instant, he was sitting beside her again, one warm fingertip back at her neckline, then dipping lower. “I am nothing if not ambitious.”
This was the moment she could have pushed him away and gotten to her feet, exclaiming indignantly that she wasn’t that kind of girl, that they hadn’t so much as been to a movie together, that he hadn’t even bought her a sandwich, let alone dinner. But she found herself both aroused and bemused by this half-drunk, earnest hick, with his bare feet and his plaid bedspread and his ambition. Was he serious about being president? Was he serious about her?
“Tell me how it’s going to happen.” He kissed her cheek, then used his fingertips, delicately, to free her copper earring from her hair. “You’re going to get your law degree …”
“Got a job lined up already. Manhattan D.A.’s office this summer,” he said, his voice low and confident, rumbling against her skin. “They’ll hire me full-time soon as I graduate.” He took her in his arms, eased her back onto the bed, and rolled on top of her. The one-quarter of her brain that was still processing information, instead of the feel of Richard’s mouth against her neck, was thinking, Drink talk . Although maybe not. Someone had to be president, so why not Richard? Good backstory; nice-looking; state school to please the common folk, a Yale law degree to delight the snobs and the intelligentsia. The world could do worse.
“Then I’ll go into private practice for a
“So,” she said, and set her drink down on a book-crammed nightstand (there were the familiar textbooks, and a dog-eared copy of Catch -22). “Tell me why you want to be a lawyer.”
He smoothed his hair with the back of his hand and tipped his glass against his mouth. “Ah, the cross-examination begins. How about you go first?”
Sylvie shrugged. “With me it was dynastic. I didn’t really have a choice.” This was true, although she’d never actually proposed an alternate career to her parents. She was smart, she could write, and in light of her mother’s outsize successes, law seemed a given. But even though she was outspoken, and could be funny (and, like Richard, could occasionally even be mean), she had a far more conciliatory nature than Selma. She could sense injustice but lacked her mother’s boundless passion to correct it, to wade into battle over and over again. As a girl, she’d been fascinated with nuns, with the idea that you could go to a place cut off from the world, where your job would be to pray, and make bread, or cheese, or something simple like that. (Of course Selma had turned this knowledge into one of her prize anecdotes. “My daughter,” she’d say to her friends, and the audiences who turned out to honor her, “the first Jewish nun.”) Sylvie finished her drink, feeling the whiskey burn her throat, wondering, a little fuzzily, whether a man could be a cloister, a monastery, a place where you could be enclosed and kept safe from the world.
“How about you?” she asked.
He looked at her thoughtfully from where he stood in the center of the room. He’d kicked his shoes off. Barefoot, he looked even more like an overgrown boy, a kid who’d been allowed to stay up late. “The truth is, I wanna be president.”
She stared at him a moment before starting to laugh. President! That was another surprise. Most of her classmates would have given an answer involving justice. They would have talked about suffering, and the law as a tool to address it; they would have given examples from their years digging latrines in the Peace Corps or their summers interning at Head Start in Harlem, or offered up some anecdote from their own lives: an uncle bankrupted after he couldn’t pay for his wife’s hospitalization, a field or forest despoiled by developers.
“President?” she said, and Richard gave a charming shrug.
“One thing you gotta know about me, Sylvie …” And, in an instant, he was sitting beside her again, one warm fingertip back at her neckline, then dipping lower. “I am nothing if not ambitious.”
This was the moment she could have pushed him away and gotten to her feet, exclaiming indignantly that she wasn’t that kind of girl, that they hadn’t so much as been to a movie together, that he hadn’t even bought her a sandwich, let alone dinner. But she found herself both aroused and bemused by this half-drunk, earnest hick, with his bare feet and his plaid bedspread and his ambition. Was he serious about being president? Was he serious about her?
“Tell me how it’s going to happen.” He kissed her cheek, then used his fingertips, delicately, to free her copper earring from her hair. “You’re going to get your law degree …”
“Got a job lined up already. Manhattan D.A.’s office this summer,” he said, his voice low and confident, rumbling against her skin. “They’ll hire me full-time soon as I graduate.” He took her in his arms, eased her back onto the bed, and rolled on top of her. The one-quarter of her brain that was still processing information, instead of the feel of Richard’s mouth against her neck, was thinking, Drink talk . Although maybe not. Someone had to be president, so why not Richard? Good backstory; nice-looking; state school to please the common folk, a Yale law degree to delight the snobs and the intelligentsia. The world could do worse.
“Then I’ll go into private practice for a
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