felt uncomfortable in the room, as if she were a misplaced detail amid all that precise beauty. The house she’d grown up in had been pleasant but unstylish: there had been furniture, of course, but almost none of it was beautiful or old or handmade. There was one glass-fronted cabinet that had been in her mother’s family for years, but its beauty was spoiled by the paperback books on its shelves, with their unattractive clashing spines: Civil War histories and Carl Hiaasen thrillers and joke books, the sources of young Amy’s haphazard early education. She remembered most vividly an early edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves , a paperback of The Prince with her mom’s college notes in the margins, and a book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk .
A couple in a photograph on a low shelf caught Amy’s eye suddenly. It wasn’t a snapshot—there would never be such a gauche thing as a snapshot in a house like this one—but a posed informal portrait, the kind you’d see in an art or fashion magazine. The man was slight and Asian and almost shorter than the woman, who wore a pearl-gray dress with a wide sash at the waist. She looked sad, somehow, even though she was beaming.
These were the house’s owners. Amy picked up the photo and studied it for more clues. Was this from their wedding? How old had they been? They looked older than Amy, but not by much.
Amy was jealous of people who got married, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married. It wasn’t the party or the presents or the patently unrealistic promise of eternal love she craved, not at all. Well, maybe it was the party, slightly. It was more—well, it was a lot of things. For one thing, people who got married seemed to be granted special exemption from the otherwise ironclad law that after you stopped being a child, you had to give up your belief in magic. The spells and talismans of marriage—the vows, the rings, the veil—retained their mythic power, over Amy at least. It was maddening. But she couldn’t stop herself from caring, from being curious and jealous and moved when she saw these symbols, no matter how much she agreed with the pundits who attacked the institution on pragmatic and feminist and philosophical grounds, and no matter how many novels she read about the inevitable end of love.
Sam had been married once, in his early twenties, and that seemed to have sufficed for him.
Bev stomped inside and saw Amy holding the photo. There was a smudge of gray charcoal dust across her sweaty forehead. She looked over Amy’s shoulder at the photo. “Our hosts,” Bev said. “Is that from their wedding? She looks miserable.”
“I bet a lot of people are miserable at their weddings. Think of that pressure for one day to be perfect. I would have nonstop stress diarrhea.”
“I’d make sure you took some of my Klonopin.”
“A cocktail of Klonopin and Imodium. Perfect.”
“Glad that’s settled.”
They stared at the photo for another moment, then went to set the table with the beautiful hand-thrown plates and Riedel stemless wineglasses and heavy square-handled cutlery that had probably been given to the couple in the photo as wedding presents.
Later, ensconced in her cozy bedroom under vintage quilts in an antique bed, Amy took a chance on the flickering cell service and called Sam. He was still at the studio.
“The signal sucks out here. We have to be prepared to be cut off at any time, so you can’t say anything important,” Amy warned him.
“Okay, baby. Are you having a fun time? Waffles and I miss you very much. Waffles is expressing his sadness, actually, by licking my feet all the time. I don’t understand why he does this, baby. I think you aren’t a very good cat disciplinarian.”
“Don’t blame me for Waffles’s behavioral problems. I didn’t have him in his formative years. What are you working on?”
“That big Cuisinart. Painting the part now where you can see that
A couple in a photograph on a low shelf caught Amy’s eye suddenly. It wasn’t a snapshot—there would never be such a gauche thing as a snapshot in a house like this one—but a posed informal portrait, the kind you’d see in an art or fashion magazine. The man was slight and Asian and almost shorter than the woman, who wore a pearl-gray dress with a wide sash at the waist. She looked sad, somehow, even though she was beaming.
These were the house’s owners. Amy picked up the photo and studied it for more clues. Was this from their wedding? How old had they been? They looked older than Amy, but not by much.
Amy was jealous of people who got married, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married. It wasn’t the party or the presents or the patently unrealistic promise of eternal love she craved, not at all. Well, maybe it was the party, slightly. It was more—well, it was a lot of things. For one thing, people who got married seemed to be granted special exemption from the otherwise ironclad law that after you stopped being a child, you had to give up your belief in magic. The spells and talismans of marriage—the vows, the rings, the veil—retained their mythic power, over Amy at least. It was maddening. But she couldn’t stop herself from caring, from being curious and jealous and moved when she saw these symbols, no matter how much she agreed with the pundits who attacked the institution on pragmatic and feminist and philosophical grounds, and no matter how many novels she read about the inevitable end of love.
Sam had been married once, in his early twenties, and that seemed to have sufficed for him.
Bev stomped inside and saw Amy holding the photo. There was a smudge of gray charcoal dust across her sweaty forehead. She looked over Amy’s shoulder at the photo. “Our hosts,” Bev said. “Is that from their wedding? She looks miserable.”
“I bet a lot of people are miserable at their weddings. Think of that pressure for one day to be perfect. I would have nonstop stress diarrhea.”
“I’d make sure you took some of my Klonopin.”
“A cocktail of Klonopin and Imodium. Perfect.”
“Glad that’s settled.”
They stared at the photo for another moment, then went to set the table with the beautiful hand-thrown plates and Riedel stemless wineglasses and heavy square-handled cutlery that had probably been given to the couple in the photo as wedding presents.
Later, ensconced in her cozy bedroom under vintage quilts in an antique bed, Amy took a chance on the flickering cell service and called Sam. He was still at the studio.
“The signal sucks out here. We have to be prepared to be cut off at any time, so you can’t say anything important,” Amy warned him.
“Okay, baby. Are you having a fun time? Waffles and I miss you very much. Waffles is expressing his sadness, actually, by licking my feet all the time. I don’t understand why he does this, baby. I think you aren’t a very good cat disciplinarian.”
“Don’t blame me for Waffles’s behavioral problems. I didn’t have him in his formative years. What are you working on?”
“That big Cuisinart. Painting the part now where you can see that
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