Read Online My Three Husbands by Swan Adamson - Free Book Online

you. She told you. At two in the afternoon.”
    â€œHer place is awfully tiny,” Whitman said. “How about if we did it here? It could be very pretty. What are you wearing by the way?”
    â€œIt’s a surprise.”
    â€œDoesn’t Donna Karan have some simple white dresses this season? Jackie Kennedy sort of nineteen-sixties A-lines. Maybe we should go down to Saks and find something that covers at least some of your tattoos.”
    â€œI don’t want a suck-ass dress from Donna Karan,” I lied. “I’ve got everything all planned out. My way.”
    â€œOkay. Next question. This event is to take place on July Fourth. Doesn’t that seem a tad inappropriate?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWell, it’s such a patriotic day.”
    â€œCarolee had a chart done. The astrologer said the Fourth is auspicious for me.”
    â€œIs this going to be one of Carolee’s pagan ceremonies?” he asked cautiously.
    â€œSort of. We’re planning everything, me and Tremaynne.”
    â€œTremaynne and I. And what about the reception?”
    â€œA big costume party.”
    â€œWhat about Tremaynne’s family?”
    â€œHe doesn’t want anything to do with them.”
    â€œOh.” Whitman dipped his cigarette into the glass of water and watched it fizzle out. He stared out the glass doors. He didn’t say anything. I thought maybe I’d pissed him off.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” I asked.
    â€œNothing. I was just wondering what I would do if I could get married to your dad. I mean really married.” He turned to me. “I was raised so differently from the way you were.”
    By which he meant his family was rich and had come over with the Mayflower —the ship, not the moving company. Daddy said the Whittlesleys were one of the oldest families in Boston. That’s about all I knew. Whitman rarely talked about his family.
    â€œYou know, I used to get into huge fights with your dad about you,” Whitman said.
    I waited for more, always eager to slurp up any emotional crumb he might toss my way.
    â€œI’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “I’m the only person I know who identified with Joan Crawford in Mommie, Dearest. Not the coat-hanger thing. No. Her strict sense of order and discipline. Everything you didn’t have when you were growing up. I worry that you’re just going to drift through life. Like a jellyfish.”
    I put my arms around him and kissed him on the lips. He obliged with his usual chaste pucker. “Don’t worry, Daddy dearest,” I said. “I’m a big girl now.”
    â€œOkay, time to suck in the guts.”
    He was zipping up his pants and I was buttoning my bustier when the bedroom door opened and Tremaynne walked in.
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    Later that night I barged like a mobster into my mom’s house and screamed, “Just what the fuck did you think you were doing showing up in a fucking clown suit?”
    Her face had that wincing, please-don’t-hit-me look that makes me even madder.
    â€œA clown suit!” I raged. “Did you think it was funny or were you trying to humiliate the dads and me or what?”
    â€œSweetheart, it was part of my clown therapy,” she whimpered. “I had to do it.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Clown therapy? What the fuck, pray tell, is that?”
    Mom told me all about it, trying to calm me down and defending herself at one and the same time.
    Clown therapy was Carolee’s latest attempt to put some meaning into her life. The astrology charts and psychic forecasts weren’t yielding any results. The ten thousand affirmations she taped to the fridge (“Today I will rejoice in my hunger between meals”) and bathroom mirror (“I honor the goddess within every time I look at my body without shame”) just weren’t doing the trick. Clown therapy was the newest of the endless alternative therapies