Read Online The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams - Free Book Online

you—”
    â€œTick?”
    â€œWhat makes you
Vivian
.”
    I liked the way he said my name, all throaty on the
V
’s, all stretched to its rightful three syllables. The diner was quiet, at least for the middle of Manhattan, only half full, giving me the illusion of privacy, the demi-sanctity of confessional. Something clattered onto the Formica before me. The raisin bun. “Thank you,” I said, without looking up.
    â€œDid he hurt you?” asked Doctor Paul, compassionate.
    â€œDid he hurt me.” I snatched the raisin bun. “Do I look like the kind of girl who lets herself get hurt?”
    â€œYou tell me.”
    I went on with my mouth full, in a way that would have caused my mother to reach for her third vodka gimlet, no ice. “Look, a girl goes away to college, any girl, every girl, and she’s alone. No mother and father, especially no father. She meets a lot of boys, if she’s lucky, and they’re either painfully awkward or awkwardly pushy, and she wonders where all the men have gone, the ones who know how to speak and act and treat a lady. Oh, wait. Look. There’s one! Right at the front of the room, an expert in his field, eminent and confident as all get-out, holding the classroom in his chalk-dusted palm, maybe flashing you a smile, maybe holding your gaze a second or two. You find yourself going to his office to ask a question, to talk about your exam, and lo and behold, he can actually hold aconversation. He pulls out your chair for you and hangs your coat on a hook. He’s civilized. He’s a grown-up, and he acts as though you’re the only woman in the universe.” I reached for my pocketbook and shook out another smoke. Doctor Paul went for his lighter, but I waved him away and used my own. “So that’s how it happens. Daddy complex, whatever the shrinks want to call it. You think you’re safe with him, until you’re not. Until you’re losing your virginity on his office sofa, oopsy-daisy.”
    â€œThe difference, of course,” said Doctor Paul, in a voice from another century, “is that this Dr. Grant married her afterward.”
    â€œStand down, Lancelot. God forbid I should have married
him.
Anyway, I could have said no, and I didn’t. I was curious. I had my own urges. Don’t let any girl tell you she doesn’t.” I let the waitress refill my coffee before I exploded my next little bombshell. “And my mother made it look so easy, having affairs. I thought, well, tiddledywinks. I’m her daughter. It’s the family business, isn’t it, sleeping with married men.”
    â€œHe was married?”
    â€œHe’s not anymore. It turned out he had a thicket of notches on the arm of his office sofa, and eventually the poor wife discovered them while she was plumping the pillows one day. As I said, a rite of passage, and he was more than happy to perform the sacraments.”
    Doctor Paul sat back and stubbed out his cigarette. His cheeks were faintly pink; so was the tip of his nose. “I don’t know what to say.”
    â€œLook, I don’t regret it. I don’t think I do, anyway, except that he was married. That was wrong, that was stupid, and I’d never do that again. It seems I don’t have the stomach for adultery, genes or no genes.”
    â€œWhat a relief.”
    â€œBut I can see the same thing happening to her, to Violet. Seduction, that is. She would have been much more alone than I was, wouldn’t she, with her family across the ocean, and no other women to share her midnight cocoa and a good laugh? She’d burned every bridge, God help her. So either Dr. Grant seduced her, because she was innocent andvulnerable, and then he married her out of guilt. Or else she seduced him and made him cough up the ring, ex post coitus.”
    â€œWhich one do you think it was?”
    I licked the sticky from my fingers and finished off the coffee. Half