Free Jeremy Thrane by Kate Christensen Page A

splendor by a famous man who supported me and my own so-called writing career? Just then, into my line of vision strolled a superb example of sapiens, genus homo—young, moist-lipped, tight-buttocked, such stuff as dreams were made on. I tracked him through narrowed eyes, a low growl bubbling deep in my throat.
    Ted was probably getting home right about now. I was extremely relieved to have an excuse to miss the homecoming. I imagined it as a scene out of a Gothic novel, the seasonal return of the Lord of the Manor bounding up the front stairs, followed by his wife and child, the nanny, his valet, Giselle’s lady-in-waiting or whatever the fuck she was called, and the limo driver with the bags. As the secret mad wife in the attic, I wasn’t due onstage until around midnight, carrying a burning candelabrum and wearing a soiled white nightgown. After supper with my mother and sister, I planned to cool my heels in a movie or bar while the household went through its paces, while the valet and lady-in-waiting unpacked the haute-couture finery and hung it in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom in readiness for Monday night’s premiere and party, and the nanny installed little Bret in the nursery, Ted and Giselle admiredYoshi’s obscene-looking orchids in their second-floor glassed-in balcony hothouse. At eight o’clock would come Basia’s summons to the dining room table for body-temperature borscht, fleshy dumplings that resisted the teeth, and her specialty, pork cutlets as chewy as slabs of latex. After dinner, bath time and bedtime for the Kewpie-faced angel, the grunt work done by the nanny, the adoring parents standing by … and then? Then Ted might start to wonder where the hell I was, and I didn’t want to be too easily located when his attention, as it must, turned to me. I had my pride.
    “There you are,” said my mother.
    I looked up at her through a thick fog. She looked fragile and upset.
    “Where’s Amanda?” I asked.
    “She’ll be out in a minute,” said my mother.
    “What’s wrong?”
    She sat next to me on the stoop and leaned against me. “I’ll tell you at dinner, when Amanda can hear too.”
    “That was a good reading, Mom.”
    “I was so distracted. But that’s very nice of you to say.” She squeezed my arm and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
    “And you look beautiful, as always.”
    “Oh, Jeremy, if only everyone were exactly like you.”
    There were a few things I could say to this, but I chose to say none of them. A few minutes later, all the members of our dinner party, with one unwelcome addition, had assembled on the sidewalk, freed of extraneous conversational entanglements, ready to roll. Irene, it developed, had been invited along, whether by my sister or my mother I hadn’t been able to ascertain, so my blame had no object and remained stuck in my craw. “The reservations were for three,” I said weakly but mulishly.
    “Well, they can pull up an extra chair,” said my mother, equally mulishly but much more assertively. She had never understood my aversion to Irene; it was one of the few things she refused to indulge in me.
    We were going, at my own suggestion, to a little bistro I frequented whenever possible. The three women strolled, yapping, while I surged ahead, eager to get this over with and also a bit peckish. Since that awful scene at Benito’s this afternoon, I’d been looking forward to the sheer comfort of a St. Émilion I particularly liked to drink with an order ofgarlicky snails, chèvre-beet-mesclun salad, moules frites, and finally a cognac with mousse au chocolat and café au lait. The evening had just begun; it was absurdly early to eat dinner, but my mother ate this early almost every night, yet another of her eccentricities in a city where some people might have considered even an eight o’clock dinner invitation much too early.
    When we arrived, it appeared that reservations had not been necessary; the staff were all still lounging at the bar