Free The Real Liddy James by Anne-Marie Casey Page B

she smiled, remembering the very young woman she had seen with him. “I think you’re too . . .
much
for me.”
    â€œHow can anyone have too much of a good thing?” she said, doing her best to affect allure despite the sogginess, sweat, and stains, and trying hard to convince him that she’d had more than three sexual encounters in her life so far, and that two out of three of them weren’t bad. She suspected, however, that he had guessed this.
    He laughed out loud. He rested his hand on her arm. “It must be great to be you,” he said softly.
    â€œAre you having a birthday party?” she said. “Maybe I’ll come.”
    â€œSure,” he replied. “Eight o’clock next Thursday. You know the address.” He pointed to the white door a little way down the street.
    She nodded. She tried to think of a parting line that a professor of English literature might appreciate. She couldn’t. She had spent all her time working on the introductory one.
    â€œI’ll get you a present,” she said.
    That fall, Liddy said good-bye to Murray Hill and moved into the loft on Bedford Street that Peter’s aunt owned. Peter was on sabbatical, writing a book on moral aestheticism, and they were happy. Most weekdays they met for a sandwich in an unprepossessing deli on Forty-third Street, equidistant from her office andthe New York Public Library, and they discussed disastrous romantic adventures, although his tales were from the pages of novels and hers were from depositions. In the evenings, when they weren’t both working, they went to new restaurants they’d read about in the
New Yorker
, and plays and concerts and galleries, although Liddy always made the reservations. She took a photography course at the New School and was invited to display her work in a respected gallery downtown; she enjoyed this but did not pursue it. (The impoverished life of the struggling artist held no romance for her. She had eaten nothing but apples and baked potatoes during her time in college. Her hair and nails had never fully recovered.) Occasionally they would visit Peter’s parents, and stay in the large house upstate Peter had grown up in, where there was Bach on the stereo, a library full of well-thumbed books, and a large pond full of shimmering red koi next to a tennis court. Peter’s mother always urged Liddy to play doubles, but Liddy did not know how, and she did not have the time to learn. Instead, she learned about red wine, and sushi, and the opera.
    When Peter went back to work, and her salary doubled and then tripled, they enjoyed numerous winter vacations in Europe and during the long, hot summers took a rental in the same cottage on the water in Amagansett. Often Peter traveled up alone on a Thursday to read and had the takeout ordered when Liddy emerged from the train late on a Friday night, desperate to see him. Sometimes it felt like they had started a conversation the night of that fateful birthday that had never ended. They always had something to talk about. They were “so good together,” everybody said, “still crazy” after so many years, and most of thetime they were—until five years later, and the Labor Day weekend that Peter’s parents came to visit and marveled at how Liddy had finally “domesticated” their boy, the “boy” who was now well into his forties, and Mrs. James got a bit tipsy and embarrassed everyone by asking when Peter intended to make “an honest woman of Liddy.” He laughed and then got petulant when she wouldn’t stop asking and said she wanted to be a grandmother, and it was very awkward and Mr. James had to escort her up to bed, saying she can’t take three glasses of wine anymore, and when Liddy asked Peter about it afterward—what
was
wrong with the idea of getting married or having a child anyway?—he flew into a furious tantrum and headed back to the