Free Memories of a Marriage by Louis Begley Page B

was wrong there. I had genuinely liked Thomas and had had a good opinion of him, but I also knew that wife beaters and child molesters often come across as nice guys. It all depends on the frequency of your contacts and the angle of vision. But my curiosity, mixed with regret, had been aroused, and I intended to learn more.
    Yes, I did hear that he was a monster, I told her, and doubtless it’s not the last time if I see her again, which I think I will.But Lucy mostly talked about herself. I think the point was to explain why she married Thomas in the first place—when she knew all along it was a mistake. The monster part had to do with his having used her money and, I guess, social position to climb and never giving anything back. And of course, anyway at the start, with his having been so wrapped up in his work that he left her to cope with Jamie alone and so forth. But principally it was about having been used.
    I was going to continue, although naturally without mentioning the complaints about sex, but Jane raised her hand to stop me. Look, she said, Thomas put up with a lot of craziness, and I mean real craziness. By all means, listen to her and reach your own conclusions and, if you don’t mind, share them with me if ever the time comes. I’ll give you my own take. For now, just two things. First, he wasn’t a closet Frankenstein monster. Second, don’t go for lies and fabrications about how Thomas and I got together. I didn’t have an affair with him before he and Lucy split. Thomas and I knew each other socially because Horace Jones, my first husband, was—and he still is—a partner in a law firm that worked on a lot of Kidder’s M-and-A deals, including Thomas’s deals, when Thomas was still at Kidder. Afterward, when Thomas and Tim Carroll started the new firm, they kept on giving work to Horace. But there was nothing between Thomas and me. Zero. And it’s a lie that I left Horace because I had my eye on Thomas. I left him because he’d had one office romance too many. Perhaps you wonder why the law firm didn’t boot him out on account of the office hanky-panky which, by the way, according to my moles over there, continued?That was, in principle, what the firm did at the time. The reasons are that at first they didn’t want to lose the Kidder business, which they thought, because he did so much work for Thomas, depended on his staying at the law firm and, later, after Thomas left Kidder and founded his own firm together with Tim Carroll, because they didn’t want to lose the Snow Carroll business. That’s right, Snow Carroll business. Thomas and Tim talked it over when Thomas and I started going out, and they decided to keep using Horace. Thomas was very clear about it. I’ve got Jane; Horace has lost her; he does a good job; why should I want to punish him? So don’t forget to say hi to Lucy!
    Saying hi to Lucy had to wait. I packed some clothes and the indispensable minimum of books, took the train to Wassaic, where my car was in storage, and, my sense of anticipation and disquiet mounting, drove over the Connecticut line to Sharon. The house looked good, and so did the garden. During a quick tour of the property, I checked as always first the trees and flowering bushes that I considered Bella’s, planted by her or at her instigation. They had survived well the winter storms that had hit the valley. So had the peonies, Bella’s favorites; for the first time since she died, I wasn’t missing the moment of their greatest glory. Inside, the house was cold and naked, Peter Drummond and the composer had removed their photographs and knickknacks, and my personal possessions were still in the locked guest-room closets, but otherwise it was fine. On the kitchen table I found a notefrom the real estate agent, asking me to call. I’ll come right over, he said when I reached him. It turned out that he had news from Peter. Renting from me had worked out well, and he and Ezra Morris—he reminded me that