Free Trophy House by Anne Bernays Page A

It’s disgusting. If you don’t look like Britney Spears or a rock star, you might as well throw yourself over the nearest cliff. I’m not doing them any favors.”
    â€œYou’re beginning to sound like me.”
    I could look over at her because we weren’t moving. I saw on her face an expression I hadn’t seen before—a look that means I know you’re right and I thank you for the compliment but I’m certainly not going to admit it.
    I asked her what she thought she might do and where she intended to live. I was surprised to hear that she had some “leads” to work in the Boston area, which meant she had actually begun to plan for a future without Andy. “I thought I’d find a place somewhere like Jamaica Plain or Charlestown. I’ve got friends both those places—they’re looking around for me. Or I might move in with one of them.”
    The line of cars started up again and eventually we reached the Mass. Turnpike, paid fifty cents to leave it, skirted Cambridge and drove up Mt. Auburn Street to Watertown. The trip door-to-door took just over three hours; it should take just over two.
    It was afternoon when we drove into our driveway and unpacked the car, making several trips from trunk to front door. The answering machine was beeping. Our house was a nice old place, built around 1910, with blondish floors and colorful area rugs, a lot of light, and furniture reflective of maybe four different decades, beginning in the sixties. Tom and I had done the so-called decorating together, long before, when we got along so well a look from one of us to the other said as much as an entire act from a long play. A friend of ours, visiting for the first time and expecting glamour, told us, “You people live like graduate students.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but that’s how I took it. I hate when everything matches perfectly, when it looks like a room in a spec house.
    I asked Beth to find out who had called, while I stored our food and tried to decide whether or not we had to do some food shopping or could make do with what we had.
    â€œIt was Dad,” Beth told me. “He won’t be home for dinner. A meeting or something…”
    â€œOh?” I said. The day before, he had told me that he would be home in time for dinner. I phoned his office and there was no one there; I left a message saying that I’d got his message and couldn’t wait to see him. At least I wouldn’t have to go to the market until the next day.
    Beth and I ate dinner around the corner at the Town Diner, a Watertown fixture featuring things like a Middle Eastern platter and old-fashioned meatloaf. When we got back, around eight, Tom was still not home. Beth remarked on it, without inflection, just something about her father’s changing his habits. I watched a stupid television show, until I heard Tom’s key in the front door, heard the front door close with a soft thud. “Anybody home?”
    I went out to the foyer. Tom was standing inside the front door with his barn jacket still on, looking somewhat baffled, as if he weren’t sure he’d stepped into the right house.
    â€œHi, Dannie,” he said, and started to take off the jacket.
    I went up to him and hugged him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
    â€œMe too,” he said. He rubbed the back of my head.
    I asked him if he’d eaten and he nodded. “I had a bite in the student cafeteria.” I asked him what the meeting was about. The usual damn thing, he told me, namely how to dole out beginning courses among senior faculty. “Someone always wants it to be ‘fair.’”
    â€œYou’re not one of them, I suppose,” I said.
    â€œSometimes yes, sometimes no. I’m beat; I can’t think of anything right now except a good night’s sleep.”
    By the time I had taken a shower and put on my pajamas, Tom was asleep