Free The View from Here by Deborah Mckinlay Page B

make out the shapes of others, vague through the veils of haze.
    That night we ate formally, as we did sometimes, in the vaulted dining room. Sally presided over those occasions with a majestic mix of grace and authority, but that wasn’t the sort of thing I realized at the time; I was too caught up in the constant, joyful undercurrent of anarchy. So much charm and beauty, so much heady entertainment, all in one room. I was giddy with it, that night in particular, though Mason’s seat, assigned by place card, was at the opposite end of the table from mine.
    Between us the children were in revolt.
    â€œNot fish again.” Jenny’s plate had just been laid in front of her. Soft fingers of lemon sauce spread across the white of the porcelain.
    â€œGood fish,” Christina said sternly, “from your Daddy.”
    â€œProbably I caught it,” Howie announced.
    â€œNo,” Ned insisted. “I recognize that one. He’s mine.”
    â€œIt’s disgusting,” Lesley groaned, pushing a fork in a listless half circle around her plate.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with it?” Richard asked.
    â€œWe don’t like it,” said Lesley.
    â€œI do,” Paige said. “I think it’s delicious.” It was painful, her crush on Richard, and all the harder to watch now that I was beginning to like her.
    Howie forked a chunk of fish and dipped it in his sauce, then licked at it before spitting theatrically.
    Richard’s disgust registered clearly on his face. “What do you like?”
    â€œSpaghetti.”
    â€œThat’s all they ever eat. Spaghetti and hot dogs and candy.”
    â€œThey’re barbarians,” Sally commented blithely. “It’s best not to attempt to civilize them.” She lifted her wineglass and sipped. “That way they grow up better prepared for the perils of adult life. Like guerrilla warfare and marriage.”
    The twins, their hair, almost white now, tumbling uncombed over their shoulders, gazed at their mother.
    â€œWe like hamburgers,” Jessica offered.
    She seemed confused when everybody laughed.
    I stayed up late that night, drinking brandy and flirting, feeling distanced from my earlier gaffe over Bee Bee and Ned by an effervescent new mood and a sense that something had changed, that I was a small step closer to becoming one of them, a member of their ill-defined, faintly hedonistic club. When, eventually, I said goodnight and went to bed, my skin still damp from moonlit swimming, it was to dream, on the frothy foundation of one tiny, unrepeated kiss, girlishly of Mason.
    â€¢ • •
    There are stories, aren’t there, plays and things, in which the central plotline involves one person driving another mad through all sorts of contrivances that leave the victim doubting the evidence of his or her own eyes, ears, memories? In life, of course, it’s simpler. One person only needs to lie to another patchily but regularly for a reasonable length of time for the lunatic edge to set in.
    In the three months since Phillip had come home to me, and stayed, he had been a model husband. Concerned and caring, he took on all kinds of new tasks and accomplished them with bachelor aplomb. He complained, comically, about the price of fruit juice, the difference between the good kind and the processed kind, the kind we did not like. Pressing home to me, through this exchange, the marvelousness of his realization that we needed fruit juice, and that he could not just leave Joan to reach for the first and cheapest one that caught her eye. I had to praise him.
    Then, when praise wasn’t quite enough, he caught a cold, or a sore throat at least, and though lousy with it, ventured out on a chilly day to spread some gravel on a pothole in the driveway. I had commented on the pothole the day before, on our way to Dr. Griffith’s office. Phillip blamed the visit to Dr. Griffith’s office, the crowded waiting room in