created out of nothing but two fifteen-minute acts in a darkened bedroom, an act repeated millions of times over throughout the country on any given day. We were hardly original in anything we did, but for a while it all felt so fraught and urgent and specific.
Today, December twelfth, would have been our thirtieth wedding anniversary. My daughter called this morning, sweetly apologetic but unable to resist saying that she had noticed this would-be milestone too. My son has not called, nor do I expect him to. He doesn’t always remember my birthday, or his sister’s, or his own, from what I can tell. Am I embarrassed or irritated with myself for continuing to observe, so to speak, the anniversary of my failed marriage? Not really. It is simply a fact of my life, like the myopia I have lived with since junior high, the knobby knees, the forgetful son.
“Dad’s back in New Orleans,” Anna informed me, even though I hadn’t asked if she knew where he was. “He had to reshoot a couple of scenes for
Bourbon at Dusk.”
“I bet he’s just thrilled about that. Have you seen him recently?”
“A few weeks ago,” she said. “I thought I told you that he was in town for a couple of days before he went up to Seattle to visit the guy who’s doing the sound track.”
“Why didn’t he hire a musician in New Orleans?”
“This guy is from Louisiana, I guess, but after Katrina, he moved to Seattle. I think he still has a place down there though.” She paused. “When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“I don’t know. Over the summer, I suppose.” I could hear strangers’ voices in the background and wind hurling itself against Anna’s phone. She was probably on break outside the hospital where she and her classmates are doing clinicals.
“Have you talked to Billy this week?” she asked.
“I called him a couple of days ago, but he hasn’t called me back yet.”
“He and Danielle broke up.” She sounded embarrassed, as if she had something to do with it. Since childhood, she has had the unfortunate tendency of taking deeply to heart other people’s mistakes or bad luck, but I suppose it is also this impulse that influenced her decision to become a doctor.
“Oh, no. Why? Was it his decision or hers?”
“Hers. He’s such a bonehead.”
I was very disappointed to hear this. From the beginning, I liked Danielle; she has always seemed honest and kind and not the type of person who wanted Billy only because of his money or his connection to his father’s celebrity. At twenty-six, my son is still rudderless, and he worries me much more than his sister does. Anna is one semester away from graduating with her MD, and I couldn’t be more proud of her if she had won the Boston marathon or the Nobel Prize. Her decision to go into family medicine rather than specialize in pediatrics or obstetrics or something a little more glamorous than country doctorhood was a bit surprising, but I’m flattered that she has chosen the same profession as mine. Thank God, in any case, that she didn’t choose her father’s. For a while, I thought for sure that she or Billy would.
“What happened?” I asked, ninety percent certain that it was my son’s fault.
She hesitated. “I think he has a crush on the lead actress in Dad’s movie. This girl named Elise Connor. You probably know who she is. Danielle found out, and what a surprise, she was upset and broke up with him. He had just asked her to move in with him too.”
I know who Elise Connor is. Of course I do. In more than one flimsy, flashy magazine that I shouldn’t notice, let alone pick up, I have seen her name linked with my ex-husband’s. “Mrs. Ivins III,” one columnist has dared to call her. “I see stars in these stars’ eyes whenever they look at each other,” the so-called journalist crowed. “Are those wedding bells I hear in the distance?”
Reading words like these, I don’t feel the same acid surge of jealousy that I did up until four
Today, December twelfth, would have been our thirtieth wedding anniversary. My daughter called this morning, sweetly apologetic but unable to resist saying that she had noticed this would-be milestone too. My son has not called, nor do I expect him to. He doesn’t always remember my birthday, or his sister’s, or his own, from what I can tell. Am I embarrassed or irritated with myself for continuing to observe, so to speak, the anniversary of my failed marriage? Not really. It is simply a fact of my life, like the myopia I have lived with since junior high, the knobby knees, the forgetful son.
“Dad’s back in New Orleans,” Anna informed me, even though I hadn’t asked if she knew where he was. “He had to reshoot a couple of scenes for
Bourbon at Dusk.”
“I bet he’s just thrilled about that. Have you seen him recently?”
“A few weeks ago,” she said. “I thought I told you that he was in town for a couple of days before he went up to Seattle to visit the guy who’s doing the sound track.”
“Why didn’t he hire a musician in New Orleans?”
“This guy is from Louisiana, I guess, but after Katrina, he moved to Seattle. I think he still has a place down there though.” She paused. “When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“I don’t know. Over the summer, I suppose.” I could hear strangers’ voices in the background and wind hurling itself against Anna’s phone. She was probably on break outside the hospital where she and her classmates are doing clinicals.
“Have you talked to Billy this week?” she asked.
“I called him a couple of days ago, but he hasn’t called me back yet.”
“He and Danielle broke up.” She sounded embarrassed, as if she had something to do with it. Since childhood, she has had the unfortunate tendency of taking deeply to heart other people’s mistakes or bad luck, but I suppose it is also this impulse that influenced her decision to become a doctor.
“Oh, no. Why? Was it his decision or hers?”
“Hers. He’s such a bonehead.”
I was very disappointed to hear this. From the beginning, I liked Danielle; she has always seemed honest and kind and not the type of person who wanted Billy only because of his money or his connection to his father’s celebrity. At twenty-six, my son is still rudderless, and he worries me much more than his sister does. Anna is one semester away from graduating with her MD, and I couldn’t be more proud of her if she had won the Boston marathon or the Nobel Prize. Her decision to go into family medicine rather than specialize in pediatrics or obstetrics or something a little more glamorous than country doctorhood was a bit surprising, but I’m flattered that she has chosen the same profession as mine. Thank God, in any case, that she didn’t choose her father’s. For a while, I thought for sure that she or Billy would.
“What happened?” I asked, ninety percent certain that it was my son’s fault.
She hesitated. “I think he has a crush on the lead actress in Dad’s movie. This girl named Elise Connor. You probably know who she is. Danielle found out, and what a surprise, she was upset and broke up with him. He had just asked her to move in with him too.”
I know who Elise Connor is. Of course I do. In more than one flimsy, flashy magazine that I shouldn’t notice, let alone pick up, I have seen her name linked with my ex-husband’s. “Mrs. Ivins III,” one columnist has dared to call her. “I see stars in these stars’ eyes whenever they look at each other,” the so-called journalist crowed. “Are those wedding bells I hear in the distance?”
Reading words like these, I don’t feel the same acid surge of jealousy that I did up until four
Similar Books
