Buch lesen: «Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail»

CHAPTER | One

It had begun to seem to Graham, in this, the twelfth year of his second marriage, that he and his wife lived in parallel universes. And worse, it seemed his universe was lonely and arid, and hers was densely populated with armies of friends and acquaintances and other people he did not know.

Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together—although, Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—it was like accompanying a visiting dignitary of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—while he did the normal shopping.

First, in the produce section, they saw some woman with a baby in a stroller and Audra said, “Oh, hi! How are you? Are you going to that thing on Tuesday?” and the woman said, “I don’t know, because there’s that other meeting,” and Audra said, “I thought that got canceled,” and the woman said, “No, it’s still on,” and Audra said, “I wish they wouldn’t double-book this stuff,” and the woman said, “I know,” and Audra said, “Well, if we don’t go, will everyone say bad things about us?” and the woman said, “Probably,” and it wasn’t that Graham wasn’t paying attention, it wasn’t that he missed the specifics—it was that there were no specifics, that was the way they actually talked.

He took his time thumping melons and picking over grapefruit and was actually rewarded for being forced to linger by remembering to buy green grapes, which weren’t on the list.

“Who was that?” he asked when Audra rejoined him.

“Who?” She was peering into the shopping cart.

“That woman you just said hello to.”

“Oh, she has a girl in Matthew’s class,” Audra said, selecting an apple. “And a five-year-old and a toddler and that baby, if you can believe it. But no more, because when the baby was only a week old, she had her husband get a vasectomy. Just made the arrangements and woke him that morning and said, ‘Guess what? You’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’ And he went!”

She took a bite of the apple. Audra was forty-one—a slender woman with a not-quite-perfectly oval face. In fact, Graham sometimes thought, all of Audra was not-quite. Her eyes were not quite brown but had stalled at hazel, her lips were not quite full enough to be lush, her eyebrows were not quite high enough to be called arched, her chin-length hair was not quite auburn, and its messy waves were not quite ringlets. She’d worn her hair this length for as long as Graham had known her. Apparently, if she cut it shorter, it curled up around her face and made her head look overly round, and if she grew it longer, the ends got too heavy and she had to have lots of layers put in. (This was marriage: you started out thinking you’d married the most interesting person in all the world and twelve years later, your head was full of useless hair facts. Of course, there was other stuff in there—some milestones, having a baby, buying a house—but that was basically the essence of it.) Audra was not quite beautiful but her liveliness kept her far away from plain.

One aisle over, in the breakfast cereals department, Audra suddenly stopped the cart. A young man behind them glared but Audra paid no attention.

“Oh! Hey!” Audra said. “Look! Hello! Hi! Whoa! How are you?” You would have thought she was greeting a whole soccer team instead of one lady in a T-shirt and jeans with her hair pulled back into a bun.

“Hello, Audra,” the lady said.

“So sorry I missed yoga this morning, Beverly!” Audra said. She cleared her throat. “Or, um, I mean, Maninder Prem. Sorry, again, I forgot that you go by your spiritual name now, right? Even in the supermarket?”

“You can call me Beverly,” the lady said neutrally. “But please remember that I have a no-refund policy for late cancellations and no-shows.”

“Of course,” Audra said. “It’s just that this morning we had a slight—well, I don’t know if you would call it a family emergency, more of a family situation—regarding my mother-in-law and an ancient jar of capers in her fridge and a trip to the hospital—”

Audra’s tendency to lie could still shock Graham. His mother lived in Ohio, and as far as he knew, she was perfectly healthy, although she did have a habit of leaving things in the refrigerator for a terrifyingly long time.

“I’m sorry to hear that—” Beverly said. There seemed to be more to say but she wasn’t saying it.

“Yes—” Audra said. There seemed to be more for her to say, too, but she wasn’t saying it, either. Finally, she made a fluttery little gesture and said, “Beverly, this is my husband, Graham. Graham, this is my yoga teacher, Beverly.”

Graham smiled politely and shook hands with Beverly, who looked him up and down, her eyelids flickering. He was fifteen years older than Audra and he could tell that Beverly was thinking, Oh, it’s one of those marriages. Graham wanted to tell her that it wasn’t one of those marriages, that his relationship with Audra was so special and unique even he didn’t know what it was, but he’d given up on trying to communicate that long ago. He was tall and in good shape, with the hair at his temples just starting to go gray, but he suddenly felt tempted to stand up straighter. (Was it just Graham or was Beverly awfully judgmental, especially for a yoga teacher?)

“So anyway,” Audra said, “see you next week, Beverly.”

They moved on, and as soon as they went around the corner and out of sight, Audra said, “I completely forgot about yoga this morning!” as though that hadn’t been as obvious as a bumper sticker.

“I think Beverly could tell that,” Graham said.

Audra sighed. “Maybe so. I don’t know why I ever thought yoga class early on a Saturday morning was such a good idea. I guess I must have been feeling particularly empowered when I signed up.”

They saw their appliance repairman, Brady Shannon, in the ice cream aisle, and Graham knew that Audra would have an extra-long talk with Brady because she believed that if you were very, very nice to repairmen, they responded very, very quickly the next time you needed something repaired. The fact that this theory had proved very, very untrue had not shaken her belief in the practice.

“Brady Shannon!” Audra exclaimed.

“Well, hello, Ms. Daltry, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Brady said. He was a slight, balding man wearing a gray sweat suit and those black padded kneepads that skateboarders wear. Every time Graham had seen him, Brady was wearing those kneepads, presumably because he was always having to get down and crawl around people’s refrigerators and washing machines.

“I was thinking of you just this morning,” Audra said. “In fact, I think of you every morning when I get in the shower!” Brady had recently fixed their shower head. “I think, This feels heavenly and I owe it all to Brady Shannon!”

Brady smirked at Audra and rocked a little on the balls of his feet.

Not for the first time, Graham wondered if there was some sort of processing unit—some sort of filter—missing from Audra’s brain. She said things like this all the time without realizing how they sounded, and now here was poor Brady Shannon, getting turned on in Frozen Foods.

“Anyway,” Audra said, oblivious, “how have you been?”

“Oh.” Brady sounded disappointed. He probably hoped that Audra would go on describing what she did in the shower. “I’m all right.”

Audra touched Brady’s arm. “And please tell me how dear Ellen is.”

Okay, now first of all, Graham happened to know that Audra didn’t say things like “dear Ellen.” Except that she just did. Second, Graham would have bet that Brady didn’t like it when people said things like “dear Ellen.” But he had just liked it when Audra said it. Third, Ellen was a cat.

“She’s coming along, I guess.”

“Bladder infections can be very serious,” Audra said.

“Don’t I know it,” Brady said, shaking his head and tsking.

Audra and Brady talked some more about dear Ellen’s urinary tract, and health problems among the elderly cat population in general, and the astronomical cost of veterinary care, and Brady’s aunt Linda, who had had a bad run of UTIs herself recently, and the time Audra drank cranberry juice nonstop for a week and turned out not to have a UTI at all and—

Finally, finally, they got to the checkout lines.

Audra said, “Now, let me see if Jordan’s working. Oh, yes, he is! Let’s get in his line. Come this way.”

“Who’s Jordan?” Graham asked, maneuvering their cart with some difficulty.

“The checkout guy.”

“Well, yes, but why do we need to be in his line?”

“Just a minute,” Audra said. “Here.” She pulled the front of the cart to a checkout line near the door. The customer in front of them was just putting the last of her groceries on the conveyor belt.

“Audra,” Graham said again. “Why—”

Audra squeezed around the front of their grocery cart so that she was standing right next to Graham and spoke in a low voice. “I thought I told you this but maybe not.” Her breath on his face was as warm and soft as clover. “I was here a couple of weeks ago and Jordan was ringing up this man’s produce and the man had bought some pears but Jordan accidentally hit the wrong button and rang them up as these superexpensive Asian pears and the man got very huffy—he really was the most awful man, Graham, very coarse and uncaring—and told Jordan to take the Asian pears off his order and Jordan tried but he’d never done it before and the cash register froze and they had to call the supervisor and the man hollered at Jordan and stormed off without even buying his groceries! I thought Jordan was going to cry. I honestly did. He can’t be more than twenty, and he’s so sweet and defenseless-looking. So, anyway, now I always make sure to go through his checkout line and tell him what a good job he’s doing.”

Perhaps this was the fundamental difference between them. Audra was worried about Jordan’s self-esteem and Graham was wondering if Fairway still had the special Asian pears. If so, should he go get some so they could have Korean short ribs with pear marinade for dinner?

Audra edged back to the front of the cart and began unloading their groceries onto the conveyor. Graham peered around her to look at Jordan. He was a tall skinny African-American guy with neatly cornrowed hair and the large scared eyes of a deer. He was painstakingly checking out the purchases of the customer in front of them.

When they got up to the cash register, Audra said, “Good morning, Jordan!” so suddenly that Jordan fumbled the can of peas he was holding and had to lean down behind the counter to pick it up off the floor.

He looked at Audra cautiously. “Good morning.” He began scanning items.

“How are you, Jordan?”

Jordan paused, a bottle of ketchup in his hand. “Pretty good.” He scanned the ketchup and reached for a box of cereal.

“I was hoping you’d be working today,” Audra said. “You always do such a good job.”

Jordan stopped again. It was clear he couldn’t work the register and talk at the same time. Graham estimated that they had at least fifty items in their cart. So if each conversational exchange took thirty seconds—

“Thanks,” Jordan said finally.

He scanned a carton of orange juice and a box of pasta—Graham’s hopes rose microscopically—before Audra said, “You’re so efficient!”

Jordan stopped. Graham sighed. The man in line behind Graham sighed, too.

Jordan swallowed nervously. His neck poked out of the too-large collar of his tan uniform, narrow and vulnerable. “Thank you, ma’am,” he whispered.

“Audra,” Graham said quickly.

“Hmmm?”

“We forgot to get Parmesan cheese.”

She frowned slightly. “Did we? You want to run back and get some?”

That was the last thing Graham wanted to do, but at least Jordan had managed to scan another three items while Audra was distracted.

“I think we also forgot toothpaste,” he began again, but she had already turned back to Jordan.

“Excellent, Jordan!” Audra told him. “Look at you go!”

(Try to imagine having sex with someone so universally encouraging. It was, like almost everything about Audra, both good and bad.)

Graham sighed again and rested his elbows on the handle of the cart.

They had left Matthew, their ten-year-old son, at home with Bitsy, and when they got back from the supermarket, they found that Bitsy and Matthew had built a domino line through every room in the apartment, including the bathrooms.

Bitsy had been living in their den for about three weeks. It wasn’t accurate to say a friend of theirs named Bitsy or even Audra’s friend Bitsy because Graham had never seen Bitsy before she moved in and Audra had only met her a handful of times at book club. Graham had thought the only people named Bitsy were bubbly teenagers, but this Bitsy was in her early fifties—with a long, narrow face and close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and the sinewy body of a devoted runner. She looked more like a greyhound than like someone named Bitsy.

The reason (if you could call it that) Bitsy was living in their den was because about six months ago, Audra, who was a freelance graphic designer, went to deliver a mock-up of a menu to a restaurant client in midtown and when she came out of the restaurant’s office, she happened to see Bitsy’s husband—she recognized him from the time Bitsy hosted book club—having lunch with a twenty-something girl in a miniskirt. (Audra had described the girl to Graham at length and was apparently upset because the girl was wearing a pair of knee-high Frye leather boots that Audra had tried on once and had been unable to get zipped over her calves.) Graham had told her that there might be an innocent reason for Bitsy’s husband to be having lunch with a girl in a miniskirt, but Audra’d just given him a withering look, and then about a month ago, Bitsy’s husband had moved to Ithaca on a creative sabbatical. (“Creative sabbatical?” Audra’d said to Graham. “He’s a bank manager! I never heard of anything so suspicious in my whole entire life.”) Audra had felt so bad—so responsible in some weird way, she said—that she’d offered to let Bitsy move in even though Bitsy and her husband owned a nice brownstone in Brooklyn. Bitsy didn’t like to live alone.

“Hey, honey,” Audra said to Matthew now, carefully stepping over the line, “some kids are playing in the lobby. Why don’t you join them?”

She said this type of thing at least once a day, apparently not having realized in ten years that Matthew was not a social person, that he would never go and join some kids who were already playing. He probably wouldn’t go even if the kids came to the door and asked for him. He was like Graham, not like Audra, and Graham thought that sometimes they both frustrated her endlessly.

“I don’t want to,” Matthew said. “Me and Bitsy are going out to buy batteries for her camera and then she’s going to film it when I knock over the domino line.”

“Okay,” Audra said, and sighed.

“Thanks, Bitsy,” Graham said.

She smiled at him. “No problem.”

Bitsy and Matthew left. Graham followed Audra into the kitchen and began unpacking the groceries. “How’s it going with Bitsy and her husband these days?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s still feeding her all this nonsense about the creative sabbatical,” Audra said. “And she believes it! I honestly don’t think she understands that she and Ted are acting out this sort of cliché. I don’t think she knows that men have been making fools of themselves chasing around after girls in miniskirts for hundreds of years.”

“You seem to be forgetting that you were a miniskirt girl yourself,” Graham said. “My miniskirt girl, in fact.”

“Oh, I never forget that,” Audra said. “That’s how I understand about these things, insider knowledge.”

It was true that Audra had a lot of insider knowledge. And it seemed like everyone wanted to trade on it. Sometimes Graham felt like he was married to Warren Buffett. Well, a female Warren Buffett who knew about everything except finance. (Maybe Audra and Warren Buffett should be married to each other and have every possible base covered. They would be the most sought-after couple in the world.)

People came to Audra for advice—well, no, not advice, that was the wrong word. They came to her for secrets, for gossip, for connections—for intel, that was the term—about everything. Friends sought her expertise on their job interviews, on their children’s chances of getting into private schools, on marriage counselors, on hairdressers, on au pairs, on restaurants, on shops, on neighborhood watches, on gyms, on doctors, on internet providers. People asked her about local politics and she didn’t even know who the mayor of New York City was! (Well, she probably did know who the mayor was, but it wasn’t a certainty by any means.)

Right now, Audra’s friend Lorelei had called and said she was on her way up to ask Audra’s advice about a client meeting.

Lorelei was Audra’s best friend, had been her best friend since they were both twenty. She lived on the third floor of their building and Graham sometimes saw her in the lobby and about once a month Lorelei and her husband and Audra and Graham had dinner together, and they often spent Thanksgiving together, so Graham saw Lorelei fairly often, but it felt like he was married to her because for fourteen years now, Audra had been giving him Lorelei’s opinion on everything along with her own. “Lorelei thinks you’re too old for me, but I don’t,” she’d said when he first met her. Or “Lorelei and I both think you shouldn’t have given in to your first wife about those maintenance fees.”

Audra did this constantly, and not just to Graham. She even did it to people in shops and restaurants, saying, “Lorelei would never pay so much for a jacket, but I love it,” or “Lorelei and I both like scallops so I’ll try the special.” (Did people think she was schizophrenic and referring to some person only she could see? Graham wondered suddenly. Or did they think she had multiple personalities and Audra was the dominant self who spoke for both?)

The buzzer sounded and Graham went to let Lorelei in.

“Hey, Graham,” Lorelei said, and smiled. She was a petite, dark-haired woman with freckles and the greenest eyes Graham had ever seen.

Graham knew Lorelei’s opinions on everything from their bathroom tiles (too dark) to his mother (passive-aggressive) to his recipe for beef stew (beyond delicious), and all of that was very tedious, but he also knew some interesting things about her. He knew that she was saddened by the invention of colored contact lenses because now everyone assumed she wore them, and that her husband had made her cry once by making fun of the way she walked in high heels, and that when she was fifteen, she had made out with her boyfriend in a lake and when the boyfriend ejaculated, his semen had floated to the surface and followed them around like a jellyfish.

Of course, Graham realized that it must work the other way around and that Lorelei must know everything about him, too, but he had always sort of enjoyed that. How many people could have such intimate knowledge of another person and yet never really say anything beyond The salmon here really is excellent? It sometimes stirred in Graham a profound affection for Lorelei.

And yet, even Lorelei, who was a client service director with a big social advertising agency, was here, humbly seeking knowledge from Audra, a part-time graphic designer!

It was not the graphic designer bit that made it odd to Graham that someone would want Audra’s advice because he actually thought Audra was very talented. And it wasn’t the part-time thing, either, because that was sort of necessary at least until Matthew went to high school (or possibly until Matthew got married, at age forty-five). It was more just Audra, who had recently wondered aloud to Graham where the fuse box was (they’d lived in their apartment for ten years) and had often said she considered herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel.

But there was no doubt that Audra knew people, and she knew things about people, and often she knew things about people who knew other people who knew people who had brothers who worked in the State Department and it was very helpful when your passport got stolen.

Lorelei went into the living room to talk to Audra, and Graham went into the kitchen to make tea for all of them. He knew just how Lorelei took hers—a single Ceylon tea bag, steeped for four minutes, with one sugar and a dash of lemon. He even knew which mug she preferred—an old-fashioned turquoise one with white enamel lining—and that she liked gingersnaps with her tea, although they didn’t have any gingersnaps right now.

Graham liked making tea. He liked cooking, he liked baking, he liked food, he liked kitchens. In another life, he would have made an excellent owner of a safe house in the Underground Railroad. He would have always been happy to get up in the middle of the night and poke up the fire, listen to the fugitives’ tales while he fried ham steaks and made hot biscuits. And although Graham had been a teenager in the seventies and never attended a consciousness-raising group, the idea had always deeply appealed to him. Political activism while you stirred the spaghetti sauce? What could be better?

He had started out as a medical researcher—Graham liked routine and order—and now he was in charge of medical ventures for a venture capitalist firm. There was just no market for underground safe houses anymore.

“So this very junior person in our office,” Lorelei was saying to Audra, “basically the girl who makes the coffee, tweeted something without approval—”

“What did she tweet?” Audra asked.

“Oh, just something about how the clients’ shoes are guaranteed not to give you blisters,” Lorelei said. “She didn’t realize the word guarantee was legally binding language and now the clients are furious, and I have to meet with them tomorrow.”

“Who are the clients?” Audra asked.

“Superguardian Footwear,” Lorelei said.

“Just a sec, let me look them up,” Audra said, and there was the muted clatter of her laptop keyboard.

Graham tried to remember how conversations like this went in the pre-Google world and found he couldn’t, although the pre-Google world was only what, ten or twelve years ago? (Some people, like his mother, still lived there.) Before Google, it seemed to Graham, there was probably a great deal more topic changing. Or maybe conversations were just shorter. Maybe you said, Have you ever heard of a company called Superguardian Footwear? and the other person said, No, and you said, Oh. Well, anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow.

“All right,” Audra said in that half-present, half-absent sort of voice people use when they’re looking at a computer screen and talking at the same time. “Let’s see. Here’s their website—wow, I really do not like that color blue.”

“Go to their company page,” Lorelei said. “Maybe you know the vice president or someone.” She sighed. “I wish you could go to this meeting for me, the way you broke up with Jeff Mayberry for me in college.”

Audra sounded puzzled. “I broke up with Jeff Mayberry for you?”

“Oh my God, yes, don’t you remember?”

“No, not at all.”

“I wanted to break up with him,” Lorelei said, “but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. So you and I were doing a lot of role play and pretend phone calls, with you being me and me being Jeff, but whenever he called, I couldn’t quite do it, and finally you got impatient, and the next time he called, you pretended to be me and said, ‘Listen, Jeff, I’m just in kind of a crazy situation and I can’t see you anymore.’”

“Did it work?” Audra sounded amused.

“Yes!” Lorelei said. “That’s the most amazing thing about it.”

“Jeff couldn’t have been that attached if he didn’t even recognize your voice—”

“I can’t believe this,” Lorelei interrupted. “I have, for years—literally, for decades—been going around telling people I couldn’t do things because I’m in kind of a crazy situation. It’s been my all-purpose answer to almost every awkward question and now I find out you don’t even remember saying it.”

“Who all have you said it to?” Audra asked.

“Everyone!” Lorelei said. “I’m sure I’ve said it to people who were collecting money for UNICEF, and my mother-in-law when she asks why I haven’t had children.”

This was the pleasure of twenty-year-old friendships, Graham thought. Tracing a memory back to its source. Like following a stream through the woods and up a mountain until you find the spring trickling from a rock and you clear away the dead brown leaves of the intervening years and the water flows as sweetly as ever.

Audra’s voice came clearly from the living room. “Really, the only connection I have at Superguardian—and it’s not much help—is that their chief operations officer is a man named Columbus Knox and I believe I gave a man by that name a blow job once outside the Raccoon Lodge in, like, 1990.”

“What?” Graham said, startled.

“It was a long time ago,” Audra called soothingly. “And I didn’t know him terribly well.”

You know, actually, it was nothing like being married to Warren Buffett at all.

The very next day, a woman ahead of Graham in line at the deli ordered a Reuben sandwich with French dressing instead of Russian, and Graham recalled that his ex-wife had often ordered that very sandwich, and then he realized the woman was his ex-wife. How could he not have recognized the back of her head? The long slender neck and smoothly gathered French twist? Her hair was the color of corn silk and Graham knew that it felt like corn silk, too—so soft it seemed to disintegrate when you rubbed the strands between your fingers.

“Elspeth?” he said. (“Stupid name,” Audra had once commented, she of the friends named Bitsy and Lorelei.)

The woman turned and yes, it was definitely Elspeth, same blue eyes, same pale face and delicate eyebrows. She looked older, but of course, she was older. Her skin seemed very slightly grainy, like the finest grade of sandpaper, like tiny calcium deposits on an eggshell. He realized abruptly that his eyes were crawling over her face and how unpleasant that must be. He forced himself to stop.

“Graham,” she said. She didn’t say anything else. He was glad she had her hands full—napkins, a can of soda, and a glass—because that prevented him from having to hug her or shake hands with her. He wasn’t sure which he’d do anyway. Did you shake hands with someone you’d been married to for eight years?

A silence spread between them like a puddle of oil, shiny and dangerous. Graham was certain that if he looked down, he would see his shoes beginning to blacken.

But then the deli guy slapped Elspeth’s sandwich on the counter. She turned to Graham. “Why don’t you join me?”

“That would be great,” Graham said. “You go find a table and I’ll order a sandwich and be right with you.”