Double Happiness Read Free Page B

suite, all the reception rooms, the master bedroom. Around back the garage doors were flung open as if the party might flood into its bays. The blue Caddy my mother liked to drive was parked close to the mudroom door, but the Mercedes, her husband’s staid sedan, was missing. I didn’t need to go inside the house to know she wasn’t there.
    My dearest heart
, my mother wrote to me.
You’ll find it strange, I know, but we’ve flown away to try again. It’s difficult for a writer, maybe for any true artist, to make a good life here. Old Sven was kinder to you than to his own son, as you will see from the enclosed. I love you more than anything, always have, always will
.
    My birth date was penciled on the envelope. A bonded courier slid it beneath my door. The letter was typed and unsigned. The bank check was for a hundred-thousand dollars.
    The house in the orchard was sold by old Sven’s personal lawyer in a private auction. He phoned me about furniture and, of course, the manger, but I didn’t want anything. This lawyer tells me from time to time, when I press, that they are both fine, they are in a quiet place now, they just need a little peace. He tells me that my mother sends her best love, as though she’s right there waiting on another extension. Sometimes I think my mother is still looking for me. She just doesn’t recognize me in my suit and leather shoes. Sometimes I scan the back pages of books. I pay close attention to long murder mysteries withwomen as dispensable, secondary characters. I read the acknowledgments, especially of the authors with phony-sounding names, hoping he will have the courage someday to say how amazing she was, how beautiful, and how she made everything, absolutely everything, possible.

Horse
    W HEN I SABEL S TEPPED FROM HER HONEYMOON BED AND drew the drapes, the view of Atlantic City was awful. Tilted houses, scattered parking lots, municipal buildings rusty from the sea air. The arrangement seemed badly planned or not planned at all, and the elevation of their bedroom was wasted because the ocean was out of sight. Just behind me, Isabel thought. She turned as if to find it there. Tom was sleeping. His lips sometimes vibrated on the exhale. I have wasted him with kisses, she thought. Or at least she hoped she had. Marriage required a certain alignment of mind and body, and she was determined to make good on her end.
    Isabel left the window and went in to draw her first bath in the heart-shaped tub. She chose the lavender bubble bath. She tried to remember, lavender was for fidelity? Lavender was for kindness? She couldn’t recall but earnestly allowed its stream to join the bath water. She was twenty-two. The year was 1967.
    At noon, a tiny bellboy, probably not more than fourteen years old, wheeled in breakfast. As the boy backed out the door, Tom, who was barely sitting up, reached for various pockets, but couldn’t find anything smaller than a twenty and said he would catch him later. The bellboy nodded and smiled, but when Tom rose from the blankets and went into the bathroom, Isabel retrieved a five-dollar bill from her purse and settled the account on the spot. The moment the door whispered shut, she felt uneasy, almost dizzy, and hoped Tom would forget all about the bellboy. She imagined Tom’s confusion when the boy said he’d been tipped, overtipped. Already she was making mistakes. She fiddled with the silvery tops on the dishes, piling them into an awkward stack before Tom came to the table. He mentioned his eggs were cold.
    Breakfast was brief. They were both anxious to get on with the day. Tom hurried into his clothes, barely glancing at Isabel as she sat legs crossed in her new stockings, new shoes, pretty new dress. It was only in the lobby, heading across the massive expanse of green carpet, that Tom pulled her to him. She was walking slightly ahead, looking in her purse for a booklet on sights she had borrowed. He