The Age of Miracles Read Free Page A

tacky little-girl clothes? No grown woman would wear anything like that. You’ve got to be kidding.”
    â€œI thought. That picture in that magazine.”
    â€œIn that off-the-shoulder blouse? I only had that on because I was in New Orleans and it was hot as hell. Then that photographer caught up with me. It was the year I was famous, God forbid.”
    â€œI wish you’d wear a flowered dress from Laura Ashley. I’ll have them send you some. I know the woman who runs the store here. She’s a good friend of mine.”
    Wouldn’t you think I would have heard that gong? Wouldn’t you think that someone with my intelligence and intuition would have stopped to think? Don’t you think I knew he was talking about his dead wife? A size six or eight from smoking who let him go down to Laura Ashley and buy her flowered dresses with full skirts and probably even sheets and pillowcases and dust ruffles to go on the antique beds and said, Oh, Daddy, what can I do to thank you for all this flowered cotton?
    Listen, was I that lonely? Was I that horny? Right there in Jackson, Mississippi, with half the old boyfriends in my life a phone call away and plenty more where they came from if only I could conquer my fear of AIDS and quit eating dinner every night with my parents.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “Send me one or two. A ten will do. I can take it up if it’s too big.”
    So then I really had to go on a diet. Had to starve myself morning, night, and noon and add three miles a day to the miles I ran and go up to six aerobic classes a week.
    By the time the dress arrived I was a ten. Almost. It was blue and pink and green and flowered. It came down to my ankles. Its full skirt covered up the only thin part of my body. Its coy little neckline made my strong shoulders and arms look absurd. Worst of all, there was a see-through garden hat trimmed in flowers.
    Was I actually going to wear this out in public? I had the hots for a guy who had to have everything I take for granted explained to him. In exchange for which he had given me a dead wife, three C-sections performed in the middle of the night wearing double gloves, two dozen roses, a check for two thousand dollars, and one long slow hug by the elevator. You figure it out. Women and their desire to please wealthy, self-made men. Think about that sometime if you get stuck in traffic in the rain.
    I found a Chinese seamstress and we managed to make the dress fit me by taking material out of the seams and adding it to the waist. We undid the elastic in the sleeves and lengthened them with part of the band on the hat. I found an old Merry Widow in my mother’s cedar chest. Strapped into that I managed to look like a tennis player masquerading as a shepherdess.
    In the end I packed two suitcases. One with the Laura Ashley special and its accoutrements. The other with my white shantung suit and some extremely high platform shoes, to make me as tall as he was.
    I left Jackson with the two suitcases, two hatboxes, and a cosmetic kit. An extra carry-on contained my retainer, my Xanax, a package of rubbers and a tube of contraceptive jelly containing nonoxynol-9, and a book of poems by Anne Sexton.
    He was waiting at the gate, wearing a seersucker suit and an open shirt. He was taking the weekend off. We went to his town house first and he showed me all around it, telling me about the antiques and where he and his wife had bought them. “My first wife will be at the wedding,” he said at last. “Don’t worry about it. She’s very nice. She’s the bride’s mother.”
    â€œHow many wives have you had?”
    â€œJust those two. You don’t mind, do you? There’s a guest cottage at the country house. She and her husband are staying there.”
    â€œOh, sure. I mean, that’s fine. Why would that matter to me?”
    â€œYou won’t have to see her if you don’t want to. I thought we’d