The Good Life Read Free

shower not to forget the difference.”
    â€œTell Martin,” I said.
    â€œYou first,” she said.
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    I drove home feeling a little sick from the liquor pooled balefully in my stomach. Jeff was stretched across the couch, watching
All About Eve
, Toulouse slung over his shoulder like a stole. “Your night to cook,” Jeff said.
    â€œYeesh. Forgot. I’ve been off getting half plotzed with Alice. You should see the dress she got. It’ll send the whole party into insulin shock.” I watched him watch the TV, Toulouse snoring beside his ear. “How long have you been zoned here?”
    â€œSince the last half-hour of
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
It’s a Bette Davis festival. That was one terrible movie.”
    â€œYou want me to call for a pizza? You don’t have to get up—I’ll feed it to you a bite at a time.” Even I couldn’t decipher my tone.
    â€œUp to you.
The Little Foxes
is on next.” He waited until I was settled on the couch next to him before asking, eyes still on Bette Davis’s bow-tie mouth, how Alice was.
    â€œYou’ll like this. She thinks that you and I are secretly miserable.”
    â€œThere’s a lot of that going around.”
    His eyes didn’t waver from the TV screen, and I reached over to scratch Toulouse under the chin, a caress that always made him extend his claws. “Martin would say we need misery. He’d say it’s how we know we’re alive.”
    Jeff extracted the cat’s claws from his neck and sat up. “I wonder what it would be like to go through a day without hearing Martin’s name.”
    â€œHe thinks you’re a lucky man. He says I should tell you so. If I don’t, he says, he will.” I meant to sound saucy, but I could feel the words slipping as they left my mouth. Jeff’s face was stiff and peculiar, and my stomach felt as if cold air were pouring into it.
    â€œLucky. What a word.” His voice clotted, and the cold feeling spread across my lungs. “Here’s a Martin story for you. Back when things were getting so rocky between him and Charlotte, she called me about getting a personal loan. Her name only. Martin had broken all of her antique serving dishes—not in one big rage, but across months. She would come home and find another tureen in pieces. He used to scream at her until he wasn’t even saying words anymore, just howling. She was terrified. Your friend Martin.” He blinked at me, then looked away. “You and I had been married two years. Charlotte and I didn’t last long. Six months.”
    â€œWhat.” My voice was dry as wind. “What are you doing?”
    â€œI’m telling you my secret despair. An homage to Martin.”
    â€œStop talking about Martin.”
    â€œI can’t stop talking about Martin. He’s over every inch of our life.”
    The image of a slow, creeping stain in the air between us came immediately, as if I’d been holding it ready. “Does he know?” I said.
    â€œWhy else would I tell you?”
    â€œSo you’re acting out of kindness.”
    Jeff closed his eyes. “I haven’t seen her since then. Not a phone call or an email. Zip.”
    â€œCongratulations.”
    â€œAren’t you itching to get on the horn and tell Martin, ‘Guess what I just found out?’”
    Jeff’s face, even his eyes, were pale as dust. He might blow away any second. I said, “What do you think I am? I don’t want him to know this. I don’t want to know this.”
    â€œBut now you do. You know everything Martin knows. And I think it will be very hard for you not to tell him that.” He sat Toulouse up on his lap and addressed him as if he were conducting an interview. “Felicia has a secret. What do you think Felicia will do?”
    â€œI didn’t ask for this,” I said.
    â€œThink of it as a gift,” he said.
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    Dik