David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

As Jane Eaglen shrills out “Hojotoho!” Holly watches Seth mangling his grapefruit. What a bad, bad wife she is. But the granola’s a hit: she’s the only taker on the Shredded Wheat. On her first full day of being thirty-two, she doesn’t want to start putting on weight.

After breakfast, Seth goes upstairs to do some work, and Holly drives Tenley and her friend to the station in the Explorer. It creeps her out to have anybody else in the Saturn after she’s used it to go commit adultery. Her official excuse is that the car’s a mess; she keeps it that way by chucking napkins, McDonald’s bags and Diet Coke cans on the passenger-side floor. She’s even tried to think of a plausible-sounding reason to trade in a two-month-old car. In which her husband just had a twelve-CD changer installed.

“I still feel like I’m buzzed,” Tenley says. “You guys always get that wasted? I was so wrecked last night, I went to the bathroom and I couldn’t, like, remember how to pee?”

“Wow, really?” says the boyfriend.

“It’s sort of Seth’s hobby,” Holly says. “Like rock climbing.”

“But what about you?”

“I just basically keep him company.”

Tenley looks at her. “Yeah, I noticed.” She sighs. “Oh, well. Anyhow, you’ve got a fabulous place.” She pulls down the visor and lifts her chin to look in the mirror. “You know, the kitchen alone. God, I look like shit.” She flips the visor back up. “Carl? You didn’t hear that.” Carl’s in the backseat, drumming his fingers on Tenley’s headrest.

“Thanks,” says Holly. “It’s not really my doing, but — you know, yeah. It’s pretty great.”

“So is he after you to have kids now? Carl, could you cut that out?”

“We talk about it.”

“It just made me think, you know, choosing a house that big. And of course now that you’re — anyway. So you never told me what he got you for your birthday.”

“Oh. A CD thing for my car.” He’d also gotten her the 1935 recording of Act I of Die Walküre with Lotte Lehmann, who he’d read was the all-time greatest Sieglinde.

“What kind?” Carl says.

Tenley looks over her right shoulder. “This is girl talk.” She turns back to Holly. “Carl does have one big thing in his favor.” Holly glances in her rearview mirror; Carl’s just looking out the window. Tenley sighs. “God, I can’t believe how rich you guys are — sorry, I know how that sounds, but I’m really sort of in awe.” Tenley shares a two-bedroom in Park Slope.

“I guess I would be, too.” Holly puts her left blinker on. The station’s just up ahead, and that’ll be that. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. ‘I’m still the same person’?”

“Oh, you are, totally. I mean, nobody would ever …” Tenley looks over at Holly, shrugs.

“Right,” Holly says. “Say no more.”

“I can say no more,” Tenley says, in an Indian accent. When they were little, they must have seen Help! twenty times.

At two-thirty Seth and Holly start down for La Guardia in the Explorer, through a freezing rain. Can his father’s plane even land? She wishes it would turn tail and take him back, which she suspects is the cover-wish for her real wish.

The plane’s late because of the weather, but they’ve brought along a few sections of the Times, and she buys a cheap ballpoint to do the crossword puzzle. She’s trying to figure out “Forsterian dictum (two words)” when the flight’s finally announced and passengers start straggling in the gate. Seth and his father hug, then Van hugs Holly, mashing her breasts, his leather shoulder bag slapping against her pelvic bone. “Mmm,” he says into her ear. “So glad. ”

“We are, too,” she says, and he releases her.

“Bumpy ride?” Seth says.

“Only along toward the last,” Van says. “I was able to read until we started hitting turbulence around Washington. Then I figured discretion was the better part of valor and had ’em bring me a drink. Since I was too pusillanimous to haul out my own supply. Listen, I have a gift for you two.” He pats the shoulder bag.

“A bottle of hooch,” says Seth. “How did I guess.”

“Oh, no, that I’m keeping. Like to have my little nightcap in my room. No, this is a one-of-a-kind — well, it is and it isn’t. I’ll have to give it to you when we get to your dacha. Couple things came loose, so I need to stop and get some rubber cement.”

“Hmm. Mighty mysterious,” Seth says. “Holly must have rubber cement in her workroom.”

“Hell, of course she would. Losing my marbles here. Ah, which reminds me. Guy goes to his doctor, doctor says, ‘I got some bad news. You have terminal cancer.’ Guy says, ‘Oh, no.’ Doctor says, ‘I got more bad news. You’ve also got Alzheimer’s.’ Guy says, ‘Whew, thank God. I thought you were going to tell me I had cancer or something.’ ”

“Good one,” says Seth.

“Except you’ve heard it.”

“Still good.”

Van stretches forth a hand and regards his palm as if holding what’s-his-name’s skull. “Age cannot wither nor custom stale. Speaking of which …” He gives Holly another quick hug. “You wouldn’t happen to have an older sister? A much older sister?”

“I have a younger sister — well, you met her. At the wedding.”

“I remember her well. Nearly as lovely as your lovely self. Too lovely, I’m afraid.”

“But she does have low standards,” Seth says.

“If she’s got standards of any kind, that lets her out,” says Van. “I remember when I used to have standards. It was back when Benjamin Harrison was president.”

When they get back to the house, she starts a pot of coffee, which seems better than offering Van more to drink. Seth shows him around, carries his bags upstairs and comes back down to the kitchen alone.

“Mmm.” He sniffs the air. “Good idea.”

Holly says, “Why were you ragging on my sister?”

“Say what?”

“She has low standards?”

“ I thought I was ragging on what’s-his-name.”

“That’s not how it came across. You essentially told your father she was a slut.”

Seth does that little take of his where he raises both palms and rolls his eyes upward.

“Why would you do that?” she says.

“Holly. I was talking about her sorry-ass boyfriend. Shit, I like your sister.”

“Well, be more careful what you say, okay?”

“Okay. I’m sorry, babe.” He smiles and holds his arms open. What can she do but go to him and put the side of her head against his chest? Though she didn’t appreciate hearing that he likes her sister, either.

Van comes back down with his gift: a photo album filled with old pictures, captions typed on slips of white paper that he’s rubber-cemented to the black pages. They sit on the couch, Holly between them holding it on her lap as Van points and narrates. The story of his marriage, basically, with what seem to Holly grudging glimpses of Seth: selected baby pictures and milestones in costume — Little League uniform, mortarboard, Abe Lincoln in a school play. In groom suit, gray jacket, striped pants, holding hands with Holly in her wedding gown. The last page has shots from the fortieth-anniversary party. Among displays of exploding tropical flowers, Seth’s father, as tanned and smiley as an actor, works the room. Raises a champagne glass. Feeds a forkful of cake to Seth’s mother, stonefaced in her wheelchair.

“This is great,” Seth says. “I’m glad to have this.” Holly’s impressed: it’s a good imitation of the normative reaction. Over to you, Holly.