Sara Gruen - Ape House

Alas, “someone” was always his parents. Their proximity was something he had failed to factor in when considering their move, an oversight for which he and Amanda were paying dearly.

For almost a year after they moved, Patricia and Paul Thigpen tried to persuade John and Amanda to join their church. If it had been anybody else, John might have considered it simply because it would force them to meet people, but the idea of his parents being even on the periphery of whatever social circle he and Amanda eventually assembled was unthinkable. The elder Thigpens had apparently given up, but now they inexplicably showed up at noon each Sunday to recount the sermon and wax on about how darling, how adorable , the children in the nursery were. The mournful sighs and static-filled silences made John want to curl into a ball and weep. Amanda tolerated them with an aloof grace (whether resigned or icy, John knew and cared not-he was just grateful, since her own family’s brand of conflict resolution tended toward the throwing of crockery).

Patricia’s thin-lipped and accusatory glares grew more overt in perfect correlation with the decline of the house. Sunday after Sunday John watched as Patricia shot smoldering blame rays in Amanda’s direction. John knew he should do something to shield his broken wife, but his family dynamic was not such that he could address his mother’s assumption about who was responsible for either the slide toward squalor or the lack of babies without risking an epic maternal sulk, and if the Thigpen males were united on any one front, it was the absolute necessity of Not Upsetting Mother. (John’s brothers, Luke and Matthew, didn’t realize how fortunate they were to live on other continents. Or perhaps they did.)

Now, with ice in his veins and a hand on the door frame, John sniffed again. In addition to Pine-Sol, he identified scented candles, seared beef, and the lingering odor of pomegranate bath bubbles. He steeled himself, entered the house, and pulled the door shut behind him.

Amanda was leaning over the coffee table in the living room, arranging shucked oysters on a bed of crushed ice. Two bottles of Perrier-Jouët and crystal flutes sat off to the side, along with a tiny, perfect mound of Osetra caviar in the center of a small piece of their wedding china. Amanda stood barefoot on fresh vacuum tracks, wearing the silk nightgown John had given her for Christmas. It was a hopeful, desperate gift, a clumsy attempt to address her increasing reluctance to get out of bed. As far as John knew, this was the first time she’d worn it. He felt suddenly light-headed. The last time he’d come home to such a scene, she’d just sold The River Wars . Had she found another agent? Had someone bought her second book, Recipe for Disaster?

“Wow,” he said.

She swung around, beaming. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She grabbed a bottle and came to him. Her hair, a mass of unruly spirals in a shade he referred to as Botticelli gold and she as Ronald McDonald orange, was arranged in a disheveled knot at the nape of her neck. She was wearing lip gloss. Her toenails were painted an opalescent shade that matched the pink silk. Something glittered on her eyelids.

“You look amazing,” he said.

“There’s a beef Wellington in the oven,” she replied, kissing him and handing him the bottle of champagne.

As John fumbled with the foil, tiny silver flecks drifted down to the carpet. He balled the rest up in his palm and loosened the wire cage. “What’s up?”

She smiled coyly. “You first. How was the trip?”

A bolt of joy displaced his apprehension. He tucked the cold bottle under his arm and dug his cell phone from his pocket. “Actually,” he said, fumbling with the touch screen, “it was kind of exciting…” He held the photograph triumphantly forth. “Ta-dah!”

Amanda squinted. She leaned closer and cocked her head. “What is that?”

“Hang on,” he said, taking the phone back. He zoomed in on the image of a real live stranger reading The River Wars . “Here.”

When Amanda realized what she was looking at, she snatched the phone.

“A sighting in the wild!” John popped the champagne. He watched Amanda with an expectant smile.

She held the phone with both hands and stared at the screen without a hint of jubilance. John’s smile faded. “Are you okay?”

She sniffed, wiped the corner of one eye, and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am,” she said in a tight voice. “Actually, I have something to tell you. Come sit.”

John followed her to the couch, where she sat with a straight back and clasped hands. His eyes moved nervously from her profile to the spread. There was no mistaking this for anything other than a celebration dinner, yet she appeared to be on the verge of tears. Was she pregnant? Probably not, as there were two glasses set out for the champagne. He tried to ignore the metallic tang of fear that blossomed in the back of his throat, and leaned forward to pour the champagne. He left the glasses on the table and reached for her hand, interlacing their fingers. Her fingertips were cold, her palm moist. She stared at the table’s edge.

“Honey?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I found a job,” she said quietly.

John winced. He couldn’t help it. He forced his features to relax and breathed deeply, steeling himself. He did not know whether to pretend to be happy about the job or to try to talk her out of it. All she’d ever wanted to do was write novels, and he knew she’d recently completed Recipe for Disaster . Surely this was the worst time to give up. Then again, perhaps a reason to get up in the morning would be a good thing. Contact with the outside world, an opportunity to make new friends, to not be pummeled relentlessly with rejection letters-

Amanda blinked at him, awaiting his response.

“Where? Doing what?” he finally said.

“Well, that’s the complicated part.” She looked back into her lap. “It’s in L.A.”

“It’s what?” John said, unsure if he’d heard correctly.

She shifted to face him and clutched his hands in a death grip. “I know this is going to sound crazy. I know that. And I know you’re going to want to say no at first, so please don’t answer right away. Maybe even sleep on it. Okay?”

John paused for the space of several beats. “Okay.”

Her eyes lifted and stared earnestly into his. She took a deep breath. “Sean and I wrote a treatment for a show, and he had a pitch meeting with NBC last week. Today we got the green light. They’re producing four episodes. And then, we’ll see.”

The room came unmoored. The ceiling swirled like toilet water. John dug his heels into the carpet to remind himself that he was anchored. Sean the who-what? And what was a treatment?

Amanda explained: she had connected with someone in an online chat room for writers, she said. His name was Sean, and they’d been corresponding for weeks. John didn’t need to worry-she knew all about the dangers of online chat rooms and had set up a Hotmail account with a fake name. They had exchanged real information only after she was sure he was legitimate. Sean had worked with the major networks for years, matching scriptwriters with various television projects. This time, the project was his, and he wanted Amanda onboard-he’d read The River Wars and was a huge fan, thought it criminal that it hadn’t gotten the review attention it deserved, because if it had, she would have been picked up by another publisher the second she was cut loose. She had the perfect voice for this project, which involved forty-something single women and a good deal of bed-hopping and was sure to hit the pulse of an enormous audience (apparently the boomer generation preferred to think of itself as in its forties rather than in its sixties). They’d collaborated on the treatment-a five-page description of the project-and Amanda stood to earn fifteen thousand an episode if NBC decided to keep it going after the initial four episodes. She hadn’t mentioned anything to John before this because she didn’t want to get his hopes up.