Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

He would begin: “Did you kill anyone in this car accident?”

“I did not.”

“Injure anyone? Run over a dog?”

“Nope.”

“Were you hurt?”

She gave him a deep sigh and closed the book she was reading, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. He had recommended it to her. “Could you give me a pass on this?”

“Are you an alcoholic?”

Franny shrugged. “Not that I know of. Probably not.”

“Then why won’t you just have a drink, keep me company. You could have a drink in the house. I’m not going to ask you to drive the car.”

She leaned over and kissed him then, as kissing was her best means of ending arguments. “Put your big brain to it,” she said kindly. “You can think of something better to fight about.”

Franny went into the kitchen and called her mother in Virginia. “Fish for dinner,” she said, “four people, something I can’t screw up.”

“Can’t you go out?” her mother asked.

“It’s not looking that way. It turns out this house is the Hotel California. People walk in the door and they don’t want to leave again. I’d probably feel the same way if I wasn’t the one doing the cooking.”

“You, cooking,” her mother said.

“I know.”

“Have you looked in her closet?”

Franny laughed out loud. Her mother could go right to the heart of the matter. “Etro bikinis, a fleet of little silk slip dresses, lots of long cashmere sweaters, featherweight, shoes like you have never seen shoes. She must be the size of an eyedropper. You can’t believe how tiny everything is.”

“What size are the shoes?”

“Sevens.” Franny had tried to push her foot into a sandal, Cinderella’s ungainly stepsister.

“If I came up I could help you cook,” her mother said.

Franny smiled, sighed. Her mother had tiny feet. “No more company. Company’s the problem right now.”

“I’m not company. I’m your mother.” She said it lightly.

For a minute Franny thought how nice it would be, her mother on the other end of the sofa reading books. For the most part Franny went home alone to Virginia, or her mother came to visit when Franny was in Chicago working at the bar. The few times Leo and her mother had been together they were cool and polite. Her mother was younger than Leo. She had read Commonwealth , and while she was glad she got to be a doctor, she would have been gladder still to have been left out altogether. Beverly didn’t believe that Leo Posen had her daughter’s best interest at heart. She had told him that once when she and Leo were drinking. Franny’s mother was not what they needed to complete their summer vacation.

“Please,” Franny said. “Just help me with the fish.”

Her mother put the phone down so she could go and get her recipe for seafood chowder. “If you follow my instructions as you have never followed my instructions even once in your life you will be a tremendous success.”

And oh, but her mother was right. They raved and praised. Eric and Marisol said they couldn’t have had a better meal in Manhattan. Franny’s mother had worked everything out, the salad with nectarines, which brand of cheese biscuits to buy, Franny was as impressed as her guests. But Leo again had failed to go to the grocery store with her, and none of them came into the kitchen to ask if they could chop the bell peppers, and when she came out to the porch to tell them dinner was ready, Eric, in the middle of another funny Chekhov story, had held up his hand so that she would know to wait until he was finished, but it took him nearly fifteen minutes to finish, and Franny could not help but think of the shrimp that were only supposed to simmer three minutes. By the end of the meal the guests were tremendously grateful, really, they couldn’t have been nicer, and Eric made a show of rolling up the sleeves of his blue linen shirt before he picked up the plates and put them in the sink, but that was it.

Leo’s agent, Astrid, called the house on Saturday morning. Her secretary had called Eric’s office the day before on a matter having nothing to do with Leo and was told in the course of the conversation that Eric was at Leo’s place in Amagansett. Astrid had a house in Sag Harbor. She came out every Thursday night in the summer and went back Monday mornings. Did they really think they weren’t going to see her? Astrid said they were coming to Amagansett that afternoon. “They” included one of her authors, a young man of exceeding promise who was spending two weeks at her place while he nailed down a few last revisions.

“I’ll give you the address,” Leo said with some resignation.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Everyone knows the house.”

“Astrid?” Eric’s face arranged into an expression of mild despair. He was working the crossword puzzle from the Saturday paper. He hadn’t shaved and didn’t want to shave.

“She didn’t ask,” Leo said, though Leo liked Astrid. The very fact that Eric didn’t like her was proof that she was doing her job.

“There goes lunch,” Eric said.

Marisol came down the stairs in a red swimsuit and a wide-brimmed hat. “I’m going to the pool,” she said.

“Astrid’s coming,” Eric said.

Marisol stopped and put on her sunglasses. “Well, she lives in Sag Harbor. It’s not like she’s going to stay over.”

Franny drove to Bridgehampton and bought lunch at a ridiculously expensive gourmet shop that sold prepared foods, put the food in the car, and then, struck by the clear and sudden understanding that no one would be leaving, walked straight back in and bought dinner. Leo had given her his credit card. The total for the two meals came to an unspeakable fortune. By the time she got back to the house Astrid was there with a pale young writer named Jonas who had shiny black hair and yellow linen pants. He ate twice as much as the rest of them put together. Franny realized sadly there would be no leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.

“Why reprint Chekhov?” the young writer said to Eric, taking both the herbed chicken breast and the lemon-poached salmon to his plate. “Why not have the courage to publish some young Russian writers instead?”

“Maybe because I don’t work at a publishing house in Russia.” Eric poured himself a glass of wine and then topped off Marisol’s glass. “Oh, and I don’t speak Russian.”

“Jonas speaks Russian,” Astrid said, the proud mother.

“ Konechno ,” Jonas said.

Astrid nodded. “He’s very involved with the refuseniks.”

“There are no refuseniks,” Leo said. “They opened up the gate and let them out in the seventies.”

“The refuseniks were my field of study,” Jonas said. “And believe me, there are still plenty of oppressed Jews in Russia.”

“So shouldn’t I be publishing some young Russian writing about the refuseniks instead of an American who’s studied them? Wouldn’t that show more courage?”

“You don’t publish me.”

Eric smiled at so pleasing a thought. “Let’s call it a draw, shall we? Chekhov is my field of study, the refuseniks are yours. We’re both old news.”

“Is that couscous?” Marisol asked Franny, pointing at the salad with the cucumbers and tomatoes.

“Israeli,” Franny said, passing the dish. “It’s just bigger.”

Franny’s premonition in the gourmet shop proved to be correct. Come dinner, Leo and the guests were still lounging on various sofas throughout the house. Jonas appeared to be working on a manuscript, or at least he had a stack of paper in his lap, a pencil between his teeth. It was odd to think he’d brought a manuscript to lunch. Eric came in from the pool and allowed that while the idea of more food had seemed impossible just two short hours ago, he thought he might be getting hungry again. At the very least he needed a drink.