Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“I don’t want to call attention to it. She’s self-conscious enough already.”

“Believe me, even if you don’t, her peers will. This is no town for fatties.”

“You’ve got to be careful what you say, or next thing you know you’re dealing with bulimia.” Much as Corrine hated to see Storey overweight, she was terrified that she might transmit her own issues to her daughter. She knew, in moments of clarity, that she had to be careful. When she was at Miss Porter’s, she’d been hospitalized with bulimia, and she still struggled against the occasional purging impulse. Or rather, still succumbed, occasionally. Hardly ever, though. It had been months.

As if reading her mind, Casey said, “There are worse things than the occasional voluntary puke. It’s just one of those basic feminine specialties, like faking an orgasm.”

One of Corrine’s biggest fears was that she would start to judge her daughter, that she would hate in Storey what she hated in others. Every bit as troubling was that Storey seemed to be getting very judgmental of Corrine, criticizing her tics, her dress, her habits at every turn. They’d always been so close, but suddenly Storey seemed to be pulling away. Whenever she let herself remotely fantasize about a future with Luke, she had only to imagine Storey’s reaction in order to squelch it.

Leaning over to pick up her napkin, she was surprised, as she righted herself, to see her face in the smoky mirror behind Casey, as if for a nanosecond she didn’t quite recognize the middle-aged woman, so like her, only slightly older. In her heart she was still twenty-seven, or thirty-three. At most forty-two. She’d always resisted the idea of getting work done, but maybe it was time to start thinking about it. There was a lag, a long delay between the calendar and her image of herself. Every few years her age consciousness lurched forward, propelled by some event or encounter, without ever necessarily catching up to the present.

“Have you been having sex with Russell?” Casey asked.

She leaned forward and whispered, “I can’t even remember the last time. A few months ago he was complaining that I didn’t put out, and now he seems to have lost interest. Maybe I’ve let myself go a little.” A busboy arrived with bread, but they both waved him away as if he were Satan himself.

“Have you thought about getting your eyes done?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Not yet, but it’s time to start thinking about these things. You don’t want to wait until you really need it. Preventive maintenance is the thing.”

The waitress brought their wine and returned almost immediately with their salads. “Would you like fresh pepper?”

They declined in unison.

“I can’t believe they still go through that ridiculous pepper ritual,” Corrine said. “They were doing that when I first arrived in the city, except the pepper mills were gigantic then.”

“It was the big eighties. Big hair, big shoulder pads, big-ass pouf dresses. Big Rubirosas.”

“According to Vogue, the eighties are coming back.”

“They’ve been coming back for years,” Casey said. “I love this salad.”

“Russell says truffle oil is just olive oil flavored with a synthetic chemical compound that mimics the taste of truffles.”

“What a killjoy. Someone was trying to tell me yesterday that Splenda isn’t actually made from sugar and I said don’t tell me what it’s made from. It can be made out of camel shit as long as it’s zero calories and tastes good.”

“ Love Splenda.”

“Now if we could just get somebody to invent a zero-calorie Chardonnay, life would be just about perfect.”

—

That night, Russell was making a risotto for the kids, instructing a rapt Storey, who stood beside him at the stove on a step stool, the two of them taking turns stirring the rice, while Jeremy sat at the table doing homework with Ferdie in his lap — a domestic tableau that seemed specifically designed to dissuade her from her illicit plans. She could join them, sit and talk with her husband and the kids about their day, but instead she was leaving them to meet her former lover, under the guise of a girls’ night out. Her day seemed to have a French theme — she might as well light up a fucking Gauloises, right here.

She would have felt better if Russell hadn’t taken this occasion to compliment her appearance. “Looking good, honey. It must be true — girls dress for other girls.”

Storey glanced up from her stirring. “I’ve never seen you wear so much makeup.” Her tone seemed slightly waspish. Was it her imagination, or was there also a touch of suspicion? They really needed to spend some mother-daughter time soon — tomorrow, or at least this weekend.

Corrine was wearing a baby blue A-line halter dress that stopped just above the knee, which she’d bought after lunch today at Century 21, and a pair of Gucci pumps with a four-inch heel that Casey had passed down to her last month after deciding they pinched her toes. Under the scrutiny of her husband and daughter, she was conscious of how much time she’d spent primping for the evening.

She was a terrible person.

“Why do you look so sad?” Jeremy asked.

“Just sad to be leaving you.”

“Then stay.”

“Can we watch Survivor ?” Storey asked, sensing an opening.

“You know the rules. It’s a school night.” Not to mention that she thought it was a ridiculous show, despite the fact that some of her friends were obsessed with it.

“But we’ve done our homework and you let us watch last week and now we need to see if Gillian gets voted off the island.”

“I’ll leave that up to your dad,” she said, not wanting to give in, but knowing that Russell would take the path of least resistance.

The elevator shuddered to a stop on the ground floor, where she encountered her neighbor Bill Sugerman, who was clutching a laundry bag with one arm and a squirming toddler with the other. “Hey, Bill, how’s it going?”

He sighed and grimaced. “This isn’t exactly what I pictured, you know, when I thought about my life.”

Unprepared for this burst of candor, she stood slack-jawed as he walked past her into the elevator.

—

She arrived at the Carlyle a nervous wreck, feeling short of breath as she rode up in the old-fashioned elevator with the polite, petite operator in his braided uniform and cap, who looked exactly like an elevator man in one of those New York films from the thirties, delivering Carole Lombard or Norma Shearer to an assignation with Cary Grant or Ronald Colman.

Her sense of self-possession was further eroded at the sight of Luke, framed in the doorway of his room, his rueful grin made more poignant by the scar and the slightly cloudy, out-of-focus eye. Whether sensing her reserve, or out of shyness, he didn’t embrace her, but merely leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “It’s so great to see you. Please, come in.”

“It’s nice to see you, too.”

She surveyed the large formal living room with its view of Central Park and the strident towers of the West Side through the windows to the east, its well-worn, almost shabby Louis Quinze decor. Wildly expensive, no doubt, but not stupidly ostentatious.

“I love your dress.”

“Thanks. You don’t know how badly I want to say I found it in the back of my closet, but actually I bought it this afternoon.”

“Well, why do you sound so unhappy about it?”

“I’m mad at myself because, well, I bought it for you, because I wanted to look good for you.”

“I’m flattered and honored.”

“So why am I mad at myself? I should be mad at you.”

“I’m not aware of having done anything to incur your wrath.”