A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [33]
“I imagine the fly, dazzled by the unseasonable weather, flew into the kitchen and was seduced by the luscious-looking fig,” Harrison said.
“Will you tell the others?”
“Very funny. You seem in good spirits.”
“Despite the fly, I am.”
“Why?”
She sat back in her chair. “I’m . . . I’m amazed by this day. And being amazed, I’m filled with an incredible sense of happiness.”
“I’m glad. The raclette is very good, by the way. My compliments to the chef.”
“Eddie. I’ll tell him. May I?” she asked, indicating Harrison’s untouched water glass.
Harrison pushed the glass toward her. “I was just wondering. Why take on an inn? Surely your husband’s royalties . . .”
“Carl’s royalties were pitiful,” Nora said, crossing her legs. “You . . . you . . . of all people should know that.” Harrison was struck by her poise. “But that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that I wanted to.”
Nora took a long sip.
“How did you and your husband meet?” Harrison asked, aware of a slight problem of nomenclature. To call the man “Carl” assumed a familiarity Harrison did not have. Yet to refer to him in Nora’s presence as “Mr. Laski” felt bizarre. And Harrison couldn’t keep referring to Laski as “your husband” either.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep asking me questions you already know the answers to,” Nora said.
Rebuffed, Harrison took a sip of wine.
Nora set down the water glass. “I thought Poetic License a work of spite. I refused to cooperate with Alan Roscoff. Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
“It . . . it wasn’t so much that it wasn’t as respectful as a widow would have wanted. It was that it was insipid. And uninformed. I don’t believe he had the faintest idea of what Carl’s work was all about.”
“I thought the book thin and rushed,” Harrison said loyally. “Deliberately sensational.”
“I’ve been wondering if I should have a serious portrait of Carl done,” Nora mused. She nibbled on her finger, and Harrison found this break in her poise endearing. “Perhaps you could help me suggest a writer? Someone you respect?”
Harrison was flattered by the invitation, but wondered if it wasn’t slightly disingenuous. Surely Nora Laski was flooded with requests for interviews, for access to the poet’s files. Harrison guessed that there might be two or three literary biographies of Laski in the works already. “I’d be happy to,” he said.
“I . . . I was sitting on a park bench,” Nora said, “in Washington Square Park. I was eating a sandwich when Carl sat down. He asked me if he could have half. I knew him then as Professor Laski. For a few minutes, I couldn’t speak. I was a sophomore at NYU. Professor Laski was . . . well, he was a presence. I’d taken a lecture course with him the year before. Though he claimed that day to remember me, he later confessed that he had not.”
Harrison could not imagine any man failing to remember a young Nora.
“Carl would come by every day to the park at the same time. And it was understood that I would give him lunch. I started making more and more elaborate lunches until they began to be full-blown picnics. I was aware that he was married. I was also aware of his reputation. I thought . . . I thought that as long as nothing progressed beyond the park bench, we were fine. And, for a long time, it didn’t.”
Nora paused. “I didn’t think much about his age,” she continued. “It didn’t seem as fraught then as it does now. If anything, there was a kind of conferred status upon girls who slept with their professors.”
“For how long did this go on?” Harrison asked.
“Weeks,” she said. “I met him in the spring. It went on until I left for the summer.”
“Where did you go?”
“I worked as a waitress in Provincetown. I shared a room with another girl. It was the thing to do then. We’d spend our tips in the bars after work. In July, I saw a poster announcing a reading by Carl Laski at the Unitarian church. I think I may have bragged to my friends that I knew him. And once I’d done that, I had to go. To prove it. I thought I’d make