The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [14]
“Nancy!”
“Why are you surprised? How can this be a reason for surprise? I’m a sexual person. Kevin always said that he thought I was promiscuous until I started with him, and then he just thought that I was healthy and instinctive.”
“Well, Nancy—”
“I have a feeling you aren’t very approving either.”
“I don’t know, I—”
“But that’s all I want. I realized on the way here that all the time I’ve known you I’ve wanted you to approve of me. Not just to like me, or even respect me, but to approve of me. I still like being married to Kevin, but all of us know by now that the best person for being married to isn’t always the best person for sleeping with, and there’s no reason why he should be.” She glanced out the window. “Anyway, here he comes.” A moment later the door slammed open. Lily thought Kevin was angry, until she realized that he had simply misjudged the weight of the door. Sweat was pouring off him, actually dripping on the carpet. Nancy said, “Jesus! Go take a shower.” Lily wanted to tell him not to drip over the coffee table, with its bowl of fruit, but said nothing. He Looked at them with studied ingenuousness and said, “Four miles in twenty-five minutes. Not bad, huh? And it’s ninety-three. I just ran past the bank clock.”
“Great.” Nancy turned back to Lily and said, “Maybe I should try to call Meredith Lawlor while I’m here. We were pretty good friends junior year. I’ve often thought about her, actually.” Kevin tromped into the bathroom.
Drying lettuce for the sandwiches, Lily watched Nancy slice the turkey. It was remarkable, after all, how the other woman’s most trivial mannerisms continued to be perfectly familiar to her after two years, after not thinking about Nancy or their times together for days and even weeks at a stretch. It was as if the repeated movement of an arm through the air or the repeated cocking of a head could engrave itself willy-nilly on her brain, and her brain, recognizing what was already contained in it, would always respond with warmth. In fact, although she did feel this burr of disapproval toward Nancy and sympathy for Kevin, Kevin’s presence was oppressive and Nancy’s congenial. Nancy got out the bread she had made, a heavy, crumbly, whole-grain production, and they stacked vegetables and meat on the slices and slathered them with mustard and catsup. The shower in the bathroom went off and Nancy sighed. Lily wondered if she heard herself.
Lily remembered that the kitchen workers in the college cafeteria had always teased Kevin about his appetite. Certainly he still ate with noise and single-minded gusto. His lettuce crunched, his bread fell apart, pieces of tomato dropped on his plate and he wiped them up with more bread. He drank milk. Lily tried to imagine him at work. Fifteen months before, he had graduated from business school near the top of his class and had taken a risky job with a small company. The owner was impressed with his confidence and imagination. In a year he’d gotten four raises, all of them substantial. Lily imagined him in a group of men, serious, athletic, well dressed, subtly dominating. Was it merely talking about him that made him seem to eat so foolishly, so dependently, with such naked anxiety? To be so foolish, so dependent? When he was finished, Nancy asked him whether he was still hungry and said to Lily, “Isn’t this good bread? I made up the recipe myself.”
“It’s delicious.”
“I think so. I’ve thought of baking bread for the health-food store near us. In fact, they asked me to, but I’m not sure it would be very profitable.”
“It’s nice that they asked you.”
“A couple of guys there really like it.”
Kevin scowled. Lily wondered if one of these guys was Hobbs Nolan. Nancy went on, “I make another kind, too, an herb bread with dill and chives and tarragon.”
“That sounds good.”
“It is.”
Lily was rather taken aback at Nancy’s immodesty. This exchange, more than previous ones, seemed to draw her into the Humboldts’ marriage and to implicate her in its fate. She felt a moment’s relief that they would