The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [118]
“I walked into a tree.”
“Ah, yes. The hazards of college life.”
David’s sense of humor was awkward and mechanical, as if he’d learned it from a book, but over time this mechanical quality could come to seem funny in itself. He seemed to be dressing better too—maybe somebody else was dressing him. Or maybe he just dressed well compared to Mike: his socks matched, and he was wearing a jacket. He was slight of frame, especially compared to you-know-who, but the jacket was new and it fit him well. The waiter appeared to silently top off her wine; she liked when that happened, because you couldn’t count how many glasses you’d had.
The table was set for four, though the reservation had been made for three. Pella hoped that when her father arrived he would invite Professor Eglantine to join them. Not only because her presence would ensure that the conversation stayed on solidly neutral ground but because Pella admired her immensely, and since attending her first oral history lecture had begun to harbor a hope that Professor Eglantine and her dad might get together. It hadn’t happened in the past eight years—or maybe it had, and ended—and so presumably never would, but she couldn’t help hoping. Professor E was just too striking and sexy, with her rare-bird eyes and that Sontag streak of pale gray in her hiply cut hair. Not conventionally sexy, perhaps—she was slight enough that you could fold her up and carry her like an umbrella—but her dad was capable of unorthodox appreciations. If there was a suitable match for him within fifty miles, this was it.
“So you’re really planning to stay here,” David said. “Shoveling slop at frat boys.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“I guess I’m not sure how else to put it.”
“Chef Spirodocus isn’t a hack,” she said. “He’s the real deal.”
David smiled that tight, tolerant smile. “I’m sure he’s a master of his craft. If he wanted to be running a first-rate kitchen somewhere, he would. He just happens to prefer making runny eggs for runny-nosed kids.”
Pella smoothed and tugged the hem of her dress. Where was her father? Why wasn’t Mike flinging a brick through the restaurant’s tinted picture window and slinging her over his shoulder to carry her away? What was all that muscle for anyway? Just because they’d had one little fight, he was going to sulk in his house and let David try to win her back? How wimpy was that? She slugged down some wine. Getting saved by men, finding a new mother—her fantasies were becoming more regressive by the second, a known hazard of being around David, who induced a strange powerlessness in her.
“I do think it’s wonderful,” he was saying, “that you want to study cooking.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely. I think much of the anxiety you’ve been suffering from these last few months has had to do with the lack of a creative outlet. No, not an outlet—a real sense of creative purpose. If you’re really through painting, perhaps this could fill that place in your life. And it would be a useful social corrective as well. All the first-rate chefs in this country are men. So many women slaving away in kitchens, so few of them allowed to be considered artists. It’s shameful.”
This was the way it had always been—everything David said so multiplicitous, so full of broad assessments and tiny recastings of truth, that to begin to dig in and issue corrections seemed petty and futile. Of course he’d believe that her “anxiety” stemmed from not painting, instead of from being married to him; of course he’d believe that her “anxiety” had lasted a few months and not the bulk of their curdled marriage. It maddened her that he still tried to cast her as an artist, when she hadn’t picked up a brush in years; the whole idea of art felt like a remnant of adolescence. Might as well call her a swimmer, because she’d once held the Tellman Rose freshman record in the 100 butterfly. The wine was good. She was drinking it down.
“Although of course I’d be disappointed if you truly gave up painting,” David went on. “You’re amazingly talented.”
“No one is ‘amazingly’