The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [120]
David drummed his fingers against the base of his wineglass and looked at her with oh-so-reasonable bemusement. “Bella, don’t twist my words. I didn’t want you to take driver’s ed while you were on certain medications. That’s all.”
“What medications? Ambusal? Kelvesin? What year do you think this is? Every person on the road is on something or other.”
“Those people already know how to drive. You were in a fragile state at the time. And San Francisco is a difficult place for a novice. Heavy traffic, constant changes in elevation. I thought it would be dangerous.”
“We could have gone somewhere quieter. You could have made some accommodations. But instead you used it as another excuse to isolate me. Who knows what kind of trouble I’d have gotten into if I’d had a car.”
David thrived on these arguments, his manner growing calmer and saner by the second as Pella tipped toward madness. Except of course that he was the mad one. “Bella, I’m surprised at you. When we first got married, I wanted you to start college right away, remember? And you told me that love and your art were all that mattered to you. So we decided you shouldn’t work.”
He was mocking her, throwing around these big little words—love, work, art. “That was at the beginning,” she said.
“And a fine beginning it was. Remember when I met Marietta and invited her to dinner? And we took your best piece, the big collage with the salmon colors, and hung it facing her chair? I felt like a criminal mastermind when she took the bait. That was quite a night.”
Marietta Cheng owned a gallery; she’d bought Sea-Spray for four thousand dollars, Pella’s first and only real sale. Pella had almost backed out of the deal, for reasons she couldn’t quite express, but David convinced her that though they didn’t need the money, it was important for her to establish herself as a commercially viable artist. Soon thereafter Pella’s ill feelings began. She blew Marietta’s money on vintage dresses and other long-gone trivia—she’d have been better off keeping the one thing she’d made that she actually liked.
“In the beginning you would have let me work,” she said. “But later…”
“Later you were sick, Bella. I wanted you to get well. That’s all.” He took her hands. “Look. If you want a divorce, you can have a divorce. I’m not going to dissuade you. But this”—with a flick of his eyes he took in not just the escargot and the aging patrons but the school and the town and the whole Midwest—“is not for you, Bella. You can live in the loft. I’ll rent an apartment. You can get a job at a restaurant, apply to culinary school, go about this the proper way. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll let me design a restaurant for you.”
Shit, thought Pella. David wasn’t going to win her back—and oh what a prize she was—but he was going to destroy whatever tenuous momentum she’d been building. If she was going to enroll at Westish, she needed to believe that she should enroll at Westish, that living near her father, working for Chef Spirodocus, studying with Professor Eglantine, was the way to start to build a life. If she entertained doubts about whether she belonged here, she’d wind up back in bed, paralyzed by those doubts. The circumstances were tipped in Westish’s favor—she could enroll without finishing high school, her tuition would be free, she was already here and so far felt okay. But how could she not have doubts, what with the sad-looking entrées arriving, the slumped-over patrons departing, her father AWOL as usual, Mike off petting Henry somewhere? If tonight was a referendum on her presence at Westish, the results weren’t good. She didn’t love David anymore, but love had trained her to see the world through his eyes, and through his eyes this place was a vapid dump.
The wine was white, which meant they’d switched.
She depended on men too much, Mike this Daddy that, needing one to rescue her from the next; even Chef Spirodocus was a man,