“Like giving birth to twins vaginally,” he says, and she laughs again and says, “Touché.”
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “everyone feels weird about their aging body. It’s not a crime not to look like you’re eighteen. Anyway, you’re attractive. I assume you know that by now.”
She is silent, and he wonders if, again, he’s misstepped. If he has, well—fuck her. She didn’t need to call him again. Then she sighs, sadly rather than resentfully. She says, “I once heard that smart women want to be told they’re pretty and pretty women want to be told they’re smart. And the depressing part is that I think I agree. What did you say your girlfriend’s name is?”
“See?” he says. “You just did it again. I told you you’re attractive and you brought up my girlfriend.”
This time, she laughs so heartily and authentically that, in a visceral way, it takes him back to their senior year at Bishop; it’s a laugh he’d forgotten about but recognizes instantly. (Oh, the passage of time! The twenty-six years that have elapsed, the green afternoon outside Dean Boede’s office! The irretrievability of his youth, the Bishop hymn, the blow jobs he used to get from Jenny Pacanowski.)
He says, “For the record, I really had no idea, none at all, that you were interested in me at Bishop. Maybe part of getting what you want is asking for it.”
“Said like a man.”
“That doesn’t make it wrong.”
The pause that ensues is the longest yet between them. He thinks about the distance between Wilmette, where his condo is, and her hotel and how many minutes it would take to drive there at this hour. (Thirty?) The thought is mostly but not completely speculative, and it’s hard to imagine that she’s not thinking about the same thing.
What she says when she finally speaks is “Did you cheat on your wife?”
“We were both involved with other people.”
“Who did it first?”
“She did, although she’d say I was checked out of the marriage by then.”
“Are you relieved or bummed out that you’re divorced?”
“Yes.”
She laughs. “Do you feel confused and desperate?”
“Sometimes.”
She says, “Now that we’re friends again—we’re friends again, right?”
“I hope so.”
“Now that we’re friends again, have you ever had an anal fissure? Because they really are insanely painful.”
“I wasn’t lying,” he says. “I haven’t.”
“Nelson once had hemorrhoids at the same time I had an anal fissure, and he said we should start a band called Sylvia McLellan and the Buttcheeks.” After a pause, she says, “I guess you had to be there.” There’s another pause—some shift seems to have occurred, some definitive understanding that they will not see each other again tonight, which is allowing them both to capitulate to their own tiredness—and she says, “I shouldn’t have said you were boring. It was rude, but it was also untrue. I appreciate your psychological insights.”
Alone in his bedroom, he smiles. “Thank you, Sylvia.”
Knowing he’s not going to her hotel makes it easier for him to settle into an uncomplicated and nostalgic affection for her. Will they stay in touch? Will they ever cross paths again? Possibly at a reunion, but otherwise, it seems highly unlikely.
“Did my call wake you up?” she asks, and it’s the combination of how sincere her concern seems with how belated it is that amuses him.
He says, “I was watching TV.”
She yawns audibly. “What show?”
He tells her the name; it’s a cable drama that’s been airing for a few years, though he’s only halfway through the first season.
“Oh, I’ve heard that’s good,” she says, and her voice is now so drowsy, so intimate with impending sleep, that it’s as if she is lying in the bed next to him. She says, “Maybe that’s what Nelson and I will watch next.”
For Susanna Daniel, Emily Miller, and Sheena MJ Cook—my fellow writers and confidantes
Acknowledgments
For supporting me as I write the books I want to write, for excelling at what they do, and for being so much fun to work with, I am deeply grateful to my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh; my editor, Jennifer Hershey; and my publicist, Maria Braeckel. I thank the many other wonderful people I work with at WME, including Raffaella DeAngelis, Tracy Fisher, Elizabeth Sheinkman, Alicia Gordon, Erin Conroy, Jill Gillett, Suzanne Gluck, Eve Attermann, Eric Zohn, Alicia Everett, Sabrina Giglio, Becky Chalsen, and Erika Niven, and the equally wonderful people I work with at Random House, including Gina Centrello, Avideh Bashirrad, Theresa Zoro, Christine Mykityshyn, Sally Marvin, Leigh Marchant, Susan Kamil, Sanyu Dillon, Caitlin McCaskey, Anastasia Whalen, Khusbu Bhakta, Erin Kane, Benjamin Dreyer, Jessica Yung, Janet Wygal, Bonnie Thompson, Jessica Bonet, Stephanie Reddaway, Paolo Pepe, Robbin Schiff, and Liz Eno. Marianne Velmans and Patsy Irwin at Transworld in the U.K. look out for me and my writing from across an ocean. A book publication is always a collaborative act, and I am so lucky that these are my collaborators.
In addition, I thank the smart and patient editors who originally shepherded some of these stories into print: above all, Willing Davidson, as well as Scott Stossel, Maria Streshinsky, David Rowell, and Elizabeth Merrick.
I thank the people who read early drafts and/or helped me sort out specific facts: Nick Arvin, Matt Bodie and Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, Dave Carlson, Sheena MJ Cook, emily m. danforth, Susanna Daniel, Matthew Klam, Grace Lee, Consuelo and Ian Macpherson, Edward McPherson, Maile Meloy, Emily Miller, Annie Morriss, Sasha Polonsky Tulgan, Shauna Seliy, Malena Watrous, and Jennifer Weiner. Beth Guterman Chu, who knows much more about classical music than I do, actually wrote many of the sentences in the emails in “Plausible Deniability.” Andrea Denny is a delightful person with whom to discuss suburban life. For being good sports about my books and for occasionally letting me steal details when they’re so juicy or perfect I can’t resist, I thank my parents, Betsy and Paul Sittenfeld, as well as my siblings and their spouses: Tiernan Sittenfeld and Darren Speece; Josephine Sittenfeld and Thad Russell; and P. G. Sittenfeld and Sarah Coyne Sittenfeld. I thank my husband, Matt, and our children for being my true story.
My beloved friend Samuel Park was the first reader of many of these stories. Sam died in April 2017. It’s not the same to be a writer without his brilliant, witty, and encouraging feedback, and it’s not the same to be a person in the world without his friendship.
By Curtis Sittenfeld
You Think It, I’ll Say It
Eligible
Sisterland
American Wife
The Man of My Dreams
Prep
About the Author
CURTIS SITTENFELD is the bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, and Eligible, which have been translated into thirty languages. Her nonfiction has been published widely, including in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Glamour, and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in St. Louis.
Stay in touch with New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld:
Visit CurtisSittenfeld.com
Facebook: @CurtisSittenfeldBooks
Twitter: @csittenfeld
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