How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,135
their finding themselves in the suburbs? The idea had already been raised before that day, inextricably related to the decision to have children. They would have needed to find a bigger place in the city anyway, as she'd pointed out. No, it definitely hadn't been his idea. But he had wanted to alleviate the anxiety and dissatisfaction that seemed to have taken hold of her even before that terrible day in September.
Somehow, three years before, they'd both believed that marriage would be the cure for a malaise they'd never named or spoken about, for the dark moods that descended upon her and the memories of childhood deprivations—most particularly her vanished father. Later, it seemed that graduate school would be just the thing. Moving to the suburbs was, as he saw it, the latest attempt to make her happy. If he hadn't discovered golf, he would have hated it out here, almost an hour from Grand Central. The pleasure he discovered in the game raised his tolerance for certain cultural clichés, although he maintained enough of his urban-hipster sensibility to forswear the kind of brown-and-white footwear that looked like saddle shoes, as well as certain shades of pink and green. And he was probably the only guy at the club with a Celtic cross tattooed on his left shoulder. And what would they think if they knew about Carly's tattoo? Even he had been a little shocked when she first proposed it.
Much as he would have loved to escape to the green refuge of the course that morning, he knew he had to cancel his game. The problem then became how to get through the rest of the day without a confrontation.
Carly went to the stove and returned with a plate, which she dropped on the place mat in front of him. “Your breakfast,” she said.
On the plate were two raw eggs, two strips of raw bacon and two pieces of white bread.
A chilly truce prevailed through the afternoon. He trimmed the boxwoods, something he'd been promising to do for two weeks, and later took her to the Barnes & Noble at the mall, where she picked up a book called Taking Charge of Your Pregnancy.
That night, they sat in the den together and watched The Sopranos and then The Tudors, a ritual that suddenly seemed fraught with peril. Carly tended to take her movies and TV shows very personally, to generalize the behavior of individual characters. As a married man, Bryce didn't want to be represented by Tony Soprano and Henry VIII. When Tony had been sleeping with the Russian babe back in season three, Bryce somehow got blamed for Tony's behavior. “You guys are just slaves to your dicks,” she said. And, yes, okay, he'd been guilty as charged back then. Fortunately, Tony wasn't screwing anyone this week, although, astonishingly, he killed his nephew Christopher.
“I can't believe he did that,” Bryce said. “I mean, how could he do that?”
“He was a hopeless drug addict,” Carly said.
“Well, yeah, but still.”
“Not to mention a cold-blooded killer.”
“I guess.”
Bryce was comfortable dealing with the major crimes and mortal sins of others. He tried to remember whether adultery was a mortal sin. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. It didn't seem like it should be right up there with murder. Carly didn't have much to say about Tony's latest offense, but she pitched a fit when Daisy jumped up on Bryce's lap. “Get her away from me!” Under normal circumstances, Bryce might've stuck up for his cat, but tonight he put her outside without protest.
Shortly after Anne Boleyn professed to be insulted by Henry's offer to make her his one and only royal squeeze, Carly said she was going to the kitchen to get a snack. Bryce said he'd see her upstairs.
He raced through his ablutions in the master bath and managed to slip between the sheets and pick up his book before she ascended the stairs. For a moment, as she paused in the bedroom doorway, he was certain she would challenge his presence there, but when he finally allowed himself to look up from his book, she was standing in front of the mirror, rubbing her belly and observing her reflected image, as if trying to verify and fathom the great mystery of her condition.
Ten minutes later she climbed ponderously into the bed beside him. “I can't have Daisy dragging mice and birds all through the house in my condition,” she said.