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Summary
Summary
"Kathryn Harrison is a wonderful writer...Spellbinding." -The New York Times Book Review "A juicy story of psychosexual suspence" -The Wall Street Journal "Shockingly complex and compulsively readable." -O, The Oprah Magazine "[Envy] has to be considered another succcess for one of the most interesting writers of her generation." -St. Louis Post Dispatch "Complex and disturbing...Envyis a masterfully constructed, insightful novel of psychosexual suspense that explores the destructive power of loss, betrayal, guilt and envy...an engaging, beautifully written story." -The Boston Globe "A compelling, beautifully written, well-constructed look at family problems that initially might seem insurmountable....Harrison is a truly gifted writer." -Deseret Morning News "The characters, their conflicts and their conversations do seem real, and their story, however improbable, will keep you turning the pages." -Newsday "Her ability to train an unflinching eye on some of the more frightening aspects of eroticism and the human psyche, combined with her uncommon wisdom, distinguishes her as one of the finest and most fearless storytellers writing today." BookForum "Envyis full of Harrison's astute, often mordant powers of physical and psychological observation...the fact is that Kathryn Harrison is one of our more earnestly impassioned and intellectually engaging players. Long may she run." Elle magazine Will has a good sex lifewith the woman he married. So why then is he increasingly plagued by violent erotic fantasies that, were they to break out of his imagination and into the real world, have the power to destroy not only his family but his career? He's about to lose his grip when he attends a college reunion and there discovers evidence of a past sexual betrayal, one serious enough that it threatens to overpower the present, even as it offers a key to Will's dangerous obsessions. Hypnotic, beautifully written, this mesmerizing novel by "an extremely gifted writer" (San Francisco Chronicle) explores the corrosive effect of eviland how painful psychological truths long buried within a family can corrupt the present and, through courage and understanding, lead to healing and renewal. "Like Scheherezade in the grip of a fever dream, Kathryn Harrison . . . has written one of those rare books, in language of unparalleled beauty, that affirm the holiness of life," said Shirley Ann Grau, aboutPoison. And the same can be said aboutEnvy.
Author Notes
Kathryn Harrison lives in New York with her husband and their children.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
William Moreland, the 47-year-old New York psychoanalyst at the center of Harrison's sixth novel, has a family that's awash in betrayals. Will's father, a retired veterinarian turned photographer, is having an affair with the owner of his gallery. Will's brother, Mitchell, a long-distance swimmer with "a name as recognizable as that of, say, Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods," is estranged from the family. And ever since Will's 12-year-old son died three years ago in a boating accident, his wife, Carole, has been emotionally and sexually distant. All these wounds pucker open when Will attends his college reunion and runs into a statuesque ex-girlfriend who left him 25 years ago when she may or may not have been pregnant with his child. That past betrayal becomes entangled with the others in Will's life and leads to further transgressions and revelations. Given the steamy, soap-operatic nature of this plot, it's remarkable how Harrison renders it emotionally plausible, in sinuous, sensitive and often funny prose, exposing the raunchiness of sex and the "obscene" nature of mortality. Will's profession as an analyst seems too convenient-allowing Harrison to analyze her own novel through the voice of her main character-but this is a pardonable flaw in a book so juicy and intelligent. Agent, Amanda Urban. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Harrison is a high-wire memoirist and a probing and inventive novelist. Her sixth novel, an intoxicating work of psychosexual suspense, portrays a New York family wracked by tragedy, some of it obvious--the accidental drowning of a young boy--much hidden. Harrison writes commandingly from a male psychologist's point of view, and much of the heady power of this harrowing tale is rooted in the fact that none of Will's powers as a perceptive therapist help him understand how his stoic wife copes with their son's death, or recognize that secrets are being kept from him. Yet Will's instincts are sharp. He wonders if the 24-year-old daughter of an old girlfriend is his. He is unnerved by his retired veterinarian father's transformation into a celebrated photographer. He obsesses about the subterranean, perhaps malevolent, aspects of his relationship with his identical twin, Mitch, identical, that is, except for the port-wine stain that disfigures Mitch's face. A world-famous long-distance swimmer, Mitch has been estranged from his twin and their parents for 15 years, ever since Will got married. Will is finally pitched into crisis by a new patient, a stunningly audacious, spiked and tattooed, viciously intelligent, foul-mouthed, and sexually rampaging young woman. Harrison's dialogue is electrifying, the sophistication of her psychology is mesmerizing, and her characters, so astutely drawn, are bewitching. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist
Guardian Review
The first time I read this book I was transfixed, gulping it down, desperate to get to the end and find out how the spiralling misery of Kathryn Harrison's characters would be resolved. From the very start there is a strange aura of menace about the novel. Will, its central character, is a New York psychoanalyst who is clearly in trouble. We first meet him on the way to his college reunion, full of much more than the usual fortysomething bitterness - rather, he seems to be on the verge of an explosive breakdown. We learn that his son has died in a boating accident, a grief that is sparingly but fiercely described. Since the accident he has found his wife sexually chilly towards him and has fallen into intense erotic obsessions about his patients. We also learn that he has an identical twin brother, a swimming champion who broke off contact when Will got married. Will sets out to chase down the mystery of that estrangement, finding the answer only at the end of a long, convoluted narrative of sexual entanglements. Sadly, this secret is something that a reviewer can't spill without spoiling the story. And it really would spoil the book, which shows something of the limitations of this novel. On first reading, the convoluted plot pushes forwards with a sense of urgency and dread. But when I returned to the novel, I found that knowing the secret meant that its urgency had gone; the whole tale felt oddly artificial and heavy- handed. The denouement had not lived up to the feeling of menace that had kept the book going, and once you're aware of Harrison's need to push the characters through their hoops, you see that many of the situations are simply produced by the structure of the plot. Even the first time around, the novel often seemed rather weighed down by how much, and how articulately, the characters talk. This may seem like a weird quibble - there is nothing wrong with having a New York shrink in a novel, and given his profession it would be strange if Will were not pretty talkative. But as he spills the beans about everything to his own shrink, to his wife, to his father, to his ex-girlfriend, and they all talk endlessly and precisely to him, the book begins to feel both repetitive - as situations are constantly replayed in conversations - and unlifelike. These characters talk as nobody talks in everyday life, with a novelist's elegant command of their scudding emotions. When they are not talking, they are having sex. Without question, Harrison is superb at writing about sex, as you will know if you have read any of her other books. Her small-scale memoir about her incestuous relationship with her father, The Kiss , was what made her famous. It wasn't just the subject matter but her condensed, rhythmic prose conveying desire so brilliantly that made it memorable. Her novels, including the bestseller The Binding Chair , have also pushed into areas of forbidden desire in ways that are always enjoyable as well as disturbing. In a world that has almost lost its taboos, Harrison still provides a daring sense of pushing against boundaries. In order to do that in this novel she creates situations of possible incest and sex involving varying degrees of unwillingness, all the way to rape. Although it's clear that the plot has been created in order to give her the opportunity to write about taboo sex, where it works it does so because she is so good at it. She is great at conveying desire, even - or especially - desire for the forbidden, and great at conveying the nuts and bolts of intercourse even, or especially, in pretty yucky situations. So, for instance, at first Will is almost unhinged by his indiscriminate, angry fantasies about sex with his patients: "By the time Will arrives at orgasm his imagined partner has suffered the opposite of synergy; she's less than the sum of her parts, or fewer parts than would add up to a person; only lips, breasts, the downy cleft of her ass, the handful of flesh, so soft, inside the top of each thigh." He then has a full-throttle erotic encounter with a pressing patient who has already described to him her real and imagined sex life, and who pushes him to perform in a way that is both hugely sexy and almost scarily de-personalising. These cold sexual encounters contrast with the sex Will has with his wife, which is described in a close-up detail that feels necessary rather than gratuitous; both the metaphorical and the physical implications of her refusal to make love face to face are brought precisely alive. Harrison is less good at writing about other areas of people's lives, which can obviously make her characters seem rather limited. But there is one exception to this criticism, which is what I liked most about this flawed but memorable book. Most impressive of all is Harrison's ability to write well about the opposite of taboo sex: parental love. The flashes of Will's love both for his dead son and his living daughter infuse this rather claustrophobic book with a human sympathy that goes beyond its apparent limits. "Even a familiar glimpse of Will's daughter can still catch him off guard, grab him with the force of a hand at his throat," Will thinks, and in such moments he comes alive to us. Natasha Walter's The New Feminism is published by Virago. To order Envy for pounds 15.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop Caption: article-lead.1 It really would spoil the book, which shows something of the limitations of this novel. On first reading, the convoluted plot pushes forwards with a sense of urgency and dread. But when I returned to the novel, I found that knowing the secret meant that its urgency had gone; the whole tale felt oddly artificial and heavy- handed. The denouement had not lived up to the feeling of menace that had kept the book going, and once you're aware of [Kathryn Harrison]'s need to push the characters through their hoops, you see that many of the situations are simply produced by the structure of the plot. Harrison is less good at writing about other areas of people's lives, which can obviously make her characters seem rather limited. But there is one exception to this criticism, which is what I liked most about this flawed but memorable book. Most impressive of all is Harrison's ability to write well about the opposite of taboo sex: parental love. The flashes of Will's love both for his dead son and his living daughter infuse this rather claustrophobic book with a human sympathy that goes beyond its apparent limits. "Even a familiar glimpse of Will's daughter can still catch him off guard, grab him with the force of a hand at his throat," Will thinks, and in such moments he comes alive to us. - Natasha Walter.
Kirkus Review
Compared to most of Harrison's heroes, Dr. William Moreland is statistically normal. But that doesn't protect him from the floodtide of psychosexual anguish that washes over them all. Although he's a successful New York psychoanalyst with a perfect daughter--his son Luke died three years ago in a boating accident--Will Moreland lives in the shadow of the twin brother he hasn't seen in 15 years. Mitch Moreland looks just like Will except for a wine mark that covers half his face, but he's a champion long-distance swimmer, and when Will goes to his 25th college reunion, it's Mitch that everybody asks about. Will has a suddenly burning question of his own for Elizabeth, a college ex-lover who now heads the burn unit at Johns Hopkins: Was Jennifer, the daughter she was pregnant with when she broke up with Will and abruptly married someone else, actually Will's? Elizabeth reacts coldly, and Will, after a few months of his normal routine of fantasizing about every one of his female patients and actual coitus with Carole, the wife who ever since Luke's death will only let him approach her from behind, writes her an apology and a promise not to pursue the question. He doesn't know that it's already pursuing him in a form he can't imagine or control, and that it won't stop until all the certainties of his life and his faith in himself have been shattered. The material shouts TV Movie of the Week--well, maybe not a network movie--but Harrison's (The Seal Wife, 2002, etc.) measured, matter-of-fact prose gives each perverse twist of her pulpish plot a nasty kick, taking readers into the heart of Will's deep sadness and out the other side. An unsparing examination of the turbulent depths beneath an unsuspecting hero's most unexceptionable-seeming fantasies, and a life patently too normal to be true. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Everyone in Harrison's latest novel is having sex-marital sex, adulterous geriatric sex, sex that crosses that critical therapist/patient line. And then, because this is Harrison, there is the matter of incest. Will Moreland's solid marriage to his yoga-calmed wife, Carole, is coming apart at the seams. A successful psychoanalyst, fortysomething Will has squarely faced the daily devastation of two profound losses-the accidental drowning of his young son, Luke, and the complete estrangement of his identical twin brother, Mitchell, on the eve of his and Carole's wedding 15 years earlier. An unfortunate encounter with an old flame at Will's 25th college reunion sends him on a journey to reexamine his sexual history, which is soon revealed to be shockingly linked to his present disastrous fall from grace. Harrison writes like a poet, spinning a tangled tale rich with familiar themes from her previous works, most notably the provocative The Kiss, her memoir of her consensual affair with her preacher father when she was 20. Compulsively readable and deeply disturbing, this work is strongly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/05.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Will leans out of the driver's-side window toward his wife. "It's not too late to change your mind," he says. Her dark glasses show him the houses on their side of the block, greatly reduced and warped by the convexity of each lens. The fancy wrought-iron bars on their neighbor's windows, the bright plastic backboard of the Little Tikes basketball hoop one door down, the white climbing rose, suddenly and profusely in bloom, on the trellis by their own mailbox: it's as if he were studying one of those jewel-like miniatures painted in Persia during the sixteenth century; the longer Will looks, the more tiny details he finds. "Did you remember to bring pictures?" Carole asks. He points to an envelope on the seat beside him. "I mentioned the pool at the hotel?" "Several times." "Babysitting services? Pay-per-view?" "Come on, Will," Carole says, "don't do this to me." "Do what?" "Make me feel guilty." Her bra strap has slipped out from the armhole of her sleeveless dress, down one shoulder. Without looking, she tucks it back where it belongs. "You know I'd make it up to you," he tells her. She smiles, raises her eyebrows so they appear above the frames of her sunglasses. "And how might you do that?" she asks him. "By being your sex slave." She reaches behind his neck to adjust his collar. "Aren't you forgetting something?" she says. "What's that?" "You already are my sex slave." "Oh," Will says, "right." The errant strap has reemerged, a black satiny one he recognizes as belonging to the bra that unhooks in front. Carole ducks her head in the window to brush her lips against his cheek, a kiss, but not quite: no pucker, no sound. For a moment she rests her forehead against his. "I just can't deal with it. You know that. I can't talk about Luke--not with people I don't know. And the same goes for your brother." She pulls back to look at him. "If you weren't such a masochist, you wouldn't be going either." I'm curious, Will thinks of saying. It's not as simple as masochism. Or as complicated. Carole steps back from the car door. "See you Sunday," she says, and her voice has returned to its previous playful tone. "Call if you get lonely." "Oh, I doubt that'll be necessary." Will turns the key in the ignition. "I'll be too busy connecting with old friends. Blowing on the embers of undergraduate romance . . ." "Checking out the hairlines," she says. "Seeing who got fat and who got really fat." Will glances in the rearview mirror as he drives away, sees his wife climb the stairs to their front door, the flash of light as she opens it, the late June sun hot and yellow against its big pane of glass. S S omething about the cavernous tent defeats acoustics: the voices of the class of '79, those Cornell alumni who made it back for their twenty-fifth reunion, combine in a percussive assault on the eardrum, the kind Will associates with driving on a highway, one window cracked for air, that annoying whuh-whuh-whuh sound. He moves his lower jaw from side to side to dispel the echoey, dizzy feeling. Psychosomatic, he concludes. Why is he here, anyway? Does he even want to make the effort to hear well enough to engage with these people? Everyone around him, it seems, isn't talking so much as advertising. Husbands describing vacations too expensive to include basic plumbing, referring to them as experiences rather than travel, as in "our rain forest experience." And, as if to demonstrate what good sports they are, wives laughing at everything, including comments that strike Will as pure information. "No, they relocated." "Ohio, wasn't it?" "The kids are from the first marriage." "She fell in love with this guy overseas." He tries to picture the women's workaday selves: quieter, with paler lips, flatter hair. Still, on the whole they're well preserved, while the men by their sides look worn and rumpled. Receding hairlines have nowhere else to go; love handles have grown too big to take hold of. "Hey!" someone says, and Will turns around to a face he remembers from his freshman dorm. "David Snader!" the face bellows to identify itself. With his big, hot hand, David pulls Will into a crushing hug. "Where you been!" he says, as though he'd lost track of Will hours rather than decades ago. "Hey!" Will pulls out of the sweaty and, it would appear, drunken embrace. "Are you here alone?" David asks him. He blots his forehead with a handkerchief. Will nods. "Carole--my wife--she wasn't up for a long weekend of nostalgia with people she's never met before." "Same here. Same here." David gives Will a companionable punch in the arm. "Where's Mitch?" he asks, and Will shrugs. "Didn't make it. At least not as far as I know." "Oh yeah?" David squints. "You guys not in touch or something?" "Not at the moment." "Well." He punches Will's arm again. "Guess that makes sense. All the travel. Media. Price of fame." Will produces the rueful smile he hopes will convey that his estrangement from his famous twin is no big deal. Unfortunate, of course, but nothing hurtful or embarrassing. He's about to ask David about his wife and whether or not they have children, when David lurches off into the crowd. Will fills his cheeks with air, blows it out in a gust. David Snader is the fifth person in one hour to have approached him to ask not about Will or Will's work, his family, but about his brother, whose career as a long-distance swimmer has given Mitch a name as recognizable as that of, say, Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods. Not that any of these alumni were his friends. Will and David hadn't even liked each other. But still. He goes to the bar for a glass of red wine. If he's going to drink, he might as well rinse a little cholesterol out of his arteries. He's just replacing his wallet in the inside breast pocket of his blazer when he looks up to see someone else bearing down on him, Sue Shimakawa, with whom he'd shared an exam-week tryst, if that's the right word for abbreviated coitus in the musty, rarely penetrated stacks of the undergraduate library. Punch-drunk from studying chemistry for a few hundred hours, on a dare Will had asked Sue to have sex with him, prepared for a slap, or for her badmouthing him later or laughing at him in the moment, anything but what he got: her accepting his invitation with a sort of gung-ho enthusiasm. She had one of those bodies Will thinks of as typically Asian: compact, androgynous, and smooth-skinned, with pubic hair that was absolutely straight instead of curly, the surprise of this discovery--along with the panic induced by having intercourse in a potentially public place--enough to eclipse other, more inclusive observations. "Will, Will, Will," Sue sings at him. "I was hoping to see you!" She has a man in tow, a sandy-haired giant at least a foot and a half taller than she. "Meet Rob. We have five kids, if you can believe it! Five!" Wow, Will is about to say when Sue turns to her husband and says, "Rob, this is Will Moreland, an old fuck-buddy of mine." Whether Rob is mute or only, like Will, horrified into silence, he thrusts his big, freckled hand forward without saying a word. The two men shake, silent in the clamor all around them, and then each drops his hand to his side and looks at Sue to see what might happen next. "Rob's a debt analyst," she says. "Really!" Will exclaims. "Yes." They all nod. "Hey, hey," Sue says. "How about that brother of yours, huh? We're major fans. Major." "He has had a spectacular ride." For once, Will is relieved when the conversation turns to his brother. "Oh, I don't know. There's heaps of athletes that are celebrities." "Of course, yes," Will says. "I know that. I just--" "Is he here?" "Here?" "At the reunion. Here at the reunion." "No. I'm afraid not." "Oh, too bad. I really wanted to catch a glimpse of him." Me, too, Will thinks as Sue and her husband move off. Having not heard from his brother for fifteen years now, during which time Mitch went from being known in the world of elite swimmers to being known by just about everyone, Will fantasized that Mitch might actually show up. If he's honest with himself, the hope of seeing his brother was at least part of what persuaded him to attend the reunion--especially after he'd learned that Andrew Goldstein, the one friend with whom he'd kept in touch after college, wouldn't be coming because his wife's due date fell on the same weekend. Not that seeing Mitch would be pleasant or, Will imagines, anything less than traumatic, but he's fed up with having to manage his private anguish even as he's forced to admit sheepishly to friends, colleagues, neighbors, and now alumni that he's no better informed about his brother's latest stunt swim--as Will has come to think of them--than the average reader of Sports Illustrated. "Hello," says a voice behind him, startling Will out of what Carole would call one of his social desertions, when he becomes a spectator rather than a participant. He turns in the direction of the flirtatious tone he almost recognizes. As for the face: arresting, angular, unforgettable. Thinner than she used to be, but no less substantial--she looks concentrated, a distillate of her younger self. "Elizabeth," he says. "William." She tilts her head to one side, lifts her eyebrows. "Were you looking for someone?" "You, of course. Who else?" Will unbuttons his shirt collar and loosens his tie. "Do you think I didn't scour each of those e-mail bulletins listing who was planning to attend, hoping--hoping against hope--to see your name?" "Can it be?" Elizabeth says. "Has Mr. Fatally Earnest developed a sense of humor?" "Only in extremis." Elizabeth glances around herself. "I guess this qualifies," she says. "Actually, I was just looking over the crowd. Seeing what generalizations I could make about the class of 'seventy-nine." "And?" He shrugs. "I don't know that I've had enough time to study my impressions. You?" She shakes her head. "Insufficient data," she says. "Data? That's a clinical word." "I'm a clinician." "Oh, right. I'd heard you'd gone on to med school." Having read her bio in the reunion book--studied it would not be inaccurate--Will knows also to which school Elizabeth went, when she got her degree, and where she now works. But he's not going to give her the (false) impression that he's still pining for her. "Where'd you end up--what school?" he asks. "Johns Hopkins." Elizabeth pauses, Will suspects, to give him the opportunity to compliment her for having been accepted by a top-flight med school. He dips his head in an abbreviated bow of congratu-lation. "I was in dermatology," she continues, "then I specialized." "I thought being a dermatologist was specializing." Excerpted from Envy: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Will leans out of the driver's-side window toward his wife. "It's not too late to change your mind," he says. |
| Her dark glasses show him the houses on their side of the block, greatly reduced and warped by the convexity of each lens. The fancy wrought-iron bars on their neighbor's windows, the bright plastic backboard of the Little Tikes basketball hoop one door down, the white climbing rose, suddenly and profusely in bloom, on the trellis by their own mailbox: it's as if he were studying one of those jewel-like miniatures painted in Persia during the sixteenth century; the longer Will looks, the more tiny details he finds. |
| "Did you remember to bring pictures?" Carole asks. |
| He points to an envelope on the seat beside him. "I mentioned the pool at the hotel?" "Several times." "Babysitting services? Pay-per-view?" "Come on, Will," Carole says, "don't do this to me." "Do what?" "Make me feel guilty." Her bra strap has slipped out from the armhole of her sleeveless dress, down one shoulder. Without looking, she tucks it back where it belongs. |
| "You know I'd make it up to you," he tells her. She smiles, raises her eyebrows so they appear above the frames of her sunglasses. |
| "And how might you do that?" she asks him. |
| "By being your sex slave." She reaches behind his neck to adjust his collar. "Aren't you forgetting something?" she says. |
| "What's that?" "You already are my sex slave." "Oh," Will says, "right." The errant strap has reemerged, a black satiny one he recognizes as belonging to the bra that unhooks in front. |
| Carole ducks her head in the window to brush her lips against his cheek, a kiss, but not quite: no pucker, no sound. For a moment she rests her forehead against his. "I just can't deal with it. You know that. I can't talk about Luke-not with people I don't know. And the same goes for your brother." She pulls back to look at him. "If you weren't such a masochist, you wouldn't be going either." I'm curious, Will thinks of saying. It's not as simple as masochism. Or as complicated. Carole steps back from the car door. |
| "See you Sunday," she says, and her voice has returned to its previous playful tone. "Call if you get lonely." "Oh, I doubt that'll be necessary." Will turns the key in the ignition. "I'll be too busy connecting with old friends. Blowing on the embers of undergraduate romance..." "Checking out the hairlines," she says. "Seeing who got fat and who got really fat." Will glances in the rearview mirror as he drives away, sees his wife climb the stairs to their front door, the flash of light as she opens it, the late June sun hot and yellow against its big pane of glass. |
| S S omething about the cavernous tent defeats acoustics: the voices of the class of '79, those Cornell alumni who made it back for their twenty-fifth reunion, combine in a percussive assault on the eardrum, the kind Will associates with driving on a highway, one window cracked for air, that annoying whuh-whuh-whuh sound. He moves his lower jaw from side to side to dispel the echoey, dizzy feeling. Psychosomatic, he concludes. Why is he here, anyway? Does he even want to make the effort to hear well enough to engage with these people? Everyone around him, it seems, isn't talking so much as advertising. Husbands describing vacations too expensive to include basic plumbing, referring to them as experiences rather than travel, as in "our rain forest experience." And, as if to demonstrate what good sports they are, wives laughing at everything, including comments that strike Will as pure information. "No, they relocated." "Ohio, wasn't it?" "The kids are from the first marriage." "She fell in love with this guy overseas." He tries to picture the women's workaday selves: quieter, with paler lips, flatter hair. Still, on the whole they're well preserved, while the men by their sides look worn and rumpled. Receding hairlines have nowhere else to go; love handles have grown too big to take hold of. |
| "Hey!" someone says, and Will turns around to a face he remembers from his freshman dorm. "David Snader!" the face bellows to identify itself. With his big, hot hand, David pulls Will into a crushing hug. "Where you been!" he says, as though he'd lost track of Will hours rather than decades ago. |
| "Hey!" Will pulls out of the sweaty and, it would appear, drunken embrace. |
| "Are you here alone?" David asks him. He blots his forehead with a handkerchief. |
| Will nods. "Carole-my wife-she wasn't up for a long weekend of nostalgia with people she's never met before." "Same here. Same here." David gives Will a companionable punch in the arm. "Where's Mitch?" he asks, and Will shrugs. |
| "Didn't make it. At least not as far as I know." "Oh yeah?" David squints. "You guys not in touch or something?" "Not at the moment." "Well." He punches Will's arm again. "Guess that makes sense. All the travel. Media. Price of fame." Will produces the rueful smile he hopes will convey that his estrangement from his famous twin is no big deal. Unfortunate, of course, but nothing hurtful or embarrassing. He's about to ask David about his wife and whether or not they have children, when David lurches off into the crowd. Will fills his cheeks with air, blows it out in a gust. David Snader is the fifth person in one hour to have approached him to ask not about Will or Will's work, his family, but about his brother, whose career as a long-distance swimmer has given Mitch a name as recognizable as that of, say, Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods. Not that any of these alumni were his friends. Will and David hadn't even liked each other. But still. |
| He goes to the bar for a glass of red wine. If he's going to drink, he might as well rinse a little cholesterol out of his arteries. He's just replacing his wallet in the inside breast pocket of his blazer when he looks up to see someone else bearing down on him, Sue Shimakawa, with whom he'd shared an exam-week tryst, if that's the right word for abbreviated coitus in the musty, rarely penetrated stacks of the undergraduate library. Punch-drunk from studying chemistry for a few hundred hours, on a dare Will had asked Sue to have sex with him, prepared for a slap, or for her badmouthing him later or laughing at him in the moment, anything but what he got: her accepting his invitation with a sort of gung-ho enthusiasm. She had one of those bodies Will thinks of as typically Asian: compact, androgynous, and smooth-skinned, with pubic hair that was absolutely straight instead of curly, the surprise of this discovery-along with the panic induced by having intercourse in a potentially public place-enough to eclipse other, more inclusive observations. |
| "Will, Will, Will," Sue sings at him. "I was hoping to see you!" She has a man in tow, a sandy-haired giant at least a foot and a half taller than she. "Meet Rob. We have five kids, if you can believe it! Five!" Wow, Will is about to say when Sue turns to her husband and says, "Rob, this is Will Moreland, an old fuck-buddy of mine." Whether Rob is mute or only, like Will, horrified into silence, he thrusts his big, freckled hand forward without saying a word. The two men shake, silent in the clamor all around them, and then each drops his hand to his side and looks at Sue to see what might happen next. |
| "Rob's a debt analyst," she says. |
| "Really!" Will exclaims. |
| "Yes." They all nod. |
| "Hey, hey," Sue says. "How about that brother of yours, huh? We're major fans. Major." "He has had a spectacular ride." For once, Will is relieved when the conversation turns to his brother. |
| "Oh, I don't know. There's heaps of athletes that are celebrities." "Of course, yes," Will says. "I know that. I just-" "Is he here?" "Here?" "At the reunion. Here at the reunion." "No. I'm afraid not." "Oh, too bad. I really wanted to catch a glimpse of him." Me, too, Will thinks as Sue and her husband move off. Having not heard from his brother for fifteen years now, during which time Mitch went from being known in the world of elite swimmers to being known by just about everyone, Will fantasized that Mitch might actually show up. If he's honest with himself, the hope of seeing his brother was at least part of what persuaded him to attend the reunion-especially after he'd learned that Andrew Goldstein, the one friend with whom he'd kept in touch after college, wouldn't be coming because his wife's due date fell on the same weekend. Not that seeing Mitch would be pleasant or, Will imagines, anything less than traumatic, but he's fed up with having to manage his private anguish even as he's forced to admit sheepishly to friends, colleagues, neighbors, and now alumni that he's no better informed about his brother's latest stunt swim-as Will has come to think of them-than the average reader of Sports Illustrated. |
| "Hello," says a voice behind him, startling Will out of what Carole would call one of his social desertions, when he becomes a spectator rather than a participant. He turns in the direction of the flirtatious tone he almost recognizes. As for the face: arresting, angular, unforgettable. Thinner than she used to be, but no less substantial-she looks concentrated, a distillate of her younger self. |
| "Elizabeth," he says. |
| "William." She tilts her head to one side, lifts her eyebrows. "Were you looking for someone?" "You, of course. Who else?" Will unbuttons his shirt collar and loosens his tie. "Do you think I didn't scour each of those e-mail bulletins listing who was planning to attend, hoping-hoping against hope-to see your name?" "Can it be?" Elizabeth says. "Has Mr. Fatally Earnest developed a sense of humor?" "Only in extremis." Elizabeth glances around herself. "I guess this qualifies," she says. |
| "Actually, I was just looking over the crowd. Seeing what generalizations I could make about the class of 'seventy-nine." "And?" He shrugs. "I don't know that I've had enough time to study my impressions. You?" She shakes her head. "Insufficient data," she says. |
| "Data? That's a clinical word." "I'm a clinician." "Oh, right. I'd heard you'd gone on to med school." Having read her bio in the reunion book-studied it would not be inaccurate-Will knows also to which school Elizabeth went, when she got her degree, and where she now works. But he's not going to give her the (false) impression that he's still pining for her. "Where'd you end up-what school?" he asks. |
| "Johns Hopkins." Elizabeth pauses, Will suspects, to give him the opportunity to compliment her for having been accepted by a top-flight med school. He dips his head in an abbreviated bow of congratu-lation. "I was in dermatology," she continues, "then I specialized." "I thought being a dermatologist was specializing." |
| From the Hardcover edition. |
