Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
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Audra said, “this is our son, Matthew! Matthew, Dr. Luxe is literally the first person who ever held you.”
Graham closed his eyes. Sex, divorce, lies, obstetrics—would this conversation never end?
But Dr. Luxe seemed delighted. He shook hands with Matthew and exclaimed over how tall he was while Graham shook hands with the second Mrs. Luxe. By then, there was such a traffic jam of wedding guests behind them that a kind of crowd surge pushed them out of the receiving line and into the bar, where Graham grabbed a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and drank it in one swallow.
But the rest of the wedding was okay, even more than okay. The manor house had French doors opening onto the grounds. It was a beautiful summer day, and teenage girls had been hired to organize all the children. Most of the children happily ran out onto the lawn, but Matthew stayed sitting at the table. One of the teenage girls—a pretty brunette in a soft lavender dress—sat next to him and Matthew made an origami tree frog that had 101 folds out of a cocktail napkin. The brunette ruffled Matthew’s hair and asked him to fold something else, and Graham thought perhaps there might be an upside to this origami business after all.
Graham and Audra even danced a little, and it was as they were dancing that it suddenly occurred to Graham to wonder how Audra had known anything about the bride’s sex life.
“Hmmm?” she said sleepily, her head resting on his shoulder. “Oh. Because it turns out through some weird coincidence that Bryant knows Doug’s old roommate and he told Doug and Doug told Lorelei, and she told me. In fact, Lorelei thought she and Doug might get invited, too, but they didn’t.”
Graham held her closer, and saw that Matthew was alone now. The brunette had wandered off. Still, it had been a better day than expected. Graham was relieved that Lorelei hadn’t come to the wedding, because if she had, she and Audra would have devoted the whole day to the most intensive type of conversation imaginable (they once talked so much they blew out the candle in a restaurant) and then he wouldn’t have had Audra to himself.
Graham’s and Audra’s were not the only universes. There were also other universes—hidden ones, secret ones. Little pocket universes scattered around and you slipped into them unexpectedly, like when you stopped into a bodega for milk and discovered a cardboard display stand of Sucrets or Love’s Baby Soft perfume or some other long-defunct product. Origami Club was in one of those pocket universes, and Graham and Audra had to take Matthew there on the day after the wedding. (At nine o’clock in the morning on the day after the wedding, to be precise.)
Origami Club was held in Clayton’s apartment, and the first unusual thing was that Clayton’s apartment building was on a street Graham had never heard of and he thought he knew every street in Manhattan. Walter Street? Where the hell was that? On the Lower East Side, as it turned out. And although the building looked like all the other low red-brick buildings around it, it had a bright green door, which made Graham think of enchanted forests. There was no doorman and the hallway had black-and-white hexagonal tile and smelled deeply of cabbage and rent control. Matthew gazed around curiously, as though they were on the set of a play.
They rode a creaking elevator up to the fourth floor and pushed the buzzer for apartment 4A. A thin, excitable-looking man in his late fifties answered immediately, giving the impression he had been crouching right behind the door.
“Come in, come in!” he said. “I’m Clayton Pierce.”
They shook hands with him and then he led them down a hall through a cluttered apartment. The doors to the rooms that opened off the hallway were all open, and glancing in, Graham saw that every single object—every bedspread, lamp shade, picture, curtain, hand towel, tissue box, wastebasket, vase, throw pillow, candleholder, hamper, and doorknob—either was made out of origami or had a picture of something made out of origami on it. It seemed that possibly the only thing not made out of origami was the white-haired woman who popped out of the kitchen to greet them, although she was wearing earrings made out of itty-bitty origami cranes.
“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Clayton’s wife, Pearl. You must be the Cavanaughs. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
“We’ve been looking forward to this, too,” Audra said. “Matthew especially.”
In the dining room, two other men, also in their fifties, were seated at the table. Clayton made a sweeping gesture and said, “Everyone, welcome Matthew!” He glanced at Graham and Audra. “And … non-folders.
“Matthew,” Clayton said. “This is Manny and Alan.”
“Hello,” Matthew said in his soft clear voice.
“Is it true you folded Lang’s Tarantula?” the man named Manny asked.
“Yes,” Matthew said. “But I couldn’t do it the first time and got all frustrated and cried a long time.”
Graham closed his eyes. He remembered that evening well. He would have preferred Matthew had been up all night with the croup or whooping cough.
“That happens,” Manny said. “Did you try it again?”
“Uh-huh.” Matthew pulled out a chair and sat down. “But the creases weren’t sharp. I like the creases to be sharp.”
“Well, naturally,” Clayton said.
“That’s neat paper,” Matthew said.
“It’s imported from Thailand,” Alan said.
Matthew hauled his backpack onto his lap and unzipped it. “I have some regular paper. Should I get it out?”
“He does have very small fingers,” Alan said to Clayton. “That might be useful when we do Kamiya’s Wasp.”
“We can use tweezers like we’ve always done,” Clayton said testily. “We accept new members on the basis of skill, not finger size. Otherwise we’d have a roomful of—of—I don’t know what.”
“People with very small fingers,” Matthew said softly.
“Exactly,” Clayton said. “Now, Matthew, today we’re going to be making Ermakov’s Mantis Shrimp and that has box-pleating collapses. Do you know how to do those?”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “Will you help me if I get stuck?”
“Of course,” Clayton said. “Well, within reason.”
Something was wrong here. So obviously wrong that Graham almost could not figure it out. But he glanced at Audra and saw she felt it, too.
Normally, Graham and Audra (especially Audra) had to act as a sort of lubricant for any social interaction Matthew had. And not just a mild lubricant, like Vaseline or butter—we’re not talking about anything as minor as a stuck zipper here—but a heavy, industrial lubricant, like motor oil or axle grease. Oh, the playdates and lunches Graham had sat through with Matthew and another child, while Audra said things like, “Matthew loves the Wiggles! Don’t you, Matthew?”
“Yeah.”
“He especially likes the red one. Murray, I think. Who’s your favorite, Jimmy?” Or Tommy. Or Zachary. Or Ross.
“I like the yellow one.”
“Matthew likes him, too! Right, Matthew?”
“Not really.”
“Well, he sort of likes him. I mean, he doesn’t dislike him. But I guess he probably likes the blue one best. And he really loves that song about fruit salad. What song do you like, Timmy?”
“The one about the car.”
“Matthew, too! Right? Toot! Toot! Remember, Matthew? Listen, maybe after we finish lunch, you guys could watch The Wiggles together? What do you think, Matthew?”
And on and on. Until you understood—truly understood, on an emotional level—why simultaneous interpreters have the highest