Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
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how they always choose people whose whole quality of life hangs in the balance of the value of some knickknack.”
They had finished their coffee and began moving toward the door.
“I guess you should know,” Elspeth said, pulling the belt on her coat tight. “I’m living with someone.”
Actually, there was no reason he should know that. He and Elspeth had no children. In lots of really important ways, it was like they’d never been married at all.
“That’s great,” he said. “Who is it?”
“Oh, you don’t know him,” Elspeth said. “His name is Bentrup Foster.”
What is the very best thing about him? Audra would have asked. Where did you meet him? What did you think when you first saw him? Is he the type of person who thinks a bowl of cereal counts as dinner? How many times does he hit the snooze button in the morning? Would he ever do a shot of tequila to get drunk quicker? Does he watch game shows? Does he give good back rubs?
But Graham did not want to start channeling his second wife in the presence of his first wife, so he only said, “What does he do?”
“He works in the shoe department at Barneys,” Elspeth said.
“I’m glad for you,” Graham said. “That you have someone.”
“Yes.” Elspeth looked thoughtful. “With is better than without.”
He wondered if she would ever—ever—say anything that didn’t make him feel automatically guilty. He doubted it.
When Graham got back to their apartment that night, Audra was helping Matthew with his homework at the dining room table.
“What the heck is bus station division?” she asked Matthew, wrinkling her forehead as she read the worksheet. “Can we Google it?”
“Hi, Daddy,” Matthew said.
“Oh, hey,” Audra said. “How was it? What did Aunt Mary leave you?”
Graham dropped the sheaf of papers on the table, and Audra glanced at the photograph of the statue. “A marble kitty cat,” she said, clearly not impressed. (Honestly, Graham was starting to feel offended on the cat’s behalf.) “Did you see Elspeth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who’s Elspeth?” Matthew asked.
“Daddy’s first wife,” Audra said.
“I didn’t know you had another wife,” Matthew said. He looked at Audra. “Did you have other husbands?”
“Only other people’s,” she said cheerfully. (She claimed she couldn’t censor herself around Matthew or she’d go crazy.) “Now finish up your homework. It’s only seven problems. Just do them the regular way, I guess.”
She followed Graham into the kitchen. “How was it, seeing her?”
“It was okay, actually.”
“Did you have the sense she wanted to murder you?” She said this in a normal sort of voice; they might have been discussing whether they had any lemons.
“No, of course not,” Graham said.
“You used to say that,” Audra said. “You used to hang up the phone with her sometimes and say that you could tell she was hoping you’d drop dead.”
Had he said that? It was hard to remember. “Well, that’s different from wanting to murder me,” Graham said. “She was actually perfectly friendly. She’s living with someone.”
“Perfect!” Audra exclaimed. “We can go on a double date!”
“I don’t know about that,” Graham said. “That might be pushing it.”
“Oh, please,” Audra said. “It would be the most natural thing in the world.”
Well. Graham was not so sure it would be, not sure at all. “You seem to be forgetting,” he said, “that you were the cause of my divorce in the first place.”
“Oh, but that’s ancient history,” Audra said. “That was all twenty years ago.”
“Thirteen,” he corrected. She had a tendency to round up. It was almost a way of life.
“Well, whatever,” she said. “Surely she’s over it by now. She’s living with this other man. Aren’t you the least bit curious to meet him?”
“No,” Graham said, knowing full well that she would find this attitude incomprehensible.
Audra sighed loudly. “But I’m dying to meet her. Just think, you were married to her for a decade”—it had been eight years—“and she and I have never even laid eyes on each other!”
That was only half-true. Elspeth had seen Audra once but Audra didn’t know that. He and Audra had been on their way to Macy’s to register for wedding gifts and they’d come up out of the subway on Thirty-fourth Street, and dashed across Seventh Avenue into the store, and in those brief moments, Elspeth had seen them. Graham knew because she told him the next day on the phone. (This was when they were first separated and still talked bitterly on the phone every few days.) “I saw you and your girlfriend going into Macy’s yesterday,” she’d said. Graham still remembered what Audra had been wearing that day: jeans and a silk blouse and a little rabbit-fur vest she’d bought in a secondhand store. She had looked unbearably pretty and young, so young. He’d seen her through Elspeth’s eyes and felt guilty all over again.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” he said now.
“Why?” Audra said. “Are you ashamed of me? Ashamed of her?”
“No, neither,” he said, realizing as he said it that it was true.
“Then, please, just ask her,” Audra said. “The next time you speak to her, just mention the idea and see what she says.”
“Okay,” Graham said. Sometimes it was easier just to give in.
So when Elspeth called to tell him that the marble kitty cat had been valued at four thousand dollars, he said, “I’ve been thinking we should all have dinner together.”
“Dinner?” Elspeth repeated. She sounded startled.
“Yes,” Graham said. “The four of us. You, me, Audra, and Bentrup. Like a double date.”
“A double date?”
(This was a problem when you lived with people who had strong personalities; you started to sound like them.)
“That’s only an expression,” he said hastily. “I just thought, you know, the four of us could have dinner. But we don’t have to if you think it’s too, ah, unconventional.” He’d been about to say kooky when he realized that was an Audra word, too.
“Of course it’s unconventional,” Elspeth said. “We’re divorced.”
“There are a million ways to be divorced,” Graham answered. Which was another thing Audra said: There are a million ways to be married, there are a million ways to raise a child, there are a million ways to run a household. It so happened he agreed with her.
“I guess,” Elspeth said slowly, like someone struggling to comprehend a difficult concept.
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Graham said. “We could—” He was about to say go out somewhere casual, when he remembered that Elspeth didn’t like to go to restaurants. “You could just come over for dinner,” he finished.
She was quiet for so long that he finally said, “Elspeth?”
“I’m thinking,” she said.
Graham remained silent, and after a moment, Elspeth said, “Okay. Let’s