Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
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really,” Audra said. “Because, I mean, have you ever smelled someone’s breath after they’ve eaten Doritos? It’s really unpleasant, but restaurants are, on the whole, pleasant experiences.”
“Unless the waiters have been eating Doritos,” Bentrup said, and Audra laughed.
“Now I have to ask you something,” she said to him.
“Certainly,” he said.
“If you work in the shoe department, why are you wearing slippers?”
Bentrup was indeed wearing slippers—or maybe they were moccasins. They looked new and stiff, nothing like the ones Graham wore at home, which bulged out at the sides like a hamster’s cheeks. Bentrup smiled. “I don’t like to be too predictable.”
During all of this, Graham was very distracted by the blouse Elspeth was wearing. It was black silk and had a picture of a white bow on it, but not an actual bow. Graham liked analogies and he couldn’t help thinking that there was some way in which the blouse suited Elspeth perfectly. It was not that she was a two-dimensional person, he knew her far too well to ever think that. It was more the self-contained, insoluble, impenetrable nature of it.
Bentrup raised his wineglass. “To your very good health,” he said.
“Cheers,” Audra said, clinking her glass with his.
Graham and Elspeth raised their glasses. Graham glanced at Elspeth and saw that he could read her expression as easily as he read a clock face: she was amused at her own expense. Who would have ever thought I’d be socializing with these two particular people? She was thinking that, or something close to it, he could tell.
It was amazing, really, that after so many years apart, he and Elspeth still spoke in marital code.
He called the day after dinner to thank her and she said, “It was a pleasure. Audra is certainly vivacious.” But what she meant was She talks too much, however do you stand it?
“I enjoy that about her,” he said. “Bentrup is extremely dapper.”
“I like the way he looks,” she said spikily, having understood him correctly to mean He looks like a dandy. (Actually, Audra had said on the way home that Bentrup reminded her of a sexy snake-oil salesman, but Graham wasn’t going to go there.)
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet Matthew,” Elspeth said, which didn’t make much sense because Matthew hadn’t been invited.
“Well, it was a school night,” Graham said.
“Audra told me he goes to the Laurence School,” Elspeth said. “I didn’t realize he was autistic.” I guess everything didn’t turn out so hunky-dory for you and Audra after all.
“He’s not autistic,” Graham said, his voice rapping out more sharply than he’d intended. “He might not even have Asperger’s. No one knows. But he’s a visual learner and he does well at Laurence. Lots of kids there have exceptional IQs.” And, as anyone with a special-needs child could tell you, that sort of defensive speech is code for Watch it.
“Yes, of course,” Elspeth said. “And Audra showed me a picture. He looks like her, very handsome.” I can give compliments, even about your second wife. I am not a small, vindictive person.
So Graham said, “Matthew reminds me of your father, actually.”
“My father?”
“Yes,” Graham said. “Very bright and mathematical but not terribly good at picking up on social signals.” Take that. Actually, it sort of described Elspeth, too.
“My father did not have Asperger’s,” Elspeth said, emphasizing every other word slightly. You never liked him.
“Not diagnosed, no,” Graham said. “But remember the first time you took me skiing with your family and he asked me to calculate what temperature water boils at at ten thousand feet? That was his idea of small talk.” I know how strange your family is, don’t forget.
“And you did it,” Elspeth said. Who are you to accuse my father of having Asperger’s?
“Yes,” Graham admitted reluctantly. And even more reluctantly, but also involuntarily, he supplied the answer again. “One hundred and ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. For each thousand feet above sea level, the boiling point of water drops two degrees.”
“And I married you,” Elspeth said. “So there you go.”
This last part was a little cryptic, even for code. Did she mean, I married you and look how horribly it turned out, or I married you because you reminded me of my father, so it serves me right, or even something more general, like For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost?
Graham didn’t know how to respond, so he said, “Thanks again for last night. The red snapper was delicious.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I took an Asian cooking class last year.”
There was a moment of silence when they both seemed to realize that they had actually meant what they were saying. They weren’t speaking in code anymore. Graham felt a needle of fear: God only knew what she might say now.
So he said he had a meeting and that they should all have dinner again soon and he would be in touch, and she said the same sorts of things back, and—safely cloaked in code again—they hung up.
Can I just ask,” Audra said that night. “Is Elspeth in or is she out?”
They were sitting on the sofa after dinner and she was drawing dolphins freehand for a brochure she was designing for a scuba diving school. Dolphins in left profile, dolphins in right profile, dolphins looking straight ahead, smiling, staring, laughing. She tore each sketch out of the book after she drew it and threw it on the floor. It was how she got inspired.
“What are you talking about?” Graham asked.
“It’s just something I’ve noticed about you as you get older,” she said, sketching. “People are either in or out with you. Either you accept them as a friend and someone you’re interested in, or you want no interaction with them.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Graham told her. “It’s not something that’s happened since I’ve gotten older. I’ve always been that way. I don’t need to be friends with the doormen and the man at the bodega and the dentist.”
“I’m not friends with the dentist,” Audra said. (They had their own marital code.)
“You had lunch with him.”
“Never!” She looked scandalized. “I think you mean Dr. Medowski.” She’d had lunch with her gynecologist? This seemed even worse on a number of levels, but before he could say anything, she continued, “And you should be friends with the doormen, Graham. They’ll do anything for me—call me a cab in the worst weather or carry the teeniest package.”
“I can call my own cabs,” he said. “And carry my own packages, too.”
“You miss out on a lot, though,” Audra said, tearing another sketch out of her book. A drawing of a dolphin talking on the phone floated to the floor. “They know so much gossip about everyone in the building. You know that couple on Two with the little redheaded boy who keeps pulling leaves off the plants in the lobby? Well, they hired a nanny last week and she quit after half an hour. Half an hour. Can you imagine? Anyway, you never answered—is Elspeth in or is she out?”
Graham considered for a moment before he answered. He and Elspeth had not made a very successful married couple, but maybe they could be successful friends. Didn’t they have all the ingredients for that: a shared history and common interests and similar intellectual outlooks? Certainly if Audra could be friends with the checkout girl at the health-food store, he could be friends with Elspeth.
“In,” he said finally.