Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
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head of Toyota?” Bentrup guessed.
“No,” Matthew said. “He’s the best origami guy in the world.” He turned to Elspeth. “Did you know who he is?”
“No,” she said. “Do you know who Alexander Fleming is?”
Matthew shook his head. “Does he do origami?”
“No,” Elspeth said, never one to volunteer information.
“Do you do origami?”
“No.”
“Who is Alexander Fleming?” Audra asked.
“He discovered penicillin,” Elspeth said.
Audra frowned slightly. “I thought that was Jonas Salk.”
(The rest of brunch went a lot better.)
But mainly they walked. They walked through Central Park and had hot dogs; they walked through Little Italy for the cannoli; they walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Since four people can’t easily walk together, they tended to divide into pairs, and the formation of these pairings and subsequent conversations were fascinating to Graham.
Sometimes he walked with Elspeth and they updated each other on mutual friends’ lives. (He and Elspeth never spoke directly of their marriage, only of the times before and after. Graham imagined it would be this way if you had a relative who went to prison.) Some of their friends had done so little in thirteen years that it was boring to hear the updates—“He still works in finance, his mother lives with them now”—but others were intriguing: Elspeth’s cousin had left his wife for the teenage pool boy; one of their former neighbors had started a healing ministry after his eczema mysteriously improved; another friend had invented a self-propelled vacuum and was now a multimillionaire. It amazed Graham that he had forgotten some of these people completely, and yet they were still around, still in touch with Elspeth. He in turn told her about his mother and her sciatica; about some people he worked with whom she’d always been fond of; about a friend from high school who still called drunk at three a.m. sometimes. Every time they exchanged information about someone who had chosen sides in that long-ago split, Graham felt a little less responsible, a little like he’d repaired some tiny bit of damage.
He wondered sometimes why Elspeth agreed to these outings, and even suggested them. Surely she didn’t feel guilty about their divorce. He thought maybe it was because she was, and always had been, a difficult person socially. He didn’t mind her quirks, and neither did Audra, but how many other friends did Elspeth have? Not many, was Graham’s guess.
Graham and Elspeth talked about the marble kitty cat sometimes, too, and speculated on its fate. Three months had gone by and Sotheby’s had yet to sell it.
“I feel bad for it,” Graham said.
“And for Aunt Mary, too,” Elspeth said. “She thought it was this treasure and no one wants it.”
“She should have had it buried with her,” Graham said, and wondered suddenly if he’d gone too far and offended Elspeth, but she only laughed.
While he talked to Elspeth, Audra and Bentrup strolled ahead, deep in conversation. Graham thought privately that Bentrup was in awe of Audra—her flirtatiousness, her prettiness, her forceful personality. But Elspeth never seemed the slightest bit jealous, even though Audra always tucked her hand into Bentrup’s arm as they walked, so maybe Graham was wrong about that. Later Audra would tell him that Bentrup was sixty-two, and that he grew up in Portsmouth, England, and that he used to go to tanning booths but didn’t anymore, his skin just sort of stayed that color. Also, he’d been married twice, the first time to a woman named Tillie, who had an unshakable belief that dishcloths should be folded a certain way to avoid bad luck, and the second time to a woman named Margaret, who disliked it when Bentrup spat in the rhododendrons.
Sometimes Graham and Bentrup walked together, but they never spoke of anything personal. In fact, Graham found Bentrup almost maddeningly impersonal, like some tour guide they’d hired and now regretted bringing along. He said things like, “Chinatown is the largest Chinese community outside Asia,” and “While much of the foliage in Central Park appears natural, it is in fact almost entirely landscaped.” Even worse, it took him easily—easily—five minutes to get to the end of any sentence with the way he drawled in his British accent. Was this the kind of conversation he had with Elspeth at home? Was this what she liked? But Graham never paid much attention to Bentrup because he was too busy trying to eavesdrop on Elspeth and Audra.
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