Body Surfing by Anita Shreve Read Free Book Online Page A

about numbers, and she names a fabulous sum. She speaks with confidence about baseball, acute myeloid leukemia, and a restaurant failure on St. Botolph Street. Ben perks up noticeably at the mention of possible real estate for sale.
    Sydney observes Julie from across the table. The girl seems subdued. Perhaps Julie sees in Victoria a woman she will never be. Maybe she minds an outsider's claim on her brother. Or is it simply that she already hears the sounds of everyone leaving her for activities to which she will not be invited? Sydney makes a mental note to ask the girl for a walk after lunch.
    Sydney is seldom told directly of future household events. Rather, she is meant to deduce them as the day progresses--from bits of conversation, from extra bags of produce on the granite counter, or, more subtly, from Mrs. Edwards's second shower at three o'clock so that her hair will be fresh for the evening's festivities.
    Today, at lunch, a reference is made to needing two more bottles of Shiraz for dinner. A debate is held regarding the strength of the breeze and whether or not having drinks on the porch is even feasible. But it is this sequence of sentences--Ferris doesn't drink; Marissa likes Pellegrino; Claire said Will can come after all--that leads Sydney to arrive at the sum of thirteen for dinner long before she passes the dining room, elaborately set three hours ahead of time with etched glasses, mismatched antique china, and damask linens (all Emporia finds) for precisely that number.
    Victoria delicately wipes her mouth and praises the lunch. She and Jeff and Ben are going to play tennis. Jeff extends an invitation to Sydney, but she begs off, declaring that she's a terrible player, which is, more or less, an accurate statement. But once again, the rudimentary math is troublesome.
    "I'll play," Mr. Edwards, ever accommodating, offers.
    Talents are weighed and measured. Ben and Mr. Edwards will take on Vicki and Jeff. From this, Sydney concludes that Ben is the best player of the four.
    Sydney does not do the dishes more than once a day. It is a private rule she never breaks, even under dire circumstances, such as on the first Friday night of her stay, when an impromptu cocktail party required upwards of thirty glasses and hors d'oeuvres plates, not to mention four cheese-encrusted cookie sheets on which Mr. Edwards had hastily baked crostini. Sydney had already emptied and reloaded the dishwasher earlier in the day and so simply retreated to her room to listen to the Sox on WEEI. Today, she effects a similar retreat, knowing that much will be required of her after the evening meal. She is happy to help out, but she has her limits.
    Sydney enters her room and is immediately overwhelmed by grief for Daniel. By simply shutting the door, she has been hurtled back to an understanding of precisely what it is that she has lost. The expectation of a normal life. A buffer against the dead hour, fast approaching. A respite from the necessity to remake a future, to enter the peculiarly other universes of strangers. She presses a hand to her stomach, which seems to have taken the worst of the blow.
    She remembers their particular fit, her pale leg slipping between his two when they lay together after making love, as if their limbs had been deliberately fashioned for this purpose. The way Daniel would never cross a room without glancing at her face. The way he'd come home from his shift, drained, searching for her, room to room, only the sight of her allowing him access to a normal life.
    The sensation fades, leaving in its wake a desire not to be left alone. Sydney walks to the dresser with its mirror. She has had two weddings, one in a church and one in a temple. One at which her mother wept with happiness; one at which her father seemed privately pleased. Surely, Sydney thinks, that is any woman's quota. Another wedding would be greedy, faintly ridiculous. She couldn't wear white, expect gifts, have a reception. Is she done, then?