The Great Man by Kate Christensen Read Free Book Online Page B

lawyer’s secretary…nobody.”
    Lila considered this question. Her date with Rex seemed anemic in comparison. What did they have to offer each other that was in any way biography-worthy?
    “Of course you,” she said.
    “I never asked him for anything,” said Teddy. “Never asked him to leave Abigail, never asked him for a cent. When I was sick, I told him not to come around. When I gave birth, you brought flowers, not Oscar.”
    “And you never resented it,” Lila prompted.
    “I preferred it that way. I wasn’t pretending. I loved Oscar. I loved who he was. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about him, and I saw him so clearly…. That’s why he came back to me, even with all the girls and models and married women who chased him. He always came back to me, and he told me everything. I wasn’t being a martyr…. I was never jealous. I always felt a man was lucky to have me and if he was smart, he’d see that, and if he didn’t, he was an idiot. Arrogance, I guess it is. It served me well, though, because my lack of jealousy was another thing that kept him interested. And I knew him better than he knew himself. He was such a pathological narcissist. Telling him what he was thinking was the equivalent of a blow job for him. He made me feel brilliant for understanding him, made me feel as if I were a genius.”
    She laughed and looked out at the yard. Lila kept quiet. Teddy had never talked like this before about Oscar.
    “I can’t bear that he’s gone sometimes,” Teddy said. “I sometimes literally feel that I can’t bear that I’ll never see him again. Am I romanticizing Oscar?” Her voice was high.
    “Not at all,” said Lila.
    Teddy reached over and took Lila’s hand. Lila started a little; Teddy wasn’t the touchy type. She rarely hugged anyone, and although they always exchanged a mutual peck on the cheek to say hello or good-bye, it was generally more out of form than feeling. Their brief sexual past was there between them, of course, but it was light-years away from where they were now. Teddy’s hand tightened around Lila’s.
    “Isn’t it strange,” she said, “to be at the end of your life, to feel you have so much more life in you…. But you won’t get it. The body gives out. I feel as if I were ready to start all over with someone, all of a sudden after missing Oscar for so long…. This feeling reminds me of youth. But youth is gone.”
    “What about your old boss Lewis?” asked Lila.
    “Lewis,” said Teddy. “What about him?”
    “He’s been in love with you for decades. He’s rich and handsome and intelligent and so nice. And he’s not married to anyone else.”
    Teddy waved the thought away, looking inscrutably amused. “I’m so happy you have a date with a nice suitable man.”
    “What’s gotten into you?” Lila said warmly. “This isn’t like you at all. You’re usually so stoic…. It’s good to hear you talk like this.”
    “It’s these biographers,” said Teddy. “Stirring the pot.”
    “You know,” said Lila, “you never really grieved for Oscar; you just went on after he died. It’s good you’re saying all this now.”
    “You mean I didn’t grieve publicly. How could I? I wasn’t his wife.”
    “You were. You were his true wife.”
    “Well, I was certainly faithful to him. One narcissistic baby-man was enough. And I could share Oscar, but he couldn’t share me. That was the deal.” Teddy and Lila both laughed.
    As Teddy was leaving Lila’s house, she heard the phone ring, heard Lila answer it and cry, “Ben!” Her eldest son, who called her every day. Lila’s three sons all loved their mother uncomplicatedly. They had always felt sure of her devotion to them and returned it in kind. It served Teddy right: She had girls, twin girls, difficult, complicated, mercurial girls who felt for their mother a strong tumult of love and hate and many other things. Teddy had had Oscar, Lila Sam, but Lila had had sons, Teddy daughters; Teddy had had