The Pretend Wife by Bridget Asher Read Free Book Online Page B

called tomorrow to commiserate about Jason’s stupidity. This was the kind of “behavior at these galas” that she was talking about. Helen’s rose was just a raggedy half-rose on a stem now. The baby’s breath was crumpled. I felt a little envious. No one would ever have bitten my corsage in half. I had an aura that didn’t invite that kind of thing—or this is what I told myself—even from my husband. “Are roses poisonous?” I asked halfheartedly.
    â€œI never thought of Peter as a barbarian,” Elliot said to me.
    â€œHe’s an anesthesiologist,” I said, nibbling on my kabob. “What’s the difference?” I looked at Elliot intently. I don’t know that he’d be beautiful to other people—maybe a little. But he was beautiful to me. I liked the way his wrinkles were turning out even—they creased upward as if they’d all been made from laughing. I said, “Your ears are very flat to your head.” This was a test, in a way. It’s the kind of thing that I might have said to Peter a long time ago, but he’d simply look at me and say, “You’re funny,” meaning odd-funny. And I learned not to say things like that anymore.
    Elliot reached up and touched one of his ears. “I was built for speed,” he said.
    Then Helen pressed her fingertips together and got very serious. “What happened?” she asked Elliot. “What went wrong with you and your fiancée?”
    â€œAfter two years or so, I realized that I was in the middle of a conversation that wouldn’t last,” Elliot said.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” the blonde asked.
    â€œA marriage is a conversation that’s supposed to last a lifetime. We didn’t have enough to say to each other,” he explained.
    â€œThat’s a beautiful definition of marriage,” Helen said. “Write that down,” she said to me as if I were her secretary. I ignored her. “I want that read at my wedding or funeral or something.”
    â€œA lifetime’s worth of material is a lot of material,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with just being quiet together?” Peter added, and I liked when we appeared to be a united front like this. “A lot of couples are comfortable enough with each other not to talk all the time.”
    Jason said, “I like not talking.” He wasn’t as effervescent as he had been earlier. In fact, there was an eye-cutting paranoia about him now. He knew that there was a lot of talking in his near future and it was going to be unpleasant. The blonde’s interest had waned too. She was holding a tissue to her nose, no longer reading his mind.
    â€œMy mother wanted me to go through with it anyway, I think. She wants me married,” Elliot said.
    â€œI despise my mother,” Helen said, and she had reason to. Her mother was an alcoholic who’d been married a number of times to unlikable men. I’d always kind of wondered if Helen didn’t really want to get married and have kids because she feared becoming her mother—so her relationships were always self-sabotaged. This is the kind of thing that my therapist would have said. She talked to me a good bit about self-sabotage.
    â€œWell,” Elliot said, “I love mine.” And I could tell that he must be very drunk, going soft for his mother like that in front of everyone. “My mother and father had a conversation that didn’t hold up, but it’s worth shooting for.”
    I don’t know why this hit me so hard, but it did. It seemed as if he was saying that the perfect relationship was out there and he, in his cockiness, was going to find it. It seemed naive and boastful, though it probably wasn’t meant that way. I was going to say something in reply. I can’t remember what exactly, but it was going to be vehement. Something about divorce statistics and the reality of relationships