The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson Read Free Book Online

it is,” I say to him. “It’s the human condition, Grant. Women care about these things. We talk about marriage. Did you even know that? Women are hungry to talk about these things with men. I want to know what you think!”
    “Sometimes …” he says with a sigh.
    “Sometimes what?”
    “Nothing. Sometimes I just wish you weren’t so silly.”
    My mouth actually drops open, and I have to concentrate on closing it again. I look out the window and do not speak to him until well after we’ve arrived at the restaurant, which is quite elegant, with thick carpets and a massive fireplace and honey-colored hurricane lamps on the tables, the kind of place with huge padded booths and plaques on the wall. Clark and the grad student are already sitting at a table, side by side, only she’s turned away from him and is looking down at something in her lap while he sits and watches her and sips a drink. He drinks manhattans, straight up, as I recall from twenty-three years of faculty parties.
    Silly! What a word. I can’t get over Grant calling me that.
    Clark jumps to his feet and kisses me on both cheeks, and then he introduces us to La Wife, even though of course I already know all about her via the grapevine. I know that she’s getting her master’s in environmental science and that her full name is Padgett Halverson-Winstanley, which sounds to me like three last names, and the word is that she’s not the traditional type of trophy wife, which is code for the fact that she’s not particularly beautiful or sexy. She’s the new breed of young wife, meaning she’s opinionated and brainy and scrappy and wears funky clothes, in the way that Mary Lou Winstanley, with her station wagon filled with her five kids and a whole bunch of soccer equipment, could never pull off. Clark met Padgett at a conference he organized. Soon after they met, she transferred to the college here, and then—voilà!—six months later he got a divorce from Mary Lou, who kept the house and the cars. I was never close friends with Mary Lou, who was a little bit cold to people she considered “outsiders” like me, but everyone said it was just awful for her to get dumped like that, like an old cloth coat. Still, when I see her in the grocery store these days, she looks just the same as ever, wearing jeans and sweatshirts with the college name on them, her short hair feathered out in wings. Somebody told me she got a great divorce settlement.
    Clark shakes Grant’s hand and then nudges Padgett, who remains seated, and I see that the reason she’s looking down is that she’s texting somebody on her cell phone. She looks up and gives us both a vacant smile and holds up one hand, but her other hand never stops its lightning-quick dance over the buttons of her phone, her thumb flashing two giant silver rings.
    “She’s arranging a meet-up for the environmental students,” Clark says by way of explanation, and I feel sorry for him, having to use words like meet-up when he means meeting , and also for the fact that you can just see in his face that he wishes she would sit up straight and talk to us. Don’t worry , I want to telegraph him. I know she’s not going to be the old kind of faculty wife, and it’s just fine with me .
    “Well!” he says. “It’s so lovely to see you, Annabelle. May I say that you’re looking quite … relaxed.”
    This is puzzling, and since I am anything but relaxed, I figure it is code for something. Relaxed, meaning tired? Relaxed, meaning that I’m letting myself go?
    “You look awfully relaxed, too, Clark,” I say, and Grant sits down, growling about how he’s not relaxed in the slightest.
    “You need a drink, then,” Clark says, summoning the waiter.
    “What I need are days that last thirty-six hours instead of twenty-four so I can get my work done,” Grant says. I kick him lightly under the table, which has always been our deal: I’m to remind him to be social if he seems to be acting like the