This One Is Mine: A Novel by Maria Semple Read Free Book Online Page A

She’d been off the pill for a year and nothing had happened. Before she resorted to in vitro, Violet decided to quit her job. A week later, driving down Mulholland, she saw an open-house sign at the bottom of a long driveway she’d always wondered about. On a lark, she went up. She got out of the car and found herself pulled up the exposed aggregate stepping-stones, through the Aleppo pines, and into a glass box on five acres overlooking Stone Canyon Reservoir. The realtor was in the yard talking to a client, so Violet walked through the house alone. It was as if a benevolent force guided her from room to room. Violet had been in a few Richard Neutra houses before and knew instinctively that this was his and arguably one of his best. The place had been neglected since the sixties and needed a ton of work. Still, she raced down the hill to David’s office, alive with images of David and her living in the house, entertaining in the house, bringing their elusive baby home from the hospital to the house. Without removing his headset, David had said that if she really wanted it, she could offer full asking price. He didn’t need to see it. He trusted her. She was UV-A.
    How could she have foreseen that the house would be her undoing? The restoration and addition cost four times the estimate and took three times as long. Overnight, Violet shape-shifted from in-demand, Emmy-winning writer to resident dunce. Every day David pummeled her with questions she couldn’t know the answers to. Why didn’t the electrician show up? Who scratched the brand-new floors? Why did the decorator charge twenty grand for a throw rug? How did that window get broken? Why did they deliver the wrong tile? But the house was Violet’s big idea, so she stoically accepted her role as human bucket for David to vomit into. In addition to the daily drubbings, she was paying for the remodel with her own money and ended up burning through her entire savings. When they finally moved in, Violet was pregnant and, for the first time in her life, unemployed and without a penny to her name. David had no reaction to the news that she’d need to start sending her bills to his accountant. She knew it was a fair trade. Lots of women would gladly get called a dumb fuck a couple times a week in exchange for not having to work.
    Steam hissed from the cracked shower door. “Ultra?” David stuck his head out. “Aren’t you coming in?”
    “One second.” Violet opened the medicine cabinet and lifted the colorful Venetian glass votive they’d gotten on their honeymoon, crammed tight with Q-tips. Underneath was the business card she couldn’t throw away but hadn’t dared touch.
    TEDDY REYES
    BASS PLAYER
    Violet closed the cabinet door and gave her face a hard look. Her skin was holding up well. From one to ten, she’d give herself a seven, with room for improvement.

CHAPTER THREE
    Goodnight Nobody   Kate Mantilini      Hamburger Hamlet / El Torito
    Learn to Park      Where Would It Be?   The Putting Green
    Flatland      What Positions Do You Like?
    S ALLY WAS FOUR BLOCKS FROM J EREMY’S BUILDING WHEN SHE STARTED LOOKING for a parking space. His street was nothing but apartments, which meant there was never any place to park. It made Sally want to scream. She trolled the endless stretch of crammed cars and had to remind herself: when Jeremy became a giant TV star and they were married and living in Beverly Hills, she’d be
nostalgic
for the days she fretted over finding a parking space in the valley.
    A car pulled out — smack in front of Jeremy’s building! Sally gunned it and waved to the exiting Cadillac. The old boat had left so much room that Sally was able to glide right in, headfirst, without having to go into reverse even once. She turned off the ignition, then thought of something: if this was her one allotment of good luck for the day, did she really want to waste it on a parking space? Maybe she should park somewhere else. A car