When the Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes Read Free Book Online

in the afternoon.
    She poured two glasses, offered him one, and motioned to the
    living room, where they sat an appropriate distance apart. She took the leather couch; he took one of the leather chairs.
    “A lot of leather,” Noah said, stumbling in his effort to come up
    with an ice-breaker.
    “It was your father’s idea. Obviously. Although I’ve come to like
    it. We bought the furniture last year, and I guess he was in a particularly masculine frame of mind. Take this leather, throw in a bunch of red meat, add a high-pressure legal practice, and I guess you’ve proven your manhood without having to embarrass yourself with a
    mistress or a shiny red sports car.” She looked at Noah and smiled.
    “You see? It was easier to get used to the leather than worry about the mistress.”
    It had never before crossed his mind that Tricia had been his fa-
    ther’s mistress before she was his wife. But now it had, and he
    couldn’t shake the thought. He wished she hadn’t brought up his
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    father’s apparent recent need to reaffirm his masculinity, because it made him realize that his father had had decades in which to go through several midlife crises.
    “So how is your mother?” she asked, moving the topic of conver-
    sation from one area of discomfort to another.
    “Fine. She’s . . . fine.”
    “I’ve always liked her.”
    Noah twitched. Did his father’s third wife really just say some-
    thing nice about his father’s first wife? How would they have even—?
    “We were both on a benefit committee for the Whitney a few
    years ago,” she said, anticipating his reaction and, in fact, seeming to enjoy it. “So how does she like living in Florida?”
    “Fine.” He paused. “Just fine.”
    Noah’s relationship with his mother was, if possible, even more
    complex than his relationship with his father. Divorced from Max
    just a few years after Noah was born, Frieda Feldman Abraham
    took her substantial settlement and started life anew, reborn as an Upper West Side social activist. Even as he was unable to shed it, he knew that his resentment about having been given everything too
    easily came directly from the mouth of his mother. While he never
    disliked his mother for that, he always felt wary and guilty in her presence. And he also wasn’t sorry she had moved to Florida.
    Also, he didn’t like the way she ate her salad. That poke-poke-
    poking at each individual lettuce leaf made him want to scream
    sometimes.
    Noah shook his head. “It’s just sort of strange. I mean, my mother knowing my stepmother . . .”
    Tricia wagged a finger in front of his face. “We’ve had this con-
    versation before, haven’t we?”
    It took Noah a few seconds to understand what she meant, but
    then he remembered.
    “Sorry. I mean, ‘my mother knowing my father’s wife .’ Better?”
    “Much,” she said, offering no further information. Several times
    in the past she had warned him away from the word “stepmother”
    without explanation, and Noah now knew better than to ask. It was
    her title, so she had the right to be called what she wanted to be called, even if Noah felt that calling her “his father’s wife” added even more distance to an already distant relationship.
    They sat—uncomfortable among the leather-laden comfort—
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    for a long stretch of the mid-afternoon, vaguely looking out the
    window at the sliver of blue between the buildings, sipping wine,
    and wishing for easy conversation. Finally, Noah remembered his
    prepared topic.
    “So your family . . . They’re in Buffalo?”
    After a half hour or so listening to what he came to think of as
    the Chronicles of Buffalo, conversation again wound down. Noah
    excused himself and, finally collecting his bag from the foyer,
    walked down a picture-lined hallway to the guest bedroom.
    He was pleased to see that his former bedroom had not been
    leatherized in the redecorating process. In fact,