Читать книгу A Song in the Daylight - Paullina Simons - Страница 18

On Saturday night Larissa made a pitcher of Margaritas with Triple Sec, Cointreau and Grand Marnier and thus liquefied the four of them played Scruples, the game that challenged everyone’s idea of what was right, a game of moral dilemmas, everyone’s hated favorite, all conundrummy ambiguity chased farther down the gullet by hard liquor.

“I don’t want to play,” declared Jared. “I want to have some superficial laughs. I don’t want to delve into the complexities of my psyche, or anyone else’s psyche for that matter. Why can’t we be like regular people, and just talk baseball free-agency trades?”

He was voted down. The children remained clean and well-behaved (aside from three whines and a stomp from Emily, and silence from the adolescent and sullen Dylan, Maggie and Ezra’s son), and nothing broke and nothing burned. Larissa, her cast still on, wore a green, form-fitting jersey sweater and tailored black slacks, her hair loosely piled, her makeup deceptively light. She served Brie in puff pastry, a chicken paprika with pappardelle, a bacon salad with her own dressing, and a rum baba for dessert, also homemade. They drank red wine, chasing it down with shots of Reposado, following it with Margaritas. On the stereo, Glenn Gould played Bach like only Gould could play him, exquisitely, his six Partitas (especially BWV 830) imprinted on Larissa’s soul so clearly she could almost play them herself, if only she had a piano, and could play. The fires were on in all the fireplaces, and when the kids ran to the playroom for ping-pong and G-rated board games, the adults were able to talk while the house sparkled, and outside a light dusting of snow fell quietly on the tall bare oaks and the frozen ground.

The question that seemed to come up in Scruples a lot came up. Larissa personally thought it was the only question a game of Scruples ever asked. It was the only question they got mired in, despite the Triple Sec. “You see your best friend’s wife making out with another man. Do you tell?” Last time they played it with Evelyn and Malcolm, and that question came up, Evelyn had told Larissa she and Malcolm didn’t talk for four days afterward.

Last time they played with Bo and Jonny, Jonny’s nonchalant response to this stupid question (“Of course you don’t tell. That’s the guy code.”) so infuriated Bo, they had to take a break from the relationship. Which was difficult considering they continued to live together in an apartment that belonged to Jonny.

When the card was flipped over and read this Saturday night, Ezra and Maggie laughed, Larissa groaned, and Jared said, “You know what I’m going to do from now on? Give a different answer each time it’s asked, to drive you all crazy and maybe next time we can just play Risk.”

“What do you mean from now on?” said Maggie. “That’s what you always do.”

“Jared,” Larissa said to her husband, “just answer the dumb question.”

“No,” said Jared. “The entreaty is clear. Do not end marriages, cause family rifts, or destroy friendships by revealing something totally inappropriate. And that’s by the guys who designed the game!”

Larissa sipped her drink, the salt on the rim deliciously swelling her lime mouth. “Jared’s right. We should heed their rules. Besides,” she added, “I think we’re overlooking the obvious here. How come the only one not in any trouble is the actual adulterer? It’s all about the friends, the secrets, the obligations to the friendship. What about the obligations to the marriage?”

“Yeah, but that’s too obvious,” replied Jared. “That’s why it’s not a Scruples question. It’s not even an ethical dilemma.”

“It is a question, however,” Ezra said. “A question, among many others,” he added pointedly, “that a certain Larissa is refusing to answer. She’s doing that a lot tonight. Not answering questions.”

“Oh, calm down, Ezra,” said Larissa. “Have another drink.”

“Are you a relativist or an absolutist, Larissa?” asked Maggie.

“Well, it depends,” Larissa replied to the raucous laughter of everyone, and she laughed herself, though she couldn’t quite tell what was so funny.

“All right, Miss I-absolutely-shouldn’t-have-made-my-’ritas-so-strong,” said Ezra, watching Larissa who was busy squeezing more lime into what was left of his drink. “Can we talk about business for a sec? Don’t avoid me.”

Larissa pulled out a card. “Let’s play Invent a Question of Scruples instead,” she said.

“Fine,” agreed Ezra. “But I ask first.”

Larissa had two Margaritas and six partitas in her. She smiled, unafraid, tipping her glass in a toast. “Yes, Ezra. What’s your question?”

“Denise goes on maternity leave after Othello. That’s next month.”

This was all he said, like a riddle.

“Is this part of Invent a Question?” Larissa wanted to know. “Denise goes on maternity leave. But she’s ambivalent about the baby, being forty-four and a first-time mom. I believe Denise’s feelings are justified. She doesn’t seem very maternal. You’re asking if should I try to dissuade her from having the child and stay on as director?”

“Larissa.”

“Yes, Ezra?”

“Stop being deliberately obtuse.”

“How am I obtuse?” She loved her Saturday nights with her friends. They were like family.

“Why do you make me tell it to you twice? You know I want you to become the new director for the Pingry Theater Department.”

Larissa swayed while sitting down. She and Jared exchanged a brief but conflicted look.

She painted background murals. She was the set decorator. Which described her life at home too. And every once in a while, when she was working, she’d hear in the nuance of the rehearsals of the sixteen-year-old’s interpretation of Othello something that would catch her ear, and she’d clear her throat and say quietly, but loud enough so that Moor of Venice could hear: “Try it again, Linus, but this time with the emphasis on must as in, ‘And yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.’”

The paint she used for the sets sometimes needed to be thinned with turps, which gave her a vicious, delicious headache, because secretly she loved the smell even as she suffered, and she listened more intently to the last act as she stirred the paint, the black and white to make a stormy gray, and waited for the thickened paint to thin so she could paint the walls behind Desdemona’s bed, on which lay the fifteen-year-old siren Tiffany from Chatham, still in braces but with a Coach purse, straight from the Swim Club, waiting for her lover in the form of Linus from Summit in Birkenstocks to persuade himself of her unthinkable, of his unthinkable.

“That death’s unnatural that kills for loving.

Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?

Some bloody passion shakes your very frame:

These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,

They do not point on me.”

“Do you ever plan to answer me?” Ezra demanded.

“Yes.” Larissa picked up another Scruples card. “Ezra, would you be willing to eat a bowl of live crickets for $40,000?”

“Lar,” Jared said, “if you want it, you should take it.”

“Want what?” she said innocently. They were getting undressed in the bedroom.

“Come on. Seriously.”

But she had too much to drink for seriously. She fell on the bed in her black bra and underwear, her hair loose, her made-up eyes half closing. Pulling up her casted leg, she motioned for Jared with her index finger, and he fell on top of her, in his clothes, also having had a little too much to drink.

“We’ll work out the kids,” he muttered, kissing her. “Take the job. You know Ezra will be thrilled.”

“What, I’m now accepting work to make Ezra happy?” Her arms flung around him.

“No, to make you happy.” They nestled, rumbled to an inebriated rhythm of a married Saturday night with nowhere to go on Sunday morning.

“I’m happy,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I know how much you used to love it. Directing.”

“Yes.” Her eyes remained closed. The true unspoken inquiry hung in the air, the real issue, the only one worth having an answer to, the thirsty dilemma at the crux of each human heart: How it best for me to live?

Soon Larissa would be asleep. She felt herself drifting, even as excitement built up in her from the feel of his man’s body on top of her, from the smell of his liquored-up breath, from his lips on her lips, on her throat. “I’ll think about it,” she said. It was like a placeholder to end the conversation. I’ll think about it meant she would endeavor never to give it another thought. Theatrically she moaned. Jared forgot about theater, as she hoped he would.