Andrew made me a drink, a vodka and tonic with a perfect slice of lemon and a sprig of mint, served in a Waterford crystal glass. He refilled both our drinks within five minutes while he and I nibbled on buttery Camembert served with crackers shaped like flowers. Dorothy Parker was damn straight: living well really is the best revenge. Tina was in the kitchen, supervising Goldie, based on the clatter of pots and dishes that drifted up the hallway toward us.
“I must tell you,” Andrew said after I assured him that I was more than pleased with the drink, “how excited Tina has been about your coming here.” Andrew is lean and tall and speaks with a mild English accent. He looked around and lowered his voice as though assuring himself that my sister was not hiding around the corner, eavesdropping. “Tina can be a little, uh, wrapped up in herself at times,” he said.
“You mean narcissistic?” I suggested.
He smiled and nodded. At heart, Andrew is a nice man. I often felt that he shared some genes with certain jazz musicians who, I remember reading, become truly at ease with themselves and the world only when they are making music. Andrew, I suspected, was truly at ease only when in an operating room, an anaesthetized patient in front of him, a surgical team around him, and a scalpel in his hand. A little ghoulish, maybe, but wouldn’t it be comforting to know that the man who is about to slice open your body and expose its innards to the world didn’t want to be doing anything else with his life?
“Mind you,” Andrew said, “the word ‘narcissistic’ has a pejorative sense to it, and I’m not sure that I would want to apply it in a cavalier manner to Tina, who, as you know, has many admirable qualities.”
Two of the most admirable qualities in a man are his easy use of phrases like “cavalier manner” and his quick defence of his wife, whether she deserves it or not. I assured Andrew that I meant no disrespect to my sister by using the term “narcissistic.” Andrew was so pleased with my comment that he didn’t notice when I checked to confirm that my nose hadn’t grown.
“She is so fond and so envious of you,” he said, sampling his own drink.
“What would I have that would ever make Tina envious?” The vodka was warming. I decided I would drink less brandy and more Smirnoff.
“Your outlook. Your sense of self. Your …” He smiled over his glass at me. “Joie de vivre.”
Thank goodness. I thought he was going to say my boobs.
He was still talking. The vodka was loosening him as much as me. “Tina wraps herself up in material things because she lacks your ability to take life as it comes. Those are her words, by the way. Not mine. ‘Josie would be happy living in sneakers and jeans every day,’ she has said to me a couple of times. ‘She just knows how to take life as it comes and not give a damn about anything else.’ She meant that as a compliment. I mean, Josie, she really adores you. In her own way.”
“We’re different,” I agreed. “But we’re close. In our own way.”
He looked toward the open door again and began sliding his chair closer to me. “I know she spends too much time and effort on incidentals in life.” He paused and actually smothered a giggle before speaking again, which suggested that his drink was stronger than mine. “Sometimes I tell people I think I’m married to a centipede when I see all the shoes she keeps in her closet. Did I mention we converted the guest bedroom, the one next to ours, into a closet for Tina’s clothes?” He drained his drink. “Another?” he said, holding his empty glass for me to inspect.
Like a dutiful sister-in-law, I passed the empty glass to him, and he turned to the small bar next to the window just as Tina leaned in through the open doorway. “How are you two getting along?” she asked. She had changed from the sweater and skirt she wore earlier into a satiny green dress under a flowered apron. She had even changed her lipstick from coral red to a deep crimson, a better match for deep green. At least her hair colour was the same.
“We’re having a fine old time,” I said, “talking about you.”
“I love it when people talk about me,” she said. “The nastier the better.” She held up five fingers. I thought she was showing off her manicure. “Five minutes,” she said. “Ten at the most.” She disappeared down the hall.
“We may have to do more drinking and less talking,” Andrew said, handing me my third drink.
“The key to sociability,” I said, and we touched the rims of our glasses together. I was beginning to like Andrew. “Your work is so interesting,” I said. “Can you tell me about it?”
He gave it some thought. “After a while …” he said, and began again. “After all the years I’ve been doing surgery, more than twenty now, there are few surprises, and the surprises I encounter are never good news, only bad. I regret that a little. I think our lives are better when we are surprised from time to time, don’t you? I don’t mean big surprises like your spouse announcing that she’s leaving you or …”
He looked away. I knew what he had been about to say. He had been about to say we don’t need surprises like finding your spouse dead.
We both began speaking at once. I started to tell him that he needn’t be embarrassed, it was a normal thing to say, but when I heard him speaking, looking out the window at the mountaintops, I stopped. “I have come to believe that a truly happy life is poised on the edge between routine and normalcy and risk and surprises,” Andrew said. “Maybe that’s why people do things like skydiving or riding roller coasters.”
Or having affairs with their husband’s partner, I thought.
“Anyway, I’m sharing office space at the clinic now with a urologist,” Andrew said before taking a long pull from his drink. “We have a lot of fun together. I call him the plumber and he calls me the butcher.” He laughed at his own joke.
The sounds drifting up the hall from the kitchen were growing louder, along with Tina’s voice barking instructions to the silent Goldie.
“Tina is very lucky to be married to you, Andrew,” I said.
He blushed. What makes a celebrated surgeon blush? A compliment.
“Thank you,” Andrew said, and set his glass aside. “Thank you, Josie, that’s very kind. You know,” and he pulled his chair a few inches closer, “I know Tina has her faults and all of that, and we have our little disagreements over things, but I could do worse. Than be married to her, I mean. Some of her friends … are you playing bridge with them Thursday?”
“Actually, I hope not.”
“Avoid it if you can. A couple of her friends, Charlene and what’s the other one? Davida. Charlene and Davida, they are really over the top. Kiss you on the cheek and stab you in the back. Simultaneously.” He stumbled through that word, adding an extra syllable or two. “I came home …” He glanced at the doorway, confirmed that Tina wasn’t lurking there with a shotgun, and dropped his voice so low it was my turn to pull my chair closer. “I came home one afternoon just as the bridge club meeting was breaking up. Davida had already left with a couple of other girls—that’s what they call themselves, and that’s all right, I guess—and three or four of them were getting ready to leave. I got some kisses from them, and then Charlene discovered that someone had walked off with her handbag. She knew it was Davida because they both have the same Louis Vuitton purse, so it was an easy mistake to make. But what happened next was that Charlene and the other women—except Tina, I’m proud to say—when they knew it was Davida’s purse, they opened it and practically ransacked it, looking at all her receipts, her pictures, her address book, everything. I mean, that’s just—”
“Dinner is finally served,” Tina said.
“Wonderful.” Andrew smiled, then stood up and took my arm. “Josie and I are starved, aren’t we?”
I agreed I was, which meant I avoided commenting on Charlene and Davida and their purses and friends.