April 30, 11:20 a.m.
Edie: I’m at the Plaza in El Paso. These past eight days have been hell. Mother and Father still aren’t speaking to me and Burton is horrified by my decision. When hasn’t Burton been horrified?!
Wicky: Your brother was born with a stick up his ass. The only Yalie I’ve known to reject a tap from Bones. Idiot could be a senator by now.
Edie: He’s as boring as his wife. She’s nauseating, and he lectures me on how I should live my life.
Wicky: Your brother loves his moral high ground.
Edie: One of us has morals?
April 30, 1:12 p.m.
Wicky: I can’t wait to hold you in my arms.
Edie: God, get here fast.
April 30, 5:46 p.m.
Edie: Hey, handsome. I was shown the pottery before the auction. I think my client will be thrilled. When is your plane arriving?
April 30, 6:52 p.m.
Wicky: I’m still in Lansing. Have a big case coming up. I don’t know if I can get away tonight.
Edie: I’ll come to Lansing.
April 30, 8:35 p.m.
Wicky: No. Don’t come.
Edie: Please. I love you.
Wicky: I can’t do this any longer.
Edie: Do what?
Wicky: This.
Edie: What are you saying?
Wicky: I love my wife.
18
I give Momma two days before I call her again, but it goes straight to voicemail. She’s left a recorded message that no child should ever have to hear: “Pudge and me are gettin’ busy, if y’all know what I mean. Try back in a few hours—beeeeep.”
I clasp my throat and try not to gag. My folks are too old to get busy. They hate each other. Where’s Daddy’s wife? This is worse than Momma getting an Espinoza Especiale in the back of Jorge’s taco truck.
Between Momma and Daddy “gettin’ busy” and Claire’s etiquette lessons, my brain is upside down. Over afternoon tea, Claire shows me how to stir and sip without breaking the Baroque. She tells me how to give compliments, even if I have to stretch the truth to spare someone’s feelings. Like, “Your baby is beautiful,” she says. “Even if the poor thing has the misfortune to resemble a hairless rat.”
I prefer the Texas way of complimenting folks to spare feelings. Like gushing over someone’s new hairstyle because you can’t think of one good thing to say about her ugly baby. Plainly, Claire and I have two different ideas when it comes to “stretching the truth.” There’s stretching the truth and there’s bullshitting. I’m practiced at both, but saying a rat baby is beautiful is beyond my capabilities. I admire Claire’s bool-sheet skills. I didn’t think she had it in her.
At night I learn the difference between red and white wineglasses and cake and fruit forks, and that polite dinner conversation is different from lively cocktail conversation.
The Friday after my release from the loony bin, Edie’s personal trainer, Rod, calls me on the company phone and wants to know when we should start working out again. He uses words like cardio and boomerang and my muscles get cramps just thinking about it, but if it gets me out of Claire’s etiquette boot camp, I’m in. I tell him I don’t want to boomerang (even though I don’t have a clue what that means) but I’ll jog with him, and he shows up at Hawthorne the next day.
I’m in a cream-colored jogging suit and white-and-gray running shoes with extra-cushy soles. Rod makes me stretch and lunge to warm up my muscles before I pull on my Carhartt cap and take off with him. We don’t make it far before I get a side stitch and my lungs hurt. I grab the ache just below my ribs and move to some soft grass, where I collapse to my knees. “I’m done for the day.”