Standard Deviation: ‘The best feel-good novel around’ Daily Mail. Katherine Heiny
and we’re updating the website, so tell Matthew to wear a red T-shirt on Sunday for the group photo. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Graham said.
He left his study, intent on finding Matthew, but the first person he bumped into was Bitsy. She was wearing running clothes, and her cheeks showed hectic spots of color like a teething baby’s. Her breath was ragged and loud, as though she were just returning from running instead of just starting out.
“Bitsy?” he said uncertainly.
He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she brushed past him as though he weren’t there and thumped out of the apartment.
Graham started toward the kitchen and met Matthew coming out of the bathroom. “Hey, Matthew!” he said. “I just got great news. You made the Origami Club!”
“Okay,” Matthew said. So much for him being very pleased.
Graham sighed. He went to find Audra. She was in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine.
“Oh, God,” she said as soon as she saw him. “Can you make fettuccine Alfredo tonight with full-fat cream and all the butter? Maybe even double the cheese?”
“I guess,” Graham said. “Why?”
“Bitsy!” Audra said as though this was an obvious answer. “Didn’t you see her?”
He nodded. “What’s wrong? She seemed upset.”
“Upset?” Audra said. “Jesus, Graham! She found out about Ted and Jasmine like one minute ago!” She saw his alarmed look and added, “No, I didn’t tell her.”
“How did she find out?”
Audra pushed her hair back from her forehead. “She was just here in the kitchen with me, doing her prerunning stretches and talking about hip flexors and round-the-world lunges, and I said that round-the-world is also something men ask prostitutes for, and she said, ‘How do you know that,’ and then her phone rings. So she digs it out of that little running belt she wears, and it’s Ted, and right away Bitsy says, ‘If it’s about that insurance claim, I still haven’t been able to find it,’ and then he says something and she says, ‘Can we talk about this later because I like to have my mind calm before my run,’ which was kind of a surprise to me because I thought calm was Bitsy’s baseline—”
Yes, oral history is a wonderful practice—a powerful way to preserve traditional customs and confront contemporary problems. Graham firmly believed that. But he also believed he knew what it was like to be married to a tribal elder whose storytelling is a bit on the long-winded side.
“—and then Ted says something and then Bitsy says, ‘Yes?’ in this very sharp voice and then he says something else, and suddenly she pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down and then she says, ‘I am sitting down,’ and she listens again and then she says, ‘Yes, someone is here with me,’ and she looked over at me, and I thought something was wrong with her eyes for a minute. But then I realized that her pupils were so dilated that her irises looked black. She looked like—like a shark. And she listened for a longer time and then she said, ‘I will never forgive you for this, Ted.’ And then she hung up and tucked her phone back into her belt.”
Audra leaned back against the refrigerator. Its blank whiteness made her look like a riot of color—burnished hair and red blouse and flushed cheeks. Like a winter sunset.
“I said, ‘Oh, Bitsy, that sounded awful,’ and sort of held out my arms, but she just stood up and she still had the shark-eyes and she was moving like a shark, too, sort of—of cruising. It was like she was swimming through the air too fast and might crash into the wall. And she said, ‘I want to go for my run,’ and I said, ‘Bitsy! Your mind’s not calm at all! You’ll be hit by a car or at the very least pull a hamstring!’ and she said, ‘Just two miles,’ in this faraway voice, and then she left— Oh, Graham, I thought I would be relieved, but I feel so bad for her.”
Graham sighed. “Me, too.”
He did feel bad for Bitsy, more than he had thought he would. He realized that he, like Audra, felt responsible for Bitsy. She was a member of their household, and she was in pain. And the fact that Graham and Audra had inflicted this same pain on Elspeth all those years ago did not make them hypocrites.
And yet—and yet—he could not help wishing it hadn’t happened on the same day they were celebrating Matthew’s acceptance into the Origami Club. Because Graham had come to believe that people were only happy when they could feel one emotion at a time. That was the reason that things that had provoked such pure joy in childhood—fresh chocolate-chip cookies, a sweatshirt warm from the dryer, a perfect sand castle—did not offer the same joy in adulthood. You were too busy having all these other tiresome emotions about income tax and drunken texts and varicose veins and how much money was in the parking meter. People in love were happy because being in love blocked all the other emotions out. And righteous anger felt so good, for a few minutes anyway, because it burned so hot that all other feelings were cleared away. And now Bitsy’s heartbreak would overshadow Matthew’s triumph and in the ten years of Matthew’s life so far, triumph had not come easily—oh, my, no.
“Hey,” he said, trying to make his voice enthusiastic. “At least I have some good news. Matthew made it into the Origami Club.”
“Really?” Audra smiled shakily. “Then we should be opening the sparkling cider, not the red wine. Matthew! Come here!”
Matthew came into the kitchen and stood there shuffling his feet while Graham popped the cork on the sparkling cider and filled the three champagne flutes Audra lined up on the counter.
“To Matthew,” Graham said, lifting his glass.
“Cheers,” Audra said.
They clinked glasses and all took a sip. Graham allowed the sparkling cider to roll around on his tongue for a moment. Nope. Absolutely no mystic rejuvenating power whatsoever. It just wasn’t like champagne.
“Sweetheart,” Audra said to Matthew. “I am so proud of you.”
Matthew glanced down, and when he looked back up, his expression was radiant. Only Audra could bring that out. It was as though Matthew’s face had been dipped in sunshine, Graham thought—and Graham was not normally a person who gave himself over to mawkish metaphors.
The apartment door banged open. That would be Bitsy, back from her run. (Evidently, she really could run an eight-minute mile.) They would give her lots of red wine and Graham would make fettuccine Alfredo using full-fat cream. It was the most they could do for her. It was, unfortunately, the most anyone could do for her right now.
“Bitsy!” he called. “Come on into the kitchen and join us!”
Graham looked at Audra. She was looking back at him, her eyelids so heavy with gratitude that her blinks were long, sensual movements, like a cat’s stretches.
It occurred to Graham suddenly that whatever happened with Bitsy tonight—if she decided to leave Ted, or murder Jasmine, or just stay up very late listening to Luther Vandross—Graham would actually be right there while the drama was unfolding. He wouldn’t have to hear about it later.
He did not feel, at that moment, standing there in the kitchen, that he and Audra were living in parallel universes. Or, if they were, she was at the very nearest edge of her universe and he was at the very nearest edge of his, and they had found a thin spot in the fabric of their worlds, a meeting place, and a way to stay there, touching, floating, together.
“You won’t believe what happened!” Graham’s secretary said.
Her name was Olivia and she had long dark hair with heavy bangs. She always looked out from under the bangs like an excited cat peering from under a chair when you’re about