The Actor and the Housewife Read Online Free PDF

highest already white with snow. She glimpsed the building cluster of downtown Salt Lake City before they veered north, leaving behind sight of the palatial peaks for the older, rounded hills of Davis County. The road lifted, and to the west she could see the mysterious purple outline of Antelope Island and a glint of the Great Salt Lake. Becky sighed, meaning that even though she’d only been gone one night, the landscape already felt new and it was nice coming home. Mike smiled, meaning that he understood and was glad to have her back. Early in their marriage, Mike and Becky had driven from Boston to Utah, and Becky had learned she could spend hours in silence with her husband and never get bored.
    When they came in the garage door, Becky could hear nine-year-old Fiona’s voice from the family room. She put a hand on Mike’s arm to stop him, wanting to listen in.
    “I’m a princess who can turn into a dragon, and you’re my maid.”
    “I wanna be a princess too,” said Polly, who at age six had just learned to pronounce her r ’s, though they were soft.
    “No, Polly.”
    “Fiona will give in,” Becky whispered. She had a theory that no one could deny Polly anything—she was unaccountably sweet in every way.
    Mike shook his head. “She’s getting stubborn.”
    “Please, Fiona!”
    “Okay, but you can’t turn into a dragon. Hyrum is the evil ogre. Here he comes—run! Run!”
    Two voices squealed as footsteps pounded down the hall, resembling the stomps of ogres more than princesses. Behind them four-year-old Hyrum growled in his high-toned little-boy voice, more princess than ogre.
    Fiona shouted, “And now behold my transformation into the dragon Princess Firemouth!”
    “And I’m Princess Hot Mouth!”
    “No, I told you already, you can be a princess but you can’t turn into a dragon.”
    “Rwaaarrrr!” said Hyrum.
    “But—”
    “No, Polly. I said no three times. You need to listen to me when I’m talking to you.”
    Becky nodded at Mike. Apparently Fiona was mother when Becky wasn’t around.
    “You can’t be a dragon ’cause I’m already a dragon.”
    “Pwease—please, Fiona?”
    Fiona sighed. “You can turn into something else—like a hamster.”
    “A fire-breathing hamster?” Polly sounded intrigued.
    “Sure, okay.”
    “Rwaaarrrr!” said Hyrum. “You are dead. Rwaaarrr!”
    “I like home,” Becky whispered to Mike.
    “Home likes you,” he said. “Also, the cat knocked an open ketchup bottle over on the rug.”
    “And what was an open ketchup bottle doing on the rug?”
    “Um . . . let me go put your bag in our room.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Polly came around the corner, abandoning the game to fall into Becky’s arms. She was petite and darling, freckles high on her face and hair blonde, like her father’s. Fiona and Hyrum both took after their mother’s side: brown hair, angry cowlicks in front and back, sturdy and unremarkable features. With those two, Becky did most of the hugging. She drove thirteen-year-old niece and babysitter Kayla to her home and then whipped up an improvised dinner (apparently in the thirty-two hours Becky had been gone, her family had nearly expired from starvation).
    Right around the cleaning up of the dishes, it occurred to her that waiting too long to tell your husband about a heartthrob encounter can make it seem even more important than it was. It took the usual hour and a half to coerce her children into clean teeth, PJs, and beds, but it felt like at least an hour and three quarters.
    Alone in their bedroom, Becky began to unpack and said casually, “You’ll never guess who I met in L.A.”
    “Carol Burnett.” Mike was sitting on their bed, reading the hunting magazine Big Buck —lead article: “Five Deer Scents You Can’t Live Without!”
    “Carol Burnett? What made you guess her?”
    He shrugged. “She seems like a fun person to meet. Now you’re going to tell me who it really was, and I won’t know the name and I’ll have