The Stuff That Never Happened Read Online Free PDF Page B

and then encourage their middle-aged wives to have boob lifts and start wearing black lacy things. Some husbands have become boring old farts. They can’t talk without lecturing; they read their wives edifying articles from the New York Times . We laughed and shouted and spilled things and banged on the table with our fists. Julie McNamara, who insisted we all order a bottle of wine if we were going to talk like this, suddenly turned to me and said, “Oh, Annabelle, don’t you dare complain. You’re so lucky to have somebody like Grant. At least he hasn’t gained so much weight that he has to wear one of those breathing machines just so he won’t die in the night.”
    This is the gold standard for judging husbands—that he doesn’t have to breathe into a machine to keep from dying? Everybody laughed about how Grant never does anything wrong, and then Joanna Caprio, whose husband, Mark, made a pass at me at a party ten years ago, said that the best thing about Grant is that he’s got a reputation for being totally immune to any kind of extramarital funny business. At parties, year after year, she pointed out, you can count on him to stand off to the side and chat about labor statistics all night long, and not once get drunk and go off dancing with any of the other women. And nobody has ever heard of a student trying to entice him into giving her a better grade by offering to sleep with him. The whole idea is unthinkable , said Joanna, and I could see everybody picturing my staid and upstanding husband trying to score with some student—a thought that made them laugh and shake their heads.
    I joined in a little uncomfortably, glad they couldn’t see the way I was shredding my napkin in my lap. Yes , I wanted to say to them. Yes, that is all true, but he is coiled up like a spring. You complain about your husbands boring you by reading you articles from the newspaper, or pontificating about the nightly news, but my husband doesn’t speak. It’s as if I’m not there at all .
    And if something takes place that Grant doesn’t like—well, then it’s as though it never happened .
    ANYWAY, SO Wednesday morning arrives, and sure enough, I wake up to the radio coming on at precisely seven o’clock. I can hear Grant tapping away at his laptop in his study. Jeremiah is once again just flitting out of my head, after a dream in which we were on a train that doubled as an outdoor café where you could buy croissants.
    From down the hall, Grant clears his throat with that “ahem” sound he makes. And then he calls, “Annabelle? I’ll be there in just a minute, okay?”
    “Okay,” I say.
    “Don’t start without me.”
    “Then you’d better get in here. You know how impatient I am.”
    He laughs, and I hear him typing furiously. Finally he appears in the doorway, blinking and rubbing his hands through his hair, looking like he just pulled himself out of a trance. Which I suppose is what he did. At least half of him is still in 1908.
    I smile at him. At fifty-three, he looks exactly like what he is: a patient, enduring labor historian, professorial and calm. He was never what Sophie and her friends would call a hottie, but I have to say he’s held up well. He still has most of his formerly full head of blond hair, faded now but flopping over his forehead in the front and sprouting a fence of cowlicks in the back. Unlike me, he also still has the same flat stomach he had twenty-eight years ago, and his knees and elbows are so pointy that he can do serious damage to me when he turns over in bed. Even his monogamous penis—I probably shouldn’t be talking about his penis, but what the hell—even his penis is gangly, like he is, yet professorial and dignified.
    He doesn’t say anything, simply starts taking off his yoga pants and T-shirt, folding them up in a neat pile, frowning.
    “How are you?” I say, pulling the down comforter and quilt aside to welcome him back to bed. I catch only a brief glance of his flat,