Nancy’s Theory of Style (3 page)

So many little things, but they had the
cumulative effect of making the world a tackier place.

The interior of their condo was taupe,
black and gray, the default masculine color scheme. Whenever
Nancy
suggested changing it, Todd countered
that they were moving soon. It was true, too, that she could always escape to
the charming apartment she still kept in a family-owned property.

While Todd showered,
Nancy
sat cross-legged on the bed with her
new design books, but mostly she was reveling in the success of the party.

When Todd came out with a towel wrapped
around his waist, he saw the books and said, “Don’t get any more expensive
ideas. Every change to the plans cranks up the cost.”

The skin on his broad shoulders was
peeling and
Nancy
chided herself for not rubbing sunscreen on him when they’d been on their
honeymoon. But every time she’d tried, he’d misinterpreted it as foreplay.

She put the books on her bedside table
and said, “It shouldn’t be an issue of money, honey bunny. It’s about quality. I
want our house to be beautiful next year and ten years from now and a century
from now.”

He lay on the bed next to her. His eyes
were acid-wash denim blue, with lashes as pale as straw.

“Old classics get rebuilt and improved
over the years,” he said. “We can always take our equity and move up.”

“I thought we agreed that we were going
to stay here.” She wished they lived in a time when she could give her house a
name. Peregrine House, The Meadowlands, Carrington House.

“All I’m saying is we have a budget, and
we’ve got to stick to it.” He and some biz school buddies had started a venture
capital firm and were still seeking investors and exploring start-ups. “You
said you were thrillified with the plans.”

“But I could be more thrillified. I just
want it to be right.” She was thinking about a guest bath, now, and how perfect
it would be to have a Japanese soaking tub with views across the hills. She
knew that she couldn’t compromise, shouldn’t compromise and said, “If I think
we need improvements to the original plans, I’m willing to cover the additional
costs, because excellence cannot be reduced to a parakeet.”

She saw his confused look and said, “A
parakeet is also called a budgerigar, or a budgie, thus budget.”

“I’m not verbal enough to keep up with
your word associations,” he said as he put his arm around her waist. “I’m more
physical. You live with me which proves you can live with imperfection. Your
father is not going to let you sink any more into construction.”

She laughed. “Everyone knows I can’t
live with imperfection. I’ll sell off the stock I got as a wedding present, and
that way he can’t stop me.” She wove her fingers through Todd’s hair and made a
mental note to buy a different kind of conditioner for him.

“Over-improving a property is never
advisable.”

“Either you believe the development’s
property values will increase, or you don’t. Tell me now.”

“Yes, yes, it’s prime, but that isn’t
the issue. Your ideas about what’s necessary are way beyond what anyone else
cares about or notices. What you spent on the wedding…”

“The wedding was incredible. Everyone
said so,” she said. “It’s my money. I want to do it for us and the family we’ll
have.”

“I’d argue, but I know how you are when
you’ve set your mind,” Todd said. “But make all your decisions prior to
construction. Remember that many calculations lead to victory, and few
calculations lead to defeat.”

“Is that from The Art of War again? You
can’t apply Sun Tzu’s rules about military strategy to modern life, Todd.”

“Yeah, you can,” he said. “For example,
I should have taken evasive maneuvers to avoid Junie Rug-Burns Butt.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her that
dreadful nickname.”

“I’m not the one who came up with it,” Todd
said blandly. “GP’s another loser, but he’s setting up a meeting for me with
his family’s people.”

“GP is adorable and crammed with
potential. I’m his career counselor and I’m giving him a reverse makeover.”

“Whatever that is. You just like him
because he takes every crazy thing you say seriously,” Todd said. “You know how
his family got their money?”

“Everyone knows. High tech.”

“That’s the story they tell. But his
mom’s family had a crappy little deli in
Cupertino
,”
Todd said with a smirk. “She traded sandwiches for stock with start-ups, and
turned a few hundred bucks worth of greasy cold cuts into a fortune.”

“Todd, he may be new money, but in a
century his family will be oldish money. It doesn’t hurt to build a
relationship now. Speaking of old money, I was thrillified that Bailey came. You
should convince him to buy a Villagio Tuscana lot. All our friends should buy
lots and then we could have block parties all the time.”

“You and parties,” he said, tumbling her
back on the bed. “I love you, Mrs. Todd Carrington Chambers.”

“I love you, too, and I’m going to love
our house.” As Todd’s big red hands grabbed the thin straps of her silk
charmeuse cami.
Nancy
tried to imagine what their children would be like, but her imagination
couldn’t extend that far. She hoped they would be exactly like her; she had
been a delightful child.

Chapter 2: The Devil is in the Details

Nancy Carrington-Chambers looked at the
diamond and sapphire watch that encircled her slim wrist. It had been her
grandmother’s, and
Nancy
was so angry that she only briefly admired the graceful rectangular design. Todd
was now an hour late for the dinner that she’d so laboriously directed the
housekeeper to prepare.

The ice in the cocktail shaker had long
ago melted. She drank down another watery martini. Gin on an empty stomach left
her feeling both light-headed and dramatic. She checked her watch again before
going to the enormous kitchen.

After an extensive search,
Nancy
found red striped oven
mitts and wondered where they had come from. They were disagreeably holidayish.
She took the platter with grass-fed organic beef roast out of one of the warming
drawers and walked outside.

The lawn was overgrown and weeds had
sprung up since their yard maintenance company had gone bankrupt. The
neighbors’ trio of slobbering
Chesapeake Bay
retrievers immediately began barking and lunging against the tall, redwood
fence, as they did every time she came outside.

Nancy
hefted the hunk of meat over the fence
and heard a gnashing of teeth and horrible chewing that sounded like Cerberus devouring
unfortunate souls, thereby confirming her own hellish existence.

As she turned back to the house, she saw
the vulgar rectangular, electric blue pool, each corner of which was marked
with a tall plinth bearing a bad reproduction of a Greek statue.

It was all so different from the plans
she’d approved.

The architect’s design had been exquisite,
so
Nancy
had felt comfortable taking her mother
to Sedona for an extended spa retreat and then to
Heidelberg
for a long visit with her sister.
Nancy
had explored the
streets of the Altstadt, photographing of the Baroque architecture and
wondering how her own house would be viewed in the decades to come.

She’d returned home to find that Todd
and the contractor had radically altered the house plans. Todd knew people in
the county permit office who would sign off on anything he asked, and the
construction was already too far along for her to have them tear it down and
start over.

Construction had continued for over a
year, and during the last several months, Nancy and Todd had argued every single
day. In addition to her initial contribution toward the construction, she’d
cashed out her wedding stock for high-end improvements, and then tried to
borrow against her trust fund’s future earnings.

Now she was glad that her father, who
managed her trust, had vetoed her request, since no amount of window dressing
could disguise this wreck.

Nancy
went back into the house and threw the candy-cane
oven mitts in the garbage compacter. She walked down the long hallway with its too
shiny polished black granite floor, humiliated that her money had paid for this
ugliness. I am walking on my money, she thought.

She went into her bedroom suite and
locked the massive double doors. She might as well spend the evening going over
the plans for her next Froth event. Todd could sleep in one of the guest rooms.

Her gaze went to the thing that she
hated most: a granite-topped wet bar of monstrous proportions. Its permanence
mocked her.

Nancy
used the remote to open the panels that
inexpertly hid a 52-inch television and turned the channel to one of the PBS
stations. She found the inflectionless voices reassuring, a sign that somewhere
in the world there was civility.

As she took off her new little black
cocktail dress, she heard heartbreaking music and turned to the television. On
the screen, a thin man was hunched over an organ. His eyes were closed and he
lurched in time to the music. She wondered where she’d seen him before.

Then a date flashed on the screen and
the announcer said, “Leo Emmanuel McElroy, one of the most promising new
artists of progressive classical, passed away today at twenty-eight after an
extended illness.”

Nancy
stood motionless, recalling her cousin
Birdie and Leo at her party on that sunny May afternoon three years ago. She
had made mocked the way he looked and hadn’t noticed that he was sick. How many
other things had she misjudged as she’d chattered to her friends about her
dream house, her dream honeymoon and wedding, and her dream marriage?

And, although
Nancy
hadn’t known him, Leo’s death changed
everything for her, like a click of the optometrist’s lenses that brings
everything into sharp focus.

She didn’t have to stay here. She was
Nancy Carrington-Chambers and she had options, the most significant of them the
apartment she still kept in
San
Francisco
.

Nancy
went into her dressing room and gathered
her luggage and cases. She placed all her intimates in silk pouches, shoes in
their own zipped bags, and she folded her essential garments compactly.

The house was so big that she didn’t
know Todd was back until he rattled the bedroom doorknob. “
Nancy
? Honey?”

“Go away.”

“What have I done now?”

She zipped up a carry-on filled with her
skin care products and went to the door. “I cooked dinner for you! You said
you’d be home. This is our ten-year anniversary!”

“What are you talking about? Our third anniversary
isn’t for two months.”

“The anniversary of when we met. You
should remember!”

After a moment he said, “You expect me
to remember the date of a kegger? Give me a fucking break, man.”

“That is no way to speak to your wife. Go
away, Todd Chamberpot. You are banished from my bed.”

A minute later he came in through the
door that led from the hall to his dressing room and bathroom. He was wearing
pants with pleats that made his hips look wide, especially since he’d taken off
his tie and shoved it in his pocket, one end dangling flaccidly out.

Nancy
tried to remember when she’d found Todd’s
features aristocratic. Now she thought he looked as overbred as a shih tzu. She
could endure his ruddy complexion, dry maize yellow hair, and pale eyes. But she
loathed the way his nose turned up at an angle that exposed his nostrils. Could
she really live as a character in an Edgar Allan Poe horror story, going mad as
she watched Todd’s nose hair grow long, thick and gray?

“What are you doing?” Todd asked.

“I’m leaving.”
Nancy
began placing her favorite pieces of
jewelry in a leather travel box.

“What’s your problem, Nance? Okay, I’m
late. I’m sorry.” He smiled and said, “Come on, baby,” and tried to put one of
his tree-trunk arms around her.

She twisted away. “You treat each
incident as if it’s isolated, but I look at them in historical context. Every
day it’s something – work, your pals, a meeting, the gym. You’re never here, and
I’m entombed in this ghastly mausoleum.”

“Not this again. I hope your father’s right
and you’ll calm down when you get pregnant. After all, your clock is ticking
away.”

“I’m only twenty-eight!” She thought
with revulsion of grubby, stubby fingered Toddlings. “That’s all you want me
for anyway, spawn incubation and entertaining your gauche business associates.”