Nancy’s Theory of Style (4 page)

“This is why I can’t stand talking to
you. You twist everything I say. You’re always looking for me to fuck up, to
say the wrong thing. Sometimes I think…” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’ve
always been looking for an excuse to leave me,
Nancy
. Like there’s someone else. Is that
what this is about?”

The accusation hung between them and
then she turned back to her packing. “Don’t be insulting. You’re the one who dragged
me to this hell hole, and I’m sick of it.”

“Not as sick as I am of your constant bitching
and whining.”

Nancy
felt a distance, as if she was watching
old hacks perform a tired domestic drama. The wife made accusations that he was
a jackass, had bad taste, and didn’t spend time with her. The husband responded
that she was a bitch, spoiled, and a control freak.

Still, being professionals, they found the
energy to improvise.
Nancy
recalled Birdie’s comment and told Todd he was as boring and braying as a
walrus, and Todd said that she was sexually unavailable, a term he’d probably
read in Maxim.

She never raised her voice, though,
because a lady didn’t shout and scream even when her husband acted badly. If
she took pleasure in the way her coolness infuriated him that was just a perk.

Act II of their argument featured
half-hearted, blaming-the-victim apologies. He claimed that he had to work so
much in order to provide her with the lifestyle she deserved. She said that she
was sorry if he was offended when she called him an uncouth barbarian, which
she wouldn’t have said if it wasn’t true.

She was willing to go straight into the
next act, when Todd changed the script with a bit of melodrama and stormed out
of the house.

Nancy
waited for Todd to return. But the
intermission stretched on and the lights on his approaching car didn’t flicker
in the window, signaling the recommencement of the performance.

Needing reassurance,
Nancy
called Junie Burns, because Junie
stayed up late and because she could confide in the still-single friend without
losing status.

Junie answered after several rings in
her breathy voice. “Hello?”

“Junie, I’m sorry to call so late, but I
knew you’d be up and… Oh, everything’s a disaster.”

“Are you all right?”

“Things with Todd are awful. He’s an abominable
human being.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do.”
Nancy
launched into a long litany of Todd’s faults,
something she’d done before when talking to her sympathetic friend. “I’m sorry.
I’m ranting.”

“Oh, Nance, isn’t there any bright
side?”

“I honestly don’t know. I look at Todd
and all I can think is how I don’t want to be with him. I get so furious that I
don’t even want him to touch me.”

“But he built you that beautiful house
and he works so hard for you. Is there another reason maybe? Or another
someone?”

No matter how often
Nancy
had lectured Junie about the ugliness
of the house and Todd’s bad behavior, her friend just didn’t get it. “The house
is reason enough,”
Nancy
said.

“
Nancy
,
is it that bad? Divorce bad?”

“I really don’t know, Junie. I’m just
glad that I listened to my father about a pre-nup. People told me it wasn’t
romantic, but what’s less romantic than being forced to stay with someone
because he’ll take half your wealth otherwise?”

“So your money is well-protected?”

“Absolutely. The only way Todd could
break the pre-nup and ask for community property is if I misbehave, and, Junie,
you know I am an exemplar of moral gooditude.”

“Everyone has secrets. Even I’ve done
things you wouldn’t believe,” Junie whispered.

Nancy
stopped Junie from confessing some
tedious sin, like not flossing daily, by saying, “Thanks for listening, Junie.”

The third act of the Carrington-Chambers
playlet began shortly after sunrise, as an exhausted
Nancy
wheeled the first of her cases along
the shiny shiny hallway into the kitchen.

Todd came in through the door that led
to the garage. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night and smelled sourly
like sweat and beer.

“You’re really leaving,” he said.

“I just need a break. I’ll be at my apartment.”

He bit his lower lip in the time-honored
way of important men who’ve overplayed their hands and been caught out. “I’m
sorry,
Nancy
. You’re
right. I screwed up with the house. I screwed up not paying enough attention to
you, not taking your business seriously.”

She felt a pang as she looked at him. Why
couldn’t she care for him the way she had? “I’m sorry. I know that I’m…particular.”
She stopped herself before she said, it’s not you, it’s me, because it really
was his crassness and negligence.

“About the house…” Todd shook his head. “We’ve
got to stay here until the market improves. Otherwise we’ll take a tremendous
hit. I told you not to invest so much in one asset.

“You told me so? You were the one who
assured me that this development was a sure thing,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t
care if this stupid house sits empty. I can’t stand living here.”

“I’m not throwing away my share of this
property when we can wait and it will recover eventually. Besides, there’s no
way your father’s going to let you buy another house if you abandon this one,
and you know that.”

“It’s bad enough that my father is more
concerned with my holdings than with my happiness,”
Nancy
said. “Why do you have to be that way,
too? I can’t even get my business going because he says it’s a waste of time.” She
began crying out of sheer frustration.

“Baby, he’s trying to protect you,” Todd
said.

“I’m an adult. Either I should be in
control of my life and my money, or I don’t even want it.” She began sobbing,
and she let Todd put his meaty arms around her while she blubbered sloppily
into his stinky shirt.

“I’ll do anything for you, Nance,
whatever it takes to make you happy.”

She managed to choke out something that
sounded enough like “Really?” for him to understand.

“Really. I’ll even pay for an assistant
for you. You’re always saying you want an assistant.”

Nancy
looked into her husband’s bleached
denim eyes, and said, “You’d really do that for me? For Froth? Even if I take a
break?”

“If you need some time off, I can accept
that,” he said. “When we’ve had time to regroup, we’ll figure out how we can
make this work. You want that, too, right?”

“Yes,” she said, and she was already
thinking about having an assistant, a small bespectacled person who carried a
notepad and said, “I’ll get right on that!”

“A break is what we need,” she said. “If
I could focus on my business for a few months and really get it off the ground,
maybe I wouldn’t get so fixated on this house and…and other things.”

“We’re smart people. We can figure this
out,” Todd said with a smile. “I’ll contact an agency we use and line up job
candidates. I’ll take care of it all.”

She decided to believe him because a
wife should try to believe her husband even when he’s wearing ugly pleated
pants and smells a little.

Todd carried
Nancy
’s bags from the bedroom to the cavernous
garage. When she had done a final check to see that she had everything she
needed, she went to join him. She automatically stepped toward her silver
Lexus, but she didn’t see her bags or her husband. “Todd?”

“Here,” he said and walked into view
from behind his Range Rover.

She looked at her car and said, “Where’s
my stuff?”

“In the Mini. I’m going to need the
Lexus because the Rover has to go in for repairs. The transmission’s fucking
up.”

“You take the Mini!” She walked around
the Rover to stare at the dented and dirty white and black Mini Cooper. Todd
and his buddies had each ordered one on the internet one night after watching
“The Italian Job.” They spent a few months racing them around tracks and desert
roads before forgetting about them.

Todd said, “I can’t use it because we go
to meetings as a team. It’s a great city car. It hauls ass on the hills and it
fits in any parking space.”

“I’m not taking your filthy dash and
crash.”

Todd made a face and said, “I thought
you were going to try not to be so picky.”

“I thought you were going to try to be
supportive.”

“I’m paying for your assistant, aren’t
I? Can’t you compromise for once?”

“Whatever, Todd,” she said, remembering
what Junie had said about Todd’s devotion. “I want my car back as soon as your behemoth
is fixed.”

As she was about to get into the little
car, stuffed with her things, Todd said, “I’m going to miss you. You’re sure there’s
not…you’re not seeing someone else?”

“I told you already. There’s no one else.
I should be worried about leaving you alone for long. Some slutty girl will set
her sights on you,” she joked.
Nancy
saw Todd anew for a second, in a strobe light flash, as a big, blonde,
successful manly man, and she realized she was taking a risk leaving him.

“I don’t like slutty girls. I like you.”
He gave her a dry-lipped peck, his standard kiss when there wouldn’t be a
payoff of sex, and she got in the car.

“Pull out front and I’ll hose the car
off,” Todd said.

So on April Fools Day, after a year of entombment,
Nancy
backed
the Mini out of her prison and swung into the long pavered drive. While Todd hosed
off the car’s thick layer of grime,
Nancy
glared at the house, all 8270 square feet of gangrenous stucco, disproportionately
narrow columns, slapdash masonry, and shoddy workmanship.

Nancy
drove out of Villagio Tuscana, past the
sad mix of ostentatious houses, abandoned construction, and empty lots. Along a
sandstone wall bordering a foreclosed house, huge cats sunned themselves, the
biggest cats
Nancy
had ever seen, with beautiful spotted fur. She was already down the street when
she realized they were bobcats reclaiming their habitat.
 

She headed north, toward
San Francisco
, She had
tried all her life to do everything right, yet mediocrity had descended upon
her like the grit that settled on everything at the revolting house.

She’d lost forever all those evenings waiting
for Todd to come home from work, his office, business meetings, and hanging out
with his friends. She tried to fill her time with the small parties she put
together, but she’d begun to avoid seeing her friends, because she thought her
smiles must have seemed as false to them as they felt to her.

There was a turn on the freeway when the
San Francisco
skyline suddenly appeared before her, a sight that had exhilarated her ever
since she was a child. As the temperature dropped into a civilized coolness,
Nancy
relaxed.

She drove to the classical gray apartment
building in
Pacific
Heights
that the Carringtons
had owned since the 1930s. She loved the building’s garland and rosette
moldings in pure white and vistas of
Alta
Plaza
Park
on one side and the bay, glimmering pewter and green, on the other. Lavenders
and white alyssum filled the mossy stone planters out front.

After parking in the street-level
garage,
Nancy
began unloading her suitcases. She usually took the stairs to her fourth-floor apartment,
but she had too much to carry. She made several trips in the small elevator,
balancing her bags on the narrow mahogany bench.

She was on carrying the last of her bags
to the elevator when she ran into Miss Elizabeth “Binky” Winkles. The elderly
spinster came into the lobby, looking like a sack of flour wearing a blue knit
suit, a pillbox hat, white gloves and carrying a red patent leather handbag.
She saw
Nancy
and
said, “Look who’s here.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Winkles. How
lovely you look today!”

The woman shuffled in, her ankles
swollen above the low black pumps.
Nancy
couldn’t believe she was still walking the hills in heels.

“Hold the elevator, Girl Carrington!” The
woman used the term for
Nancy
and all her female cousins.

Nancy
took a suitcase out of the elevator. “You
can go ahead and I’ll take it up later.”