Alternate Side(57)
Asheville, North Carolina, was famous for a large resort built around what had at one time been the largest private house in America, before everybody and his brother was trying to build the largest private house in America. When they first arrived, Charlie went out onto the terrace and spread his arms wide. “God’s. Own. Country,” he said, inhaling audibly. “For what it is, it’s nice,” Bebe had said dismissively when Nora said she was spending a weekend there. It was nice, with a view of the mountains and an enormous bed with high-thread-count linens. The fact that she could tell this about the sheets made Nora feel ridiculous.
“Good last night, right?” said Charlie, coming out of the bathroom in a towel, and Nora was not sure if he meant the food, the wine, or the sex. Probably all three. The minibar had Advil, thank God.
The day before, after Charlie had left to play golf with the president of a local bank who had been a fraternity brother, she did a long trail run, had a massage and a facial, and sat out on that terrace, drinking an eleven-dollar smoothie and reading a fashion magazine full of clothes no one she knew would ever wear. She called Jenny to tell her that her newest book, Witches and Wise Women, was mentioned in one of the fashion magazines.
“Why are you reading that?” Jenny said, and Nora explained where they were.
“I’m exhausted by Charlie’s midlife crisis,” she said, sipping her smoothie, but Jenny was oddly unsympathetic.
“I’d like to see the midlife crisis get more respect,” she said. “Everyone talks reverentially about terminal illness or bipolar syndrome. Why do we all blow off the midlife crisis as nothing but red convertibles and hair plugs? It’s a perfectly reasonable response to increased life expectancy and the demands of modern life.”
“Is this your next book?” Nora said. “Because you sound like it’s your next book. It would just work better for me if it wasn’t a bad mood twenty-four/seven and the determination that I should trade New York for a picture window on a golf course.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Jenny said. The two of them had decided years ago that even a move to Brooklyn on one of their parts would be a geographic betrayal. At one point Emory University had tried to lure Jenny to Atlanta with more money and a teaching schedule that basically consisted of not teaching at all. The provost had taken Jenny to what she said was a wonderful restaurant, but when she was invited back for a tour of the campus and another dinner, this time with the president, Jenny decided it would be dishonest to go any further.
“You’re not even considering it?” Nora had said.
“You’re stuck with me, babe,” Jenny replied.
After Nora hung up the phone, a woman in a white uniform came to the door of the hotel room with a wheeled cart of supplies and gave Nora a pedicure on the terrace while she started in on a mystery novel. She felt totally content, although she would not tell Charlie that, since he would think it was yet another sign that they should move here, or someplace like it. After her pedicure she sat there alone. When she had first met Charlie, part of the appeal had been that she found New York such a hard place to be by herself. In the ensuing years Nora had discovered that by herself was a condition she really liked.
In the afternoon they went out to lunch at the kind of first-rate pretentious little bistro that garnished the food with flowers. “What are these again?” Charlie asked.
“Nasturtiums,” Nora said. “I’m so glad they stopped doing this in New York.”
“You’re from New York?” the massage therapist at the spa had asked. “I love New York.”
“Are you from Asheville originally?” Nora asked.
“Buffalo,” the woman said, shivering slightly. “I don’t miss the snow.”
“But now you get it here, too, don’t you?”
“It’s true. This winter we had two inches one day, and they had no clue how to handle it. But the same day my mother said they had a foot in Buffalo. So, no contest, right?”
They had dinner in the main dining room, and Charlie ordered a bottle of wine so good that Nora knew the dinner bill would be larger than the bill for the room. They chatted determinedly, but they avoided the obvious oil slicks: Bob Harris, Jack Fisk, the estimated value of their house, the lack of parking on the block, the persistent drip of their kitchen sink. Nora knew that they were there that weekend to convince her that a life elsewhere would be wonderful, but Charlie didn’t even mention how pleasant the weather had been that day. She told him about Oliver and Lizzie. He told her about the fraternity brother and his wife. When they were first married they had vowed they would never be one of those married couples who sat silently at dinner because they’d run out of things to say. They were determined that they would never run out of things to say. So they repeated themselves a lot.
A hotel car drove them a half hour outside town for a house tour. Several of the houses on the tour appeared to have been designed to give the resort a run for its money in the square-footage sweepstakes. One kitchen had three sinks, two refrigerators, a cooktop in the center island, an eight-burner stove, a wall oven, and two microwaves. “The caterers must love this place,” Nora said.
“Don’t be cynical,” Charlie said.
“I’m a New Yorker,” said Nora. “Cynicism is my religion.”
“I just love New York,” said the tour guide, who had an accent so thick the consonants appeared to be chewy nuggets in the butterscotch pudding of her voice. “Is that where you all are from?”