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Back Ladies of the House Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Praise
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. January
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. February
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. March
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. April
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Twenty
  30. Twenty-One
  31. Twenty-Two
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Twenty-Four
  34. Twenty-Five
  35. May
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. June
  43. Thirty-Two
  44. Thirty-Three
  45. Thirty-Four
  46. Thirty-Five
  47. Thirty-Six
  48. Thirty-Seven
  49. Thirty-Eight
  50. Thirty-Nine
  51. Forty
  52. July
  53. Forty-One
  54. Epilogue
  55. Acknowledgments
  56. Author’s Note
  57. Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
  58. Questions For Discussion
  59. Excerpt

“Do you—do you ever find yourself wishing that there were aspects of your life you could just coast through? That there was just one thing you could put on autopilot?”

“Yes, of course. It means something, though,” I added, hesitant, not wanting him to feel like I was pressing him one way or the other, “that you wish your autopilot could control this.” I motioned to the elevator and up, toward Ari’s apartment, with the nice view and hand-hewn dinner plates, the bed and its linen sheets, the bathroom with the lavender candle. A bad relationship was bad for both of them. I looked him straight in the eye. “I think that she wants to love you very much, Atlas. But I could be wrong. Or not. In any event, I wish you nothing but happiness.”

“You’re no help at all,” he said, laughing, though his heart wasn’t in it. “Everything is an honest-to-God wreck right now, Daisy. My father is declining. I think he may have to sell the London house. Can’t work the stairs anymore. Last week he was stuck in the bathtub all night.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, giving his side a squeeze. Atlas and his father weren’t always on the same page—there had been trouble, after his mother had left for the States, and hurt on both sides—but they loved each other, in spite of it. Yet illness has a way of magnifying fissures in even the strongest relationships, and I sensed the pain in Atlas’s face, in the slight twist of his mouth. “Nothing happens for a very long time, then everything comes at once. That’s the law.”

Under the constellation of lights in the lobby, we talked growing up and getting old, living and dying. Ari—not mentioned again. Just us, old friends who knew each other well, who loved each other despite the centrifugal forces of adult life continually trying to rip us apart. Not the kind of love I’d hoped for, but love nonetheless. And there was beauty and meaning in that, just being there for each other, laughing at the pain of it all.

Thirty-Five

Wallis was making gazpacho. I disliked cold soup, but hadn’t the inclination to remind her; I was glad she was feeling like cooking again. She’d also mixed sangria, which we were drinking out of mismatched wineglasses. Cricket was puttering around the kitchen, seeming to stand in front of whatever drawer Wallis needed to get into. I, nervous, having promised myself one glass, was silently rehearsing some of what I wanted to say on the record.