Chapters (60)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Personae
- I: Early Days
- One. Control
- Two. Doubt
- Three. Fate
- Four. Same
- Five. Fine Arts
- Six. In Loco Parentis
- Seven. Settling
- Eight. Neighbors
- Nine. Prospects
- Ten. The Lucky
- Eleven. Instruction
- Twelve. Same
- Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
- Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
- Fifteen. The Reason
- Sixteen. That Person
- Seventeen. Predictably
- II: Writing Teacher
- Eighteen. Early Poems
- Nineteen. Motivation
- Twenty. Allegory
- Twenty-One. Grief
- Twenty-Two. A Portrait
- Twenty-Three. Veils
- Twenty-Four. Soft Power
- Twenty-Five. Lists
- Twenty-Six. A Break
- Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
- Twenty-Eight. Custom
- Twenty-Nine. Parity
- Thirty. Fortune
- III: Volta
- Thirty-One. Images
- Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
- Thirty-Three. Letters
- Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
- Thirty-Five. Love
- Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
- IV: Your Best Reader
- Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
- Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
- Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
- Forty. Détente
- Forty-One. Worlds
- Forty-Two. Recognition
- Forty-Three. Persistence
- Forty-Four. And Then
- Forty-Five. Mingling
- Forty-Six. You
- Forty-Seven. Persona
- Forty-Eight. Est et Non
- Forty-Nine. The Author
- Epilogue
- Afterword: The Libertine
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
Stefanie was halfway through an outdated documentary on Madison when she remembered Glenn’s envelope. She had been giving herself a pedicure and IM’ing halfheartedly with Kathy, who was obsessing over the nomination procedure for an all-female eating club that recent alumnae in finance were setting up, when she saw it again, out of the corner of her eye.
Glenn got me something
what Kathy wanted to know.
my mom’s husband
i know / what?
don’t know
u like him?
of course, typed Stefanie. Then she wrote, crap gotta run
She closed the window rapidly, semi-rudely, as if she had been compelled.
She hauled her body across the bed and seized the envelope from the marble bedside stand, tore the top. They were membership cards, two of them. She extracted one. MUSEUM OF THE DECORATIVE ARTS OF THE COLONIAL AMERICAS SUSTAINING MEMBER. There was some sort of urn imprinted.
It was so perfect.
Stefanie was on Fifth in 7 For All Mankind jeans, Ferragamo loafers, a Theory top, a vintage peacoat from Searle, and a Longchamp bag she was borrowing even if they were so played out. She avoided the cobblestoned side where ice had been permitted to set in threatening welts. She was wearing cashmere gloves from J.Crew in “Flurry.”
She thought about Kathy.
She didn’t know why, come to think of it, she could never bring herself to compete with K-Hu. It was of course what made their relationship possible to begin with, and it wasn’t like Kat wasn’t worthy of your jealousy or like Kat didn’t occasionally groom herself with the misfortunes of others, but she was just so convinced of herself in the end, and she wanted these things that made actually interesting men kind of hate you, so that was strange.
It was winter, and there was nothing on the trees, and even the blue in the sky looked damp. Salt-stained taxis hurtled by.
Stefanie was about a block away, and she resolved she would not look at her phone again until she was at least done with the museum.
She waited at the light. What she was doing right now, if she were forced to admit this to herself, which she was not sure that she was, was she was thinking about her parents’ marriage. She was, if she had to describe what she was doing, trying to “see” it. What she could remember from the apparently better years wasn’t much, just some brief scenes. Her father with the paper and a calculator. Her mother giving some instruction to the nanny, who in turn gave Stefanie a triangle of toast with a red layer of jam. The noise of the rapidly, and perhaps irritably, perused paper.