She turned and went back to rolling the dough. “Oh, that.”
My heart was beating fast.
“It was silly,” she said. “I was just—I was just thinking about what jobs I could get if I wanted to.”
“Why would you want to?”
She looked up at me and raised a hand, palm out, and then turned it and pressed it to her lips. “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s not—Really, I just, I haven’t had a real one since the bank—you know, one with an interview and a paycheck. It was fun to think about what I was qualified for.”
“But it looked like you called some of them.”
She set the rolling pin aside now. “I did. I went for an interview even. Two actually. Just to see if I could get the job.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. But I turned them down because I didn’t need them.” She picked up a star cutter, but just held it. “It was just for fun, Luther. I know it’s silly, but working at the Crisis Center made me feel useful.”
“You are useful,” I said. But I sensed vaguely that I had robbed her of this feeling in the domain where it would have meant the most to her. She could see this in my face, I think. Before I could dwell on it and begin to fathom the damage radius of my secrecy, she obscured it with lines and gestures cribbed from days when our conversations still seemed pregnant with the promise of some future revelation.
She said, “How about you? How was work?”
“Oh, fine.”
She smiled. “Tell me.”
I had started with Nathan just a week earlier, and each night she had found a different way to celebrate—champagne, a cake, an office nameplate hidden in the butter dish.
I said, “I got assigned my first project.”
She held out another scrap of dough. “Details,” she said.
Upstairs, I heard the toilet flush and pictured my son disguised in pajamas, a man. I set the torque wrench on the counter and took the piece of dough from her hand.
I said, “It’s a six-week evaluation of a prospective dam site on the Pak Mun River in Thailand. They interviewed three firms, and when they picked us, they asked specifically for me.”
“That’s fantastic,” she said.
And in some ways, it was. I did well at Nathan’s office, traveling to six different countries in my first year. Liz got promoted, becoming Counseling Trainer and then Volunteer Supervisor, and after a while I stopped bracing myself for questions she would never ask about the pieces of the story Elliot had chosen to share with her—his mischief with the trap seals maybe, or the secret of my father’s gun. By the end of Elliot’s freshman year in college we spent half our evenings separated by work we enjoyed, and most of the others at tables for four in downtown restaurants, where she listened to the troubles of her fellow volunteers and their husbands with a bright intensity that I loved, I see now, because it was an unearned window on the passion she had tried so hard to devote to me. Elliot chose a school in New Hampshire, but he came home for every holiday, so that I could almost imagine there was no significance to the distance. Then after Liz died, he began to eliminate annual visits home with a tender restraint—his birthday one year; the next year mine; the first Christmas he spent with his in-laws in Vermont—until finally he brought his wife and sons out to visit me only once a year, for Thanksgiving.
But that day twenty years ago, with the threat of the plumbing and the job and Elliot’s research topic behind me, I was reasonably optimistic that I could start fresh, building intimacy into our exchanges on the bedrock of my secrets. It was another two weeks before I left for Thailand, and in that time, I opened a safe-deposit box and gave up my father’s gun. I checked the function of the trap primers daily, and gave Liz her own maintenance closet key. A few times I thought of driving to tell Larry’s wife the punch line to my plumbing problems, but I think I already knew I would never tell Liz, and for all my myopia I was at least aware enough of the betrayal this small temptation represented to resist it.
The night before my flight, Elliot was at the far end of the yard teaching the dog to wait for his release before fetching a tossed ball. Liz stood at the kitchen sink snapping the ends from beans. I went upstairs to change, and tried to imagine the life they would lead alone together during my six weeks on the other side of the world. A hint of the missed chance this kind of travel would come to represent flickered through me, although it would be years before I really understood it. Just then I felt relieved. Even a little victorious.
I opened my wallet, and inside it was that picture of our family standing in front of the Grand Canyon. I had taken it by positioning the camera on a rock and setting the timer for thirty seconds. I walked to the canyon wall where my wife and son stood and tossed a stone out into the shimmering air, and we watched it fall past the rose-hued record of one hundred million years of geologic time. A bird flew by. A chipmunk passed us on the path. Silence. The stone struck the wall for the first time a mere two seconds before the aperture opened, and into the hush of their held breath I whispered “Smile” and captured for all time on both of their faces that mixture of awe and surprise that is wonder. On my own is a different thing. I used to think of it as a father’s joy, but just recently it has begun to strike me as the lonelier joy of a magician.
Acknowledgments
A number of people were important to the writing of this book. I was helped daily by the long reach of three teachers, Mr. Sloan (sixth grade); my high school English teacher, Blair Torrey; and my thesis advisor, Toni Morrison, each of whom sometimes found a few things worthy of praise in my homework assignments and always respected me enough to point out a great deal that was not. For various invaluable contributions, including encouragement, candor, technical information, geographical perspective, critical insight, editorial advice, and unstinting gifts of time, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all of the following people: Robert C. Allen, Clay and Amy Brock, Laurel Canan, Ethan Canin, G. Scott Cuming, Suzanne Dresdner, Carole Glickfeld, Courtney Hodell, Alan Locker, Amy Loyd, Melanie Rehak, Chandler Tuttle, Amanda Urban, Steve Verigin, Joshua Weinstein, and Dottie Zicklin. I would also like to thank all those friends and family members who rendered emotional support in the form of comfort, distraction, or childcare; my children, for countless small and priceless things; and Jeff, my best reader and best friend, whose company was itself the most frequent aid.
About the Author
MACKENZIE BEZOS grew up in northern California and studied creative writing at Princeton University. She lives in Seattle. This is her first novel.
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Credits
Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
Copyright
THE TESTING OF LUTHER ALBRIGHT. Copyright © 2005 MacKenzie Bezos. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition August 2006 ISBN 9780061758096
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 0-06-075141-X
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The Testing of Luther Albright Page 25
