The Private Lives of Pippa Lee Read Online Free Page A

found carrot sticks planted in a bowl of vanilla frosting. A frying pan with the remains of fried ham cemented to the bottom. More dirty plates. This time she woke Herb and showed him. They looked at each other.
    â€˜Maybe you should see a doctor,’ she said.
    Herb was furious. ‘Okay, if I have Alzheimer’s so be it, I’ll kill myself. But first I need to see the evidence.’ He drove straight to the electronics store in the mini-mall and bought a small surveillance camera with a wall mount, then paid the man from the store to install it in the corner, where the wall met the ceiling. The guy was up on a ladder, sweat pouring down his face. Pippa turned on the air conditioner. ‘This must seem a little strange to you,’ she said.
    â€˜You’d be surprised what people do for entertainment in this place,’ said the man.
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Yeah, but I’ve never seen it in the kitchen before.’
    â€˜Oh. No. It’s not – it’s –’ Pippa let it go. She’d rather have him think they were filming themselves humping on the kitchen table than chronicling her husband’s descent into inanity.
    An hour later, Pippa was straightening out the living room when she looked out the plate-glass window. Across the pond, in the Nadeaus’ driveway, a U-Haul was hitched up to a bright yellow truck with an orange shell clamped over the bed. The shell had windows with ratty blue and red gingham curtains pulled shut inside. Pippa could see Dot gesturing to a dark-haired man who was carrying a cardboard box. Pippa picked her bird-watching binoculars off the coffee table and trained them on the young man. He had a T-shirt with ‘What?’ printed on the back of it. So the half-baked son was moving in after all! It was funny about Dot, she thought. It felt so natural, talking to her. It made Pippa feel like a different person. Dot knew her out of context. A few months ago, in her old life, she would no sooner have had a friendship with Dot Nadeau than flown around the room. Their friends were editors, novelists, critics, poets. Yet Pippa had never felt fully at ease in their hypercivilized company. Only with her twins, when they were young – only then had she felt fully secure in who she was. Grace and Ben had looked up at her with such certainty in their little faces, and called her Mama. They knew, so she knew. Now her babies were gone. They called sometimes, came home to visit. Occasionally they all went out to lunch together. But they didn’t look at Pippa the way they once had. Ben was still so sweet to her. He had always needed little, expected everything, received what he expected. He was born thoughtful, but secure. Pippa’s feeling for him was simple, ample, easy. But Grace – that was a real fuckup. Pippa felt stupid and bumbling in her daughter’s company, and somehow guilty, as though she had let Grace down by amounting to so little. And there was something more.
    As a very young child, Grace had been needy, clutching at hermother like a baby monkey. Her love for Pippa was possessive and competitive. Though she adored her twin, she tried to edge Ben out of her mother’s embraces, desperate to bask in her love alone. The day after her fourth birthday she sat down at Pippa’s feet, opened a book, and read the whole thing out loud. Pippa was astounded; the child had been completely intractable when it came to reading, refusing to sound out letters at all. Little Grace looked up at her mother then and, with furrowed brow, asked, ‘ Now do you love me more than Ben?’ Pippa swept the girl up into her lap and hugged her, feeling a sting of guilt like a poisoned needle in her sternum. Because she knew what Grace was getting at. There were flashes of jealous intensity in her daughter’s love that Pippa found domineering, devouring, even repellent in moments that came and, mercifully, dissolved again into the otherwise