The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline(31)

I lay awake for a long time, refusing to cry. I’d made my bed.



Saturday started with a guilty dash to the large, out-of-town grocery store.

David had enticed his colleagues with promises of fine Italian cuisine—I doubted it was his sunny personality and winning ways that made so many people desirous of attending our supper party—so fine cuisine was what I had to supply. All homemade. David wouldn’t allow anything pre-prepared—he liked to see me busy in the kitchen.

I checked my phone as soon as I left the house but there were no messages from Sebastian. I decided to text while I was out and hoped that’d he’d reply quickly while I dared to leave my phone on.



* Am shopping but thinking of you. Cx *



I was stupidly happy when he replied immediately.



* I think of you all the time. xx *



I read the simple message three times and then, with a sigh, deleted it. Now I had groceries to buy: I had to be that person—David’s wife.

Ninety minutes later I staggered into the house, bowed under the weight of a multitude of loaves and fishes, and unloaded all the grocery bags into the kitchen. David was doing something in his study—he was too busy and important to help me. I hoped I’d bought enough for the 35 people I was expected to feed.

At noon I made him a quick sandwich and delivered it express. I surprised him. He snapped shut the lid of his laptop as I entered, but not before I’d seen that he was playing card games. Yeah, too busy to help me. Not that I cared anymore, but it was another irritant. I realized my tolerance levels were being eroded—every moment I spent with Sebastian made the long hours with David more unbearable.

By early evening I was exhausted. I’d been standing in the kitchen all day and I felt tired and bad-tempered. David wandered in fresh from the shower and eyed the buffet table with the air of a lord surveying his fiefdom.

“You’re not ready,” he said, gazing at me in my flour-stained, rumpled apron.

“I’ve just spent seven hours cooking, David.”

“You look like it.”

I turned on my heel. He couldn’t even bring himself to say a simple ‘thank you’ or that the food looked damn fine, which it did. Bastard.

I thought again about Sebastian’s words: four months. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t last that long either.

Then I saw that the dress I’d laid out to wear tonight had slid off the bed. David would have had to step over it three or four times as he’d moved around the bedroom, but he’d left it in a crumpled heap.

His pettiness filled me with sudden fury. I supposed his childish behavior was punishment for not fully attending to his needs last night. Whatever the reason, I felt a small kernel of real dislike hardening in the pit of my stomach.

I showered quickly, running through all the angry words I wanted to spit in his face; words that were getting harder to bite back.

Once I’d dried my hair, I swept it up into a simple chignon—one of the few arts of graceful dressing that I learned from my mom—then slipped on my favorite, if slightly wrinkled, terracotta cocktail dress, and cream pumps.

I was applying some gloss lipstick when I heard the first car pull up outside, followed by David’s hysterical yell for me to be front and center in the living room.

Tempted as I was to keep him waiting, it just wasn’t worth his prima donna overreaction later. He always found a way to exorcise his pique. It occurred to me that over the next few months it would behove me to be a model wife—it would certainly make life easier, but I severely doubted I was up to the challenge. But not when I felt like stabbing him with a pastry fork.

The early arrivals were a Commander Dawson and his wife Bette, a well-dressed couple in their mid-thirties who radiated curiosity, looking at me, the food, the house, our fixtures and fittings with such avid eyes, I wondered if they’d try to sell it on the home-shopping channel.

Then four people arrived together: two single officers and a couple called the Bennetts who were friendly and easy-going, greeting me kindly and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the food.

By the time Donna and Johan arrived, the house was filling up and people spilled out into the yard, the pleasant hum of chat drifting on the summer air.

“Darling Caroline. You look beautiful, as always,” said Donna, kissing me on the cheek and holding my hands. “It’s so good of you to have everyone over so soon after moving in.”

I felt she was trying to convey some sort of message with her words, but I just smiled and nodded, and accepted a quick peck from Johan, whose eyes were fixed expectantly on the buffet.

Donna hooked her arm through mine and asked how I was settling back into the old neighborhood.