In the early days of their marriage, Maddy had considered his stealth in the bedroom a blessing. She'd thought it was nice of him not to bother her with the demands of his job—all that coming and going for the early staff meetings and the endless round of late-night parties. She hadn't wanted to give credence to the myriad bitter complaints of his first wife, Jenny. First wives were by definition evil hags. Jenny still harassed him, and often her, as well. It wasn't a pleasant situation. She used to think Jenny was just crazy, but now she was more sympathetic to her former rival. Wayne's bedroom stealth was just sneaking around, a trick he must have mastered with her, or even before, to confuse all his victims. Well, maybe that assessment was a little dramatic. She was hardly his victim.
Maddy had been twenty-seven when she'd met the handsome forty-two-year-old. They'd both been part of a daredevil trip in which a group of wealthy friends flew in small planes to a remote area way in Canada to ski fresh deep powder on a virgin slope. Like numerous women before her, Maddy had been attracted to him right away. She had appreciated his appetites, and she'd ended up pursuing him as much as he pursued her. At the time, he was backing out of a failed marriage, the father of two nice children, and she believed every word he said about Jenny's failures as a wife.
Maddy had been certain that she was a woman of the world, game for anything. She'd been a champion skier, after all. All legs and pretty enough to be a model. With her huge blue eyes and blond hair, she'd been photographed many times for ski magazines and had plenty of boyfriends in the sports crowd. Her past popularity and athletic prowess were painful to remember now because Wayne did not turn out to be interested in sports at all. He was just a very handsome foodie. Seven years ago she didn't even know what a foodie was. Now she was buried in the type—that special breed of human being who devoted his (or her) entire life to the art of the meal.
Never mind what meal, where or at what time of day it had been eaten, how, or what year. A foodie could spend hours discussing the merits and demerits of a meal consumed a decade ago in a country that had since been annihilated. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, even tea—it didn't matter. Al kinds of meals were worthy of lengthy savoring and even longer debate. It wouldn't affect Wayne's conversation one bit if the restaurant, or indeed the whole city, he might be praising had been totally destroyed by a war in which poison gas was used to exterminate half its citizens. Its demise wouldn't be the point. It wouldn't be mentioned. Events and the passage of time had no relevance whatsoever to the memory of an excellent meal.
When the two handsome people had met in a tiny plane in a very cold place where Maddy certainly felt very much at home, she had no way of knowing that history, even Wayne's own personal history, was significant to him only in the context of some dish or some ingredient of some dish. He remembered Jenny through the itinerary of their meals.
A gastronome had an encyclopedic mind in one area only, and that didn't even hint at the depth of knowledge about food possessed by a true foodie. Wayne was a true foodie. Other interests, like skiing or skydiving, this wife or that one, would come and go in his life, but food would always dominate. Maddy had learned that to her deep chagrin. For him every country had a terrain jnd a cuisine built on the ingredients cultivated there. Every cuisine had its history and its traditions, its utensils and vessels for presentation. He could write books. He did write books, or rather someone wrote them for him and let him take the credit.
And then, almost worse than foodies, Wayne's friends were winies, too. Or maybe winos was a more fitting description. When wine was added to the menu of foodie conversation, they talked all day and all night, as well. They knew which wine went best with each and every course, which slopes and caves in every country were best for the grapes, which years were the best vintages, and when every vintage should be drunk, as well as the perfect temperature to serve it. Not to mention the shape of glass required to give every wine the very best nose.
Maddy Angus Wilson was raised in Jackson, Wyoming, where she grew up on Cherry Coke, beef, antelope, venison, french fries, and not a lot else. They certainly didn't have mache lettuces, baby vegetables the size of an infant's pinkie, and free-range chickens in her family's kitchen. Maddy preferred a different kind of physical life. Her friends were skiers, skaters, sailors, golfers. They were not much in attendance at places where foie gras was served with kumquat coulis. Unfortunately, however, there were a great many women who shared Wayne's passions. Maddy had become an angry woman, but who could blame her, she asked herself. This wasn't what she'd signed on for.
At seven thirty she dragged herself out of bed and studied herself critically in the mirror. She was still beautiful, but for some reason not as sharp this morning as she should be. She washed her face, brushed her hair, dressed in sneakers and almost see-through pink leotards that showed off her magnificent figure. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where Wayne was already having breakfast with the boys. They were having a feast without her. Her exclusion from that special ritual hurt, too.
The presentation had included fresh homemade sausage patties.; whipped cream; a huge bowl of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries; apricot preserves; three kinds of honey; thin, rolled pancakes filled with fresh raspberry jam that had been made only yesterday. Maddy had seen four jars of it cooling in the kitchen last night before she went to bed. Not much was left of the meal now, and Maddy's eyes widened with further distress to see that Remy, their supposed nanny, was sitting at her table with her one big and two little men, enjoying her share of the feast as if she, not Maddy, were the lady of the house.
"Remy made pancakes, Mommy. They're sooo yum." Bert was five and a half. Towheaded and smiley all over, he was a happy boy who looked just like her. At the moment, the bottom half of his face was smeared with bright red raspberry jam, and so were two of her favorite French blue toile napkins with the idyllic rustic scenes from the eighteenth century on them. Maddy's mouth tightened.
"Hi, Mommy," little Angus chirped from his special high chair. He was three and a half but still had a throne of his own, and he, too, was covered in red, likewise his napkin.
"Hi, sweetie," she cooed, then gave both boys careful kisses on the tops of their heads. She did not kiss Wayne, but he was busy with a sausage and didn't seem to notice.
"Hey, they're not just plain old pancakes, boys.
They're crepes. Didn't Remy do a great job?" Wayne said.
"Yea Remy," Angus said.
And that did it. Maddy wanted that woman out of her house. Out of her life. Today. She was gone, fired. Maddy didn't care that they had the special bond of growing up in Jackson, and both had escaped to the city for a better life. She didn't want Remy stealing her life. She picked up a jam-smeared napkin. "You ruined the napkins—" she snapped at the young woman.
Wayne jumped in before she could go any further. "Oh, don't be an old silly. Who cares about napkins when the meal is terrific? Come on, honey, try one of these patties. Oh, wait. I forgot, you don't eat before noon." He finished off the very last bite and dabbed at his lips.
Shit.
Maddy's blood boiled at the insult. He put her down and insulted her every chance he got, always looking like an angel with his bland expression.
An old silly?
Now she was a freak who didn't eat? Now she was old? Maddy flushed angrily, trying to hold her rage in check. "The boys are going to be late," she said coldly.