Read Astor Place Vintage: A Novel for Free Online Page B

spread them on a tray, stuck a toothpick in each one, and invited us to try a sample. My fellow spectators descended on the mushrooms like soldiers starving on the front lines. I stepped in and took one before they disappeared. It tasted delicious. Still, I turned away without buying one. Even the prospect of pleasing Father with a home-cooked meal couldn’t compete with my wounded pride.

AMANDA
    THE BUTTON CLICKED as Dr. Markoff turned on a cassette recorder. Did they still manufacture those?
    I want you to stare at the ceiling.
    His ceiling was much higher than mine. I bet the walls were thicker, too.
    Keep your eyes focused on the flat white surface and try not to blink.
    This was exciting. I was good at not blinking. Maybe I was good at being hypnotized.
    You very much want to blink, but I want you to resist that urge.
    I blinked.
    Your lids feel so heavy, the temptation to close them is too great. So now you can close your eyes if you like.
    Relief.
    Now I want you to focus on your body by relaxing each part. The soles of your feet  . . . your calves  . . . your thighs . . .
    He went slowly, lingering on every part. I relaxed. This wasnice. I just wanted to lie there listening to his rhythmical, soothing, monotonous voice.
    We’re going to let your unconscious hear what it needs to hear while you think about your relationships with other people.
    Well, that wasn’t going to relax me. I didn’t want to think about Jeff or why I couldn’t give him up.
    Life is not always a straight line. You take detours and go backward and forward and sideways.
    It wasn’t like I’d been pining away for Jeff after we lost touch. He was the one who came to me at the store on Mott Street.
    It’s impossible to know everything from the beginning.
    I sold him a white alligator bag. Then he asked me to dinner.
    We need to live in order to learn about ourselves, and the world and other people.
    By the time we were on dessert, he’d confessed that his marriage was a failure.
    We wouldn’t grow if we didn’t make mistakes.
    We began to see each other regularly, just as friends, though his wife didn’t know.
    So it doesn’t make sense to blame yourself for living your life.
    One night, when I was hopeless about finding anyone I wanted to be with more than him, we made love.
    We can’t tell the future.
    I told myself we’d have our fling, and then I’d move on to that serious relationship I couldn’t seem to find anyway.
    We don’t know how we’ll affect the people we cross paths with.
    Months passed and then a year. Jeff talked about leaving his wife but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His two sons needed him. His wife would never agree to a divorce. They both came from money, and fighting over a settlement would get ugly.
    You’ve faced many challenges before, and you can face new ones.
    I’d suffered through my parents’ divorce, so I understood the difficulties—minus the coming-from-money part. I hated the woman my father left us for. Did I want to become the other woman? Give his kids a reason to hate me?
    Not by making something happen but by allowing it to happen.
    It took me a year to tell my mother about my affair. It took her two years to stop telling me it was wrong every chance she got. Eventually, we learned to avoid the subject.
    Because you’re strong, you’re independent.
    I knew I was behaving dishonorably. Still, I couldn’t give Jeff up, just hovered like a shoplifter waiting for the right moment to pocket the loot.
    You’re able to open up to new ways of thinking.
    Molly had a theory: Since he was my first love and my first sexual relationship, all my intense reactions to him were physiologically imprinted on my brain. Now it was chemical, like an addiction.
    Even though it’s frightening to you.
    After a while I realized he’d never leave her. We began to fight a lot, make up, fight. He said he wanted to marry me, but it was impossible.
    It’s scary to let him go.
    I told him it was