De Amerikaanse schrijver Stewart O’Nan werd geboren op 4 februari 1961 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Stewart O’Nan op dit blog.
Uit: The Odds: A Love Story
“The final weekend of their marriage, hounded by insolvency, indecision, and, stupidly, half secretly, in the never-distant past ruled by memory, infidelity, Art and Marion Fowler fled the country. North, to Canada. “Like the slaves,” Marion told her sister Celia. They would spend their last days and nights as man and wife as they’d spent the first, nearly thirty years ago, in Niagara Falls, as if, across the border, by that fabled and overwrought cauldron of new beginnings, away from any domestic, everyday claims, they might find each other again. Or at least Art hoped so. Marion was just hoping to endure it with some grace and get back home so she could start dealing with the paperwork required to become, for the first time in her life, a single-filing taxpayer.
They told their daughter Emma they were taking a second honeymoon.
“Plus they’re doing another open house here, so … ” Marion, on the other line, qualified.
They weren’t good liars, they were just afraid of the truth and what it might say about them. They were middle-class, prey to the tyranny of appearances and what they could afford, or dare, which was part of their problem. They were too settled and practical for what they were doing, uncomfortable with desperate measures. They could barely discuss the plan between themselves, as if, exposed to light and air, it might evaporate.
With Jeremy, it was enough to say they wanted to see the new casino, a Frank Gehry knockoff featured on the covers of Sunday travel sections and in-flight magazines. He was impressed with the rate they’d gotten. Art had dug around online to find a bargain.
“Your father the high roller,” Marion joked.
The Valentine’s Getaway Special, it was called: $249, inclusive of meals and a stake of fifty Lucky Bucks toward table games.”
Stewart O’Nan (Pittsburgh, 4 februari 1961)