“We can stop at BookBarn on the way back,” Mom says, as if to entice me. BookBarn
is a giant, dusty old used-book store. In the back they keep a stash of twenty-five-cent
classical records that nobody ever seems to buy except me. I keep a pile of
them hidden under my bed. A collection of classical records is not the kind of thing
you advertise.
I’ve shown them to Adam, but that was only after we’d already been together for
five months. I’d expected him to laugh. He’s such the cool guy with his pegged jeans
and black low-tops, his effortlessly beat-up punk-rock tees and his subtle tattoos. He
is so not the kind of guy to end up with someone like me. Which was why when I’d
first spotted him watching me at the music studios at school two years ago, I’d been
convinced he was making fun of me and I’d hidden from him. Anyhow, he hadn’t
laughed. It turned out he had a dusty collection of punk-rock records under his bed.
“We can also stop by Gran and Gramps for an early dinner,” Dad says, already
reaching for the phone. “We’ll have you back in plenty of time to get to Portland,” he
adds as he dials.
“I’m in,” I say. It isn’t the lure of BookBarn, or the fact that Adam is on tour, or that
my best friend, Kim, is busy doing yearbook stuff. It isn’t even that my cello is at
school or that I could stay home and watch TV or sleep. I’d actually rather go off
with my family. This is another thing you don’t advertise about yourself, but Adam
gets that, too.
“Teddy,” Dad calls. “Get dressed. We’re going on an adventure.”
Teddy finishes off his drum solo with a crash of cymbals. A moment later he’s
bounding into the kitchen fully dressed, as if he’d pulled on his clothes while
careening down the steep wooden staircase of our drafty Victorian house. “School’s
out for summer . . .” he sings.
“Alice Cooper?” Dad asks. “Have we no standards? At least sing the Ramones.”
“School’s out forever,” Teddy sings over Dad’s protests.
“Ever the optimist,” I say.
Mom laughs. She puts a plate of slightly charred pancakes down on the kitchen
table. “Eat up, family.”
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
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