This Beautiful Life E-Book

Helen Schulman

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

It could happen to any family... What if it happened to yours? When the Bergamots move to the city, they're unsure how well they'll adapt. Soon though, Richard is consumed by his new job and Liz, who has given up her career, is hectically playing mother to six-year-old Coco and fifteen-year-old Jake. But the day Jake unthinkingly forwards a sexually explicit email attachment sent to him by a young girl is the last day of the Bergamots' comfortable middle-class existence. Within hours, the video clip is not only all over Jake's school, but all over the city - and all over the internet. Faced with impossible choices, what Richard and Liz do next risks destroying not only their marriage, their daughter and their place in the community, but also Jake - the child they have set out to protect. The controversial and explosive story of how one email can tear a family apart. 'One of the most gifted writers of our generation.' Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit From the Goon Squad 'A gripping, potent and blisteringly well-written story of family, dilemma and consequence.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Leseprobe

THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE

Helen Schulman is the author of the novels A Day at the Beach, P.S., The Revisionist, and Out of Time, and the short story collection Not a Free Show. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Time, Vogue, GQ, the Paris Review, and the New York Times Book Review. She is an associate professor of writing at The New School in New York City, where she lives with her husband and two children.

First published in the United States of America in 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2012 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Helen Schulman, 2011

The moral right of Helen Schulman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 085789 623 0 E-book ISBN: 978 085789 624 7

Designed by Jennifer Ann Daddio/Bookmark Design & Media Inc.

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Lord, give us what you have already given.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

HER MOUTH FILLED THE screen. Purple lip gloss, clear braces.

“Still think I’m too young?”

She leaned over, the fixed lens of the camera catching a tiny smattering of blemishes on her cheek, like a comet’s spray. Her hair had been bleached white, with long blond roots, and most of it was pulled back and up into a chunky ponytail above the three plastic hoops climbing the rim of her ear.

The song began to play, Beyoncé. I love to love you, baby. She stepped aside, revealing her room in all its messy glory. Above the bed was a painting; the central image was a daisy. A large lava lamp bubbled and gooed on the nightstand.

She was giggling offstage. Suddenly, the screen was a swirl of green plaid. Filmstrips of color in knife pleats. Her short skirt swayed along with her round hips. A little roll of ivory fat nestled above the waistband. She wore a white tank top, which she took off, her hands quickly finding the cups of her black bra. The breasts inside were small, and at first she covered them with her palms, fingers splayed like scallop shells. Then she unhooked the bra in the front and they popped out as if on springs. Her hands did a little fan dance as they reached below her hemline and lifted up her skirt.

She’d done all of this for his benefit. To please him. To prove him wrong. She reached out for the little toy baseball bat and the next part was hard to watch, even if you knew what was coming.

Except it wasn’t.

AS WITH SO MANY things of consequence, it all began with a party.

Two parties. Both of Elizabeth Bergamots children had parties to go to. Jake, the eldesthis longish brown hair suddenly grazing his collarbones, his eyes the color of muddled mintwas on his own that night, of course. His party was up in the Bronx, in Riverdale, somewhere near his school. He was fifteen and a half the previous Friday. It was pretty ridiculous that the Bergamots continued to celebrate this increasingly minor milestonehis half birthdaywith half a cake and half a present. Richard, Lizs husband, had started the whole business ten years earlier, when hed surprised them both by bringing home half a deck of cards that year, the other twenty-six miraculously appearing overnight under the boys pillow.

Hes five and a half on Cinco de Mayo, Richard had said, by way of explanation. Is there a better cause for celebration?

Since the gesture was so touching, so sweet and fatherly, and Richard was a Californian by birth, Liz had trusted him on the import of such things, Mexican things. Plus, it seemed funa fun family tradition! It was what Liz had always hungered after despite generations of contrary evidence: relatives as respite, home as haven, a retreat from the rest of the dangerous, damaging world.

Last Friday, this Cinco de Mayo, Jake got half a set of car keys in the morning over his Lucky Charms. The true key to the kingdom was to be delivered, along with tuition for drivers ed, on his actual birthday, in November.

But for tonights party, Jake would have to rely on some cocktail of public transportationbus, subway, bus, subway, subway, cabalthough there was always the possibility that some other love-addled mom like Liz would drive him home. Liz herself was otherwise occupied. It was his job to figure it out.