========================================================
英语小说：The Professor's Wives' Club 简介
With its shady maple trees, elegant iron gate, and high
fence laced with honeysuckle, Manhattan U's garden offers
faculty wives Mary, Sofia, Ashleigh, and Hannah a much-
needed refuge. For Mary, the garden is an escape from
abuse. For Sofia, it offers solace as she considers
trading in her diaper bag for a briefcase. Then there's
Ashleigh, who wonders whether she should tell her
conservative father something that might well give him
another heart attack. And last is Hannah, who rues
jeopardizing her lukewarm marriage...for one passionate
night.
As Mary's hu*****and, the power-hungry dean, makes plans to
demolish the beloved garden, these four women will
discover a surprising secret about a lost Edgar Allan Poe
manuscript...and realize they must find the courage to
stand up for their passions, dreams, and desires.
==========================
THE PROFESSORS' WIVES' CLUB
by Joanne Rendell (fiction)
Published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ISBN: 9780451224910
Copyright (c) 2008 by Joanne Rendell
PROFESSORS (Part 1 of 2)
======================================
CHAPTER ONE
Mary
Even though the sky was heavy with rain clouds and an eerie morning
gloom hung over the city, Mary didn't take off her dark glasses. It
was bad enough that Sandra, their cleaner, had caught a glimpse of
her swollen eye; she couldn't risk anyone else seeing it. As if to
make doubly sure the puffed and purple mess remained concealed, Mary
pushed the glasses farther up her nose and winced as the plastic
pressed into her tender skin.
Squinting upward through her one good eye, she could just make out
the Empire State Building and the twinkling tip of the Chrysler
peeking above the university's library. On either side of the garden
where she sat, two apartment buildings jutted thirty floors into the
sky. Although each building housed hundreds of Manhattan U's
faculty, each with their own window looking down on the garden
below, Mary found this place strangely secluded and anonymous.
Perhaps it had something to do with the high fence and the garden's
heavy iron gate with its large, menacing lock. Only people who lived
in the two towers had keys to the garden, and when it was gloomy
like today only a few of those people actually used them.
She would miss the garden. After she was gone, that was. Back when
her daughter was young, they spent almost every summer afternoon out
here. It was their small oasis in the heart of the dirty and
rambunctious city. The trees around the garden were always thick
with leaves, and the blooming honeysuckle that weaved its way
through the steel struts of the fence made it impossible to see
bustling Bleecker Street only a few feet away. She knew her daughter
was safe in this garden, and on shady spots in the diligently mowed
grass the two of them would play and skip and stretch out for hours,
drawing, reading, and napping. Back in those days Mary would
sometimes even pull out a battered leather-bound notebook and write.
Today, however, with the trees still bare from winter and a sharp
spring breeze whipping Mary's long black and silver hair across her
face, the garden was not so inviting. But it was the only place she
could think to come. The only place where she wouldn't have to
explain the dark glasses, and the only place she wouldn't see "him."
It was ironic that Mary came to the garden on days like this one;
particularly ironic that it was the one place she would miss when
she left New York. After all, Mary was the wife of Dean Jack
Havemeyer, and it was none other than Dean Jack Havemeyer who wanted
the garden demolished and replaced with a parking lot. Although it
hadn't been given the final go-ahead, Jack's campaign was gathering
steam. As ever, Jack was outspoken about his cause, and Mary knew he
would get his way in the end. The garden was a drain on university
resources, Jack argued passionately to anyone who'd listen, whereas
a parking lot would require little maintenance and would be highly
lucrative. What he didn't make so public was that the parking lot
plans included reserved spots for deans and other university
management like himself.
If Jack was obsessed with one day becoming president of Manhattan U,
he was even more obsessed with his prized metallic blue Ford
Explorer.
"If it was parked out there," he'd often say, gesticulating out of
their thirtieth-floor apartment window with a tumbler of whiskey
lodged in his hand, "I'd be able to keep my eye on it. Make sure no
punks are scratching it up."
Mary would merely nod. She couldn't care less about the car. They
rarely used it, and it sat in a cramped garage in the West Village,
eating up hundreds of dollars each month. She just couldn't
understand why he loved it so much. A long time ago, when he was a
lowly professor in the history department, his passions were simple:
his writing, his research on the American Revolution, his students,
and his Rolling Stones albums.
But then he began to move up Manhattan U's management ladder, and
everything changed. He suddenly started wanting things, grasping
things, needing things. All kinds of things that he'd never been
interested in before. Not only did he demand a bigger and higher
apartment in faculty housing with every promotion, he also started
to wear hand-tailored suits, smoke expensive Cuban cigars, and
import single-malt whiskeys from Scotland. Then there was the car,
and the new love for golf, and the expensive holidays in Europe. To
see him now, suited and swaggering, it was hard to believe he'd ever
been that shaggy-haired grad student in a scuffed hand-knitted
sweater and ill-fitting brown cords. The one whom she'd spied, with
his intense hazel eyes and wide smile, across a smoke-filled
graduate common room at Princeton three long decades ago.
The thought of Jack made Mary shiver. She buried her chin in her
woolen scarf and wrapped her long arms tighter across her chest.
He'd changed so much in the last few years. Some women might put up
with it, stay with Jack until the grave, but she couldn't. She'd
endured it long enough and it was time to go.
"Not long now," she muttered under her breath as she remembered the
plane tickets and the crisp, newly signed lease hidden in her
underwear drawer.
英语小说：The Professor's Wives' Club 简介
With its shady maple trees, elegant iron gate, and high
fence laced with honeysuckle, Manhattan U's garden offers
faculty wives Mary, Sofia, Ashleigh, and Hannah a much-
needed refuge. For Mary, the garden is an escape from
abuse. For Sofia, it offers solace as she considers
trading in her diaper bag for a briefcase. Then there's
Ashleigh, who wonders whether she should tell her
conservative father something that might well give him
another heart attack. And last is Hannah, who rues
jeopardizing her lukewarm marriage...for one passionate
night.
As Mary's hu*****and, the power-hungry dean, makes plans to
demolish the beloved garden, these four women will
discover a surprising secret about a lost Edgar Allan Poe
manuscript...and realize they must find the courage to
stand up for their passions, dreams, and desires.
==========================
THE PROFESSORS' WIVES' CLUB
by Joanne Rendell (fiction)
Published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ISBN: 9780451224910
Copyright (c) 2008 by Joanne Rendell
PROFESSORS (Part 1 of 2)
======================================
CHAPTER ONE
Mary
Even though the sky was heavy with rain clouds and an eerie morning
gloom hung over the city, Mary didn't take off her dark glasses. It
was bad enough that Sandra, their cleaner, had caught a glimpse of
her swollen eye; she couldn't risk anyone else seeing it. As if to
make doubly sure the puffed and purple mess remained concealed, Mary
pushed the glasses farther up her nose and winced as the plastic
pressed into her tender skin.
Squinting upward through her one good eye, she could just make out
the Empire State Building and the twinkling tip of the Chrysler
peeking above the university's library. On either side of the garden
where she sat, two apartment buildings jutted thirty floors into the
sky. Although each building housed hundreds of Manhattan U's
faculty, each with their own window looking down on the garden
below, Mary found this place strangely secluded and anonymous.
Perhaps it had something to do with the high fence and the garden's
heavy iron gate with its large, menacing lock. Only people who lived
in the two towers had keys to the garden, and when it was gloomy
like today only a few of those people actually used them.
She would miss the garden. After she was gone, that was. Back when
her daughter was young, they spent almost every summer afternoon out
here. It was their small oasis in the heart of the dirty and
rambunctious city. The trees around the garden were always thick
with leaves, and the blooming honeysuckle that weaved its way
through the steel struts of the fence made it impossible to see
bustling Bleecker Street only a few feet away. She knew her daughter
was safe in this garden, and on shady spots in the diligently mowed
grass the two of them would play and skip and stretch out for hours,
drawing, reading, and napping. Back in those days Mary would
sometimes even pull out a battered leather-bound notebook and write.
Today, however, with the trees still bare from winter and a sharp
spring breeze whipping Mary's long black and silver hair across her
face, the garden was not so inviting. But it was the only place she
could think to come. The only place where she wouldn't have to
explain the dark glasses, and the only place she wouldn't see "him."
It was ironic that Mary came to the garden on days like this one;
particularly ironic that it was the one place she would miss when
she left New York. After all, Mary was the wife of Dean Jack
Havemeyer, and it was none other than Dean Jack Havemeyer who wanted
the garden demolished and replaced with a parking lot. Although it
hadn't been given the final go-ahead, Jack's campaign was gathering
steam. As ever, Jack was outspoken about his cause, and Mary knew he
would get his way in the end. The garden was a drain on university
resources, Jack argued passionately to anyone who'd listen, whereas
a parking lot would require little maintenance and would be highly
lucrative. What he didn't make so public was that the parking lot
plans included reserved spots for deans and other university
management like himself.
If Jack was obsessed with one day becoming president of Manhattan U,
he was even more obsessed with his prized metallic blue Ford
Explorer.
"If it was parked out there," he'd often say, gesticulating out of
their thirtieth-floor apartment window with a tumbler of whiskey
lodged in his hand, "I'd be able to keep my eye on it. Make sure no
punks are scratching it up."
Mary would merely nod. She couldn't care less about the car. They
rarely used it, and it sat in a cramped garage in the West Village,
eating up hundreds of dollars each month. She just couldn't
understand why he loved it so much. A long time ago, when he was a
lowly professor in the history department, his passions were simple:
his writing, his research on the American Revolution, his students,
and his Rolling Stones albums.
But then he began to move up Manhattan U's management ladder, and
everything changed. He suddenly started wanting things, grasping
things, needing things. All kinds of things that he'd never been
interested in before. Not only did he demand a bigger and higher
apartment in faculty housing with every promotion, he also started
to wear hand-tailored suits, smoke expensive Cuban cigars, and
import single-malt whiskeys from Scotland. Then there was the car,
and the new love for golf, and the expensive holidays in Europe. To
see him now, suited and swaggering, it was hard to believe he'd ever
been that shaggy-haired grad student in a scuffed hand-knitted
sweater and ill-fitting brown cords. The one whom she'd spied, with
his intense hazel eyes and wide smile, across a smoke-filled
graduate common room at Princeton three long decades ago.
The thought of Jack made Mary shiver. She buried her chin in her
woolen scarf and wrapped her long arms tighter across her chest.
He'd changed so much in the last few years. Some women might put up
with it, stay with Jack until the grave, but she couldn't. She'd
endured it long enough and it was time to go.
"Not long now," she muttered under her breath as she remembered the
plane tickets and the crisp, newly signed lease hidden in her
underwear drawer.
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