A
llie holds her
hand out for me and I take it, squeezing her wool mitten. It’s chilly today, and so I pushed for the gloves and the stocking cap and her heavy coat. As I look around at other parents escorting their bareheaded children through the parking lot, I feel overprotective and silly.
“See, Daddy, it’s not as cold as you said.”
“Well, you look good in a hat regardless. It’s a rare quality in a woman.”
She scratches her head with one mitten. “It makes my hair itchy.”
It’s my first full day of unemployment, and despite the searing headache, I’m up and showered. Getting Allie to school today is my only real responsibility, and I’m lingering a bit, not sure how I’m going to fill the rest of the hours. The other parents are dressed for work in nice office-appropriate attire. They’re going to drop their children off and head to buildings like responsible adults. I’ve got nothing though. For seven years, I’ve fantasized about how I’d quit my job when I sold my novel. I would do it respectfully and professionally, but I’d be sure to let them know that I was happy to be escaping.
“Do you think Mommy’s gonna bring me a present from Boston? When I talked to her, she didn’t say. But she usually brings me something . . . like candy.”
“Probably,” I say. “She loves you very much, and she likes to bring you presents.” We step over a curb, and her backpack is almost as big as she is, weighing her down. How could someone so young have so much to carry?
All around us, children I’ve never seen before smile and wave at my daughter—little girls and boys, her friends. “Hi, Allie,” says a black boy with a mini-Afro in a Redskins parka. “I like your hat a lot.”
Allie looks at me and she’s blushing in the cool air.
“See, honey, what’d I tell you? The hat’s totally money.”
“Daaaaad,” she says.
The other parents are stopping at the front door, but I’d imagined walking her all the way to her pastel-colored classroom. Hell, if I could, I’d stay with her all day, help her draw pictures and do math problems, and chase her around at recess. But she stops me. “You can’t come in,” she says.
“Why not?”
“We’re supposed to go in by ourselves. Mrs. Rosemary says it’s good for us. It makes us feel
independent
.”
“Oh. Well, if those are the rules.” I squat down on my haunches and give her a hug. She’s a tiny thing among all these silly layers I’ve made her wear, and I squeeze her in my arms.
“You know what, Daddy?”
“Hmmm?”
“Mommy loves
you
very much, too.”
“What?”
“You always tell me that mommy loves me very much. And you always tell me that you love me very much. But you never say that about each other. You should. It’s a nice thing to say.”
I hug her again, hug her for so long that she tells me she has to go or she’s going to be late for Reading. I pull her hat off and hand it to her and she tells me good-bye. Through the window, I watch her walk away, her backpack tugging her coat down over her shoulders. She talks to her friends and gives a little girl a hug and then disappears through a door. I love her so much that it’s actually hard to breathe.
Back at the car, I sink into the driver’s seat and give myself a minute. I close my eyes and scratch Hank’s ear. He’s sitting in the passenger seat wondering what we’re going to do next and why I’m in jeans and a sweatshirt as opposed to my usual khakis and blue or white work shirt. Admittedly, this is assuming a lot of thought for a dog. It’s more likely that he’s wondering if, by chance, I have bacon hidden in my pocket.
For a long time I’ve been very breezy about coming and going at work, and now I have to actually remind myself that I’m not supposed to go at all. That I don’t have to ever go again. If it weren’t so terrifying, it’d be the most wonderful day of my life.
My BlackBerry rings and it’s probably Anna. Whatever happens, I’m going to need to explain this to her somehow. But when I see the caller ID, I feel a surge of panic. It’s not Anna. It’s Katie. All morning I’ve been trying to decide if we should ever talk again—if I should call her and see if she’s OK, like a gentleman, or if I should simply not and allow the circumstances of last night to somehow be their own form of closure, which seems incredibly cowardly now.
“How are you?” I ask after awkward hellos.
“So this is what unemployment feels like,” she says. “Funny, it feels like a hangover.”
She sounds awful and a little nervous. I wonder if she’s still lying there topless and I wince. All of that tension and desire has dissolved into this overwhelming shame and regret. “Yeah, same here.”
For a moment we say nothing and I turn off my radio. The bottom of the windshield has begun to cloud over. “So, a lot of girls when they get drunk try to play the amnesia card and say they don’t remember anything.”
“But you’re not a lot of girls, right?”
“Nope. Some of it’s a little sketchy, I’ll admit. But I pieced things together enough to know that you’re a pretty good guy after all. And that I’m a little sluttier than I thought I was.”
“I don’t think either of those things is true.”
We chat about last night, and about how drunk everyone was. It’s one of those conversations that hover outside of the conversation that you should be having. We could be chatting in my office or goofing around on the roof of the building, a cigarette between us.
“So, what do you think?” she asks, finally.
I run my hand along the steering wheel, wishing I’d thought about this more, about what to say to this girl. “I think that in a few years, I’m going to be a story that you tell your closest friends. About how you almost screwed up your life. And I think that’s probably for the best. For
you
especially.”
“I was thinking you might say that. So that’s it then, huh?”
Last night, when she called me Todd, it wasn’t merely out of force of habit. There was hope there; it’s who she wanted me to be. “I think you love Todd, Katie,” I say.
“When I woke up this morning,” she says, “I didn’t know what to do. Yesterday sucked. It was one of the worst days ever. But I had so much fun with you last night, because it was like everything else was gone, and it was just us. And I knew that that’s how it could be if we ever let it.”
“But it’s not just us,” I say. “It isn’t that easy.”
“I wanted it to be though. I
do
love Todd, I think. Maybe. But I know that if it was just us—if I’d met you first and you’d met me first—we would have loved each other. But the world got it in the wrong order. And so when I was dialing your number just now, I decided to roll the dice and see what you thought. If you chose your family, I’d get it. And I do. But if you chose me, then I’d have waited and gone through everything we had to go through until it
was
just us. I know that sounds so passive and awful, and I’d smack one of my girlfriends in the face if I heard her say it. But deep down I knew what you were going to say anyway, so it was easy. Because you
are
a good guy.”
A few mothers and fathers hustle their children past, running late.
“Katie,” I say. “I’m sorry about—”
“Don’t be. And that press release. It really was the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a sign that I need to find some nicer guys.” She laughs, sort of.
I tell her that she’s wonderful, and that she’s going to be fine, and that I’m going to miss her. All of these things are true, but they sound trite, like what people always say. She accepts it dutifully, though, and thanks me for not letting her do anything last night that she’d have regretted doing. Perhaps I am a good guy, and perhaps I really
did
choose to leave. But, frankly, I don’t really know what would have happened if I hadn’t run across the dog-eared shrine to Curtis on her messy bookshelf, or if she hadn’t fallen asleep, or if she hadn’t called me Todd. Things could have gone much differently.
“One thing, though,” she says. “Do you remember what it felt like to kiss me last night?”
“Of course.”
“Does it feel like that when you kiss Anna?”
I think of us—of Anna and me when we were younger—kissing those first few times when that’s all there was going to be. I’d wanted to kiss Anna so badly, and when I finally did, it
did
feel like that. Maybe it can feel like that again. Or maybe it simply can’t, and that feeling is what men like my father are willing to ruin their lives searching for, over and over. I haven’t answered her question. I don’t know how to.
“Good-bye, Tom,” she says.
A
nna arrives home
that night, as scheduled. My dad hugs her, as he always does, and Allie and Hank are ecstatic, jumping around and making noise like she’s been gone for months. She looks tired from the train in a T-shirt, jeans, and her running shoes. I search her face for signs of change—of revelation or otherwise—and find simply Anna, my wife. Taking my turn, I give her a hug, recognizing instantly the smell of her hair and the temperature of her skin. She never should have left. I should have woken up, leaped from our bed, and told her that she couldn’t leave.
The rest of the evening, we’re polite and nervous, afraid to make eye contact. At some point, Allie’s drawing comes down, leaving a blank square on the fridge where art usually goes. Allie doesn’t seem to notice, and I wonder if she’s taken it down herself, aware somehow of what it’s done.
Around 10 p.m., I knock on my dad’s door and find him packing. Tomorrow morning, the two of us are going to New York together for the Pulitzer Prize award luncheon at Columbia University. Anna and Allie are staying home, so it’ll just be the two of us.
“You got everything?” I ask.
He’s written a list, which he’s consulting now as he studies his travel bag. “I always forget something,” he says. “I accepted my first National Book Award without underwear on.”
I’m fairly certain that this isn’t true, but my father’s relationship with the truth has always been touch and go. As he fiddles with his shaving kit, I consider my stepmother’s breasts. Curtis has set Ashley’s portrait lovingly atop the dresser for the world to see. “I think that would be a good title for your memoir, if you ever write one,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Good Luck with the New Book, Asshole: The Curtis Violet Story.”
“Attention-grabbing. Not sure how well it would play in the Midwest though.”
“Is Ashley gonna be in New York?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Honestly. I really don’t know this time. I doubt it. She left me a rambling voice mail the other day saying that she’s going to L.A. She’s meeting with some directors or producers. I think she still wants to give acting a go.”
I laugh because it seems pretty much perfect.
“She’ll have an Oscar in five years,” he says. “They’ll be afraid
not
to give her one.”
I sit down at my computer desk and watch him pack. He opens the green bag I recovered for him, and I see that it’s full of prescriptions and pills. “What’s all that?” I ask.
“Just some medicine,” he says, “and some voodoo pills that Ashley got me on. Organic, revitalizing crap. So, I was thinking, how about we scrap the train tomorrow and take the Porsche up to the city? It’d be like old times.”
I think of the two of us together coming off the Jersey Turnpike, crawling toward the Lincoln Tunnel with the entire amazing city laid out to our left. I’d been hoping he’d say this all along. I really am like a ten-year-old. “Can I drive?”
“Of course not, but the radio’s all yours.”
When I nudge the mouse, the computer comes to life, and I’m looking at my blue desktop. If he’d found my book on here, buried in its folders, would he have asked me about it? Would he have read it without telling me?
“You know what everyone’s gonna be asking this weekend, right?” I say.
“The same thing they always ask.”
“Where’s the next book?”
“Exactly. Poor Harper Lee.”
“Well, where is it then?” I look around the room. “Have you hidden it here somewhere? Under the bed?”
“It’s done,” he says. “Well,
almost
done. I can always tell when a book is done because I start to hate it. And I still love this one a little.”
If I were one of his students, or some journalist, I’d have written this frantically in my notebook. There are five major universities that I know of that teach courses exclusively on this man’s work. He’s one of the handful of living writers that people outside of academia even care about anymore. But I’m his son, and I’ve been looking behind the curtain my whole life. “Have you ever considered that you’re just a hack, and that maybe you’ve just gotten lucky now sixteen times?”
He takes a sip of his Jack Daniel’s on ice, his hand shaking slightly. “I can’t balance a checkbook, you know. And I don’t know the first thing about how the Porsche works, or how to fix a faucet. I’m a mediocre father, and a bad husband. In the real world, I’m almost completely incompetent. But I’m one of the best writers in the world.”
“Now
that
should be the title of your memoir, you arrogant bastard.”
He smiles. “Maybe. But, enough about me. Why are you here?”
“What?”
“You heard me. I don’t need help packing. You’re obviously stalling.”
Anna has read to Allie and put her to bed. And now she’s in our room, waiting for me.
Curtis sits down on the bed as I lurk awkwardly. “You know, there’s a point in every marriage where you either give up or march on. Giving up sounds easy, but I promise you, it isn’t. All of those things that men think are better on the other side really aren’t.”
I think of saying good-bye to Katie this morning. A week ago, the thought of never seeing her again terrified me. Now though, it’s more like relief.
He clears his throat. “There’s something I’ve never told you.”
“OK.”
“One fall, a while back—you were about ten, I think. I was supposed to have you for Thanksgiving. We were going to spend the whole weekend together. It was the year there was that early snowstorm. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. You brought me back to Mom’s because you had to go up to New York all of the sudden. Something with NPR, right?”
“Yes, well, when I dropped you off, your mother and Gary and your brothers were just sitting down to eat. There was all this great-looking food at the table and Maryanne was playing one of her Beatles records. The house smelled like cooking and it was like a painting of what a family is supposed to be. Gary was wearing some God-awful holiday sweater.”
“I think he still has that,” I say.
“Of course he does.” Curtis looks at his hands, tugging a hangnail. “When I was about to leave, you waved at me and told me to have a nice trip. And then I watched you sit down at the table. You were with the people you loved, and you were all smiling and everyone was happy. And even though you’re my son, I wasn’t a part of it. It didn’t feel fair at all, like I was being cheated. But I knew that I had no one to blame but myself. At that moment, I regretted everything I’d ever done that led to you sitting at that table with your real family while I stood by the door in those ridiculous snow boots.”
“Dad,” I say. I want to tell him that no matter what, he was always my dad and that I loved him. But that’s not how fathers and sons talk in real life. And, the truth is, I was kind of relieved when he told me he had to go to New York. And so I don’t say anything.
“I don’t ever want you to have to live through a moment like that,” he says. “And I promise you, if you’re not careful right now, you will.”
I lean back against the wall—the day catching up with me. “I don’t even know if it’s up to me anymore, Dad. I think Anna might be—”
He waits for me to finish whatever I’m about to say, but I don’t.
“A woman never
wants
to be with someone else. Not really. That’s the business of men, and for some reason we destroy things because of it. But not them. They’re better than us. They only choose someone else when we push them away.”
“So, what should I do then?” I ask.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” he says. “Anna is the sort of woman who writers write about, Tom. Somewhere in the third act, women like her save characters like you and me from ourselves. She’s the loveliest literary device in the world. So get your ass out of this room right now and go tell her that she doesn’t have to be with anyone else. Because you love her, and because you’re not going anywhere. And mean it.”
She isn’t reading her running magazine or playing with Hank or laying her clothes out for tomorrow like usual. Instead, she’s sitting in our bed, her eyes wide and expectant. She’s wearing one of her bedtime tank tops and a pair of my old boxers. Hank is sniffing her travel bags, which are lying in heaps on the floor. I make her wait while I brush my teeth and analyze my hairline in the mirror. I look old still, and I realize that I need to start making some changes in my life.
Back in our bedroom, I see my novel stacked neatly on the comforter. “Read anything interesting lately?” I ask.
Her face is noncommittal, serious. She says my name, and when someone says your name things can go either way. “I started it yesterday in the hotel. I actually skipped a presentation I was supposed to go to. I finished it today between Baltimore and here.”
I wait for her to say more, but, apparently, I’m going to have to participate in this. “And?”
“I loved it.”
“What?”
She laughs, which falls away quickly. “I loved it. And I’m sorry. All these years, I didn’t think I would. That’s why I was afraid to read it, because it scared the shit out of me that I might hate it. But I didn’t . . . I love it.”
There’s no way to interpret or respond to this.
“It made me feel like a bad wife because I never really believed that it
could
be good. It didn’t seem possible. Does that make sense? But, while I was reading it, I realized that it could be your dad’s book. It could be something he wrote when he was younger and then hid away somewhere. It’s funny like him, but sad like him, too. And it has his, I don’t know . . . elegance.”
Uncertainty sits in for happiness here, like I’m being tricked. “I sent it to Brandon.”
“Brandon Ross? Sonya’s Brandon?”
“Yeah. He’s an agent now.”
She looks at the comforter, fiddling with the dog-eared copy of my manuscript, acknowledging that this is something she would have known—that she should have known—if we hadn’t been avoiding each other for so long. I’ve felt the full burden of our struggles for a long time. I’ve been pulling away, drifting toward Katie and another life, and it’s made me feel aimless and guilty. But I can see now in Anna’s hanging head that she’s shouldered the burden, too, and she’s sitting here sad, lonely, and, more than anything else, sorry.
Someday, maybe we’ll talk more about the book. Maybe we’ll eat dinner and discuss it, chapter by chapter and section by section. Maybe she’ll tell me her favorite parts, and maybe she’ll tell me what she thinks it all means, and maybe she’ll reveal a bunch of shit buried between the lines that I didn’t even know. But not tonight.
“What really happened, Anna?” I ask.
Her eyes meet mine and then return to the bed. It takes her a long time to say anything. “I knew he was going to be there. I guess I didn’t know
technically
. He never told me exactly. But I knew that he was going to show up in Boston. I told him about the conference and the name of my hotel. I said it all casually, like I was just talking, but I wanted him to come.”
I need to not be standing, and so I sit on my side of the bed. “What happened?”
“I don’t think I want to talk about—”
“Tell me,” I say.
She’s a little startled by this. “Well, he used to talk to me when I was working out. We met at that 6:30 spin class I take sometimes. I could tell he liked me, and so I flirted with him a little because it was just silly. It was kinda fun, I guess—
funny
even. I haven’t flirted since . . . well,
you
.”
“People don’t take trips to Boston because of flirting.”
Anna carries on, grim. “He looked at me like he wanted me. I don’t know if he even liked me at first, or if he thought I was nice or smart or a good person. He just wanted me. I’d forgotten what that feels like. And so . . . I let him.”
“You let him what?”
She looks at me, and I urge her along. “I let him want me,” she says, finally. “Married women have these tricks. We learn them somewhere along the way, and they let us make men lose interest in us or just go away. I didn’t use any of those tricks on him though. I didn’t want him to go away.”
I stand up, take a few steps in several directions, and then I sit back down again. “Keep talking,” I say.
“Really? But—”
“Keep talking, Anna,” I say, and then I bite the skin on one knuckle. All of the tension in my body eases into a crisp shot of pain, and I’m somehow able to refocus.
“OK. That first day of the conference when I got back to my room after our evening sessions, he’d left me a message. He said he’d come to surprise me and that he wanted to see me. I was supposed to meet Tammy and Beth for dinner, but I told them I was too tired. I knew it was wrong. But it was just dinner, right? Just a drink and some dinner and nothing else—no big deal.”
I wonder if she believes this, or if women are simply that naïve. Can a person be that inherently good inside to think that a man travels the length of the Eastern Seaboard for dinner and drinks with a married woman?
“And so we ate, and then we went to the bar for another drink, and it was fun to talk to someone again. We don’t talk anymore, Tom. Do you even realize that? I can’t remember the last time we had a legitimate conversation about something. David and I talked about our kids and our jobs and . . . just . . . our lives.”
“Does he know about me?” I ask.
“I never tried to hide you—or hide anything else. I didn’t talk about you very much though. And he hardly ever talked about . . .
her
. It’s not like we ever agreed to not talk about you both. We just never did.”
I understand exactly what she means. And I also understand that somewhere there’s a woman, David Anderson’s wife, in some bedroom somewhere. Right now she’s lying next to a man she thinks she knows everything about. I want to know what David Anderson looks like. And I want to know what Anna was wearing. And I want to know what she had to eat and drink. And how he was sitting next to her and what she thought was happening and when she knew that it wasn’t just a drink and dinner. But I don’t. I really, really don’t. And I do.