Ms. Taken Identity (10 page)

I look at her sitting there, her own hair back in a loose ponytail draped over her shoulder, sunglasses pushed on top, and
I can see the resemblance to Bradley. Not so much in the looks but in the things she says. Or rather, the way she says them.
Like she…
believes
in them.

“I’m curious, Marie. With all the thought you put into this, your clients must’ve loved you. Why’d you leave North Carolina?”

She stirs up the ice in her glass. “Because Rosie opened her shop and we made a promise to each other that whoever opened
a shop first, the other would come and help out. She beat me to it.”

I sit up straighter. “Wait. She opens a shop, so you pack it all up and move?”

“Not the day I got the call. But a few months later.”

“And you made this promise when you were how old?”

“Eighteen.”

Eighteen?
What kind of person makes a teenage promise like that and keeps it almost ten years later? For a class clown, like Rosie.
Worse, what kind of person holds her to it?

“I’m surprised she didn’t let you out of it.”

“She offered. I wouldn’t let her.”

“But… but what if you’d been
married
, or had a kid in school, or had a place you didn’t want to leave?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. That wasn’t how it was, so I don’t give it much thought. But I guess things would’ve managed to
work out okay. They always do.”

Oh boy oh boy.
Here
we go. That’s the kind of harebrain lamebrain mushbrain nobrain two-bit idiotic worthless-piece-of-crap comment that people
always make, and it always drives me crazy. As if the universe has nothing better to do than tend to comets and asteroids
and black holes and antimatter and the level of CO
₂
in the atmosphere and create a weather pattern or two and keep the planets orbiting the sun, but oh, let’s make sure everything
comes up roses for Susie Smith in her crappy little life. Things don’t just work out;
people
make them work out, with planning and finagling and haggling and sheer grit and effort. And then there’s no guarantee. But
for whatever reason, today, sitting here with Marie, I can’t seem to muster up my usual ten-gallon hat load of moral indignation
to give her the tongue-lashing she deserves. Maybe I’m just too hungry.

“Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big deal,” she says. “I’m just another pair of scissors in her shop. It’s not like I’m saving
lives or anything, like you are.”

“Pardon?”

“With the drugs you rep.”

“Oh, right. No, of course not. Those drugs certainly help people out. But I really can’t take too much of the credit, since,
you know, I didn’t actually invent them. And speaking of inventions, look what’s coming our way. Pizza!”

It’s a stroke of masterful timing, and allows me to steer the conversation to pizza, then the studio, then dance, and keep
it far away from pharmaceutical drugs and saving lives, and
Jason
, so that in this instance, on this one occasion, for this one time only, I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe every once
in a while the universe does manage to turn away from more important matters—management of the Andromeda galaxy, let’s say—and
toss us measly humans a freebie.

Marie has done a kindness for me—taking me shoe shopping—and when I get back to the apartment, I pay it forward to the characters
in my novel. Each time I’m tempted to put a knife in someone’s back, have her look silly or stupid or say something half-baked
about a Kate Spade purse that makes her sound like a shopaholic ditz, I give her a different line, make her not so foolish,
even make her seem sensible and bright. It’s the only outlet I have right now for my charity. That, and my mom. I go over
there and cut the grass, my usual job, but this time I skim the pool, which is above and beyond.

After I’ve taken a dip of my own, to cool down, and I’m lounging in back with a beer, she pulls up into the shade of the back
drive. She sees me and I give her a small wave, but she just sits there in the car, like she’s in no big hurry to see me or
anyone else. Maybe I’m wrong, though, and it’s just a good song on the radio. Finally she gets out.

“I thought you’d be heading out about now with the Saturday Night Club,” I say as she crosses the patio. My mom teaches at
a college prep school, and she and a few colleagues usually hit the symphony or a gallery opening or movie at the Tivoli on
Saturday nights.

“I canceled,” she says, her tone clipped. “I’m not much in the mood.” She pulls out the chair across from me, roughly, the
metal legs scraping on the concrete.

“You okay?” I ask.

She ignores me. “Scott called this morning. He wanted me to know about your father. That’s where I was. At the hospital.”

My instinct is to ask, “What happened?” until I realize I know what happened. He had a heart attack. He had surgery. It’s
the first time I’ve given him any thought since Thursday night. Of course, that’s the last thing I can tell my mom. For years
now, I’ve played this little game with her called “Big Fat Lies”: I lie to her that my dad and I are good, we’re fine, we’re
great, heck, sometimes we even go out for drinks, and she believes me. (Why wouldn’t she?) She feels guilty enough about the
divorce as it is, so this is my way of protecting her from worse.

“And how is he,
today
?” I say it like I’ve been keeping up.

She looks at me hard, almost a glare. “So you’re concerned, are you?”

I don’t like this. “Sure. Yeah. Why wouldn’t I—”

She angrily waves me off. “Oh, Jesus, Mitch. Cut the act. He asked about you, wanted to know what you’ve been up to. Since
the two of you haven’t talked in months.
Months
. Why didn’t you tell me things had gotten to this point?”

I shrug. “I figured I’d deal with it. And I knew if I told you, you’d be upset and try to do something.”

She rubs at her temples and takes a moment to recollect her thoughts. I wish she’d just drop it. “How long has this been going
on?”

“A while. Forever. Look, who cares? We’re both done with it. He has his life and I have mine, and that’s how it is. It’s fine.”

“It’s not
fine
, Mitch. It’s horrible.” She’s on the verge of tears, she’s so worked up. “Your father had a heart attack. He almost died.”
Her eyes bore into me. “For god’s sake, don’t you care?”

Christ
. “Yes, Mom, I
do
care. Okay? I care. I care because if he lets go, I’ll have to go out and buy a new suit for the funeral.”

I feel like I’ve been goaded into saying it, like she got together with Scott and the two of them came up with a plan to push
and pile on the guilt and try to get me to do something stupid. Well, it worked. They got me. I snapped. And if she wants
to keep staring at me till her face freezes like that—shocked and appalled—let her.

Fuck
.

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But he’s not exactly my favorite person in the world, for obvious reasons.”
What is it with these people? Doesn’t anyone get this? “Besides, I thought you’d be on my side, especially after what he did
to you.”

She narrows her eyes. “What he did to me?”

“Yeah, Mom, what he did to you. Oh, come on, if we’re spilling our guts here, let’s spill them all the way. I’m not ten anymore.”
But apparently she thinks I am, because her mouth refuses to work. “Fine. Then I’ll say it. He was screwing around and you
kicked him out. He had an affair. There. See how easy that was?”

The blood instantly drains from her face, till it’s as white as her cotton blouse.

“That’s what you’ve thought all these years?”

“What do you think?”

“Oh, god,” she whispers. “Then I am to blame for so much.” Her eyes dart around like they’re searching for the safety of high
ground, but there is none.

“Mitch, I don’t even know how to say this. Your father didn’t have an affair.
I
did.”

Remember that scene in
The Matrix
where Keanu Reeves is on the rooftop and the bad guys are blasting away, and the motion gets super slow, and Neo bends his
body back at an impossible angle, and the bullets leave liquid tracks as they float harmlessly by? That’s me right now. My
mother’s words are coming at me like those bullets—“Your father didn’t have an affair.
I did I did I did I did
”—and I’m doing everything I can to give them the slip, contorting my body as much as I can, but I don’t have Neo’s training
or agility or special effects budget, and they plaster me square in the chest. I can’t breathe.

“When?” I eventually manage to get out.

She looks stricken, panicked, pale. “After Emily died. Your father and I were going through a miserable time. We were barely
speaking to each other. I found someone I could talk to, someone who cared… and it happened.”

Jesus
. My mom had an affair. “And Dad found out?”

“No.” She’s nasally now, sniveling. “I told him. I threw it all in his face. I wanted to punish him for not being there in
the way I needed. I wanted to give him a reason to be done with me, with us, and go away. But he wouldn’t.”

No. Not then. Not for five more years. “But I don’t understand. Then why did he leave when he did?”

She wipes her tears away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know, Mitch. I don’t know. He just said he needed to go.” And
I believe her, that she doesn’t know, since she wouldn’t hold anything back now, not after the damage misunderstandings and
half-truths have caused all of us to this point.

A light breeze stirs through the trees, sending some leaves skittering into the pool, disturbing the surface of the pristine
water.

“I’m so sorry, Mitch,” she says, and that’s the last time either one of us speaks, for a long time.

You’ve probably seen those newscasts where somebody does something bad and they interview the neighbors and coworkers, and
they all say something like, “He seemed like such a nice guy”; “He’s the last person I would’ve expected”; “I never saw it
coming.” And I always think: You people are morons. You saw him every day. You ate lunch with him. Your kids cut his grass.
And you had no idea he had a meth lab in his basement and a hit squad of mafia hookers? Nothing odd about anything he said?
Not even a goofy smile or weird sense of humor?
Please
.

That’s what I’m playing out in my mind the whole way home. I’ve known my mother for twenty-eight years. For twenty-three of
those, while she was doing all those mom things—reading bedtime stories, checking my homework, putting on my Band-Aids, taking
my temperature, cooking my pork chops, picking out my corsages—she’s been hiding the secret she had an affair. And I never
got a whiff of it. And what about my dad and his part in this, and how it all sailed over my head?
Shit
. My entire universe was swimming with liars and connivers and secret-keepers, and I never had a freaking clue. Who looks
like the moron now?

I go to see him Sunday afternoon, after basketball, and it’s awkward for all the obvious reasons. I haven’t seen him in months.
I haven’t talked to him since his heart attack. I didn’t call before I came over. He’s my father.

“How are you feeling?” I ask. I’m sitting in a chair across from his bed.

“Okay,” he says in a raspy voice.

My father has a bit of a Martin Scorsese look—the hair, the bushy eyebrows, even the glasses—but right now his skin is puffy
and jaundiced, and he has enormous bags under his eyes, so maybe it’s the way Scorsese would look if he were on his deathbed.

“How long are they planning to keep you?”

“Another few days. They want me up and out of here as soon as possible. I’ll be happy to oblige.”

He tries to shift his position but pulls up short, wincing, and Leah, who’s standing right by his bed, helps him scoot to
the side. She’s heavier than the last time I saw her, and maybe a bit more gray, but for the most part looks the same. The
kids do not. Nathan has feet nearly the size of mine and that croaky on-the-cusp-of-puberty voice, and Jessica is walking
now, and talking, and no longer uses a pacifier, and is nine.

“One of the joys of turning sixty, I guess,” he sums it up.

“That’s right. Happy belated birthday.”

“I’ll take it, since I’m still around to hear it.”

“And what’s the prognosis? You’ll be okay?”

He shrugs. “The heart attack did some damage. But they fixed what they could. Now I just have to be careful with my diet and
get some exercise.” He pats Leah’s hand as if it’s something they’ve discussed before and he’s finally seen the light and
is ready to get with the program.

The kids are watching one of those funniest home video shows on TV, caught up in that world. It’s odd to be in the same room
as them, knowing they’re such strangers to me even though we share the same last name and half our DNA.

“Your mom was here yesterday,” he says. “She said you’re waiting to hear back on your book.”

“I heard. They rejected it.” I blurt it all out without thinking. “But if you talk to her anytime soon, don’t tell her. She
doesn’t know.”

It’s a strange moment for us, my sharing a secret like that with him, both of us knowing I’m keeping it from my mom. But I
guess I can trust him, since he’s had experience in the keeping big secrets hush-hush department.

There really isn’t much more to talk about, since I don’t want to ask him if he likes the food, or the color of the walls,
or how his par-three golf course is running without him. This is probably enough of a reunion for one day, so I get off my
chair.

“I just wanted to come by and say hi.” I pick at the belt loop of my shorts. “So I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“Thanks for coming, Mitch,” he says. “I mean that.”

For an instant he gives me a closer look, and I’m certain he can see inside my head and all the questions burning a hole in
my brain: Why did you stay? Why did you leave? How did we come to this? But then I realize it’s not that he suddenly gets
me any better; I just might be starting to see him through different eyes.