Ms. Taken Identity (14 page)

Afterwards, we go out to the bar and have the type of conversation you’d expect after a lesson like that: given the chance,
would you sleep with either of them? Rosie jumps right in.

“
Va-voom!
” she whoops.

Marie gives her a look. “So just like that, you’d do it?”

“Yep. Just like that. And like this, and like this, and like this,” she says, making comically vulgar gyrations with her hips.
“Did you see him, Marie? Did you see that body and that face?”

She did. We all did.

Marie mulls this over. “Great. So let’s say you meet a guy at Wal-Mart, same body, same face, and he asks you if you want
to have sex. Then what?”

Rosie is horrified. “
Then what?
I’d smack him upside the head with his tackle box, is what.”

“But it’s the same guy.”

“But he’s at Wal-Mart.”

“So are you. You love Wal-Mart.”

“For my soap and toothpaste and paper towels. Not for my guys.” Rosie swirls the ice in her drink. “Come on, Marie. One’s
a professional dancer. The other guy’s just a guy at Wal-Mart.”

“So? One guy has a fancy outfit and fancy steps, the other guy just likes to fish. That’s why you’d rip your top off for one
and knock the other guy upside the head.”

“Yeah, more or less. Plus Tony’s…
someone
.” She shrugs, at a loss. “What can I say?”

We’re all at a loss. What
can
you say?

Steve clears his throat. “May I?” he asks. He’s been quiet and patient up to this point.

“He roomed for a year with a psychology major in college,” Jennifer adds proudly, explaining his expertise.

He leans in to us and lowers his voice. “Is it all right if I get a little graphic?”

By all means, we tell him.

“What it sounds like to me is the star-fuck syndrome. First, take a reasonably attractive person, which itself gets the sexual
juices flowing, then give him a position where he’s in the spotlight, say rock singer or actor or dancer, where his skill
is viewed and admired by a lot of people, so that he becomes
desired
by a lot of people. This gives him power and stature, and he becomes a sort of prize, so that if he chooses to take you to
his bed, you’re not just sleeping with any person, but a person
everyone
wants, and you’re bringing him pleasure or he’s pleasuring you, controlling him or being controlled, depending on which fantasy
you have. There’s a sweetness and luridness about a star-fuck that makes you drop your inhibitions, get swept away, do things
you normally wouldn’t do.”

We all sit in silence.

Rosie begins to fan herself. “Whatever it is, Dr. Freud, I’m getting all hot and bothered just thinking about it. It’s still
a no to Wal-Mart guy, but I’m in for the dancing man. Who else?” She looks around. “Gina?”

Gina shrugs, waggles her head, can’t make up her mind. “Probably,” she says weakly. “I think.”

Rosie turns to Marie. “Miss Priss, no. Jennifer, I hope not. So not much competition for me, other than Gina. Now, how about
you boys, with the tiny dancer girl. David?”

Dave nods and gives a thumbs-up and smiles from ear to ear and starts rocking eagerly on his stool. “Yes, please,” he adds,
in case there was any mistake. “Dancer
or
Wal-Mart girl.”

“Little Steven, no. Which leaves us with Jason. How about it, mystery man?”

“You really know how to put a guy on the spot.”

“I can think of another spot I’d like to put you on.” She says it with a wink, and even though it makes no sense at all, it
still sounds sexual; Rosie has a way of doing that. “Come on, handsome. Shandi girl walks in here in that outfit, shakes her
little tail feather in your face, says she’d like a little company tonight. You’re single. She’s single. Up for it?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

So here’s honest. She looked great, fantastic, sexy: Jessica Biel with sparkles and longer legs. What guy wouldn’t entertain
the thought? But I really don’t need another notch, just to say I bedded the star dancer girl (not that I’ve had thousands
and thousands of notches, by the way). And if I just want to have an orgasm, well, I know ways to take care of that. So if
I’m going to sleep with her, I’ll need to know a few things first; not worthless sappy things like her sign or does she come
here often, but just things to let me know she likes to laugh and has a little bit going on upstairs so that the next time
I see her, in clothes, I’ll like her that way, too. And some people might disagree and say sex is just sex, and if you get
stirred up or worked up or hot enough, then by god, just do it, and who cares if you like them or know a name. Which is fine.
It’s just not me. And since Shandi seemed like the type who wouldn’t bother too much with the names, I’m left with this:

“I think I’d want to. But I don’t think I would.”

Rosie blows up. “You
gotta
be kidding!” Even Dave looks let down, like I’ve violated some sort of man-law. But that’s okay. Let them think what they
want, rather than try to explain all that.

I never bring my cell phone to lessons (too dangerous: what if I lapse into Mitch?). It’s ringing when I get to the apartment.

“It’s eleven o’clock. It’s Monday night. Where the hell you been?” Bradley.

“Out. Busy.”

“Doing what?”

“What do you think I was doing?” Not having a couple beers with your sister and friends from the dance studio talking about
whether we’d do our guest instructors, that’s for sure. “Dissertation, remember? So, what’s going on?”

What’s going on, it turns out, is that he’s found me a perfect match.

“The couple Skyler and I went out with yesterday brought a friend. And get this: She went to Johns Hopkins. She’s gorgeous.
And single. I talked you up, she’d like to meet you. The four of us, this Thursday night.”

Thursday
night? That’s dancing. “Sorry, Bradley. Can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” His tone indicates that wasn’t an option.

“What I mean is, I can’t. I’m having dinner with my mom.” Lately, the lies come as easy as breathing. Scary.

“Fine. Then we’ll switch it to Friday. But I’m not taking no for an answer.”

But he’s got it all wrong: why would I say no? Johns Hopkins. Gorgeous. Single. I’m ready to meet the woman of my dreams.

Tuesday morning I actually do head to the library to work on my dissertation. I haven’t cracked a book in a couple weeks,
and it’s high time I return to the dusty fourteenth-century road to Canterbury Cathedral with Chaucer and his motley crew.
It’s the perfect day to do this—gray, drizzly, cool. But even though I’m only dealing with Middle English and not Old English,
it’s no piece of cake and demands concentration, not a mind still bucking to get a latté with
Catwalk Mama
and stroll the glossy aisles of Bergdorf Goodman. I do manage to make some progress on the “Knight’s Tale” (two sworn blood-brothers
vow to kill each other after they fall in love with the same woman: testament to the incredible power of love, or its destructiveness?),
then reward myself by browsing through magazines.

The current issue of
Travel
+
Leisure
and its cover story about North Carolina catch my eye, so I page through. It’s a great spread, with photos of the Biltmore
Estate and the Smokies and Chapel Hill, which are nice, but the best ones are along the coast—the Outer Banks and Ocracoke
Island and Pamlico Sound, with their ink blue water and streaky-cloud skies and old weathered lighthouses. It’s all gorgeous,
smell-the-salt, feel-the-wet-sand-squishing-between-your-toes, hear-the-waves-crashing sort of gorgeous, and then I think
of Marie, who lived in Raleigh, and even though it might take a couple hours to get there, it’s the ocean for chrissakes,
and it beats what we have running through town (there’s a reason why the Mississippi is called the “Big Muddy”), and this
is what she gave up for
Rosie
? It floors me again, as it did in the pizza parlor, and all seems a bit absurd. But then another thought leaps from the bushes
and throttles me, one that wasn’t there two weeks ago: maybe she
did
get this right. I mean, Rosie may have a big mouth and be overly horny, but she grows on you, I like her, and it’s pretty
clear she thinks the world of Marie and would do
anything
for her. Which means, if you were inclined to tally it a certain way, Marie traded something she might get to see once a
week or month—the ocean—for a best friend she gets to see every day. Some people might even call that…
winning
.

I go to my father’s house on Wednesday, after class. I’ve chosen a weekday because I don’t want his kids around, and I’d prefer
it if Leah weren’t around either. But she is of course, since what kind of wife leaves her husband all by his lonesome less
than three weeks after he’s had his chest cracked open in the OR. I think my father’s spoken to her, though, because after
she says hello and brings us iced tea and a plate of cookies, she excuses herself with some suspicious-sounding story about
needing to go work in the garden, which gives us some time alone.

He’s propped up on the sofa, and we talk about his heart, obviously, and the meds he’s on, and my teaching and Scott, and
how Nathan has cut the grass most of the summer, and boy, we could use some rain, and I guess this is how normal people talk,
or at least normal fathers and sons, but we’re not that, so I just want to leapfrog all the small talk and ask him why
why
WHY he left when he did. But an hour in, I can see it’s not going to happen, not today anyway, because even though his color’s
better and he’s not wincing as much, he still looks like one of those front-porch Halloween scarecrows—unnatural, stiff,
lumpy
—and putting him through the ringer with all my questions wouldn’t be too charitable on my part, so it looks like I made the
trip out here just to eat a bunch of cookies.

“You want to tell me what’s on your mind?” he asks out of nowhere.

“Mmm? My mind?” I wipe some crumbs from my lips. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, great as it was to see you in the hospital, it was a surprise. As is this, today, just stopping by to shoot
the breeze.” His eyes zero in on mine from behind his glasses. “I don’t want to sound cynical, Mitch, but that’s not us.”

What’s the use lying to him now, especially when he’s giving me one of those “Go on, give it to me straight” looks.

“Okay, Dad, I’m not going to beat around the bush,” I declare. Then I go on and beat around the bush, at least a little, in
my head, fumbling for a different—and gentler—way of saying it, but I can’t come up with anything. “Mom told me about the
affair.”

For a long time he doesn’t speak.

“I wish she hadn’t.”

“She didn’t have a choice. We were talking about how bad the relationship is between you and me, and I said the only thing
that would change for me if you died is that I’d have to get a new suit.” I feel squeamish saying it now. “I told her one
of the reasons I couldn’t stand you is that you cheated on her. She wanted to set me straight.”

His face remains fixed, expressionless.

I rub my hands on my jeans. “So will you help me understand a few things about that time? How everything… happened?”

He offers a barely perceptible nod.

“Mom told me she was petty and spiteful when she threw the affair in your face. That she wanted to hurt you with the news,
give you a reason to go. Why didn’t you?”

The muscles along his jawline flare and tighten, as if I’d poked my finger into a nerve. He shifts awkwardly on the sofa,
his thoughts obviously taking him to a place he’d rather not go.

“We were a mess after Emily died, Mitch. The whole family was, but especially your mother and me. We could hardly get out
of bed in the morning, look at each other, breathe. But we had to get on with living, and we tried, best as we could. Your
mother made it clear what she needed. She needed to talk about what’d happened, replay everything we’d done, or hadn’t done,
be sad and angry and bitter and let whatever was there come out. She cried a lot. But I didn’t want to hear it. Not the tears
or the second-guessing or the ‘
Why Emily
?’ So I shut her up. I shut her up and shut her out, turned myself into a stone. Because that was the only way I could deal
with knowing we’d let our daughter die.”

“But you didn’t let her die. She had viral meningitis. The doctor said—”

“I don’t care what the doctor said,” he cuts me off sharply. “She was two. She was counting on us. We were her
parents
. And we let her die.” There’s anger in his eyes, and pain, but it’s almost like you can see right through all of it to the
part of his heart that’s still a heap of burnt-out ash. Gradually his look grows softer. “Anyway, what your mother needed
was comfort and hope, someone to listen to her, and I wouldn’t give her any of it. She found it with someone else. How could
I blame her for that?”

“So you stayed, out of guilt.”

He nods. “And for Emily, because I couldn’t stand the thought that her death would be what ripped our family apart. Plus,
I still had two sons.”

He says it in such an offhanded way, like it’s a no-brainer— what father
wouldn’t
stay with his two sons under such circum-stances?—but then we both fall silent because we’re thinking the same thing: he
still had two sons five years later, and that didn’t keep him from bolting.

I’m starting to feel a little bad for him, now that he’s backed himself into a corner and he’s already so physically uncomfortable.

“Look, Dad. You don’t have to talk about it now. Not if you don’t want to.”

He musters an awful smile. “No, Mitch, I don’t. Because it’s beyond the pale, and you’ll realize what a small and ugly man
I was to you. And I always,
always
thought it’d be better for you to think the worst of your old man, whatever crimes and misdeeds your imagination could conjure
up, than know the truth. I’d hoped to take it all to the grave with me, and I nearly managed to pull that one off. But you
deserve to know.”