Ms. Taken Identity (2 page)

Bradley is sitting where he’s always sitting at this time on Tuesday evenings: Colchester’s. His girlfriend Skyler runs a
plant nursery, and this is her late night, which means Bradley grabs dinner at the pub. To see him sitting at the bar, brown
hair wavy and brushed back, three-days’ growth on his face, you’d think you were on a movie set: Hey isn’t that Matthew McConaughey,
and shouldn’t he be out banging on some bongos with his shirt off? But take another look, see if you can’t spot the guy who
translated his summa cum laude degree in philosophy into life as a rehabber, transforming rundown Queen Annes and Dutch Colonials
into something out of
Architectural Digest
.

“What’ll you have?” he asks with a smile as I belly up next to him.

“A pint. Of everything.”

“Ah, one of those days,” he says, taking a bite of his shepherd’s pie. “Let me guess. No love from Chaucer? Lost some breathtakingly
lyrical metaphor in your head before you could get it down on paper?”

“Nah, none of that.” I shift on my stool. “It’s Hannah.”

“Oh,” he says, obviously surprised. “Now there’s a switch. But don’t worry, Mitchell Samuel,” he drawls with an over-the-top
Texas twang, leaning closer. “The doctor is in.” We hate Dr. Phil. “Speak to me.”

There are lots of ways I could go with this. Tell him I spent her life savings on a Porsche. Tell him she’s in love with another
man. Tell him
I’m
in love with another man. But I opt for the truth. “We broke up.”

He drops the Dr. Phil shtick like a bag of rocks. “What happened?”

I shrug. “I’m not really sure.”

But after a pull on my bottle of beer, I go on to demonstrate that, in fact, I am really sure, by telling him how I forgot
her at the airport because I was writing, which upset her, so there was arguing and a few tears and a bit of a back and forth,
which led to our ultimate decision to go our separate ways. I don’t pull any punches, put the blame squarely on me, but I
expect at least a little sympathy from him, since he knows how the creative process can tend to sweep you away and cause you
to forget things. But more than anything he’s on Hannah’s side, which is to say that in this case, he thinks I’m a total ass.
But still, I’m his best friend, so he’s concerned.

“So how’re you doing with it?”

“Oh, you know.” And he does, because he’s been out with me when I’ve seen another woman and made some comment, not as crude
as, “Damn, I’d like a piece of that,” but enough that he’d get the idea that despite Hannah’s top-drawer pedigree—BA from
Northwestern, MFA from Iowa—and the fact we’re perfect on paper, I was never completely satisfied with that particular match.
(Unlike Bradley, who only has eyes for Skyler.) Besides, he knows I still have my novel.

Having a book that’s about to be published has a way of keeping your spirits up, pulling you through the dark spots and rough
patches in your life that might otherwise be a source of concern. Such as getting kicked to the curb. Again. I should’ve written
it a long time ago, like when I was five and my little sister Emily died of meningitis, or when I was ten and my father had
an affair and hit the road, or even when I was eighteen and found Sharon Manus making out with Colby Nash in the boys’ bathroom
at the prom. It would’ve saved me a lot of tears (and in the case of Sharon, a busted set of knuckles from punching a bathroom
wall).

“And Hannah?” he asks. “How’s she taking it?”

I hem and haw and roll my shoulders. “Okay. I think. I guess. She hated to lose a guy like me.”

“Right. So she dumped you, then.”

“Pretty much.”

He gives his head a little shake. “Mitchell, Mitchell. When are you going to get it together?”

Easy for him to say. He loves Skyler, so he just does what comes naturally. For the rest of us, being with people we care
about but don’t really love, we have to figure out the right thing to do on an hourly basis, moment by moment, woman by woman.
There’s a lot of hit-and-miss guesswork in that.

We discuss my moving back into the apartment Bradley and I have shared for the last three years (I had a feeling things might
fizzle with Hannah, so I never stopped paying rent: Who looks like the genius now?). It’s not a problem, since he spends all
his time over at Skyler’s now, meaning our place is mostly unoccupied. I suggest we celebrate my homecoming by heading back
to the apartment and watching a baseball game on cable, but he tells me that’s a no-go: He’s helping his sister pick up her
new furniture.

“In North Carolina?” I ask.

“What?”

“Doesn’t your sister live in North Carolina?”

“No, she lives in Chesterfield.”

I point west, toward the highway, a couple counties over, where my father lives. “
That
Chesterfield?”

“That Chesterfield. She moved back in April.”

So Bradley’s sister has been back in St. Louis for five months, living half an hour away, and this is the first I’m hearing
about it. Of course, maybe the fact that she’s lived in North Carolina the entire three years I’ve known Bradley, and I’ve
never met her, and she’s a
hairstylist
, and what would we possibly have to talk about (Me: “I prefer the elegiac wistfulness of Tennyson to the Romantic pessimism
of Housman; Her: “Like, I totally
love
mousse!”), maybe all that has something to do with it. For starters.

“I thought I told you,” he says.

“Nope.”

“Hmm. Anyway, she did. And she finally decided to upgrade from the furniture she came with. I told her I’d use my truck, save
her the delivery charge.”

“Need a hand?” I ask.

“Nah, she’s got it covered. Her studio friends are helping.”

“Her what?”

“Studio friends.” He pauses. “Apparently, she takes dance lessons and these are her ballroom buddies. I just hope someone
with a little muscle tone shows up so I don’t get a hernia.”

Much later, back at our apartment, I lie in bed, alone, worried I won’t be able to fall asleep. If something’s bothering me,
this is when my mind spins and whirls and nags me with thoughts, and I’m wondering if it’s going to do that tonight, get fixated
on what happened with Hannah, and suddenly I’ll get panicky and sweaty and realize I’ve made the greatest mistake of my life,
leaving her crying on the bathroom floor, not begging her to forgive me and take me back, and how could I be so stupid, and
will I ever be happy again? But before I actually get to those thoughts, I start thinking about margaritas, because I watched
a woman at the bar sip on one, and when was the last time I had a margarita, and have I ever had one without salt, and what’s
that brand of salt with the girl on the label carrying a container and spilling some, and isn’t she also holding an umbrella?
And then I fall asleep.

I
teach an Intro to Comp and Lit class at the university. I had my choice of something less basic—American Transcendentalism,
The Age of Dryden and Pope—but I passed; I figure it’s hypocritical to complain about the planet’s general tendency toward
bad grammar and foggy thinking and not try to do something about it while these kids are still freshmen. Fortunately, two
weeks into the semester, I think it’s a solid group; they show up on time (noon, so how hard can it be?), don’t crunch their
chip bags, do good work. In fact, I see no foreseeable problems with the bunch. Except with Molly.

Molly is a knockout blonde (think Scarlett Johansson), extremely bright, and an excellent writer. In most cases, such a combination
of qualities would make her the anti-problem. But for each of those favorable traits, there’s an evil twin-sister one that
not only cancels the good ones out, it puts her in the red. Deeply. She’s pretty, but flaunts it. As in the T-shirts she wears
(the very,
very
tight T-shirts she wears), with messages like Yes, They’re Real, Stop Gawking; Bad Girls Suck; Future Trophy Wife. Subtle,
eh? She’s smart, but likes to rub your nose in it. Sometimes you have to delete your favorite bits of writing because they
just don’t work, and I told the class this is what Hemingway called “killing your darlings,” but Molly blurted out, “It wasn’t
Hemingway, it was Faulkner,” and I said, “You know, you might be right, but let’s discuss it later”; so next class, apropos
of nothing, not even bothering to raise her hand, she announces to the class that, yes, it was Faulkner, and goes on to read
the entire quote, and ask me if I’d like a copy for future reference. She’s an excellent writer, but thinks she has nothing
to learn from me. She asked me where I’d been published, and I gave her the name of a magazine she’d never heard of, and she
shrugged and said, “Is that it?” She’s the fly in my ointment, the banana peel on my stage, the pain in my ass.

Case in point: Today we’re talking about an Updike story in which a grocery clerk quits on the spot after his manager embarrasses
a trio of young girls who came into the store in their swimsuits. I want to focus on the final line: “My stomach kind of fell
as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” Why does he say this, and how will his world be hard? But Molly
has other ideas.

“What’s the big deal about wearing a swimsuit into a store?” She cracks her gum. “I don’t get it.”

Of course not. This from the girl wearing a shirt that says Ball Handler.

“It’s against the rules.” So says stocky Pete.

“So? The rule is dumb. They just went in there to grab a jar of herring snacks. For her mother.”

“Doesn’t matter why they’re there, or who they’re there for. Rules is rules, and they broke them.” Pete winks at me to let
me know the verb conjugation was no accident.

“Then I guess if there’s a rule that black people can’t use the same water fountain as whites, we should just accept that.
Or if there’s a law that says women can’t vote, that’s okay too. Since, as you say, ‘rules is rules.’”

Pete looks at me again, this time not so cocky. Donna piles on. “Yeah, exactly. I mean, men probably made those store rules.
They’re the ones who decided what everyone should wear. They’ve brainwashed women to be ashamed of their bodies.”

Thomas: “But if guys are making the rules, wouldn’t they say swimsuits are okay, since they’d want to see girls in swimsuits?”

Pam: “Not necessarily. Not everyone’s a pervert.”

Thomas: “So I’m a pervert, just because I like to see a little skin?”

Pam: “No. Just a man.”

Molly, shrugging: “The bottom line is, some people just can’t handle in-their-face sexuality. Look at the Janet Jackson Nipplegate
flap...”

And then we’re off, swept away, everyone worked up into a lather about sexism, ageism, the fashion industry, plastic surgery,
women as priests, wardrobe malfunctions, Justin Timberlake, and whether Britney would’ve turned into
Britney
if she’d stayed with him. And I find myself jumping in,
on Molly’s side
, not so much about Nipplegate or Justin but more on rules not always being rules, and before I know it, class is over and
I dismiss them, but I still have to collect their essays, so I’m scrambling around in the hallway trying to track them down,
and forget about a homework assignment or the last line in Updike or my entire lesson plan that’s been hijacked. And Molly?
Molly’s just yakking away on her cell phone, making plans for god knows what.

When I get back to the apartment, I give Brandon Suarez a call. Brandon works for a small literary press in Minnesota, and
he’s the guy who’s going to publish my novel. He’s also a former student. I thought I’d have to shoot a tranquilizer dart
through the phone when I sent him the manuscript—“You want
me
to publish
your
novel? Really? Are you kidding? Unbelievable! This is great! Yippee! I can fly!”—but once we got past the hyperventilating
and down to business, he told me to give him a couple weeks to look things over, which I have. Enough’s enough. But I don’t
get Brandon when I call, I get his machine, so I leave a message, telling him I’d like to get the ball rolling on this, take
care of any revisions, if there are any, while the semester’s still young.

My novel is called
Henley Farm
. It’s a sweeping saga about America that spans several generations of the Henley family and their relationship to the land:
think
The Grapes of Wrath
meets
The Good Earth
, with bits of
King Lear
and
A Thousand Acres
sprinkled in. Seven years and seven hundred pages to get it just the way I want it, and I won’t lie to you: it hasn’t been
an easy ride. You may have the impression that writing is all about sitting at Pottery Barn–style desks with scented candles
and ocean views and breezes gently rustling the curtains, or it’s hobnobbing at charming European cafés where the intelligentsia
discuss philosophy and beautiful women gather and you write poetry on the back of a naked lover. It’s not. Remember Jack Nicholson
in
The Shining
, running around with that ax and whacking through bathroom doors and screaming “
Heeeere’s Johnny
” and trying to kill people?
He
was a writer.

But as if writing the novel weren’t hard enough, the last six months have been worse. Trying to find an agent or publisher
or anyone who’s interested, sending out manuscript after manuscript, just to get them thrown right back in my face, sometimes
half a dozen before I’ve even had lunch. It’s been rejection on an epic scale, like going into a bar filled with a thousand
single women, in my best clothes with a bouquet of flowers, even wearing a splash of expensive cologne, and having them all
turn their backs, no peck on the cheek, no smiling hello, not even a second look. Talk about your dating disasters.

Finally, I shipped it off to Brandon. I hated calling in a favor like that, especially from a former student, and I know he
doesn’t have much of a budget and the first printing won’t be very large. But what else could I do? I need to believe the
last seven years of my life, and all the things I may have ruined in the process (relationships, mainly, with Hannah, as you
know, but also with women named Chloe and Laura and Xiang, a cellist, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever slept with), have
all been worth it. Otherwise, I may start looking for an ax of my own.