Mystery Girl: A Novel (4 page)

“Don’t worry,” she said. “This is all for the best. I think we press this when we’re ready.” There was a button on the door, with a red light beside it, as in some high-security facility. A small sign said
PLEASE PRESS UPON ARRIVAL
. She hesitated before pushing, as if she were launching our fate. “I’m nervous,” she said, frowning, and I almost
giggled, seeing my old Lala peek through. Then I remembered that she was the one who had brought us here and got mad again. She pushed the button. The light turned red.

How did we get here? I wondered, at a total, sudden loss, like a man who went out for milk and woke up in traction at a hospital. I was, I saw, unable to even begin hypothesizing the reasons we were in therapy because I was unable to grasp that we were actually the sort of married couple who might find themselves in therapy, because deep down I barely grasped that we were really married: to me Lala was unique, she superseded the categories of girlfriend, lover, wife. I remember, soon after we’d wed, when bankers and bakers first began saying, “your wife called in an order,” or “your wife mentioned this…” I would be nonplussed, and on the verge of asking “Who?” She’s not my wife. She’s my Lala. But I held that belief at my peril. We were not unique. We were in fact an ordinary married couple, with ordinary heartbreaking problems, and an ordinary inextinguishable love that might flicker out or be smothered in our sleep. Our tragedy was like every other tragedy that I had witnessed playing itself out in supermarkets and parking lots and bars. Now, on the couch, her right hand crab-walked to mine and we squeezed, once, before she put it in her lap and covered it with her left. My heart swelled like a flood, cresting my chest, and retreated back into its depths. The inner door opened. A kindly old woman blinked at us, in round glasses, a pink sweater, pleated slacks. “You must be Natalia and Sam,” she said and smiled warmly. “I’m Gladys. Please come in.”

8

THE OFFICE WAS SORT OF
new age grandma—printed fabrics, upholstered pinks and creams, mixed with candles, Buddhas, and sunset posters exhorting us to Aspire and Accept. We sat as on a seesaw, at
opposing ends of the couch. Gladys perched on a chair at our apex. “Well,” she asked, leaning forward eagerly, hands pressing together, as if we were getting ready to open presents, “why are we here? Who’d like to begin?” I noticed she had a diamond ring and a gold band together on one long, knobby finger.

I looked at my wife, who looked back at me, eyebrows urging me to speak, like in a restaurant when she was too embarrassed to ask for more bread.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was Lala’s idea. I mean Natalie.” I blinked and micronodded at her. “You tell her.”

“OK, fine, I’ll begin,” she said, as if doing me a favor, and pulled out a legal pad. I glimpsed a long list, similar to the lists of gift ideas (for herself) that she generously provided in advance of Christmas and her birthdays. Her frank and childlike lust for things used to stun me, but there was something fetching about it back then. I was the cosseted middle-class child who could never think of anything he wanted, who didn’t see why he needed new jeans when he had a pair. She was the poor girl from beat-rural Mexico whose wish lists, along with wild hopes for cameras and watches, also asked for “socks,” “good books,” and “nice stationery and envelopes (different colors).” The idea of her covering those rainbow pages with her small, clear hand, sealing them, and sending them off to her friends, all of whom lived within a few miles, made me want to hug her so hard that the poor little girl she once was could feel my squeeze.

This current list, however, did not make me want to hug her, exactly. From what I could see it was longer than the ones she sent to Santa.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “That’s some list.” I turned to Gladys apologetically. “I didn’t even know there was homework.”

She giggled and blinked brightly. “That’s OK,” she said. “Let’s let Natalia begin with her top five and maybe you’ll think of something later.”

“Well, number one,” Lala read. “Sam finds a job. Number two,
does more chores around the house. Also, number three, you can do more errands, like for example, when I’m working you could do the grocery shopping and get dinner started. Or instead of sitting in your room all day you could be cleaning the garage or doing the yard.”

“Hey,” I said. “I have an idea. Why do I waste time sleeping when I could be polishing your shoes?”

Gladys chuckled, but Lala wasn’t amused. She spoke in her new, icy businesslady’s voice. “I’m just not getting my needs met in this marriage anymore.”

“Your needs met? What am I, a needs provider? It sounds like you’re changing banks, not husbands.”

Gladys laughed again and Lala glared at her. Gladys shrugged. “You’ve got to admit, he’s funny…”

“Very,” Lala said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though secretly I was thrilled that the therapist seemed to like me, as if pleasing her were the point, as if she would pick a winner and decide our fate. “I just don’t see why that’s my job. I don’t remember agreeing to any of this when we got married. I just promised to love you. And I have.” I reached around, gazing at the affirmative posters for a hint. “Unconditionally.”

Gladys held up her hands. “Let’s take a breath. All of us.” We did. “Good. Now, there are three areas in which healthy couples have reasonable expectations: first, money and chores, and who contributes what, then emotional support, and lastly sex. We’ve touched on the first two. How is your sex life?”

Embarrassed to be asked this by a grandma type with lipstick on her teeth and reading glasses on her head, I shrugged.

“Normal,” I said.

Lala snorted. “What sex life?”

“Well now,” Gladys said, “keeping that spark alive can be tough in a long-term relationship or when the stresses of life intrude. But it’s very important. For example, my husband, Myron, and I go to
spouse-swap events on the weekend and take our vacations at nudist ranches in the desert. It recharges our batteries. Last year we went to a swingers’ retreat in Mexico. It was wonderfully refreshing.”

I nodded, hoping the horror I felt wasn’t clear on my face. Where did Lala find this shrink? Craigslist? She seemed unperturbed. “For me the problem is that I just can’t feel attracted to a man I don’t respect. Someone I can admire and look up to.”

“How can you respect someone naked?” I said. “I’ll wear a tie next time. Or a yarmulke.”

“I just want a breadwinner,” she said. “You’re not a breadwinner.”

“What is this, the fifties? Who did you think you were marrying? This is me. You want such a traditional husband all of a sudden, I don’t see you home cooking my dinner, ironing my shirts, and taking care of my babies.” She looked away, out the window, where the half-raised curtain revealed a length of telephone wire, the trembling top of a tree, and some pieces of blue sky. That was an unintentional low blow. Or maybe not. Lala and I had tried getting pregnant for most of the previous year, and she’d been unable to conceive. Was that when things began to really unravel? Or had it been the last attempt to stitch them up?

“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject. “I got a job.”

“What?” The tears seemed to recede from her eyes, and the twitchy stiffness left her smile. “You’re kidding? When?”

“Just now. I came from the interview.” I tapped the pad. “So you can cross that off your list.”

Granny Gladys smiled broadly and clasped her hands. She seemed immensely relieved. “Well that sure is fast progress, right?”

Lala slapped my arm. “Is that why you’re wearing the suit?” She seemed tickled that I might have a job that required a suit, as if I’d suddenly become head of a law firm. “What kind of job is it?” She turned toward me on the couch, lips parted, knees slightly agape, which was, I think I read somewhere, a welcoming sign. Gladys leaned forward eagerly, squeezing her hands together as if in fervent prayer.

“I’m going to be a detective.”

Gladys cooed in gleeful surprise, clapping once, as if at a Mother’s Day card that I’d made all by myself. Lala just stared.

“Detective?” she asked, waiting for a punch line.

“Well, assistant detective,” I said, turning to Gladys for support. “I mean, I’m just starting out.”

She nodded. “He is trying.”

“Try harder,” Lala said flatly. “You know, some men take pride in providing for their wives. They want them to have everything. They treat them like princesses.”

Who were these men, I wondered? Had I ever met any? Were these perhaps the very same “assholes” who had once pursued her in their BMWs, waving gaudy watches and ski trips as bait, the “douchebags” and “jockstraps” whom she had been so glad to leave behind for me? Had she turned into one of their wives? I remembered her stories about the wealthy older lover she’d left when she came to America. “You had your chance to marry a rich man,” I said. “Remember? You picked me.”

I took a breath. I didn’t want to sound angry. I didn’t really feel mad anymore. What did I feel? “I do think you are a princess,” I said. “Of course you are. My princess.”

She glanced down softly at her list, as if ready to remove a few items. Gladys nodded. I probably should have shut up there, but I didn’t. I never do. “But don’t forget,” I added. “I’m a prince.”

Lala’s shoulders bit and her features closed up. “I have to tell you that I am really considering divorce,” she announced and gave me a dead look. I looked back in shock, hearing her actually say the word. Then she put her hands together and seemed to be begging, but for what? Compliance? Forgiveness? For what she had done or what she was going to do?

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said to Gladys. “I don’t know how to change things. We fight all the time. It’s just too hard.” She turned to me, desperately. “You can’t tell me you’re happy,” she pleaded.

“No,” I said, quietly. “You’re right. I can’t. I’m miserable.”

Her face seemed at once relieved and mournful, relieved to be mournful perhaps, or mournful at feeling relief.

“Well,” Gladys said, checking at her watch with a sigh. “We have to stop.”

9

I DROVE TO THE MYSTERY GIRL’S
place and parked beneath a tree. It was a Hollywood bungalow colony, set on a quiet block off of Sunset, the sort of phony beach cottages they built in the ’20s or ’30s as offices or sets, with peeling blue shutters and curving paths around the browning rosebushes. I got out, pretending to be looking for an address, which I suppose I really was doing, and found her cottage, number five, a quaint one-bedroom, flimsy yet chic, with cacti in little pots on the tile steps and an old-fashioned lamp beside the door. I loitered about until I noticed movement beyond the thin lacey curtains, then retreated to my car, which I rolled forward a few feet until I had a view of her door.

I pulled out the canvas bag stuffed with some of the items Lonsky recommended I keep in my “kit” and which I’d grabbed when I stopped home to change from my suit into a less conspicuous T-shirt and jeans. I couldn’t complete his list—I didn’t own a camera, for instance, or any theatrical makeup, or a “selection” of fake mustaches—but I did have an old blond wig that Lala had worn when she’d dressed as a cheerleader one Halloween.

For now, I just took out the notebook, in which I wrote the time of my arrival, and “Subject Observed at Home,” and grabbed the bag of nuts and raisins that I’d brought along in case the stakeout lasted all night, along with the water bottle, a designer model Lala used for yoga class. Fifteen minutes later my emergency supplies were gone. Half an hour after that I had to pee. I considered running to the gas
station on the corner, but didn’t want to risk losing the subject, so I put on NPR and listened to the news while I watched the traffic on Sunset slide by. Another half hour slowly passed. Unable to stand it any longer, I walked to the corner as casually fast as I could. They said they had no bathroom, though I’m not sure I believed them. I raced back to the car, hoping my subject was still there. I was now in acute distress and worried about permanent kidney damage. Precisely seventeen minutes later, I surrendered and relieved myself into my wife’s fancy water bottle. I was about to discard it, but remembering that it cost fifteen dollars, and the ridiculous fight that this fact had triggered, I resealed it and tucked it in my bag, planning to sterilize it with boiling water later. I chuckled ruefully, imagining the fury that would be unleashed if she ever found out. Then I felt sad, imagining the jolly laughter we would have shared a couple of years before, if I’d told her the same tale. What had happened? Why did she give a shit about a purple water bottle? Why wasn’t it fun being married to her anymore? Or to me?

I reached into my bag and got my Proust (book one of
Remembrance of Things Past,
the three-part Moncrieff-Rafferty version, that silver-and-black paperback that’s everywhere, and which, like all true lovers, I’d learned to call by its secret pet name:
In Search of Lost Time
). This was the one detail that Lonsky hadn’t gotten completely right: the inclusion of the Proust was not random. That volume, a fat block of thin paper, soft and heavy and yet somehow feathery, like pound cake, had been snoozing on the pillow beside me, in the spot where Lala used to dream. I’d always loved Proust, but now I read him both obsessively and haphazardly, the way other folks, I suppose, read the Bible, for comfort and wisdom in my time of pain. I had developed the irrational belief that almost any section, dipped up by chance, would answer my moment’s dilemma. Proust himself would only laugh: no one had less faith in God or man or woman, or in the prospect of those parties working things out. I opened the book and read

He was jealous now of that other self whom she had loved.

10

THE SUN WENT DOWN,
though from where I sat, I couldn’t see it set. Evening, like groundwater, just seemed to seep up from the earth. The shadows of the palm trees lengthened. The pools under cars and porches deepened, then grew, scaling the walls, covering the hills and sidewalks, rising like smoke into the air. A slow parade of cars rolled by, some with their lights on, anticipating darkness, as if heading toward a funeral in the east. A star appeared, high and sharp above the mountains I knew had to be there, invisible now in the gloom. Then in Bungalow Five, behind the lacey curtains, a warm yellow lamp went on.