You Don't Love This Man (29 page)

Miranda shook her head—not angrily—and said, “You need to stop. Why do you hate him so much?”

Pretending not to understand why I disliked Ira could only have been an emotional affectation at that point, pretend bafflement at a reaction she actually understood perfectly well. But her thoughts on people and the world seemed entirely in play, as if she had decided not only to discard her childhood identity, but also to open up to inquiry every system of sane thinking and every scrap of common sense. Everything that had once been proven would now have to be proven again. “You're my daughter,” I said. “So if you're going to have a boyfriend, I want it to be someone nice. Not someone who smashes doors in a rage.”

“Did Grandma Carrie act this way when you were a teenager? Was she this super-critical of everyone?”

“I'm not being super-critical. And Carrie didn't have to worry about who I was dating, because I didn't date anyone in high school.”

“Why do you call her Carrie? Didn't you ever call her Mom?”

“Not really. Maybe once in a while, as a joke. Most of the time we just called each other by our names.”

“And you didn't date anyone at all? Ever?”

“There were only about fifty people in my whole graduating class, Miranda.” Miranda knew my mother had been seventeen and unmarried when she had me, and that my father, only eighteen himself at the time, never lived with us. In her youth, Miranda had asked me more than once to describe the two-bedroom apartment Carrie and I lived in across the street from the bowling alley—she referred to it as if it were one of the wonders of the ancient world. I did my best not to use the modest means of my own childhood as something to hold over Miranda, and I suspect she avoided asking much about it for the same reason: when she was making a demand, there was no way her own situation could look anything but fine in comparison to the years in which my mother would slip over from the bowling alley on her evening break, make me dinner, and then walk back across the street to finish her shift. I was allowed—encouraged, in fact—to watch television until I fell asleep on the couch, and I still have fond memories of the little independent station that showed, in my memory, almost nothing but
Star Trek
episodes and sci-fi films from the 1950s. My favorite of these was
Forbidden Planet
, not just because of the film's otherworldly soundtrack, but also because it was about a single parent and child marooned on a distant planet. Over the course of my childhood I probably saw that movie twenty or thirty times on that station, identifying every time with the father—as if
I
were the parent, and Carrie my daughter. How I had flattered myself into believing that I, a boy watching television, was actually taking care my mother, who was working night after night in the run-down bowling alley to provide for us, is
beyond me. But I sustained this belief throughout my childhood. It's hard to know if it was simply the relative economic poverty of my childhood that made Miranda bashful about her own demands, or if she also sensed the little self-flattering narrative I had invented for myself in that childhood, and felt sorry for me on that account, too. She didn't need to feel sorry for me at all, but I always sensed a shift in her demeanor when the subject of those years came up.

“But still,” she said, “I'm sure people went out. I didn't grow up there, but I know that even in small towns, people have boyfriends and girlfriends.”

“I'm sorry, but I didn't,” I said. “I worked at the bowling alley on the weekends when I was a teenager. And Carrie always knew where I was, because she was working there, too.”

“I still think guys that work at bowling alleys can date, Dad. It's the perfect situation, really.”

“Well. Maybe the boys in our class outnumbered the girls.”

Miranda's attempts to retroactively bolster the self-esteem of my sixteen-year-old self were cute, but I could also sense—especially as she hesitated there in the conversation, as if picking her next move—that she was trying to make some kind of deeper point. “But don't you see that Ira isn't that different?” she said. “He's always had to work, too. And maybe he's not always good around people, but that's just because he hasn't had good role models.”

Did I sigh aloud, or just inwardly? “He has to work because he's not in high school anymore, Miranda. And I'm sure his problems have a source, but he's not the only person in the world who has problems. And also, I don't see how you can already know him well enough to be coming to these conclusions about him.”

“But if a lot of people in the world have problems, and if a lot of people need help, then why are you against him?”

As she stood there waiting for an answer, a pencil behind her ear and a hammer hanging idly from her bandaged hand, I felt for the first time in a very long time that she was actually listening. She was studying me intently, as if alert to the possibility of unlocking some bit of new or important information not about Ira, but about me. It felt almost mathematical: Why was
I
against
him
? Why did
x
not equal
y
?

“Because not everyone breaks down doors,” I said. “And I don't see how you can expect me to be okay with him when you won't even tell me what happened. I understand that a young man was so angry that he actually destroyed the front door of our home. I don't respect that kind of person.”

She tapped the handle of the hammer thoughtfully against the side of the house. “He was just being jealous. It was stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“He said he knows I don't really like him, because he thinks I want a boyfriend who's rich. He said I probably want a rich, fancy person like Grant.” Her eyes darted quickly toward and away from mine before she laughed, and resumed tapping the siding.

“Did you tell him Grant is your father's age?”

“He said it doesn't matter. He said you and Grant don't like him because he's not from a rich family.”

“You're not from a rich family, either. And I still don't understand how this turns into smashing the door.”

“He was saying stupid things, so I told him to leave. And then he said that proved he was right.”

“What kind of stupid things?”

“He was just trying to shock me. It doesn't matter. He just needs to learn to trust people.”

She was so invested in this idea that people could be good on the inside, regardless of their actual behavior, that I could see direct argument would get me nowhere. It was a marvelous consolation to know that the situation was already on its way to being resolved. “Hand me the drill,” I said.

Her eyes actually widened in alarm. “Why?”

“Because I need to put this hinge on.”

“Right!” she said, and jumped to retrieve it.

We didn't get that door in until almost eleven o'clock that night. It took that long primarily because I slowed the pace of the project to make sure Miranda would have to be at my side for the entirety of the evening. When we were done, I opened the new door a few inches and then closed it, listening to the crisp sound of the latch. Miranda asked if she could try, and when I moved aside, she opened the door wide, shifted her grip, and then swung it with enthusiasm. It slammed shut with a clean, two-note strike: latch against plate, door against jamb. “Good work,” she said, nodding with satisfaction.

“I hope so,” I said.

 

T
HE SECOND TIME
I entered campus on Miranda's wedding day, it was from the side opposite where I had earlier in the day. I passed a row of squat, utilitarian buildings that in previous years I had considered little more than glorified tin sheds, but on the day of the wedding, I was struck by how clean and solid the places now seemed to me. Armed with the knowledge that somewhere within each structure's dim, oil-stained concrete interior lay a glassy little
office, fluorescently aglow Monday through Friday, I felt a wave of gratitude for the invisible number of hands that had indeed cleared the Quad that day, that had mowed its grass and silenced its sprinklers and completed the other unseen tasks that, together, created the sufficient conditions for my daughter's wedding. I knew—had been warned repeatedly, in fact—that the buildings were empty and locked that day, and should there be a problem, there would be no one to appeal to. But that was fine, I thought. It was as it should be.

When I turned into the Quad, I saw Catherine and a man I assumed was our photographer standing beneath the trees. Earlier in the day I had felt uneasy about accepting her help, but I also found her presence comforting. I suppose I felt uneasy
because
I felt her presence comforting, and I knew well that comforts could not be relied on. And yet there she was, a protective spirit watching over the careful rows of plastic chairs that lent the area the charged aura that precedes any piece of theater.
If she wants to help, she wants to help
, I told myself, and with a tautology no more complicated than that, I sailed forward. The grass was still slick and wet from the rain, and I could see, even from the edge of the Quad, that the chairs were beaded with water, too. We were scheduled to take the wedding photos there at four o'clock, only half an hour away, and my solitary march across the grass felt like a formal movement, the true beginning of things. The silence with which Catherine and the photographer watched me only added to the sense of ceremony, and I was glad to reach them there beneath the trees and, by speaking, to break the spell.

The photographer, a short fellow with dark eyes whom I hadn't had occasion to meet before, introduced himself as Kurt. The anxiousness with which he raked his fingers through the
sand-colored hair that fell perfectly across his forehead, and the enthusiasm he showed for his spearmint chewing gum (its odor fully detectable and identifiable from ten paces) reminded me of any number of male customers in early middle age I had helped over the years, men whose financial lives were in tatters due to bad divorce settlements or amateur investment strategies, and who tended as a result to focus their attention almost exclusively on matters of health and personal appearance: they drank bottled water and chased it with breath mints, gelled their hair rigidly in place, and shaved so closely and with the use of such bracing aftershaves that the tight skin of their ruddy cheeks shone with an unhealthy plasticity. Radically uncertain of where they stood with the fairer sex, these men often ended up worshipping at the feet of Catherine. Her dual backgrounds in finance and femininity placed her in a position to take them by the hand, it seemed. And something about the way Catherine was standing under the trees there in the Quad—she was a bit farther from Kurt than seemed necessary, and wasn't looking at him—made me wonder if perhaps the opening exchange of some transaction had already occurred between them. But Kurt seemed perfectly at ease. He shook my hand with great earnestness, leaning forward as if he had reached the end of a diving board and was prepared to jump, and then punctuated his words with staccato chomps of his gum and with what struck me as an excess of eye contact as he assured me his equipment was in his van, and if I let him know what I might like as the background, he would begin setting up. “The buildings here are great,” he said, “and I've done a lot of weddings where we take pictures in front of them, or on the steps or by the columns, but the trees are great, too, of course, so we could use those just as easily. It's all up to you.”

“Why do you still have your suit on?” Catherine asked. “Shouldn't you be in your tuxedo?”

“I've been busy,” I said.

“It's fine,” Kurt said. “You have plenty of time.”

“We had a plan for inclement weather, didn't we?” I said. “We would take the photos after the ceremony?”

“Sure. It looks like it's going to be clear, though, doesn't it?” He looked up into the trees, though from where we were standing, their canopy blocked any view of the sky.

“It's not the weather,” I said. “We've had a change of plans. The bride has decided she doesn't want to be seen before the ceremony.”

Kurt nodded not only with his head, but with his shoulders, too. He followed a band around the country for a while when he was younger, I thought—it was that kind of nodding. “That's cool,” he said. “Like you said, we can do them after. It'll work fine.”

“Good. I was hoping that would be true.”

“Did you find that person you were looking for?” Catherine asked.

“Someone flake on you?” Kurt said. “Not the groom, I hope!”

For his benefit, I smiled. It wasn't necessary for him to be there any longer, and I didn't want to discuss Miranda's disappearance in his presence. Some irrational part of me probably feared he would set about shooting photos of me standing there without her, and that the images would appear in the city newspaper, fronting some inside section devoted to tales of local trouble. “Just a minor detail,” I said.

“But minor details aren't the father's job,” he said jovially. “The dad's just supposed to be the money man.”

I assured Kurt that I had never been anything other than a
money man, and hinted that if he were looking for cues on how to prepare for our new plan for the wedding photos, I would get back to him about that in just a little while. But he persisted in making what he clearly believed were helpful comments. He had a prediction for how long it would take him to set up after the ceremony, suggestions for how to quickly hustle the guests off to the reception so we would have the Quad to ourselves, and thoughts on how he would streamline the process, which, he told us in the lowered voice of a magician revealing one of his tricks, would involve him moving back and forth between two cameras. Eventually I was forced to tell him that it all sounded very good, I trusted him implicitly, was glad we were in his experienced hands—but could he please allow me a moment or two with Miss L'Esprit?