May We Be Forgiven: A Novel

by Homes, A. M.

  In the morning, I wonder if any of it really happened or if it’s all some warped wet dream. I shower, make breakfast, walk the dog. I stay away from George’s office until nine-thirty.

  I’ve got mail: “In the interest of full disclosure, I am someone in the process of transitioning.” I’m thinking it’s from a woman who lost her job, or is getting a divorce, but no. “For thirty-five years I lived as a man, but for the last three I’ve been a woman. I think of myself as a regular girl looking to meet a regular guy. If you’re not interested—a polite no thanks will do.”

  “Soccer mom with time between games. Lets meet in my minivan. I’ll cum to you.”

  “I’m miserable,” the next one writes. “Don’t even ask for details. Last week I increased my medication which gave me the energy to write this. Now, I’d like to get laid. Happy to host or meet for a BLT. Lets have lunch!”

  I e-mail back, “What’s a BLT?”

  “Bacon lettuce tomato? Duh.”

  “Sorry, all the online acronyms are getting to me.”

  “What do you like for lunch?”

  “I’m easy,” I type. “A can of soup is fine.”

  She sends directions. “Don’t be weird, okay.”

  “Okay,” I write back. I can’t believe I’m doing this. The woman lives seven miles from George’s house. I get there, nervously park behind her car in the driveway, ring the bell. A perfectly normal woman answers. “Are you you?” I ask.

  “Come in,” she says. We sit in her kitchen. She pours me a glass of wine. We chat as she’s taking things out of the refrigerator. I find myself staring at a large dry-erase board with a multicolored chart/schedule. The names Brad, Tad, Lad, Ed, and ME are written down the left side, and Monday, Tuesday…across the top. Each name has its schedule—football, tutoring, class trip, yoga, potluck—in a matching color, Ed in red, ME in yellow.

  “Do you run a small business?”

  “Just the family,” she says.

  “Cheryl, is that your real name?”

  “Yes,” she says

  “Not like your online name?”

  “I only have one name,” she says. “More than that and I’d get confused. Is Harold your real name, or code for Hairy Old Codger?”

  “I was named after my father’s father,” I offer. “He walked here from Russia.”

  “Shall we go into the dining room?” Cheryl leads me to her dining room, where the table is set. She brings out dish after dish, canapé, beef stew, salmon tart.

  “I didn’t make it just for you,” she says. “My friend is a caterer, and I helped her with an event last night—these were leftovers.”

  “This is really good,” I say, stuffing my mouth. “It’s been a long time since I had anything other than Chinese food.” Part of me wants to ask, “Do you do this often?” but if she says yes, I’ll feel disgusting and compelled to leave, and the thing is, I don’t want to go, so I don’t ask.

  “Should I feel sorry for you?” she wants to know.

  “No,” I say.

  “You have kids?” I ask, to distract from my second helping of the stew.

  “Three boys; Tad, Brad, Lad. Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen. Can you imagine? Do I look like I had three babies?” She lifts up her shirt, flashing me her flat stomach, the curve of the bottom of her breasts.

  “You look very nice,” I say, suddenly breathless.

  “Would you like coffee?” she asks.

  “Please,” I say.

  She goes into the kitchen. I hear the usual coffee-making sounds. She returns, coffee cup in hand—nude.

  “Oh,” I say. “I really just came to meet you, to talk, we don’t have to, you know…”

  “But I want to.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what? I’ve never heard of a man who doesn’t want free sex,” she says, indignant. She hands me the coffee. I drink quickly, scalding my throat.

  “I’m just not…”

  “Not what? You better figure it out, buster, or there’s going to be some hurty feelings around here.”

  “I’ve never done this before.”

  She softens. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.” She takes my hand and leads me upstairs. “Would you like me to tie you up? Some people can’t relax unless they’re restrained.”

  “Thanks, I’m okay,” I say. “I prefer to be free.”

  Upstairs, she asks if I want a dough job; I’m thinking money, but then she’s got both hands greased up and on either side of my cock and she’s telling me that she’s going to knead it like dough. It’s vaguely medical at first but not unpleasant and then she’s got my cock in her mouth and honestly I never thought it could be this easy. Claire never wanted to suck my cock, she said my balls smelled damp.

  And then—the front door slams. “Hi, Mom.”

  Her mouth comes off my cock, but her hand clutches me firmly, as if refusing to let the blood recede.

  “Tad?” she calls out.

  “Brad,” the kid answers, slightly put out.

  “Hi there, kiddo, everything okay?” she calls downstairs.

  “Yeah, I forgot my hockey stick.”

  “Okay, see you later,” she says. “I made brownies—they’re on the counter, help yourself.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  And the door slams closed.

  For a moment I think I may have a heart attack, but when her good work resumes, the feeling quickly passes.

  I go home, take a long nap, and start thinking about tomorrow. I finally have a calling, a way to spend my time. I am going to do this every day. I’ll get up early, work on Nixon from 6 a.m. until noon, go out for lunch with a different woman each day, get home, take Tessie for a walk, and get a good night’s sleep.

  A single session, once a day. I contemplate trying for two times a day, a lunch and a dinner, on the days I’m not teaching, but it seems too much—better to pace myself, to manage it like an athlete in training.

  “How far will you go?” a woman asks.

  “In what way?”

  “Mileage,” she writes.

  It’s a delicate balance—on the one hand, I don’t want to stay too close to the house, in case I run into someone; on the other, I am suddenly mindful of time—I have things to do and don’t want to spend the day driving. It’s fascinating, everything from the real estate involved to the women themselves, the variations in décor and desire. Twenty-five miles at most; that seems reasonable. As I’m leaving, one woman tries to pay me. “Oh no,” I say. “It was my pleasure.”

  “I insist,” she says.

  “I can’t. That makes it like a work for hire, like…”

  “Prostitution,” she says. “That’s what I’m looking for, a man who can accept money for it, who can feel both the pleasure and the degradation.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “I did it for myself, for my pleasure.”

  “Yes,” she says, “but for my pleasure I need to pay you.”

  Twenty bucks is forced on me. Twenty bucks—is that all I’m worth? I would have thought more. Maybe that’s her point?

  After that, from each house, each woman, I take something. Nothing big, nothing of value, but like a trinket, something as small as a single sock, a little something that catches my eye.

  On one particular Wednesday, I am especially looking forward to an early lunch because my pen pal is so spirited and funny. “What is this all about? Why do you do these things?” she writes.

  “God knows,” I write back. “But I’m looking forward to meeting you.”

  I arrive at the house, a modern glass-walled structure from the early 1960s nestled in the curve of a cul-de-sac. I can see into the house—highly stylized, like a film set, a place that people pass through, more along the lines of an airport or a museum than a cozy family home. I ring the doorbell and watch as a young girl of about nine or ten unexpectedly appears at the far end of the house and then crosses from room to room, window to window, carpet to carpet, until she reaches the front
door.

  “Is your mother home?” I ask as she opens the door.

  “What’s it to you?” she asks.

  “She and I were going to have an early lunch?”

  “Oh, you’re the guy. Come in.”

  I step into the house. “Everything okay—shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

  “I should be but I’m not.”

  The foyer is a cube within the cube—I can see into the kitchen, the living room, dining room, and out into the backyard.

  “So is your mom here? Maybe I should leave; tell her John came by, John Mitchell.”

  “I can make you lunch,” the girl says, “like a grilled cheese or something.”

  “No offense, but I don’t think you should be using the stove if your mom’s not home.”

  The girl puts her hands on her hips. “You want the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “My mom’s in the city. She and my dad are having lunch to see if they can work it out.”

  “Okay, then,” I say, backing up, preparing to go.

  “And so”—she pauses for effect—“my brother and I decided to play our version of that TV show Predator. My dad says it’s amazing how dumb people can be. And we knew my mom was up to something, but didn’t know what.”

  And with that the little brother comes out of the powder room, where he’s been hiding, and gets my hands behind my back—slapping the cuffs on.

  “Look,” I say, “first off, you’re doing it wrong, I’ve committed no crime. And, secondly, you’ve got the handcuffs on incorrectly—if you cut off my circulation, you’ve got nothing. You’ve got to make them looser.” The kid doesn’t blink.

  I wiggle my hands. “The cuffs are too tight, they hurt.”

  “I think that’s a good thing,” the kid says. “They should hurt.”

  “Looser, please,” I say. And the kid shakes his head. “Looser.”

  He doesn’t budge.

  I consider falling to my knees, pretending to foam at the mouth, or simulating a heart attack. I wonder how much it would be dramatic play and how much would be real, because I’m actually having a panic attack. I consider falling, but look down at the hard slate floor and calculate the possibility of broken kneecaps as too great a risk.

  “How old are you?” I ask, attempting to distract myself.

  “Thirteen,” the girl says. “And he’s almost eleven.”

  “Didn’t your parents tell you not to let strangers in—how do you know I’m not some monstrous, dangerous person?”

  “My mom wouldn’t have lunch with a dangerous person,” the boy says.

  “I don’t know your mom very well.”

  “Look at you,” the girl says. “You’re not exactly scary.”

  “Do we need more restraints?” the boy asks his sister. “Should I tie up his legs? I have bungee cords.”

  “No,” she says. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  The boy yanks my arm, hard. “Sit down,” he says, pushing me, and I’m surprised by his strength.

  “Hey,” I say. “Go easy.”

  Once I’m seated on the living-room couch, if you can call it seated with your arms locked behind your body, the two kids stand in front of me, as if expecting me to say something. I take the cue.

  “Okay,” I say, “so how’s this gonna work? Is there, like, a hidden camera?”

  “We have a camera,” the boy says. “But no battery.”

  The living room is all white—white sofa, white walls, the only color two bright-red womb chairs.

  “So—what’s the story?” I ask.

  “Basically, our life sucks,” the boy says. “Our parents pay no attention to us, Dad works all the time, Mom’s entirely electronic, and I can’t remember when we last did anything fun with them.”

  “We think he’s having an affair,” the girl says.

  “What’s an affair again?” the boy asks his sister. She whispers in his ear, and he makes a disgusted face.

  “What makes you think he’s having an affair?” I ask.

  “Whenever his cell phone rings, he runs out of the room. And my mom yells at him, ‘If it’s work, how come you can’t answer it in here?’”

  “We logged into Mom’s computer. She’s also doing weird stuff, and we think our father knows, but aren’t sure.”

  “How many times have you done it with her?” the boy asks, cutting his sister off.

  “Done it?” I say. And then I realize what he’s asking and blush. “Never,” I say. “I’ve never met your mother. We chatted online and she invited me to lunch.”

  “That simple?” the girl asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a wife?” the girl asks.

  “I’m divorced.”

  “Kids?” the boy wants to know.

  “No.”

  “Okay, but she does,” the girl says.

  “Yeah,” the boy says.

  “I understand,” I say. “Have you tried talking to your mother, asking her what it’s all about?”

  “You can’t talk to her,” the boy says. “She doesn’t talk. All she does is this.” He makes weird repeating motions with his thumbs.

  “My mother only talks to her BlackBerry. All day, all night. In the middle of the night she wakes up to BlackBerry people around the world. I hear her in the bathroom, typing and typing,” the girl says. “My father once got so mad he flushed it down the toilet. It got stuck in the pipe, and the plumber had to come.”

  “Not a good idea,” the boy says.

  “Very expensive,” the girl says.

  We sit for a while. The kids make snacks: pineapple juice, maraschino cherries, white bread with slices of American cheese. They have to feed them to me on account of the handcuffs.

  “Try not to crumb,” the girl says.

  I almost choke on a cherry. “You might want to check the expiration date on those,” I say.

  “What’s tea-bagging?” the girl asks, while feeding me another piece of crustless white bread.

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly.

  She dabs the corners of my mouth with a napkin and lets me sip from a juice box.

  “It’s something grown-ups do; it was in one of my mom’s e-mails,” the boy says.

  “It’s not good to read someone else’s e-mail, e-mail is private,” I say.

  “Whatever,” the girl says. “I’ll Google it later.” She takes the juice box away.

  “Do you have any pets?” I ask.

  “I was in charge of the class fish over school vacation,” the boy says.

  “Do you like school?”

  Both kids look at me blankly. “Do you have friends?”

  “It’s more like we know people. We’re not friends but we know them. Like, if we’re out somewhere or something and see them, we might wave or nod but we don’t talk or anything.”

  “Do you have a babysitter?”

  “Mom let her go. She decided she didn’t like having someone around all the time,” the boy says.

  “We have an electronic minder. Every day at three p.m. we have to check in; if we don’t it beeps us, and if we don’t respond it calls a list of names, and if no one can find us it calls the police.”

  “How do you check in?”

  “You dial a number and type in your code.”

  “I always forget mine,” the boy says. “So I write it on my hand.” He holds up his hand; “1 2 3 4” is written in ink on his palm.

  “We have chips,” the boy says, standing up.

  “Thanks, but I’m trying to watch what I eat,” I say.

  “Not chips you eat—chips implanted under our skin so they can track us,” he says.

  “Like, if anyone wanted to know where we were right now, they’d know we’re at home. I keep thinking maybe they never installed the software,” the girl says. “Or they don’t care.”

  “Look, kids, I hope this doesn’t sound bad, but, despite the fact that you kidnapped me and held me against my will, you seem lik
e good kids—you made nice snacks, you both worry about your parents and wish they showed the same concern for you, and that’s really not asking too much. What about offering your parents a Get Out of Jail Free card? Offer them their freedom and ask them to give you up for adoption? Do you know how many people would love to have housebroken—I mean potty-trained—white, English-speaking children?”

  “Wow, I never thought of that,” the girl says.

  “You could find a nice family where they’d make sure you went to school, did your homework, and flossed your teeth.”

  “Maybe you could adopt us,” the boy says.

  I shake my head. “Clearly I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome,” I say.

  “What’s that?” the girl asks.

  “You’ll Google it later,” I say. “I’ve got a lot on my plate—my brother’s kids, and I’m trying to finish a book on Richard Nixon—do you know who he was?”

  “No.”

  “He was the thirty-seventh President of the United States, born in the small town of Yorba Linda, California, in a house that his father built with his bare hands. Nixon was the only President in United States history to resign the office.”

  “What does ‘resign’ mean?” the boy asks.

  “It means he quit in the middle,” the sister says.

  “His father must have been really mad,” the boy says.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Why?”

  “I have to teach this afternoon. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” I ask.

  “It’s over there,” the boy says pointing.

  “It’s a half-bath,” the girl says.

  I slide myself to the front of the sofa and wiggle my arms. “Can’t exactly use the bathroom with my hands behind my back,” I say.

  “Obviously,” the girl says.

  “Right,” the boy says, coming to unlock me. The kid struggles with the key.

  “Do your best,” I say. And somehow encouraging them to do their best calms the kids, and within seconds the cuffs are off and I’m heading towards the bathroom.

  “I’ve got news for the two of you,” I say as I come out the bathroom door, fully prepared to fight them if I must. “I’m leaving now, but I urge you to talk to your parents—you deserve better. And I want you to know that what happened here today was a success, you did a good job convincing me never to do this again, no more Internet dates—it’s not safe. This experience was like a Scared Straight program for adults.”