Honestly, We Meant Well

by Grant Ginder

  Sue Ellen closes the door and the cab leaves.

  “Hi, Dr. Wright,” Ginny says.

  She removes her sunglasses.

  “I know you,” she says.

  Next to her Ginny hears heavy breathing. Glancing over, she sees Will, who whispers, “Shit.”

  “I…” Ginny struggles. Her stomach rumbles again. “I took your seminar on antiquity and feminist thought? It was something like two years ago, though, so if you don’t remember me, I totally—”

  “Ginny Polonsky.” Sue Ellen’s smile widens and becomes genuine. “You wrote your final paper on the Thesmophoria.”

  “Yes.” Ginny nods and draws circles in the dirt with her foot. “Ginny Polonsky. That’s me.”

  “I’m confused—are you here to see Will?” Above them, a warbler cackles. Sue Ellen looks beyond Ginny to her son. “Will, what’s going on?”

  “Actually—”

  Will presses his hand against Ginny’s back, and she feels her shirt stick to the base of her spine.

  “Hi, Mom,” he says. “Uh, yeah, she’s here to see me. She’s on her way back to Athens from, uh, Patmos, right?” Ginny stares at him and doesn’t nod. “Anyway, her flight’s early tomorrow morning, and she was just on her way out.”

  Sue Ellen’s quiet. She nods, and the space between the three of them seems to stretch and pull.

  “I see,” she says eventually.

  Will reaches down and picks up the suitcase.

  “Here, Ginny. Let me get you a cab.”

  With his free hand he grabs her arm and starts to tug her, burrowing his fingers into her flesh. At first, she allows herself to be led, tripping over her own feet as Will drags her past Sue Ellen and down the drive. Then she digs in her heels. She pries his hand away and yanks herself free.

  “We aren’t really friends,” she says. “Will and me, I mean. We sort of used to be, but we aren’t anymore.”

  “Ginny,” Will says. “Please.”

  She ignores him.

  She says, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not here to see him.”

  For a moment, the sun ducks behind an errant cloud and the world darkens, the afternoon’s long shadows bleeding and disappearing into the earth. There’s a breeze, and the air swirls with familiar and foreign scents: pine and brittle scrub. The chalky dryness of an evaporating summer.

  Sue Ellen crosses her arms. She says, in that unmistakable tone of a mother who has sensed something awry, “One of you needs to tell me what the hell is happening here.”

  When does a person grow up? Ginny wonders. Is it when she realizes the adults in her life—the parents, the teachers, the politicians making laws—are just as screwed up as she is? That their mistakes aren’t noble or mature, but rather mundane and selfish? Or is it something beyond that? A coming to terms with the world as a brutally indifferent place? A forum of pain, joy, energy, and struggle that’s ambivalent to the desires of any single person? Perhaps more to the point: When, and how, does this change happen? Do we undergo a singular experience—a trauma or a quest—from which we emerge fully formed, like a butterfly springing from its cocoon? Or is the process gradual: Do the millions of tiny scars we earn each day eventually blunt us, rubbing off the sheen of childhood?

  Ginny doesn’t know about any of that. The truth, she suspects, hides somewhere in a gray area. What she does know, though—what she’s absolutely certain of—is that part of growing up is admitting when you’re wrong. Coming clean and ripping off the Band-Aid. Being able to say Look, I really screwed up, and then taking those steps, small as they initially may be, to set things right.

  And so, Ginny Polonsky takes a deep breath.

  She closes her eyes, and she says: “I slept with your husband, Dr. Wright, and now I’m pregnant. It was stupid, and mean, and selfish, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry in my entire life. And while I don’t really know much about you, except that sometimes you stare out the window too much during class, what I can tell you is that you’re better than he is, and you’re better than I am. You’re better than both of us, and you deserve more.”

  Dean

  August 3

  Aegina

  A list, if not comprehensive then very close to it, of all the metaphors he’s used to illustrate regret: wineglasses, pillowcases, and a half-finished sheet cake. Empty picture frames, scuba gear, and fading star-shaped tattoos. Unused bicycles, chipped front teeth, and—once—the entire country of Czechoslovakia. A boat that never touched the water; a plane without any wings. Missed sunsets, broken vases, coffee that grows cold as the morning stretches into the afternoon. In other words: life failing to come together. Opportunities forgotten in dark corners, left to gather a thickening layer of dust.

  He knows that all of these are absurd; they smack with the precise sort of self-conscious, literary hand-wringing he professes to loathe. Regret is not a Joni Mitchell song or a broken umbrella. Rather, it’s literal, it’s visceral, it’s a feeling. It’s weight, composed of air, hindsight, and consequence. It’s the sensation of choking; the quick clenching of his bowels. An unbearable burden that crushes him as he watches, from the relative safety of one of the Alectrona’s bedrooms, as Sue Ellen listens to Ginny, her face settling into a familiar, devastating pallor.

  What else is regret? How does it manifest itself beyond those brutal physical sensations? In memories, he suspects. A deep and unfathomable flood of them. Here he is with his wife, taking turns holding their infant son as he cries through his first ear infection; here they are a year earlier, giggling over the earnestness of parenting books. And there is, of course, more: birthdays and holidays and the blessed mundanity that fills the space between them. A chain of Friday nights and Saturday mornings; of soccer games and first dates and bleary-eyed breakfasts. And then, somewhere buried within all that, is the moment they met. It had been at a social mixer for doctoral candidates organized by the Graduate Assembly. Dean wasn’t a graduate student—he had just started teaching creative writing as an adjunct—but he didn’t know anyone in Berkeley, and the department’s administrative assistant had taken pity on him and had forwarded the invitation, so he decided to attend. They had rented out a bar on Durant Avenue—the aim, as far as Dean could tell, was to break free from the tropes that typically characterized the academy’s attempts at forced socialization, and yet still, upon entering, he was confronted with the same platter of wrinkled celery and gray-skinned carrots; the same landscape of stilted conversations. He hovered at the periphery of the room for an hour, he remembers. Occasionally, someone would approach him. They would see him nursing his IPA and they would come over to where he was standing, scooting slowly, with the practiced timidity of scholars. The interaction would then follow a familiar pattern: after a brief rally of small talk, he would ask them about their dissertation, a topic that—regardless of his interest—he would try to keep in the air for as long as possible, delaying the inevitable moment when the conversation turned toward him and he was forced to admit that he wasn’t a scholar at all, but a part-time teacher of stories; that, in fact, his academic pursuits stopped after he received his Masters of Fine Arts—a degree that, in the face of medieval history, ethnosociology, and nanophysics struck him as little more than finger painting.

  They were nice to him. Or, if not nice then gracious. They listened to him as he talked about his writing, which at that point consisted of a handful of published stories and a single novel—a quiet, slim thing with the sort of sales that his agent and publisher described as modest. They asked the right questions, and nodded at the right moments. When he mentioned that the book at been reviewed in The New Yorker, they smiled and said that was really something. Still, as he spoke he found himself turning embarrassed, then ashamed; more and more he began to apologize for being there, and his became speech riddled with self-deprecating tics. The book wasn’t a big deal and anyone could write—really it was just a matter of being bored enough. Here, after all, were people who had committe
d themselves to a life of knowledge, of uncovering worldly truths. Meanwhile, he had settled for playing make-believe.

  He met her as he was leaving. After his second IPA he decided that he had taken enough of these peoples’ free beer, and that it was time to go home. Besides, he led a workshop at eight o’clock the next morning, and while the last hour and a half had filled him with more self-doubt than his most recent royalties report, the act of teaching—of planning a class, of engaging with students—still felt fresh and relevant; it made him feel part of something larger than himself. She was standing, he remembers, just to the right of the bar’s exit. When he tried to slide past her she jutted out an arm, as if it were a turnstile, and clocked him in the nose.

  “Ow,” he said, rubbing the spot where she had bumped him.

  “And where exactly do you think you’re going?”

  She was wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of dark Levi’s. Her hair was pulled back off her face, and beneath each eye was an asymmetrical spattering of freckles. To her left were two other graduate students—a pair of men who greeted Dean with brief, unfriendly nods.

  “I—I was just going.”

  She kept her arm where it was, her hand planted against the opposite side of the door frame.

  “Not without paying, you aren’t.”

  “I didn’t realize there was a toll for leaving.”

  “You’ve either got to pay or suffer here with the rest of us.” She sipped her beer. “No one escapes hell for free.”

  “Uh, okay.” He rubbed his nose again. He worried that it might bruise. “What’s it cost?”

  “Ten bucks.”

  “That seems pretty expensive.”

  She shrugged. “Happiness ain’t cheap.”

  Both of the men snickered—not with her, but at him.

  Dean dug through his pockets but came up short: a crumpled five, three ones, and half a toothpick. Even if he had the cash he wasn’t going to pay—he wanted to leave, but he wasn’t a pushover. Still, he decided to play along. He liked how jealous it was making the men beside her.

  He said, “I’ve only got eight.”

  Sue Ellen sucked her teeth and shook her head. “Guess you’re not leaving, then.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Let me make it up to you.”

  He brushed his hair out of his eyes. He was tired, he decided. He wanted to go home.

  “How?”

  She took the eight dollars and slipped her arm in his.

  “I’ll let you buy me a drink.”

  Was that their first date? Or, had it been week later when, exhilarated and nervous, he’d called her at the number she had given him when she finally let him leave. He doesn’t know, and he supposes it doesn’t matter. The fact is they saw each other again; they kept seeing each other until suddenly they were married. In the beginning, she terrified him. Whereas he had never had a passport, hers was overflowing with stamps, evidence of travel to places like Greece, and Turkey, and Egypt—countries that, for Dean, constituted a mythological worldliness that made his own life feel as expansive as a snow globe. She was calm and unbearably collected; while Dean wanted to be near her all the time, Sue Ellen seemed at ease in love—her heart she doled out in pieces, while he offered his up all at once. His blunders—and there were many of them—seemed tragic, and world-ending: a spilled glass of wine would have him apologizing for weeks. Hers, on the other hand, just added to her charm. The first time they slept together, she tripped and toppled over as she was shimmying out of her jeans. Springing up, she brushed her hair from her eyes and smiled at him.

  “That was my grand jeté,” she said. “What would you like to see next?”

  These are histories he hasn’t thought of in years, and now, still standing at the window, he wonders where he’s kept them buried away. When, and how, did Sue Ellen turn from someone he worshiped to very simply his wife? When had they allowed themselves to become such different people? Had it happened quickly, or rather inch by inch—two continents separating until a vast and impassable ocean lay between them? Or, had one of them actually stood firm, while the other drifted? He suspects that this latter theory is closer to the truth: Sue Ellen hasn’t changed, so much as he has.

  * * *

  He waits ten minutes—long enough for Ginny to run away and for Will to follow her—before he ventures downstairs. He finds his wife sitting by the side of the pool. She’s taken off her shoes and her legs hang over the edge, the water swirling around her knees. Next to her is a glass filled with a clear liquid—ouzo, he guesses, poured over two cloudy ice cubes.

  Approaching her, he says, “You know, they say that if you drink that stuff on the rocks it gives you a worse hangover.”

  “Get away from me.” She doesn’t look up.

  “Sue Ellen, let’s please just talk.”

  “I’m serious, Dean. Get away from me.”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets and stares down at his shadow, which in the afternoon sun elongates, stretching until it dissolves into the pool.

  He says, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can’t say anything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  With one hand he reaches around and rubs the back of his neck, now dampened with a cold, nervous sweat. Looking up, he takes stock of the Alectrona—its gray stone walls, its baked-tile roof, the way the orange tree, set against that washed-out façade, seems to have been robbed of its green by the sun.

  “I’ll fix it,” he says.

  “Oh, save it, Dean. You got someone pregnant. You got a student pregnant.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know whether to strangle that girl or offer to pay for her child care.”

  He feels a rush of indignation. “What, so this is all my fault?”

  “Yes,” she says. “It is unequivocally your fault.”

  “She came on to me, you know. She weaseled her way into my workshop, and then she came on to me.”

  “And then what? You just happened to trip and fall inside her during office hours? Jesus, Dean, listen to yourself.”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Sue Ellen.”

  She stands up, and water drips from her calves. The glass she leaves where it is, sitting on the pool deck. The ice has started to melt, turning the ouzo cloudy, the color of watered-down milk.

  “Don’t tell me how to act—you slept with a child.” She wipes her hands against her shorts. “Did you think about that? Someone who’s two years younger than our son. At least with Jasmine you were screwing around with someone who was old enough to rent a car. Who was there to vote for Barack fucking Obama. But Ginny, Dean?” Sue Ellen covers her eyes with her hands. “Jesus Christ.”

  He lets her cry for a moment, then cautiously takes a step toward her. She immediately steps back.

  “Hey,” he says. “I told you I would fix this, and I will. I promise you.”

  “Yeah? And how exactly do you plan on doing that?”

  “I’ll talk to Ginny,” he says. “We’ll go back to Connie.”

  “Connie,” she spits, and finally reaches down for her drink. “Connie isn’t penance, Dean. She’s not there to absolve you whenever you screw up.” Sue Ellen swallows some ouzo, and her eyes pinch shut. “We never should have gone to her in the first place.”

  “Sue Ellen—”

  “No, I’m serious. We never should have gone to her. That—that was my mistake.”

  “I’m not going to let you do this,” he says. “I’m not going to let you rewrite the entire history of our marriage just because I fucked up.”

  “I’m not rewriting history, Dean. I’m just finally recognizing it.”

  She looks down and swirls the ice.

  She says, “Do you remember how, after our first session with Connie, we went to that dinner Charlene Jackson was having to celebrate getting tenure? We weren’t going to go, but then Connie mentioned that we should do something together—something that didn’
t involve fighting or yelling at each other.”

  “Of course I remember,” Dean says, though really, he doesn’t. Watching her stare into her glass, he wonders what else she’s holding on to that he’s already forgotten, what sort of memories she’s used to construct the record of their marriage, and how wildly they might differ from his own.

  “Anyway,” Sue Ellen continues, “I can’t remember the name of the restaurant where they had it. Can you?”

  “I can’t.” He ventures a guess: “It was in the city, though, wasn’t it?”

  “No, Oakland,” she says. “There weren’t enough seats, so we spent most of the time standing up, balancing plates. You were drinking Sancerre, and I had beer and kept eating these bruschetta they were passing around. I was emotionally wound up, and starving, and wanted something that would make me feel tired and full.” She looks into the glass again. “Jesus, isn’t it insane that I can remember that—what I ate and why I ate it, I mean—but I can’t remember the name of the goddamned restaurant?”

  Dean nods. He begins to tell her that he agrees, but she shakes her head.

  “We tried our best to follow Connie’s advice and not to talk about the session, and we did an okay job. There were a few times when we would drift, or where it was clear that one of us was thinking about something the other had said, but mainly, I think, we managed to avoid it. Your book had just gone into its third printing. Mostly, we talked about that.”

  “Sue Ellen, your lecture’s in an hour. Can we just—”

  “I’m not done.” The ice has finally melted. She finishes her drink and holds the glass at her side. “Charlene hired these students to act as servers at the dinner. There was a group of them—three boys and two girls. They’d all been in her Ovid seminar the semester earlier, I think, and she wanted to help them earn a little extra cash. You know how she can be like that. Anyway, at one point I was standing by the bar, and I looked over and saw you on the other side of the room, watching one of the girls. Someone was talking to you—Rick Jenkins, maybe?—but you weren’t really listening; it was like you were in your own world, where it was just you and this—this girl. You watched her wherever she went. I thought you were going to break your neck.”