The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken

by Passananti, Mari

  My mother doesn’t get it. She thinks Laurie should “apply herself.” Laurie and Scott think Mom should mind her own business, and that Mom’s just bitter because she never had a career and she wishes she had it to do over. It always makes for at least one tense exchange per holiday.

  By the time Laurie and I have gotten through the basics, such as how the flight was, the kids are squirming to get me out of the kitchen before I’m sucked into adult conversation. Laurie asks if I’d like a glass of wine, and I say I’d love one for the road.

  “Pirates only drink rum!” Ben protests.

  “We can pretend it’s rum.”

  “Okay.” His face wrinkles in concentration for a moment, then he says, “I’ll have one, too!” A split second later, he remembers to add, “Please, Mommy.”

  “Only grown up pirates get to bring drinks upstairs,” Laurie says. I see a glimmer of protest spark in Ben’s eyes but he decides not to push what he must recognize as a bad position. “And Aunt Zoë’s going to need one as soon as she hears about the sleeping arrangements.”

  “What sleeping arrangements?”

  “Scott and I are at the Hyatt. Your mother plans to put Oscar in the guestroom and have you bunk with the kids.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Laurie rolls her eyes. “She thinks it’s positively immoral for the grandkids to see their Auntie shacked up. But don’t freak out. Scott already booked you guys a room, weeks ago, when we first heard about this. You’re welcome to drive over to the hotel with us later.”

  “My mom will lose it if I don’t sleep here.”

  Laurie shrugs, as if that’s part of the point, and reaches for the wine bottle. Normally it would annoy me to hear my sister-in-law criticize my mother, but in this case, I can’t say she’s wrong. Mom should be thrilled I’m serious enough to bring my new guy home. And since she’s so worried about my biological clock, she shouldn’t be so judgmental about my sex life.

  My new boyfriend, my brother and my parents catch up to us as Laurie pours me a generous glass of wine. Oscar has sportingly traded his Ferragamo loafers for worn gray slippers, which Dad has probably tried to toss several times in recent decades. I manage quick introductions before the kids start pulling at me to get moving. “Want to come see a pirate ship?” I ask Oscar again, thinking it might not be best to leave him with the adult members of the Clark family.

  “And a castle!” Courtney corrects my invitation.

  “Absolutely,” he says, with a huge smile in my direction.

  Upstairs, I’m so surprised when Oscar gamely drops to his hands and knees to access the ship and fort crafted from old sheets and sofa cushions, that I stand there for a second, taking in the whole scene, before Courtney re-commandeers my full attention to the castle tour.

  Evidently Oscar likes children. We’ve never discussed the kid question, probably because we never really see any children in New York. Maybe it’s something I need to bring up, assuming we survive this visit. I’ve always pictured myself with kids, at some vague point in my distant future, but certainly not on Angela’s stepped up timeline. What if Oscar is in more of a hurry? He does have a decade on me. I wonder if this is a deal breaker for him. If it is, wouldn’t he have told me right off the bat?

  Later, I take my mother aside and tell her that there is no way, since I am over thirty years old, and I have this great new man who gave up his holiday weekend to be with me, that I am sleeping down the hall from him. When I was upstairs playing pirates, I ran through various scenarios in which I explained to Oscar that my hippy mother was really a prude, but none of them were appealing enough to re-create in reality. Mom puts up surprisingly minimal fuss, probably because she knows I’m more than willing to make good on my threat to join my brother and his wife at the Hyatt. Either that, or she sees Oscar as her fastest possible route to more grandchildren. Without further drama, Oscar and I shuffle our belongings upstairs to the guest room, which houses a perfectly serviceable, though quite squeaky, queen sized bed.

  I open my suitcase and start hanging my clothes for tomorrow in the closet, in hopes of not having to iron. Oscar takes out his laptop and asks whether I mind if he checks his messages before heading downstairs.

  I tell him no problem, but my expression must say I suspect he’s willfully hiding from my relatives. Not that I would blame him, if he’d known them for more than about half an hour.

  Oscar sighs. “I’ll be right down, if it’s so important to you. Just let me answer a few emails.” He pulls me towards him and plants a kiss on my forehead. Maybe under the correct circumstances, that would be cute, but in this moment, it feels patronizing and dismissive. I try to remind myself that his work demands a huge commitment of his time, even if everyone else is in holiday mode. I, once again, need to stop creating issues where none exist.

  As I head back downstairs, I hear Laurie grumbling to my brother that it’s not fair, since my mom never let them co-habit under her roof, prior to their engagement.

  Dinner feels roughly seventy-four hours long, but in reality lasts only about ninety minutes. Basically, in lieu of normal conversation, my parents take turns interrogating Oscar. Dad’s questions about his career, and what he thinks about the market downturn would be bearable, if Mom didn’t chime in at every opportunity to make wholly inappropriate inquiries, such as whether Oscar wants children.

  My normally cool, self-possessed guy blinks like a young doe in headlights. “I suppose so, yes,” he finally says, as neutrally as possible.

  This is all the validation my mother needs. “Well, you shouldn’t put it off, you know,” she trills. “Zoë’s not getting any younger, are you, darling?”

  I feel my face burn red. My dad asks whether anyone would like more mahi. Scott says he’d love some, and volunteers to go retrieve it from the grill.

  My mother smiles like a criminally insane person and bats her eyelids madly at me.

  “Mom, please,” is all I can think of to hiss.

  Oscar decides to ignore the moment of colossal Clark family dysfunction and remarks that the squash is excellent.

  “I am so, so, so profoundly sorry,” I tell him three long hours later, when we’re safely locked in the guest bedroom.

  “Your mom’s something. I know you warned me, but I don’t think I was prepared.”

  “She’s had a filtering problem all her life, but it seems to get worse with age. Plus she’s been lobbying for me to have babies since I graduated college.”

  “But she’s got two grandchildren already.”

  “She loves Ben and Courtney to pieces, but my brother’s kids are still a bit like a consolation prize for her. Not that she’d admit it, but she desperately wants me to reproduce. I think she thinks it would give us some kind of sacred earth-motherly bond.”

  Maybe this line of discussion is the opening I need. Maybe he’ll say something about wanting children eventually, and we can have a heart to heart talk about our shared hopes for our shared long-term future.

  No such luck.

  “Well, at least she’s not boring. Although now that I’ve seen what you’ll be like in thirty years...” Oscar says playfully, and kisses my earlobe. I snuggle closer into the nook under his arm, close my eyes and drift off thinking I’m the luckiest woman in the world.

  Because my brother is a kind man with a good soul, he has reserved a tee time that requires Oscar and Dad to leave before breakfast, thereby avoiding the lumpy flaxseed porridge my mother would try to push on them first thing in the morning. I get up early, too, to make sure Oscar gets out of the kitchen with plain old coffee, instead of the Asian virility tea with which Mom threatened him at dessert last night. The plan succeeds, mainly because my mother is momentarily distracted by her sun salutations.

  As I close the front door after Oscar and Dad, who looks like he’s about to start apologizing as soon as he’s sure his spouse is out of earshot, I exhale for what feels like the first time since we landed. Laurie will arrive any mome
nt now, and she’ll want company in the kitchen. Ben and Courtney will be vying for Auntie time, and Mom will spend the morning wringing her hands about the evils of the food industry. Which in Laurie’s case means she’s preaching to the converted, because I know my sister-in-law has procured a vegetarian-fed, humanely raised “happy” turkey from a small, local farm.

  I go back upstairs and jump in the shower, but instead of the hot, steamy cascade that used to fall from an over-sized shower head in this bathroom, I get a trickle from some foolish low-flow faucet. It takes three times the usual amount of time to rinse the conditioner from my hair and I decide that this is one of Mom’s environmental “improvements” I could live without.

  I wrap myself in a towel, slide my slippers back on my feet, and pad back into the guestroom. Oscar’s briefcase rests propped against the closet door. I move it to retrieve my clothes and see that it’s the undamaged replacement he bought himself around the time the O’Malley scandal broke.

  I stand in Mom’s kitschy guestroom, hair still dripping wet, and try to wrap my head around the fact that Oscar switched bags sometime during the course of our journey. Which unquestionably qualifies as abnormal behavior. My heart starts racing. What is he up to?

  I have to know. Of course, if I look inside, I’ll probably find nothing and end up feeling like a creep. I must have dreamed I saw the other briefcase in the car yesterday.

  Except I know I didn’t.

  I try to reassure myself that my unease is an understandable result of being burnt by Brendan. If I think about things rationally, I wouldn’t expect to uncover anything weird in Oscar’s luggage. Supposing I believe Olivia’s tawdry version of events—which I don’t anymore—it’s not likely he’d pack evidence of his infidelity on a trip with me. So I can’t even articulate why the bag is calling me to look inside.

  Other than the possibility that he switched it with someone when he went to the men’s room at the airport. That’s the only time he’s been out of my sight. But what then? Is my guy a CIA operative? How sexy would that be? Or could he be some kind of high end drug mule? The little voice in my head demands to know where I come up with this stuff.

  Why am I plagued by such nosy, immature urges? And if I peek now, where does it end? Do I rifle through his underwear drawer next? Or in the deep recesses of his bathroom closet? Or under his bed? Why can’t I trust him? He’s been nothing but wonderful to me. I should extend him the same courtesy and assert some control over my imagination.

  I’m about to take the high road when the little voice in my head eggs me on. She says peeking will reassure me that he’s a great guy, just like when I snooped in his phone. And I won’t be able to relax until I know he’s not hiding anything. Which means I’ll be silently embarrassed at my unbecoming behavior for the rest of my otherwise perfect life with Oscar.

  That seems like the lesser evil.

  The briefcase feels heavier than it looks as I wedge myself in the chair and hoist it onto my lap. I make a silly deal with myself: I’ll try his birthday, which unlocked his phone. If that doesn’t work, I’ll abandon this pursuit once and for all. I arrange the dials on the clasp. The lock remains shut. Hmm. It can’t hurt to try one more combination. I adjust the dials to my birthday and the clasp springs open. Wow. I’m not sure why I attach great meaning to this development but I do. So much so that I leaf through the files on top almost absentmindedly, mulling if his use of my birthday means he’s decided I’m The One.

  As suspected, all he’s carrying is a small pile of business documents, his laptop, which I can’t open without the password card he carries in his wallet, and this month’s Food and Wine magazine. I set it all on the end table, taking care to keep the pile in order. I’m already berating myself for my slimy behavior when I notice a pocket in the bottom of the briefcase.

  The compartment is small and snug, and I have to wedge my hand between the leather lining to produce its contents. It yields an unsealed letter sized envelope and an Andorran passport. Interesting. He must have procured it during his marriage. I flip through the stamps. He’s used it in Andorra, Cyprus, and a bunch of islands in the Caribbean, over the past five or six years. And just this Monday, he was issued six-month, multiple-entry visas to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

  I realize I’ve been holding my breath and force myself to exhale as I open the envelope. It takes me a second to register what’s inside.

  I’m holding a cashier’s check, drawn in U.S. dollars on some bank in Phnom Penh, made out to CASH, in the amount of $500,000. It’s wrapped in a sheet of paper that contains a series of wiring instructions, but doesn’t mention any financial institutions by name. There’s just a long list of account numbers.

  My hands start to shake and my jaw drops. Who carries that kind of money? Certainly not upstanding young executives with normal incomes and traditional bank accounts, even if they’ve made brilliant investments along the way. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t smell something off. Very off. The sudden sound of small feet pattering in the hallway makes me jump.

  “Auntie Zoë! Come play with us!” Courtney demands.

  “Mommy says you have to, if you don’t want to help in the kitchen,” Ben adds.

  Normally it would grate on me that Laurie presumes to tell me what I need to do, but I’m distracted enough to let it slide. “I’ll be there in just a minute.” I stare at the number in shock. Half a million dollars seems like an awful lot of spending money to bring along on a weekend to meet my family.

  A chill shoots up my back and I pull my towel more tightly around myself. What the hell is Oscar doing on the side? Because it’s pretty clear he’s up to something. Takamura Brothers doesn’t pay him that well, and they certainly don’t compensate their executives with foreign cashier’s checks. Kevin’s warning echoes in my head. Does he know something he can’t share? No, that’s ridiculous. Kevin was motivated by simple, old-fashioned jealousy. Oscar can’t possibly be involved in anything below board. He’s so upstanding and clean cut, and besides, when would he have the time? When he’s not at work, he’s with me.

  Except when he’s not. If I thought he had time for another woman, I can’t tell myself he doesn’t have time for a clandestine business venture.

  Just because he tells me he’s at a meeting, or a client dinner, or the gym, doesn’t mean it’s so. There are just enough bizarre little details to raise my antenna. Maybe the story about replacing the damaged bag is horseshit. What if he’s always had two? And what if he’s been swapping bags with someone right under my nose? And why would he need a second passport to travel to Southeast Asia? My heart starts racing and a knot forms in my stomach and pulls itself tight.

  No. My imagination must be going places it has no business exploring.

  The children rap on the door again. “Nana! Auntie Zoë is too slow!” Courtney yells.

  I re-pack the briefcase and obsessively check and re-check that the files are in the exact same order I found them, even though I know I didn’t re-arrange anything. As I pull my clothes on, I have an idea. The clock on the night stand shows that the guys have only been gone an hour. Plenty of time. I re-open the case, and empty the secret compartment again. The kids tackle me as I step into the hallway. “Santa’s going to be in the parade!” Ben announces, with wide eyes and a huge, dimpled smile. “Come watch with us so we don’t miss him!”

  “It’s going to be a while before it’s Santa’s turn. He’s always the big finish. Auntie Zoë needs to go in Grandma’s study to make a copy and then I need to dry my hair, and then I’ll come down. I promise. Why don’t you go check on the parade? Maybe they have something fun on right now.”

  “Okay,” the twins say in unison and stampede off in the direction of the stairs.

  My mother’s study features an almost un-navigable labyrinth of boxes, books and piles of loose paper, arranged in towers like skyscrapers in a small-scale city all over the floor. Mom may have never held a job outside the home, but that hasn’t stopped her from join
ing every committee, social movement, and neighborhood outreach organization she could find. Her desk isn’t much better. The laptop almost gets lost in the other chaos. So many plants line the window sill that they block much of the natural light, which means most of them look a bit anemic.

  I move a stack of literature on sustainable farming off the printer/scanner/copier and place the wiring instructions on the glass. It produces a single photocopy at what feels like a glacial pace. I repeat the exercise with the check and the photo page of his passport. I grab the originals and the copies and dart back to the guest room before anyone has a chance to way-lay me. My fingers tremble as I restore Oscar’s treasures to their hiding place. I check four times that the briefcase is resting in its exact original position by the closet, before folding the photocopies and stashing them inside a box of tampons.

  So this is how my fairy tale romance ends. I try to steel myself as I dry my hair, rolling each segment out with my wiry round brush, just like I do almost every morning before work. Something is seriously up. My prince charming has been less than forthcoming at best, and at worst, he’s a common criminal. God knows what he’s doing to rake in that kind of money, but he’s obviously hiding something major. Why did I have to bring him here? Why couldn’t I wait to confirm or deny my fears first, as Angela, even in the midst of her own crisis, so wisely advised? I’m surprised I don’t feel more unhinged. Or maybe that comes later, after the initial jolt dissipates.

  All I feel is a sort of crushing emptiness, a loss so out of nowhere that I can’t begin to process it yet. I’m not getting stuffed up, or teary, or even lumpy in the throat. I take a deep breath and watch the color start to drain from my face in the mirror. I have to pull it together. If my happy ending is about to be torpedoed, I want to be the one to decide that. Not have it unravel in a flood of hysteria in front of the whole family. I need to decide whether to push through the weekend with a cowardly smile and pretend all is perfect, or end things immediately. Though that sounds messy, and therefore so not tempting, it might be the most reasonable course.