The Man of My Dreams

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Maryland?”

  “ ‘Manly deeds, womanly words.’ ”

  “That is not the state motto of Maryland,” Hannah says.

  “What is it, then?”

  “What would ‘Manly deeds, womanly words’ even mean? What’s a manly deed or a womanly word?”

  “I think a manly deed is something like splitting wood. And a womanly word is…mascara, maybe? Doily? By the way, am I right in assuming I just stay on Three until the Sagamore Bridge?”

  Hannah picks up the atlas by her feet. “It looks like after that, Three turns into Six, which is the same as the Mid-Cape Highway. You have about ten miles.” They both are quiet, and then she asks, “So why are you a fuddy-duddy?”

  “I mostly meant compared to Fig. I’m just not that into partying. When you’re single, you go out a lot, but being in a relationship—sometimes I just wanted to stay in and chill out. But your cousin likes to have fun. She likes her rum and Cokes, right?”

  “Her partying isn’t why you broke up, is it?”

  “We’re overall headed in different directions. I’m graduating in a couple weeks, and I’ll be working as a consultant, which means crazy hours. And the fact that Fig still has two more years of school—it’s cleaner this way than constantly wondering what she’s up to.” So Fig cheated on him. That must be what he means. “But it’s like you said,” he continues. “Accept Fig for her good qualities, and don’t expect too much of her.”

  Did Hannah say that? She can barely remember now.

  “Mark Harris isn’t a real professor, by the way,” Henry adds. “He’s some jackass T.A. grad student studying, like, Chaucer—he’s Mr. Sensitive. And he’s been after Fig since the fall.”

  “Is he her T.A.?”

  “Not this semester. But the guy’s just a total sleazeball. I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if he wears a velvet cape.” Hannah laughs, but Henry doesn’t. He says, “What kind of T.A. has a house on Cape Cod? It has to be his parents’, doesn’t it?” He shakes his head. “I’ve gotta say that a part of me really wants to turn the car around.”

  At first Hannah says nothing. There was the suddenness of Fig’s call, and immediately, the situation had its own momentum. But really, who knows what’s going on? She thinks of when she and Fig were little, how Fig would come over to play and they’d be drawing or baking cookies and then, without warning, Fig would want to leave when Hannah had thought they were having a perfectly good time. It even happened in the middle of the night, and Hannah’s father, who considered Fig a brat, eventually barred her from staying over.

  The likelihood that Fig is presently in harm’s way is slim. It’s probably just that she got sick of the T.A., whom Hannah now pictures, because of the velvet cape, as Sir Walter Raleigh. But if Hannah and Henry turn around, their time together will be over sooner. The reasons she wants to continue have little to do with Fig.

  “I think we should keep going,” Hannah says. “I just do. So, want to hear a weird story?”

  “If you’re trying to distract me, you’re not being very subtle.”

  “No, I really want to tell you this. The other day”—she was planning, actually, to bring this up with Dr. Lewin yesterday, but then there wasn’t time—“I was in poli sci, which is a lecture. And I was sitting kind of close to the front, and I thought, The next person who walks through the auditorium door, I’m going to marry. It was just this idea that popped into my head. And then the door started to open, but it shut again without anyone coming through. So do you think that means my destiny is to be alone?”

  “Did anyone come in after that?”

  “Yeah, but no one had come through that time, which had been when I had the thought.”

  “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “It’s not like I definitely believe it, but it was a pretty weird coincidence.”

  “Hannah, you’re insane. That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. What if a girl had walked in the door—would you have thought you were supposed to marry her?”

  “Well, maybe I meant the next guy who walks through.”

  “But more guys did come through, right?”

  “I guess so, although not—”

  “If you don’t want to get married, fine. But you can’t think some weird mind game you’re playing with yourself is the determinant.”

  “You never do that? Like, ‘If I wake up right on the hour, I’ll get an A on my paper’?”

  “ ‘If I find a penny, I’ll have good luck’?”

  “Not generic superstitions,” Hannah says. “Ones you invented but you feel like they’re true. You barely remember inventing them.”

  “ ‘If a snowflake falls into my left ear, I’ll win the lottery.’ ”

  “Never mind,” she says. For his benefit, she pretends to sulk.

  “ ‘If I pass a giraffe on the sidewalk, I’ll grow a third nipple,’ ” he says.

  “Very funny.”

  “ ‘If I sneeze and fart at the same time—’ ”

  “I’m seriously never telling you anything again.”

  “What?” Henry grins. “Did I hurt your feelings?” With the middle finger and thumb of his right hand, he flicks the side of Hannah’s head. It is thrilling—first, that he’s touching her for no reason. Also it makes it okay that she hit his arm before. In the math of their knowing each other, she’d been at a deficit, but now they’re even. Then he says, “I bet you believe in love at first sight, too,” and her heart feels like it’s warm and liquidy. Isn’t he definitely flirting with her?

  But her voice sounds surprisingly normal when she says, “Why—do you not believe in it?”

  “I believe in attraction at first sight,” Henry says, and his voice sounds normal, too, no longer teasing. “And then maybe you fall in love as you get to know each other. I guess I believe in chemistry at first sight.”

  She is on a balance beam, and if she says anything too corny or too clinical, she’ll tip to one side. But possibly, if she says the exact right thing, Henry will fall in love with her. (No, of course he won’t! He’s Fig’s ex-boyfriend! And any guy who would go out with a girl like Fig in the first place…Also, he can’t be flirting with Hannah, because doesn’t having a conversation about romantic topics automatically mean they don’t apply to the people discussing them? If Henry felt remotely attracted to Hannah, wouldn’t this all seem way too obvious?) “I’m not sure what I think,” she says.

  Henry shakes his head. “Cop-out. Try again.”

  “Then I guess I’d say I don’t believe in love at first sight. Does that disappoint you?”

  “What about the guy who was going to walk through the auditorium door?”

  “We wouldn’t have fallen in love that day. That would have just been a preview. Maybe we wouldn’t even have talked in that class, or for the rest of this year, but then next year we’d have another class together and that’s when we’d meet.”

  “That’s a pretty elaborate plan.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’d thought it all out. I’m just saying because you’re asking me.”

  “It’s interesting,” Henry says, “because Fig is kind of crazy, and you’re kind of crazy, but you’re crazy in really different ways.”

  “And what way are you crazy?”

  “I already told you, I’m your typical all-American bore. I played baseball in high school. We had a golden retriever. My parents are still married.”

  “And now you’re going to be a consultant—that seems like a good job for a boring person.”

  “Touché,” Henry says, but—she checks—he’s smiling.

  “You did just call me crazy.”

  “Maybe I should have said eccentric. You definitely seem a lot more down-to-earth than Fig,” he says.

  “Actually—well, first, I don’t think I’m crazy. But second, I sort of think guys like a certain amount of craziness in girls. All the time, I see guys going out with girls who are just so whiny and moody. They’re so irrational
ly whiny and moody.”

  “What about girls who go out with jerks?”

  “It’s not the same. The kind of girl I’m talking about, she’s always complaining or crying or making a scene. I just think if I were her boyfriend, I wouldn’t stay with her five more minutes. But the fact that he does stay must mean he likes the drama.”

  “You never know from the outside what two people are giving each other.” The way Henry says it, evenly, makes Hannah pretty sure he’s had several serious girlfriends; he seems mature and knowledgeable, as though he is speaking, unlike Hannah, from experience. “What’s visible to everyone else is only half the story,” he says. “Plus, don’t we act the way we’re expected to? If your girlfriend is freaking out, of course you try to talk her down in the moment, even if she’s not being completely logical. It’s sort of a squeaky-wheel thing.”

  “That makes it seem like if you want a boyfriend, you should just be a big pain in the ass.”

  “I’d say your chances are better if you’re wearing a low-cut shirt at the time.”

  “So you don’t agree with me?”

  “I’m sure you’re right in some cases, but you’re making an awfully broad generalization.”

  Hannah is quiet; her giddiness has passed. Obviously, she is pushing away Henry with her theory of high-maintenance girls—he’s being diplomatic but isn’t particularly interested. Yet the distance that’s arising between them is almost a relief; the fever pitch of her own hope before was too much.

  A few minutes pass, and Henry says, “How you doing over there?”

  “I’m okay.” But the air is also turning: She can feel out the open window that it’s becoming evening. When they cross the Sagamore Bridge, she tells herself not to pretend that she is thirty-one and Henry is thirty-three and their two kids (a six-year-old and a four-year-old) are in the back; tells herself not to pretend they are going for the weekend to a cottage on the beach. It’s just that college dating, all the rituals and weird outfits and coded things you’re supposed to say—they seem so removed from her particular desired outcome. It would be better if she were ten years older, past the time when she’s supposed to be fun and kicky. All she really wants is someone to order takeout with, someone to ride beside in the car, exactly like this except she’d be playing the female lead instead of the supporting actress; she’d convince Henry to drive somewhere not for Fig but for her.

  The Cape is tackier than she expected. She pictured it preppy, but there are lots of strip malls. They are nearing Hyannis, and then they are in Hyannis. Their conversation tapered off about twenty minutes ago, and Henry’s voice is practically a surprise when he says, “You see that Mexican place? Are you hungry at all?”

  “I guess so,” Hannah says. “Sure.”

  Inside, the restaurant has a fast-food feel, though Hannah doesn’t think it’s a chain. They both get burritos—in some gesture toward being ladylike, she declines guacamole and sour cream—then carry them outside to a picnic table near the road. Henry sits on top of the table, so Hannah does, too. They are facing the cars, which is almost like watching television; it takes the pressure off talking.

  Hannah is nearly finished with her burrito when Henry says, “It’s not that you’re wrong about guys liking needy girls—I’d basically say you’re right. But I think what you’re underestimating is how much it means to a guy to be needed. It sounds really silly, but if a girl’s relying on you and you come through for her, you feel like a superhero.”

  Why, exactly, is this so depressing for Hannah to hear?

  “In the long term, the girl who can’t take care of herself isn’t who you want to end up with,” Henry says. “But for a while—I don’t know. It’s pretty fun. The lows are lower, but the highs are really fucking high.”

  Hannah keeps watching the cars. She sort of detests him.

  He is talking more slowly when he says, “I know I only met you once before today, but you seem like you have your act together. You don’t seem like you need rescuing.”

  Is the depressing part that he’s only half right—it’s not that she doesn’t need rescuing but that nobody else will be able to do it? She has always somehow known that she is the one who will have to rescue herself. Or maybe what’s depressing is that this knowledge seems like it should make life easier, and instead it makes it harder.

  “You realize that’s a good thing, don’t you?” Henry says. He pauses and then says, “You shouldn’t think you won’t get married, because you’re exactly the kind of girl a guy marries.”

  She is afraid to look at him, afraid to react. She is bewildered because he has given her one of two types of compliments, but the types are opposites. He’s speaking either from pity or else from attraction. He’s comforting her, or else he’s revealing something about himself. And she should be slightly insulted by his brotherly friendliness, or else she should be embarrassed—a good and happy embarrassed—by his declaration. Pleadingly, she thinks, Just say a little bit more. Go one step further. Make it definitely not pity. She looks at him sideways, and when their eyes meet, his expression is serious. If he were speaking out of pity, wouldn’t he be smiling encouragingly? She looks back at the traffic and says softly, “Yeah, maybe.” It seems not impossible that he could kiss her or take her hand in this moment, and that perhaps whether he will hinges on if she meets his gaze again. She is delaying looking at him rather than avoiding it altogether, or at least she feels like that for the minute before he stands, crumples his burrito foil into a ball, and throws it into a metal trash bin. Abruptly, it no longer seems like he ever might have kissed her.

  Back in the car, nearing the supposed street for the house where Fig is, they make several wrong turns. Hannah suggests returning to the main road and finding someone to ask for directions. But then Henry sees the street they’re looking for. It’s called Tagger Point, which is not altogether different from, as Hannah had written it, Dagger Point; in her defense, Dagger Point seems like a much better street name for Sir Walter Raleigh.

  “At least it exists,” Hannah says. “We weren’t on a wild-goose chase.” She can feel that Henry is grumpy from being lost. His grumpiness is not entirely unwelcome, though. It’s a distraction, it restores normality.

  “How much do you want to bet Fig is sitting on the beach having a cocktail right now?” Henry says. “And that asshole is probably reading her a sonnet.” As he speaks, he is driving slowly, looking at addresses. It is disappointing when he turns in to a driveway of broken white shells beyond which sits a medium-sized blue shingle house—it’s disappointing that their time alone together is over.

  More lightheartedly than she feels, Hannah says, “You think they’re doing Jell-O shots?” and this is when Fig comes tearing out of the house. Literally, she is running. She’s wearing jeans and a black V-neck cotton sweater, and over her right shoulder is a white canvas weekend bag with pale pink trim (is Hannah imagining that her mother gave this bag to Fig a few years ago for Christmas? She’s kind of surprised to see Fig actually using it). Fig’s long straight brown hair is flying behind her, and Hannah does not see this part at first, as Fig sprints across the yard, but after Fig opens the back door of Henry’s car and tosses her bag onto the seat and climbs in and slams the door shut and says, “Go. Start driving. Henry, drive”—at this moment Hannah, turning around from the front seat, notices that Fig has a split lip. It’s on the lower left: a vertical cut with glistening lines of blood padding the two sides, and dryer blood in an irregular cloud going away from the cut. Also, there is an extra redness edging over the corner of her mouth onto the skin around it, and within this redness a few tiny dots, like minuscule freckles of an even deeper red hue. The car still isn’t moving: Henry, too, is turned around. Fig is not crying, nor does she look like she’s been crying, and she does not seem afraid. What she gives off most is an air of impatience.

  “What the hell is going on?” Henry says.

  “Don’t even think of going in there,” Fig says. “Start d
riving, or else give me the keys and I will.”

  “That asshole punched you or something—is that what happened?” Henry seems both horrified and disbelieving; he seems confused.

  “Can we go?” Fig says. Then, with a disdainful expression on her face, she lifts her hands and makes air quotes. “ ‘I fell,’ ” she says.

  Hannah can’t tell if she’s mocking their concern, or just the idea of bothering to pretend her split lip occurred by accident. “Fig, are you okay?” she says. “Really—do you want us to take you to the hospital?”

  Fig rolls her eyes skyward. (Does Henry also feel in this moment like Fig is the daughter and they are the parents? And not a cute six-year-old daughter in pigtails but a belligerent teenager.) “You both need to get over yourselves,” Fig says. “For the tenth time, can we just leave?”

  At last Henry turns back to the steering wheel, and Hannah can see him intently watching Fig in the rearview mirror. As he reverses the car, pulling out of the driveway and onto the road, Hannah physically relaxes: Mark Harris won’t come outside now, Henry won’t try to go into the house.

  “Oh, yeah,” Fig says from the back. “Thanks for coming to get me.” Fig’s ability to talk is almost normal. If Hannah couldn’t see her, she might just think her cousin was speaking with food in her mouth.

  “Fig, you should have told me,” Hannah says. “I had no idea.”

  Henry shakes his head. “That guy’s a caveman.”

  “Guess what?” Fig says. “Mark looks a lot worse than I do, and I’m not making that up.”

  Henry glances over his shoulder. “Are you proud of that?”

  It’s true that Fig sounds weirdly like she’s gloating.

  “Well, you don’t need to avenge my honor or whatever you’re thinking,” Fig says. “I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Clearly,” Henry says.

  “You know what, Henry?” Fig says. “Sometimes I fucking hate you.”

  In the ensuing silence, Hannah realizes that the Bruce Springsteen CD has been playing continuously since she and Henry left Boston; they must have listened to the entire thing several times over by now. After a few minutes, when they are back on Main Street, Henry makes a right into a gas station.