The Latecomers Fan Club

by Diane V. Mulligan

  He didn’t wait for the dean’s reaction. Instead, he turned and left the office, storming out of the building and across campus toward the T station. He wanted a drink. To lose his job on top of losing both Maggie and Abby was too much. Yes, he’d made mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes. He didn’t deserve this. When he got back to Davis Square, he headed straight for the package store. He was in line to buy a case of Molson when his phone rang. It was Abby.

  “Hey,” she said. “I was wondering if we could get together tonight.” She sounded light and breezy.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we have things to talk about,” she said.

  Since the gig at O’Grady’s they’d spoken a few times, but he hadn’t seen her. If he made a plan with her tonight, he couldn’t get drunk right now, and God how he wanted a drink. “I lost my job today,” he said, as he placed the case of the beer on the sales counter and handed the clerk his credit card.

  “What?”

  “At Old Colony. They fired me.”

  “I’m so sorry. Where are you now?”

  He signed the credit card slip, grabbed the beer and left the store. “Heading home,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come over? I’m just leaving work.”

  “The little slut told them we had an affair. First she stalks me, then when I turned her down, she gets me fired,” he said. He liked that version of the story so much better than the truth.

  “Jesus.”

  Nathaniel worked a can from the case as he walked, not giving a damn about open container laws. He popped the top and took a swallow. It tasted so good.

  “I’m going to come straight there,” Abby said.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your problem,” he said. It was so like Abby to want to rescue him from his sorrow. It was one of the things he hated about her. He burped and that made him laugh.

  “Are you drinking?” she asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I’m coming over,” she said, hanging up the phone.

  By the time Abby showed up, he was on his fifth beer and his situation was starting to feel comical to him. He was about to join the ranks of philosophers who live by their wits and can’t support their children. If only he’d lived in the 1800s, he could have been best friends with Bronson Alcott and similarly mooched off of Emerson. The recommendation Simmons had given him wouldn’t help him at all. Everything it didn’t say said it all. He was no professor. He was a lazy hack who enjoyed a paycheck but didn’t especially care for his students or their education, nor was he engaging in a community of scholarship by publishing. He was a joke. The least he could do was laugh at himself.

  Abby walked through his apartment like she owned it, surveying the living room and then the kitchen, checking the fridge first and then counting the empties in the sink. Nathaniel watched from the couch as she poured the rest of his beers, one after another, down the drain. He found it hilarious. Just like his life. Glub, glub, glub. It was okay with him. He’d had enough to take the edge off, and when she left, assuming she didn’t steal his wallet, he could go get more.

  When she was done, she came and sat beside him on the couch. “So. How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Fucking fantastic.” How did she think he was doing?

  Neither of them spoke for a few moments, but then Abby said, “I really wanted to talk to you tonight. I have something important to tell you. But I guess this isn’t the best time.”

  What more bad news could she possibly offer him? Why should this moment be any worse than any other to tell him whatever she needed to say? He looked at her. She was studying her hands which were folded in her lap.

  “If you want to talk, by all means, talk,” he said.

  She looked up and frowned. “You’re drunk. Will you even remember that we had a conversation?”

  “I’m not drunk. I had a few beers. I’m a big guy. I can have a few beers.”

  “Have you eaten anything today?” she asked, standing back up. She went to the kitchen and rummaged through his cabinets. He watched her spread peanut butter on some crackers. Then she filled a glass of water and brought the food and drink back to him. Instead of sitting on the couch, she sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, not touching the food.

  “Because you need a friend.”

  He picked up a cracker and took a bite, but he was suspicious. Was she there to make up? To show him that he needed her and to get back together? No, that didn’t make sense. Why in the world would she want to get back together with him when he just lost his job and had no prospects on the horizon? “I didn’t think you wanted to be my friend,” he said, washing the cracker down with a sip of water.

  “How are we going to raise a child if we can’t be friends?” she asked.

  Nathaniel shook his head and ate another cracker. He was starving. She was right to guess that he hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  “Are you going to stay here?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? In this apartment?” Where else would he go? He still had his classes at the other schools. It wasn’t enough to cover his expenses, but it was more than nothing. And besides, he needed to be where she and the baby were going to be.

  “I mean, jobs. Are you going to look for tenure-track jobs somewhere?”

  “Obviously I’m going to have to try to pick up some more classes somewhere.”

  “Well, listen, I don’t really want to talk to you when you’re like this, but you need to know that you shouldn’t limit yourself to Boston because of me.”

  “Because of the baby, you mean,” he said, trying to understand what she was suggesting. Did she want him to leave now and never look back? She acted like she was going to let him have some role in their child’s life, but maybe that was just a front because she really hoped he’d leave for good.

  “I’m moving home, Nathaniel,” she said.

  “You can’t do that—”

  “We aren’t married. You don’t want to get lawyers involved in custody issues, do you?”

  She was so calm, just like she had been at O’Grady’s. It was infuriating for her to sit there and tell him what he did or did not want. “So what? That’s it? You’re here to be my friend, and also to tell me that you’re taking my baby and going home?”

  “It’s barely an hour and a half from here. You can visit as often as you like.”

  As often as he liked? He could drive to Peterborough daily? Because that was how often he wanted to see his child. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Honestly?” she said, getting up and coming back around to the couch. “That night, after I saw you at O’Grady’s, I realized that I’m not responsible for you and that I have to put myself first. I’ve stayed here for years for you. If it weren’t for you, I’d have moved back long ago. I don’t belong here.”

  “What about Breanna? Don’t tell me she isn’t part of why you stayed.”

  “That’s true, but she’s getting married. She has her own life. I need to have mine.”

  Nathaniel dropped forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He was defeated. His career was dead, he was all alone, and, despite his wishes, he was going to be a distant, part-time father. He could already imagine the confusion their child would feel as he grew up, how he’d probably admire Nathaniel and love him when he was young, the way kids do, and that by the time he was a teenager, he’d hate his absentee father. He’d never understand how complicated the situation was. Nathaniel was already doomed to be a failure as a father and the child hadn’t even been born yet.

  “What about your new job?”

  Abby shrugged. “I’m going back to work for my uncle.”

  “I thought you wanted to get out of bartending.”

  “It’s not the same,” Abby
said. She curled her legs up on the couch and pushed her hair behind her ear. Nathaniel had always loved the way she always made herself small when she was sitting on the couch. It was cute and endearing, even now. “His kids want no part of the business, but I do. I could run that place someday. It could be mine.”

  “You don’t know a thing about running a restaurant,” Nathaniel said, wondering how Abby, usually so pragmatic, could think she’d honestly take over her uncle’s business.

  “A lifetime of working in restaurants, and I know nothing? Do you think the only way to learn anything is to go to college? Should I get a degree in restaurant management and hospitality?” she said, her old anger over the “sham” of college flaring up. It made Nathaniel feel a little better to know he could still push her buttons, despite her calm new attitude.

  “Well,” he said. “I guess you said what you came here to say.”

  Abby went to stand up, but then sat back down. “Do you get what this means for you?” she asked.

  He didn’t know what exactly she meant by that.

  “You don’t have to stay here. You can find a job in Worcester or Western Mass or New Hampshire or Vermont. You’re going to have to travel to see the baby anyway, so you aren’t stuck here. There are tons of colleges out there. Now you can cast a wider net.”

  It was true, Nathaniel thought. He could leave. He could start fresh somewhere else. A two-hour radius from Southwestern New Hampshire was a big area with plenty of colleges in it. He could move and be no further from his baby than he’d be if he stayed in Boston. Still, he wasn’t done wallowing in his misery. He couldn’t give her the satisfaction of cheering up at the possibility she just presented him. Besides, the freedom she was bestowing on him didn’t change the biggest disappointment, that he’d be distanced from his baby.

  Abby stood up and put her hands in her pockets. “One more thing,” she said.

  He looked up at her and waited, expecting her to say what she always said when she was leaving: “I love you.”

  Instead she said, “You have to stop drinking. If you want a relationship with your child, you have to stop. As long as you’re drinking, I won’t even consider any type of shared custody.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, well, I leave next week. My cell number will be the same, so feel free to call.”

  And she left. Just like that. It was like a switch had been flipped in her brain and she suddenly realized that she didn’t need him. Nathaniel was amazed. He got up and refilled his water glass. Then he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts, stopping on a number he hadn’t called in years, his sponsor from his brief stint in AA. He hoped the guy hadn’t changed his phone number.

  Maggie

  Six months at her mother’s house and already Maggie had fallen into a rut that had no foreseeable end. As the summer blazed into New England, each morning she woke in her mother’s muggy house where wearing anything other than a tank top and loose shorts was unbearable and then spent the day in the climate-controlled mall where she had to bundle up like it was still winter.

  She liked working in cosmetics, though. Sure, there were the boring parts, stocking the cabinets and counting inventory or cleaning up the messes left by women who wanted to sample things but who didn’t want help and who then left dirty cotton balls on the counter along with open tubes of lipstick and testers scattered about. But when she got to help someone create a new look—a young prom-goer, a bride, a woman on the cusp of her fortieth birthday seeking a youthful glow—she loved it. Every face was a canvas. She could see suspicion in some of the customers’ eyes when they glimpsed the colors she’d pull out for them, but they’d look in the mirror when she was done and be startled at the transformation. People so seldom seemed to understand how color worked, Maggie found, but she did. She could use her artistic knowledge to great effect.

  What surprised Maggie the most was that she didn’t feel her usual cynicism about love and marriage when she was helping starry-eyed teenagers or brides. She felt excitement for them. She looked at their hopeful faces and remembered how good it felt to believe in love and happy endings. And why shouldn’t happy endings be possible? Just because she hadn’t found hers yet did not mean they didn’t exist. Look at her mother and Frank. She knew the statistics about divorce and couldn’t refute them. Half of all marriages. But to focus on the half that failed was to ignore the half that succeeded. Some people find love and make a life. Some people’s vows remain whole until death.

  Some days, flipping through a magazine, she’d stumble on a makeup advice column and wonder how a person got that job. She wouldn’t mind continuing to work with makeup, helping women enhance their beauty, but she didn’t want to spend her life in retail. She thought about how she might work at a salon or day spa but Vanessa offered a reality check. She’d have to go back to school to become a licensed esthetician or something like that, and she’d have to do other things besides makeup. The thought of giving facials or waxing people’s legs was enough to make her realize she didn’t want a beauty-industry career after all.

  “Move back to LA,” Vanessa said, jokingly. “You just have to get one celebrity client and you’ll be all set.”

  The joke stung. When Maggie thought about Vanessa’s words, she realized that she was turning her current experience working at a cosmetics counter into another pie-in-the-sky, unattainable dream. Sitting around all day wondering how to become Oprah’s makeup advisor was as useful as aspiring to have an art show at the Met. She needed to be realistic. She needed a plan she could actually follow through on to have the kind of life she wanted, which at this point she defined as a comfortable middle class existence. She wanted to be able to live in a nice neighborhood and afford a few of life’s luxuries. She was willing to settle for ordinary now, but not ordinary poverty. To that end, she went so far as to request a few graduate school catalogues from business schools. When her college friends were getting MBAs ten years earlier, she had scoffed at them and called them sell-outs. Now, though, a degree in something like business management and arts administration sounded pretty good. Her mother kept telling her that she could live at home as long as she needed to, so maybe she could even afford to go back to school without acquiring too much student loan debt. Also, enrolling in a program of study would give her some end date after which she’d get a real job and move out of her mother’s place once and for all. Hell, maybe when she was done with school, she would move back to California. One winter in Massachusetts (and a mild one at that) had reminded her why she left, but the summer was proving to be an even worse form of torture. Cold she could tolerate, but the humidity was hell.

  So she began studying for the GREs in her free time. It felt good to have a purpose and a plan. She was nervous, too, though. Would the other students be career changers like her or would they be recent college graduates? Would she fit in? Would there even be any jobs when she graduated? Her mother told her she worried too much, which was probably true.

  When Claire called to ask her to go to a Labor Day cookout at Zack’s, she was hesitant. What if Nathaniel was there? Claire assured her that he didn’t usually come Zack’s parties. New Year’s was a fluke. Maggie hadn’t heard from Nathaniel in months, not that she expected to. He had called her a number of times in the spring after the whole debacle at O’Grady’s, but she refused to return his calls.

  “Besides, are you going to avoid him forever? Don’t be stupid,” she said.

  Maggie didn’t see why it was such a bad idea to avoid him forever, but in the end she caved. She hadn’t gotten together with her sister in a while and it would be nice to take a break from her usual schedule of studying and working.

  It was a gorgeous day, not too hot, not too humid, a perfect September day where the air was clear, the sky was blue, and it seemed like summer might last forever, even as it was ending. Claire picked Maggie up in the afternoon. Timmy was in the
backseat playing a handheld video game with headphones in his ears. He nodded when Maggie said hello but he didn’t divert his attention from the game for long.

  “I know,” Claire said, rolling her eyes. “He’s too young to be acting like such a cool kid.”

  It was the perfect day for windows-down, back-roads driving. Maggie understood Claire’s willingness to let Timmy zone out in the back. It allowed them to zone out in the front, just taking in the scenery.

  “So,” Claire said, when they pulled into Zack’s driveway. “I have to tell you something.” She put the car in park and turned to Maggie. Timmy was still in video-game land. “Nathaniel lost his job at the beginning of the summer and has been crashing with Zack for the past few weeks.”

  Maggie considered this declaration for a moment. When she had asked Claire if she thought Nathaniel would be there, Claire had lied, and now they were at Zack’s, and Maggie was at Claire’s mercy for a ride home.

  “I know it seems like real middle school stuff, setting you up like this, but Zack called me and he and I agreed that we had to do something. He’s sitting here watching Nathaniel pine away for you day after day, and I’m at home listening to you complain about how all men suck, and the thing is, you and Nathaniel were always so good together.”

  Zack and Claire conspired to make Maggie face Nathaniel. It really was middle school stuff. “I want to go home,” Maggie said.

  “Please, let’s just go say hello. Let’s just stay for an hour,” Claire said, unbuckling her seat belt. She turned to Timmy. “Let’s go, buddy. Put the game away.”

  Timmy ignored her. Maggie thought the kid had the right idea.

  “Right now, mister. Wouldn’t you rather swim?”

  Timmy sighed dramatically and shut off the game.

  “One hour,” Claire said to Maggie, getting out of the car.

  Maggie followed Claire and Timmy around the house to the backyard where Zack was manning the grill. People were sitting in beach chairs in the yard. She saw a few dads and toddlers playing on the edge of the lake, and some older kids taking turns jumping off the dock. As soon as he saw them, Timmy pulled off his t-shirt, handed it to Claire, kicked off his crocs, and ran for the water. Maggie didn’t see Nathaniel at first. She was wishing she’d thought to bring a chair and trying to figure out what she should do with herself when he came up behind her.