by Deb Caletti
Here are a few things (the few that I care to disclose): Mark came home one afternoon and told me he’d quit his job, just like that. With a baby and a mortgage and me not working yet. He’d gotten into a fight with his boss. No matter where he worked, he was always getting into a fight with a boss. And there’d been sexual-harassment charges at another workplace. Another thing: On Christmas Eve, his sister told me that he’d once dislocated his own arm while beating her up when they were teenagers. Another: He spent more than we had. And this: One night, after shoving me hard onto the bed and screaming in my face and battering me, he left. He left for hours. Where? A porn theater, he admitted later. I washed the clothes that he wore that night. They smelled of cigarettes and of old men in overcoats slunk down in worn velvet theater seats. The woman who washed those clothes—it’s like talking about someone I once knew.
You can get too small to save yourself. You married a tiger because a tiger is large and fierce, but he’s fierce to all humans, even you. Especially you, because with you he can hide behind the word husband and the doors of your own home and no one will ever know. You start to understand that if living with the tiger is bad, leaving the tiger is going to be worse.
The point is, I forced myself to see the good in Mark because of my own cowardice. The ways he was a great father to Abby. The bike rides. The baseball practices. The times we were a regular family, joking, taking vacations. Running out to the waves on some beach, holding hands. Thanksgiving, when he said that what he was most thankful for was me. He made me laugh sometimes. Your hatred lies low, disappears in your fear of what it might mean to leave. I reminded myself instead of the endearing way he’d crack up at his own jokes, or the joy he showed coming back from some trip to buy lumber, or his earnest, good intentions with some self-help book. It’s like the thing you do when you don’t have money (well, I did it, anyway, after I was divorced)—you turn the radio up because the car’s making some noise you know is going to cost more than you can pay.
I was “in denial,” which sounds like I was “in” some foreign country, which I guess I basically was. I stayed in denial until I saw the slightest shadowy figure of a rescuer who might have held a ticket out of there. Ian wasn’t even a real rescuer. He made no promises. He hadn’t yet decided what his own life and marriage needed to be. He was merely the illusion of a rescuer. That was enough. Even if it was a trick of the eye, it suddenly appeared that I wasn’t facing the tiger alone. You stand there and look and look and look at the tiger. You stare and stare at his teeth. And then, seemingly all at once, standing there a second longer is worse than the possibility of being eaten alive. There was no knight, not really. No sword. But I was ready anyway. Finally I could say, Enough.
Finally I could say, Go ahead and eat me, fucker.
I remember reading something once, in one of Ian’s books. It reminded me of us. The Aztec goddess of love, Xochiquetzal, held a butterfly between her teeth as she made love to young soldiers on battlefields. It was a promise of rebirth, should they die while fighting for freedom.
On the way to BetterWorks, I pray. As I drive past all of the photoflash images of typical Seattle—the six coffee places, the thin, speeding bikers, the cafés featuring sustainable food—I silently ask for my family’s safety and well-being. This is what I settle on after some initial perplexity about what to pray for. You know: If he left home, do I pray he returns? If he’s swimming in the sea somewhere, do I pray for a shark attack? Or do I pray for mistaken identity, for Evan Lutz’s girlfriend’s bad eyesight, for it to have been some bank employee with Ian’s profile she saw there in Bagel Oasis? I don’t have a great deal of confidence that God is really listening to me, anyway. There’s probably some strikeout system Up There, and I’m sure I’ve gotten more than my share.
I pull into the BetterWorks lot. My stomach is roiling, a boat riding ocean swells. Ian might come out of those glass doors right now. He might spot my car and bolt. He won’t exactly want to see me, will he, after ditching me in such a cruel way? I didn’t even know he had reached that point. Being disappointed is one thing.
I am struck with a blow of frigid air from the air-conditioning when I walk in. He keeps it too cold in there. Kitty and Jasmine are at the reception desk. They’re chatting and laughing together, but when they see me they stop. It’s not one of those social situations for which there are rules. Kitty collects herself enough to speak.
“Mrs. Keller!”
“Is Ian in?”
She looks baffled. Kitty and Jasmine glance at each other. My voice is bitter, even to me. Those embarrassing moments that seem worse later—this will become one of them.
“He’s not been in since …” Kitty waves a hand in a small circle, treading emotional water.
“Last Friday. Saturday. The party,” Jasmine says.
“Saturday. The party,” Kitty repeats.
I guess I’m relieved. I’ve been worried he’s in his office, wearing his missing clothes, eating another lunch from Bagel Oasis. But Nathan would have told me if he’d seen Ian, wouldn’t he? Nathan has a good heart.
“Is Nathan in?”
“Not yet, Mrs. Keller.”
“I’m actually here to see Evan Lutz.”
“I’ll buzz him,” Kitty says, which leaves Jasmine to deal with me. Her eye contact is awkward. I realize I haven’t showered. I probably look a little crazy. I pat down my hair. I have a sudden fear that I’m wearing only socks, but, no, thank goodness, my shoes are there.
I remember: Jasmine is a part-time employee. She’s a student. Something-something, I don’t know. “How’s graduate school? How are your classes going?” Jasmine tilts her head, troubled, but I persist. My husband may have left me in some cruel, unimaginable way, but I can still manage. I can be kind. And I’m just fine. See? Fine. He might have left me because my clothes aren’t sexy enough, or because I am annoyingly forgetful about tying boats down, or because I waste food, or because his daughters hate me, but I’m perfectly okay without him. “Business marketing?” I say to Jasmine.
“Right. You know, busy …”
Kitty saves us. “He’s on his way,” she says. I don’t have the three different passes with secret fingerprints that allow the elevator to work. You’d think Ian’s building was the goddamn CIA.
Now here is Evan. Red beard, crumpled shirt. He looks about twenty, though I know he’s a good deal past that. Apparently, years of playing medieval video games can contribute to a youthful appearance. There are two kinds of computer guys, I’ve found—you have the ones who dress in food-splotched clothes, who eat out of pizza boxes, and who can’t make socially appropriate eye contact, and then you have the ones like Ian. Casually but expensively dressed. The feel of money and the lifestyle of perfection that programming code requires. The former have cars that run on soybeans and cow manure. The latter have foreign sports cars with leather seats and some satellite fantasy woman who’ll help them out of their traffic woes.
I am getting used to the look I get from Evan as he takes my hand. I imagine it’s the same one you give to the dogs at the pound, the ones you won’t be bringing home. It’s a mix of apology–guilt–pity that draws down the mouth and the corners of the eyes. I hate pity, which is probably one of the reasons I’ve never told people about what went on between Mark and me. I don’t believe in self-pity, either. I believe I’m responsible for my own messes, even this one. Reasons are not the same thing as excuses.
“Dani …” Evan has chubby fingers and the sort of squishy palms that make shaking hands unpleasant. I hate shaking fat hands. It’s one of life’s unpleasantries, along the lines of sitting in a seat still warm from someone else’s butt or smelling a stranger’s fart in a bookstore. But now he’s walking and I’m following. Evan is my day’s fate, like it or not. We’re in the elevator, then out of the elevator. He’s apologizing again and again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …”
More useless pity, I think. We arrive at the doorway to his office before I realiz
e it’s not pity at all. He’s really apologizing.
I look at all those Happy Meal toys on his desk and shelves—the little cartoon cars and Ronald McDonalds and Disney characters, some I even remember from the bottom of Abby’s toy box. That Lion King one, right there. A rubber Simba and his lion girlfriend—her name escapes me. And that power-woman with the red-laser eyes. She has a trigger on her back that makes them spit fire.
“Hailey feels terrible. She only met them once, you know? So she got confused.”
“What?”
“I really am so sorry. I was telling her everything, right? And I said that Ian hadn’t been seen in days, and she said, ‘But I just saw him. He was at Bagel Oasis today, getting lunch.’ I didn’t even question. I just assumed it was him. We even called the police department, like your daughter said to. And then Hailey and I were talking this morning again. And she said something like, ‘He probably has women around him all the time, good-looking like that. That hair …’ And I thought, I don’t think Ian …”
I was hearing: women. I was hearing: all the time. Ian is good-looking, all right, but not exactly known for his hair. It’s cut rather seriously. Trim. Handsome, but …
Evan is shaking his head. “Ian’s hair? And then I just went, Oh, shit!”
My stomach makes an odd flip. Ian hasn’t been seen, that’s all I’m getting.
“Nathan. She saw Nathan, not Ian. She didn’t know. She only met them that once.” He’s repeating himself. “We are both so sorry. She feels terrible. She didn’t even go in to work today, she was so upset.”
I might throw up. The Happy Meal room also carries the sickening scent of cold French fries. The smell of old grease is coming off Evan’s clothes, too.
There’s a hand on my arm, and just in time, because the floor appears to be moving. “Dani?”
It’s Nathan, Nathan with the fabulous, noticeable hair. Nathan who isn’t Ian, and who looks nothing like him.
“Let’s go to my office or something. Let’s go sit down.”
There is more following, and then Nathan shuts his door behind us. There are no toys here, thank God. The windows show another wide, gorgeous vista of the city. There’s a couch, and pillows in warm fall colors. There’s a bookcase filled with books. Not only science books and tech magazines, I can see, but novels and biographies, too. There’s On the Road and To Kill a Mockingbird and The Phantom Tollbooth. I love that. His desk is a bit messy, which is somehow comforting.
I sit on his couch. He’s gone and then he’s back, carrying a cold bottle of sparkling water, which he hands to me. He sits on his desk chair, facing me. He is hunched forward and his hands are folded together. If someone were spying on us, it might look as if I was hearing his deepest secrets.
“It wasn’t him,” I say.
Nathan gives a single shake of his head.
“We still don’t know anything.”
He shakes his head again.
I look out at the city. So many stories are there, in each of those windows and tiny cars. Every single person has his or her own story line going on at that very moment, one that involves the urgency of right now, but with motivations and themes that go back generations. Out there are lost fortunes and broken hearts and great ideas and daughters who’ve never truly left home.
Nathan’s office is strangely cozy and confessional. It calms me, though maybe it’s all of those books, all of those life stories. Books can have that effect in a room. It reminds me of Dr. Shana Berg’s office. She also has a bookshelf and a couch with pillows in fall colors.
“I was the best I could be,” I say. It sounds bad, even to me. I rather hate myself for letting it slip out.
“What do you mean?” Nathan’s voice is soft. His cellphone rings, but he only glances at it and then shuts it off.
I don’t answer at first. How to explain? In my marriage with Mark it had been clear, the state things were in. We had even gone to marital counseling a year or so before I met Ian. Dr. Frederick Mercury—yes, that was the psychologist’s name, poor man, he could never be called “Freddie.” He listened without saying much all that time. I got to wondering, you know, what we were paying for. But after a few months, near the end of our time with him, he only looked at us both. He said, “I have to question if you can fix something so broken.” Just that. The comment still hurts, even now. But it was clear is what I’m saying.
“Some of his clothes are gone.”
“You really think he left you?” He leans back in his chair. He runs a hand through that memorable hair.
“What else?”
“He could be injured somewhere. Dani, I don’t want to be blunt, but he could be—”
“He’s not dead. He’s left me.”
“In that case, he’s left you, his kids, me, our business …”
“He’ll come back to those things. He won’t come back to me. I believe that.”
“But why?”
“He lost so much because of me. The kids, all that money. Their friends. You have to be so much more to make it all worth it.…” Nathan is one of the few people in our lives who would know to what I’m alluding. When you have our history, you don’t exactly advertise it. It’s always awkward, that moment when you’re asked, “So how’d you meet?” You skirt the truth. Through friends, you might say. You don’t say those friends were your kids, who played on the same baseball team when you both were married to other people. But Nathan’s known Ian for a long time. He’s been through the gory details with him.
“He loves you. He’s crazy about you. His eyes follow you. I mean, you’re gorgeous and you’re kind and you’re funny.… You see the world in your own way—”
“No, don’t do that. I don’t need you to say that.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t want you to say that. It doesn’t matter. There are always these things. I can’t seem to get it right for him.”
“That’s how he is.”
“I didn’t see it, not really, until we got married.”
“Maybe he was trying to be better than who he’d been.”
“Maybe.”
“For as long as he could.”
“The way he flirts, though—even at that party.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, you know that. It’s Ian being his charming self.” Nathan rubs the arms of his chair. He’s at a loss. “You deserve better, Dani. So do I, actually.”
“Where is he, for God’s sake? Nathan, where?”
“You know what I think? What I honestly think? I think he’s feeling unappreciated. That night, he was pissed. At me. At you, too. I mean, I noticed. I saw.” Nathan meets my eyes. He waits for some acknowledgment from me, but I don’t know exactly what he’s referring to. What did he notice? What did he see? “He’s like the kid on the playground who picks on people and then sulks when they don’t like him for it. We’ll appreciate him now, won’t we?”
Nathan’s hostility surprises me. But, really, why should it? This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we’ve finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it’s shut for good. “I want to go into his office,” I say.
Nathan smacks his forehead. “I’m an idiot. Of course you do. You want to look.”
“There’s got to be something …”
Nathan gathers up his keys in one swoop, grabs his coffee cup. We head down the hall to Ian’s corner office. Nathan unlocks the door. Ian’s office is so different from Nathan’s. You can tell that Nathan handles the creative end of their partnership while Ian manages the technical side. Ian’s choice of furniture is contemporary and high-tech. His own couch is made of black leather panels stretched onto linear brushed metal. His coffee table is a thin iron structure topped with fragile glass.
For all of Ian’s precision, his office is a disaster. It always has been. I remember being surprised by this on my first visit; it seemed so unlike him. His desk is dominated by
his huge computer screen, and the screen is flanked by magazines meant to be read and mail meant to be sorted. There are boxes and piles of paper and masses of file folders on a round table in one corner of the room. Computer components are stacked in another corner, their cords neatly wound and tied with rubber bands. A bookshelf is haphazardly decorated, as if the task had been abandoned halfway through. There’s a tech-magazine award that Ian had won (a glass pyramid on a black stand—he won it two years in a row, and we have another one in our office at home) and a chunky clay pot painted garish colors, made by Bethy in elementary school. There’s a photo of us that I gave him. In it, we’re leaning against the New View, and the sun is setting.
I take it all in. It’s not the office of a person who never makes mistakes, and something about this makes my heart soften. He’s a complicated man, but I love him. I am choked up, about to cry.
“I don’t know where to begin,” I say.
“All this mess …”
I am overwhelmed in front of those piles of file folders and stacks of paper. There’s too much. Each item represents a thought that had once crossed through his mind. I could be there for days, just searching for a single receipt or a small jotted note that might tell me what his plan had been. And there had to have been a plan. Ian’s not exactly spontaneous. Look how long it took him to finally leave Mary—two and a half years of both mental and actual back and forth. He researches the layout of the parking lot before going to the Opera House. He keeps a log of his gas mileage.
But if I am there to learn something, anything, it suddenly offers itself. I only have to run my eyes over that room, past his desk, to what’s lying on the floor. There is his blue gym bag, with the Mariners logo on it. He isn’t a baseball fan, so where it came from, I don’t know; he’s had it for years. And while he hasn’t been to the Fifth Street Gym in a long time, he sometimes goes for a run after work. He comes home sweaty and tired and starving.
The gym bag—I know what it means before I even look inside.
I lean down to pick it up. The slippery nylon is so familiar, as are the woven handles. I’d forgotten about this bag and what is likely inside it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.