by Dan Begley
I’ve misled her and tricked her and lied to her. I’ve fucking pretended to be someone else. I’ve let her call me by another name—during sex. And symbolic gestures like trashing my guilt-stained clothes and scrubbing off a layer of skin and crossing my fingers and wearing my lucky underwear and sitting around waiting for her to call and say she’s worked through her feelings and all is forgiven—in other words, laying low—aren’t going to fix this. It’s not that easy. It shouldn’t be that easy.
So I call her. She doesn’t answer, which is no surprise, but I call again. She doesn’t answer again, and we’re back to yesterday, me trying to reach her, her not wanting to be reached, and I suppose I could keep calling her, and each time she doesn’t want to speak with me, I could fly to Chicago and sleep with Katharine, though this would ultimately get very expensive (unless I just start living with her; but even though she gave every indication she enjoyed our rendezvous, she said nothing about making the two of us a permanent arrangement). Or, I could grow a pair, act like a man—or even better, act like a human being—and do what I should’ve done yesterday, at the mall, never mind who was watching and what they might say and how big of an ass I would’ve made of myself, and how much dignity and self-respect and pride I would’ve left puddled on that glossy tile out in front of Banana Republic: I could fight for the most important thing I’ve ever had in my life.
Dignity is overrated. I’m ready to go down swinging.
Sunday afternoon, I show up at the salon around one, but I don’t go in. I walk by a couple times, till I get Samantha’s attention. When she sees me, she gets one of those deer-in-the-headlights looks, like she’s not sure what to do: tell Marie, call the police, grab her Mace. But I just sort of smile and nod, then make sure she’s watching me as I go directly across the street and into the coffee shop and take a window seat. Sure enough, Rosie comes to the salon window a few moments later, scissors in hand, and scowls at me. Even through two panes of glass, across two lanes of traffic, it’s scary. And so it begins.
I’ve decided I’m not going to go barging into the salon like a madman, or follow her home, or show up at the studio, or pop up in her shower, or do any other type of TMZ paparazzi stalking or shadowing or hounding. It’s not a good strategy, since that would probably piss her off even more, give her a reason to fume and rage against me, even take legal action (restraining order, anyone?). More importantly, she doesn’t deserve it. Instead, my plan is to show up every day in this coffee shop, sit in this seat, let her know that I’m here and I’m thinking of her and I just want to talk. I’ll be like a tree that’s outside her back window—patient, nonthreatening, ever present—and when she’s good and ready, she can come over and sit for a spell, get relief from the glare of the sun. Or chop me down. I’ve also decided to send her something in the mail every day, to let her know how sorry I am.
So I come back on Monday and Tuesday, same spot, drinking coffee, grading papers, passing time, watching commerce along the street, signing myself up for the “Java Junkie” frequent drinkers program, knowing that in those two days Marie has received, respectively, a bouquet of Mokara orchids—her favorites—and a Tiffany’s bracelet, and I, in return, have received the back of her head a few times in the salon, since she’s on to me and apparently wants no part of being seen. On Wednesday, Coach clutch day, Rosie makes a mid-afternoon run to the Thai place for carry-out, and on her way back she acknowledges me, which I take as progress, even though it’s only with her middle finger. On Thursday, I know Sylvia’s Double Fudge Peanut Swirl Macadamia Mud Pie should be arriving from the Magnolia Café in North Carolina, which Marie had told me was the best pie ever; but no one calls to invite me over for a slice, not even to ask for extra napkins. On Friday Bradley and I talk—he still thinks laying low would’ve been better, but gets why I’m doing what I’m doing—and he tells me, in fact, that he and Marie are getting together later that evening for drinks. Back at the apartment, I’m a nervous wreck all night, sitting with my phone in hand, waiting for word of a breakthrough, an accord, a truce, but no call comes, which means there’s nothing new to report, my status remains unchanged, and I’m as fucked as I was last week.
I spend a miserable Saturday at the coffee shop, taking stock of everything. I’m nowhere closer to getting back with Marie than I was a week ago—maybe farther—and, from a financial standpoint, bleeding myself red. Maybe I made a grave error, starting too big with bracelets and handbags and overnight pies from another state, since, if I keep escalating the worth of what I send, by the end of next week I may have to buy her a Vespa, or a small island. Maybe I should just show up here on Monday with a Java the Hut apron, since I already know everyone who works here and comes in, and even though it wouldn’t be much money—minimum wage, do you think?—at least I’d get my coffee free. And apparently I get lost in some calculations about hours worked and gross versus net pay and what cut of the tip jar I’d get, because the next thing I know, the front door flies open and Rosie storms in and marches over to my table.
“Why do you keep hanging out here?” she growls, hands on her hips.
A week to prepare for it and I can’t find my tongue. I shrug. “I just want to talk with her,” I say weakly.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Why not?”
She rolls her eyes disgustedly. “What do you mean, ‘why not?’ How stupid are you. Jason. She hates you.”
“Did she say that?”
“She didn’t have to. I know her. She hates you.” She glares at me. “We all do.” Her eye catches something on the table. “What’s in the bag?”
“What? Oh, Noni’s”.
“Duh. I can see it’s Noni’s. What did you get?”
I look inside. “Brownies, a cinnamon roll. So she didn’t say she hates me, she just doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“Sounds familiar.”
I take a breath. “Look, Rosie. I know you don’t like me right now. I get it. But I need your help. I need you to convince her to talk with me, so I can explain some things.”
She snorts. “And why would I want to help you?
“Because I’m an ass. And I want to tell her that. And that I love her.”
She grits her teeth and balls her hands into fists, as if I’ve given the only possible answer that would force her to grant my request. And she hates that.
“Rosie, listen. If she doesn’t like what she hears and never wants to see me again, I’ll accept it. I’ll stop hanging out here, and I won’t bug anyone, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
She narrows her eyes. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to her.” She starts to leave, then clomps back to my table. “Give me those,” she says, snatching the Noni’s bag. She charges out and across the street, and returns a few minutes later.
“All right, buster. She’ll talk. Her apartment, in an hour. Me, I would’ve chosen someplace neutral, like a bridge, so I could throw you off. But that’s her business. But just so you know: I’m on standby. And I’m warning you: if you try anything crazy, I’ll be there to kick your ass.”
So, finally, a chance for a one-on-one. And just like that my stomach drops, my blood goes cold, my skin gets clammy. A one-on-one with Marie. As Mitch. Jesus. Can’t I just send her another pie from North Carolina?
I’m ready for just about anything when I get to her apartment. Angry Marie. Bitter Marie. Detached and apathetic Marie. Vindictive Marie. Maybe she already has a guy over and they’re having sex right now, and she wants me to walk in and see what I won’t be getting anymore, and that’s why she chose her apartment. Maybe she’s gathered up everything I sent her this week and plans to torch it in front of my eyes, and laugh. Or maybe she’s not there at all. Ha! Talk about the ultimate way to get a message across: invite me over, then don’t bother sticking around. But I knock on the door, and she’s there, and she lets me right in.
The place looks pretty much the same as
it did last Friday when I picked her up for our trip to the mall. No well-endowed naked strangers, no gifts heaped in a pile next to a gasoline can. Just Marie in jeans and a sweatshirt. And maybe she looks a little tired and strung out, but overall, she looks good.
We don’t kiss or hug.
“Drink?” she asks.
“Water would be great.”
She returns from the kitchen with a glass for me and something with a straw for her. She settles on the sofa, I take a chair across from her, and for a long time we just look at each other. In fact, we do this for such a long time that I realize this is an incarnation of Marie that I hadn’t anticipated: Stare Marie. Finally I look away, like I have important matters to tend to in the room, such as counting the colored glass bottles on the shelf, or making sure the Latin names on her botanical prints are correctly spelled, when all I’m really doing is trying to keep track out of the corner of my eye whether she’s still staring at me—which she is—and trying to figure out if this is some kind of passive-aggressive evil eye interrogator thing, her attempt to get me to own up to a whole litany of criminal misdeeds. It’s starting to work, because I’m beginning to sweat and think I may have to tell her about the time I was five and swiped a Snickers bar from Walgreens, or when I cheated on a geometry test freshman year, or god help me, I may just have to blurt it all out, that I went to Chicago and slept with Katharine; and that’s the thought I’m trying to beat down when, unbidden—horribly!—Katharine Longwell’s breasts pop into mind, her naked, glistening, and not-so-fake-as-it-turns-out breasts, and I realize I am sitting in a car with no brakes, and I’m about to go off the cliff.
“What are you thinking about?” she finally asks.
“Me? Nothing. Bunnies. The weather.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m sitting here thinking that we’ve baked cookies together and danced together, and taken a bath, and had sex I don’t know how many times, and I’ve told you I love you, and you’ve done the same, and I can’t even get myself to say your name. Your real one. So I keep saying it in my head, trying to get the face to match the name. ‘Mitch Samuel. Mitch Samuel.’”
“That’s me,” I want to say, like we’re taking roll. I don’t.
“That other name, ‘Jason Gallagher,’ where’d that come from?”
“My middle name, plus my mom’s maiden name. It’s Irish.”
“Bradley didn’t recognize it. Of course, that’s probably why you chose it.”
Exactly, I nod, a little proud of my cunning. Then I stop.
“And you teach at the university, and you write.”
“And I’m also working on my PhD. The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer. English poet from the fourteenth century. ‘Father of the English—’”
“I got it. I know who he is.”
“Sorry.”
She takes a thoughtful sip from her drink and places it deliberately back on the table. She smoothes some wrinkles from the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “So tell me… Mitch.” The name sticks on her tongue an extra second. “Why’d you do it?”
“Go to the studio?”
“No. Bradley already told me about the book, and doing research, and needing to be around a bunch of people who get worked up over the label on their purse. Which I want to discuss later. I’m talking about the phony identity. Jason. Why’d you do that?”
I think about Snoop Dogg and Bono and Jon Stewart, and I’d like to explain the idea of a stage name and tell her that it’s really not that uncommon. But I know better. “Fear,” I say. “I hate dancing, or at least I did, and I thought I was terrible at it, and I really couldn’t stomach the idea of putting myself out there on display. So I made up Jason to take the heat off Mitch. Besides, I figured I’d only be playing Jason for a day or two, just long enough to get what I needed at the studio and be gone.”
“But when you realized it wouldn’t be so quick. Then what?”
“Then it got hard. I was having so much fun, dancing, getting to know Rosie and Steve and Jennifer and Fran and the whole crew. And the next thing I know, I’m past the point where I can just say, ‘Hey, guys, my name’s not really Jason, and by the way, I’ve been spying on you.’ I decided it was better just to keep quiet as Mitch and let Jason do all the talking.”
“Even to me? That didn’t bother you?”
“Of course it did. But to be honest, Marie, I just saw you as one of the group. The last thing on my mind was starting anything with you.”
She gives me a withering look. “And why’s that? Because I’m a hairstylist?”
I hate the way she sneers it, because it’s exactly the way I would’ve sneered it before I got to know her. “The first couple lessons, sure, maybe that’s what I was thinking. What could we possibly have in common? But beyond that, way beyond that, you were Bradley’s sister. That was the built-in safeguard. You were off-limits. Of course nothing could happen. No way anything could happen. Then it happened.”
“As in, we started sleeping together.”
“No. Before that. It was the night we went to the winery, and we were standing on that hill, and I looked at you and realized that I didn’t want to be without you. Without trying, without wanting it to happen, I was falling in love with you, Marie. I had fallen in love with you. And I couldn’t risk losing you.”
Her face softens and I can tell she’s gone back to that night, to the moonlight, to the kiss, and even in a sweatshirt and ponytail, she looks as beautiful as she did that night, and I want to kiss her right now. But I can’t. And I can’t believe it’s come to this, that I’m sitting on her sofa, with her, as I’ve done hundreds of times, and I’m afraid to touch her or kiss her, not knowing if this is the last time I’ll ever be sitting on this sofa. But I can’t think that way.
“Did you like the pie?” I ask brightly.
She nods, grimly. “I did. And the flowers and clutch and bracelet. All very nice. But you can’t just buy me things and throw them my way and expect all the bad stuff to just go away. Do you get that, Mitch? Do you understand that’s not the way this works?
“God, Marie, yes. I get it. I swear. I didn’t send all those things to try to buy you back. You wouldn’t talk to me. It was the only way I could get anything to you, to let you know how sorry I was. How sorry I am. I was desperate.” I feel slivers of that same desperation creeping up my spine right now. “Look, I even did something that didn’t cost a dime. I made a list of all the things I promise to do, or not do, if you’ll just give me another chance.”
That bit of news catches her off guard. “You made… a list?”
I nod. “Ten items. Sort of like a Ten Commandments, minus anything about the Sabbath. Or killing.”
She looks at me like I’m joking. Which I’m not. Though now I realize I should be, since her face is telling me that anyone who would actually make such a list, and admit it, must be joking.
“All right, then,” she says, settling in. “Proceed.”
“Um, on second thought, I didn’t make a list.”
“You made it. Let’s hear it.”
I suppose at this point I could clam up, refuse to read it, maybe fly out in a huff, but I can’t imagine she’d be ringing my phone off the hook begging me to come back, since I’m the one who had to beg her for this get-together in the first place. This is my best shot. So I pull it out of my back pocket with as much of a flourish as I can muster, but what I really need now is a couple of stone tablets, like Charlton Heston had, even parchment, instead of a folded up piece of loose-leaf
“It’s still a little rough,” I say as a disclaimer. “More in the draft stages, really.”
“Read.”
I clear my throat. “‘Marie.’” I look at her, then back at the list. “‘I promise I will never lie to you again. I promise I will never pretend to be someone else. I promise I will never be dishonest. I promise I will love you, love you, love you. I promise I will never take you for granted. I promise I will respect you. I promise I will always put you fir
st. I promise that I will always forgive you, especially if you do something odd or wacky that I don’t understand at first, but then, when you explain it, I do.’”
She lets it all sink in for a moment. Then: “That didn’t sound like ten.”
“Oh, it is. Trust me.”
I can tell she’s still not convinced, so I hand her the list. “The ‘love you, love you, love you,’ those count as three,” I point out.
She looks it over. “So, three to say the same thing, you won’t lie. Three to say you’ll love me, with those words. Three more to say you’ll love me, with different words. And one to forgive me for a hypothetical wrongdoing that I’d never do, perhaps on the off-chance that should you ever do something that stupid, which you have, I’d forgive you. Do I have it?”
“Pretty much.”
The whole thing makes her smile—me too—and for a moment it’s back to old times, Mitch and Marie, or Jason and Marie, smiling, joking, ribbing each other, but most of all, delighted to be with each other. Then, as if she realizes the very same thing, her look goes hard—toxic, really—and it’s back to new times.