by Dan Begley
“Do you know what a week I’ve had?” she fumes, flinging the list back at me. “Going from being in love with you to finding out you’re not who I thought you were, crying my eyes out, hating you, wanting to rip your throat out, wanting it all just to go away, wanting to be back with you. Do you realize what you’ve put me through?
“Sorry.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Fuck sorry. I hate you for putting me through this, you know that? I hate you for making me feel this way about you. Fuck you, Mitch. Fuck you.”
I sit there and endure her fury, and it’s killing me to see her look at me that way, face red, eyes wide, furious, blazing holes through my skin, but I deserve every ounce of it, so all I can do is sit there and absorb it and let her do what she needs to do. Slowly, mercifully, the anger leaches out of her, like a fever, till her breathing and complexion and eyes return to normal and she looks like Marie again—a sad, pissed, torn version—and she collapses back into the sofa, woman wronged and hurt little girl, all at once, deflated in a sea of cushions.
“Oh, Mitch. I don’t know what to make of any of it. Maybe I get it. Maybe I understand why you’d do all this, how one thing led to another. Maybe. But here’s what I’m left with. Not knowing if you’re Mitch or Jason, what parts were real. The bottom line is, I don’t even know who you really are.”
I move to the edge of my chair. “But you do, Marie. Beneath all the hang-ups and stupidity, it was me, every step of the way, getting to know you, wanting to spend time with you, falling in love with you. And yeah, if I could do it all over again, I’d march right into that studio and say I was Mitch Samuel. But the irony is, I couldn’t have done that. Not three months ago. I was ready to turn around and go home that first night. It took Jason Gallagher to lead me to you.”
Despite the mental gymnastics it takes to understand that one, I think she does, because she looks like she’s ready to cry. Or hug me. Or throw the table at me. I can’t be certain.
“You should go now,” she says.
So I do.
Back at the apartment I watch TV, then listen to every Nirvana CD I own (which is a mistake, given that I already don’t feel so great and look what listening to too much Nirvana did to Kurt Cobain), then watch more TV, then go for a jog at midnight, then listen to something happy—Elvis—then take a shower and watch TV. It’s after two when my phone rings.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Not sleeping. You?”
“Staring at the walls.” There’s a long pause. “Do you want to come over, so we can both get some sleep?”
Abso-fucking-lutely I want to come over.
“And bring that list and a pen,” she says. “We’re adding a few things.”
I have the car started before we say goodbye.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At last we’re a couple in the way God and the universe intended: Mitch Samuel and Marie Colson. The next two weeks are a series of firsts. 1) She meets my mom. We go to the student production of The Imaginary Invalid at my mom’s school, and even though Marie has never heard of Molière, she gets all the jokes and laughs a lot, and we go out for drinks afterwards, and it’s obvious my mom likes her, and she likes my mom, and I like that a lot. 2) She comes over to the apartment. I give her the grand tour, and I can tell it’s a little weird for her, seeing how Bradley and I shared this space and she had no idea, but by the end of the visit she gets over it, enough to fix up a meal using pots and pans that, between Bradley and me, have likely never held anything in them. 3) I give my real name at the studio. I announce that I’m going by Mitch now, and they give me a funny look and shrug, because at age twenty-eight, people usually don’t start going by something else; but they go along with it, even Rosie, who, after making a big show of forgiving me for all I’ve put her through, announces she has news of her own: she’s no longer going by Rosie but by Angelina Jolie and has Brad called yet? 4) We double date with Skyler and Bradley. We go to Colchester’s for dinner, and Bradley has the line of the night when he sizes up our group, gives me an extra once-over, and tells the hostess we’re a party of five.
Most importantly, Marie reads the book. I give it to her on a Friday night and she reads it straight through the weekend, and the entire time I’m nervous, like an expectant father who’s got nothing to do but pace the floors and wring his hands and have unsettling thoughts—the baby’s out, and it’s a seal or zebra or loaf of bread. She finishes on Sunday evening.
“I loved it,” she says, not holding back her smile, and my heart starts to beat again. “I was worried you’d stolen all our identities, just changed the names, and slapped us into print. But you didn’t. I see bits of all of us, but these are new people. It’s a world I recognize, but it’s different.”
We talk about this and that concerning the characters and the plot and some suggestions she has, but it’s all good and fun, and I realize that there ain’t no stopping me, now that Marie’s on board. But then this:
“So you really met Katharine Longwell?”
“Um, a little.”
“What do you mean, ‘a little’? That doesn’t make sense. Either you did or you didn’t.”
“No, right. Of course. I did. Yes.”
“What’s she like?”
“Not much of anything. Not as good-looking as you might think, that’s for sure.”
“Anything else?”
“Sweet. Boring. The matronly type.”
“She doesn’t seem that way, not from her books and what I’ve seen on TV.”
“That’s all an act.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, it is.”
And so we leave it. Till the end of our natural lives, I hope.
The last day of classes arrives, and the students are ready to be done. They’ve only to turn in their final research paper, on the topic of their choice. A few of them volunteer to read excerpts—no aliases this time, since it’s the last time I’ll see them—so we hear a little about opera and Gothic cathedrals and Bob Marley and NASCAR, and when it’s over, after I’ve wished them well on their upcoming exams and collected the papers, I head to my office. Grading time. I’m not there long before I’m interrupted by a knock on the door. It’s Molly.
When the weather turned cold, Molly turned to sweaters, and she’s been sporting an assortment of styles and colors and textures these past few weeks, all with this common thread: hello Molly’s body. But today, the coup de grâce: a painted-on baby blue, paired with hip-hugging low-rider jeans.
“Mind if I shut this?” she asks, of the door.
“I’d rather you left it open,” I say quickly.
She gives a small laugh. “I’m harmless, Mitch. Really.” She slides into the chair across from me, looking anything but harmless. “Besides, I already have a boyfriend. Pete.”
“Pete? From class Pete?”
“Yep, Pete-from-class Pete. Don’t look so surprised.”
Surprised? Me? I’m not surprised. Dumbstruck, astounded, flabbergasted, yes. Molly could be modeling swimsuits in Sports Illustrated. Pete… well, Pete probably has a swimsuit, and I’m sure he looks fine in it, but I don’t imagine anyone’ll be taking pictures of him in it and splashing them across the centerfold of a magazine. “I just wouldn’t have put the two of you together. Based on the way you go at it in class,” I throw in.
“He challenges me and I like that. Plus, he’s the funniest guy I know. And smart. Don’t let the stupid grin fool you.”
After today, I won’t. “So, what can I do for you?”
She picks at the corner of the chair. It’s the most submissive gesture I’ve seen from her all semester. “I just wanted to tell you… I didn’t turn in my paper.”
“Oh?” I don’t have to remind her she loses a letter grade for each day it’s late. I’ve been reminding them for the last month. “When can I expect it?”
“See, that’s just it. You probably shouldn’t expect it at all.”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning, well, probably never.”
I let that settle for a moment. “Never. Wow. That’s a long time. You do realize it counts for a fourth of your final grade.”
She drops her eyes and nods. “But I’ll pass, right?” She actually seems a little worried.
“Assuming you were getting an A going in, which you probably were, then yeah, you’ll pass. Barely…” C minus or D barely. How about that? Ms. When-are-you-going-to-write-something-real-like-a-novel pain in my ass just screwed her own grade, and I didn’t even have to blink an eye. A few months ago, I would’ve been rejoicing. I would’ve done cartwheels. But now, I don’t feel so good about it.
“Do you need an extension?” I’ve told them I might be willing to provide one, in extreme circumstances—like loss of limb.
“Thanks, but I don’t think it would help.”
We sit there and look at each other, and there’s really nothing I can do. She doesn’t want to write the paper, she’s willing to accept the consequence, so that’s pretty much that. But I don’t want to let go.
“Look, Molly, I know we didn’t see eye to eye on everything this semester. No secret there. But you were a good student—a great student—and I respect that. You don’t seem much in the offering mood, but I’m going to ask anyway.” I lean forward and give her as intense a look as I can manage, without having it come across as one of those “I’m deep, I’m concerned, now why don’t you let me separate you from your panties” looks. “Why didn’t you do it?”
She shakes her head. “But that’s just it. I did do it. Most of it, anyway. I’m doing it on Mount Everest because I want to climb it someday. But then I started thinking about why. It’s dangerous. Irrational. People die there every year. One wrong step, or freak storm, or unstable piece of ice could do me in. Am I that much of a thrill seeker? Or is it that sometimes I don’t really like myself or some of the things I do and wouldn’t mind if it all happened to end.” You can tell that she’d planned to say some of it, but not all of it, and that it’s upsetting to her own ears to hear it, but now that she’s started, she doesn’t want to stop. “I don’t have the answers, Mitch,” she says, her voice starting to crack. “I think it’s the thrill-seeking thing, but there are enough days when I think it could be the other. And it scares me. That’s why I had to stop, because I’m not ready to stare at those things too hard right now, if you know what I mean…”
I look at her, this beautiful, scared, sexed-up, mixed-up, intelligent, trembling teenage girl, and realize that, despite the obnoxious T-shirts and skintight sweaters and form-fitting jeans and everything I think I may know about her, I have absolutely no idea who she is. None. What’s more, I can see she’s getting ready to do something that I never in a thousand years would’ve thought possible from Molly Schaeffer: she starts to cry. Big tears. Big big tears.
My impulse is to push her chair out the door, or crawl under the desk, or run, because I am immediately back to the night with Hannah, when I saw her on the bathroom floor, sobbing, and did nothing, and how can I be expected to do anything for a girl I’ve spent the better part of four months cursing under my breath when I didn’t even do it for a woman who made the coffee for us every morning? But then something else kicks in, and I can only say that it’s the Marie in me, which is an odd thing to say under any circumstance, but even odder in this situation, since we’re talking about a gorgeous eighteen-year-old girl, and that the Marie in me is telling me to give her a hug. So that’s what I do.
I don’t say anything, because I’m not sure what I’d say, but I just sort of hold on, and she buries her head against my shoulder and I let her do it, and I will myself not to have any impure thoughts, or notice how good she smells, and I don’t know if anyone passes by, but I don’t care either, because whatever it may look like, I know it’s the right thing to do.
Finally she pulls away and wipes her eyes. The storm has passed.
“Do you wanna talk more?” I ask.
She laughs. “And have you try to analyze me any more than you are right now? No thanks, Dr. Freud.”
She takes a moment to compose herself—straightening her sweater, sweeping back her hair, smoothing the fabric on her jeans—all in a way that makes it clear that even though there may be some chipped or dented pieces inside her soul, and she doesn’t have it all figured out, life goes on and she needs to be ready to face it. And be sexy. The swagger is back. Honestly, I’m glad to see it.
She stands. “It’s been a good semester, Mitch. I’m not just saying that to kiss your ass. I enjoyed it.”
“Take care of yourself, Molly. Okay? And have fun in San Diego.”
“Oh, I will.” She gives me a smile that’s laced with flirty (Molly is Molly, after all), and she’s gone.
Early on in Hamlet, there’s a scene where Hamlet’s friend Horatio is trying to make sense of all the crazy goings-on in Denmark—like ghosts of dead kings wandering through town—and he says it’s all so “wondrous strange.” That phrase is looping in my head right now. A student who bugged the hell out of me all semester just cried in my arms and I comforted her—I think—and even though I have every right to give her a D for the class, I’ll split the difference and give her a B. What’s more, I’ve danced as Zorro and golfed with my dad and written a chick-lit novel and fallen in love with my best friend’s sister. I realize we’re not talking ghosts of murdered fathers coming back with tales of fratricide and incest and wife-stealing, but there’s no other way to put it: it’s all so wondrous strange. But then again, with all apologies to Master Will, maybe it’s something else altogether. Maybe it’s all so strangely wonderful.
Later that night, we’re sitting on Marie’s sofa watching Frosty the Snowman.
“I’m not really a fan of this one,” I tell her. “I don’t like the way they added the jealous magician, Professor Hinkle. He’s not in the song.”
“But they had to add things. If they kept to the song, the show would be two minutes long. Even less, because of all the thumpety thump thumps.”
She’s right, of course. Sometimes you have to tweak the source material, especially when it has no plot whatsoever and the only characters are a snowman, children, and a traffic cop who hollers, “Stop!” So I get to the crux of my problem with Frosty, which I’ve never told anyone. “I don’t like the way they let Frosty melt in the greenhouse. When he dies.”
“He doesn’t die.”
“He dies. He melts. For a snowman, that’s death.”
“Fine. He dies. But Santa brings him back to life.”
“But he was dead first. And that’s tough to get out of your mind, that puddle of water, and the corncob pipe and hat sitting on top of it. So every time I hear the song, that’s what I think of. Dead Frosty. Puddle of water Frosty. They should stick with the song, even if it’s only a two-minute show. I like the Rudolph special better.”
“Oh, like that one sticks to the song. The dentist. The Isle of Misfit toys. Yukon Cornelius. Burl Ives as a snowman with a plaid vest. And that one’s an hour.”
“But no one dies.”
“But they think Yukon Cornelius does, when he falls off the glacier ledge with the Abominable Snowman.”
“But not Rudolph. He doesn’t die and come back to life.”
We stop there, because it’s clear she really likes Frosty and I don’t, and I want her to enjoy this.
“Charlie Brown?” she asks.
“Love it.”
“Good.”
We watch a little more, and get through the part where he dies and comes back to life, and I tell her it’s not so bad after all, even though it is, especially when that little girl cries. Ask her if Frosty was dead.
“You know, the TV at your place is nicer than this one,” she says, when Frosty is safely on his way to the North Pole with Santa. She half turns my way. “Are you planning to bring it over someday?”
I do a half turn myself. “Maybe.” But even without a mirror I can tell I have a huge smile on my face
when I say it.
When I came back from Chicago with the manuscript, I had Katharine’s comments. Now Marie and Bradley have read it and offered theirs, and I’ve considered what everyone’s had to say and made my changes. It’s finished. I call Katharine to let her know it’s on the way.
The conversation is brief and cordial. She tells me she’s looking forward to reading it, which is nice, and that her agent will probably want to start shopping it around to publishers, which is great; and when she asks about my plans for the holidays, I mention that my girlfriend and I will be celebrating our first Christmas together, which, in my opinion, is the best news of all. There’s a pause, and I can tell her mind goes back to my first trip to Chicago, when I said I had a girlfriend and we didn’t sleep together, then to my second trip, when I said nothing about a girlfriend and we did sleep together, so she must realize we’ve patched things up and we’re back on track and everything is going well.
“Good for the two of you,” she says, and she sounds sincere. Which means, if I’m reading her right, the fact that we slept together will never be mentioned again, by either of us.
Now I need to get to work on that letter to Virginia and tell her there really is a Santa Claus.
Hanukkah starts on the eighteenth, and my father has a party. He’s had this party every year and invited me each time; and each time he’s invited me, I’ve never gone, usually without the courtesy of a reply. This year is different: he invites, I reply, it’s a yes, for two.
The house is filled with people I don’t know: brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews on Leah’s side, friends of my dad and Leah, a few faces I recognize from the course; but everyone is warm and friendly. The kids run around and play games and quote lines from Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” and there is every conceivable shape and style of dreidel, from glow-in-the-dark to wood to pure chocolate, and the kids take turns deciding who will spin which one—or eat it, as the case may be. We light the Hanukkah candles and Nathan leads us in the prayers; he’s a year away from his bar mitzvah and intent on getting his pronunciation correct: “Baruch ata adonai elohaynu melech haolam…” My dad helps him when he stumbles, which isn’t often.