Ms. Taken Identity

by Dan Begley

  “Yo, Mitch.”

  I turn. It’s Molly.

  “Hey there,” I say, and quickly lick spilled beer off my hand so I can shake hers, but she’s a little quicker on the draw and gives me a hug. It’s one of those press-her-body-in kind and I can feel her legs against mine.

  “So, what’s going on?” I ask when we’ve separated.

  “Nothing much. Just watching the game, same as you, I imagine.”

  Truth be told, at that very moment I’m having difficulty remembering why it is I am here, because she’s wearing a cottony summer dress—sophisticated, a little sheer—with flip-flops and a golden tan.

  “Yep. Watching the game. You bet.” I clear my throat. “Are you here with Pete?”

  Her face turns slightly gloomy. “Nah. With some other friends. Pete and I broke up a few months ago.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah, thanks. We’re still good friends, though. We talk a lot. Or debate. Or argue. Whatever it is we do.”

  She tells me about her semester, which was good, even though Cosmo decided to pass on the article after all, but no big deal, since she’s going to spend the next year abroad, in London, studying theater.

  “I think I found my niche,” she says. “Flair for the dramatic and all.”

  “You’ll be great.” There’s a glow about her, and it’s not just the tan, and I have a feeling she won’t be throwing herself off the side of Mount Everest anytime soon.

  We talk about my dissertation—things humming along nicely on that front—then say our goodbyes. I gather up my tray of beers.

  “Hey, Mitch,” she calls over, still hanging around. “Are you on campus this summer?”

  I shrug. “Sometimes. I’m not teaching, but I make it out there every now and then.”

  “Same office?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then maybe I could stop by sometime and we could head over to the café for lunch.”

  Two guys around my age are standing off to the side, ogling her, and apparently following enough of the conversation to realize she’s basically asking me out. That would explain why they both have that dropped-jaw, gimme-a-break, I-did-not-just-hear-that look plastered to their faces. Suddenly that Joe Jackson song “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” is running through my head.

  “Yeah. Sure. We could do that.”

  “Great,” she says, and gives me a smile that will last me all day.

  The rest of the game breezes by. Neither Nathan nor Kyle snags a foul ball and the Cards come up short, but it’s tough for any of us to be very disappointed, since we’ve all had such a great time. Outside the stadium, we snap one last set of pictures in front of the statue of Stan Musial. Scott wants to get my dad and me and him striking the same pose we did when we were kids and Dad brought us here—bat in hands, poised for the swing, the way Stan is—so Nathan snaps that one. There’s brief talk of heading out for dinner, but we’re all still stuffed from the game, especially my father, whose stomach is bothering him from a hotdog that went down the wrong way, and plus he’s a little tired, so we nix those plans. Besides, we’ll be spending tomorrow together.

  Back at the apartment, I take Bo for a walk, grab a late dinner at Colchester’s, then the two of us get cozy on the sofa and watch TV. But I keep thinking about Molly, how good she looked and healthy she seemed, trying to convince myself that I didn’t just say yes to lunch with her to impress those guys at the game, that we could actually have some sort of relationship outside the classroom, though not that type of relationship, because eighteen is still eighteen, for chrissakes; and all of it’s still so much on my mind that when the phone rings at 2:48 and wakes me up, my groggy-minded knee-jerk reaction is that it’s her, calling to say she doesn’t want to wait until summer to have lunch, she wants to make plans now, since she has some questions about London or Shakespeare or the theater, and she knows I’d be a font of information. But it’s not Molly at all. It’s Leah. She’s at the hospital and sobbing. My father is dead.

  When I was a kid, my dad had a habit of taking a nap when he got home from work, and I had a habit of sneaking in to watch him sleep. He’d be flopped on his back, longways on the bed, one arm draped over his eyes, the other across his stomach. Sometimes he left his watch on, and I’d try to get close enough to read the numbers; other times I’d bring in one of my baseball cards and tickle the hair on his arms, till he tried to brush the sensation away. When I felt most daring, I’d try to balance a marble on his chest and see how long it’d stay, which usually wasn’t very long, since he’d shift or stir or let out a grizzled snore or just take one of those deep-sleep breaths, and the marble went tumbling off.

  I’m thinking of that marble as I stand with Scott and Leah at the hospital and we stare at my father’s body. He looks exactly the same as he did a few hours ago, same wrinkles and age spots and hair, even a patch of sunburned skin on the tip of his nose, and I keep expecting a little movement, a breath, something to indicate that he’s alive, that he’s just taking a nap, that he’s managed to hold his breath for a long time, and at any moment his eyelids will flutter, or his lips will part, or his throat will swallow, or his fingers will twitch, or his leg will shake out. But none of it happens, and it’s not going to happen, not even if we stay here till dawn. And it’s all starting to sink in that if I placed that marble on his chest now, it would stay there till the end of time.

  I’m out at the golf course just before seven, waiting for Kip. I give him the news and he can’t believe it, and he just keeps shaking his head and crying and asking if there’s anything he can do. I tell him he can call the others, break the news to them, and let them know the course will be closed for a few days. I consider putting up a sign on the front door of the clubhouse—“Course closed till further notice”—and leaving, but the people who know my dad deserve better, so I stick around and tell them in person.

  Over the next two days, I stay in touch with Leah and offer to help her or Nathan or Jessica in any way I can, but she already has a whole army of family and friends providing meals and comfort, and it’s not like we’re the closest people anyway, so I stay in the background. Plus, my dad already took care of all the funeral arrangements after the first heart attack.

  On Wednesday we meet at the cemetery for the service. It’s another hot day, so there’s a tent up, but it’s not big enough by far, and people spill out the back and around on both sides. The immediate family sits in the front row, and I’m next to Scott, on the end. Several people get up and say a few words about my father, including Scott, and it’s nice to hear that people thought so highly of him—and loved him, I’d have to say—though I don’t get up and speak, because what would I say: that I thought the world of him for the first ten years, hated him for the next eighteen, and started to like him again these past few months. No one needs to hear that, and I don’t want to pretend it was any other way. He and I knew what it was, and where we were, and how far we’d gotten, and that’s what matters.

  After the eulogies and prayers from the rabbi, we all throw a shovelful of dirt on the casket. It’s a long line of people, and I see a lot of familiar faces from the course, a few from the Hanukkah party, and one I haven’t seen in a while, near the back: Bradley. Instinctively, I scan the crowd for Marie, but she’s not there. People come over and offer sympathy and hugs, and by the time Bradley has thrown his bit of dirt on my father, I’m standing under a tree, trying to keep cool.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” he says, shaking my hand.

  I nod. “Thanks for coming.”

  In my mind, there are a thousand different ways this conversation could go. But in reality, there’s only one way it can, in this place, under these circumstances.

  “It was another heart attack.”

  He makes a grim face. “How’s everyone doing?”

  “Leah’s a mess, inside. But she’s a strong woman. She’s hanging in there as best as she can. And
Nathan and Jessica, they know what it means, obviously, that their dad’s dead, but they can’t really grasp it yet. She’s only nine. Scott’s taking it hard.”

  He studies my face. “And what about you?”

  The question catches me off guard, and my thoughts shoot in a dozen directions. “Honestly, I don’t know. I feel sad. I’m sorry he’s gone. I feel bad for Leah and the kids. But I also feel frustrated. Pissed, actually. Can I say that? I guess I’m just angry we wasted all this time, that there was something good between us all along and we didn’t do anything about it. Or not enough. We could’ve been at this point ten years ago. And there were things I hadn’t said, and probably would have, in time.” I pause. “But it was good at the end, and that’s better than nothing, I guess.”

  I regret it as soon as I say it, that last part, because it’s a stupid and empty expression, and not even true. Sometimes you are better off with nothing, because the something you get is so small, and so good, that the taste of it lasts only a second, but the missing of it and longing for it and living without it will haunt you the rest of your life. I change the subject.

  “How have you been?” I ask.

  “Good. Working outside a lot.”

  “And Skyler?”

  “She’s great.”

  I rub the side of my jaw. “And Marie?”

  He considers this carefully. “Marie’s… okay. She’s been busy.” He’s sufficiently vague and evasive, which I take as a sign that she told him not to say anything. “She wanted me to give you this.” He hands me a card. “She thought about coming, but figured it’d probably be better if she didn’t.”

  It’s a beige envelope with no name on the front, which isn’t so odd, I guess, since she probably only gave Bradley one envelope and he knows who gets it. Unless she couldn’t even bring herself to write my name.

  The crowd is beginning to disperse and head for their cars. One of Nathan’s friends slips his tie over his head, the grieving over for him. For Nathan it’s just starting.

  “We’re going over to Leah’s house to sit shivah,” I say. “You’re welcome to come.”

  He gives his head a soft shake. “I appreciate that, Mitch. But I don’t think so.”

  No, not since he knows it’s for family and close friends, and Bradley and I are neither these days.

  I take my keys out of my pocket and loop my finger through the ring. “I should get going,” I say.

  He looks off to the distance, then kicks at a rocky clump. “I hate the way things are between us, you know.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Anything we can do about that?”

  “Your being here is a start, I think. And when all this is over, I’ll give you a call. Maybe we could go for drinks. Or shoot baskets.”

  He turns to me, and for a moment I see Bradley, and Bradley sees me. “I’d like that.”

  We shake hands again and he leaves. As I watch him make his way down the path to the parking lot, the sun beating down on his back, I allow myself to think that maybe there’s one aspect of my life that’s headed in the right direction.

  There’s food galore at Leah’s, and the house is swarming with people, since it’s too hot to be outside. The little kids are running around, because for them it’s just a party, sort of like Hanukkah without the dreidels or candles. Leah seems to be holding up well, buoyed by all the hugs she’s getting, and Nathan and Jessica seem too distracted by friends and cousins to be showing much emotion. I manage to read the card from Marie, and it’s generic Hallmark, sorry about your dad, thinking of you in your time of loss, etc., but just what it needs to be. But I can’t help thinking that this is the woman who would’ve been standing with me right now, and I’d be fetching her a drink or a slice of pie or a second helping of kugel, and she’d be asking me how I’m holding up. Instead I have a three dollar card.

  I don’t stay till the end, because it’s clear Leah’s parents and siblings have that honor, so after I swing by my apartment to take care of Bo, I head over to my mom’s. Scott is there with Melinda and Kyle, and we sit out by the pool for a while, reminiscing. Then Scott and his family leave, so it’s down to my mom and me and the two of us talking, then she goes inside. It’s just the pool and the night and me.

  My father used to sit here on summertime evenings and listen to the ballgames on AM radio. Sometimes I listened with him, sometimes I didn’t, but after the game was over, he’d find a station and listen to jazz. I didn’t know it was jazz then, only that it wasn’t the type of music I liked, which was rock or pop or whatever they were playing on MTV. It was just Dad music, and when I went to bed and he was still out there, I’d open my bedroom window, even when the AC was on, just so I could hear the murmur of the piano or saxophone or bass as I drifted off to sleep on those summer nights.

  It’s been nearly two decades since any of that happened, and to be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought, till tonight. Sitting here in the spot where he used to sit, I strain to hear some echo of what once was, hoping that maybe the trees or grass or stones collected a fragment of those tunes, even a few notes, and will play them back for me. But of course, they didn’t, they can’t, they won’t. And even if my mom and Scott and I assumed the places and clothes we had in 1984 or ’86 or ’88, and we all played Yahtzee or Monopoly or Scrabble, the games we used to play, and made popcorn—even if we all agreed to do it for just one more night, for old time’s sake, it wouldn’t make a difference. I can never go back into that room and open my window and hear my father’s music and know he’s out here on the patio, and I’m safely tucked into bed. He’s gone. He’s gone. And for the first time since Leah called with the news, I cry.

  There are no surprises when my father’s will is read, no strange requests that his remains be shot out of a cannon or fed to the sharks or buried on the eighteenth green (which is good, since any of it would require digging him up and going through it all over again, and no one wants to do that). Everything is divvied up the way you’d expect it; in other words, it all goes to Leah and the kids, with something set aside for Kyle. The only part of it that takes me by surprise, but apparently no one else because they already knew, is that he wants the golf course to be sold.

  “But why?” I ask my brother, as we sit on his back deck drinking a beer.

  “Dad made it work because he knew how to pinch pennies and scrimp and run a bare-bones operation. In the wrong hands, it would go bust, and he didn’t want to leave Leah strapped with that.”

  “So this makes more sense, financially—to sell it?”

  “Yep. His life insurance policy pays off the remaining debt, plus leaves a little extra. Then Leah can sell the course, which is pure profit. Dad even left us a list of guys who’d already expressed an interest in the land.”

  “That’s an odd way to put it, ‘the land.’”

  “Unfortunately, the course is more valuable as land for developers than it is as a golf course. Dad knew it, too.”

  “So you mean some guy will buy it and put up a row of condos or villas or something?”

  He gives his head a sober nod. “That’s exactly what it means.”

  This comes to me like a punch in the gut. Knowing how hard he’d worked to keep it going, the pride he took from it. It was a labor of love. And what about Kip? But my father must have known this was the way it would go. Still…

  “So give me a ballpark figure,” I say. “What kind of money are we talking about for ‘the land’?”

  He gives me a ballpark figure.

  “What if I knew someone who could give Leah just about that and keep the course in the family?”

  “I’d say, give me the number.”

  “Brother, you already have it, probably on speed dial.”

  He looks at me like I’m crazy. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  That’s when I introduce him to my sugar lady Catwalk Mama.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’m out on the course playing eighteen with a
guy named Joe Magditch. Joe’s a T-shirt vendor, and I need T-shirts for the charity tournament I’m planning for August. Joe also loves to golf, so we have a friendly wager in play: if I win, I get free T-shirts from Joe; if he wins, he gets free golf for the rest of the year. We’re on the sixteenth hole and I have a two-shot lead, but he has a short putt to cut the lead to one. That’s when my cell phone—which I can’t believe I forgot to turn off—rings. It’s Katharine.

  “Hey, stranger. I thought I’d hear from you by now.”

  “Oh? And why’s that?”

  “Like you don’t know.” She pauses to let me fill in the blank, which I don’t. So she does. “To coordinate our plans for New York.”

  I step off the green and away from Joe’s evil eye. “I don’t follow, Katharine. Why would I be going to New York?”

  “Because you said you would. Hello. The bet.”

  The only bet that comes to mind is the one I have with Joe. But I don’t think any of the conditions we discussed had me going to New York with Katharine, and how would she know, anyway?

  “Regis and Kelly, Mitch. I’m on next Tuesday. And you said you’d go on with me if the book—”

  “If the book made it into the top five,” I cut her off. Suddenly my heart starts pounding in my throat. With everything going on with my father, I haven’t been paying attention to any of that. “Are you telling me we made it into the top five?”

  “You might say that. We just squeaked in… at number one.”

  Oh sweet Jesus. What the fuck have I done?

  I’ve never been on TV. The closest I came was my junior year of high school when I was out for a jog in Forest Park and a local news crew was interviewing people about how they were coping with the sweltering heat and I gave them my secret strategy: ignore it. But when the story aired, all I saw was a bunch of shirtless guys with six-pack abs talking about drinking lots of water and sticking to the shade. I felt slighted. This morning, however, sitting in my dressing room, I’d love to see any one of those bare-chested underwear models again, so I could trot him out there onto the Regis and Kelly stage and everyone would forget about me.