Man of My Dreams

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “You don’t want to tell her yourself?”

  “I already have. I’m an old nag, aren’t I? But I worry.” Her mother opens the cabinet beneath the sink and tosses a handful of flower stems into the trash. “Hannah, I hope you know how appreciative I am to both you girls for coming home.”

  “Mom, of course.”

  “Well, I know you’re busy. You two work long hours.” Perhaps because their mother has not had much of a career, she is, in Hannah’s opinion, overly respectful of her daughters’ jobs. For Christmas she even gave them monogrammed leather briefcases. I’m mostly just sitting at a desk, Hannah wants to say, but she suspects her mother takes pleasure in the idea of Hannah and Allison as on the go, conducting important business.

  Her mother dries her hands on a dish towel. “You and Oliver fly out around three, right?”

  Hannah nods again.

  Her mother hesitates—possibly she’s blushing—and then she says, “You know, honey, I’ve met Fig’s friend, and she seems quite nice.”

  “You’ve met Fig’s girlfriend?”

  The blush deepens. “I didn’t realize at the time that they were an item, so to speak. But Frank and I ran into the two of them at Striped Bass, oh, probably in November. We all had a drink.” Her mother as stealth gay sympathizer? Hannah can’t wait to tell Allison. “She seemed like an appealing young lady,” her mother says. The toaster pops up then, with a little ding. “How about an English muffin?”

  Hannah says okay before realizing her mother intends to give her this English muffin, the one that’s ready now. “I can fix my own,” Hannah says.

  “Oh, honey, don’t be silly. It will take me one second to make another. Sit down and eat this while it’s warm.”

  Hannah obeys because it seems easier, it seems like what her mother wants. Passing Hannah the plate, her mother says, “I think the important thing is to find someone you feel comfortable around.” Then—her mother has always been both tentative and not subtle—she adds, “Oliver is a little eccentric, isn’t he?” She’s lowered her voice; presumably, Oliver is asleep in the den.

  “In what way?” Hannah says.

  “Well, I’m sure he’s had a lot of interesting experiences. I take it he’s traveled the globe. We all grow up differently, don’t we?” This is definitely her mother’s version of a condemnation. The question is, did Oliver do something explicitly inappropriate in front of her, something besides the snowball, or was it a general vibe her mother got? “And he’s very handsome,” her mother continues, “but you know, your father was handsome, too, when he was a young man.”

  Hannah is more intrigued than insulted. Because her mother is truly without malice, she’d make such remarks only due to a nervousness on Hannah’s behalf, a concern for her future.

  “Is that why you fell for Dad, because of his looks?” Hannah asks, and unexpectedly, her mother laughs.

  “That was probably part of it. God help me if that was all of it. I was twenty-two on our wedding day, which seems extraordinary to me now. I moved right from my parents’ house into a house with your father. But Hannah, I would never consider my marriage to your father a mistake. I used to beat myself up, thinking what a bad role model I must have been for you and Allison, but eventually, I realized, well, I’d never have had you girls if I hadn’t been married to your father. Sometimes it’s hard to say what’s a bad decision and what’s not.” There is a silence, and then her mother adds, “It’s nice you went to see him yesterday. I know it made him happy.”

  “Who told you?”

  “He mentioned it when he called to wish me luck.”

  “That was uncharacteristically gracious of him.”

  Her mother smiles. “Let’s hope it’s never too late for any of us.”

  Hannah bites into the English muffin, which is excellent: It is perfectly browned, and her mother buttered it about three times more thickly than Hannah would have, meaning it tastes three times better. “Mom,” Hannah says.

  Her mother looks over.

  “I really like Frank,” Hannah says. “I’m glad you married him.”

  SHE WAS NOT planning to, but as she passes by the closed door to the den on her way back upstairs, she impulsively stops and turns the knob. Inside the den, the curtains are pulled and the room is dim; Oliver is a vertical lump beneath the covers. She also is acting on impulse when she joins him. He lies on his back, and she curls up against him, her face in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, one of her arms against the left side of his rib cage and one across his chest. He does not seem to wake completely as he shifts to accommodate her, encircling her waist with his arm. She glances up at his face, relaxed in sleep. He is breathing audibly without quite snoring.

  There is a way he smells in the morning, beneath the ever-present smell of cigarettes; he smells, she thinks, like a baby’s spit-up. If she ever expressed this, he’d make fun of her. It’s a scent that’s of the body yet completely clean, coming from some blend of his hair and mouth and skin, and it’s her favorite thing about him. Inhaling it in this moment, she feels an urge to somehow store it, to save it up for remembering, and this is how she knows she’s going to end things with him after all. Of course she is. Isn’t she the only one who’s ever thought that to do otherwise would be a good idea?

  And how heartbreaking, because if it were all just a few degrees different, she is pretty sure they could be quite happy together. She really does like him, she likes lying next to him, she wants to be around him; when you get down to it, can you say that about many people? But also, what a relief: When he awakens, she knows, he’ll be talkative—he is in the morning even when hungover—and after a few minutes he’ll pull her hand toward his erection. Look what you’ve done, he’ll say. You’re a vixen. Not that long ago, in spite of everything she knew, his constant horniness was sort of flattering, but at this point it makes her feel depleted. Staving him off or giving in—both options are equally unpleasant.

  And so who knows what will happen next, how exactly it will unravel? For now, she thinks, this is the trick: to pay such close attention to him that she is able to stay until the last possible second before he opens his eyes.

  8

  August 2003

  WHEN HANNAH TELLS Allison they need to go by her doctor’s office in Brookline before getting on the highway, what Allison says—this is highly un-Allison-like—is “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  It is just after eleven A.M., a sunny morning on the last day of August, and they both are sweating. Hannah’s apartment is empty, all the furniture and boxes loaded onto the truck; last night she and Allison slept in separate sleeping bags on the same air mattress. Between trips out to the truck this morning, Hannah ate handfuls of stale animal crackers from a carton she’d unearthed in a cupboard, but Allison declined them.

  “Brookline really isn’t that far away,” Hannah says. “It’s sort of parallel to Cambridge.”

  Allison looks at Hannah. “Parallel?” she repeats.

  Because Allison has agreed to drive the moving truck out of the city, Hannah is not in a position to be anything but diplomatic. In eight years of living in Boston, Hannah has driven here exactly once—that time her freshman year when she and Jenny came back from the engineering school in the middle of the night—and she has no wish to do it again, regardless of the fact that the truck is the smallest size available. When Hannah first broached the topic, Allison hesitated a little because of her daughter, Isabel, who is only a few months old, but Allison appeared not to see the driving part of Hannah’s request as a big deal. In San Francisco, Allison and Sam share a standard Saab, and they blithely back into parking spaces midway up hills.

  Hannah inserts three more animal crackers into her mouth and then, while chewing, says, “Should we go?”

  She’s not certain how to find Dr. Lewin’s—she has always come by T—and is relieved they don’t get lost. They are a few blocks from Dr. Lewin’s office, which is in the basement of her house, when Hannah r
ealizes her mistake. When she told Allison she’d forgotten her sweater after a doctor’s appointment, Allison presumably thought she meant a doctor-doctor, which of course is what Hannah intended for Allison to think. To pull up in front of Dr. Lewin’s gray stucco house will require explanation, and Hannah doesn’t feel like announcing, at the start of a two-day drive from Boston to Chicago, with Allison in a ragingly bad mood, that she sees a shrink. Allison is a social worker and thus officially supports the pursuit of mental health, but Hannah suspects Allison would think it was kind of weird, borderline unsavory, for her own sister to go to a psychiatrist. Hannah would not be surprised if Allison is the kind of person who thinks only crazy people go to psychiatrists.

  “Sorry,” Hannah says, “but I’ve gotten really mixed up. I know how to get us onto Ninety from here, but I don’t know how to get to”—she pauses—“the hospital. I think I’ll just have them send me the sweater.”

  “Can’t you look at the map? We might as well figure it out if we’ve gotten this far.”

  “No, you were right that this was a bad idea. If you turn on Beacon, we can go around the block.”

  “Your doctor doesn’t have anything better to do than mail you sweaters?”

  “Allison, I thought you wanted to get on the road.”

  Allison does not respond, and Hannah thinks, This is for your sake as much as mine. “Sorry,” she says. “I thought I knew the way.”

  Allison makes the turn that will lead them back to Ninety, but instead of acknowledging Hannah’s apology, she leans forward and tunes the radio until she finds the public station. Then she turns it up, which is pure Allison: aggression by NPR. Hannah eats several more animal crackers and looks out the window.

  AMAZINGLY, UNTIL YESTERDAY Hannah had never once, during seven years’ worth of appointments, cried in Dr. Lewin’s office. What prompted yesterday’s tears was, as much as anything, the logistics of moving: Earlier in the afternoon, Hannah had gone (for the fourth time in a week) to the shipping store, planning to buy more medium-sized boxes, and the store was out. Back at her apartment, she waited on hold for nearly half an hour in an effort to get her gas turned off and her account closed, then finally hung up the phone when she needed to leave for Dr. Lewin’s. At the T stop, she arrived just in time to see a train pull away, and the next one took so long to come that she was six minutes, or $12.60, late for the appointment. (Dr. Lewin’s sliding fee has slid up over the years.) Plus, it was a grotesquely humid ninety-five degrees, the sun blazing overhead and air conditioners everywhere straining to keep the indoors even moderately cool. Why on earth had she brought along this pink cotton sweater? Hannah set it on the floor next to her chair, which was thick and leather. Her damp skin stuck to it.

  “I’m sorry for being late,” she said for the second time.

  “It’s really all right,” Dr. Lewin said. “How are moving preparations?”

  In reply, Hannah burst into tears. Dr. Lewin passed her a box of tissues, but in the moment, it seemed like a better idea to Hannah just to yank up the neck of her shirt and use it to wipe her eyes and nose.

  “You have a lot going on,” Dr. Lewin said.

  Hannah shook her head; she couldn’t speak.

  “Take your time,” Dr. Lewin said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  For another two or three minutes ($4.20 to $6.30), Hannah collected herself but then thought of, well, everything, which started new tears streaming, which necessitated recollecting herself. Eventually, there appeared to be no more tears forthcoming, the cycle sputtered out, and Dr. Lewin said, “Tell me what’s worrying you most.”

  Hannah swallowed. “Moving to Chicago isn’t a terrible idea, is it?”

  “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”

  “That I get fired, maybe. I mean, probably I could find another job then.”

  Dr. Lewin nodded. “Probably you could find another job.”

  “I guess the truly worst thing would be if it doesn’t work out with Henry. Am I psycho for moving there if we’re not dating?”

  “Do you think you’re psycho?”

  “With all due respect”—Hannah sniffled a little—“aren’t you in a better position to answer that question than I am?”

  Dr. Lewin smiled dryly. “As far as I can tell, you recognize there are no guarantees with Henry or with anyone else. What you’re doing is taking a risk, which is perfectly healthy and reasonable.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re twenty-six,” Dr. Lewin said. “Why not?” This why not? type commentary had been a relatively recent development, mostly since Hannah’s breakup with Oliver: Dr. Lewin had, after all these years, gotten a little jaunty. Once when Hannah told Dr. Lewin that whenever she and Oliver had sex, she imagined that she could feel herself getting an STD in that moment, Dr. Lewin said, “So why don’t you quit having sex with him and buy yourself a vibrator?” Hannah’s eyes must have widened, because Dr. Lewin added, “They’re not against the law, you know.” Hannah could not help wondering, was it possible, even in a small way, that Dr. Lewin might miss her?

  “Twenty-six isn’t that young,” Hannah said. “It’s not like twenty-two.”

  “The point is that you’re unencumbered. It’s not irresponsible for you to take a chance.”

  The chance Hannah was taking—is taking—is that she is moving to Chicago to see what might happen with Henry. It had all come about rather quickly. Fig’s wedding (that’s what Fig herself called it, a wedding—she’d say, “A commitment ceremony sounds so gay”) happened in June. It was small and elegant and took place in a private room at a restaurant on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. Zoe wore a white pantsuit, and Fig wore a simple white dress with spaghetti straps, and they both looked hiply beautiful. Allison and Hannah were Fig’s bridesmaids, and Nathan and Zoe’s brother were—well, not groomsmen—but the really clever idea on Fig’s part was to ask Frank to officiate, thereby eliciting a tacit generational endorsement that Fig’s own parents went along with. Frank was both dignified and warm, and Fig’s parents seemed to enjoy themselves. Afterward, at the dinner, Nathan had several martinis and gave a toast that started “Given what a slut she’s always been, who ever thought Fig would go lezzie?”

  And also: Henry was there. Hannah had not seen him since her junior year in college, but there he was; she was pretty sure Fig had invited him solely as an act of generosity. He and Hannah were seated next to each other at the reception and he was completely easy to talk to. Instead of the conversation whittling away, getting closer and closer to nothing the longer they spent in each other’s presence, it enlarged and enlarged. There was an infinite amount to cover, and nothing he said bored her at all—one of his stories was about how, after he’d checked in to his hotel that afternoon, he’d gotten trapped in an elevator with an eighty-nine-year-old Russian woman who was soon feeding him piroshki and scheming to set him up with her granddaughter, though actually, Henry said, he’d stepped off the elevator feeling slightly in love with the eighty-nine-year-old herself; her name was Masha. They also discussed what Henry called Fig’s “change of heart,” and he did not seem personally disgruntled. He said, “How can I not be happy for her? She’s the most at peace I’ve ever seen her.” When Hannah told him all about Oliver, he said, “Hannah, the dude sounds like a total jackass. He doesn’t sound worthy of you.” They’d both drunk a fair amount, and this was sometime after midnight, as the reception was winding down. “And you still share an office with the guy?” Henry said. “What a drag. You need to get out of Beantown.”

  “I’m not sure where else I’d go.”

  “Go anywhere. It’s a big world. Come to Chicago. Chicago is definitely better than Boston.”

  She looked at him sideways, pursing her lips a little. She was so much better at this than she’d been back in college—also, she was pretty sure she looked considerably better. She’d cut her hair to chin-length, she was wearing contact lenses, the strapless bridesmaid dresses Fig had picked out showed her
shoulders and arms to flattering effect. As it happened, this was the first time in her life that Hannah had worn a strapless dress. She was thinking she might do it again.

  In perhaps the most coquettish voice she’d ever used, she said, “You think I should move to Chicago?”

  He was smiling. “I think you should move to Chicago.”

  “What would I do there?”

  “You’d do what people everywhere do. Work. Eat. Have sex. Listen to music. But all of it would be better because it’d be happening there.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said.

  “Really?” Henry said. “Because I’m holding you to this.”

  As the night proceeded, it seemed harder and harder to believe something physical wouldn’t happen between them, but the logistics were complicated—his hotel was downtown, she was getting a ride back to the suburbs with her mother and Frank. Everyone in her family knew Henry as Fig’s ex-boyfriend. It would have been tricky to explain. On the street, with her mother and Frank waiting in the car, Hannah and Henry hugged, and he kissed her cheek, and she thought that this was how it would be when they were husband and wife and saw each other off at train stations and airports. It almost didn’t matter that nothing more happened. As she sat in the backseat riding home, her heart kept clenching with how much she liked him.

  And what was to stop her from moving? If Fig was married to Zoe, then Fig and Henry weren’t going to reconcile; they were definitely and absolutely finished. Besides, if Zoe could get Fig to fall in love with her when Zoe wasn’t even the gender of person Fig believed she was attracted to, then why was it so far-fetched to think Hannah and Henry might end up together? Really, Zoe and Fig’s courtship was emboldening; it gave Hannah hope.

  Of the five nonprofits she sent résumés to in Chicago, one—the educational outreach arm of a medium-sized art museum—asked for an interview. She flew out in late July, and the interview was fine (she wasn’t entirely paying attention, anticipating her evening with Henry), and then she had dinner with him and his friend Bill and it was great again, the three of them went to a billiards hall on Lincoln Avenue and played pool and darts for six hours straight, Henry was touchy-feely, Hannah turned out to be okay at darts, and when, after her return to Boston, she was offered the job, it was hard to think of a reason not to take it. Dr. Lewin didn’t disapprove—ahead of time, Hannah had felt sure she would, but later Hannah couldn’t remember why.