Very Nice

by Marcy Dermansky

  Zahid’s face appeared in the living room window. My writing professor, his swoopy hair in his eyes, his beautiful eyes, his brown skin. I could see the concern on his face and I understood that it was not for me. I had thought I loved him. It was a secret love, a love I had never thought would be returned, but I had not expected it to be thrown in my face.

  Becca

  I knew that car. It was Richard Thornton’s ridiculous car, and of course, if there was one person in this town that I disliked, that I loathed, because loathed would be a more accurate word, if there was any one person that I recoiled from if forced to share the same space in the same room, it was him.

  Fucking Richard Thornton. Republican. Card-carrying member of the NRA. This was the man who’d made it possible for his son to show up in my elementary school classroom with an assault weapon. Who smoked cigars in public places. His alcoholic wife continued to send me gifts. Once a month, I received a bottle of wine from a wine-of-the-month club.

  They had invited me to dinner once, for family lobster night, and I had almost said yes, curious about their house, which had been featured in Architectural Digest, curious about the dynamics of their family, even, but that had been a moment of folly. I had saved their son’s life. This did not mean that I had to like them.

  The Thorntons were dysfunctional. They were toxic. They were bad rich people, Jonathan had once said, during the run-up to the election, and we, he’d insisted, were the good ones.

  He had said it like it was black and white.

  I wasn’t sure I agreed. Supporting Hillary Clinton, for instance, was not evidence of our good character. She was just the better choice. I had once brought up the horrific and perhaps even criminal mismanagement of the Clinton Foundation and Jonathan had inexplicably yelled at me. He had become furious, as if I had flipped a switch. I had never seen him so angry. Maybe that was the moment everything started to change. Was he with the pilot then, already?

  Now my daughter was being dropped off late at night, tears streaming down her face, in Richard Thornton’s gold Lamborghini. Was that old son of a bitch fucking my daughter? That was absurd. Impossible. And then I remembered. Their eldest son was in town. This was the kid who had been expelled from boarding school for drinking and drugs, and then expelled from the public high school, too, for drinking and drugs, and then, he took off for California. I’d thought he would end up dead, but instead he was starring on some TV show.

  This very son had participated in a fund-raiser in town. A local girl had been born with a rare disease, born without a nose, and he had helped raise money for her medical treatment. He appeared at a charity dinner, which of course I did not go to. I’d wondered what the Thorntons were pulling. As if their family could possibly restore their reputation in our tiny hamlet. It wasn’t possible. Did Richard Thornton publicly renounce guns? Make a donation to the families of children senselessly gunned down in schools? He did not. Instead, he sent his kid away, out of sight, out of mind, and he carried on.

  I knew for a fact that not a single family wanted to have little Amelia Thornton to their home for a playdate. The girl seemed odd. Seven years old, she still peed in her pants. She played imaginary games by herself on the playground, flying on a dragon named Firebolt and defeating her enemies. Rachel had mentioned that the girl was in her group at camp. She had made Rachel a bracelet with wooden beads spelling her name.

  “She’s like a sad puppy,” Rachel had told me.

  Of course, I had not told my daughter to stay away from the little girl. I had held my tongue, proud of my restraint.

  It was not enough that Theo had tried to kill me, had terrorized my students. Now it was the older son. This family was fucking with my child.

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked Rachel.

  “Who?” she said. “Ian?”

  Ian. That was his name. His picture had been on the cover of the local paper, smug, just like his father.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  Rachel did not answer the question, looking into the house, and there was Zahid, looking out at us.

  “What is going on here?” Rachel asked me. “You tell me that.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We were waiting up for you.”

  Zahid and I had been in the living room, watching a movie on Netflix, waiting for Rachel. She had done this the other night, too, when Zahid was away, stayed out late without explanation. Yes, it was true, when she was away at college, I knew none of her daily whereabouts. But this was different. Rachel was home and I had no idea where she was and I didn’t like it.

  Zahid and I had been eating bowls of the ice cream we had bought at the Stop & Shop. I had started a film, one of the recommended movies on the menu, some independent thing that was popular. It was so innocent, of course, the two of us watching a movie together, that it occurred to me that it was strange that he had lived in this house with us all this time and we had not watched a movie together. Rachel could come home and find us watching a movie. It would be a good thing.

  Tonight, for the first time, I seriously considered telling Rachel about us. She was, of course, an observant child. I had no idea what she knew, what clues might have given us away. I had gone so far as to wander into her bedroom, looking for a journal. I’d even turned on her computer, to see what she was writing. There was a password.

  “We could tell her,” I said to Zahid. “About us.”

  I methodically ate my ice cream, waiting for him to respond. Zahid was uncomfortable with the idea, talking to Rachel. I understood this was a warning sign, his reluctance, that there had to be something more behind his reticence. I could just ask him straight out if he had messed around with my daughter. And so what if he had? I could take it. I could take this information and process it and continue to love him.

  Or could I?

  If it had happened, it had happened before. Before me. Before us. It was an abuse of power, sure, but I was not that old. I remembered college, all of the coeds falling for their professors. How hard it would be to resist a pretty nineteen-year-old girl.

  This was also rationalization, I thought. I did not like the idea of Zahid having sex with my daughter, taking advantage of her youth, of her innocence, while criticizing her short stories. Maybe that part was the most bothersome to me. He was supposed to be building her confidence. I would have told Zahid this, except that we did not talk about my daughter.

  “I don’t want to tell you not to tell her.”

  That is what he said.

  “But you don’t want me to?” I said. “Is that correct?”

  Zahid agreed. I turned on the movie.

  And now, Rachel and I stood outside the house, together, looking in. It seemed symbolic, as if Zahid were an intruder. I could call the police and have him removed, arrested.

  “Something is going on,” Rachel said. “I know you are lying to me. It just makes it worse when you deny it.”

  I hesitated.

  “You spend every day with him,” she said.

  She did not know. She was guessing.

  “We do our own thing,” I said. “He sits in your father’s office and he writes. He makes pleasant dinner conversation, I grant you that, but I have been missing you. We were watching a movie, just now, waiting for you to come home.”

  “You are a terrible liar,” Rachel said.

  She looked down at her backpack, like there might be something in it she wanted to show me.

  “What is it, honey?” I said. Because Rachel had started crying again. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  I remembered what it was like, to be her age, to feel everything that intensely. It also did not seem that different from right now. I was also feeling things intensely. My heart flip-flopped. Maybe it was me, hurting my daughter, and how could I explain that away?

/>   “I want you to stay away from the Thorntons,” I said.

  “Seriously?”

  “You haven’t forgotten, have you, what happened? At the school?”

  “No,” Rachel said. “Of course not.”

  “You were at college.”

  “So?”

  “That entire family is seriously disturbed, honey. Not just Theo Thornton. All of them. Even the little girl.”

  “I am not talking to you about this.”

  “But that was Ian, wasn’t it? Dropping you off just now?”

  “I just said that I’m not talking to you about this.”

  “That doesn’t work for me.”

  “You’re lying to me, about him,” Rachel said, pointing to the house. “That doesn’t work for me, either.”

  “Your father left me for a pilot,” I said. “Do you remember that?”

  “The pilot. Mandy,” Rachel said. “Like the Barry Manilow song. How could I forget?”

  I did not like the way this conversation was going. I had told Rachel, back when Jonathan and I split, that I was okay with it. Only it wasn’t okay. I don’t know why it had taken me so long to realize this.

  “And so that makes it all right?” Rachel said. “Whatever it is you are doing now. Because of Mandy.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It does.”

  Shit, I thought, shit shit shit. I wasn’t sure what I had done, what I’d just admitted to. I had admitted to nothing, it was more like in principle. In principle, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I was doing with Zahid. Except, of course, that there was. It was wrong. I knew that.

  She was my daughter.

  “Seriously, Rachel. I am being very serious,” I said, trying to regain control. “Everything about that family is toxic. Richard Thornton collects guns. He has had his picture taken with Trump. Did you hear me? Amelia is in counseling at school.”

  “You aren’t supposed to tell me that, Mom. That’s a violation of her privacy. I like Amelia. What is wrong with you?”

  “And that boy,” I continued. “The older one. Ian.” I had actually watched an episode of his TV show. He had taken off his shirt, displaying a hairless, almost disturbingly perfect chest. He had proceeded to take off the actress’s shirt, she was wearing a pink underwire bra, and they had continued to talk, half-undressed, as if they were one hundred years old, plotting a murder, and then a commercial came on and I turned off the TV. “What do we know about him?”

  “Exactly. You don’t know anything about him. So suspend judgment.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t trust him. There is something about his expression. He is ice-cold. Even his character on the show was plotting a murder.”

  “You’ve watched it?” Rachel seemed surprised. “You knew he was on TV?”

  “I would not trust him alone with any young woman,” I said. “Especially you. You’re my daughter. I love you. Don’t you see? That is why I worry.”

  “And you trust him?” Rachel asked.

  She pivoted back toward the house. Zahid. She wanted to know if I trusted Zahid.

  “It’s two different things,” I said.

  Rachel looked at me like I was full of shit.

  “I trust him,” I said.

  “I don’t,” Rachel said. “I think he is just as toxic. I don’t just think this. I know it.”

  She knew it.

  How? How did she know?

  What did she know?

  And her father, he said he knew.

  He had seen us walking, walking on the beach.

  They did not know, but they knew.

  What was the problem? Zahid and I were both adults. I had done nothing wrong, nothing. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake her. This daughter of mine would go back to college and lead her own life, and what about me? Wasn’t I allowed to be happy? Why couldn’t I have him?

  “You are like a child, Mom,” Rachel said. “You don’t know anything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “When was the last time you went on a date?”

  “That is irrelevant.”

  Zahid had not left the window. He was standing there, watching us as we watched him. He should have walked away.

  “He is like a big man-child!” Rachel screamed at me. “He is using you, Mom, it is so incredibly obvious, I don’t know how you don’t see it.”

  “No,” I said. “That isn’t true.”

  “Oh my God. He is using you for this house. For the swimming pool. For the room to write in. For the meals you make for him. He is using you for the fucking grilled chicken with tarragon. He eats all of the strawberries.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not true. I am nobody’s wife.”

  “Exactly!” Rachel screamed. “That is what I am saying. He wants a mother.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  “Your words,” Rachel said. “Not mine.”

  I was stunned. I felt my mouth hanging open. Rachel stormed inside, carrying her backpack with her, and I followed behind her. She slammed the door in my face. I opened it. She was already halfway up the stairs.

  “Rachel,” I called out to her. “Let’s sit down and talk about everything. I don’t think you understand. You have the wrong idea,” I said. She did. She did. She did have the wrong idea. Zahid was still standing in the living room. Frozen. Useless. “Let’s all of us talk about this,” I said. “We can talk about it.”

  “Fuck you,” Rachel said. She was talking to both of us.

  Her bedroom door slammed behind her. Posey started barking. I went over to the poodle to calm her down. Poodles, they don’t like violence. This wasn’t violence, I reminded myself. This was a fight. It was okay, sometimes people fight. Mothers and daughters. Rachel had had an uneventful adolescence.

  “It’s okay,” I told Posey. I sat down on the floor, petting the dog, Zahid watching us. I had royally fucked up, but I wasn’t even sure how. I could have picked a better boyfriend? But how? Tinder? He was right for me. It was only that Rachel wanted him, too.

  “That didn’t go well,” I said to Zahid.

  “Becca,” he said.

  I should have asked him then. Did you have sexual relations with my daughter? But it would be better not to know. I did not want to know. Why did everything have to be spelled out? I was okay with plausible deniability. I continued to pet the dog. My sweet Posey.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Zahid said, which was such a cliché, I was surprised. I thought he might have something better than that, award-winning writer that he was.

  “I think you should go,” I said, surprising myself. I didn’t want Zahid to leave. I did not want to lose my daughter. I did not see why I should have to choose.

  “Becca?” he said. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to leave.”

  I was glad. I was glad that he did not do what I’d told him to.

  “She is so angry,” I said. “So angry. I don’t know what to do. I have to do something.”

  “Let her be angry,” Zahid said. “She is young. That is their natural state.”

  Somehow Zahid was on the floor, too, on the other side of Posey. He leaned over the dog and kissed me. It was incredibly risky, this kiss, we were out in the open, my daughter upstairs, but this was the right thing for him to do. Zahid was not a coward after all.

  “I don’t want to go,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

  I returned Zahid’s kiss. My daughter already knew. I had not told her, I had taken pains to hide it, but she knew anyway. The way she’d just looked at me, the hate, the contempt, it was as bad as anything could be. I understood that I was making the wrong choice. She was my child. My little girl. My baby. The only child I would ever have. I needed to lead Zahid and his standard poodle to the door. It was the only
thing for me to do and I did not do it.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, I found a new short story slipped under my door. It was well written, like the first one. And mean-spirited. Cruel, even. I certainly no longer felt that Rachel was rooting for me.

  She had moved on from her fictional father and now there was a new character, Zahir, the writer, who has been infected by the very same Amanda. He had also been a passenger on one of her flights, on the way to a job interview.

  This Zahir is never treated for his venereal disease.

  I will get better, he thinks, because basically, he is an idiot. He runs a high fever, but he ignores it. He works on his novel, desperate to finish, getting sicker and sicker. He gives up coffee. He gives up alcohol. He even gives up women. Still, he does not get better. He starts to see spots dancing before his eyes, but he is sure that will get better if he finishes the book. He wakes up one morning and he cannot see.

  He is blind.

  Meanwhile, Amanda, the flight attendant, has changed her ways. She is done with men and she is done with flying. She has quit her job and moved to Morocco, inspired by the Kate Hudson character in Almost Famous. Unlike Zahir, Amanda has received proper medical attention. She has taken her second round of antibiotics.

  Amanda goes to a nightclub wearing a short sequined dress and high-heeled sandals. She catches the eye of a beautiful princess. They dance until the sun comes up.

  Amanda moves into her new girlfriend’s castle, overlooking the sea.

  “You are like no one I have ever met before,” the princess tells her. “I love you. I adore you. I love your bangs.”

  Amanda shrugs, unsurprised.

  Zahid

  Rachel was going to ruin everything for me.

  I knew it and I did not know how to stop it.

  I could beg her.