by Mandy Berman
“No, it’s fine. Why did Liv email you about that?”
“I guess…I don’t know. I guess, without sounding like a prick, it was her way of talking to me.” He looked guilty. “I didn’t, though,” he said. “I mean. I wouldn’t.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I do, though.”
Fiona could feel herself growing drunker as she drained her whiskey. She slumped over the bar, the weight of her torso resting there; it was a comfortable place to land. She lifted a finger to order a third drink from Danny. She noticed that Oliver had drunk his second vodka exceptionally fast.
Oliver gently touched her hand while discreetly shaking his head at Danny. “Should we make it water?”
She looked at him stone-faced. “Beer.”
He considered, conceded. “Two Amstel Lights,” he told Danny, and she scoffed.
“I’m watching my figure,” he said, patting the small gut folded over his lap, and she smiled.
For a few minutes they were quiet, watching the Phillies game. Someone on the Phillies hit a home run, but no one in the bar reacted.
She looked up at Oliver, who remained upright.
“Why aren’t you drunk?” she asked.
“I’m bigger than you,” he said. This pleased her; she loved allusions to her smallness, no matter how oblique.
“So why are you here?” she asked.
“At this bar?”
“No, like, here.” She used both hands to wave all around her, as if to imply, Here Buchanan, here Pennsylvania, here America.
He flipped over the cardboard coaster in front of him. “It’s a job,” he said.
“But so far from home. There are jobs in Berlin! Aren’t you married? Isn’t she mad?”
“My wife—Simone—she’s not mad I’m here, no.”
“Why not?”
She tried signaling Danny for yet another drink but Oliver gently pressed his hands around hers, shook his head once, almost imperceptibly.
“Come on,” she whined.
“How about water,” he said.
“I hate water.”
He drained his own beer, put more bills on the counter for Danny. A water appeared, and he raised it to Fiona’s lips.
“Drink, please.” He said this with such the right mix of confidence and care that she did as she was told, swallowing the plastic cup of water down in one gulp. There was too much ice in it, and she cringed.
“Brain freeze.”
“I feel,” he said, “that I would be remiss to not take you home now.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“I’m going to take you home,” he said, patting her hand once more. “Where do you live?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, but she followed him outside to his car anyway.
* * *
—
Fiona could feel the tinge of an early headache, biding its time. The clock on the car radio said it was only 8:33 P.M. They were near campus, and she told him when to turn left onto North Abbott. He pulled up across from her house and put the car into park.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said. Only she didn’t get out of the car yet.
“You have someone to go with you to pick up your car tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” she said. It would have to be Marley; Lula didn’t have a car, and she certainly wasn’t explaining this situation to Liv. “I don’t want to go inside yet.”
“Okay,” he said, and turned the engine off.
She looked at him. “Did you really do all that stuff that you were accused of?”
He stared out the windshield.
“The girl. Was she underage?”
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea we have this conversation,” he said slowly, measured.
She was feeling brave, less drunk than before, but still with an ounce of carelessness in her.
“She was, wasn’t she?”
He sighed deeply. “I think you should probably go now.”
“Listen. Sometimes the cards get stacked against you,” she said, suddenly feeling very wise, and suddenly feeling like she knew this man, like she could feel sympathy for him, in a way she couldn’t for, say, her own mother. Strangers were easier. “And you have to wonder if you had anything to do with it. I wonder how much I had to do with my own life turning out the way it did.”
“Turned out? You’re what, twenty-one? You’re only getting started.”
At this she could not control the tears.
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“Oh shit.” He scrambled for tissues or napkins in the console. He only came up with a crumpled paper napkin, and handed it to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“No, it’s good you don’t know,” she said, wiping at her face with the dirty napkin. “It feels like you’re the last person on earth who doesn’t know.”
They sat for a few more minutes, not saying anything. Cars drove up and down her street, and students passed by on foot, walking to their off-campus homes. Some were walking in the other direction, already dressed up for the night, toward the frat houses on Phillips Avenue.
When she was ready, she unbuckled her seatbelt. “Thanks again.”
“Water,” he said to her as she shut the passenger door.
It was only then, as Fiona crossed the street to her house, that she looked up and saw a light on in the third-floor window, and Liv, holding a curtain open, standing and watching from it.
* * *
—
Fiona almost made it to her bedroom without being confronted by Liv. Almost.
“Are you sleeping with Oliver Ash?” she asked from the top of the steps.
“I have to go to sleep,” Fiona said, passing Liv into her own room and crawling under the covers with all her clothes on. Liv followed her in.
“Why were you in his car?”
“Water,” Fiona groaned, eyes already closed and head on her pillow.
“Take your shoes off, at least.”
Liv was quiet a moment, and Fiona thought she might have gone.
“If I get you water,” Liv then said, “will you tell me?”
Fiona made a sound that might have meant yes.
Liv returned with the glass and sat at the edge of Fiona’s bed.
Fiona sat up and finished the water in two gulps. She exhaled, caught her breath. This was a pattern lately, it seemed: Fiona was drunk and Liv was taking care of her. Or had this always been their relationship, that of competent caregiver and helpless girl-child? Only, Fiona wasn’t actually that drunk anymore. Just thirsty and tired and headachey and desperately uninterested in talking to Liv about Oliver Ash.
“Okay, spill,” Liv said. She was trying to sound excited and casual, Fiona knew, to disguise her own possessiveness over Oliver. Fiona again felt that hit of perverse satisfaction in knowing more about the situation than Liv realized she did.
“Nothing happened. We ran into each other at a bar, and he drove me home.” Fiona felt slightly protective of Oliver now. He had been kind to her. He had not hit on her, and would not say anything about his sordid past when she asked him. This impressed her, perhaps more than it ought to. She knew that men like him—that is, men in power—were considered laudable for maintaining the bare minimum of decorum. And yet knowing this did not stop her from liking him more.
“What bar?”
“I don’t remember the name.”
Liv looked skeptical, waiting for another piece of information.
“Can I please go to sleep now?” Fiona said.
“Be careful,” Liv said. “You know what happened last time he was teaching.”
“I’m an adult,” Fiona said, “he’s an adult.”
Liv seemed even more intrigued
now, as if the mention of two adults suggested adult activity.
“I promise you,” Fiona said. “Nothing happened. I was too drunk to drive, so he drove me home,” she repeated. “That’s it. I’m not interested.”
She could have asked Liv: If you’re so worried about his past, then why are you emailing him? But she stopped short, out of some innate need to protect Liv’s feelings or ego. She wasn’t sure, if the roles were reversed, that Liv would do the same; she might, in fact, be brutally honest, tell her all about their conversation and make it clear that Oliver wasn’t interested, as a way to gain power over Fiona, couched in an aura of protectiveness and way to give Fiona some “tough love.”
But Fiona would not stoop to that. She felt it was important to let Liv think her secret was her own. Out of some sense of generosity, she wanted to let Liv have her fantasy. She understood the joy fantasies could bring, especially when they weren’t brought down by the hard thud of reality.
“Okay, Fee,” Liv said, seeming satisfied. She stood and walked toward the door. “Get some rest.” She turned off the bedroom light and left.
“I will,” Fiona said, though for a while she lay there with her eyes open, entertaining her own fantasy about Oliver Ash.
* * *
—
The next day Fiona stayed in her room, studying. For Roiphe’s seminar, she was reading The Coquette, a late-eighteenth-century novel about a New England woman whose illegitimate pregnancy leads to her social downfall and, ultimately, her death. The novel was based on the story of a real woman who died at a roadside tavern after giving birth to a stillborn infant. The author had published it under a pseudonym to protect her own identity, because the content of the novel was so scandalous for its time.
Without much of Liv’s help this semester, Fiona was doing her best to keep up with her reading. She knew that her passion for literature had largely dissipated after Helen died, and her anxiety, especially when she was faced with nothing to do but read, was still a challenge. (Wading through French lit, in particular, was a gigantic struggle.) In Professor Roiphe’s class, though, she felt competent, even smart. It gave her the sense that she might be on an upswing.
She had not always done well with pre-nineteenth-century literature, with its antiquated language and often outdated storylines, but the subject matter here—women wronged because of their sexual decisions—was one that newly interested her. Sex had lately taken on a different meaning for her: as an outlet of some kind. She wouldn’t go so far as to say it was an avenue for validation, though she knew her friends thought that. She could admit that the attention from men themselves was validating—it was like a hit, a rush of euphoria that never lasted long enough. And though she’d lost weight out of grief and anxiety, the attention to her body from men had grown since she’d gotten thinner, and perpetuated itself, until she got to a point where it was easy to not eat a lot because being thin meant she would always feel this desired.
That and sex were two different things. The attention, she wanted. The sex, that was simply the next logical thing to do. It was not particularly enjoyable. It was a physical expression of what she could not express in any other way: her bottom. The bottom of her grief and the bottom of her guilt. In having not-particularly-enjoyable sex, she felt she was getting what she deserved.
She couldn’t totally square that with the women in these early American books, who seemed to be making sexual decisions out of romance and love. Fiona had never been in love, but she had had a series of extreme crushes that felt like love for weeks on end, until another crush introduced itself and took the place of the first. Or, sometimes, the crushes lived in tandem with one another, and she would rank them in her head, their positions changing constantly. Even she knew these crushes were not love, though she wasn’t quite sure how love would feel different—was it not intoxicating, all-encompassing? Did it not keep you happily awake at night, give you the jitters in the daytime, squash your appetite, make you perk up when you heard his name? When she didn’t have a crush—as she didn’t at the beginning of this semester—her life felt empty, joyless, half-formed.
And now: she had a new crush. He was one of the two men in her Roiphe seminar: a long-haired, bearded poet whom she and Liv called Mountain Man. Mountain Man’s real name was Dave, which was unfortunate. He was not from the mountains, but he looked as if he’d been hiking for days. For Liv, the nickname was not intended to be complimentary, though Fiona liked that unshaven, unwashed vibe. He was, in fact, from New Jersey. He barely talked in class, but when he did, the comments he made seemed profound. He did the readings. Perhaps he sounded more profound than he was because he spoke in a soft, husky voice and tucked his hair behind his ears as he did so. He wore wide button-down linen shirts with no collar, reminiscent of Indian kurtas, and ragged jeans, the same pair always, frayed at the ankles, and filthy canvas Converse low-tops.
Fiona had tried clicking through his Facebook pictures, but she could only see a limited number, since they weren’t Facebook friends, and she didn’t want to add him—at least not until they had had one or two conversations. There was a photo of him holding an electric guitar, standing in front of a microphone, a stage light casting him in a pink glow. Another of him climbing up a steep rock, big bushy green trees up ahead, wearing long denim shorts, hiking boots, and no shirt. The photo was geo-tagged at a mountain in the Adirondacks, taken by a girl named Erin Kingsley. Fiona had clicked Erin’s profile: she was petite and cute, had short, dyed-red hair and a nose ring, and was from the same town in New Jersey as Dave. The rock picture had been taken nearly a year ago; she was a high school sweetheart turned long-term college girlfriend, Fiona surmised, but it was very possible they’d broken up in the last year, since there were no pictures taken by her or with her on his Facebook since then. On his profile, the relationship status field was left blank.
Now Fiona entertained daydreams about herself and Mountain Man: going on hikes themselves, taking a weekend trip to the Poconos to see the foliage. Standing in the front row at one of his shows, him singing a song he had written for her, introducing it vaguely (“This one is for a girl I know”), and then winking at her so fast only she could see it. Having sex for the first time, both tender and hot, slow and sweaty, his hair getting all over her, him making sure she finished first.
She did not have a game plan about how to talk to him, because she never saw him at parties; in fact, she never saw him around at all, except in class. The issue was, she was scared to flirt; she didn’t know how to do it; she always felt incredibly self-conscious partaking in an act so obvious that both people knew it was happening. This was why her sexual encounters tended to be initiated only at parties; alcohol made everything easier.
And, she did admit, if only to herself, that a second, in-tandem crush on Oliver Ash was forming. She’d been thinking a lot about that picture with his family in his office, and about the fact that he was a father. What was more powerful, more sexy, than a man having a child? Having to provide for a family? She’d never had a crush on a dad before, and now she wondered why not. She began, without even realizing that she had feelings quite this strong, imagining his wife dying in a tragic accident and him taking Fiona back to Berlin to be his child’s nanny, a Maria von Trapp. Then, slowly, they would fall in love. Was Fiona ready to be a mother figure? This would be the central crisis, but ultimately she would find that her love for the child and for Oliver far surpassed anything she could have imagined, and over time she would step into the role with tenderness, care, and aplomb.
There was a knock on the door. Fiona looked up from her book; Marley was in the doorway, holding a mug and wearing her Saturday clothes: gray sweatpants and a gray tank top.
“What are you reading?” Marley asked.
Fiona showed her the book cover.
“Is it good?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Didn’t you need
a ride somewhere?”
Both of them still in their sweatpants, the two girls got into Marley’s car—a used two-door Toyota that Marley had bought with her own savings from her summers lifeguarding (her parents, though they had some money, were big on their kids paying their own way)—and drove back to the run-down bar.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Marley asked, seeming skeptical when they crossed the train tracks.
“It’s a mile farther or so, I think,” Fiona said, and then recognized the big plot of land for sale, the empty lot.
“What were you doing over here, anyway?”
“I was just getting a drink.”
Marley glanced over at Fiona.
“It’s up ahead. Here, on the right.”
Marley turned into the lot and pulled up next to Fiona’s car. Fiona opened the passenger door of Marley’s car.
“Thanks,” she said, though she could tell she was not free yet; Marley had something to say, and Fiona would have to listen: her fee for the ride.
“You should be careful,” Marley said. It was no surprise that Liv had already shared with their roommate what she’d seen. How many times did she have to be told to be careful? Did her friends really think her so irresponsible, so lacking in good judgment? Sure, she’d been promiscuous the past few years, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t made these decisions for herself, hadn’t chosen to go home with this guy or that. She was an adult. She had agency.
“Marley,” she said, careful to be particularly measured and calm. “I’m not sleeping with him. Not that that should matter, actually.”
“You can sleep with whoever you want,” Marley said.
“So what are we talking about?”
Marley’s hands were still on the steering wheel.
“I guess I’m worried about the reasons. I mean, it’s no secret that I think Oliver Ash is a bad person. But what’s more concerning to me…It’s, well, do you actually want to sleep with these guys? Because if you do, then, by all means, that’s your prerogative. It seems, from the vantage point of a concerned friend, that you have this wound—a gaping wound, actually, which anyone in your position would have—but you aren’t taking care of it. You are just covering it with Band-Aids, little by little, in hopes that it might heal on its own, that those small bandages are enough.”