Stranger, Father, Beloved (2 page)

“Molly, so glad you could come. How are things going for you?”

She appeared relieved to see him and stepped closer. He noticed that her face had a distinct line where the layer of foundation ended along her jawline. The skin on her neck was paler and less alive but more real. Women seemed to love Michael's height, just over six feet, and his thin trim frame. Many, upon meeting him, would glance up at him, take him in, and their eyes would gleam with instant respect. He had a full head of hair, large eyes, and delicate features. By no means considered universally handsome, he was also not considered unhandsome. He was not mentioned as one or the other, which left it all open to interpretation.

“It's good to get out. You know how it is,” she replied.

Michael nodded. He pitied her, standing there in her olive-green dress and slightly worn-out black shoes. Those must be the shoes she always wore to parties, every year for God knew how long.

“Where's your daughter? I've always wanted to meet her after seeing her photo on your desk.”

“She's in hiding—you know how teenagers are. They never want to show themselves.” Molly was unmarried and seemed resigned to her fate. Desperately, Michael thought of what else he could say to her. His daughter was in hiding, and his severely asthmatic six-year-old son, little Max, was already asleep. There was nothing else to say about either one of them that he could think of.

Michael felt as if Molly were forever searching his face for something. She was one of those mysterious women who was drawn to him and sought him out for some reason he could not identify. She repulsed him, but just because he could, he began to flirt with her, listening with his full being, talking sensuously, lightly touching her arm. He knew those attentions were delighting her, as they were so different from his normally cold demeanor. Just when he had her excited, he excused himself.

Then he was back outside in a dark yard. Nancy had lit little candles, just as they had planned, and the air was lovely and warm, the lighting flattering to everyone, equalizing them all in an image of God's beauty. All faces could bend and slant into something nice to look at if just given a kind and delicate light. Michael's friends were young men again in this light, and the women were dangerous beings, deliciously different from them, whom they loved to watch glide around. His wife was not among the nymphets, so he went inside to find her.

Michael found Nancy sitting on a chair in the living room talking earnestly with the man from the bathroom. The man sat across from
her on a yellow armchair that matched hers in color and fabric, and they both had wicked grins on their faces. They sat next to a small table with a delicate blue glass lamp on it that cast a soft, intimate glow on their faces. The light seemed to separate the pair from the world around them. Michael thought of going up to them and entering their pleasant conversation but then thought better of it. They were speaking in such a way as to stop him in his tracks.

Time was moving slowly in their corner of the room. Nancy was leaning comfortably forward on her elbows. Michael saw that his wife was grinning with an ecstatic happiness, and he knew he had never before elicited from her such a response of unrestrained joy. She appeared to him a different woman from the one he had married. The man was studying Nancy as she spoke, clearly amused by her, his lips parted ever so slightly, hanging on her every word, as if they were sharing a secret. Nancy would occasionally laugh with her head cocked back, a wild gesture Michael was sure he had never seen in her before. He was amazed to see her so animated, so unself-conscious. A stab of jealousy coursed through him, and then just as quickly it vanished, leaving only a sense of wonder.

The weight that normally coated Nancy's face seemed to have miraculously left her features—they were sharp and bold, and a sense of preciousness clung to her, surrounded her. Her hands seemed more delicate, her mouth and eyes more alive, more passionate. Michael was sure that she had never looked like this, never once, until now. He watched her and the man, whose own features, in their preciousness, seemed a mirror of Nancy's. They both had happy, well-cared-for faces.

It was at that moment that Michael realized, without a doubt, that this was the man Nancy should have married. The energy around them was electric, and as he watched them he felt a strange ­shaking
sensation rising up from his legs. This realization was immediate, could not be explained, and could not be refuted by anyone. He had never in his life been more certain of anything. Their two bodies were meant to be joined. It occurred to him that perhaps they were the reason for all of his erections. Their coming together, a process that must have taken much time to come about, had finally arrived, and the sheer magnitude of its power descending on the house had been arousing him for weeks.

Michael knew that
she
didn't know that. She was not the kind of person to open herself to such forces. She could not see that the man before her was more closely related to her romantic destiny than her own husband was. She was unaware of the force of change that had descended upon their house, slowly, bit by bit, over the course of their miserable years as a family. A force sent to free them.

To her credit, Michael was sure that the man was someone she had just met and toward whom her intentions were totally innocent. Yet he still saw it. At that moment, something restless that had been previously undefined began to crystallize inside Michael. He could feel his molecules realigning. As people shifted around him, mingling and murmuring, he kept his eyes focused on the two of them. It was really quite beautiful to witness such a match perched before him. He drew in his breath in a trance and watched as they chatted casually, completely oblivious to their obvious, deep compatibility.

Michael wanted secretly to clear out all the guests, tiptoe to the door, and lock it behind him, sealing the two of them in a private world they could explore together. He knew if they were left alone in a timeless realm, they would go on talking forever, or at least late into the night until they fell asleep together. And their sex would be
beautiful and innocent, like two teenagers having their first time on a bed of sheets and covers they made in the woods.

Michael stood transfixed, smiling at the thought.

At the party's end, Michael stared outside at the lamppost, which lit up a section of the driveway and left the rest in darkness. It was getting colder; the spring nights still had their chill. Stray fog was drifting through his yard as it always did; he could see an occasional flicker as it blanketed the light post. The clouds moved quickly out here over the rocky coasts and dark, cold waters surrounding their peninsula; the sky was constantly in motion with charged gray matter—above, a mass moving purposefully forward; below, playful swirls of mist skipping over the houses and trees, causing mischief. Some of Rhode Island was tacky, but this little strip of land was positively wild and elegant, he felt, like an old English marsh. If he got too caught in his head, he knew to come outside. The cool, wind-filled air always dissipated his anxiety, the paranoia that had marred his life. It was like an evil growth, a malignancy that clung to his side and made thoughts arrive in his mind at a different timbre from regular people's.

The paranoid brain was fast and often perceived an innocent look or comment as mocking or cruel; hints were amplified and meanings distorted. Talking with other people could be a horrifying experience, though Michael could usually pass for normal. Most of the pain was internal, a private hell that his silent, brooding twin offered up daily tickets to. To make matters worse, the older he got, the less his medication seemed to work. It still put a sheath over about thirty-five percent of the anxiety, but the rest stayed strong and functional, doing what it did best. At work, though he was admired and had made it into senior management, nothing to worry about anymore, he still had to
flick a switch when talking to other people. That clicked on the full smile and the easy handshake, which banished the dark thoughts and lit up his eyes, creating the impression that the person before him was the most important person in the world. The autoswitch clicked off once he left the conversation, and the great swell of tension returned and claimed him again.

But coming outside seemed to free him from the dark mass and the dark mind, and the elements of wind, water, and earth pulled him away from himself. There were the pine trees, the sea-misted air, the sounds of the water on stormy nights, all the little animals and birds, hawks and owls that moved around the outside of his house, securing shelter and adapting to the moods of the atmosphere. In a sense, it was unnatural to live in a solid house that was never affected by the weather. If he had been an animal or lived in a house that was not sealed with sterility, his mind might have been freer and less paranoid. The salt air would soothe the malignancy, coax it away into the night.

In his study, Michael could hear Nancy cleaning up in the kitchen and could not bring himself to go and help her. Looking out into the hallway, he could see the blaze of lights at the other end of the hall. Nancy always cleaned with every single light turned on, so that each square inch could be scanned and no detail missed. The overheads were blaringly electric and hurt his eyes. Nancy was very good at keeping house, and her diligence with cleaning allowed Michael to relax when he moved through one orderly room to another. When he needed a snack later, the kitchen would be serene and spotless, a small lamp left on in the corner of the room to allow him to get his late-night snack in relative darkness.

Michael knew his wife was avoiding him, as he could turn hateful from drinking. Or, he thought, maybe she wanted to be alone—maybe she was thinking of the man she had talked with at the party. He closed the door to the study and settled into his burgundy leather chair. He pulled out his secret bottle of scotch and poured some into the glass he held, which still had ice at the bottom. An excitement tinged with anxiety burned in his stomach as flashes of Nancy talking so flirtatiously with the other man lit up his mind. He would give her this gift for so many of the wasted years she had spent as his wife. He could deliver her this man as a prize for enduring the years of disappointments. Though he was excited, the alcohol slowed his mind down with each sip. He had Alex's essay in his lap, but he was too disoriented to begin reading it tonight. He reached up and snapped off the standing lamp next to his leather chair. The room was mostly dark. Miraculously, he found himself going in and out of dreams. More miraculous still, his wife had gone to bed, had not rap-rap-rapped on the door to see what he was up to.

When he awoke from a deep sleep, it was three in the morning. That was quite an accomplishment, sleeping for a few hours. Out of habit, he stood from the chair and made his way to the stairway to the second floor to join his wife in bed. Perhaps he could get one or two more hours of sleep; his mind was foggy enough to allow it. Sliding face-first onto the massive bed, he stretched out on his half of the mattress. She knew not to come to his side.

CHAPTER TWO

From her window, Ryan observed her parents standing in the yard. They both seemed at ease, satisfied with the evening, as they stood on the lawn waving. It was a rare moment of unity between them. Her father was standing a couple of feet from her mother on the grass, saying good-bye to the last of the guests. He never stood too close to her. They were watching their friends Gayle and Todd get into their car. Her father held a drink and was no doubt sad to see this particular couple leave, as they were old university friends. Her window was open, and through the screen she could hear bits of their conversation on the lawn. She could hear her father rambling to her mother about a certain joke that so-and-so had told, a joke that was probably way over her mother's head anyway. She felt there was nothing sadder than to hear him babble about all his achievements and awards won. It was pathetic to watch her mother remain silent, listening, as she, having no such track record, simply could not relate.

When she looked at her father lately, she knew in her heart that something was wrong with him. She had seen her mother whisper hushed concerns to him when he made himself a drink, and she had
seen the pill bottles. Yes, there was most likely something wrong with him. She had tried several times to get her hands on one of his bottles to see the label, but she had never managed to find one. They were well hidden, wherever they were.

Ryan watched with irritation as her parents came back toward the house, both smiling, but for their own reasons. Her father always held his body stiffly, his shoulders unnaturally hunched toward his ears. He had unusually long, thin limbs and long, almost feminine fingers. Her mother had never been a beauty, and her figure had suffered from childbearing. Standing next to her tall, brittle-boned husband, she looked even shorter and rounder. As Ryan looked down upon them, they appeared to be mismatched.

That night, Ryan focused her thoughts on the fact that she would be having dinner the following evening at Jill's. For more than a year she had been going to her friend Carol's house after school, but these days it was to see Carol's mother, Jill, not Carol, who was present in the house, sequestered in her room.

Growing up, Ryan and Carol had been inseparable. They had played together in grade school and middle school and slept over at each other's houses on weekends. Their houses were in the same neighborhood, and they'd used to race to find each other after school, but at the beginning of high school, two years ago, they had begun to drift apart. Jill's house sat on the edge of the forest, a hybrid of the small local workmen's homes on the outskirts and those of the giant houses hidden within the forest. Many of the houses on the edge of town or outside had aluminum siding and squat, boxy shapes. A lot of local fishermen and plumbers lived there, as well as the family that mowed their lawn. Jill's was not a Cape Cod–style house, just a
­regular one, painted bright yellow, of medium size, neither impressive nor meager.

Back when Ryan had ventured down the road almost every night to spend the evening at Carol's house, she would pass the large beautiful houses tucked away behind their driveways, flowers overflowing in fuschia, yellow, violet. She passed homes with bursts of roses growing along wooden weathered gates, red, white, and pink roses, a preview of what was to come a hundred feet behind them in the dazzling gray houses with clean walls, happy pets, and well-fed children. She sometimes saw hummingbirds zoom up to the feeders that held the syrupy golden liquid they swallowed with true zeal. A little further down, she began to pass houses that had fewer flowers, whose lawns were more scraggly, and that were closer to the road. The structures became less and less magical until they became downright oppressively the same. Right before that point, where all turned ordinary, stood Carol's house, still among the cheery and cared for, to some degree.

Ryan would arrive out of breath, and usually she and Carol would heat up the microwaveable Betty Crocker chocolate cake with frosting and then eat it with either milk or orange juice, depending on what Jill had in stock. Then they would run up the stairs together and read magazines. She could remember the bizarre children's games they had played together. One of their favorites was called “college”—a role-playing game where they put tennis balls in their training bras and walked around the bedroom bending over in front of imaginary suitors and talking about parties. For some reason, the game had been immensely satisfying. One night, they had played the game wearing their two-piece bathing suits, tennis balls stuffed inside the padded tops.

With several books slung under her arm, Ryan had sauntered around the room and smiled and waved at male students she ­imagined
she was passing. Carol was stretched out on one of her twin beds, her legs slightly spread, coyly fanning herself.

“Janet, you are such a tease!” Ryan exclaimed. “Why did you turn down Bobby's offer to take you to his summer house? He is so hot.”

“Stephanie,” Carol belted back, “how can I go with him after what he did to Katie's reputation? He torched it.” “Torching” was a term often used at their middle school; it referred to a moment when a girl was suddenly, out of the blue, humiliated or abandoned by the people she felt were
her people
. The old term had been “dropping the bomb” and implied surprising a selected girl by refusing to speak to her or acknowledge her presence at all, but, over time, they had grown tired of it, and instead preferred the tidy, efficient term “torching.” Typically applied only to female friendship, the concept was taken a step further in “college,” where Carol and Ryan created sexual torching, which they supposed involved humiliation of some kind between a man and a woman after they had “had sex.”

Then it was Carol's turn to take a lap around the room. Rising from the bed dramatically, she walked as if drunk; deliberate in all her movements, swinging her legs. When she reached the corner of the room, she bent over a chair and rested one hand on each of its arms. These pauses were for the imaginary male audience that was always circling around them. After hours of endless flirting with made-up people, they collapsed on Carol's bed and began flipping through magazines.

They didn't know it yet, but that summer just before high school was to be their last with children's games of any kind. They began to lose their sense of humor. When they were younger, their lightheartedness had lit up every room they were in and every game they engaged in. They'd made up scripts for fake soap operas and used
Ryan's family's video camera to film the scenes. They had two soap operas; one was called
Teardrops on My Lingerie
and the other
The Young and the Chestless
. But, recently, with games like “college,” the tone had changed, had turned slightly more serious, more studied, and although it had still been playful, there was considerably less joy in it for both of them. Things were shifting, changing, and though Ryan could hardly have articulated it at the time, looking back now, it was as if a dark cloud had settled over their little section of the neighborhood.

At the end of middle school, Carol hadn't fared well; she had emerged from puberty slightly ugly, Ryan thought. Maybe it wasn't quite ugliness exactly, but her face was large and her features seemed out of proportion. The skin on her cheeks was also continually glazed with little acne bumps, shiny red colonies that could not be rubbed off. However, that was not the full reason Ryan felt awkward around her. It was mainly because, through these unfortunate physical developments, Carol's personality had changed. The knowledge that she now had worse cards to play than when she had been a cute, goofy girl made her paranoid around other people. The changes in her were subtle, but she seemed meaner and more guarded in her movements. In the girls' locker room, she was careful about who saw her undress, and she no longer smiled easily. Along with this new restraint, the beginnings of an unshakable sadness hung around her.

Ryan could recall one of the pivotal days between the two of them when they were twelve—they were putting on their bathing suits to use the slip-and-slide Jill had set up in the yard for them. As Ryan was putting on her favorite red one-piece bathing suit, and before she pulled it up to her waist, the two girls looked at the traces of her pubic hair and the tiny buds on Ryan's chest. It came as a shock when Carol gave a short, nasty laugh.

“I don't know if that's how it's supposed to look, but it looks weird to me,” Carol said, and almost immediately Ryan was ashamed. Carol was gazing intently down at the floor, her face burning red. She already had on her blue Speedo bathing suit, and her short, stocky body showed no signs of any of the desired attributes. As they had both been waiting for those signs of life to begin showing themselves, it had never occurred to either of them that one would start before the other or that one of them would fall short of the ideal. Carol seemed to be looking more and more like a miniature Jill; her body was thicker, her face was pudgy, and traces of her biological father, who had supposedly been a startlingly good-looking young man, were, day by day, getting lost in the shuffle.

“At least I have something going on. You haven't changed at all since last year,” Ryan answered. She curled her fingers tighter over her small breasts, as if Carol could somehow take them from her or stop the growing process from continuing. At that moment, each girl felt possessed by a deep-seated wariness of the other, a feeling neither would ever be able to shake. Each felt the other capable of harm and the one to blame should problems arise in the future.

At the start of high school, they tried to keep a friendly rapport going, even occasionally going out to a movie together at the local theater, but over the last year, as they had both turned sixteen, all attempts at connecting felt entirely forced, and they had stopped spending time together completely.

Now Carol was always staying after school for sports, field hockey, basketball, softball, so Ryan continued her habit of going over to her house to spend time with Carol's mother, Jill, instead of returning to her own home. It would be just the two of them for hours, and when Carol finally did come home, she would take her tray of food up to her room and shut herself up there for most of the
night. Ryan, unsure why she kept going back there, knew only that she found Jill's presence soothing.

The next day, in the late afternoon, Ryan spread her biology books over Jill's kitchen table. The kitchen smelled of lemon, as Jill had cleaned it just before Ryan arrived. Ryan knew that Jill loved having her over and she was the reason the kitchen counters gleamed under the bright, cheery lights. Jill stood across the kitchen, making egg salad and, as usual, was completely caught up in her own world. She seemed to expect nothing from Ryan, and Ryan appreciated that more than she could express. Jill had a nature CD playing on the stereo. It was called
Distant Thunder
, and the rumbling noises and cricket sounds made the stereo speakers vibrate and hum as the waves of sound emerged and took over the room.

“Jill, I think the CD is meant to be played quietly to have a relaxing effect.”

Jill smiled and poured some herbs into the egg salad. “I like it like this. It blasts through your system. Really stirs you up. Anything that stirs you up is good.” But she went over and lowered the volume a little.

“Yeah, I guess you're right.” Ryan sighed and looked back down at her books. She noticed that this new Jill was freer with her speech and seemed to have adopted an “it's all good” motto. Maybe all the self-help books she had read were finally making an impact. The old Jill had been shy and hesitating. There were only traces left of that insecure creature, Ryan felt. When just she and Jill were together, she felt the two of them had the ease that close friends share.

Until recently, she and Carol had always laughed at Jill, who had never married and so had raised her daughter by herself. They found
it funny that she refused to dye her graying hair or shave her armpits and that she always seemed to be one step behind the times. She had a collection of glass mushrooms that was housed in a rickety wooden case in the corner of the living room. She always seemed to be embarking on some new, strange project that embarrassed the girls, such as growing sprouts in a little machine she kept in her bedroom, studying tai chi, or learning Portuguese from cassette tapes while she cooked meals in the kitchen. Back then, Jill hadn't seemed to mind that the girls were always giggling at her or rolling their eyes. She had taken it all in with generous patience and usually even laughed at herself or made a self-deprecating comment such as “I got to stay busy somehow, guys.”

Jill had had a string of boyfriends, each of whom lasted for a few months. They would appear at the house, each of them slightly older than Jill, and hesitantly walk past the two girls playing in the yard on their way to the front steps of the porch. Three years ago, the procession of big-bellied men had stopped for some reason, and Jill had, without explanation, found herself permanently single. It was clear that she was somehow unlikely to date again—all three of them felt it intuitively, although each was unsure why.

The last beau, Robbie, had been the most likable of the bunch, although by the time he came around, Jill and her daughter were for the most part disillusioned with the idea of having a permanent man in their lives. Robbie had the bad luck of arriving in the aftermath of Andy, who had been the most hurtful of all. Andy's unpredictability had taken them all by surprise. Ryan had memories of Andy, who had been mild-mannered in his initial persistent pursuit of Jill, settling into a comfortable routine of having dinner with Jill and Carol and Ryan, and spending the night. But then, one summer morning, he had awakened to find that Jill was not in bed with him. She had just
gone to get some groceries, and he had become enraged at her for not leaving him a note. When she returned forty minutes later, he had confronted her by screaming and throwing a chair against the wall, waking both Carol and Ryan.