The Guy Not Taken (29 page)

Marion knew that good mothers weren’t supposed to have favorites. So she tried doggedly to ignore that, almost without exception, watching Jason swim gave her more pleasure than watching her older children do almost anything else. She was scrupulous about allotting equal time to Josh’s lacrosse, Amy’s singing, and Lisa’s soccer. But she supposed they knew she’d always feel some slight disappointment that they weren’t swimmers.

It is hard to keep secrets from your children. This was what Marion thought as she did laps next to her son in the Marriott’s postage-stamp-size indoor pool. Side by side for thirty minutes they planed through the lanes, wrapped in the cocoon of the water and in their own silence.

•   •   •

They had dinner at a Thai restaurant near their hotel. Jason built a pyramid out of Sweet ’n Low and sugar packets, then bulldozed it with his fork.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Marion asked. Jason shrugged and started arranging the sugar into a star. He worked carefully, pushing the packets along with just the tips of his long fingers. “You’ll do fine. You’re very articulate,” she said drily, struggling to contain her frustration.

The waitress took their order. Jason asked for shredded beef, extra spicy, and kept his eyes down. He swept the star aside and started constructing a complicated-looking form involving piles of stacked sugar in a circle.

“You know, when Amy interviewed at Penn, they asked her, ‘If you could be any vegetable, what would you be?’ “ Marion tried.

Jason’s lip curled. “Stupid.”

“I think she said she wanted to be an eggplant.”

“Why?”

“That I don’t remember.”

“Weren’t you there?”

“No,” Marion said softly. “Your father took her.” Jason started gnawing at his lower lip, vague hurt on his face. She backpedaled quickly. “But really, hon, you’ve got nothing to worry about. They’ll probably just ask about your swimming, what you might want to study, why you want to go there . . .”

“My mom, the guidance counselor,” Jason said. It took Marion a minute to realize she was being teased.

The waitress set their steaming plates down. “My, what is that?” she asked Jason, pointing to the complicated circle he’d created with the pink and brown packets. Jason smiled swiftly at Marion, then looked up at the waitress with absolute seriousness.

“Stonehenge.”

The waitress laughed politely and left fast. Marion looked at her son. “Stonehenge?”

Jason nodded modestly. “It’s not quite to scale, but I didn’t have much to work with.”

Marion smiled, feeling relief flood through her like something sweet she’d swallowed. This was the Jason she knew.

But by morning his good humor had evaporated. He sulked on the drive to New Jersey, jamming the radio buttons too hard, flicking the lock on the door up and down until Marion, preoccupied with thoughts of the telephone calls she would need to make—first Lisa, then Amy, then Josh—finally snapped at him to stop. They rode in tense silence for twenty minutes until Marion pulled off the highway.

“Drive,” she said, and smiled a little when Jason looked surprised. “Go on. I’m feeling reckless.”

“Fine,” he said curtly, refusing to be humored. He slid behind the wheel, jerked the seat backward to accommodate his long legs, and pulled into traffic. Marion closed her eyes.

Usually, Jason was a good driver, fast and confident. But that day he was too aggressive: swinging the car in and out of lanes, growling under his breath at drivers who weren’t getting out of his way quickly enough. Marion forced herself not to criticize. She dozed fitfully, waking every few minutes to find herself hurtling toward the back end of an eighteen-wheeler or swerving into the passing lane.

Abandoning the hope of falling asleep, she sat up and unfolded the map. Princeton was a tiny black speck. It looked far too small, too physically incidental to be the setting for a broken heart. She traced her finger down the turnpike, along the fragile blue lines that ran through the state like veins, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. Here, she thought. You are here.

•   •   •

The information session was held in a wood-paneled classroom with soaring ceilings and many-paned windows that still managed to be stuffy. The smell of chalk dust and nervous sweat reminded Marion of her own college days at Mount Holyoke, before she’d met Hal, when she thought she might have grown
up to become a doctor or a diplomat, anything but a married housewife in the suburbs with four children and a backyard swimming pool. The difference was that now it was the parents who scurried around with forced smiles and sweaty palms, comparing test scores and GPAs, while the kids relaxed, chatting around the punch bowl. The admissions officer, a dapper, bearded man, was easily recognizable as he stood in the corner in a black-and-orange tie. With fifteen parents crowding around him, jabbering and gesticulating, he had the look of a gracious lord of the manor entertaining the petitions of serfs.

Marion supposed she should join the crowd, it being Princeton, Jason’s first choice, not to mention Hal’s alma mater. But instead, she toyed with her swizzle stick and found herself wishing passionately for a cigarette, even though she hadn’t smoked in more than twenty years. Her headache was back, a dull throbbing at her forehead, like fists pounding on a distant door. A jovial young man in a Princeton sweatshirt walked up and handed her a large black-and-orange sticker reading “PMS.”

“What does PMS stand for?” she asked.

The beaming young man barely paused. “Prospective Mother—Son,” he replied.

“But I’m not a prospective mother!” said Marion. “I already am his mother. I’ve got papers to prove it!”

He gave her a weak smile and moved on to the next parent (PFD, which, Marion guessed, stood for Prospective Father—Daughter).

Marion turned to the woman on her right, expecting sympathy. “Can you believe this?” she said. “PMS!”

The woman spoke to Marion out of the corner of her mouth. “I’d keep it quiet if I were you,” she muttered. “No sense in making trouble if you want your son to have a chance.”

“Oh, come on,” Marion said. “You can’t believe they’d hold
it against him that I refuse to wear this!” She yanked off the sticker, wadded it up, and threw it in the trash.

The woman sidled a few steps back, as though Marion had suddenly become contagious, with her squinty eyes gleaming. “All I’m saying is I’m not taking any chances.” She nodded toward a group of boys standing in a corner. “My son,” she proclaimed, in a tone customarily reserved for announcing heads of state.

Marion wasn’t sure which boy she meant. She nodded anyhow.

“First in his class,” the woman offered. “Governor’s school every summer.” Her voice rose in a triumphant spiral. “Fourteen-thirty!”

Marion gave what she hoped was a knowledgeable nod. “Sounds good.”

The woman was silent. Marion realized that the woman was waiting for her to reciprocate with information about her own child. “Oh, that’s Jason over there,” she said, pointing. Jason was talking to the sticker guy.

The woman nodded. “How are his numbers?”

“Fine!” she answered, too enthusiastically. The woman waited, eyebrows raised, but Marion couldn’t remember Jason’s scores. All she could remember was that her husband had gotten up early to prepare Jason a healthy, high-protein breakfast on the morning of the SATs, to shake his hand and wish him luck.

“Did he take any prep courses?”

Marion shook her head. “We did buy him a book.” Her headache flared. Had the book been a guide to SATs or to colleges? She couldn’t remember. Hal had been the one in charge of book-buying. “But Jason’s a great kid, a very good student. Captain of the swim team.”

The woman gave a barely perceptible snort and walked away. Marion sighed and tugged at her nylons discreetly. Evidently, being a great kid wasn’t enough anymore. Then Jason
was at her shoulder, handing her a plastic cup of punch. “They’re going to start soon. Want to sit down?” he asked.

“I want to go home,” she whispered, too low for him to hear her. Then the admissions officer was stepping up to the podium, and his sweatshirted assistant began flicking the lights on and off, a trick Marion hadn’t seen since her own days in school. Parents scrambled toward the seats, and with a rolling surge of panic, Marion realized that this was it. They’d have another three hours, tops, on campus. Another seven, maybe, in the car, not including a stop for dinner. Then they’d be back in Providence, and if she hadn’t figured out how to tell him by then . . .

Jason listened carefully as the admissions officer talked about the Princeton experience. Marion eased one of the highlighted maps out of her purse and quietly unfolded it in her lap. She ran her finger down the unassuming green that was New Jersey. Down the turnpike, over the Hudson, across the Tappan Zee Bridge into Connecticut, her finger slowed, then stopped.

She looked at her son. In his sport coat and tie, he could be any bland, bright-eyed prep-schooler. All of his little mischiefs, all of his humor, his sweetness, the detention he’d gotten in fifth grade and cried over for a week, even the scar on his chin from when he’d jumped off the lifeguard’s chair and landed on a seashell—all of his history was undetectable, erased. Jason was gone, and her panic was back, and she was suddenly flushed and so dizzy that the big, fusty room in its mellow creams and browns seemed to tilt and spin. What did she have left? She’d told Jason that she wanted to go home, but there would be nothing for her there.
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.
Her house wasn’t on fire, but her children were gone, the oldest three already, and Jason soon enough. The pool was closed up for the season, covered tight with a heavy black tarp. Her eyes filled with tears, and she bit down hard on her lip.

“Ma?” Jason whispered. Marion winced and shook her head.

“Shhh,” she said. “The athletic director’s up next.”

The SAT woman rose to her feet, reciting her son’s scores and grades, asking if they would be good enough. Her son sat beside her, clearly in an agony of shame. He wore an enormous class ring with a huge blue-red stone set in the center. Even from a distance, Marion could tell the stone was fake.

“And,” the woman trilled in a high buzzing voice, “he was a Westinghouse Science finalist.”

The admissions officer was trying not to smile. Marion made a strangled noise, and when she looked down she saw that she’d crumpled the map in her lap. Jason was staring.

“Let’s go,” he whispered, and she nodded, easing past the knees of disgruntled Westinghouse Science finalists, out of the building, down a slate path, through a gate to where they’d parked at a meter on Nassau Street. There was something special about the gate, Marion thought, something important, but she couldn’t remember what. Was it that the students weren’t supposed to walk through it until they’ve graduated? Or that the parents were never supposed to walk through it at all? Too late. She stood by the car door and extracted her keys from her purse. “I’ll drive,” Jason offered, but his mother shook her head.

“Go to the gym and find the swim coach. I’ll meet you here in an hour.”

Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Please.”

Marion took a deep breath. “Your father,” she began, and her voice caught in her throat. This is all wrong, she thought, and started coughing. “Ma?” asked Jason, and patted her ineffectually on her back, as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of water. I should sit down with him, somewhere private, explain this reasonably.

Jason was talking, and Marion forced herself to listen. “What about Dad?” he asked. “Is he sick?”

Marion’s chest loosened, and she managed to suck in a breath. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, Jason, nobody’s sick.” She drew another shaking breath, let it out slowly, and said what she hadn’t let herself say for days since Hal had told her. “It’s just that your father is moving out.”

For a moment the two of them stood silently, looking at each other, posed like swimmers at the end of the pool, holding on to the concrete ledge, readying themselves for the turn. In the distance, Marion could hear the staccato rhythms of a campus tour, the gunshot of the guide’s high heels along the slate path, the rhythm of questions and answers.

“He’s planning on moving out. He’ll be gone when we get home,” she said. Jason’s face flushed. He balled his big hands into fists.

“Ohio,” he said dully. “All that time in Ohio. Does he have a girlfriend there or something?”

Marion shook her head, feeling incredibly weary, more tired than she’d been after labor, or the sleepless nights with each of her new babies. “It’s nothing like that, Jason,” she told him. “It’s just us. Your father and me. That’s all.”

She reached for his hands. She said his name softly, to comfort him. She thought to tell him that none of them knew, she least of all, and how scared she is about being alone, and how letting her son go will be the hardest thing she’s ever done; harder, even, than losing a husband.

Jason pulled his hands away from hers. “I don’t know anything!” he cried. Each word was wrenched out of him as if by force. His voice cracked. “Not anything!” At the top of a tall stone tower, a bell tolled, and suddenly mother and son were engulfed in a flow of bodies, as students burst out of their classrooms and streamed outside, calling and laughing.

D
ORA ON THE
B
EACH

“H
ey.” Dora Ginsburg slowed her pace, pulled off her earphones, and looked up at the two teenage girls in bikini tops, shorts, and flip-flops standing in front of a shuttered custard stand. The girl who’d spoken sauntered across the boardwalk to Dora. She was tall and rail-thin, with rib bones pushing against the waxy white skin of her torso, a white handbag made of cheap imitation leather tucked under her arm, and a necklace reading “Amber” in curlicued gold script around her neck. The girl following behind her was shorter and stockier, with broad shoulders and solid thighs and the same unhealthy pallor.