The Other Side (13 page)

I return to The Strange Man's apartment night after night, week after week, to play out this same scene. If we're not on
the bed, we're on the floor, or the futon, or in the car. Sometimes we're in my apartment, or in a tent at a campsite, or stumbling through the alley after leaving the bar. Sometimes we're at his parents' house, visiting his hometown for a class reunion, or a birthday, or a wedding. It goes on like this until November, four months after the kidnapping, when he asks me to marry him. I'm not at all surprised by the proposal. I've staged the whole thing. I've sent My Good Friend to help pick out the ring. I've told him to take my Dad golfing, to ask for his blessing on the eighth green. I have put these exact words in his mouth:
Will you marry me?

I agree, not because I love The Strange Man, but because it's what I need.

One night, I drag myself home to my apartment after a long day of work. I have found a job as a marketing assistant at the university press, where I look for reviews of the books we have published and cut them out of magazines, or scan them, or type them into a Word document. Tonight, I have had to stay late for some reason or other, and when I leave the office, I stop at the grocery store for a pack of cigarettes and a bag of rice. It is nearly dark outside, and with the blinds closed, it is very dark in the apartment. All the lights are off. I turn my key in the lock, open the door, and walk into the living room, heading for the kitchen, like usual.

It's me
, says someone in a wolf mask sitting on my couch.

It's a man's voice. A man's body.

I drop all the things in my hands. Everything inside me falls. I don't scream or cry out because in moments I'll be dead. There's a knife in the drawer by the stove. I watch and wait for what comes next.

The man's body stands up, the mask comes off, and underneath it: the face of the man who will become My First Husband. A prank he thinks might be funny. He's not thinking.

It's not funny
, I tell him, already pushing him out the door.

It's too soon
, My Therapist tells me in December, five months after the kidnapping. It's our last session before the holiday break and she's suspicious of my good mood, of the complete and sudden recovery. She asks how I feel now about The Man I Used to Live With, about all that happened. I say
I feel sorry for him. He doesn't need prison; he needs psychiatric help
. One corner of her mouth turns up in a smile. Before I leave I say
See you next week
, though I never return. I tell My Psychiatrist that I feel very happy now and he agrees to take me off the medication.
I've never seen such resilience!
he exclaims, as he begins writing instructions on a pad of paper.

But the truth is, I don't feel happy. I don't feel angry or sorry or frightened or sad. I don't feel anything at all.

It must be the medication
, I tell myself.
I'm getting married and I should feel happy
.

All I want is to feel happy.

At the wedding, Mom cries and thanks God for sending someone to love me. Dad cries and reaches for her hand.

It is June, eleven months after the kidnapping.

In July, they file for divorce.

Mom is the one who calls, breaking the news like she's telling me the weather. I'm sitting on the futon in the apartment I share with My First Husband, a basket of clean laundry on the coffee table, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Mom is on the phone saying they've decided that now is as good a time as any.
Everyone is healthy and happy
. I crack a joke, say,
Well it's about time
. I thank her for letting me know and hang up the phone.

I light a cigarette and pick a shirt out of the pile. I'm crying, which doesn't surprise me. It's all I do anymore: cry, smoke, sleep. Today the crying makes me feel like a child: so naive, the hope that my parents might learn to love one another. To forgive. To be happy. To decide, once and for all, to stay together no matter what. All these years I've never understood what actually went so wrong between them. Now I wonder what, if anything, ever went right.

In August, thirteen months after the kidnapping, I quit my job at the university press and quit the internship at the literary magazine and we move from the college town where there aren't actually any full-time jobs for college graduates, to a city that is not really a city but rather a cluster of small towns. My Older Sister has bought a big house on a tree-lined street; we'll find jobs and live in her basement until we get on our feet. We stack the boxes of our belongings in her garage, and we set up our bed and dresser and bookshelves in the basement room that is probably supposed to be a den. It has a den-like fireplace, den-like wood paneling, and den-like shag carpet on the floor. My First Husband gets a job as a carpenter, and every morning I wake to pack his lunch into a brown paper bag. He asks what I will do today and I say,
Apply for jobs!
but really I will go back to sleep. In the afternoons, My Older Sister leaves for work, and in the evenings, when I am alone in the house with My First Husband, I make dinner:
pescado a la Veracruzana
, the way I learned from watching The Man I Used to Live With. My First Husband and I eat on the couch watching television. Each night, after the first forkful, he grunts and says
Damn, this is delicious
, and then when he is finished he puts his plate or bowl on the edge of the coffee table, as if he plans to take it to the sink later. Each night, he falls asleep on the couch, the dirty dish still at the edge of the coffee table, where he rests his feet, his legs crossed at the ankles.

On the nights when My Older Sister does not work, I make dinner for us. Sometimes we eat at the table like a regular family. Sometimes we go out to bars, where the three of us play pool over cheap beers. If the weather is nice, we grill in the backyard and eat at the picnic table. Sometimes My Younger Sister comes over to the house for dinner, making the short drive from the apartment she shares with other freshmen at her school near the center of the city-that-is-not-a-city, and the three of us stay up late into the night, long after My First Husband has fallen asleep on the couch. We sit outside in the dark, smoking cigarettes and swatting at mosquitoes, making fun of one another and either or both of our parents. We talk and talk and talk. But we never talk about
what happened
. Not about my mountain of credit card debt, or why I start drinking vodka before I've eaten breakfast, or why I can't hold down a job. Not once.

We celebrate Christmas at our house. My Older Sister's house. It's the first major holiday since our parents' divorce. Mom arrives the night before, and after we ply her with wine coolers, she says she is eager to start dating. We convince her to put on makeup and fix her hair, and then we take her picture and post it on dating websites. In the morning, My Younger Sister arrives to help cook the giant meal. We are struggling to get everything prepared in time,
My Older Sister whipping the potatoes, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, My Younger Sister burning her hand putting the rolls in the oven. I am checking the turkey, realizing too late that I have forgotten to remove the giblets. My First Husband's parents arrive, with a laundry basket full of presents to set under the tree. Dad arrives last, in a new sweater the same color as his eyes: spring-sky blue, robin's-egg blue. We've learned only days ago that he's getting married again. Mom has told us how he came to the house and stood on the porch. He knocked on the door and she opened it just a crack, thinking he would ask if he could come back.
I've met someone. We're getting married
. She slammed the door, hard, in his face. Sitting in My Older Sister's house, at opposite ends of the couch, my parents have never looked better. He is tanner, thinner. He drives a new car. Her hair is shorter, higher. Her makeup looks perfect. Her crystal jewelry complements her purple raw silk top. The wine is opened. The food is served. For a few hours, nothing has changed. Our parents go the whole day without speaking.