The First Bad Man

  “You’re on the crappy phone!” Carl shouted.

  “I’m not!” Suzanne yelled. “I’m on the hall one! Why do we both need to be on at the same time?” She hung up the hall phone but could still be heard distantly through Carl’s phone. “You get off the phone, I’ll talk to Cheryl alone!”

  “You’ve been snapping at me all day, Suz.”

  Suzanne picked up the phone but paused before putting it to her mouth. “Can you go away? I don’t need you monitoring my every move.”

  “Are you going to offer her money?” Carl said in a whisper that seemed louder than his regular voice.

  “Of course not. You think I’m just handing out—” Suzanne put her hand over the phone. I waited, wondering what there was to argue about since they both agreed I should not be offered money.

  “Cheryl!” She was back.

  “Hi.”

  “Sorry about that, I’m not having fun in this marriage right now.”

  “Oh no,” I said, although this was the only way they ever were, like this or loudly entranced by each other.

  “He makes me feel like shit,” she said, and then to Carl, “Well, then go away—I’m having a private conversation here and I can say what I like.” And then to me: “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  “We never thanked you for taking Clee, but it means so much”—her voice became thick and halting, I could see her mascara starting to run—“just to know she’s getting exposed to good values. You have to remember she grew up in Ojai.”

  Carl picked up.

  “Please excuse the theatrics, Cheryl, you don’t have to listen to this. Feel free to hang up.”

  “Fuck you, Carl, I’m trying to make a point. Everyone thinks it’s such a terrific idea to move out of the city to raise your kids. Well, don’t be surprised when that kid is pro-life and anti–gun control. You should see her friends. Is she going on auditions?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Can you put her on?”

  I wondered if I was still allowed to hang up if I wanted to.

  “She might need to call you back.”

  “Cheryl, hon, just put her on.” She could tell I was scared of her daughter.

  I opened my door. Clee was eating ramen on the couch.

  “It’s your mom.” I held out the phone.

  Clee took it with a swipe and strode out to the backyard, the door slamming shut behind her. I watched her pacing past the window, her mouth a little spitting knot. The whole family exerted tremendously toward each other; they were in the throes of passion all the time. I held my elbows and looked at the floor. There was a bright orange Cheeto on the rug. Next to the Cheeto was an empty Diet Pepsi can and next to the can was a pair of green-lace thong underwear with white stuff on the crotch. And this was just the area right around my feet. I touched my throat, hard as a rock. But not yet to the point where I had to spit instead of swallow.

  Clee stormed in.

  “Someone named”—she looked at the screen—“Phillip Bettelheim called you three times.”

  I CALLED HIM BACK FROM my car. When he asked me how I was, I did my equivalent of bursting into tears—my throat seized, my face crumpled, and I made a noise so high in pitch that it was silent. Then I heard a sob. Phillip was crying—out loud.

  “Oh no, what is it?” He had seemed fine when we touched fingers through the computer.

  “Nothing new, I’m okay, it’s just the thing I was talking about before,” he sniffed soggily.

  “The confession.”

  “Yep. It’s driving me nuts.”

  He laughed and this made room for a larger cry. Gasping, he said, “Is—this okay? Can I just—cry—for a while?”

  I said of course. I could tell him about Clee another time.

  At first the permission seemed to stifle him, but after a minute he broke through to a new kind of crying that I could tell he liked—it was the crying of a child, a little boy who can’t catch his breath and is out of control and won’t be consoled. But I did console him, I said, “Sh-sh-shhh,” and “That’s it, let it out,” and each of these seemed to be exactly right, they allowed him to cry harder. I really felt a part of it, like I was helping him get somewhere he’d always wanted to go and he was crying with gratitude and astonishment. It was pretty incredible, when you thought about it, which, as the minutes wore on, I had time to do. I looked at the curtains of my own house and hoped Clee wasn’t breaking things in there. I doubted if any man had ever cried this much, or even any adult woman. We would probably switch roles at some point, down the road, and he would guide me through my big cry. I could see him gently coaxing me into wet tears; the relief would be overwhelming. “You look beautiful,” he’d say, touching my tearstained cheek and bringing my hand to the front of his pants. With a little fiddling the car seat went almost flat; as his wail renewed itself I quietly unclasped my pants and slid my hand down. We’d blow our noses and take off our clothes, but only the clothes we needed to. For example, I would leave my blouse and socks and maybe even shoes on and Phillip would do the same. We’d take our pants and underpants off completely but wouldn’t fold them up because we’d just have to unfold them to put them back on. We’d lay them out on the floor in a way that would make them easy to put on again later. We’d get side by side in the bed and hug and kiss a lot, Phillip would get on top of me and insert his penis between my legs and then, in a low, commanding voice, he would whisper, “Think about your thing.” I’d smile, grateful for the permission to go within, and shut my eyes—transporting myself to a very similar room where our pants were laid out on the floor and Phillip was on top of and inside me. In a low, commanding voice he said, “Think about your thing,” and I was flooded with gratitude and relief, even more than last time. I shut my eyes and was again transported to a similar room, a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy, and it continued like this, building in intensity until I was so far inside myself that I could go no further. That’s it. That’s my thing, the thing I like to think about during intercourse or masturbation. It ends with a sudden knotting in my groin followed by a very relaxing fatigue.

  As I reclasped my pants he began to slow down, to try to catch his breath. He blew his nose a few times. I said, “That’s it, there you go,” which made him cry a little more, perhaps just politely to acknowledge my words. Finally it was all quiet.

  “That felt really, really good.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It was incredible.”

  “I’m surprised. I usually don’t cry well in front of other people. It’s different with you.”

  “Does it feel like we’ve known each other for longer than we really have?”

  “Kind of.”

  I could tell him or I could not tell him. I decided to tell him.

  “Maybe there’s a reason for that,” I ventured.

  “Okay.” He blew his nose again.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “A hint. Let’s see . . . actually, I can’t. There are no little parts to it, it’s all big.”

  I took a deep breath and shut my eyes.

  “I see a rocky tundra and a crouched figure with apelike features who resembles me. She’s fashioned a pouch out of animal gut and now she’s giving it to her mate, a strong, hairy pre-man who looks a lot like you. He moves his thick finger around in the pouch and fishes out a colorful rock. Her gift to him. Do you see where I’m going?”

  “Kind of? In that I see you’re talking about cavemen who look like us.”

  “Who are us.”

  “Right, I wasn’t sure—okay. Reincarnation?”

  “I don’t relate to that word.”

  “No, right, me either.”

  “But sure. I see us in medieval times, huddling together in long coats. I see us both with crowns on. I see us in the
forties.”

  “The 1940s?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was born in ’48.”

  “That makes sense because I was seeing us as a very old couple in the forties. That was probably the lifetime right before this one.” I paused. I had said a lot. Too much? That depended on what he said next. He cleared his throat, then was silent. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything, which is the worst thing men do.

  “What keeps us coming back?” he said quietly.

  I smiled into the phone. What an amazing thing to be asked. Right now, tucked into the warmth of my car with this unanswerable question before me—this might have been my favorite moment of all the lifetimes.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. I quietly leaned my head against the steering wheel and we swam in time, silent and together.

  “What are you doing for dinner on Friday, Cheryl? I’m ready to confess.”

  THE REST OF THE WEEK glided by. Everything was fantastic and I forgave everyone, even Clee, not to her face. She was young! Over a standing-up lunch in the staff kitchen Jim assured me that young people these days were a lot more physically demonstrative than we had been; his niece, for example: very physical girl.

  “They’re rough,” I said.

  “They aren’t afraid to show their feelings,” he said.

  “Which is maybe not such a good thing?” I suggested.

  “Which is very healthy,” he said.

  “In the long run, yes,” I said. “Perhaps.”

  “They hug more,” he said. “More than we did.”

  “Hug,” I said.

  “Boys and girls hug, unromantically.”

  The conclusion I came to—and it was important to come to a conclusion because you didn’t want these kinds of thoughts to just go on and on with no category and no conclusion—was that girls these days, when they weren’t hugging boys unromantically, were busy being generally aggressive. Whereas girls in my youth felt angry but directed it inward and cut themselves and became depressed, girls nowadays just went arrrrgh and pushed someone into a wall. Who could say which way was better? In the past the girl herself got hurt; now another unsuspecting, innocent person was hurt and the girl herself seemed to feel just fine. In terms of fairness maybe the past was a better time.

  On Friday night I put on the pin-striped dress shirt again and a very small amount of taupe eye shadow. My hair looked great—a little Julie Andrews, a little Geraldine Ferraro. When Phillip honked I scooted through the living room, hoping to bypass Clee.

  “C’mere,” she said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating a piece of white toast.

  I pointed at the door.

  “Come here.”

  I went to her.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “My bracelets?” I said, shaking my wrist. I had put on a pair of clangy bracelets in case the men’s shirt made me look unfeminine. Her big hand closed around my arm and she slowly began squeezing it.

  “You’re dressed up,” she said. “You wanted to look good and this”—she squeezed harder—“is what you came up with.”

  He honked again, twice.

  She took another bite of toast. “Who is it?”

  “His name’s Phillip.”

  “Is it a date?”

  “No.”

  I focused on the ceiling. Maybe she did this all the time and so she knew something about skin, like that it could withstand a certain amount of pressure before breaking. Hopefully she would keep that amount in mind and not go over it. Phillip knocked on the front door. She finished her toast and used her free hand to gently lower my chin so that my eyes were forced to meet hers.

  “I’d appreciate it if you told me when you have a problem with me, not my parents.”

  “I don’t have a problem with you,” I said quickly.

  “That’s what I told them.” And we stayed like that. And Phillip knocked again. And we stayed like that. And Phillip knocked again. And we stayed like that. And then she let me go.

  I opened the door just wide enough to slip out.

  When we were safely out of the neighborhood I asked him to pull over and we looked at my wrist; there was nothing there. He turned on the interior lights; nothing. I described how big she was and the way she had grabbed me and he said he could imagine she might squeeze a person thinking it was a normal amount of squeezing, but to someone delicate like me, it might hurt.

  “I’m not really delicate.”

  “Well, compared to her you are.”

  “Have you seen her recently?”

  “Not for a few years.”

  “She’s big-boned,” I said. “A lot of men think that’s attractive.”

  “Sure, a woman with that kind of body has a fat store that allows her to make milk for her young even if her husband isn’t able to bring meat home. I feel confident about my ability to bring meat home.”

  The words milk and fat store and meat had fogged up the windows faster than leaner words would have. We were in a sort of creamy cloud.

  “What if, instead of going to a restaurant,” Phillip said, “what if we ate dinner at my house?”

  He drove like he lived, with entitlement, not using the blinker, just gliding very quickly between lanes in his Land Rover. At first I kept looking over my shoulder to check if the lane was actually clear or if we were going to die, but after a while I threw caution to the wind and sank back into the heated leather seat. Fear was for poor people. Maybe this was the happiest I’d ever been.

  Everything in his penthouse was white or gray or black. The floor was one vast smooth white surface. There were no personal items—no books or stacks of bills, no stupid windup toy that a friend had given him as a gift. The dish soap was in a black stone dispenser; someone had transferred it from its plastic container to this serious one. Phillip put his keys down and touched my arm. “Want to know something crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our shirts.”

  I made a shocked face that was too extreme and quickly ratcheted it down to baffled surprise.

  “You’re the female me.”

  My heart started swooping around, like it was hanging on a long rope. He said he hoped I liked sushi. I asked if he could point me toward the restroom.

  Everything in the bathroom was white. I sat on the toilet and looked at my thighs nostalgically. Soon they would be perpetually entwined in his thighs, never alone, not even when they wanted to be. But it couldn’t be helped. We had a good run, me and me. I imagined shooting an old dog, an old faithful dog, because that’s what I was to myself. Go on, boy, get. I watched myself dutifully trot ahead. Then I lowered my rifle and what actually happened was I began to have a bowel movement. It was unplanned, but once begun it was best to finish. I flushed and washed my hands and only by luck did I happen to glance back at the toilet. It was still there. One had to suppose it was the dog, shot, but refusing to die. This could get out of hand, I could flush and flush and Phillip would wonder what was going on and I’d have to say The dog won’t die gracefully.

  Is the dog yourself, as you’ve known yourself until now?

  Yes.

  No need to kill it, my sweet girl, he’d say, reaching into the toilet bowl with a slotted spoon. We need a dog.

  But it’s old and has strange, unchangeable habits.

  So do I, my dear. So do we all.

  I flushed again and it went down. I could tell him about it later.

  We ate without talking and then I saw his hand shaking a little and I knew it was time. He was about to confess. I must have sat across from him at a hundred meetings of the board, but I had never let myself really study his face. It was like knowing what the moon looks like without ever stopping to find the man in it. He had wrinkles that carved down from his eyes into his cheeks. His hair was dense and curly on the sides, thinner on the
top. Full beard, messy eyebrows. We smiled at each other like the old friends we on some level were. He exhaled a long breath and we both laughed a little.

  “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk with you about,” he began.

  “Yes.”

  He laughed again. “Yes, you have probably gathered that by now. I’ve made a big deal out of something that is probably not such a big deal.”

  “It is and it isn’t,” I said.

  “That’s exactly right, it is and it isn’t. It is for other people, but it isn’t for me. I mean, not that it isn’t a big deal—it’s huge, just not—” He stopped himself and exhaled with a long schooooo sound. Then he lowered his head and became very still. “I . . . have fallen in love . . . with a woman who is my equal in every way, who challenges me, who makes me feel, who humbles me. She is sixteen. Her name is Kirsten.”

  My first thought was of Clee, as if she were in the room, watching my face collapse. Her head thrown back, a husky heh, heh, heh. I pressed my fingernail into a paper-thin slice of ginger.

  “How did you”—I tried to swallow but my throat was completely locked—“meet Kristen?”

  “Kir—like ear”—he touched his ear, a pendulous lobe with a tuft of gray hair sprouting from the hole—“sten. Kirsten. We met in my craniosacral certification class.”

  Heh, heh, heh.

  I nodded.

  “Amazing, right? At sixteen? She’s so ahead of the game. She’s this very wise, very advanced being—and she comes from the most unlikely background, her mom is totally out to lunch and involved in drugs. But Kirsten just”—he gasped with pained eyes—“transcends.”

  I pretended to take a sip of wine but actually deposited the spit that was collecting in my mouth.

  “Does she feel the same way?”

  He nodded. “She’s actually the one pushing for consummation.”

  “Oh, so you haven’t . . . ?”

  “No. Until recently she was seeing someone. Our teacher, actually. He’s a young man, much closer to her age. A really neat guy—in some ways I think she should have stayed with him.”

  “Maybe he’ll take her back,” I offered.

  “Cheryl.” He suddenly put his hand on my hand. “We want your blessing.”