Man of My Dreams

Allison doesn’t respond.

  “You’re such a bitch,” Hannah says. She takes a few steps down the grassy hill that abuts the highway shoulder. She doesn’t like being visible to the passing cars, doesn’t like the sense of herself as someone the other drivers are glad not to be right now. She folds her arms, then looks back up at her sister. “By the way,” she says, “it was Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  SO THEY ARE staying for a second night in a motel. It’s not even five o’clock when they check in; the guy who towed the moving truck drops them off. The garage says the truck will be ready by noon tomorrow, which means Hannah and Allison will have to drive straight to the airport if there is any chance of Allison making her plane. Then Hannah will drive alone into the city, through the scary Chicago traffic, to meet Henry and unload the truck, and then, presumably, she’ll return the truck alone. It’s not until she knows it won’t happen that she realizes she wanted Allison to be there when she greeted Henry, when she officially moved to his city. This never happens with Fig because Fig and Hannah look nothing alike, but sometimes when Hannah and Allison are together, Hannah feels like Allison’s prettiness rubs off on her. Two cars pulled over and offered to help while they were waiting for AAA; both of the drivers were men, and Hannah wondered if they’d have stopped were she not with her sister.

  They are in the town of Carlton. The motel is family-owned and one-story, with parking places in front of the rooms. On one side of the building are modest houses; on the other side are woods so lushly green that Hannah assumes there has been lots of rain lately. According to the woman who gives them their room key, the closest stores and restaurants are about a mile beyond the woods along a road with no sidewalk. As soon as Hannah and Allison have set down their bags, Allison announces she is going jogging. She is gone for nearly an hour and comes back with a dripping, ruddy face. By then Hannah is watching her second talk show. After showering, Allison leaves the room again and returns a few minutes later with a pack of vending-machine potato chips that she does not offer to share. She lies on the other bed, reading a book about raising children with self-esteem.

  If she and her sister didn’t hate each other right now, Hannah thinks, being stranded might almost seem fun—the randomness of it, the annoyingness, even. As it is, Allison is making her so tense that Hannah is tempted to tell her to just take a bus to the airport now. Go ahead, see if Hannah cares. But she says nothing. There is a brief thunderstorm around six, and when the rain stops, Hannah says, “What are you thinking for dinner?”

  “I’m good for the night. Those chips filled me up.”

  Is she serious? Dinner was what Hannah was counting on to give the evening back some shape and purpose. “Do you want to come with me to find something?”

  “No, thanks.”

  What Hannah decides to do—this is doubly pleasing, because it will both irritate Allison and make Hannah happy—is order Chinese food. She finds a phone book in a drawer and asks for three dishes (Kung Pao shrimp, string beans Szechuan style, and eggplant in spicy garlic sauce) as well as a serving of wonton soup and two egg rolls. When she gets off the phone, Allison says, “I hope you’re planning to eat all of that, because I certainly don’t want any.”

  “I’m leaving my options open,” Hannah says. “I didn’t know what I was in the mood for.”

  “It’s going to stink in here.”

  “I like the smell of Chinese food.”

  “Apparently, you like the taste, too.”

  “Oh, how embarrassing that I eat three meals a day. You really got me there. Boy, do I feel awkward.”

  “You know,” Allison says, “there are people who might think me leaving my infant daughter to do you the favor of driving your moving truck cross-country would encourage you not to be so rude.”

  The food takes a long time to come, almost an hour. But finally, there is a knock at the door, and a middle-aged Asian man in a short-sleeved button-down beige shirt passes the bags to Hannah. She sets all the containers on the bureau; keeping the lids off will mean the food cools sooner, but it’s a small price to pay for circulating the aroma in the room, insinuating it into Allison’s nostrils. No doubt assuming this is a meal for a family, the restaurant has provided three sets of chopsticks and plastic utensils, yet there are no plates, so Hannah pulls the room’s lone chair to the bureau, her knees flush against the bureau’s middle drawer, and eats straight from the containers. There’s a mirror above the bureau in which she can observe herself chewing; it’s not the most attractive sight. Stretched out on one of the beds behind Hannah, Allison channel-surfs before settling on a reality dating show. This selection is a bit alarming—for Hannah to watch a reality dating show would be normal, but for Allison, it seems like an admission of defeat, possibly a sign of desperation. Where did the earnest parenting tome go? Hannah can’t help glancing at her sister in the mirror every few minutes. Once, their eyes meet, and Allison quickly looks away.

  Hannah is stuffed and about to start perspiring when she gives up. She’s eaten one egg roll, two spoonfuls of soup, one tenth each of the shrimp and eggplant entrées, and half of the string beans. Already, the food seems like a disgusting error. She washes her hands—the sink is not in the bathroom but just outside it—then methodically tidies and closes all the containers.

  “You’re not keeping those in the room overnight,” Allison says.

  In fact, Hannah wasn’t planning to, but it’s tempting, hearing Allison’s outrage. “I thought I’d leave them under your pillow in case you got hungry,” Hannah says. “If you don’t want me to, I guess I’ll just throw them away.”

  In a small voice, Allison says, “Thank you.”

  The parking lot is wet from the storm, and filled with golden sunlight. There’s a breeze, and after the unrelenting heat of the last several days, the air is actually pleasant. Standing outside the motel’s main office, Hannah thinks of offering the leftover food to the woman behind the desk, but this seems possibly insulting. She has just dropped the bags into a green metal trash can and turned around when there it is: a massive rainbow, the biggest she has ever seen, perfectly formed and very close. Looking at the half circle of fuzzed colors, she thinks of learning about Roy G. Biv in fourth-grade science. She hurries into the room. “Allison, come out here. You have to come see.”

  Allison, lying on the bed, turns her head; her expression is suspicious, and suddenly, Hannah has trouble remembering what it is they’ve been bickering about.

  But Allison does get up. She follows Hannah back out the door, and they stand side by side in the parking lot.

  “It’s amazing, right?” Hannah says. “I’ve never seen one that size.”

  “It is amazing.”

  Neither of them have spoken for several minutes when Hannah says, “When we were little, do you remember we used to say if it was rainy and sunny at the same time, it meant the devil was getting married?”

  Allison nods.

  “How far away do you think that is?” Hannah asks.

  “Half a mile, maybe. It’s hard to say.” They keep watching, and then Allison says, “I don’t think Sam did anything wrong. It’s just that the whole thing is so distasteful. It’s embarrassing.”

  “It’ll blow over.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I really think it will. Sam is a decent person. I’m sure he’s good at his job. And maybe you guys aren’t perfect, but you’re definitely a good couple. He wouldn’t jeopardize your marriage—he’s way too in love with you. Honestly, that’s why I’m moving, because I want what you guys have.” Hannah looks over. Allison’s profile is lit by the evening sun, her brow furrowed, her lips tight. “I don’t mean this to be glib,” Hannah continues, “but I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. Isn’t that the big lesson we learned from living with Dad? You fix what you can, and you let time pass.”

  After a silence, Allison says, “When did you get all wise?”

  “I’m not a
s clueless as you think. I mean, I don’t know. I actually see a therapist, too. She knows all about why I’m moving to Chicago, by the way, and she doesn’t disapprove.”

  “Hannah, I chased boys when I was single. Everyone does.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. And it’s good about you seeing a therapist. I thought of suggesting it to you a few times.” Allison pauses. “So you think we should go look for the pot of gold?”

  “I know,” Hannah says. “I keep thinking of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ ”

  Allison smiles. She says, “That song always makes me cry.”

  9

  May 2005

  Dear Dr. Lewin,

  I have been meaning to write to you for quite some time, but I have put it off first because I’ve been busy and second because—this feels very silly to say, which makes it no less true—I wanted to wait until I could tell you I’d fallen in love. It’s difficult to believe almost two years have elapsed since I left Boston, and this afternoon (it’s a Sunday) I thought to myself that I needed to write a letter today, before either you forget who I am or my wish to contact you starts to seem sentimental and pointless even to me.

  I now live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I am working at a school for autistic children. It’s coed, but the classroom I’m in is all boys. (You probably are aware that there’s a higher rate of autism among boys than girls.) The boys’ ages range between twelve and fifteen. Most are small and appear younger than they are, but one, a student named Pedro, is taller than I am and probably forty pounds heavier. He sometimes slyly calls me by my first name, as if I won’t notice. If we’re drawing side by side—he’s especially fond of drawing guitars—he’ll say, “You like my picture, Hannah?” and I’ll say, “Not Hannah, Pedro. Ms. Gavener,” and he’ll be quiet for a few seconds and then say, “Not Pedro, Ms. Gavener. Mr. Gutierrez.” Pedro is the most conversational. Many of them speak very little and are prone to outbursts and tantrums. There is a particularly temperamental boy, Jason, whose pockets are at all times bulging with miscellaneous items including but not limited to broken pen caps, candy wrappers, rubber bands, two or three pairs of scissors, and a cat brush. (The cat brush is gray plastic, with metal bristles.) Jason might be calmly eating lunch, then drop a grape on the floor and become hysterical, or I’ll be talking to him, coaxing him to respond by asking questions—once this happened when I said, “Does your name begin with a J?”—and he’ll make a horribly offended expression before beginning to seethe and spit. By contrast, a boy named Mickey is the most cheerful person I’ve ever known. I take him to the bathroom once an hour. He recently graduated from wearing diapers to Pull-Ups, and if ever I slip and refer to the Pull-Ups as diapers, he corrects me immediately. When he sits on the toilet (even urinating, he sits down) he looks around the bathroom in such an upbeat, appreciative way that he calls to mind a businessman who has finally taken a long-awaited trip to the Bahamas and is reclining on a lounge chair by a pool, drinking a fabulous drink. Mickey is a curly-haired boy who alternates, no matter the season, between red sweatsuits and blue sweatsuits. Last week, sitting there with his red pants bunched at his ankles, he happened to notice a metal shelf—just a ledge, really—that had been installed to store rolls of toilet paper.

  He gestured up at it and said, “Is that new?”

  “Yes, Mickey,” I said. “I think it is.”

  He smiled so widely and shook his head so slowly and blissfully that you might have thought, to continue the businessman analogy, he had just been informed of his million-dollar bonus. He was elated. He asked what the shelf was for, and I told him for toilet paper. Then he asked, as he often does, “Do you like me, Ms. Gavener?” (Mickey slurs his words and pronounces it more like Ms. Gaahv.) I said, yes, of course, and then a few more minutes passed, and he again gestured above him and said, “New shelf!” I smiled and said, “I know, Mickey.” He said happily, pointing, “Look at it!” and I said, “I am.”

  I live in a one-story adobe house south of the university, and my roommate is a police officer. (I’d never personally known a female police officer before I met Lisa.) About half the time, she stays with her boyfriend, who’s also a police officer, but on the nights she’s home, we watch TV together. A lot of Lisa’s habits would be considered stereotypically feminine—she’s always getting manicures, or spending three hundred dollars on shoes at the mall—though she’s also a bit of a tomboy and avidly follows the Lobos. In the first week I knew her, she once said, “No day is so shitty that it can’t be salvaged by a good margarita.” She grew up in Albuquerque, and she has never, you might be interested to know, sought therapy.

  If it seems like I am avoiding the real topic here, the topic of Henry, that might be correct. But I can say truthfully that at this point I don’t think of him from day to day or even from week to week. I do think of him on a monthly basis, but honestly, I think of you far more. Sometimes when I’m trying to make a decision, I wonder what you would recommend, and in my mind you always pick the option that involves either having more fun or standing up for myself. When I try to explain what the disadvantages might be, you remind me to relax; whatever it is, you say, it’s worth a shot.

  By the way, I’m glad I finally met your husband before I moved from Boston, even if it was just by chance when we all ran into each other outside the movie theater on Brattle Street. I was surprised (in neither a good or bad way—I just hadn’t considered the possibility) to learn that he is African American. I used to imagine that he must either be a doctor like you or else some sort of hot carpenter—maybe I came up with this notion because you had such nice moldings in your office, and the floor was so elegantly refinished—but given that he is a math professor, both my guesses were wrong. When you introduced us, you could not reveal to him how you knew me, but I suspect he inferred it. He smiled at me as if to say I presume you are extremely neurotic, yet I do not hold your neuroses against you.

  Dr. Lewin, to this day you remain the smartest person I have ever met. You once used the word periphrastic—you used it utterly unshowily, only because it was for you the most precise word for the occasion—and I was enormously flattered by your incorrect assumption that I knew what it meant. I never told you that after each session, as I rode away on the T, I’d take notes about what we’d discussed. I came across my folder of notes when I unpacked after moving here, and while for narcissistic reasons I did find them interesting, I am afraid they gave off a sort of wispy, elusive air when what I’d always hoped for was the snap of revelation—the clarity and permanence of some official knowledge that would feel instantly true and keep feeling true from then on.

  In any case: That first night in Chicago after I’d dropped Allison at the airport and then Henry and I carried all the boxes and furniture up the stairs to my new apartment, I said, “Should we get something to eat?” and he said, “There’s a really good Greek place around the corner, but first let me touch base with Dana,” and I said, “Who’s Dana?”

  Oh, Henry said, had he not mentioned his girlfriend when we’d seen each other at Fig’s wedding or during my interview trip? He had not. She joined us that night for dinner—I was in a disbelieving agony—and she turned out to be a tall woman with a certain preppy hardness. She’d rowed crew in college, she was Republican, she seemed to be the type of person who, no matter how many drinks she consumed, would never divulge anything inappropriate or endearing. At the end of dinner, she said, “Why’d you move to Chicago?” I laughed nervously and said, “I’m trying to remember.”

  “She got a job here,” Henry said.

  Dana was a paralegal, worked long hours, was rarely around during the week, and was often not around on the weekend, either. This made it easy for Henry and me to quickly develop a pattern of spending large quantities of time together. Though Dana’s existence initially prompted in me a sense of betrayal I wouldn’t have dared articulate to Henry, perhaps I also preferred it. In college, when he and I had driven to Cape Cod together, Fi
g’s existence had been something of a relief, it had taken the pressure off. Now, in Chicago, I thought Dana would allow Henry and me to get used to each other again, and then she could conveniently make her exit. Such a prospect did not seem entirely unrealistic: On a regular basis, Henry made comments that threw into question the stability of their relationship, and I tried to pretend the comments didn’t thrill me. “I think she secretly has a thing for her boss” was an early one. Also, “She’s not the most compassionate person you’ll ever meet.” Unfortunately, not all of his remarks about her were negative, and once he said, “She’s the first girlfriend I’ve ever had who could literally kick my ass if she wanted to. Is it weird that that turns me on?”

  Pretty soon Henry and I were hanging out as many nights of the week as not. He often asked my advice, which surprised and flattered me. At the time, he and his twin sister were squabbling long-distance—her husband had borrowed money from Henry to start a restaurant in New Hampshire, and Henry was having an increasingly suspicious feeling about the whole venture—and so we talked about what, if anything, Henry should do. It took me a few months to realize how many other friends Henry confided in. True, I became the one he sought out most, but perhaps that was because no one else made themselves as available. Although I was unsure why he believed me to be capable of giving advice, I took his problems very seriously and would concentrate on them so hard, genuinely trying to find a solution, that I sometimes had headaches afterward. In addition to talking about his sister and brother-in-law, we talked a lot about his new boss at the consulting firm where he worked, who was, Henry thought, a particular asshole, and sometimes about Dana. Henry had the idea he’d screwed up his last several relationships, and he was determined to make this one work. It seemed so clear to me that he couldn’t that I didn’t even try to convince him. I figured he’d realize it himself soon enough.

  One night in late September—I’d been in Chicago for three weeks by then—Henry and I drove to Milwaukee with his friend Bill to see the Brewers play the Cubs. Though I hardly understood the rules of baseball, Henry had bought my ticket and insisted I come along. At the ballpark, Bill announced that he was going to eat one hot dog for every run the Cubs scored. By his fifth hot dog, Bill was gripping his stomach unhappily, and by the seventh, he could barely watch the game. He was leaning forward, his head in his hands.