The Breakup (7 page)

By now it was 3
P
.
M
. I told Roger I had to get my nails done. He nodded vaguely in my direction and returned his attention to
Xena.
I’m sure it didn’t even register that I’d left the house. Twenty minutes later he would call upstairs for me, starting with
a medium-range holler, gradually building up to that shrill eardrum-puncturing shriek of his. He would ask Pete to run upstairs
and find me, at which point Pete would tell him that I left to get my nails done because Pete, unlike his father, actually
paid attention when I had something to say. I imagined the stupid
way Roger rubbed the side of his head whenever he was bewildered, and thanked God I wouldn’t have to live with this dog much
longer.

I took the shortcut to Lake Merle, but hit a detour—they’re digging up Crawford Road—which meant I had to take Market, putting
me twenty minutes out of my way. By the time I’d made it to the lake I had soaked through my blazer and my hands were so sweaty
I left stains on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. I pulled into the subdivision, followed the road west, and found Roger’s
condo. It was the last unit at the very end of a gravel road virtually engulfed by tall pines. I parked along the curb. My
heart thumped so hard I could see the silver teapot pin on my lapel pulsating.

I stared at the condo. While most of the units had some special feature—a striped awning here, a handpainted mailbox there—this
one had nothing to distinguish it. The landscaping was sparse, almost barren. There were no painted shutters, no pretty plaque
bearing the family name or house number, no colorful wind sock. In fact, there were no signs of life. The shades and curtains
were all drawn. Visitors, it seems, were not welcome here.

I turned my ear toward the door and listened. Backstreet Boys. I heard a faint rustling, footsteps, something clanging, maybe
a pan. I took another deep breath and knocked at the door, softly at first,
then harder when no one responded. I knocked again. The music stopped, and then I could hear nothing. No footsteps, no clanging.
I cupped my ear against the door now, and held my breath until it hurt.

The door opened. I lifted my eyes and saw the apprehensive face of a young girl, a small and slender Asian girl. She opened
the door a crack and stared at me. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She wore a plain white buttoned shirt and cheap,
shiny trousers, white socks, and flip-flops. And she was beautiful. Full lips, dark eyes. Her black hair was tied back. No
makeup except for lip gloss. She was chewing gum.

“Is the lady of the house here?” I asked her. She stared at me as if she didn’t understand.

I tried again. “Do you speak English?” She nodded quickly, but kept her grip on the door.

“The lady of the house. Mary Tisdale. Is she home?”

She looked at me a long time. “I am Mrs. Tisdale.”

I thought I must have heard wrong. What do you mean, you’re Mary Tisdale? Crazy thoughts popped into my head. Maybe she was
a distant cousin, from the Asian side of the family (but there is no Asian side of the family). Maybe a half sister—my father-inlaw’s
illegitimate daughter. I groped for a rational explanation. How could this be Roger’s wife?
Impossible. I tried to remain composed, but my heart was now smashing around in my mouth, and I could feel my whole body flush
with panic.

“What’s your husband’s name?”

She beamed at me. “Roger Tisdale. Mister Roger Tisdale.” Jesus. She was a kid. I felt dizzy, heard my blood roaring in my
ears. I steadied myself against the door frame.

“Let me get this straight. You are married—you’re married, as in husband and wife—to Roger Tisdale?”

She nodded her head enthusiastically.

“Roger Tisdale, the playwright?”

“Yes! Yes! That’s my man!” the girl exclaimed. Her man? I had to stay clearheaded. I had to keep her talking. I suddenly regretted
that I didn’t have any M&M’s with me; she struck me as the kind of kid who could be bribed with candy.

“What’s your business?” she asked, a little suspiciously.

“My business? Oh, I live around here; just wanted to meet the neighbors and all that. I’m Mrs. Ryan.”

Mary started to smile, then remembered something and grew serious. She closed the door a little more. “I’m not supposed to
talk to anybody.”

“Why not?”

“My husband says not to. He says, ‘Stay inside and take good care, Mary.’ So that’s what I do. I stay inside and wait for
him.” She pouted. “But I miss him. He’s all the time traveling, putting on his shows.”
Putting on his shows? So that’s how he explained why he’s rarely around. With me it was writers’ retreats and rehearsals.
With her, he’s putting on shows. Dandy.

A pregnant cat rubbed against her legs. She lifted it into her arms and stroked its head. “I play with Tippy. Eat. Watch TV.
Dance to music. Clean house. That’s all I do.”

I tried to be solicitous, tried to be a nice, normal, nonthreatening woman. A friend. A big sister. “Oh, I know what you mean.
Sounds like my life.” I rolled my eyes.

“Men.”

She smiled at me and echoed: “Men.”

“Listen, can I come in for a minute? I’m feeling a little sick. I think . . . I may be pregnant.” I don’t know, it just seemed
like the right thing to say. I could almost hear her interior debate: Roger told me not to talk to strangers. But this lady
seems nice. Maybe it’s okay. And Roger won’t find out anyway.

I prayed hard while she considered my request. Please make her let me in. Please, Lord. Finally, she stepped back and pulled
open the door. “I guess it’s okay,” she said.

I recognized the furniture right away. The place was filled with the crap we’d kept in the basement for the garage sale we
never had the energy to have. Roger had loaded everything into the back of a U-Haul. He said he’d deliver it to Promise House,
the
battered women’s shelter. I spotted the pair of butterfly chairs, the cheap laminate bookcases, the wicker love seat and chairs
we bought in graduate school at Pier 1. Hanging above the sofa, the amateurish still life I’d painted when I was nine months
pregnant and bored out of my skull. I’m not sure what galled me more, that he gave her something I painted or that he gave
her something so hideous. What I did not see, however, was a telephone. Leave it to Roger to lock this girl in the condo without
a connection to the outside world. “Can I use your phone?” I asked.

“Oh, we can’t have phones out here in the country,” she said matter-of-factly. “And my husband says the kind without wires
are too expensive. Is that the kind you have? Without wires?”

“Yes, that’s what we have. The kind without wires.” God.

I watched her size five bottom as she led me to the sofa, and I cringed imagining Roger violating her body. She made Alyssa
look matronly. I couldn’t pinpoint the accent. Filipino, maybe? She offered me a glass of water. I reached to accept it and
gestured for her to sit down. She sat cross-legged in the wicker chair and the cat jumped into her lap, kneaded her little
belly, and plopped down. I glanced around the room. It was sparsely furnished but spotless, truly immaculate. I had a cruel,
fleeting thought—maybe she could clean our other house too. I attribute this
bizarre thought to my state: completely deranged. My husband had a child for a wife. He kept her locked in a little condo
at the end of a country road with instructions to stay put. For the moment, I had two goals: to learn her age, and to figure
out how they met.

Mary broke the silence. “When’s the baby coming?”

I didn’t know what she meant until I remembered my lie. “Oh, I’m not sure. Maybe in the winter.” I was speaking like a foreigner
myself. I was trying to establish some kind of rapport.

She rolled the cat over and displayed its bulging belly. “Tippy’s pregnant too!” She ran her fingers over the nipples. She
smiled and patted her own stomach. “I also want to have baby.”

“Are you”—I tried to produce a smile—“pregnant?”

The girl shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe.” She pulled the gum out of her mouth, stretched it, and popped it back in. She smiled
dreamily. “Maybe not. Hope so. I love babies.”

Of course you do, I wanted to say, because you’re practically a zygote yourself. “Babies are great,” I answered. “Do you have
any little brothers or sisters?”

She looked away. “Yes. Four brothers, three sisters. Back home.”

Now I was getting somewhere. “Oh, what a nice big family. Are you the oldest?”

The girl nodded, still looking away. “How old are you?” I asked, then held my breath.

She bit her lip and hesitated. “Twenty-one.”

Bullshit. I giggled and said, “No, really. How old are you, really?”

She looked at me and answered almost obediently. “Sixteen, ma’am.”

Now I was ma’am? I should have been glad to get my answer, but now I was stewing because she called me ma’am. There was that
wretched word again. “You’re a beautiful girl, Mary,” I told her. “You must be an actress. Is that how you met your husband?”

I’d flattered her. She smiled shyly. “Oh, no. Not me. I met him through CLIT.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“You know, Classy Ladies International Trade.” When she realized I hadn’t heard of this CLIT, she elaborated: “It’s a worldwide
organization that links well-mannered international ladies with established American gentlemen.” She obviously had that memorized.
I wondered if she knew what the acronym meant in English. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so mortified.

“How nice,” I answered. I didn’t know what to say next. Should I tell her I was Roger’s real wife? Let her know her marriage
is a joke, that she’s essentially a sex slave? I didn’t want to say anything that might scare her, and I couldn’t let Roger
know I was onto him. Not yet, not until Omar gave me the go-ahead.
So I pulled myself up, thanked her for the water, and started to leave. But I felt such compassion for the girl. She was stuck
in that little condo with all my old crap. No car, no friends. I had to ask, “Listen, do you need anything?”

“Oh, no. We’re fine. We have everything we need,” she said, trying to sound like a grown-up.

I sped home, avoiding the detour this time, and called Omar, then Libby. Then I got online and searched for Classy Ladies
International Trade. And I cannot believe what I discovered. Much more, later.

’Til next time,

V

I was anxious to tell Omar the news about Roger’s mail-order bride. He reacted with uncharacteristic zeal. “Woo-hoo!” he yelped.
“We’re going to nail that bastard to the wall!” I loved hearing him talk tough, and his enthusiasm filled me with pure joy.
(I know this is an issue for me, and I realize it’s not particularly healthy—my impulse to make Omar my hero, my knight, my
personal Terminator. Rather than see him merely as my well-paid advocate, I’ve already romanticized our relationship and his
role in my life. I love his bald, penile head.) Omar said we’re ready to serve Roger with the divorce papers. I told him I
wanted to wait until Friday. I’ve decided that I want to be there when he opens the envelope. I need just a little more time.
Jesus. It’s really happening.

I suspect Libby was a bit rankled to hear that I drove out to Lake Merle myself and got to Mary before she did. Libby didn’t
say anything at first, and for a second I thought we’d been disconnected. To her credit, she recovered gracefully. “Hey, you
want a job?” she joked. “I could always use the help.”

Even though I’m glad I took the initiative, I’m annoyed she didn’t do it first. She’s the investigator. I’m just an unemployed
psychotherapist. What’s the point of paying her all this money if I’m doing the legwork?

Libby said she’s going to go out to the condo and get some pictures of Mary for her report. She also said she’d try to contact
Classy Ladies International Trade, but suspects they’ll be slow to produce records if they suspect they’re part of an investigation
and if the girl is underage.

I went on-line, typed in classyladiesinternational trade.com. Lo and behold, it was there, in all its putridity. The on-line
“catalog” was filled with 145 thumbnail shots of women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Most of them were surprisingly plain,
and many looked sad, though they obviously tried their best to look “marketable” for the camera. I was particularly struck
by “Jasmine,” a plump woman who claimed to be thirty-five but who looked closer to
fifty. When I clicked on her thumbnail, I got the full dossier. She said she loved housecleaning and cooking, and promised
to make a cozy home for her Western mate. She looked panic-stricken.

The company is owned by H. Wilhem Prost, a character who brazenly describes himself the “proud owner” of a Filipina bride.
He sprinkles his own sickening experiences throughout the site. An excerpt from the home page:

Willing, compliant, obedient. Let our ladies take you back in time, a time when men wore the pants and women did as they were
told. Imagine your own geisha girl at your beck and call, a girl who only has eyes for you. Gentlemen, these women are desperate
to meet upstanding Western men like yourselves. And all our ladies come with a 100 percent money-back guarantee. If you are
not absolutely satisfied with your CLIT girl, you can return her— postage paid—and choose another of our lovely girls. What’s
your fantasy? Damsel in distress? Virgin bride? Betty Crocker? Barefoot and pregnant? Young and innocent? We’ve got them all,
and plenty more. CLIT girls won’t tell you it’s your turn to do the dishes or cook dinner. They wouldn’t dream of getting
a job (unless, of course, you tell them to). Their greatest pleasure is to serve, whether in the kitchen or in the
bedroom. These are women who truly appreciate Western men, who crave the comfort of a traditional, domestic life. All they
want in this world is a Western man who will treat them like a lady. If you’re that kind of man—and who isn’t?—then we have
the girl for you!

I thought of Mary, sitting alone in the condo beneath my ugly painting, playing with the cat, chewing gum. I wonder if that’s
what she had in mind when she left her homeland and family. I tried not to imagine the fantasies Mary was purchased to fulfill.
In graduate school, I once heard Roger tell his buddy Kirby Bond that “there’s nothing in this world like a cherry,” and I
actually thought they were talking about produce until I saw his wicked grin and realized, blushing, that he was talking about
something else entirely.