The Man of My Dreams (21 page)

“I think they’re sort of cute,” Hannah says.

“Darrach and I just rented—now I can’t even remember the movie. Hannah, this addled brain of mine. But here’s why I’m really calling. You need to go see your dad.”

“I think I’d rather not,” Hannah says.

“How long has it been? Five years?”

“I saw him at Allison’s wedding, and that was less than four years ago. Anyway, that was when I last saw
you.
” This is true. Since the summer she stayed with Elizabeth and Darrach, Hannah has seen her aunt twice: once on a Sunday during Hannah’s freshman year in high school (this was Hannah’s idea) when Elizabeth and Darrach and Rory met her and her mother at a restaurant halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; and then a few years after that, when Elizabeth came to Philadelphia for Hannah’s father’s fiftieth birthday. Hannah and Elizabeth still talk every two or three months, and Hannah thinks of her aunt more than that—she finds herself remembering things Elizabeth told her, intimations Elizabeth gave of adulthood—but Hannah has never returned to Pittsburgh. She is pretty sure it would remind her of too much.

“Come on, now,” Elizabeth says. “His ex-wife is getting married today, and the guy she’s marrying sounds, pardon my French, pretty stinking rich. You don’t think your dad deserves a break?”

“How’s Rory?” Hannah says. “Is he still working at that restaurant?”

“Don’t you try to change the subject.”

“My dad can get in touch with me as easily as I can get in touch with him. Why is it my responsibility?”

“Didn’t you tell him never to call you?”

Hannah says nothing. A few days after she and her father had that last lunch, he forwarded her a postcard from her dentist, a reminder to schedule her annual visit, which had somehow been sent to his apartment. On the outside of the envelope he’d stuck the card in, he’d scrawled,
Nice to see you last week, Hannah,
and she had no idea if he was being sarcastic or just oblivious. At Allison’s wedding, it was impossible to avoid him completely, but she did so as much as she could. To this day, Allison claims that their father inquires after her, and Hannah doesn’t know whether this is true. That he didn’t end up paying any of her Tufts tuition senior year seemed a message of sorts—it would have been easy enough for him to go above her head and just send in a check. Hannah has never regretted her decision, but she is still in debt.

“I’m not asking you to go see your dad,” Elizabeth says. “I’m telling you. Do I have enough authority to do that?”

“He and I have never had that much to say,” Hannah says. “Maybe this is how things are supposed to be between us.”

“No one’s suggesting you pretend you don’t have problems with him. But just go drink a cup of tea, ask him how work is. Give him a reason to think he hasn’t destroyed everything good in his life.”

“He kind of has,” Hannah says, though she is arguing as much on reflex as on conviction. The freshness of her anger toward her father, what she felt that afternoon at the restaurant, has faded; she knows she’s mad at him more than she feels it. “If I were to go see him,” she says, “I’m sure he’d expect me to apologize.”

“Tough shit for him. You’re going over to be sociable, not to grovel.”

“Why are you so confident this is a good idea?”

“I’m tempted to say you wouldn’t even be doing it for him, you’d be doing it for you. But maybe you’d really be doing it for me. Here’s the bottom line, though. Are you ready for the bottom line?”

“Probably not.” Hannah has moved to a window overlooking the driveway. Outside, the snow is still falling, and she can see her mother, in a pink quilted bathrobe and boots, talking to Aunt Polly as they walk toward Aunt Polly’s Volvo. At least this means Aunt Polly is no longer trapping Oliver.

“The bottom line is he’s lonely,” Elizabeth says. “And he’s your father.”

IN THE KITCHEN,
there are bagels and muffins in a basket on the table, and Sam is grading his sixth-grade students’ papers while Allison rolls forks and knives into dinner napkins and ties them with thin blue ribbon. There will be nineteen wedding guests, including family; the ceremony will happen at five o’clock this afternoon. When Hannah asked her mother whether she would avoid Frank during the day—it wouldn’t be that hard, since Frank still has his own house—Hannah’s mother said, “Oh, honey, I’m fifty-three. That’s more for your age.”

When Hannah sits down, Sam says, “It’s Sleeping Beauty. Are you hungover or something?”

“Where’s Oliver?” Hannah asks.

“He took Mom’s car to run an errand,” Allison says. “He said he’d be gone about twenty minutes.”

“Wait,” Hannah says. “He drove?” Oliver does not have a driver’s license. When Allison looks at her curiously, Hannah looks away. To Sam, she says, “I’m not hungover at all. I didn’t even drink last night.”

“You should have,” Allison says. “The champagne looked delicious.” Allison is six months pregnant and glowing even more than usual.

“Hannah, if you’re dating an Aussie, you have to step up,” Sam says. “Become more of a lush.”

“Oliver’s from New Zealand,” Hannah says. “But thanks for the tip.”

Sam grins, and Hannah thinks of the energy she used to expend feeling irritated by him. She didn’t understand back then that you don’t ask a person to defend her significant other, that she never should have asked Allison to. Not because of the sanctity of couple-hood (as far as Hannah can tell, there are only ever fleeting, split-second episodes of sanctity between any couple) but because maybe the person
can’t
entirely defend her mate, because maybe—probably—the person has her own ambivalence, and your criticisms are undermining. And not even of the couple but of this individual trying to move forward in her life, making choices that she hopes are the right ones when, really, how does anyone ever know? Forcing Allison to stand up for Sam, Hannah thinks now, was naïve as much as obnoxious. Hannah used to imagine a greater merging between two people, a point beyond which you felt an unquestioning certainty in each other.

“Did you sign the card for Mom and Frank?” Allison asks.

Hannah nods, taking a sesame bagel. “Dad’s in town, right?” she says.

“Yeah, we saw him yesterday. Are you thinking of…” Allison trails off, her expression encouraging.

“Maybe,” Hannah says. “But please let’s not have some big conversation about it.”

OLIVER RETURNS AFTER
closer to forty minutes than twenty. When Hannah hears the car in the driveway, she grabs her coat and goes outside. Oliver kisses her on the lips, and she can taste cigarettes, the purchase of which she assumes was his errand. He is wearing a plaid flannel shirt and over it a black down parka that definitely doesn’t belong to him—it’s Sam’s or maybe even Allison’s. Hannah gestures toward it and says, “Cute.” Hannah and Oliver flew in last night from Boston, and then—Hannah’s mother apologetically insisted—Oliver slept on the pullout couch in the den. It’s slightly bizarre to have his handsomeness set down here by daylight in her mother’s familiar, comforting, unexciting condo.

“So Aunt Polly offered to show me her art class portfolio,” Oliver says. He perches on the porch railing, lights a cigarette, and takes a puff. “But I sense that it’s filled with giant penises, and I’m afraid I’ll feel inadequate.”

“Aunt Polly’s taking an art class? Like adult ed or something?”

“Ask her yourself. She’ll be more than happy to tell you. They’re currently studying the human form, and she said the male model is quite well hung.”

“Aunt Polly did not say
well hung.
”

Oliver holds up the hand with the cigarette in it, palm facing her. “As God is my witness.” He has that little pre-smile on his face, though.

“Aunt Polly would never say that. Or if she did, she must not know what it means.” Polly is Fig’s mother, fifty-eight years old, with graying black hair that’s usually pulled back in a bun. Every year on Thanksgiving, she wears an enamel turkey pin.

“Of course she knows what it means,” Oliver says. “Do you think she was referring to his earlobes? She also said she finds his scrotum exquisite. She’s never considered herself partial to the scrote, but something special’s going on with this guy.”

Hannah shakes her head—they both are smiling—and she says, “You’re such a liar.”

“Your aunt’s appreciation of the male sex organs is healthy. Don’t be judgmental.”

Oliver is still seated on the railing, and she has a strange urge to butt her head against his chest, like a goat. She’s not into the sex with him, but she’s always reassured by his arms around her. When he lights another cigarette, she feels a leap of happiness—she thought he would smoke only one, but now they get to stay out here longer, alone on the back porch. Oliver’s smoking doesn’t bother her at all, which is something that actually does sort of bother her. But the smoke reminds her, even when they’re together, of him.

“I might go see my dad today,” Hannah says. “Do you think I should?”

Oliver shrugs. “Sure.”

“Do you remember that I haven’t spoken to him for several years?”

“Not since he tried to force-feed you pasta, if I’m not mistaken.” Oliver often seems like he’s not particularly listening, yet he has an excellent memory. It’s both insulting and flattering.

“If I go, do you want to come?” Hannah asks.

“Do I want to or will I?”

“Either, I guess.”

“Will, yes. Want to, no.” Perhaps he senses that she’s displeased, because he reaches out and pulls her toward him so she’s leaning sideways against his chest. Although his cigarette must be perilously close to her hair, this configuration is pretty much what she was thinking of before, with herself as the goat. “You don’t need me to go with you, Hannah,” he says, and his voice is one of affectionate indulgence. “You’re a big girl.”

AFTER STEPPING OFF
the elevator on the fourth floor, Hannah walks down the carpeted hall until she finds her father’s apartment. This is where he has lived for almost ten years, since selling their house on the Main Line. Though her heart is thudding, she knocks without hesitation; the gesture of knocking is habit. When her father opens the door, he smiles in a pleasantly superficial fashion, as he might for the adult daughter of a neighbor, and says, “Come on in.” She follows him and accepts his offer of Diet Coke, which is what he is drinking. (It’s weird—it’s practically girly—to see her father drinking Diet Coke.) Hannah is struck by, of all things, his good looks. At fifty-eight, he remains fit and lean; his gray hair is neatly combed; he is wearing Top-Siders, khaki pants, and a blue polo shirt with the collar visible above the neck of his gray sweatshirt. If he were a stranger Hannah passed on the sidewalk, wouldn’t she assume he had a life attendant to such looks? She’d think he had an attractive wife, with whom he would attend a benefit dinner at the art museum that night.

When they are settled in the living room, he says, “Long time, no see, Hannah. I have to confess, I was surprised when I got your call this morning. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Well, I’m in town for the weekend,” Hannah says.

“Indeed. And your mom’s becoming a real estate heiress, huh? Who’d have thunk?”

“Frank seems like a good guy.”

“I’ll tell you what Frank McGuire is, and that’s one shrewd businessman. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. I’ll say that about him.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“Oh, sure. Not for years, but I’ve met him. He’s a well-known fellow in this city.”

“He’s pretty low-key with us,” Hannah says.

“And how about yourself? I trust you’re gainfully employed these days.”

If he really does ask Allison about Hannah, it seems impossible that he doesn’t know what her job is. “I work at a nonprofit that sends classical musicians into public schools,” she says.

“Now, there’s some irony. I remember when you wouldn’t practice piano to save your life.”

“You’re thinking of Allison. I never took piano lessons.”

“I beg your pardon? You took them from that witch of a woman on Barkhurst Lane.”

“That was definitely Allison.”

“You never took piano lessons? I guess you had a deprived childhood.”

“Anyway,” she says, “I’m on the fund-raising side.”

“A nonprofit, huh? Both you and your sister turned out to be bleeding hearts.”

“You were in the Peace Corps, Dad.”

He makes a kind of cheerful grimace. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? I always thought one of you would go to business or law school. It’s not too late, you know. You’re about to turn twenty-six?”

She nods. She can’t imagine anything she’d be less suited for than business or law school.

“You’d probably be right in the middle. An MBA in particular, that opens up a lot of options. If I were your age, I’d go for that, forget about this law crap.”

She nods some more. If she stays another fifteen minutes, that ought to be enough. “Have you been traveling much for work?” she asks.

“Less and less. I’ve got a case over in King of Prussia, if you consider that toilet bowl travel. Where I did go, not for work but for some R and R, is down to Florida last month.” Her father leans forward. “Grab that album on the shelf, will you? You’ll enjoy these.”

When she’s holding the album, he waves her toward him. Meaning they’re supposed to sit on the couch side by side? And since when has her father taken pictures? He always showed impatience when her mother had them pose; as her mother waited hopefully for the sun to reemerge, or perhaps for Hannah to smile, he’d say, “Hurry up and just take it, Caitlin.”

“I went with a couple of the guys, Howard Donovan and Rich Inslow,” he says. “Inslow’s separated now, too.”

Hannah does not remember her father having friends, certainly not close ones. The Donovans and the Inslows both belonged to the same country club as the Gaveners—her mother was no longer a member after the divorce, so Hannah rarely went—but the other men hadn’t appeared to be more than acquaintances. Interestingly, her father stopped dating around the time her mother started; he was in a few relationships at first, but those all fell away.