Dream Girl Read online

  Books signed, stock signed, chairs folded, time for Gerry to make his getaway and, lord knows, the escort seemed eager to escort him. He didn’t really have the energy for much, but if she wanted to do a little something in the car, that could work for him. He was a single man, unencumbered, a consenting adult.

  He was about to slide through the bookstore’s rear exit when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “I guess you’re surprised to see me.”

  Gerry shrugged.

  “You seem to have done pretty well for yourself. How many copies of this book have you sold?”

  A question Gerry hated, although at least the number was finally respectable. It seemed to him that only novelists were asked, in this indirect way, how much money they made.

  “I’m doing fine,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “To see my boy, of course.”

  “I’m not your boy.”

  “How’s Ellie?”

  “Fine.”

  “I bet she’s bursting with pride.”

  “She’s always been proud of me, yes.”

  “Yeah, once you came along, she didn’t really have anything left for me. When I would come home from being on the road, I felt like an interloper, like you two were the couple and I was the kid.”

  Interloper. Gerry’s father had always liked to show off his vocabulary, much of it learned from the old Reader’s Digest feature Build Your Word Power. He took the quiz very seriously and woe to anyone who dared to mark it up before him.

  But had his mother treated his father like an interloper? Gerry didn’t think so. His mother had lit up when his father walked into a room. She was a young, still quite beautiful woman when he left, yet she never dated again, and it wasn’t for lack of opportunities. It was always clear to Gerry that Gerry Senior was the only man his mother ever loved. He considered that unrequited, undeserved devotion the singular tragedy of her life.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m going to be leaving Colleen.”

  “Who?”

  “My second wife.”

  “Down from two wives to one to none. That will be different for you.”

  “Maybe I’ll swing by Baltimore, pay your mother a visit. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.”

  Gerry’s right hand was sore from signing, but he felt his fingers clench and unclench. God, it would be satisfying to punch him, just once. “Why would I care that you’re leaving Colleen? What does that have to do with me? What do you have to do with me?”

  “You’ll never be rid of me,” his father said, pointing to Gerry’s head. “I’ll always be in there. You’re my boy.”

  It was like a curse in a fairy tale. Gerry didn’t believe in fairy tales. He took the escort by the elbow and piloted her into the parking lot. Unfortunately, his decision to touch her, even if it was only an elbow, ended up committing him to far more intimate and intensive acts than he had planned. Ah well, he wasn’t married and if he noticed, when she plunged her hand inside his pants as they necked outside his hotel, that this “divorcée” wore a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, what business was it of his?

  “Who was that man?” she asked later in his bed, after he had tried and failed to fuck her into silence. “Back in the bookstore.”

  “Some run-of-the-mill crazy.”

  “Yeah, we see those a lot. I would have thought you were more likely to be a magnet for the female crazies. Those sex scenes in Dream Girl—they’re pretty hot.”

  Were they? Gerry had intended them to be more comic than erotic. She was probably saying what she thought he wanted to hear.

  “Gosh, I hope I’m not in your next book,” she added in a tone that implied she yearned for just that.

  “Who knows,” he said, wondering what other novelists she had slept with, and if he would consider any of them more accomplished than himself. “Anyway, I have a very early wake-up call.”

  “I’m the one taking you to the airport. Should I call you or nudge you?” To her credit, she gave the old joke a curlicue of self-aware irony.

  “Call,” Gerry said.

  April 1

  VICTORIA IS IN AN ODD MOOD on April Fool’s Day, a day that Gerry has always loathed, finding practical jokes to be a particular kind of sadism. His father, of course, had loved them. His father’s sense of humor was so low that he had thought it funny to shake his four-year-old’s hand with one of those old-fashioned buzzers that administered a shock. To this day, Gerry isn’t much for hand-shaking. People think he’s a germaphobe, but he’s simply never gotten over the idea that something hard and electric might be pressed into his palm.

  He attributes Victoria’s mood to the weather. March has gone out like a wet, cranky lion, the temperatures falling from last week ’s springlike interlude, rain squalls sweeping across the city every few hours. She isn’t unkind—if anything, she is more solicitous of him than usual, asking him twice if he’s sure that a turkey sandwich will suffice for lunch, if he’s happy with his tea. She does inquire at one point whether the detective from New York has followed up with him about Margot, but she appears to be making idle conversation.

  Yet—her hands are shaking when she clears his tray and she is unusually pale. Probably love trouble. A neurasthenic type, he decides, the kind of girl—woman—who takes long, solitary walks at night, considers the Brontës and their heroines to be role models. He remembers a young woman in that vein whom he and Lucy had known, who was given to floaty, ankle-length dresses and outrageous hats. What a revelation she had been when they had gotten to know her better.

  When Victoria comes in to say goodbye, she says: “We should probably start talking about the next phase of your care. You won’t need a nurse forever. Do you think you could be comfortable without Aileen once you’re able to use a walker?”

  It’s a day he has been yearning for, but now he’s terrified of this benchmark. To move on his own again, to reclaim his body will be glorious. But—to be here, alone, in this apartment, where there are still things that can’t be explained. To not have Aileen in his sight or within earshot. How will they ever be free of each other? To think that this is the person he will be yoked to for the rest of his life, not because of love or passion, but because of a terrible secret. If he were to call the detective—no, if he were to call a lawyer, explain the situation, and they could cut a deal—no, if he were to call Thiru—

  His mind abandons all plans as preposterous. He can never confess without a horrible scandal. Imagine the first line of his New York Times obituary if this should come to light.

  “Let’s see what my doctor says. I admit, I am nervous about being alone here at night. What if I were to fall again?”

  “I guess you could wear one of those bracelets?”

  I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Gerry remembers being in his twenties when that television ad became famous. How he and Luke and Tara had laughed at the idea, at the poor production values. Why had it struck them as funny? Why had it struck them as improbable? He thinks of the Sphinx’s riddle, about the animal who starts the day on four legs, goes to two, ends up with three. Add a walker and one could argue it’s six.

  So there, Sphinx. You didn’t know everything. But then, neither did Oedipus.

  “Let’s see what the doctor advises,” he says. It is four P.M. and he is counting the hours until Aileen’s arrival and his nightly dose of Ambien.

  *

  GERRY WAKES UP in the middle of the night to the sound of a quarrel. Mama never raised her voice, he thinks. When his parents did argue late at night, he would have to tiptoe to the bottom of the stairs if he wanted to hear anything and, even then, it was difficult to make out the words.

  But most of the time, he didn’t try to eavesdrop, he just stayed in bed, willing himself to go back to sleep. He starts to do that now. Maybe the Olympic swimmer has finally decided to spend a night here, he thinks. Maybe the sheikh is here, berating his staff. It would be just like Baltimore to erect a lu
xury high-rise in which one could hear the neighbors through the walls.

  And then he realizes the two voices are female and coming from downstairs. Tiptoeing is out of the question, of course. Even if he were mobile, he would be nervous about standing at the top of those stairs.

  One voice is clearly Aileen’s, only it sounds different from the way it usually does. Less flat, more passionate. I did what I had to do. Don’t second-guess me.

  The other voice is higher, but not as loud; her words don’t carry as well. She seems to be asking questions, each sentence ending on a little wail. Do? Do? What are we going to do?

  I had no choice.

  Jesus, Leenie.

  Leenie. Leenie. Gerry knows a Leenie. Knew. “I go by Leenie. Rhymes with Deenie, like in the Judy Blume novel.”

  It’s as if his bed starts to float through the night sky, taking him to his past, the way the ghosts guided Scrooge through London. He is in his office at Goucher. Leenie has big thick glasses, she is round as a bowling ball. She has requested this office visit to explain why she wants to avoid participating at the next class, which has been designated a day of silence in support of LGBTQ people. He thinks that was the acronym at the time, although maybe the T and the Q hadn’t yet been added.

  Leenie. Leenie Bryant. And she had a friend in the class, they were thick as thieves, a slender girl. One so thin and one so round they had looked like the number 10 when they walked side by side.

  The thin girl had been named Tory. At least, that was the name she used for her short stories, anemic little sketches that always ended with someone’s suicide. “It’s short for Victoria,” she had told him, “but I prefer it because it rhymes with ‘story’ and all I want to do is write stories.”

  Leenie and Tory. Aileen and Victoria.

  What is happening? Why are two of his former students downstairs in his apartment, arguing? How did one of them become his night nurse? Why had Victoria not reminded him that she was in his class when she applied to be his assistant? I was there at the same time, but I majored in biology.

  WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?

  He must be dreaming or hallucinating. He will start cutting back on the Ambien, the oxycodone. He will, he will.

  “I’m going to tell him.”

  The voices stop. There is the thud of something falling, then a sound unlike anything Gerry has ever heard, as if a wild animal is rampaging. He would not want to see what’s making that sound.

  Footsteps on the stair, heavy and slow; has to be Aileen. Leenie. Huffing, puffing, carrying something cumbersome in her hand. It’s the Hartwell, his first prize, a marble book on a brass base, his name and the year, 1986, inscribed on the book. The prize has sat on his desk in various cities for almost thirty-five years now, a testament to young promise fulfilled. Gerry has won other prizes since then, but none has carried the literal and figurative weight of the Hartwell.

  There is something clinging to it, something dark, liquid, viscous, with pale flecks. He doesn’t want to think about what’s clinging to the statuette. Gerry glances at the clock. It’s eleven thirty P.M., thirty minutes left of April Fool’s Day. If this were a terrible practical joke, he wouldn’t mind.

  “I’m going to have to get another freezer,” Aileen says. She puts the prize on his bedside table, goes to the kitchen, returns with a glass of water and his medication, including the calcium pill, which he usually doesn’t take two nights in a row.

  He takes them. Who cares if he never wakes up?

  1986

  “THIS IS SO CIVILIZED,” Lucy whispered to Gerry. “None of that short-list savagery, no putting people through the suspense of it all for everyone else’s amusement. Just a dinner, a presentation, and ‘remarks.’ I love this.”

  Gerry loved it, too, although he was trying to pretend he didn’t. He had entertained, for a brief moment, not showing up for the dinner. Thiru had been furious with him. “You are not going to be that kind of writer,” he said. “I’m not asking you to be Truman fucking Capote, running around with society types and appearing on The Tonight Show. But when someone gives you a prize, you are going to show up and you are going to be properly grateful. Jesus Christ, it’s eighty thousand dollars—that could be a year off from teaching. Go someplace like Mexico or Costa Rica and it could be two years. You don’t have to kiss anyone’s ass, but you will attend, and you will be properly grateful.”

  He was properly grateful. He had even splurged on a proper tuxedo. In the fitting room at Hamburger’s, as the tailor measured his inseam, he had been surprised, then terrified and, finally, elated, at a fleeting thought: I will wear this tuxedo many times. I will win other awards. I will be given prestigious honors. This is only my first book.

  But, much as he would like to go away and do nothing but write, Lucy couldn’t leave her teaching gig and there was no way she would let him take even a brief writing sabbatical. Lucy had no intention of allowing Gerry out of her sight for so much as an evening, which was why she was here. She had made that very clear when he reported Thiru’s comments to her—how he must attend the dinner, even though it was in Mobile, Alabama, a wretchedly difficult place to fly, and a not-inexpensive one.

  “You mean, we’ll go,” Lucy had said.

  “I only meant to spare you a night of tedium.”

  “Sure.”

  And here she was, her arm linked through his, eye-fucking every woman who spoke to him. Lucy, who had never expressed the least bit of professional rivalry with Gerry, had suddenly become jealous of other women. It was at once incredibly erotic and a bit of a drag. He looked at her in the dress she had insisted spending three hundred dollars on in a Cross Keys boutique—three hundred dollars! She had never splurged on clothing before. It was a bubbly thing, apparently the current style. It didn’t suit her. Worse, it was out of place here in Mobile, where the women tended toward a kind of era-less soap opera beauty. Big hair, low necklines, lots of sparkles.

  “You can stop looking at her tits now,” Lucy hissed after he greeted one of the jurors.

  “I wasn’t,” he said, and he hadn’t been. But then he had to look and—well, they were worth regarding. He had never been a breast man and, in marrying Lucy, he had figured he had cemented his preference for slender, small-breasted women.

  What if he hadn’t?

  That question was like the fleeting thought in the dressing room at Hamburger’s—thrilling, awful, wonderful. When he married Lucy, he had been “promising.” Now he was beginning to fulfill that promise. This was only his first book, not his last. Would Lucy really be the last woman he ever had sex with? Of course she would, that was the promise made. He didn’t believe that adulterous thoughts counted. He was pretty sure that a marriage’s only chance was in each partner having a lively inner life, fantasies that could never be shared. But it had not occurred to him that professional success could nudge those fantasies closer to him, like someone moving a plate of brownies toward you when you were adamant that you were dieting. Just have one. What could it hurt?

  The female juror, the one with the tits, had seated herself on Gerry’s right. It was almost impossible to speak to her without staring into her cleavage, and he had to speak to her, he had to be polite. Thiru’s orders.

  Lucy, under the cover of the tablecloth, put her hand on his groin. It felt more like a threat than a come-on.

  “It’s funny how obscure our prize is, when it’s so richly endowed,” the richly endowed juror was saying. “I can’t help thinking that it’s about location—if our foundation were in New York or Chicago, it would be a much bigger deal. Why, the Pulitzer gives its winners only three thousand dollars and the judges are newspaper editors. Our jury is comprised of past winners, critics, academics.”

  “Comprises,” Lucy said.

  “What?”

  “The correct usage is ‘comprises.’ The whole comprises the parts. Not ‘comprised of.’ Lots of people get it wrong. It’s one of my bugaboos.”

  The female juror eyed Lu
cy thoughtfully. “I’d almost forgotten,” she said. “You write, too.”

  “She’s a wonderful writer,” Gerry put in. “Fiction and poetry.”

  “Have you—”

  “Have I published anything yet? Not outside of literary journals.”

  “She’s been working on this book of interconnected stories, it’s really marvelous.”

  “How lovely,” the female juror said, putting her hand on Gerry’s forearm. “You two are the loveliest couple, so perfectly matched, in brains and beauty. I mean that.”

  She excused herself to speak to someone on the committee about the evening’s program.

  “Do you want her?” Lucy said.

  “What? No! What are you talking about?”

  “Because you can have her. If I’m in the room.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I know you, Gerry. I can feel how restless you’re becoming. I’ve been thinking—if we do these things together, we’ll be okay. It’s how we’ll survive your … restlessness.”

  “Lucy—no, you’re wrong. Ever since I’ve had this modest success, your emotions have been all over the place. This isn’t about us, as a couple. Please don’t worry. I’m not leaving you behind, in any sense.”

  Lucy has never looked more like Barbara Stanwyck than she does in this moment. Cool, appraising, plotting.

  “Let’s invite her back to the hotel with us, after the event, to have a drink. Let’s see what happens.”

  “You’re being very silly.”

  “What do you have to lose? If I’m wrong, or if you decide you want no part of it, we have a drink with the nice lady who helped hand you eighty thousand dollars and I can make up for being so rude to her just now. If I’m right—”