Ms. Taken Identity (29 page)

“Look at me. I’m a wreck. I’m a fucking paranoid wreck. Because I have this thought in my head now, the seed is there, and
I can’t get rid of it. I can’t claw it out, even if I want to.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks, and she tries to wipe
them away with her sleeve but misses most of them. “I’m sorry, Mitch. I can’t do it. I can’t live a life always looking over
my shoulder or holding my breath, wondering what you’re up to when things go bad, and not trusting you, and feeling so awful
about myself. I won’t live my life that way.”

A taxi pulls up to the curb.

“So what are you saying?” My throat clamps down, shutting off air, and I can’t swallow.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls something out. Her ring. I didn’t even notice it was off. She presses it into my hand.

“Goodbye, Mitch,” she says, and slides into the darkness of the cab.

There’ve been a dozen or so movie versions of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
, and I’ve seen most of them, including the classic with Alastair Sim. But there’s a scene in the one with George C. Scott,
from the mid-eighties, that gets me every time. Scrooge travels back in time with the Ghost of Christmas Past, and he’s looking
at a twenty-something version of himself meeting up with his fiancée, Belle. They’re out by a frozen pond and haven’t seen
each other in a while, and she senses hesitancy in Scrooge’s eyes about continuing their engagement. When she asks him what’s
wrong, he says that instead of getting married now, he wants to work for a while longer, amass his fortune, because then they’ll
be happier when they marry. She gives him a sad, sad look, and her eyes tear up, and she releases him from his engagement
promise. As she walks away, the Old Scrooge gets a fiery look in his eye and you can see he wants to shout out, “Damn the
money, boy! Go after her!” and the Young Scrooge feels it too, wants to chase her down. But he doesn’t. He just lets her walk
away.

As I watch Marie’s cab pull away, I have the feeling that if I run out in the street and stop the cab, and make her get out
and tell her that I love her; that if I pull her by the hand back into the restaurant, stand in front of Katharine and Brent
and Sheldon, and confess what I’ve done; if I promise I will never do anything like this again, and beg her just to be patient,
and work with me, and let me talk when I feel any strange or panicky urges, she’d listen, and she’d know how much I love her,
and she’d take me back, and she’d wear my ring again. But I don’t. Like Scrooge, I just stand and watch her go.

T
here’s little fanfare to greet me when I get back to St. Louis. In fact, there’s no fanfare. But why should there be? Only
two people knew why I’d gone, and one of them has given me every indication she never wants to see me again. I can hardly
expect the other to be waiting at the airport, ready to strike up the band, especially if Marie has gotten to him first and
regaled him with all the details: “The Empire State Building was tall and the food was good, but Mitch fucked another woman,
not in New York, but not so long ago, so I dumped him. Here’s his flight information, in case you wanted it.”

I collect my bags and catch a cab to the apartment, which is plenty cold since it’s cold outside and I turned down the heat
before I left. I take as hot a shower as I can stand without giving myself third-degree burns. Afterwards, I slip into my
sweats and start unpacking. I save Marie’s ring for last, which I pull out of the pocket of my jeans. What does one do with
a used engagement ring? I suppose I could keep it, hope the next woman I meet, if I ever meet another woman, will have exactly
the same taste as Marie. In fact, I hope she’s like Marie in
every
way, except for the fact that I won’t have cheated on her, or whatever it is I did. But what’re the odds of that? Besides,
maybe that’s not the brightest idea, kicking off a new life with someone with a ring that failed the previous owner.

I put it on the tip of my pinky and polish it against my shirt. It’s a good-looking ring, and it looked great on her. The
center stone was the perfect size for her finger, and the little diamonds that speckled all around the band gave it a sort
of Goldilocks gleam: not too little, not too much, but just right. I hold it up to my nose, to see if it still has her scent
on it, that cocoa-butter cream she’s always slathering on. But it doesn’t. In fact, you’d have a tough time finding any clue
that it was ever on her finger at all.

When I finally get hold of Bradley, he’s at Skyler’s, and it’s obvious Marie hasn’t broken the news: he suggests the two of
us come over and tell them how it went. In truth, this is exactly what I’d love to do, but seeing how there is no longer a
two of us to come over, I suggest a different two of us—he and I—meet at Colchester’s. Once we’ve settled in and ordered sandwiches
and a round of beer, and I’ve told him what I think of New York—massive, frigid, fun—I tell him about the contract. And the
amount.

“Get lost,” he says, and wipes his mouth with the back of his shirt cuff. “And they also want you to bat cleanup for the Yankees.”

So I pull out my copy of the contract, which I brought for exactly this reason, and slide it over to him. He reads it, then
does a couple twitchy things with his brows and lips.

“That’s
really
how much you got?”

“That’s really how much I got. Pre-tax, of course. And before Susannah takes her cut.”

“Still.” He leans back in his chair, clearly in awe. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah. Son of a bitch.”

He’s taking this part very well, which he should, since his best friend is more than halfway to being a millionaire, and he
knows this means a lot of free beer and sandwiches and pool and many other things, for a long time, so I have a feeling it’s
all going to be okay. I decide to ride the good-time momentum. “Hey, not to change the subject or anything, but there’s something
I want to tell you.” I pause. “Marie and I hit a rough patch while we were up there.”

“Hmm? Lovers’ quarrel?” He’s still eyeing the contract, and all those zeros.

“Yep, that’s exactly what it was. Lovers’ quarrel. Maybe a bit worse. In the sense she gave me my ring back.”

Now he snaps to. “Wait. What?”

“She gave me my ring back. We pretty much broke up.”

His expression turns stormy quicker than I expected. “You broke up? What happened?”

“Actually, it’s kind of a long story.”

I give him a jokey smile to let him know the worst is over, and I’m doing okay, and that there are bits of humor to come,
probably, though I don’t know where, or when. What I’m looking for, really, is a way to paint the
whole
picture, give him all the shades, since I know he’ll be talking to Marie, and I want him to see that this wasn’t a one-issue
breakup, that, sure, I slept with Katharine, which was wrong, but we both realized we weren’t the best people for each other,
or would have in time, since that’s what she basically said when she told me she couldn’t be with me, and that other problems
were already knocking on the door, or just around the corner, or somewhere in town. Maybe.

“You did something stupid again, didn’t you?” His tone is cold and flinty, and I don’t like the accusatory finger poking through
it.

“What do you mean,
again
?”

“Jesus, Mitch. Do you have amnesia? Don’t you remember Jason?”

“That wasn’t stupid. That was just a lapse in judgment. A miscommunication. We’ve been over this.”

“It was fucking stupid. It was idiotic. And then I had to bail you out.”

“You didn’t bail me out. I talked to her. I gave her the truth.”

These, from the look on his face, are the most ridiculous words a person has ever spoken. “You gave her the truth all right.
After
I
talked to her every day for a week and listened to her scream and cry and told her you were my best friend and not some psycho,
and there had to be a reason why you did what you did, so why don’t you let him explain?” He glares at me like I’m a snotty-nosed
kid. “What, did you think it was your charm and good looks and chocolate pies that got you over to her place that night? Don’t
flatter yourself.”

I’ve never seen him this pissed.

“So what was it?” he sneers. “Did you gamble away a few thousand? Pick up a prostitute? Tell her she was an imbecile because
she couldn’t keep her Turgenev straight from her Tolstoy?”

“Why are you getting so hostile, man?”

“Because she’s my sister.
Man
.”

Something in the way he says “man” triggers it, like what he’s really saying is, “You’re not a man at all, but a good-for-nothing
screw-up, which is what you’ve always been, and I’m her brother, and you had no business being in the same city as her, much
less engaged to her.”

“Oh, I get it. The two of you are
so
close. I don’t hear about her for five months when she moves back from North Carolina. You tell me to go to the studio where
she dances, to listen to her and her retard friends. And now your heart breaks when you hear her cry. Give him a medal, for
brother of the year.”

“Fuck you,” he says, shoving the table at me as he scrambles to get up. The beers spill all over the place. I get up too and
we both stare each other down.

“I thought I owed you an explanation,” I say. My breathing is ragged and shallow and my pulse is thrumming in my ears. “But
apparently you already have all the answers. So I guess I don’t owe you shit.”

He takes a step back, then lunges forward and smashes his right fist into my face. What I see is a burst of light, then the
ceiling, and I realize I’m on the ground. He’s standing over me, towering and humongous from this angle.

“Now we’re even,” he says, and storms away.

I’ve never been in a fight, not unless you count childhood spats on the playground, which I don’t, since that’s more pulling
on hair and shirt collars and rolling around in the dirt. The closest I ever got was about five years ago, when I witnessed
a car accident, and the two guys got out and started pounding each other. A few of us saw where this one was headed, the Skipper
thrashing Gilligan, so we jumped in and pulled the big guy off and pinned him down for a couple minutes, till he cooled off.
Now, as I pick myself off the floor of Colchester’s, I realize I still haven’t been in a fight: a fight requires two, an exchange
of punches, an Ali and a Frazier. I’ve just been flattened.

I assure everyone I’m okay, then go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I open and close my jaw a few times,
to make sure it works, and it does, barely. I stare into the mirror at the spot, gingerly poking at the skin to differentiate
the parts that hurt from the parts that don’t—my right cheek is already swelling up. Then I take a look at the larger picture.
Me. As a whole. Where do I go from here? And I don’t mean, do I go back to my table or home (though it is a legitimate question,
since I’ve a feeling I need a bag of ice, and soon), but more, how do I view myself in light of all that’s happened with Marie.
I suppose I could just slink around town with my guilt and regret, wait for the next roundhouse-right sucker puncher to knock
me on my ass (“Go ahead and sock him: he cheated on his woman”). But when does it end? I told Marie the truth when I didn’t
have to, I apologized and sincerely meant it—and she dumped me. I brought Bradley to Colchester’s and sat him down, bought
him beer and a sandwich, tried to break it to him gently—and he did his best to jack a few teeth down my throat. Fine. I get
it. Message received. I’m an asshole. You don’t want any part of me. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have a life to live.
I splash a last bit of water on my face and towel it off. I feel better. I’m okay. I’m fine.

And I am. I have my health (except for the pain in my jaw), my brain (except for a slight concussion), and over half a million
dollars coming my way. This is my chance to improve my life, make a difference, be kind and charitable, all those things we
all say we’d do if we ever won the lottery, and though this isn’t exactly winning the lottery, it’s as close as I’ll ever
come. And while I’m not saying money is the answer to everything, or many things, it can, to paraphrase what I heard Oprah
tell Cameron Diaz not too long ago, be a good thing.

W
hen the check finally comes from Susannah—all six figures of it—and I’ve deposited it, and I’ve waited a few days, and there’s
no knock on my door from the bank manager, police, or FBI wanting to know whom I robbed, what I’m laundering, or do I have
any other counterfeit checks in circulation, the first thing I do is buy my Malibu. The purchase price is in my lease agreement,
and I’m probably paying a few bucks more than if I’d gone to a dealer and haggled, but so be it: I’ve grown fond of my little
Chevy.

I’m teaching again this semester, and this new batch of students is a lot like the last one—hardworking, interested, chatty—without
a Molly. This makes things a little boring, and if you’re waiting for me to say something like, “Gee, I actually miss her
and all the excitement and drama she brought,” keep holding your breath; sometimes you just want to walk into a classroom
and have the kids do their work, and not feel like you’re co-starring in an episode of
Gossip Girl
or
The Hills
, or some other angsty teen drama. Now’s that time. And for the most part, over the next few weeks, the students oblige, which
lets me teach in peace and work on my dissertation, since, by the grace of God, I was able to wheedle and coax and cajole—but
mostly grovel—my way back into the good graces of my dissertation committee, after missing various appointments and deadlines
over the last four months.

Scott invites me over for a Super Bowl party in early February. A few of his college buddies and lawyer friends are there,
and we spend the afternoon eating nachos and pretzels and pizza, drinking beer and soda—all before the game even starts, thanks
to a sixteen-hour pre-game show.