The Man of My Dreams (32 page)

Out here, I do sometimes miss my family, but they seem to be getting along well. Allison is pregnant again, and Fig is pregnant, too—the world is a very fertile place these days—and relishes discussing with anyone who cares to listen that the anonymous sperm donor she and Zoe used has an IQ of 143. Darrach and Elizabeth and Rory visited me in the winter, and we did lots of touristy things—they all three bought turquoise necklaces in Old Town—and Elizabeth kept saying, “It’s so stinking cool that you live here. I’ve wanted to come to New Mexico for my whole life.” I’m not sure if you’d remember my friend Jenny from Tufts, but she lives in Denver, which is a short plane flight away, so we keep talking about trying to see each other; she’s in her second semester of nursing school. (I hope in providing updates about other people I am not assuming in you an excessive degree of interest in my life now that I am no longer paying $105 an hour. Please know also I am not trying to mock the fee, as I’m aware that other clients paid up to $70 more. I guess part of the reason I haven’t written to you before is that when you said to let you know how I was doing, I just didn’t know if you meant once or regularly.)

But back to Henry: I suppose the easiest explanation is that he didn’t find me that attractive. But my attraction to him was flattering, and he genuinely enjoyed my friendship. What did he have to lose by keeping me near? I don’t resent him for suggesting that I move to Chicago, because the fact is, I didn’t require much persuasion—I heard in that conversation at Fig’s wedding what I wanted to hear. Or maybe he was sufficiently attracted to me but didn’t want the person he told everything to also to be his girlfriend. I can see this, how one might prefer a little distance. I can see, too, how because he denied me, I had the luxury of being sure of him, but because I never denied him, he was burdened by uncertainty. And then I think, no, no, it was none of that. It was me—all along, I was the one who resisted. I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and because I didn’t want to use it up, because what do you wish for then? That possibility, that I was intimidated by getting what I wanted, is the hardest one for me to consider, which might mean it is the likeliest. On three or four occasions Henry would, I think, have kissed me, and on all these occasions, I turned away. Sometimes only an inch, or only with my eyes. It was never purposely; I’d always done it already, before I’d decided to. One of the times was when he was lying in my lap in front of the TV, and he looked up at me, he
gazed
at me, and I should have gazed back, but instead I wondered if he could see my nose hair, and I tilted my head so we were no longer making eye contact. I never felt ready in those moments, I felt like first I needed to go take a shower or prepare some notes, and so, I guess, it was my fault; I choreographed my own devastation. A part of me thinks,
But why couldn’t he have accounted for my nervousness, why couldn’t he just have set his palms against my ears and held me still?
And then another part of me thinks,
He was never single anyway.
Maybe it all did turn out for the best.

I sometimes remember driving back from the Brewers game, how I believed I would never love anyone more than I loved Henry. In a sense, I may have been right: I can’t imagine ever again feeling that infatuated and free of doubt. I think Henry may have been the first and last person about whom I believed,
If I can get him to love me, then everything else will be all right.
That I am no longer that naïve is both a loss and a gain. I have dated a bit since moving to New Mexico—I even once really did meet a guy at the supermarket, which was something I thought happened only in movies—but I am not in love. I am writing you now anyway, not in love. If I had to guess, I’d guess I will get married eventually, but I am far from sure of it. When I think of Henry and Oliver and Mike, I feel as if they are three different models—templates, almost—and I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. It would be arrogant to claim no other dynamics exist just because I haven’t experienced them, but I have to say that I can’t imagine what they are. I hope that I am wrong.

Mike is the only one of the three I look back on with much nostalgia. I do think it might be different if we met now, when I have enough of a frame of comparison to recognize how rare his goodness to me was, but then I think how I grew sick of kissing him. How can you spend your life with a person you’re sick of kissing? Regardless, I have heard through the grapevine that he is married. Oliver is still in Boston, and we exchange occasional e-mails. I don’t harbor ill will—I really did get a kick out of him—but I’m glad we didn’t stay together any longer than we did.

As for Henry, we haven’t been in touch since I left Chicago. I assume that he and Suzy are still together; when I picture him, I picture her in the background, cradling an infant. The day I left Chicago, Henry and I had breakfast together at a diner, at his suggestion, and as we hugged goodbye, he said, “I feel like I made some mistakes with you,” and I said, “I feel like you did, too.” Yet again he looked like he might cry, so I shook my head, almost irritably, and said, “It’s not that big a deal.”

Incidentally, I described Henry to my roommate, Lisa, once, soon after I’d moved to Albuquerque. Though I’d been speaking for about fifteen minutes, I’d barely, in my own view, gotten going, and she glanced over—we were in her car, and she was driving—and said, “He sounds like a pussy.”

That day last week on the playground, after Jason had gone inside, Lisa called into headquarters on her walkie-talkie, then paused as her partner headed back to the police car. She said, “Hannah, what did I tell you about sticking your students’ fingers in drainage holes?” She grinned. “So you want to grill out tonight?”

“Do we have stuff?”

“I’ll stop at Smith’s on the way home.” Lisa climbed into the car, then unrolled the window, poked her head out, and said, “I can’t believe you’re wearing clogs. You’re such a teacher.”

Dr. Lewin, I am telling you all of this so you’ll know I moved on; I progressed. During the time we met, I must have seemed so stuck—in my ideas of myself, of men, of everything—and it must have seemed as if I were hearing and absorbing nothing, but all along, I was listening to you; I
was
learning. And I’m learning still: Even after I moved out here, I felt that I ought to send a present to Henry and Suzy to wish them well, plus, because I was bitter, I believed it was a way to show how not bitter I was. So I bought a grill one day, at a sporting-goods store, and I brought it home and started to address the box, and then I thought,
What the fuck am I doing?
This is the grill Lisa and I use in our backyard. The grass in the yard is long dead, but there’s a deck to sit on. It is spring now; in the evening, the light over the mountains is beautiful, and the hamburgers we make on Henry’s grill are, I must say, exceptionally delicious. If you should ever find yourself in Albuquerque, I hope that you will look me up and let me fix one for you. I send this letter with the greatest affection and appreciation for the many ways in which you helped me.

All my best,
Hannah Gavener

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY AGENT
, Shana Kelly, is calm and wise even when I am not, and does an excellent job of every single thing she does on my behalf. I also am looked out for at William Morris by Suzanne Gluck, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Tracy Fisher, Raffaella DeAngelis, Michelle Feehan, Andy McNicol, Alicia Gordon—who is able to explain Hollywood in a way I understand—and Candace Finn, who is unfailingly cheerful and well organized.

At Random House, I am lucky to have the support of Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, Jane von Mehren, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Allison Saltzman, Victoria Wong, and Janet Wygal. I have not one but two wonderful editors: Daniel Menaker, who is the sensei to my grasshopper, and Laura Ford, who was both Lee Fiora’s and Hannah Gavener’s first friend at Random House. Dan’s and Laura’s careful feedback, amusing e-mails, wise counsel, ongoing availability, and general good humor make me feel grateful every single day. Meanwhile, my publicists—Jynne Martin, Kate Blum, Jen Huwer, Jennifer Jones, and Megan Fishmann—are the cleverest and hardest-working group of women on the planet. Total strangers sometimes tell me that my publicists must be miracle workers; I agree.

My
Prep
editor, Lee Boudreaux, read parts of this book in an earlier form and offered her characteristically smart and useful advice; although we no longer work together, it’s a better book because of her. Several of my writer friends also critiqued this material, and I especially thank the ones who had the patience to read it multiple times and still respond intelligently: Jim Donnelly, Elisabeth Eaves, Emily Miller, Sam Park, and Shauna Seliy.

My parents, Paul and Betsy Sittenfeld, and my siblings, Tiernan, Josephine, and P.G., are much warmer, weirder, and funnier than any characters I will ever invent. And they are good sports about having a novelist in the family.

Last, I thank my boyfriend, Matt Carlson, who created and maintains my website; who researched for me the tuition of Tufts University in 1998 and the timing of Mark Spitz’s swimming records; who comforts me when things aren’t going well; who celebrates with me when they are; and who is, of course, very dreamy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C
URTIS
S
ITTENFELD
’s first novel,
Prep,
was a national bestseller. It was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by
The New York Times,
it will be published in sixteen foreign countries, and its film rights have been optioned by Paramount Pictures. Sittenfeld’s nonfiction has appeared in
The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Allure, Glamour,
and on public radio’s
This American Life.
She lives in Philadelphia. Visit her website at
www.curtissittenfeld.com
.

ALSO BY CURTIS SITTENFELD

Prep

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Curtis Sittenfeld

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Sections of chapter 4 appeared, in a different form, in
The Mississippi Review.
The author also would like to acknowledge her use, in gathering information about Julia Roberts, of the July 1, 1991,
People
magazine cover story, “Julia Roberts: The Big Breakup!”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Sittenfeld, Curtis.
The man of my dreams: a novel / Curtis Sittenfeld.

p. cm.

eISBN-13: 978-1-58836-539-2

eISBN-10: 1-58836-539-5

1. Young women—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.I94M36 2006

813'.6—dc22 2005052910

www.atrandom.com

v1.0