My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  The news about the SAT scores had given her a thrill, but it had lasted for only a few days before she realized that they were abstract numbers that meant more to other people than they meant to her.

  Sometimes she went home at night and claimed she was tired from work and lay curled on her bed, listening to music and clutching the purple stuffed elephant she’d dug out of the far reaches of her closet. Benny, a toy she thought she’d lost interest in more than five years ago. Fortunately, she hadn’t thrown it away. She still didn’t understand a word of the French songs she listened to (except for the frequent mention of “amour,” of course, not that she really understood that), but now she felt that she understood the emotion in the singers’ voices better, the intense longing to be changed or rescued by something, most likely by amour. She and David shared the record player, moving it between the living room and her bedroom, depending on who wanted it most. Sometimes, she cried, but she was never sure if it was about her own life or if it was a reaction to the manipulative music.

  One of the weirder things about working in Craig’s basement was that it had started to feel like a job. There were times she was supposed to arrive, specific hours she was expected to appear online and chat with the group of men who’d become—there was no other word for it—her fans. As with the job at Beachy Keen, her labor was making someone else more money than it made her. On top of that, she gave herself a lunch break every day and went for a walk around Hammond and got a sandwich at an Italian deli that was tucked into Craig’s beat-up neighborhood.

  The other consolation was the money, which she’d started keeping in an envelope taped to the back of her desk drawer. She still hadn’t made any purchases, although she had talked to the guy in the hardware store about installing an air conditioner in her room one afternoon when no one was home “as a surprise for my mother.” It was nice to walk into the high-end coffee shop in the middle of Beauport and order anything she wanted without worrying about the ridiculous prices. Also to leave the girl who worked behind the counter a big tip because clearly she had to work in a place that was always hot and in which the customers were constantly complaining. Yesterday, as she left her tip and waved goodbye, she’d almost started to cry. When she got outside, she realized it wasn’t for the girl, but for herself. Even if the girl was sweating through her shifts and making less money than Mandy, she was still doing something that was honest, that didn’t have to be hidden.

  The most confusing thing of all was trying to figure out why she couldn’t quit, even though she knew she should.

  She could tell Craig was more attached to her or maybe more dependent upon her, and maybe that was part of it. Maybe he loved her a little. He sometimes called her “Sis.” She tried not to think too much about what this meant. She chose to believe that it was a little like the way Rooster Cogburn called Mattie Ross “Little Sister” in True Grit, which remained her favorite book of all time. Her own feelings about him were tangled. Sometimes she wished he’d make out with her again—he hadn’t for at least a week—hold her, maybe even do other things. Sometimes he seemed like an older brother she hung out with and took care of. There were heaps of laundry tossed next to the washing machine in the far corner of the basement, and she’d sorted it and run six loads through the machine over the course of a few days, folded and arranged it all in neat piles. He’d never thanked her, but it had given her satisfaction and the illusion that they had a halfway normal relationship of some kind.

  She walked from the bus stop, down along the buildings where the fishing industry had once been thriving. A lot of them were closed, but they still blocked the view of the water. When she got to Craig’s neighborhood, she was sweating lightly. The old woman who lived next door was out in her yard in her turquoise housedress, moving around pots that didn’t have any plants in them.

  “Hi, Daisy,” she said. “What’s the project today?”

  “Same as always. Trying to keep up here.”

  “Do you want help moving anything?”

  It was impossible even to guess how old she was, but she had the hump of an old lady, fingers that looked like claws, and a crazy bathrobe.

  “Aren’t you sweet to ask,” she said. “I need to keep busy. We all need to keep busy.” One of the clay pots she was holding fell out of her hand and smashed on the ground. She didn’t seem surprised or upset. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. “You going to help Craig? He’s a good boy. His mother always worried he’d end up in prison or on the streets after she died. She’d be proud he has his own business. Whatever it is.”

  The way she’d paused before saying this last sentence, the way she’d looked away from Mandy when she did say it, made her think she knew something or at the very least had her suspicions. It made Mandy feel a little sick to her stomach.

  “I have to get going,” she said.

  Craig was in the dining room, working on a laptop that had been lying around for weeks. A lot of what he did seemed to be the equivalent of doodling.

  “You should open the windows sometime,” she said. “It smells like bacon in here. All the time.”

  When he looked up, he shook his head and said, “I can’t believe you’re dressed like that again.”

  She looked down at herself. “Why not?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Okay. So?”

  He got up from the table and took her by the upper arm and moved her so she was standing sideways to the ornate wooden mirror over the buffet. “Look from the side.” He undid the bib of her overalls and let it fall to her waist. He pulled at the T-shirt and said, “You might as well be naked. I can see everything.”

  “I had the top up,” she said. “I wasn’t riding the bus like this.”

  He still had her arm and it was starting to hurt. She wrestled out of his grasp, and pulled up the top of her overalls. He was being a protective older brother, unless maybe he was being one of those controlling men she’d been warned about.

  “I don’t want you going around with your tits out,” he said. “It makes you look like a slut.”

  “Think about what you just said, Craig. I mean, really, does it make any sense at all, considering the job you gave me?”

  “And where would you be if I hadn’t?” he said. “Making a few bucks an hour in some shop until they fired you?”

  “I’d rather be!” she shouted.

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  She saw that he was jealous of the attention he imagined she was getting on the bus (none, as a matter of fact). She knew it was unhealthy and probably part of his private craziness, but, undeniably, it made her feel special, despite the thousands of lectures about consent and abuse at school. Despite knowing she’d probably think about this moment later in the evening and curl up on her bed with Benny and cry.

  “You’re being a jerk!” she shouted.

  “Really? Am I scaring you?”

  “A little. Mainly you’re making me want to leave.”

  “There’s the door. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of other places to go. Practice for the intramural tennis team maybe?”

  After years of privately deriding jock girls with their flushed complexions and boring talk of scores and workout routines and their faint smell of sweat and chlorine, she felt an intense pang of longing to be one of them. To be outside in the sun and the heavy, humid air doing something good for herself instead of being here doing no good for anyone. She had a crazy urge to tell him about her SAT scores, but she knew he’d turn them against her and make her see how meaningless it was to brag about them.

  And then, suddenly, Craig’s face changed again, and he smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Come here.” He reached out and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. His body felt so warm, it was as if he’d been lying in the sun for hours. His T-shirt smelled like greasy food, in a familiar, ordinary way. She relaxed against him and slowly moved her arms so they were on his waist.

  “Remember what we talked about yesterday?” he
asked. He said it quietly, just to her.

  “The weather?”

  “Yeah, the weather. Smart-ass.” But he used his teasing voice that meant he was trying to be friendly and get her to do something. She shouldn’t have been relieved that their fight was over, but she was.

  What they’d talked about yesterday was a request from a regular, a man who described himself as “a successful businessman on Wall Street.” This was laughable. If he was successful, what was he doing chatting with her in the middle of the day three times a week, sometimes for as long as a couple of hours? She was pretty sure a successful businessman on Wall Street wouldn’t describe himself that way. More likely he was a blobby married guy whose wife had left him. He’d told her he had diabetes and was impotent as a result. Okay. The most shocking thing about what she was doing was that a lot of men talked to her about their illnesses. Diabetes was a common one. It was like they needed to confess; she was supposed to tell them it didn’t matter to her, which, since she didn’t know them and would never meet them, was true. She’d read up on a few of the diseases and asked them questions about their medications, which made them more grateful and generous. At this rate, she thought maybe she should start looking into nursing programs.

  The alleged Wall Street guy had said he’d pay a lot if she agreed to do a private session with him so he could watch her do something to her boyfriend. The expression he’d used was “orally pleasure,” a term so bizarrely polite, it sounded like something you’d say on TV to get around the censors.

  “What if I don’t have a boyfriend?” she’d said to him.

  “That can’t be true,” he’d typed back, “and if it’s a girlfriend, even better. You’d make a sick man happy, just to watch.”

  At first, she didn’t tell Craig about this since it was asking for trouble. But then, as the day wore on, she’d felt an overwhelming desire to prove something to him—not that she was desirable or sexy or anything like that, just that she was a valuable employee. That she was doing a good job. Fuck you, Beachy Elaine.

  His first question, of course, had been: “How much?”

  When she’d told him, he hesitated and then said, “So do you want to?”

  “No!” she’d said immediately. “I do not.”

  Craig had shrugged and walked away, but before she’d left in the afternoon, he’d said, “You know, if you really didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t have told me. You do know that, don’t you?”

  She did know that. Or partly knew it. She’d heard girls at school talk about this with their friends, how it didn’t count as anything, how it made it easy to get what they wanted from their boyfriends, how it was essentially gross but usually quick. They seemed proud of the fact that they did it, bragging that they were good at it while claiming they didn’t enjoy it. That last part might or might not be true.

  Now, standing in Craig’s dining room, with her arms around his waist, he said, “So have you thought about it more?”

  “About the weather?”

  “Yeah, about the weather.”

  “A minute ago, you were complaining about my T-shirt, and now you want me to do this.”

  “What can I say? I’m a complicated guy.”

  This was true but probably he—unlike, Picasso, say, who they’d studied in art history—was complicated in a fundamentally uncomplicated way.

  He moved so he was against her and his crotch was pressing hers. Unmistakable what was going on there, even for someone like her who was completely inexperienced in that department. She felt herself shake a little. She was afraid, not of him but of the part of herself that wasn’t going to say no. The warning lights were flashing, but she was ignoring them yet again.

  “Aw, come on, Mandy,” he said. “The weather’s fine.”

  * * *

  He was right—it hadn’t been “so bad,” not that it had been good. It was a relief when it was over and it had become an experience she’d had, and was no longer one she was having or waiting to have. She’d spent a long time washing in the bathroom, and when she came out, Craig had sweetly offered to drive her back to Beauport. She turned him down because she wanted to be alone. She got on the bus and settled into the last row, watching the same scenery she’d watched a few hours earlier. But now it was different in the late-afternoon light, sadder and even more tired. A few weeks ago, it had seemed the days lasted long past dinner; it was still light when David and her mother returned from their walks. The change to shorter days had happened suddenly when she hadn’t been paying attention. There were so many things she hadn’t been paying attention to.

  When she got home, she went into the living room, where her mother was watching the news. She sat on the sofa next to her and pressed her body against hers, the way she’d been curling up with her stuffed animal. Her mother put her arm around her and kissed her on the forehead. Before she even knew she was doing it, she said, “I know you stopped smoking pot, Mom.”

  Her mother stiffened against her, and then hugged her tighter without saying anything.

  “I know it wasn’t easy. I’m proud of you.”

  She felt her mother’s chest rising and falling against her, as if she was taking in deep breaths. To help her out, she said, “I know you’ll cry if you say anything, so really, you don’t have to.”

  They sat like that for a while on the sofa, then her mother said, “David has a date tonight, so it’s just you and me. We’ll go in and fix something in a minute.”

  But when she added, “Let’s watch the weather first,” it was Mandy who burst into tears.

  35

  In terms of hills and ocean views, David had come to think of Beauport as San Francisco’s smaller and less interesting sibling. Having had a brother who was better-looking and more athletic and entrepreneurial than he was, he’d developed a fondness for the lesser sibling, the appealing human equivalent of a halfway decent B-side. The town lacked the scenic grandeur of San Francisco, but it had its intimate charms and more manageable vistas that caught your eye as you turned a corner or appeared before you unexpectedly on the far side of a hedge or behind a walled garden. As he walked to Kenneth’s house on the night of their dinner, he took in the views of the harbor with its fishing boats and rocky jetty with the possessive and slightly bored pride of a resident.

  Except he wasn’t officially a resident yet, and Michael was beginning to sound more doubtful about getting anything close to what he’d originally quoted as a buyout. “I could get whatever you want if you could seriously threaten to hold things up for a year or more, but as it is, you’re too eager to settle it. The people in New York who got millions held out for over a decade.”

  There was logic in this, but David had begun to wonder if Michael’s disapproval of his plans to relocate to Beauport and, especially, to live with Julie played into it. Michael had led him into the middle of this maze of legal negotiations, but it was looking as if one mention of what he intended to do with the money had led to abandonment. Michael had even begun to comment on the fact that Renata could be good company if you got her in the right mood. “She has a pretty racy past, and she loves talking about it. And you know how I love airline pilots and Italians.”

  If things did fall through, where did it leave him? When he pictured living in Beauport, he pictured living on the same property as Julie, wandering into each other’s houses without knocking or planning, having breakfast with her and reading aloud to her in the evenings. Not being a stepparent to Mandy, but at least playing the role of one. They’d decided that he could wait to put a kitchen into the barn, and the two of them would use hers communally. He’d be there to help her welcome tenants and make beds when they left, the latter a task that he did with special flair and efficiency. His skill with hospital corners was finally being put to good use. If they had places on opposite sides of town, the sense of home vanished, and sharing a condo or small house was fraught with too much intimacy. Her house and barn offered the precise combination of qualities they needed.r />
  No sane person would look upon living in San Francisco as a bad idea. If Michael was right, he could hold out for a year for a large buyout and would be able to afford something decent for himself. Still, the idea made him feel like a failure and unaccountably lonely. He and Julie had worked through most of the Seven Steps he’d outlined for her happy future, but not all. It would be terrible to let her down by not delivering on the two most important—Mandy and the house.

  Kenneth had sent him walking directions that included the admonishment: “Please follow these exactly, even if you think you know a better route.” Kenneth’s pushiness in this matter was more exciting evidence that he was probably a complete submissive elsewhere, assuming they got there. David made a stand for himself, tossed the directions, and took an alternate route. Within minutes, he was lost.

  It was nearly twilight when he knocked on Kenneth’s door. Beauport was full of small houses tucked behind other houses, garages renovated into rental units, and cottages planted into gardens. In that sense, too, it resembled San Francisco. Kenneth lived at the bottom of a set of concrete steps that cut through vines of Virginia creeper and wisteria.

  Kenneth opened the door dressed in a starched short-sleeved shirt, a pair of navy-blue shorts, and red sneakers that seemed out of place with the rest of his outfit, not to mention his age. David handed him a bottle of wine and an absurdly expensive imported Italian soda. Kenneth scrutinized the soda and said, “Where did you buy this?”