The Guy Not Taken

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “You absolutely do not. You have no idea how it feels when you pull into your driveway and see some stranger standing there with your son. No idea at all.” Her lips were trembling. He’d scared her, he saw, and the best thing he could do would be to leave. But he couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I try so hard,” she said, “so hard to keep Joe safe. I worry about him; I worry all the time, and you just come waltzing up here, and he doesn’t even know enough to make sure you’re who you say you are! You could be anyone! You could have done anything to him!”

  She glared at him a moment longer, then shook her head and turned toward the house.

  Doug scooped up the oranges and followed her, thinking that he couldn’t be anyone, that he could be only himself. He was stuck that way, but it would have to be enough. He reached for her shoulder. “You know my name,” he said.

  She turned toward him again and looked him full in the face, her little hands balled into fists.

  “You know I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry,” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the word.

  “It was a dumb thing to do. I should have just told the truth.”

  “Why?” she asked. “That’s what I want to know. Why?”

  Doug thought. “I don’t know, really. I guess I wanted to do something good.”

  “Well,” she said, glaring at him. “Next time you could maybe make a donation to the Cancer Society. Or the library. We really need a new roof.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said, matching the heat in her voice. “But this is what I did this time, and I can’t undo it now.”

  She looked as if she were about to say something more. Then she closed her mouth abruptly, not meeting his eyes but not running away, either. Doug was thinking of how to reassure her when the door to the house opened.

  “Mom!”

  Joe was standing in the doorway, with Harry poking his head between the boy’s legs. A wedge of light spilled out into the early-evening darkness. “We have to get the pizza!” the boy called.

  “I am sorry,” Doug said one more time. He handed her the bag of fruit and started walking toward his car.

  He was halfway there when he heard her behind him. “Wait,” she said.

  He turned to face her with his heart in his throat.

  “Hold still,” she said and looked him over from head to toe, examining him the way she might have measured a new piece of furniture, inspecting it for stains and scratches, wondering if it would fit through the door.

  “Oranges,” she said. Her voice was soft.

  “Oranges from Florida,” he said.

  Shelly bit her lip. “I want to believe you.” Her voice trailed off. “You seem sincere, and I want to believe you are. Can you understand?”

  Too anxious even to breathe, Doug just nodded.

  She studied his face for an endless moment. “Come on, then,” she said. He held the oranges and followed her inside.

  TOUR OF DUTY

  Jason and Marion Meyers were at their third college in two days, having lunch at the student union. The air was thick and hot, filled with the tortured screeches of metal-legged chairs being dragged across the tile floor. Students in the smoking section, tucked on one side of the big round room, produced a bluish cloud that edged its way out of the enclosure to hang, like fog, over everything.

  Marion and Jason, mother and son, had the same thing for lunch: bagels, cream cheese squeezed out of tinfoil tubes, and overpriced, overly sweet, all-natural black-cherry soda. They nibbled their food and watched each other with identical gray-green eyes.

  Marion sipped her soda and grimaced, setting the can aside. “Well, this seems like a nice one,” she said encouragingly. “Beautiful campus. Do you like it?”

  Jason shrugged and gave a noncommittal grunt. Ever since they’d left their home in Rhode Island the day before, Jason had communicated primarily by grunts and shrugs and long silences. None of the colleges they’d seen so far—Cornell, Bowdoin, and Amherst, each resplendent in fall foliage and ivied marble—had earned an entire sentence. With a flick of his tweed-clad shoulders and an unintelligible mumble, Jason had dismissed the swim teams and prelaw societies, the glee clubs and the frats. The quick flashes of humor that usually popped up in his conversation were absent. As he sat paging through the student paper, his broad shoulders were hunched and his face was solemn, even glum.

  No surprise, Marion thought. Hal was supposed to have taken Jason on this trip. They’d planned it together over the summer, looking at maps, studying brochures, looking up admissions statistics in the Barron’s guide. But Hal had gotten busy in August. A case in Ohio had taken him out of town for two weeks, and he’d been working late all through September and October, coming home after Jason was asleep, leaving before he awoke. At least, she devoutly hoped that that was what Jason thought was going on. Let him get through the interviews, she told herself. Then she’d tell him the truth.

  She took a deep breath and arranged her face cheerfully. “Have I ever told you my theory about bagels?”

  Jason rolled his eyes. “I can’t wait to hear that,” he muttered, but he was smiling just a bit.

  “The excellence of a college is in direct proportion to the quality of its bagels. Good bagels, good school,” Marion said. Closing her eyes, she picked up her bagel and sniffed it with the studied concentration of a wine connoisseur. “Nineteen ninety,” she intoned. “A very good year.” She took a nibble and chewed intently. “Not bad,” she pronounced, and looked at Jason. His eyes were fixed earnestly on her face. Despite his red cheeks, still sunburned from a summer as a lifeguard, he looked very grown up. Marion pushed her plate toward her son and looked away.

  “What do you think Dad had to do that was so important?” It was the most Jason had spoken since they left home at five o’clock in the morning two days ago, driving past the clapboard Colonials and curtained windows in her husband’s Mercedes.

  Marion shrugged. “Oh, you know how he is with those depositions, he probably just got behind . . .” Her voice trailed off. The lie sat on the table between them. Marion could almost see it crouching there, leering at her. “I know he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said lamely, taking little comfort in the fact that this, at least, was true. She fished in her purse, past the maps that Hal had meticulously marked with lime-green Hi-Liter, and pulled out five dollars. “Go get your old mom some of that frozen yogurt.” Jason studied her for a silent moment. Then in one fluid movement he was up and out of his chair, moving toward the line, attracting plenty of attention along the way. Tall and slender, with curly reddish hair a few shades brighter than her own, he moved with a lanky grace. Two girls with big hoop earrings nudged each other when he passed them, and the girl behind the cash register stared, smoothing her uniform, fidgeting with her hair. These visits mean he’s leaving, she thought. Soon he’ll be gone. Her heart gave a sudden, painful twist. She closed her eyes and rested her head in her hands.

  “Mom?”

  Jason was standing in front of her, looking worried, with two cups of yogurt in his hands.

  She made herself smile. “Just thinking.”

  He smiles. “Well, you must be out of practice if it takes so much effort. I got old-world chocolate or strawberry. What do you want?”

  “Huh? Oh, strawberry, please,” Marion said. Watching her son walk away, she thought, with a ferocity that startled her, I will never let anything hurt him. Never.

  • • •

  Their hotel in Middletown had a swimming pool. Marion made sure of that. She and Jason both loved to swim. In the water and out of it, they understood each other with a special, unspoken ease.

  Marion had always been a swimmer. “You’re water-based,” Hal had joked during their honeymoon, when she’d shunned golf and tennis and tanning in favor of spending hours immersed in the turquoise waters of Bermuda. He’d waded up to his knees a couple of times and floated on hi
s back for a few moments before paddling back to shore. The truth was that the water made him nervous. He didn’t like the feeling of being small in the vastness of the ocean, of being pushed and prodded by currents and waves, forces he couldn’t control.

  Still, Hal did his best to accommodate her. When his practice got off the ground, after he’d purchased the obligatory mini-mansion in the suburbs and the bright red sports car, he’d presented Marion with a combination in-ground pool and hot tub for her birthday. In the summer, she would often take a late-night swim to cool off before going to sleep. Sometimes Hal would come out back, sit on the edge of a chaise lounge, and watch her stroking through the warm, lit water, the muscles in her back working in clean, pleasing harmony. And later he would join her in the hot tub, where the water was shallow enough for him to feel at ease. His cotton pajamas and her damp swimsuit would lie crumpled together on a lounge chair, and the crickets would be chirping, and the air, humid and oppressive during the day, would lie on their skin like a caress.

  Her three oldest children hated the water. Marion had taught all of them to swim, but it was hard work. Amy, Josh, and Lisa had to be coaxed into the shallow end with the promises of ice cream or toys, and they were visibly uncomfortable once they got there, pinching their noses shut and squinting anxiously toward the deep end as if the water was going to rise up and carry them away. Marion made sure that each could manage at least a respectable breaststroke before relinquishing them to drier sports, games that involved sticks or balls, molded rubber mouth guards and arcane offsides rules.

  And then there was Jason, her baby, her surprise. Jason had taken to the water just like his mother. As a newborn, he was happiest at bath time, cooing and gurgling as Marion poured water over his plump body. He learned to swim at two and a half when, without water wings and without fear, he flung himself into the deep end of the pool and bobbed up and down like a cork, giggling cheerfully as his grandmother screamed and Hal, still clad in his wing tips and suit, jumped in after him.

  That summer, on nights when Hal worked late, Marion would sometimes take Jason to the pool with her. She’d hook him over her hip and bounce him up and down in the shallow water, both of them laughing. She would fling him high in the air, and he’d land with a splash, paddling back to her, eyes wide open and arms outstretched, begging for more.

  Marion knew that good mothers weren’t supposed to have favorites. So she tried doggedly to ignore that, almost without exception, watching Jason swim gave her more pleasure than watching her older children do almost anything else. She was scrupulous about allotting equal time to Josh’s lacrosse, Amy’s singing, and Lisa’s soccer. But she supposed they knew she’d always feel some slight disappointment that they weren’t swimmers.

  It is hard to keep secrets from your children. This was what Marion thought as she did laps next to her son in the Marriott’s postage-stamp-size indoor pool. Side by side for thirty minutes they planed through the lanes, wrapped in the cocoon of the water and in their own silence.

  • • •

  They had dinner at a Thai restaurant near their hotel. Jason built a pyramid out of Sweet ’n Low and sugar packets, then bulldozed it with his fork.

  “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Marion asked. Jason shrugged and started arranging the sugar into a star. He worked carefully, pushing the packets along with just the tips of his long fingers. “You’ll do fine. You’re very articulate,” she said drily, struggling to contain her frustration.

  The waitress took their order. Jason asked for shredded beef, extra spicy, and kept his eyes down. He swept the star aside and started constructing a complicated-looking form involving piles of stacked sugar in a circle.

  “You know, when Amy interviewed at Penn, they asked her, ‘If you could be any vegetable, what would you be?’ “ Marion tried.

  Jason’s lip curled. “Stupid.”

  “I think she said she wanted to be an eggplant.”

  “Why?”

  “That I don’t remember.”

  “Weren’t you there?”

  “No,” Marion said softly. “Your father took her.” Jason started gnawing at his lower lip, vague hurt on his face. She backpedaled quickly. “But really, hon, you’ve got nothing to worry about. They’ll probably just ask about your swimming, what you might want to study, why you want to go there . . .”

  “My mom, the guidance counselor,” Jason said. It took Marion a minute to realize she was being teased.

  The waitress set their steaming plates down. “My, what is that?” she asked Jason, pointing to the complicated circle he’d created with the pink and brown packets. Jason smiled swiftly at Marion, then looked up at the waitress with absolute seriousness.

  “Stonehenge.”

  The waitress laughed politely and left fast. Marion looked at her son. “Stonehenge?”

  Jason nodded modestly. “It’s not quite to scale, but I didn’t have much to work with.”

  Marion smiled, feeling relief flood through her like something sweet she’d swallowed. This was the Jason she knew.

  But by morning his good humor had evaporated. He sulked on the drive to New Jersey, jamming the radio buttons too hard, flicking the lock on the door up and down until Marion, preoccupied with thoughts of the telephone calls she would need to make—first Lisa, then Amy, then Josh—finally snapped at him to stop. They rode in tense silence for twenty minutes until Marion pulled off the highway.

  “Drive,” she said, and smiled a little when Jason looked surprised. “Go on. I’m feeling reckless.”

  “Fine,” he said curtly, refusing to be humored. He slid behind the wheel, jerked the seat backward to accommodate his long legs, and pulled into traffic. Marion closed her eyes.

  Usually, Jason was a good driver, fast and confident. But that day he was too aggressive: swinging the car in and out of lanes, growling under his breath at drivers who weren’t getting out of his way quickly enough. Marion forced herself not to criticize. She dozed fitfully, waking every few minutes to find herself hurtling toward the back end of an eighteen-wheeler or swerving into the passing lane.

  Abandoning the hope of falling asleep, she sat up and unfolded the map. Princeton was a tiny black speck. It looked far too small, too physically incidental to be the setting for a broken heart. She traced her finger down the turnpike, along the fragile blue lines that ran through the state like veins, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. Here, she thought. You are here.

  • • •

  The information session was held in a wood-paneled classroom with soaring ceilings and many-paned windows that still managed to be stuffy. The smell of chalk dust and nervous sweat reminded Marion of her own college days at Mount Holyoke, before she’d met Hal, when she thought she might have grown up to become a doctor or a diplomat, anything but a married housewife in the suburbs with four children and a backyard swimming pool. The difference was that now it was the parents who scurried around with forced smiles and sweaty palms, comparing test scores and GPAs, while the kids relaxed, chatting around the punch bowl. The admissions officer, a dapper, bearded man, was easily recognizable as he stood in the corner in a black-and-orange tie. With fifteen parents crowding around him, jabbering and gesticulating, he had the look of a gracious lord of the manor entertaining the petitions of serfs.

  Marion supposed she should join the crowd, it being Princeton, Jason’s first choice, not to mention Hal’s alma mater. But instead, she toyed with her swizzle stick and found herself wishing passionately for a cigarette, even though she hadn’t smoked in more than twenty years. Her headache was back, a dull throbbing at her forehead, like fists pounding on a distant door. A jovial young man in a Princeton sweatshirt walked up and handed her a large black-and-orange sticker reading “PMS.”

  “What does PMS stand for?” she asked.

  The beaming young man barely paused. “Prospective Mother—Son,” he replied.

  “But I’m not a prospective mother!” said Marion. “I already am h
is mother. I’ve got papers to prove it!”

  He gave her a weak smile and moved on to the next parent (PFD, which, Marion guessed, stood for Prospective Father—Daughter).

  Marion turned to the woman on her right, expecting sympathy. “Can you believe this?” she said. “PMS!”

  The woman spoke to Marion out of the corner of her mouth. “I’d keep it quiet if I were you,” she muttered. “No sense in making trouble if you want your son to have a chance.”

  “Oh, come on,” Marion said. “You can’t believe they’d hold it against him that I refuse to wear this!” She yanked off the sticker, wadded it up, and threw it in the trash.

  The woman sidled a few steps back, as though Marion had suddenly become contagious, with her squinty eyes gleaming. “All I’m saying is I’m not taking any chances.” She nodded toward a group of boys standing in a corner. “My son,” she proclaimed, in a tone customarily reserved for announcing heads of state.

  Marion wasn’t sure which boy she meant. She nodded anyhow.

  “First in his class,” the woman offered. “Governor’s school every summer.” Her voice rose in a triumphant spiral. “Fourteen-thirty!”

  Marion gave what she hoped was a knowledgeable nod. “Sounds good.”

  The woman was silent. Marion realized that the woman was waiting for her to reciprocate with information about her own child. “Oh, that’s Jason over there,” she said, pointing. Jason was talking to the sticker guy.

  The woman nodded. “How are his numbers?”

  “Fine!” she answered, too enthusiastically. The woman waited, eyebrows raised, but Marion couldn’t remember Jason’s scores. All she could remember was that her husband had gotten up early to prepare Jason a healthy, high-protein breakfast on the morning of the SATs, to shake his hand and wish him luck.

  “Did he take any prep courses?”

  Marion shook her head. “We did buy him a book.” Her headache flared. Had the book been a guide to SATs or to colleges? She couldn’t remember. Hal had been the one in charge of book-buying. “But Jason’s a great kid, a very good student. Captain of the swim team.”