The Man of My Dreams

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “What about your mom?” Hannah asks.

  “She sleeps like a log.”

  Soon, of course, they are kissing and entangled; he is on top. “You’re sure she can’t hear?” Hannah whispers.

  “Shh.” Mike smiles in the dark. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  When he says he has a condom, she nods—really, the surprising part is that it has taken this long—and then he is plunging into her; the entry hurts the most, and Hannah thinks of Fig saying, back in high school, “You just grit your teeth and get it over with.” After the entry, when it is actually happening, it’s neither as painful nor as pleasurable as she imagined. As he thrusts, there is mostly a kind of juicy friction, and she thinks how this, allegedly, is the reason people stand in crowded bars on Saturday nights, the reason for marriages and crimes and wars, and she cannot help thinking, Really? Just this? It makes people, all of them—all of us, she thinks—seem so strange and sweet. She can see how every other act that unfolds between a man and woman in a bed together might vary, but mustn’t this always feel more or less the same? For the first time since she met Henry almost a year and a half ago, it occurs to her that maybe he’s not an answer to anything in particular. Maybe Mike is as much an answer as Henry.

  After Mike collapses on her, he whispers, “How do you like sex, Hannah?”

  What is there to say? She squeezes his hand.

  He whispers, “It’s going to get better and better,” and though she doesn’t cry, this is when she gets the closest, because of his sureness in their future. Does he not have any doubts at all about her? He says, “Now let me take care of you,” and he uses the tips of his forefinger and middle finger. She squirms and squirms (surely this is one of the acts that is not identical from couple to couple), and when she comes, she whimpers softly, and he murmurs into her ear, “You’re so beautiful. I’m so lucky to have a beautiful, wonderful naked woman in my bed.”

  THE NIGHT BEFORE Hannah leaves for Los Angeles, Mike’s friend Susan holds a dinner party for his birthday. Susan lives off campus with two other women, and they serve gnocchi on paper plates and red wine in plastic cups, and everyone smokes pot except for Hannah and, possibly out of deference to Hannah, Mike. Hannah has brought a sheet cake she got at the supermarket and on her computer has typed up a certificate for dinner at the restaurant of Mike’s choosing. She considers this present lame, what an unimaginative boyfriend who hadn’t planned ahead would peeve his girlfriend by giving her, but when she hands it to Mike before they leave for the party, he hugs her and says, “Thank you, baby.” (Being called baby: like safaris and bowling leagues, a phenomenon she never thought she’d experience firsthand.)

  At the party, Hannah doesn’t drink, but Mike has six or seven beers. Back in her dorm, she climbs in bed after he has, turns off the light, and lies on her side. He leans over from behind her and pulls the covers up around her shoulders. “Thanks,” she says.

  “I hope you feel warm and loved.” He pauses. “Because I do love you, you know.”

  It is two in the morning and entirely dark in the room. Previously, it has occurred to Hannah that this moment will come to pass with Mike, and she has not known whether or not she wants it to. Either way, she did not expect it now. She is quiet for perhaps thirty seconds and then says, “How do you know?”

  She hears him, she feels him, smile. “I took a quiz on the Internet,” he says and wraps his arms around her; he rubs his nose in her hair.

  Saying it back is not an impossibility, but the sentiment hasn’t emerged spontaneously, and then more time passes. Has he fallen asleep? The front of his body curves against the back of hers, and she lies with her eyes open. After fifteen minutes, in a small but completely awake voice, he says, “Do you love me?”

  The reason she says nothing is that nothing she can think of is exactly right. Finally—she feels mean, but she also feels like he’s backed her into a corner—she says, “We’ve been together less than two months. That’s not that long.”

  He rolls away from her. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Check your emotional calendar, and let me know what kind of schedule we’re looking at here. Maybe throw out a couple dates that might work for you.” She has never heard him be sarcastic.

  “Mike, maybe I do,” she says.

  “Maybe you do what?”

  Again she says nothing, and then she says, “If I said it because you’d forced it out of me, would it really mean anything anyway?”

  She feels him roll over another ninety degrees, so they’re back to back. “Thanks for making this such a great birthday,” he says, and she begins to cry.

  Immediately, he rolls back toward her (so some males really are softened by female tears). “What could be different between us that would make it better?” he says. “I don’t think it could be better, except it seems like you don’t want it official. The I’m-not-your-boyfriend bullshit—what is that? Are you embarrassed by me?”

  “Of course I’m not embarrassed by you.” Sometimes she’s embarrassed by him. She wishes that he didn’t unironically pronounce the word genuine gen-u-wine, like a used-car dealer; she wishes he’d just eat grapes, or shut up about not eating them; she wishes she didn’t suspect that, should she introduce him to her family, they’d probably think he’s not that cute. She realizes she can never express these sentiments, but is she supposed to pretend, even to herself, that she doesn’t feel them? “I’m just getting used to everything,” she says.

  “You know what?” Mike says. “You can get used to it without me. I can’t sleep here tonight.”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning!”

  “I’m too riled up. I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “I’m going to L.A. tomorrow,” she says. “Don’t leave.”

  “You know what else?” he says. “The vet library doesn’t open until ten on Saturdays.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The first time we got together, you told me you had to go to work at eight the next day.”

  “Mike, we barely knew each other. I was freaking out.”

  “You’re right, though,” he says. “Why would I want to convince you of anything?”

  CARRYING HER BACKPACK and duffel bag, Hannah rides the T to Fig’s apartment. She has agreed to come over before they head to the airport in order to help Fig pick out clothes to take. In Hannah’s head, the fight with Mike is a bowl of soup she is carrying down a long hall, and to think about it at all is to shake the bowl; it is best just to walk forward. At Fig’s, her cousin’s bedroom is open, and Fig stands in front of the closet in a black thong and nothing else. Instinctively, Hannah lifts her hand in front of her eyes, and Fig says, “Don’t be a prude. Will I look like a college student if I wear a halter top?”

  “You are a college student.” Fig’s double bed is unmade and covered with clothes, so Hannah sits on the floor, her back against the wall.

  “But I don’t want to give Philip Lake a vibe of, like, keg parties,” Fig says. “I want to seem classy.”

  “Your black boots are classy,” Hannah says. “Wear those.”

  “They’re Mindy’s, but that’s not a bad idea. Hey, Mindy—” Still in only her thong, Fig walks out of the bedroom and into the hall.

  When she returns, Hannah says, “How will you decide if you stay with Philip Lake tonight or stay in our hotel?”

  “I’ll play it by ear.”

  “How about this—definitely stay in the hotel tonight, and then think about staying with him tomorrow?”

  Fig steps into a black suede skirt, pulls it up over her hips, and zips it. She stands in front of a full-length mirror hanging on the wall and looks at herself intently. “How about this?” she says. “I wear a collar, and you attach a leash to it, and when I get too frisky, you yank.”

  “Fig, you’re the one who asked me to come on this trip.”

  “I didn’t ask you to babysit me.”

  You sort of did, Hannah thinks, and says nothing.


  Fig steps out of the skirt and flings it back on the bed. She glances over at Hannah, and when their eyes meet, Fig says, “Are you checking out my tits?”

  Heat rises in Hannah’s cheeks. “Of course not,” she says. In fact, observing Fig, she’d been thinking she could understand for the first time in her life why men are drawn to women’s breasts. In the past, breasts always seemed to her an odd-looking and unwieldy part of the anatomy—she included her own in this assessment—but on her cousin, they make sense. Fig’s are small but firm-looking, her dark skin (Fig lays out in the summer and goes to a tanning bed the rest of the year) accented by darker nipples. Sometimes when Mike is sucking away, Hannah is unclear who’s doing whom a favor—she thinks it’s more for his benefit but isn’t sure in precisely what way. In Fig’s breasts, though, she sees a certain festivity; hanging there so visibly, they’re a kind of invitation. Aloud, Hannah says, “So what’s the exact plan? Is he picking us up at the airport?”

  “Oh God, no,” Fig says. “I thought we’d take a taxi. I mean, Hannah, it’s not like Philip knows you’re coming.” Fig is spritzing perfume on her wrists, then rubbing her wrists behind her ears. She is no longer looking at Hannah, and so, Hannah thinks, Fig will not see what is surely an expression of dismay crossing Hannah’s face. Of course Philip Lake doesn’t know Hannah is coming; she had only assumed otherwise because she hadn’t given it real thought. There was a time when this whole trip would have loomed larger to Hannah, consumed much more anticipatory energy, but she has been so distracted lately. She’s not even certain what time their flight is leaving—it’s either 1:20 or 1:40—and she unzips her backpack and reaches into it for the airplane ticket. When she pulls it out, the yellow Post-it note is stuck to the ticket sleeve. In blue ink, in Mike’s handwriting, it says, Hannah is Great!

  For at least a minute, she holds the square of paper between her thumb and index finger, looking down at it, stricken. She doesn’t know if he put it there before or after their fight, but either way, how has she been so foolish? Why exactly is she flying to Los Angeles? Why, as Allison might put it, is she giving attention to something that makes her unhappy, why is she still choosing Fig when she finally has the privilege of making a choice?

  She stands. She says, “Fig, I’m not going with you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fig says.

  “You’ll be fine. If you think Philip Lake isn’t sketchy, I bet your instincts are right. You don’t need me.”

  “Are you offended because I didn’t tell him you were coming? If it matters that much to you, I will.”

  “It’s not that,” Hannah says. “There’s stuff I need to take care of here. This was never a good idea.” She has pulled on her backpack, she’s holding her duffel. Fig is regarding her with both curiosity and confusion. Perhaps, unprecedentedly, Fig is entertaining the thought that Hannah’s life contains its own dark corridors and mysterious doors. “You do have great tits, though,” Hannah says. “I’m sure Philip Lake will love them.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Fig says, but Hannah is already backing down the hall, waving with her one free hand.

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” she says.

  “You’ve lost your fucking mind,” Fig says, “and I hope you don’t think I’m reimbursing you for your plane ticket.”

  HANNAH SITS ON a bench waiting for the T, holding the Post-it note in her hand. She’s within view of Fig’s apartment, but Fig doesn’t come after her. The train has just appeared in the distance when it occurs to Hannah that she can’t possibly wait for as long as it will take to transfer lines and then walk from the Davis Square stop back to campus. She’s pretty sure Mike is working until noon, so what she should do instead is catch a cab and ride it straight to the financial aid office. But he almost certainly wrote the note before their fight, and what if it doesn’t still apply?

  Next to the T tracks is a pay phone. Hannah sticks in the change and presses the number keys. When Mike answers, he says, “Student Financial Services,” and she is on the verge of tears as she says, “It’s me.”

  His silence is long enough to let her feel afraid. In this silence, she thinks that if he is glad to hear from her—she’ll be devastated if he’s not glad to hear from her—she’ll say she loves him, too; she’ll say it immediately, in this conversation.

  She hears him swallow.

  “Hi, baby,” he says.

  Part III

  7

  February 2003

  ON THE MORNING of her mother’s wedding to Frank McGuire, Hannah sleeps until quarter to nine and awakens to Allison saying, “Get up, Hannah. Aunt Elizabeth is on the phone, and she wants to talk to you.” When Allison opens the curtains—they are pink-striped, the same ones their mother first decorated Hannah’s room with when they moved into the condo twelve years ago—Hannah blinks in the light. White flakes appear to be sailing past the window.

  “Is it snowing again?” she asks.

  “It’s only supposed to be a couple inches. Hurry up and get the phone. Elizabeth’s waiting.” Allison pauses in the door. “When you’re done, you might want to come rescue Oliver. Aunt Polly is here, and I think she’s talking his ear off.”

  Of course—Oliver. Hannah knew there was some reason she was feeling unsettled even in sleep. “I’ll be down in a second,” she says.

  THERE IS NO longer a phone in Hannah’s old bedroom. She walks into her mother’s room, lifts the receiver from its cradle, and stands in front of the mirror that hangs on the inside door of the open closet. She is wearing cotton pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and she watches herself say hello.

  “Can we just discuss for a minute what that gorgeous Jennifer Lopez is doing with that squirrelly Ben Affleck?” Elizabeth says. “Every time I see him, I want to wipe the frat-boy smirk off his face.”

  “I think they’re sort of cute,” Hannah says.

  “Darrach and I just rented—now I can’t even remember the movie. Hannah, this addled brain of mine. But here’s why I’m really calling. You need to go see your dad.”

  “I think I’d rather not,” Hannah says.

  “How long has it been? Five years?”

  “I saw him at Allison’s wedding, and that was less than four years ago. Anyway, that was when I last saw you.” This is true. Since the summer she stayed with Elizabeth and Darrach, Hannah has seen her aunt twice: once on a Sunday during Hannah’s freshman year in high school (this was Hannah’s idea) when Elizabeth and Darrach and Rory met her and her mother at a restaurant halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; and then a few years after that, when Elizabeth came to Philadelphia for Hannah’s father’s fiftieth birthday. Hannah and Elizabeth still talk every two or three months, and Hannah thinks of her aunt more than that—she finds herself remembering things Elizabeth told her, intimations Elizabeth gave of adulthood—but Hannah has never returned to Pittsburgh. She is pretty sure it would remind her of too much.

  “Come on, now,” Elizabeth says. “His ex-wife is getting married today, and the guy she’s marrying sounds, pardon my French, pretty stinking rich. You don’t think your dad deserves a break?”

  “How’s Rory?” Hannah says. “Is he still working at that restaurant?”

  “Don’t you try to change the subject.”

  “My dad can get in touch with me as easily as I can get in touch with him. Why is it my responsibility?”

  “Didn’t you tell him never to call you?”

  Hannah says nothing. A few days after she and her father had that last lunch, he forwarded her a postcard from her dentist, a reminder to schedule her annual visit, which had somehow been sent to his apartment. On the outside of the envelope he’d stuck the card in, he’d scrawled, Nice to see you last week, Hannah, and she had no idea if he was being sarcastic or just oblivious. At Allison’s wedding, it was impossible to avoid him completely, but she did so as much as she could. To this day, Allison claims that their father inquires after her, and Hannah doesn’t kno
w whether this is true. That he didn’t end up paying any of her Tufts tuition senior year seemed a message of sorts—it would have been easy enough for him to go above her head and just send in a check. Hannah has never regretted her decision, but she is still in debt.

  “I’m not asking you to go see your dad,” Elizabeth says. “I’m telling you. Do I have enough authority to do that?”

  “He and I have never had that much to say,” Hannah says. “Maybe this is how things are supposed to be between us.”

  “No one’s suggesting you pretend you don’t have problems with him. But just go drink a cup of tea, ask him how work is. Give him a reason to think he hasn’t destroyed everything good in his life.”

  “He kind of has,” Hannah says, though she is arguing as much on reflex as on conviction. The freshness of her anger toward her father, what she felt that afternoon at the restaurant, has faded; she knows she’s mad at him more than she feels it. “If I were to go see him,” she says, “I’m sure he’d expect me to apologize.”

  “Tough shit for him. You’re going over to be sociable, not to grovel.”

  “Why are you so confident this is a good idea?”

  “I’m tempted to say you wouldn’t even be doing it for him, you’d be doing it for you. But maybe you’d really be doing it for me. Here’s the bottom line, though. Are you ready for the bottom line?”

  “Probably not.” Hannah has moved to a window overlooking the driveway. Outside, the snow is still falling, and she can see her mother, in a pink quilted bathrobe and boots, talking to Aunt Polly as they walk toward Aunt Polly’s Volvo. At least this means Aunt Polly is no longer trapping Oliver.

  “The bottom line is he’s lonely,” Elizabeth says. “And he’s your father.”

  IN THE KITCHEN, there are bagels and muffins in a basket on the table, and Sam is grading his sixth-grade students’ papers while Allison rolls forks and knives into dinner napkins and ties them with thin blue ribbon. There will be nineteen wedding guests, including family; the ceremony will happen at five o’clock this afternoon. When Hannah asked her mother whether she would avoid Frank during the day—it wouldn’t be that hard, since Frank still has his own house—Hannah’s mother said, “Oh, honey, I’m fifty-three. That’s more for your age.”