Beside Herself

by Elizabeth Laban

  “This is all doable,” Reuben said confidently. She noticed that his phone kept ringing and he kept ignoring it. “First of all, you don’t have to reveal your last name. Bumble uses first names only.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said.

  “But even so, I would come up with a fake last name, even though you won’t share it, so you feel like someone else when you’re doing it, if that’s the experience you’re after. For example, what street did you grow up on?”

  “Walter Place,” Hannah said.

  “Perfect. So while you’re writing the profile, think of yourself as Hannah Walter—maybe that will make you feel freer, and I would stick with Hannah because otherwise you’re going to be forced to answer to another name, and that will get old quick. Make sense?”

  “I think so,” she said, not at all sure it did.

  “After that I don’t think there’s much information to give—your age, which is easy to lie about if you want to, possibly your profession, and some put their college, though I’m guessing that might be more personal than you want to get. There might be a space to write a little something extra, if you want, or to describe what you’re looking for. Honestly, there are all kinds of people on those apps. I’d be as honest as possible about what you’re looking for. Or on second thought, you don’t have to do that. Just be vague.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said, nodding. “So what did Lucy put in her profile that got your attention?”

  For the first time, Reuben turned slightly away, and Hannah was pretty sure he was blushing.

  “Okay then,” she said quickly. “What did you put in your profile that attracted her to you?”

  He turned fully back toward her, and she relaxed a little.

  “I kept it to a minimum,” he said, sounding like his normal self. “Name, city, age. I left out the part about dropping out of rabbinical school.”

  “You went to rabbinical school?” she asked, scooching forward. “That is so interesting.”

  “I dropped out of rabbinical school,” he corrected her.

  “Well, in order to drop out, you had to go,” Hannah said lightly. “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “I never made it past the second year. I was never ordained, obviously. But I learned so much about dealing with people. I mean, there is a lot more involved in it, too—history, religious beliefs, obviously—but for me it was all about interacting with people, helping people.”

  “I have to ask: How did you end up at a Catholic nursing home?”

  His phone rang again, and this time he flipped it over so he couldn’t see the display. He sat back in his chair, holding his mug in front of him with both hands like he was settling in for a fireside chat.

  “What I’m about to say might be controversial,” he said. “Especially among people with strong faith, and many people at Saint Martha’s have unwavering faith in their religion, which for most people here—though not all—is Catholicism. I respect that more than I can say. But for me, I just couldn’t get my head around the idea that there was just one religion that was the true religion. Obviously, if I were to become a rabbi, I would have to believe with every part of my being that Judaism was the most important faith. And it isn’t that I don’t, necessarily. I identify as Jewish, I’m proud of that, I wear a yarmulke every day, so it isn’t like I’m trying to keep that quiet in any way. But I love all religions. I don’t think one is better than another; I just think they are all paths to a good life. I mean, as a rabbi I would be free to study all religions, of course, but there was just something in me that knew it wasn’t the right fit for me. I began to feel constricted by some of the rules and traditions and found myself picking and choosing what works for me. That was sort of my clue. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve always wondered.”

  “I worry a lot of people do,” he said. “And I worry that the truly devout people here might have a hard time connecting with me, but so far, as they say, so good. All of this is a long way of saying I did not share that in my profile. We all have things we don’t quite know how to explain.”

  “Yes, we do,” Hannah said, placing her mug on the table in front of her. She had been so absorbed in Reuben’s explanation that she’d almost forgotten what they were doing there for a second.

  “So,” she said.

  “So,” he said.

  “I should go,” she said. “I’m sure you have much more important things to do than help me with my dating profile.”

  “Well,” he said. “Not necessarily more important, certainly not more interesting, but if I don’t return this call, I might not be working here much longer.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, standing up. “Thank you. I think I have a handle on it now. Not too much information. Choose good photos.”

  “I’m here if you need me,” he said. “I can take a look at it before you post it.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said slowly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  It took three days for Hannah to complete her profile. Reuben’s suggestion to think of herself as Hannah Walter while she was writing it, not Hannah Bent, helped a little. She did not agree to get notifications when asked since she didn’t want that sweeping across her screen when she was reading to Lincoln or getting Ridley a snack, and once her profile was up, she didn’t look at the app again for three more days. She wasn’t ready. Until one Thursday morning when she couldn’t stand it anymore, and there, waiting for her, were men—lots and lots of men. And so on that Thursday morning, she took her phone out to her porch, her husband and her kids in the house behind her, and she started swiping. Left, left, left, left. And then a photo of a man with dark, warm eyes and a thick graying beard appeared. She wasn’t usually one to go for a beard, but it was striking. It said his name was Dan. She thought about that for a minute. Dan was a solid name, a good name. She had no history with any Dans. She barely knew any Dans.

  In some photos he wore glasses; in others he didn’t. He looked rugged and kind and adventurous. She looked at his last photo for a long time. He was in a field, smiling wide, holding a boxer puppy. Before she swiped, she wanted to ask, Is that your puppy, or is he a prop? Are those prescription glasses or readers? Or are they just to make a fashion statement? Have you climbed that mountain behind you, or did you choose it for the sole purpose of being the backdrop of the photo shoot? But there was only one way to get all the answers. She swiped right.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’m going out tonight,” Hannah said to Joel. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

  “Where?” Joel asked pointedly. She looked right back at him and pursed her lips, and he lowered his eyes. She was meeting Dan at Southwark, a bar not too far from her house but one she would never think to go to, so it seemed okay. She and Dan had chatted a little through the app, but she’d decided to hold most of her questions for the date so they would have at least something to talk about.

  “Just out,” she said.

  Joel nodded, his head down, and walked out of the bedroom. She had to remain in her armor mode as she was thinking of it, ready to protect and defend herself. When she wasn’t looking for a date, she was surprised by how relatively normal things had become between her and Joel, except for the lack of sleep—neither of them were sleeping—and the lack of sex. But how could it be any other way? She knew she couldn’t sleep with Joel and have an affair at the same time, even though that was exactly what he had done. Well, maybe not quite. If she had the story right, he had come home after his first time with Tara for that in-between week, ten or eleven days, and he had been sick—or at least pretended to be, she thought now—and he’d slept on the couch. Then when he’d come back the second time, the affair was over. So technically, she guessed, he had not slept with her while he was sleeping with Tara.

  She came down the stairs to find Joel at the kitchen table with the kids, spooning steaming meatballs onto each of their pla
tes, and she knew exactly where he’d gotten them. Really? she wanted to say. Enough with the meatballs! Why do you think meatballs are the thing that will change my mind? And then she saw he had filled “the bowl,” as they called it, with extra sauce and placed it in the middle of the table. It was their bowl, the one they had had for their entire marriage, the one that represented pretty much everything they had been through, at least until things had gone so bad, with tons of cracks from their everyday living. She had avoided using it lately. Now she wanted to smash it. She had to get out of there.

  “Why do you look so pretty, Mommy?” Lincoln asked, looking up from his meatballs. She really hadn’t done much more than not change into her pajamas before dinner and put on earrings, a few bracelets, and lipstick. That was it. Well, that and the nice blouse.

  “I have a meeting,” she said as casually as she could, lifting her purse from the table next to the door.

  “At night?” Lincoln asked. He was going to be a reporter one day, Hannah thought, or a lawyer, some line of work that caught people doing things they were not supposed to be doing or did not want to get caught at and then questioned them about it.

  “Yeah, the people I have to meet can only meet at night,” she said, cringing a little because now she had lied. If she had said person, she would still be lying but only by omission. In fact, that wouldn’t have been a lie at all. She was going to a meeting with one person who could meet only at night.

  “Person, I mean,” she mumbled. There, now she wasn’t lying.

  “Okay, Mommy,” he said, letting her off the hook. “Will you be home before we go to sleep?”

  She didn’t know. She guessed it depended on how well the date went. No, that was silly—she was meeting Dan for the first time. Even if she liked him, she wouldn’t be out too late with him tonight; she would just schedule another date.

  “Yes, I plan to be,” she said, feeling like a fraud and an interloper in her own house.

  “I love you guys,” she said generally as she moved toward the door, accepting a hug from Lincoln, who had jumped up and run to her. “I’ll be home soon.”

  She was a little excited about her date with Dan, being able to present herself to someone who didn’t know her, meeting someone new. She had all her questions, culled from his profile photos, ready as she walked into the bar. She hoped she would know him; she had heard so many horror stories about people not looking at all like their photos, but there he was, looking exactly as he did standing below the mountain: dark hair, beard, fit, tall, welcoming.

  “Hannah?” he asked as she walked toward him, and she was relieved to know she looked enough like her pictures to be recognizable.

  “Yes,” she said, reaching out her hand, her delicate bracelets jangling on her wrist. She should really wear bracelets more often. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  She followed him to the bar, and they took seats next to each other.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  “I’ll just have a glass of red wine,” she said, looking down and seeing the tiniest splatter of sauce from the meatballs at the bottom of her shirt, undoubtedly from Lincoln’s hug. She fought the urge to rub it. “What about you?”

  “Sounds good,” he said, gesturing to the bartender and ordering.

  He was cute, and he had a kind look to his eyes. She relaxed slightly. The wine came, and he raised his glass.

  “To new beginnings,” he said.

  “Cheers,” she said, even though that wasn’t why she was here at all. If she had made the toast, she might have said To a good night or To a short new beginning before being forced to make the biggest, hardest decision of my life, but she let it go. She had to stop thinking that way if she was going to make any progress at all.

  “So in that photo, was that your puppy?” she asked.

  “Actually, it’s my son’s puppy,” he said. He took a deep breath. “There’s not much room to say all of this in a profile, so I save it for the first date. I’m divorced; I have three sons. My ex-wife has them during the week when school is in session because that’s what works logistically, so I always feel like I’m not part of their routine. Anyway, that’s my son Jake’s puppy. His name is Waldo.”

  “Is that why you put that photo in?” she asked, truly curious. “Because it sparks that conversation?”

  “Actually, no, I just like it,” he said. “You’re the first person to ask me about it. What about you? I couldn’t really see anything telling in your photos. I mean, I could see you, which was enough, of course, but nothing that told me a single thing about your life.”

  Hannah had decided she was going to be honest but only if the person seemed like someone she might really want to have an affair with. Then she would explain the situation. She figured there must be some men who would jump at the chance to have a quick relationship, no strings attached. Or even be willing to take a chance and see how it all played out. In order to do this at all, she found herself fantasizing more and more about the possibility that she would find not only someone to have a romantic encounter with but maybe even someone who would carry her into the future should she move forward with the divorce.

  “I’ll tell you about me,” she said, trying to not think too much and just be there with Dan. “I promise. But I’m so interested in you. It said something about your being a guide to young people in your profile. What sort of guide?”

  “Ah, okay,” he said like he was gearing up for something. He took a slow sip of his wine. She noticed he was wearing jeans and leather shoes, and he had an Apple Watch that kept lighting up, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. “I’m a college counselor, so I’m a guide to young people in that sense. I didn’t mean to be so cryptic. I am proud to say I know every college in the United States, even Canada, backward and forward.”

  “Oh, that’s so interesting. My hu—um, my friend knows every single mascot of every single college and university in the US,” she said, knowing she was getting red in the face. Why was that where her mind had to go? She couldn’t stop thinking about Joel for one hour? “He, I mean she, is never stumped.”

  “I bet I could stump her,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Hannah said, trailing off. This was not where she’d meant to take the conversation. “So you, what? Help them with essays and putting college lists together? Do you work at a high school?”

  “Yes, yes, and no,” he said, smiling. He motioned to the bartender that he wanted another glass of wine. Hannah took another sip of hers. “I’ll answer in the reverse order in which the questions were asked. I don’t work for a high school; I have my own private consulting firm. I do help the students make college lists, which is a long, tedious, and also intricate process, one I like and don’t like at the same time. And finally, yes, I do help them with their essays. In fact, just today I helped a student come up with a great essay topic, unique, outstanding. I think it’s going to get him into his first choice—which is Georgetown.”

  “Wow, what is it?” Hannah asked, finding the conversation to be more interesting than she’d expected. “What was the topic?”

  “Hamster hospice,” Dan said proudly. “Basically, my student is going to write about starting a business in which he takes in sick and dying hamsters so the owners don’t have to watch them die. Hamsters go downhill fast. It’s a great subject. He’s going to start with a hamster named Fred, who belonged to a ten-year-old boy, no, maybe a six-year-old boy; I’m not sure which yet. The boy will be crying as he hands over his hamster to my student, thanking him for his service.”

  “That must be really sad,” Hannah said. “To watch so many hamsters die. What does he do with them once they’re dead?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t actually have a hamster-hospice service,” Dan said like it was no big deal. “I made it up. But the colleges will never know.”

  Hannah’s jerk radar went up. Was lying like that jerky behavior? She was fairly sure it was.

  “Isn’t there a code of ethics or som
ething?” Hannah asked. Maybe she was misunderstanding.

  “Yeah, I mean, of course there is,” Dan said, and Hannah relaxed slightly. “But who is ever going to know? Look, it’s a competitive world out there. If you want to get ahead, sometimes you have to lie and cheat and literally claw your way in.”

  “Can you excuse me for a minute?” Hannah asked.

  “Sure,” Dan said jovially.

  Hannah found her way to the bathroom. She didn’t have to go, but she locked the door behind her. She wished she could talk to someone to make sure she wasn’t wrong about him, but there was nobody. The idea of calling Reuben moved through her mind, but she let it go. She didn’t need to ask anyone. Dan was a liar, which made him a jerk. There really wasn’t any way around it. On the other hand, he was cute, so he met the first part of her wish list. And it had taken so long to get to this point. She decided she would give him another chance.

  She went back to the bar and took her seat.

  “Welcome back,” he said, and from his tone she was certain he had no idea she was having second thoughts.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “So, you, I want to hear about you,” he said, taking a sip of wine.

  Liar, liar, liar ran through her mind. Really, if she already knew he was a liar, what was the point? What was she doing? And in the end, he wasn’t that cute. His beard was prickly looking in person. When she looked closer, she realized she had no desire in the world to kiss him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m going to call it a night. I made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”

  Dan looked at her for a second, then nodded.

  “No problem,” he said, like he really didn’t care much. “It happens.”