Identity Thief (11 page)

“Well, that’s what’s wrong with you.”

“You always have some smart answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Not really. It’s simply that you’re not as smart as you think.”

Esther marched toward me and spat in my face. Then she silently marched to the kitchen, to put the three plates, three forks, and three glasses we used for our takeout dinner into the dishwasher. This probably took her thirty seconds, but she said, without turning to look at me, “You’ve always been
such
a help around the house.”

“Well,” I replied, “you’ve always been
such
a lousy lay.”

She stared at me soberly. “Why do you hate me?”

“Because there’s nothing to love.”

I could hear her mumble, “What a dickhead,” as she stormed off to her bedroom. Sabrina knew we slept in separate rooms, though she thought it was because of my snoring instead of Esther’s frigidity.

The morning after the Linda incident, I woke up early to go through some papers on the identity theft case. Through an amazing coincidence, the papers had turned into tiny, confetti-like pieces since the day before. My, could Esther have possibly had something to do with it?

I completely lost my cool with Esther for the first time in front of Sabrina, accusing my wife of plotting to drive me crazy. Esther put her hand on her hip to reply there was no need for her to drive me crazy since I already was and things pretty much digressed from there.

“I didn’t tear up your stupid papers!” Esther shouted. “You must’ve done it. When you were . . . you know . . . ”

“You mean drunk? You mean strung out on meds?” In a fit of sarcasm, I threw a couple of handfuls of confetti over my head. “Look at me, I’m crazy.”

Esther stared at me sadly, like I was a teenager beyond redemption. “I know you’re embarrassed. Because you can’t remember doing it. You honestly can’t.”

“Oh, well, aren’t you so wonderful to find it in your heart to pity me? Quick, call the Pope. There is a living saint among us.”

To my horror, Sabrina grabbed her suitcase and said, “Dad, I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t even know you anymore. And I don’t want to know you.” She refused to hug or kiss me good-bye, and rubbed salt on the wound by letting her mother do so. “Oh Mom,” she said, “please let me know if I can help. Come and visit, if you’d like.”

As soon as Sabrina left, Esther said, “I need to get out of here. I’m going for a drive.”

“Hopefully off the edge of a cliff.” I couldn’t resist.

I expected some bitchy reply, but she stood there for a minute. “Never mind,” she said. “It’s not worth saying.”

After falling asleep on the couch, I woke up and thought to go to Esther’s bedroom, to see if she’d returned. I felt like shit—drunk and hung over at the same time and woozily depressed from my meds. I opened her door and found her in bed, reading some decorating magazine as if nothing unpleasant had ever entered her world. Sometimes we’d have huge fights, but if someone called, she’d answer the phone with a lilting, smiling, “Hel-
lo
,” as if she were in the midst of feeding the goldfish.

She took off her reading glasses. “Don’t come near me. I’ll call 911.”

I rubbed my eyes for my headache or hangover or whatever it was. “Relax, Esther. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She breathed in and out with fear. “Then what . . . what do you want?”

I sat down on the bed, looking deep into her eyes. “I want . . . I want you to stop slamming the door. I mean, I want to stop making you slam the door. I mean, I want life to stop making me make you slam the door.” Totally out of nowhere, I started to shiver. But it seemed more like I was a reptile shedding its skin, cleansing all the poison from my life.

“It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it? You always . . . oh, come here.” Esther was crying. She held me until I stopped shaking, which took about an hour. As much as I hated to admit it, there was still a glimmer of something between us. I remembered the girl I married. I could see her before me. All the mutual hate was gone. I realized in that moment that we really were
married
—only death would part us.

We made love for the first time in years. She was never a particularly demonstrative or inventive sex partner, but as the old saying goes, it was the thought that counted.

Esther fell asleep in my arms as I stared at the blank ceiling, trying to remember the last time I was at peace. All at once, I realized something that felt like the heaviest weight of all time. O
h my God
, I thought, as all the fear, dread and anger returned.

As a psychologist, I wondered if stress was impeding my long-term memory. But as just another schmuck, I wondered how I could be so stupid. That lunatic Linda. She told me she had a note that explained everything when she called me that ill-fated night. Yes, she most definitely said that, no matter how hard I tried to tell myself I was imagining things. Was the note in the long-gone mink coat? Did some homeless person find it and throw it away or turn it into the cops? Did the cops have it all along? Or did Marty have it?

Turning away from Esther, I curled up like a fetus as one awful possibility after another went flashing through my mind. In her sleepiness, Esther put my arm back around her.

“Stay put,” she murmured. “No more running away.”

I kissed her forehead. “I love you, Esther.” Her drowsy smile said the same thing in return. It should’ve been one of the nicest moments of my life. But all I could think of was that motherfucking letter. Then I remembered about the identity thief again, unable to decide which terrible thing to obsess about the most.

S
EQUOIA WAS BRINGING ME A JOY I never thought possible. Corny as it sounds, I became a firm believer in love at first sight. Our life together was one of those amazing spells in which everything you say and do feels like making love. When she gave me her fortune cookie over some take-out Chinese, it was as if she’d given me her heart. And when the fortune said something like, “You have a secret admirer,” it was as though God blessed our union.

I did notice that Sequoia was extremely unsentimental. Not that she wasn’t affectionate, but she refused to have photos of us on display because she claimed it was a cliché and did not care much about things like birthdays or talking about how long we’d been together. Still, one on one, she was extremely kind and present. And given her childhood, I figured she had good reason not to trust nostalgia.

Maybe love at first sight was the only kind of love there was. Maybe first impressions never did go away, and you either loved, liked, or hated someone from the moment you met. Looking back, I think I always hated Betsy, but in some crazy way that made me feel sorry for her, especially when she got pregnant. And Biff was always a nut job.

Yet at the same time that my life had never been better, my life became more and more of a lie. I missed Scotty a whole lot, and though I know it sounds wimpy beyond belief, I felt guilty lying to Mom. Supposedly, I was living low profile someplace else, exactly like Mom said I should do. Mom had temporary custody of Scotty, and the only time I found out what he was doing was when she’d call me, using one of her friend’s phones. I decided that even e-mails were too risky. Plus, of course, there were all the crimes and lies I was hiding from Sequoia. Yet in a strange way, that didn’t bother me as much. I couldn’t comprehend our not staying together no matter what happened.

One of the more inconvenient situations was the fact that I periodically had to go away for a day or two on “government business” to make that particular lie look good. I would fly to Washington, DC—I very quickly racked up bonus miles—and would stay at an inexpensive hotel I’d found that had no frills but was bug-free. I’d kick off my shoes, loosen my tie, and watch TV for a day or a weekend, miss Sequoia so badly I’d thought I’d lose my mind, and then gratefully fly back home. Sequoia once asked if the government couldn’t do better than the cheap hotel I stayed at, and I told her I couldn’t discuss why I always stayed there.

Obviously, I also had to keep Sequoia completely out of the divorce, since she thought I was Dr. Jesse Falcon. I told her I didn’t want her to have to get involved or worry about any of it at all. That much was true. I got a PO Box for all my correspondence with Ondine.

My original plan to take only $20,000 more from Dr. Jesse Falcon proved naïve at best. Besides getting my website going, there were Scotty’s living expenses, which I insisted on paying for, plus my own, as I refused to be supported by Sequoia. It’s funny how relative life becomes. I told myself that I’d done a highly moral thing when, thanks to substantial advertising contracts and benefit options that Sequoia helped me set up, I got my online business going for a mere $85,000 of the $120,000 I’d stolen to date. As for what the business was, it was Sequoia who came up with what she saw as the perfect solution. And she could not have known, on that happy day, how life-changing her brainstorm was.

“What do you think?” she asked me, showing a mock-up of my possible homepage.

I leaned over into the laptop and saw the title: Ask Dr. Jesse. It would be a kind of online “Dear Abby,” only I’d offer answers to four menus of information: Personal Advice, The Facts about Sex, Mental Illness Guide, and Physical Fitness. There was even a subheading that read: “The Psych of All Trades.”

Of course, I really wasn’t a doctor of any kind, but it was only natural of Sequoia to want to capitalize on the assumption that I was. “Um, it’s great, sweetheart. But I have to be
extremely
low-key, remember?”

Sequoia made the funny face she’d make when some minor problem emerged between us. “Ah yes, all those government secrets. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention your last name. And I can set up a small business to own the copyright.”

“Still, even ‘Jesse’ is too much.”

Sequoia tapped her index finger to her lips. She was a quick thinker. “What about ‘Dr. Know-It-All’? Or ‘McShrink’? Or maybe ‘Free Psychology’?”

I thought about it. I did, after all, originally want to be a psychologist. Way back when, I was a straight A student. There also were all sorts of books and websites I could get accurate information from. And it seemed poetic justice to finally live out my dreams without Betsy’s lies spoiling them.

“McShrink,” I decided.

“Great! We’re in business. I already looked up the legal wording for our disclaimer, so no one could sue for bad advice.”

“Great!” I parroted back, though in truth that hadn’t even occurred to me. Sequoia was not only incredibly easy to love, but she made an excellent business advisor.

It was then that we launched the website. Sequoia already had an alias she used for investment reasons and that was the only name that appeared on any contracts. She also was the webmaster. We advertised on a bunch of other websites and fairly quickly I began getting e-mails from people seeking advice.

From the first e-mail I received, I never consulted any of the textbooks I thought I’d refer to. Instead, I relied on my gut. Or what I really mean is that I relied on my inner bad guy. I advised people to do the kinds of things I’d always wanted to do but never had the nerve. It was as if every time I’d stuffed my anger, it turned out to be a bank deposit of sorts, and now I was ready to cash in on all that pent-up energy by helping others. I didn’t assume people would follow my advice, but—except for the occasional slimeball—I thought that the people who wrote to me needed to feel like someone was 100 percent on their side. I was their online life coach egging them on to tell whoever was bugging them to fuck off.

Dear McShrink,

I’m a 5’ 7” woman who weighs 140 pounds, not excessive for my height. Yet my boyfriend says unless I lose weight, he’ll break up with me. His best friend is always there to back him up. They get drunk and call me a fat slob. What do I do?

Badgered

Dear Badgered,

Your weight is fine. Tell your boyfriend that his best friend must be secretly in love with him because there’s no other reason why he should care how much you weigh. Say this to the best friend as well as everyone you know he knows. Then breakup with your boyfriend. But before you do, go through all his drawers and fill them with lard. Don’t forget the glove compartment of his car.