You Don't Love This Man (11 page)

“They needed my help with something. And what have you been up to?”

“Having a quiet morning. Trying to relax.”

“And not answering your phone,” I said. “Unless you think it's Catherine.”

“That was so random, I thought something might be wrong,” she said. “You know, it's a little like lying, Dad, calling with someone else's phone.”

“It's not lying, it's deceit. And your mother is worried.”

The waitress appeared from the back room, and when Miranda asked her what was good, it turned out that despite her dismissive treatment of me earlier, she did have enthusiastic beliefs about the sandwiches and chips. In the room's uneven midday light, I watched the two of them discuss the relative merits of rye versus sourdough for a turkey sandwich, and admired the way Miranda looked the waitress in the eye, negotiating their little exchange with a cheerfulness that did not seem false.

“So did your quiet morning help?” I said after the waitress left. “Have you been able to relax?”

“That's not going to happen,” she said, the cheerfulness vanishing. “But there's nothing to be done about it.”

“About what?”

She sighed in the same way she did when I used to ask what she had learned at school. “A lot of things. Or maybe just that I'm twenty-five, and that people seem to assume that means I'm naive, or that I don't know what I'm getting into, or whatever it is they say.”

“Who has said that to you?”

“No one. But I know what people talk about when I'm not in the room.”

“Which people?”

“Don't do the fake obtuse thing right now, Dad. You know what I'm talking about.” She dropped her napkin into her lap with a disdainful little flip of the wrist. Those wrists, the taper of her fingers, the way she tapped them on the table while training a heavy-lidded look of impatience on me: those were her mother all over.

“So this is about what other people think?” I said. “Not about what you think?”

“I know what I think,” she said. “I want to marry Grant. But he's older than me, so this marriage might not last forever. Maybe he'll die before me. Or he'll find out he doesn't like marriage. Or I'll find out I don't like marriage. Or maybe he'll leave me for some even younger woman, or maybe I'll leave him for some even older man.” She gasped silently in mock horror, a gesture so filled with disdain that it took me aback. “I'm aware that people think I'm some kind of child, wandering into something I can't possibly understand, or that our age difference is some kind of scandal that no one should mention, or that they should treat with some kind of weird, desperately positive spin. Aunt Sheila actually tried to tell me I was smart to marry an older man, because I won't have to worry that he'll go after a younger woman,
because I'll always
be
the younger woman. I didn't even know what to say to that.”

“There's no point in trying to respond to her. You know that.”

“But I keep getting all of these frozen smiles and courteous little handshakes from people who I can tell are just doing their best not to reveal their doubts about whether this will really provide me with
happiness and security for the rest of my life
—as if my goal is to be a little housewife, at home doing laundry for the next forty years. I don't know what our life will be like. And so what? What does it matter if I know what I'm doing or not? Does anyone know what they're doing? It just gets harder and harder for me not to scream, ‘Look, this is what I'm doing! I want to be with this person right now!' It's nobody else's business, and if things change at some point, then they change. I don't think they're going to change, but even if they do, so what? There are more important things to worry about.”

“Than what?” I said. “Than your life?”

She shook her head. “I know people think Grant is taking advantage of me,” she said. “But he is not.”

I was having a hard time following her. Was she trying to say she
was
happy, or that her happiness somehow didn't concern her? And I noticed that in her fervent naming of the supposedly unspoken issues, she had mentioned Grant's age, but had passed over the fact that Grant was—had been—a friend of mine. “That's all fine,” I said. “But I don't think you should enter a marriage thinking of it as a short-term relationship.”

“I'm not,” she said. “But I'm also not sure how you can be all that worried about that, when you and Mom's marriage didn't last, right?”

Was her grievance with me personally? Or was I just in the
wrong place at the wrong time? “Your mother and I were headed in different directions,” I said. “You know that.”

“But how did you figure that out?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It happened slowly. We each wanted control over our time, I guess, or over how we lived. And we didn't agree on how to do that, or we couldn't figure out how to do it, so we made a decision.”

She nodded as if telling me it was all right to stop—as if it wasn't really the question she'd wanted to ask. “So what happens if Grant and I both want control?” she said.

The question was asked in earnest, and she waited for my response with an expression I knew well: she was a daughter challenging her father to explain how the world worked. And yet I could not help her there. “I guess I don't know the answer to that,” I said.

“Well,” she said, shrugging. “How could you, right? You and Mom split up.”

If Miranda knew what other people thought about her and Grant, then surely she knew people assumed Grant was in charge. A successful businessman in his late forties doesn't marry a girl in her twenties so that the girl can tell him what to do. Did she really believe she and Grant were entering into a partnership in which each would have the same amount of power? He had money; she had none. He had traveled extensively; she had gone on a few childhood vacations to mid-level swimming-and-golf resorts, and a few ski trips. The question of what would happen if she and Grant both wanted control was off the mark, because the question didn't apply to him. Grant would certainly expect to have control over his work and home life, and the idea that Miranda would ever tell him how to go about his business
seemed preposterous. “So are you worried about how people are talking to you, or about the fact that your mother and I got divorced?” I said.

“No,” she said, “I know I'm talking about those things, but that's not it. Or it's not that simple. There's really nothing to resolve.”

Except how to handle her feeling that people's enthusiasm for her wedding was false. And what would happen the first time she told Grant she didn't want him to go on a business trip, because he was traveling too much. Or maybe what would happen the first time she told him she didn't want to go on a business trip
with
him, because she was tired of tagging along. “You know, when you were a little girl and you threw a tantrum, you had this brain-rattling scream,” I said. “The pitch was so high that the vibrations would basically stop everyone's brain from working. You would cry, throw things, spit—real
Exorcist
stuff—and then unleash this scream, and no one could talk to you. The only way to get you to talk was to sit on the floor and let you scream and hit me with your little fists, and whisper to you. And you wouldn't hear me at first, but you would know I'd said something. So I would whisper it again, and maybe again, until you stopped hitting me.”

“And this worked?”

“Not really. You would still scream. But you would scream what was wrong, right into my ear, and then I could respond.”

“That's why you keep the car radio so loud.”

“Probably,” I said, and then lowered my voice and whispered, “But Miranda? I can't understand you right now. You have to tell me what is wrong.”

She laughed, but looked down, avoiding my eyes. “I don't think that's going to work this time, Dad. I've talked to you, and I've
talked to Mom, and I've thought about it. I just have to make decisions for myself.”

“What is this ‘it'? What have you talked to your mother about?”

“Nothing. I'm just overthinking things. Or I'm thinking about too many different things. I have to—” she started, but then hesitated. “I have to use the bathroom.” She stood, and laid her hand briefly on my shoulder as she passed. I heard her trade a word or two with the waitress, who asked if Miranda knew where she was going, and then her footsteps faded as she left the room.

So there had been no accident. She and Grant had not eloped. And rather than my imagined scene in which she would request permission to disappear, in person she had defended her resolve to do exactly what she was doing. She had expressed uncertainty about who she would become as a married woman, yes, but I wondered how much the marriage's role in that uncertainty was bit of a smokescreen, anyway. Miranda was only three years out of college, and was gamely trying to use her degree in arts and letters by working as an assistant in an art gallery. Most people her age, trying to find their way into careers and lives, were uncertain about who they might become, and what unforeseen people or powers would take part in their transformation. I realized that what she found most insulting, of course, was that exact conclusion: the belief that at twenty-five she was not yet a full-fledged adult, but still in some protean, pre-adult phase. Maybe this wasn't what she felt about herself—maybe she felt she was doing exactly what she wanted to do and being exactly who she wanted to be. If so, was it naive of her to believe that, or was it condescending of me to think she was wrong? How she and Grant spoke to each other when no one else was around, how they negotiated their time, how
they chose who did what and when: these were things I couldn't know, and didn't want to. A series of images fluttered through my head. As I sat there in the restaurant dining room, watching condensation trickle down my glass, I was also adjusting Miranda's blankets during her afternoon nap when she was no more than a few years old. The room's white curtains stirred in the breeze as I placed my hand over hers, and was surprised by the heat of her little palm. I watched her let go of a playground swing as it reached its apogee, so that she could hang in the air, her hair suspended in a float of gravity-defying stillness, before she returned to the earth, landing on her feet with a happy thud. I heard her peal of laughter a few years later, her hat and false nose discarded as she sorted chocolates and candies beneath the glow of the kitchen table lamp one later Halloween night, a girl witch in dishabille, intoxicated with candy bar delight. Among the million images of my daughter that had passed through my eyes, why were these the ones that lingered? Asleep during a toddler nap, aloft above the playground, laughing at the table: each was of Miranda alone, I noticed. Or alone, save for the presence of the mind recording the moments, of course. Save for me.

How long had I been staring at my glass of soda? It seemed too long. A middle-aged couple had been seated across the room, and three young men stood at the entrance, waiting to be shown to a table. I stood, walked past the young men, and continued down the hall toward the restrooms. I stopped in front of the door to the women's room and thought, The only woman customer is at her table, so it's just the staff I have to consider here. I pushed the door a couple inches open with my foot. “Miranda? Is anyone in here?” I said. There was no response, so I pushed the door open, taking a half step into the room to do so. It was a standard bathroom: a tile
floor, mirrors above each of two sinks set within a beige countertop, and two stalls. From where I was standing, though, I couldn't see whether the stalls were occupied.

“Can I help you, sir?” the waitress said. She couldn't have done a better job of startling me if she'd been trying.

“My daughter,” I said, stepping back and allowing the door to swing shut. “She said she was going to the bathroom a while ago, but she hasn't come back.”

“You can't go in there, though.”

“I understand. But I think it's empty.”

“I'll check.” She pushed the door open, stepped in exactly as I had, and said, “Is there anyone in here?” She walked in, letting the door close behind her, and a few seconds later stepped out again. “There's nobody in there,” she said.

“Is there anywhere else she might have gone?” I said. “Are there other bathrooms?”

“This is it,” she said. “But if you want to go back to your table, I can look around.”

So not only was I not allowed to call Miranda's name into the women's restroom, but I wasn't allowed to walk around the restaurant, either. I was in trouble, it seemed. I told the waitress thanks, I would appreciate that, and headed back to my table while she went into the kitchen. From my table, I watched a young couple walk in the front door, look at me and the others in the dining room, share a quiet look, and then turn and leave.

“I asked the kitchen staff,” the waitress said, returning. “They said they might have heard someone go out the back door, but I went out there, and I don't see anyone. I'm not sure where else she could be.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I'll try her phone. Thanks for checking.”

I dialed Miranda's number, but there was no answer. I left a message saying I was in the restaurant wondering where she was, and then placed the phone in front of me on the table, studying it while I thought about how cell phones seem to exist primarily so that people can avoid ever actually having a telephone conversation. And then the phone buzzed in a way that was entirely new and confusing to me. I picked it up and said hello, but not only was there no answer, there wasn't even the sound of an empty line. What now? I thought. When I looked at the display, it indicated a message waiting for me. I dialed voice mail, but there were no new messages there, so I hit the menu button and found that there was, indeed, a menu titled “Messages,”0m titled “can't talk now. h.” When I opened the message, it read: