But When She Was Bad Page 2

  As in horny enough to consider dating that proverbial rolling doughnut should it show up on my doorstep … or a naked young woman who called me at 8 a.m. just before stepping into the shower.

  4

  We went to a little upscale restaurant nearby, looked over the menu and then drank a delicious lunch. She ordered the whiskey sour on the rocks and I favored the Manhattan straight up with a twist.

  The chef had to be delighted because we were so obviously delighted with lunch. The bill ran to what an actual meal would have cost so the waiter was likewise delighted with his tip.

  What went on? Exactly what you’d expect between a lonely pseudo-bachelor male and a 15-years-younger female, both properly lubricated with alcohol. Annie smiled a lot and laughed at my joking and stories and general nonsense; I gave her vast compliments on her eyes and her hair and her skin and her choice of what she put on after her shower and just in general her astounding harmony with my universe. She quickly went from cute to pretty.

  My first impression of Annie was that she was sweet rather than sophisticated; that she was a little naive; and that she was more inclined to the artsy/airhead mode than to the hard-charging career-woman style. Not exactly my type, I suppose, but as I say I wasn’t in that discriminating a mood or time of life.

  So as it happened, hands just happened to touch once in a while. Looks into eyes lingered for more than a proper beat or two. Cheeks flushed and lips dried up.

  It was during that lunch, very casually, that Annie mentioned she happened to be married. “But separated, you know. That’s why I’m living at Billy’s.”

  I gave a relatively cheery “Ah?” and waved it away as if such things were not real concerns for us. But somewhere in the back of my mind a furtive bell tinged its intense concern. Which brings us to the matter of morals and standards and Codes of Behavior.

  I was well into my late-30s by then, old enough to have spent more than a few sleepless nights over the truly horrible things I’d done in my past. Like messing with another man’s wife. Like pursuing luscious, flirting, willing females regardless of what was on their third finger, left hand. Like probably helping break up one or two marriages with my lust.

  With age comes the resolution that, no matter what, the sins of one’s youth will not be repeated. You or I will not be the assholes we once were. You or I will not be so selfish and so primitive and so sleazy as to tread where the Code does not allow us.

  And then you or (more likely) I, with the fifth Manhattan under our belts, say to hell with all that and we keep talking with and teasing with and toying with the Annie who’s sitting across the table from us—and who’s indulging in her own rationalizations that it’s maybe, just possibly, okay to bend the Code a little bit if this guy is really as … as what? As fascinating as he seems to be? As sexy and alluring and fun as he promises to be?

  Or, let us be crass here, Annie … as well off as you suspect?

  5

  In fact, I was doing pretty well with the business at that point. Commercial photography in those long-ago days a decade ago was still an arcane art where, if you could keep things in focus, you could charge a grand a day, maybe two, for shooting the stupidest, simplest little transparencies imaginable. It was legalized theft but I didn’t mind. I figured I’d paid my dues in all the years of building up a client base of the gullible and the tasteless in the advertising community who at least knew enough to value the fact that I never, ever missed a deadline.

  If you wanted it done right and on time, get Gil Wexler. That was the word on the street and that was why I didn’t get to bed some nights until 3 or 4 a.m. Because taking good pictures and doing it on time, with never any excuses about the wrong film stock or the wrong camera or Hey-the-clouds-moved or Hey-the-model-you-picked-really-sucked … that was my stock in trade.

  I told Annie all this over that first liquid lunch.

  Was I trolling for her favors? Or was I just a lonely, beleaguered guy in search of praise for carrying on?

  Whichever answer you pick, I come off as a jerk and a cad and a bastard. Because I didn’t, when Annie so casually mentioned that she was still married, drain my current Manhattan, plonk it down on the table, and say, “So where can I drop you off, Annie?” Not at all. I said “Ah?” and kept on playing emotional footsie with her. Saying, in effect, to hell with her husband and to hell with any kind of respect for a commitment and to hell with the moral Code it had taken me 30-plus years to construct.

  Sometimes we want so badly to be held that we behave very, very badly.

  6

  Who was this Annie White person? And why did she too need so badly to be held?

  Annie was 23 when we met. She’d been married three years at that point to a financial planner by name of Harry White. There had been no children. Annie said it wasn’t for lack of trying; rather, it was thought to be traceable to Harry: maybe a bout of childhood mumps, maybe just a low sperm count. Annie knew it wasn’t her deficiency; much later on she would tell me about the abortion she had when she was 17. But that’s getting ahead of my story.

  By Annie’s account, it was a fairly contented marriage. Harry loved her unconditionally. He was proud of her, he doted on her, he valued what she had to say to him. He willingly paid her way through the university, where she picked up a degree in something utterly useless like sculpture and a conviction that she herself was an artist, albeit one of those talent-impaired who creates in the abstract rather than the representational. She in turn loved Harry. Maybe not unconditionally, but not half-heartedly either. She made a home for him, she cooked for him, she tried to show an interest in his career and his livelihood.

  But something was missing, Annie said.

  Maybe it was the failure to conceive. After all, wasn’t that the point of marriage? To carry on the line, to serve the next generation, to see yourself in miniature with new worlds of potential and possibility before you. But Annie said no, that wasn’t it. In fact she didn’t want children.

  “Really?” I said, with all the hidden joy of someone who already has three more children than he can handle.

  “Absolutely,” Annie answered. “Oh, I like children very much, but I just can’t see myself ever having any.” Incidentally, I hadn’t yet realized that when people sprinkle their convictions with that word “absolutely,” it should send up the same warning flare as the word “frankly.” Both words are sure-fire indicators that you’d better get the hip boots out—because the tide of bullshit is coming in. You’ll recall how O.J. Simpson didn’t just aver that he was not guilty; he said he was “Absolutely, 100 percent not guilty.”

  All that aside, with enough liquor in me, I’ll go along with anything. Absolutely. Okay, so maybe Annie was unhappy in her marriage because Harry White was so … so placid. She used that very word. “You’re bored?” I suggested.

  “Well, yes,” Annie conceded. “He’s so damned accepting and understanding and so willing to do anything for me.”

  “And you don’t—you didn’t—want that?” I was slightly incredulous. What was this man, a saint? “He sounds like a great guy to me.”

  Annie shrugged. This was during a second lunch, a lunch where we actually had food as well as whiskey sours and Manhattans. We hadn’t yet had sex. I was both relieved and proud of that. I was simply talking with this woman, not trying to wake up and moisten and penetrate the little mouse that roars. Yeah, right.

  Annie shrugged some more “He doesn’t support me.”

  “Sending you through school isn’t supporting you?”

  She flashed a glare at me. “That’s not what I mean. I mean supporting me in front of his family. I mean when his mother or his partners criticize me for something, Harry doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t help me. He doesn’t defend me.”

  I nodded with the wisdom of three Manhattans down the hatch. It all sounded like a crock to me, but if it bothered Annie, by dang it bothered me too. “He should,” I offered. “He should do that.”

&nb
sp; Annie gave another unguarded glare at my insipid response but it was quickly replaced with a glittering smile of her perfect teeth. She had the female’s wisdom of overlooking the male’s preoccupation with bribes. I smiled back, knowing she had moved a few yards farther than cute … and nice. She was beyond maybe and into very, very possible.

  “But what about you?” Annie said. “Don’t you get lonely sometimes?”

  We finished the lunch without any untoward advances or suggestions of furthering our deep intellectual understanding of each other. The Code was still somewhat operative in me. I’m not sure how a fourth Manhattan would have affected that, but the resolve held for the day. She dropped me back at the studio and we exchanged chaste “Thanks” and “I enjoyed that’s” and I managed to get through the rest of the afternoon without serious mishap though I did print every single shot of an assignment at a hospital ribbon-cutting backwards. I re-did them all later that night with only a pounding headache to keep me company in the darkroom.

  7

  Let me introduce you to Todd, the four-year-old who’s on his way with me to a medical laboratory somewhere down here in the nearby suburban village that’s grown into a city … as everyone with any sense flees the real city farther south.

  There it is: LUCIUS HOFFMAN LABORATORY. It’s one of a half-dozen independent labs in the area which will do DNA collections for the company I found in the yellow pages advertising Fast … Legally Conclusive Paternity Testing.

  I park the car in a lot and Todd asks, “What’s here?”

  It’s a Thursday and generally on Thursday the four kids and I visit with my mother for dinner. Todd knows all this: he’s a fairly sharp kid. He asks me, “Where are the kids?” Kids comes out sounding like Tids, and I get such a kick out of hearing this all-too-temporary pronunciation that sometimes I invent ways to make him say Tids. I tell him, “We’ll pick up the other kids in a little while. I want to go into this office first to fill out some forms.”

  “Okay,” he says. It comes out “O-tay.” I love it.

  Todd wraps his fist around my index finger as we walk from the car. He’s a cautious kid, which is hardly surprising given what he’s lived through. He’s also cute as hell and I find that the air is easier to breathe when I’m with him; life is simpler and more fun. It was the same way with the three kids Jillian and I had together. At certain ages they’re so absorbing in all their mannerisms and their unique ways of dealing with the world that you can let go of yourself and all the fears and worries that long ago took up permanent residence in your mind. You can relax and watch and marvel.

  Todd’s fascinated when the lab technician takes a Polaroid of him and then his thumbprint. “Why is this?” he asks me.

  “Oh, just because. You know how I like pictures of you.”

  “Just be-tuzz why?” he asks. The very discreet technician, a young woman who’s pretty enough to distract me from the painful reality behind this charade, smiles. She asks, “Can I take a picture of you and your dad together?”

  Todd considers this and nods finally. “O-tay.”

  He’s a little less willing to go along when the young woman asks if he’ll open his mouth so she can touch a few cotton-tipped swabs to the inside of his cheek. He tightly purses his lips together and shakes his head.

  “It won’t hurt, Todd,” I assure him.

  He ponders this for a few moments, decides he’ll trust me just this once, and opens his mouth. The technician gently rolls six of the sticks, one after the other, inside his mouth. On each of the swabs, unseen by our mere mortal eyes, are what they call Todd’s “buccal” samples—the common, everyday cheek cells that just as surely carry his DNA as does his blood, his hair, even his fingernail parings. The stuff is everywhere.

  The O.J. Simpson affair, wherein a deadly hero of the people was freed by the people, told us a lot about DNA testing, which has been quietly doing its thing for a couple of decades. The DNA procedure will show whether separated fragments of Todd’s and my deoxyribonucleic acid markers, the unique genetic blueprints within each cell of a person’s body, display any of the matches that must be there between father and son. Despite what O.J.’s jurors decreed, it’s virtually foolproof. You can argue all you want about the results, but they’re always conclusive. Either those little bands line up … or they don’t.

  The technician photographs and thumbprints me then draws a vial of blood from my arm. Todd watches all this with intense concentration and I find myself hoping that he’ll forget to mention to Annie tonight how some friend of Dad’s stuck a needle in Dad and also stuck something in Todd’s own mouth and put black ink on his thumb, too.

  All the various samples go into their own sealed baggies which the technician and I both initial. She further seals them into separate envelopes, then tapes the envelopes together and slides them into yet another envelope. This too is time-stamped and sealed with more yards of tape.

  Todd watches it all and says to the woman, “Are you going to mail it away?”

  The woman smiles and looks at me as if asking for permission to answer Todd. I help her out with a “They’ll probably overnight it, Todd.”

  “Fed’ral Spress?” Todd asks in great seriousness.

  “That’s right,” the woman says. “Because it’s very special.”

  As we’re leaving the young woman catches my eye and says, very quietly, “Good luck. I hope it works out the way you want.” I nod and try to think of something to say. Then I just nod again and Todd grabs onto my finger and we’re back on the sidewalk.

  It’s a hell of a note: How do I want it to go? If it turns out that Todd is not of my flesh and blood, then he becomes just another of the millions and millions of kids in the world who have no connection to me and I lose the son I thought I had. He’ll become a stranger and I’ll likely never see him grow up. I remind myself that I’ve already lost whole years of his childhood because Annie took him away but this is no consolation. I’ve been loving Todd as a part of me and maybe it’s all been a lie.

  On the other hand, if the test says Todd is in fact my son, then we’re sentenced to this travesty of visitations and fatherhood-with-no-influence for years to come. I hate it with a passion, the fact I can see Todd and be with him for only a few hours at a time. And even then, it’s a totally artificial thing. Raising kids is tucking them into bed every night and being there when they cry out at 3 a.m. with a stuffy nose or a bad dream. It’s not just taking them to McDonald’s once a week or the zoo once a year. I honestly don’t know how men can do it—how they can live with this kind of grotesque parody.

  Nine days, I find myself thinking. Nine days and I’ll know.

  8

  Annie and I stayed out of harm’s way (which is to say, bed) for a good month or so after our second lunch. We talked every few days on the phone and I even bought some darkroom supplies from her so we’d have an excuse to keep up the contact. But Billy Greckle, the matchmaker who’d started all this, was suddenly very disturbed about our liaison, no matter how innocent it might still be. He called me one afternoon while I was mounting some slides for an audio-visual I was shooting for a local bank.

  “I think you should back off, Gil. There’s something strange here.”

  “Is this Annie we’re talking about?”

  He sighed and I could visualize the indignant, queenly toss of the head that went with it. “Just take my word for it, Gil.” He added, “Please.”

  “But why? What’s the problem?”

  “Well, goddammit, for starters, she’s a basket case, Gil. I go to take mother her supper and I hear her—Annie, that is, not mother—wailing in her room. So after I leave mother’s tray I knock gently and I go in and she latches onto me and she sputters and gulps and gasps that she’s in love with you, Gil, that she adores you, for Christ’s sake.”

  Whoops, I think. “Whoops,” I say.

  “Exactly,” Billy snaps.

  We both let the silence build for a while. I find I’m thinking of t
hose huge red signs with the flashing red lights that garland the roadside down some mountainside in West Virginia they call Dead Man’s Hill. It’s a seven-mile decline, straight down, which ends up against a sheer cliff. The signs warn, DANGER. TEST BRAKES NOW. IF BRAKES FAIL, USE PULLOFFS AHEAD.

  The signs keep repeating every quarter mile or so down the hill and then you see the crosses at the base of that sheer cliff at the bottom. Dozens of them. Each one marking the spot where some damned fool didn’t test his brakes and didn’t pull off and didn’t make it home that night.

  “So what are you going to do?” Billy asks finally.

  “Nothing,” I say, thinking of all those crosses. “No more lunches.”

  “Good,” he says.

  Billy and I hung up then, which is truly one of the major regrets of my life. Because there were at least two more very critical things he could have told me about Annie—either one of which would have surely, decidedly, definitely stopped me in my tracks. Apparently, though, Billy assumed I’d been sufficiently scared off already. Because he told me about neither of those things until literally years afterward. Why would a friend not tell me something so important? Well, you have to understand something central about Billy Greckle: he is a prig. Not only does he favor the art and furnishings of a century ago, he applauds the circumlocutions and the reticence of a bygone era. Billy would have been embarrassed had he said anything further. That’s why he didn’t tell me more about Annie White.

  So once again, I put her out of mind. This time for good.

  Then she called.

  I was in the middle of my bedtime ritual with the kids where the four of us and the fat, black cat we had at the time were reading the night’s bedtime story. The cat hated this because I’d sit him on my lap and I’d have him act out the story with waving, jabbing, swooping paws. Yet the damned dummy cat showed up every night for it.