The Middlesteins(16)
And then there was the hooker, or half a hooker, maybe; he wasn’t quite sure what she was. Tracy had contacted him on the site a few days after he joined it, and he should have suspected something, because she was far younger than him, thirty-nine years old—only four years older than his son! What would she want with him anyway? He should have known, but still he agreed to meet with her, suggesting coffee, then she suggesting a drink, and then a few hours before they were to meet, she e-mailing him and telling him she had just come from the gym and had had a tough workout and she was famished and did he mind meeting her for dinner instead? She named a pricey steak house, and how could he say no? He didn’t want to seem cheap or less than a class act.
She turned out to be a real knockout—though perhaps a bit older than she claimed on her profile—with dark, shining eyes, plump lips, a lush behind, and slick, minklike hair that she kept pulled to one side over her bare shoulder. She was wearing a strapless dress made of a black stretchy material that ended above the knee. Middlestein hadn’t seen that much skin on a woman up close in a long time. She smelled fantastic, this combination of flowers and baby powder, and she was tan, and fit, and everything about her was perfect. As she slowly crossed and uncrossed her legs and ran her fingertips along the shiny enameled wood of the bar, possibilities unfolded in front of him.
They sat first at the bar—she guzzled a martini, he sipped at a beer—until their names were called, and he couldn’t say exactly what was going on until after they had been seated and just before their steaks had already been delivered. He asked if she enjoyed her work as a receptionist at a massage-therapy institute, and she put her hand on his and said, “Well, what I’m really looking for is a daddy, so I never have to work again,” and then she giggled, and he stared at her for longer than he meant to, and she said, “If you know what I mean,” in a low voice, and he—he just couldn’t help himself—he did the briefest of calculations, he moved a zero around in his bank account, even though he already knew the answer, and this was not what he wanted anyway, but oh, he wouldn’t mind putting his hands on that tuchus of hers. But there was no way. A steak dinner, sure; not much more than that, though. And if he couldn’t bring her to his grandchildren’s b’nai mitzvah in June—he could just hear the whispers, he knew he’d be whispering himself if one of his buddies did the same, and his children, and especially that daughter-in-law of his, would never forgive him—then she wasn’t much of an investment at all. Then she said, “Do you think you would like to be my daddy?” and a massive pang of depression struck him, and he looked down into the bottom of his drink, searching deeply for his dignity. When he looked up, her smile had faded.
“I’m just looking to meet a nice lady,” he said, which wasn’t exactly true, but was closer to the truth than what she was proposing.
“I can be very nice,” she said, the last remnants of her flirtation fading, because she was not there to defend herself, only to promote her possibilities.
And then there were the steaks, and they were delicious. She took half of hers home in a doggy bag, which she clutched to herself as they stood in the parking lot. A kiss on the cheek, and then a whisper: “You know how to reach me if you change your mind.”
*
He had her number in his hand right now and was thinking about giving her a call after the day, week, month, year, life he’d had. A few hours after his depressing coffee date with Jill—who had left in tears, though thankfully she’d waited until she got in her car for the real waterworks to start; he had seen her sobbing at the stoplight—he met his daughter, Robin, for dinner. He hadn’t seen her since he’d left his wife, only spoken with her on the phone. The kids had circled their mother and had shut him down, Benny much more than Robin, but that was to be expected. Benny’s wife, that obsessive, tightly wound, Little Miss Prim and Proper, was outraged that he had filed for divorce, as if no one had gotten divorced before, as if she knew everything there was to know about family and marriage and life, as if she were the moral arbiter of what was right and wrong when she was the one who had gotten knocked up even before she had graduated from college and she should consider herself lucky that she’d had a free ride practically since the day she had met his son. He could go on. He did not appreciate being judged.
“She doesn’t want you in our lives,” said Benny stiffly on the phone. “You’re my father, and I have made it clear that I will continue to have a relationship with you. I think things just need to cool off. She’ll calm down.” It was shocking to Middlestein that he would no longer be able to see his beloved grandchildren regularly. He hadn’t considered that such a thing would even be a possibility. He thought they would understand how he couldn’t live with that woman any longer. Surely they knew what he went through. Surely they could accept that he had been in pain. But they had not; they treated him as if he were a criminal, like he had murdered someone, when his wife, Edie, was the one killing herself, and taking him with her piece by piece.
His daughter was only slightly more reasonable, but first she had to get her anger out of the way. She had been like that since the day she was born: a screamer, a howler, and then she would slide, herky-jerky, into something resembling acceptance. He didn’t get her, he knew that much. He didn’t know why he needed to get her anyway. His father had never gotten him. Why did people need to be gotten so much? Why couldn’t they just accept that he had left his wife and respect his decision? Why did he need to justify his existence to anyone?