Honestly, We Meant Well Read online

  “I guess I opted for the most obvious one.”

  “Can you forgive me?” Dean asked.

  “Is it my job to?”

  A woman approached the ATM, and Dean scooted his chair aside, making room for her.

  “We’re working it out. We will work it out.” He drummed his fingers against the pint glass. “You know this doesn’t have anything to do with you, right? I fucked up—this doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “I’m an adult, Dad. I know people make mistakes.”

  Dean nodded.

  “Can I offer you some, uh, advice, though? From son to father?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  * * *

  Now, he circles around the west side of the temple’s foundations and looks out over the ruins, then beyond them. It’s gorgeous, he thinks. Jagged gray cliffs dotted with cypresses and olive trees. A valley blanketed in a wild, primordial green. His phone buzzing in his pocket distracts him, and he reaches down to check it again: another email from Ginny Polonsky, bringing the new total to forty-one. Scanning the screen, he catches a few of the phrases the messages contain—I need you; You’re a dickless swamp walker; YOU CAN’T HIDE FOREVER. I’LL COME FOR YOU. He closes his eyes and puts his phone away.

  He had tried to stop. Two weeks before he proposed the idea of a family vacation to Sue Ellen, he had tried to end it with Ginny, an endeavor that resulted with both of them pressed up against the grubby bathroom wall of a diner in Walnut Creek. Again, though, that had not been his intention. In fact, he had invited Ginny to the diner in Walnut Creek (Diane’s, he thinks it was called) to do precisely the opposite—to tell her that, despite the fun times they’d had, they would not be having fun any longer. Closing his eyes, he tries to remember how, exactly, he had explained himself. All he can think of, though, is the way her breasts squeezed together as she slathered thick pads of butter across her pancakes. The way she licked her fingers clean of syrup after taking her first, messy bites.

  “Look, Ginny” is how he probably started.

  “Yes, Dean?” (She always did this, Dean noted. She always stressed the pronunciation of his first name, ever since he’d told her to stop calling him Professor Wright, save for during moments of copulation, when he, in fact, preferred it.)

  “I … I just think…”

  He watched her pick up a strip of bacon, which she brushed against her lips a few times before finally taking a bite. Sunlight, tempered by a scrim of clouds, streamed through the windows, turning Ginny’s hair the color of weak embers. Beneath the table, he felt her sandaled foot creep up his left leg, a single toe momentarily getting caught in the elastic band of his sock. Chewing her bacon, Ginny worked her foot higher. She had nearly reached his knee when their blue-haired waitress scuttled by, asking if they would like refills on coffee. Shaken, Dean had brushed Ginny’s foot away. He crossed his legs, suppressing the bulge in his khakis.

  The waitress left and he tried again: “I think we should stop this.”

  “Stop what?”

  “This,” Dean said. He picked up a fork and pierced the yolk on one of the two fried eggs he had ordered. Yellow muck bled across his plate. “All of this.”

  Ginny grinned. “I’ve heard that before.”

  Dean looked out the window. A Honda Civic pulled into the empty space next to his station wagon. He held his breath until he could see the driver and confirm that it was no one he knew. He said, “I’m serious this time. It’s got to stop.”

  “Yeah? And why’s that?”

  “Because I’m married.”

  “Oh, please, Dean.”

  He dipped a spoon into his coffee and started stirring. He knew he shouldn’t have told Ginny about Jasmine. He had done so because he thought it would make her like him more. He thought that if he gave her some indication that this wasn’t just sex—that he was capable of carrying on an affair—she was more liable to keep sleeping with him. That, he realized now, had been a miscalculation.

  And so, he accepted her edit and thought twice; he revised: “Because it’s getting out of control,” he said. “Because we’re one red hair in the shower drain away from someone finding out.”

  “You mean from your wife finding out.”

  “Incidentally, that is who I’m most concerned about, yes,” Dean said, adding, “but there’s also Will.”

  “Will?” Ginny reached back and gathered her hair into a ponytail, straining her neck from side to side. Dean glanced at the white flesh and the smattering of freckles that darkened the left side of her chin. He recrossed his legs, and she went on: “You said it yourself, Will’s hopeless. He’d literally have to be naked in bed with us before he even suspected something was going on.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I didn’t.” He thought for a moment. “When did I?”

  “Two weeks ago. Tuesday afternoon in the laundry room. Right after I put my finger up your—”

  “Okay, okay, maybe I did,” he hissed, leaning forward. “I’m allowed to, though. He’s my kid.”

  “Oh-ho, so that’s how this works?” She slapped the table. “Now you’ve suddenly got a monopoly on who gets to be called an idiot?”

  Dean scooped up a bite of egg, but it slipped, limp and wet, between the tines of his fork.

  He looked at her and said firmly, “Do not talk about my son.”

  Ginny stared at him for a moment, as if she was searching his face for signs of a tell. When he didn’t blink she finally turned away and let her hair fall back around her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—is that why you brought me out here? Is that why you drove me all the way to Walnut Creek? So you could tell me that it’s got to stop?”

  “I knew you liked pancakes.” He wondered how fast he could get the check. He wondered if Ginny would mind taking the bus home. “I heard this place had good pancakes.”

  “Yeah, well, they suck.” She pushed her plate away. “They’re dry as shit, and they suck.”

  “Would you like to order something else?”

  “No, I would not like to order something else.” She folded her arms across her chest and heaved a massive sigh. “In fact, if I’m being honest with you, I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Ginny…”

  “Yes?”

  But he said nothing; instead, he just looked at her. Her green eyes had darkened to a stormy hazel. In front of her sat a box of yellow Splenda packets, and he watched as she arranged them and rearranged them, occasionally glancing up with an expression that was as desperate as it was vindictive. He knew that whatever he said next had the potential for gorgeously disastrous consequences. With a few simple words he could ruin Ginny’s week—nay, Ginny’s year. Conversely, if he pitied her and capitulated, he would have her groveling at his feet, thanking him for his magnanimity. He considered what those two outcomes might look like: on the one hand, here’s Ginny, whispering sweet words of gratitude as she unzipped his pants; on the other hand, here’s Ginny, throwing lukewarm coffee in his face as she stormed out into the rain. Both options, he admitted, carried with them the same, familiar effect: a wonderful tingling at the end of his dick.

  But then, something strange happened: without warning, Ginny stood up. She took her napkin off her lap, dabbed the corners of her mouth with it, and just … stood up. It was as if she had suddenly become aware of just how seductive her own pliability was; of how Dean’s own obsession with control had paradoxically given her the upper hand.

  “I’m going to the restroom to dry my eyes,” she said, folding the napkin into thirds and setting it back down on the table.

  Leaning over, she added, “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later the Wrights abandon the ruins for a restaurant a few miles down the road, a place called Epikouros with cloth napkins and, at least from some of its tables, a sweeping view of the surrounding mou
ntains. Once they’re seated, he orders a half liter of white wine, which the waiter delivers with a small basket of bread. The bread isn’t good, or fresh; it’s crusty and freckled with sesame seeds that keep getting caught in his teeth. He finds none of these facts particularly offensive. Rather, he’s grateful for how he can eat the little slices without thinking, without appreciating. How he can slop them in olive oil and consume them purely as matter, which he does, over and over again, as he waits for his lunch to arrive. When it does, though, he’s disappointed by what he sees: a lukewarm lamb chop, accompanied by rice and two wrinkled roasted tomatoes. He inspects them for a moment, poking them with his fork, letting their juices stain the plate red.

  His tryst with Ginny in the diner had been the very last time. He made the decision to follow his wife to Greece right after he had finished. His pants were still around his ankles when he thought, with perfect clarity, Jesus Christ, we’ve got to get out of here. For starters, there was the issue of his faulty self-control—the diner had proven that much. More problematic than that, though, was the fact that Ginny had started to become, well, a little nuts. Typically, he would find this sort of behavior equally as seductive as it was troubling—he had no problem admitting a certain infatuation with crazy women—but with Ginny he found himself worrying that, sooner or later, he would get caught.

  He had, to some degree, always suspected it would turn out like this. There were signs, even during their first encounter, when she was just another creative writing student vying for a place in his class. He remembers the first time she stopped by his office. It was November, two months into the fall term, and applications to Dean’s upcoming spring workshop weren’t due for another week. Still, the first thing Ginny did when she sat down across from him was slap a ten-page story on his desk, along with a letter of recommendation from Chip Fieldworth, the powdery old Victorianist who chaired the English Department.

  “I want to study with you,” she said, letting her shoulder bag fall to the floor. “I’ve read The Light of Our Shadows four times, and I want to learn everything you have to teach me.”

  Dean looked up from the book he had been reading, an old Forster hardcover, behind which he hid the stuff he actually liked: Lee Child thrillers. The occasional Jodi Picoult.

  “We’re not accepting applications until next week,” he said, and waited for Ginny to reach down and pick up her bag. She didn’t.

  “I realize that. I thought, though, that it might behoove me to submit mine now.”

  “You mean that you thought it might give you a leg up on the others.” He dog-eared his page and set the book down.

  “Whatever. I guess that’s one way of looking at it, sure.”

  She was wearing a light denim jacket, which she presently began working her way out of, letting the sleeves slip from her shoulders to reveal bare arms and a cream-colored top. The shirt, which she had cut to expose her pale midriff, had been stenciled with the word #BLACKTIVIST, even though (at least from what Dean could tell) Ginny was nothing if not very, very white.

  “And why do you think you deserve to study with me?” he asked her.

  She shifted in her seat, and her flesh doubled over in tiny folds against the waistband of her jeans.

  “Because I can quote multiple paragraphs from everything you’ve ever written,” she said, blinking. “And because I’m devastatingly talented.”

  “You don’t think you’ve got classmates who’ve memorized my books? Or classmates who are devastatingly talented?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’m sure I do,” she said. “But they’re not here, are they?”

  Dean smirked: he liked her swagger. Picking up his book, he said, “Get out of here, but leave your story.”

  He ignored her smile and focused on his book while she stood and gathered her things. Once he had heard the sound of her footsteps fade from the department’s halls, he pushed himself away from his desk, picked up the stack of papers that she had left him, and poked his head into the office next door, where Chip Fieldworth was watering a trio of half-dead orchids.

  “Who’s this?” Dean said, waving the story in the air.

  Chip peered over the rims of his glasses. “That’s a piece of paper.”

  “Knock it off. You wrote her a recommendation for my class. Who is it?”

  Chip set down his watering can and sighed. He was, per Dean’s imagination, the sort of man who women in the early twentieth century might call a confirmed bachelor, someone who was so dandified, so entirely pastel, that his sexuality transcended any conventional categorization. He was, of course, gay, though he wore his homosexuality with a sort of chicness and savoir faire that Dean sensed had been lost on his son’s generation. Chip, for example, knew how to wear an ascot. He knew how to quote Wilde and Burroughs, and how to talk about Verdi, and early American furniture, and chinoiserie. He had an ability that Dean admired to raise the aesthetic above the political and to treat artifice as truth. On three separate Sundays he had seen him in the city—on the borders of the Castro, more specifically—and each time Chip had been accompanied by a coterie of young men. They tittered around him, Dean later thought, like children in a Renoir painting, dappled in pale light.

  Now, he squinted at the papers that Dean held.

  “Ginny Polonsky,” he said. “I had her in a seminar last spring. A positively exhausting young woman.”

  “Then God damn it, Chip, why’d you recommend her for my workshop?”

  Chip turned and began sprinkling water over the orchid in the middle, a meager little plant boasting a single white bloom.

  “Because she wouldn’t leave my office until I agreed to write her a letter,” he said, shrugging. “And I had places to be.”

  Dean looked down at the story. “Is she any good?”

  “How do you suppose I would know?”

  “Didn’t you say she was in your class?”

  Chip laughed. “You’re assuming that means I read her work?” He stopped watering and turned back to face Dean. “I haven’t the slightest idea if the girl’s talented or not.”

  She was, Dean thinks now. Just—for the record, Ginny was talented. (Is talented—he needs to stop thinking about her like she’s dead.) The rest of the writers in her class all adhered to the same limp aesthetic, a simpering style of prose that seemed primarily concerned with things like the undersides of someone’s wrists, or the way the sun reflected off a collarbone. It was the sort of spineless stuff that at once assured them admission to any number of prestigious M.F.A. programs and made Dean fear for the future of American fiction. Ginny, on the other hand—there was a girl with actual promise. Granted, her stories weren’t in the genre of stuff he typically saw in an undergraduate workshop, though he suspected that’s also what made them so refreshing. While her classmates concerned themselves with the same soggy preoccupations (sad young women retracing their families’ pasts, for example, or lonely boys named Sasha picking their way through Brooklyn), Ginny created wild, bizarre worlds. Her first submission, he remembers, had been set on a planet called Druida—a place where women ruled and kept men in giant hamster cages. Sci-fi, you could call it, with a dose of slasher-feminism. When it came time for the piece to be critiqued, her classmates didn’t say much. Instead, they looked at Ginny like she was nuts, a fact which further convinced Dean that she was actually some sort of genius. Stephen King meets Philip K. Dick, he breathlessly told Chip, but only if Ursula K. Le Guin had their nuts in a vice.

  He remembers the first time they had sex, in the kitchen of the group house she lived in on Arch Street. After they finished the first time, she slipped his finger into her mouth and bit down on it, stopping just before her teeth pierced the skin. Then she slid the same finger inside of her, demanding that he make her cum a second time as he recited lines from his novel. Watching her sweat and chew her lip, he felt enlivened; he remembered what Jasmine had given him—a sense of prestige and dominance. Immediately after they had finished, however,
the guilt began to creep back: there it was again, the familiar hollowing of his stomach, the sudden rise in his throat. In Ginny’s bathroom, he splashed some cool water on his face and looked around for some soap to wash his hands. He couldn’t find any, though, so he used her strawberry bodywash instead.

  They slept together four days later, and then the day after that; they continued sleeping together until the act became a habit, as opposed to a fluke. Between these occasions, he worried that something was wrong with him, mentally; he worried that his inability to be faithful signaled something larger, a sort of disease. The concern weighed on him so heavily that, after an encounter with Ginny that left him with bruises on his hips, he attended a meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous—a wholly depressing affair held in the basement of a Presbyterian church in San Leandro, replete with foam cups, weak coffee, and sugar cookies that (at least in Dean’s estimation) were shaped a little too much like vaginas. He didn’t stay for the whole thing. The closest he ever got to returning was writing a story about one of the women who had shared—a twenty-two-year-old from Oakland whose fiancé left her when he discovered she had a thing for truck stops and the truckers who frequented them. His most recent novel aside, it’s one of the better things he’s written. In a month, it’s going to be published in The Paris Review.

  * * *

  After lunch they begin the trek back to the bus, which is the first, negligible leg of a much longer trek back to the Alectrona. He stays put for a minute or so outside the restaurant while his wife and son go on ahead. Looking down, Dean sees a trail of ants threading between his feet. Above him, up the craggy slope of Mount Parnassus, are the specks of Delphi, the foundations of the ancient temple, beneath which used to sit the Pythia. How did the old consultants used to ask for advice? Did they take a knee? Whisper something in her ear? He knows Sue Ellen has told him, but he can’t piece it together. All he remembers is that there was a sacrifice that took place, something involving a slaughtered goat.