but his name isn’t John Smith, either, so I had a chance. I looked and looked and looked. It became a minor obsession. Every day I scrolled through the hundreds of hits that came up when I searched his name on Google. I tried combinations of his name and the state where I knew him, but he no longer lives there. I tried to guess what he had become when he grew up—my first two guesses were politician or lawyer, so you can probably guess the kind of person he is. I found him. He is neither a politician nor a lawyer, but I wasn’t far off. People don’t change. I wondered if I would recognize him. I shouldn’t have. There are some faces you don’t forget. He looks exactly the same. Exactly. He looks older, but not by much. His hair is darker. I know how long it has been since I last saw him in years, months, and days. It has been more than twenty years but fewer than thirty.
I would recognize him anywhere. He wears his hair in the same style he always has, real glossy-catalog preppy. He has a wide face. He’s an executive at a major company. He has a fancy title. He has the same smug facial expression, that sort of “the world is mine” cockiness innate to some people, people like him. Ever since I found him, I Google him every few days or so like I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t go missing. I need to know where he is. I need to understand, at all times, the distance between him and me, just in case. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Or I do. I Googled him when I wrote this book. I don’t know why. Or I do. I sat for hours, staring at his picture on his webpage on his company’s website. It nauseates me.
I can smell him. This is what the future brings. I think about tracking him down the next time I’m in his city. I am there sometimes. If I told my friends there what I was doing, they would try to stop me, so I would wait and keep my plans to myself, commit a sin of omission. I am good at waiting. I could make the time to find him. He wouldn’t recognize me. I was skinny when he knew me and much shorter. I was very small and cute and smart but not smart. I am not that girl anymore. I could find him and hide in plain sight. I saw to that. He wouldn’t see me. He would look right through me. I know where he works and his e-mail address and his phone number and fax number. I don’t have these things written down, but I know. I have them bookmarked and maybe committed to memory. I know what the street outside his office building looks like because of Google Maps Street View. There are palm trees. He has a nice view. This is the future. I don’t have anything to say to him or, rather, anything I would say to him. Or I do. Maybe I have everything to say to him. I don’t know. I wonder where he lives. If I went to his workplace and waited outside the parking lot and followed him home, I could find out where he lives, how he lives. I could see where and how he sleeps at night. I wonder if he’s married, if he has children, if he’s happy. Is he a good husband and father? I wonder if he keeps in touch with the guys he used to run with. I wonder if they ever talk about the good old days, if they talk about me. I wonder if he could tell me their names because I didn’t really know them, I just knew of them, and then I did know them but never their names. I wonder if he has become a good person. This one time, we were making out in the woods and my younger brother caught us and then blackmailed me for weeks. I had to do what he said or he would tell on me, which meant doing all his stupid chores and worrying, constantly, that he would tell my parents I was a bad Catholic girl.
Sibling relationships are strangely corrupt. My younger brother also told me, then, that he didn’t like this guy and I should stay away. I told him he was being silly, immature. I had a secret romance with a golden boy. That’s all that mattered. I told him he was jealous someone liked me. I told my brother he was just a kid, he couldn’t understand. I should have listened to my brother. I was a kid too. I wonder how this man from my past takes his coffee because there is a Starbucks right across from his office. Google showed me that too. I wonder if he eats red meat and if he still likes to look at Playboys and if he has any hobbies and if he’s still mean to fat kids. I was crazy for him. I probably would have done anything if he had bothered to ask. Do people still like him as much as they used to? What kind of car does he drive? Is he close to his parents? Do they live in the same house? I have called his office and asked for him. I have done this more than once. Mostly I hang up immediately. His secretary put me through once after I made up a story about why I needed to speak to him. It was a good story. When I heard his voice I dropped the phone. His voice hasn’t changed. When I picked up the phone again, he kept saying, “Hello, hello, hello . . .” This went on for a long time. He wouldn’t stop saying hello. It was like he knew it was me, like he had been waiting too, and then after a long time he stopped saying hello and we sat there in silence and I kept waiting for him to hang up but he didn’t and neither did I so we just listened to each other breathing. I was paralyzed. I wonder if he thinks of me, of what I gave him before he took what I did not. I wonder if he thinks of me when he makes love to his wife. Is he disgusted with himself? Does he get turned on when he thinks of what he did? Do I disgust him? I wonder if he knows I think of him every day. I say I don’t, but I do.
He’s always with me. Always. There is no peace. I wonder if he knows I have sought out men who would do to me what he did or that they often found me because they knew I was looking. I wonder if he knows how I found them and how I pushed away every good thing. Does he know that for years I could not stop what he started? I wonder what he would think if he knew that unless I thought of him I felt nothing at all while having sex, I went through the motions, I was very convincing, and that when I did think of him the pleasure was so intense it was breathtaking. I wonder if he is familiar with the Sword of Damocles.
He is always with me, every night, no matter whom I’m with, always. If I were to track him down, I could pretend to be a client looking for what he deals in. I know how to move in his circles. I could make an appointment to have him show me things. I can afford to be in the same room as him even though I doubt he would have ever imagined that. I have a fancy title too. I could sit across from him in what must be a corner office with a view. I have no doubt his desk is huge and imposing and compensating for something. I wonder how long we would have to sit there before he recognized me. I wonder if he would even remember me.
My eyes haven’t changed. My lips haven’t changed. If he remembered me, would he admit it, or would he pretend he didn’t to try to feel me out, figure out my endgame? I wonder how long I would sit there. I wonder how long I could sit there. I wonder if I would tell him what I became, what I made of myself, what I made of myself despite him. I wonder if he would care, if it would matter.
85
I am taking small steps toward the life I want. For the past twelve years, I have lived, rather unhappily, in rural America.
As a black woman, this has been trying, at best. If I’m being honest with myself, other than graduate school, where I didn’t have a choice in where I lived, I have been hiding. I’m afraid to live in a city where, at least in my mind, everyone is thin, athletic, beautiful, and I am an abominable woman.