Free The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg Page A

vein protruding from beneath the
     skin. This seemed like an unattractive habit at best to Middlestein, and the kind
     of thing that might scare a man away. But it was none of his business if she got married
     or not. Maybe once upon a time, but he knew he would never be able to say a thing
     to her again about it. She looked up, looked him in the eye, and said, “Do you think
     she would ever do the same to you? Leave you when you needed her most?”
    “Robin, your mother left me a long time ago,” he said, and whether Robin knew it,
     or Benny knew it, or that ballbuster of a wife of his knew it, it was true.
    “When?” she said.
    “It has been a lifetime of whens,” he said.
    And then he refused to discuss it any further, dissect his marriage for his daughter,
     because it was enough already, and the food had arrived, and could they just eat and
     stop fighting for a second? But he did get her to agree to see him again sometime,
     and to maybe put in a good (but not great) word for him with her brother, and he thought
     he had successfully convinced her to hate him slightly less than she did when the
     meal had started, until just before they said good-bye to each other in the parking
     lot, when he said, “So how is she? Your mother,” and she looked like she was going
     to kill him, take those powerful arms of hers, her veiny hands, and wring his neck.
     “How do you think she is?” was her only response, and then she walked off—no hug,
     no kiss, nothing—toward the train station in the early spring chill, lean, hateful,
     angry, young, alive.
     
    * * *
    He had Tracy’s number in his phone, but it was almost nine, and he decided it was
     too late to call. It wouldn’t hurt to send an e-mail, though. Either she was up and
     would get it, or she’d get it tomorrow, and maybe by then he might have a change of
     heart. I wouldn’t mind seeing you again. She replied almost immediately—“I’m game if you are,” followed by a winking, blushing
     smiley face (even her choice of emoticon was seductive, thought Middlestein)—and,
     to his surprise, invited him over immediately. He hadn’t expected such a quick response
     to his e-mail. Even some of the women he had met who didn’t work (there were more
     than a few living on spousal support or inheritance) held on to some semblance of
     propriety and made him wait a few days to meet even though there they were, online,
     just like himself, obviously not doing a damn thing with their time. He suspected
     he knew what it all meant, but he also wanted to make no assumptions, because he didn’t
     want to get into any tricky kind of trouble. He was no fool. He watched Law & Order , he watched Dateline . He knew about blackmail and con games and the like. But this was the furthest he
     had gotten with any woman yet, and they were in the suburbs of Chicago not Manhattan,
     and he was obviously not a rich man, maybe even she could see that he was not a bad
     man, even though he had left his sick wife all alone (which in the quietest moments
     in the mornings, alone in bed, he knew was a truly terrible thing), and was there
     any possibility that maybe she liked him a little bit? Was that the craziest thing
     in the world?
    These are the things Middlestein told himself as he drove to the half hooker’s house,
     the things that might make what he was doing okay in his book. If a friend of his
     told him he had done the same, Middlestein would like to think he wouldn’t have judged.
     World’s oldest profession. Biblical. Don’t knock it till you try it.
    She lived two towns over from him; the streets were empty, and he arrived at her condo
     fifteen minutes early—now there’s no traffic, he thought, just when I could use a little traffic —so he drove around in circles for a while; past a massive Kmart with a gardening
     center that made him sentimental for his backyard, even though his wife would never
     let him touch a thing; strip mall, strip mall,