My daughter’s favorite game is Make-believe. Make-believe you’re a witch, she says. Make-believe you’re a snail. Make-believe this broccoli is a strawberry. Make-believe our cat understands every word we’re saying.
If I don’t perform my assigned roles convincingly, I get scolded. “You’re supposed to make me believe it,” she says.
So I do as I’m told. I cast spells on the dog walkers who pass our house. I take a whole minute to walk from the dining table to the refrigerator. I praise the broccoli’s plump sweetness. I am more respectful toward the cat.
One morning: Make-believe you’re rich.
So I google a man I went to high school with, a man (a boy at the time) that I went on a few dates with, a man I suspect has done well for himself. He was the ambitious sort.
He liked me very much, that boy. When I rejected him one night—our third date—he tried to persuade me that I was making a mistake. We ended up on the see-saw on the playground at the end of my street. His feet rested on the earth. Mine barely grazed it. He presented various arguments as to why we were compatible: for instance, we were both smart, he said.
I think about him from time to time because I’m embarrassed by that argument on the see-saw—embarrassed by the stupid things my teenage self said and did. I don’t think I was wrong about us not having much in common, but the evidence I presented had to do with my wildness and his restraint, my delinquency and his upstandingness. I chain-smoked Marlboros to prove my point. I had a certain idea of myself back then. He was potatoes; I was Pop Rocks. Also, his lips were severely chapped. Gnarled is the word that comes to mind, like a tree burl. Kissing him was unpleasant.
I think about him because I’m curious what other path my life could have taken if he’d persuaded me. He was a nice enough boy. Outside of those chapped lips, not bad looking, either. Not that dating him in high school would have necessarily led to marriage, but you never know.
When I find him, I’m uncertain at first that it’s him. His face has rounded. His chest has broadened. What confirms his identity are his lips. In the photo online, his lips look rough, just as I remember.
He went to business school, is a CEO. Something about asset management. My sleuthing reveals that four years ago he bought a two-million-dollar home that’s four times the size of my own house. I zoom in on Google maps. Try to see inside the windows. The curtains are closed, revealing nothing. The neighborhood is one of those rich neighborhoods that look unlived in. The houses and lawns are all immaculate. Not a car or bicycle or lawn ornament in sight. Not a person or animal, either.
My sleuthing reveals that he has a wife and five (!) kids. The wife is a stay-at-home mother, the kind of woman whose Facebook posts are all about motherhood. This isn’t speculation. “Mothers hold their children’s hands for a while and their hearts forever.” “The greatest gift and blessing in life is being a mom.” “I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.”
So, yeah, she’s an idiot, too.
What I also find are more photos of him, mostly at children’s birthday parties. He has a paunch. His eyes are listless. He wears ill-fitting shirts that hang from his torso like sacks. Money has not bought him good taste.
I am relieved that I’m not attracted to him.
I think about what a weird thing money is, how some people prioritize it above nearly all else. Not that I think he’s greedy. Safety, security, comfort: they’re reasonable desires. And I know he grew up with modest means. His father was a postman; his mother volunteered at her church. I’m just saying I’m certain money was his primary criterion in choosing a career.
I consider how I could have made that decision, too—gone to business school or med school. When people annoyingly suggest I should write a commercial novel, the kind of book that might secure a six- or seven-digit book deal, that might sell hundreds of thousands of copies and a movie deal, too, I think, well, if money were what I was after, writing is a very stupid method by which to pursue it. I would have made some very different life choices.
Like marrying a man who would earn the money so that I could spend my days writing those best-selling novels.
Maybe his wife isn’t so stupid, after all.
My daughter interrupts. Whines for me to get up from the computer. Says, “You’re not playing right.”
Michelle Ross is the author of three story collections: There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Short Fiction Award; Shapeshifting, winner of the 2020 Stillhouse Press Short Fiction Award (2021); and They Kept Running, winner of the 2021 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (2022). Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, a story collection she cowrote with Kim Magowan, is just out from EastOver Press. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50, and the Norton anthology, Flash Fiction America. It’s received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is an Editor at 100 Word Story.
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash