He Wanted Me as His Mistress. My Mother Left Him a Letter

Adam held the earring by the stone, careful to keep his fingers away from the blood. I watched his face until he glanced down at my hand. For a second, he looked uncomfortable. I thought he was about to open the glove compartment and find me something to press against the cut. “I’ll cover for you this time,” he said. “Just don’t touch her things again.” He took a sanitizing wipe from the center console and worked it around the post. He turned the stud over, checked the setting under the dome light, and wiped it again. A drop of blood landed on my thigh. I watched it spread into the fabric. I knew I ought to close my hand or ask him for a tissue. I sat there with my palm open anyway. Adam wrapped the earring in a clean tissue and tucked it into the glove compartment. Then he looked at me. “What are you waiting for? I told you to get in the back.” “Take me up to the street,” I said. “I’ll get a cab.” “Fine. I’ve got the company gala tonight. I still have to take her to pick out a dress.” The Sanchez shipping company held that gala every year. The invitations went to port officials, contractors, and people his father wanted photographed shaking his hand. I’d spent a week helping Adam sort the seating chart. He drove up the ramp and stopped at the curb. Rain was coming down hard enough to bounce off the hood. I knew there was an umbrella in the trunk. I’d put it there myself. “Get yourself home,” he said. I shut the door. He pulled away before I’d taken my hand off it. No cab stopped. By the time I reached the bus shelter, my sleeves were soaked through and my hair was dripping down my collar. A woman on the bench moved her shopping bag to make room for me. She looked at the blood on my hand, then at my face. I stayed standing. What I wanted to remember was the way Adam had looked at me in the car. What I kept remembering was the first time he’d stood between me and a crowd. I was eighteen when my father posted a video admitting to the affair. Until then, I’d known him as a man my mother called on birthdays and never expected to pick up. He said his wife had been pregnant when my mother began calling the house. My mother kept calling, even after his wife begged her to stop. In the video, he said he’d let it go on because he thought he could keep both women waiting for him to make up his mind. His wife died by suicide. The baby died with her. My mother had expected him to marry her after that. Instead, he cut her off. She told him he had a daughter to think about. He told her to stop calling. For eighteen years, she raised me alone. It took strangers online less than a week to find out who she was. Then they found my name, my college, and the building where I lived. My mother jumped from the roof of her apartment building. After she died, the messages kept coming. So did the women who waited at the campus gates with rotten eggs and bags of spoiled produce. Some had been cheated on themselves. One told me about her husband while she dug an egg out of her coat pocket. “A mistress’s daughter grows up to be a mistress,” she said. “Everybody knows that.” Inside the gates, my classmates whispered. Outside, the women got close enough to tell me what they thought of my face. “You look just like her. Bet you know exactly what to do with a married man.” I’d been living in a dorm room my mother had paid for. I wore a coat she’d bought me. At eighteen, I couldn’t work out how to grieve for her and be horrified by what she’d done. I’d hear those women shouting and think I owed them the chance to say it. So I kept my head down. It went on for most of a year. Then one afternoon, a woman reached for my sleeve at the gate. Adam caught her by the wrist before she got hold of me. “Who told you a mistress’s daughter has to grow up to be one?” he asked. The woman looked past him at the black car waiting by the curb. She knew the Sanchez name. Most people in that neighborhood did. He let go of her wrist and asked what her daughter did for a living. “She’s an accountant,” the woman said. “At a big firm.” “And what do you do?” She hesitated. One of the women beside her answered for her. “She cooks for a construction crew.” Adam nodded. “So your daughter got to choose what she did with her life. Why doesn’t she?” He pointed at me. Nobody had asked me a question out there in months. For a second, I didn’t know where to look. The crowd thinned after that. A few women still showed up the next day. By the end of the week, I could walk through the gates without checking both sides of the street. Adam started coming by even when there was nobody to run off. He brought an umbrella when it rained and crossed to the shady side of the street when the sun was strong. After I finished studying at the library, he’d be outside waiting to walk me back to my dorm. Once, in the dining hall, he saw two people tip the scraps from their trays onto the seat I’d been saving. I started to get up. He put a hand on the back of my chair. “Stay,” he said quietly. Then he looked at the two of them. “Which one of you got to pick your parents?”

Nobody in the dining hall answered Adam. He waited a moment. “All right. Which one of you can stand here and swear nobody in your family ever did something they were ashamed of?” One of the students set his tray down. The other stared at the soup running off my chair. Neither looked at me. Adam pulled a clean chair over and sat across from me while I finished eating. He’d grown up a Sanchez. He could have cleared the room by saying his last name. What mattered to me then was that he’d stayed long enough to make them answer for what they’d done. When he asked me to be his girlfriend, I said yes. Until then, I’d figured anybody who got close to me would eventually look up my mother’s name. With Adam, I could tell him a good memory of her without feeling obliged to follow it with a confession. For the first time since she died, I could talk about her and still get to sleep afterward. At the bus stop, rain ran down the back of my coat. My palm had stopped bleeding, but I could still feel the earring post going in. I kept thinking about that chair in the dining hall and wondering how the man who’d pulled it over for me could sit beside me tonight and worry about a stain on someone else’s jewelry. The bus came around the corner. I put a hand out for the shelter post and missed. When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside. An IV line was taped to the back of my hand, and my coat hung dripping from a hook by the hospital bed. Someone had put my phone on the tray beside me. “You’ve had a rough day,” the doctor said. “For now, I want you to rest. Let the nurse know if you feel dizzy again.” “Okay.” My phone rang before he reached the door. Adam. I let it ring long enough to think I might actually leave it alone. Then I picked up. “Valerie got something on her gown,” he said. Music and voices carried through the phone. “Go home and get Starlit Night. Bring it to the hotel. She needs something to change into.” Valerie. He’d told me he was marrying her before he’d even told me her name. Starlit Night was what the designer called the gown Adam had commissioned for me. I’d stood through three fittings while she pinned tiny silver beads into the dark blue fabric. Adam said I’d wear it to the party after our wedding. When it came back from the final fitting, I’d reached for the zipper on the garment bag, and he’d covered my hand with his. “Leave it,” he’d said. “I want the next time you touch it to be our wedding night.” “Adam, I’m in the hospital. I have an IV in my hand.” “You were fine when I dropped you off.” I looked down at the tape on my hand. “I need that dress here now,” he said. “Don’t make me come deal with you myself.” I could have hung up. Instead, I thought about the afternoon at the campus gate, when he’d stepped between me and a woman who’d reached for my sleeve. I’d spent years feeling I owed him something for that day. One last thing, then. I asked the nurse to remove the IV. By the time I got a cab, it was still raining. I went home, took the garment bag from the back of my closet, and held it across my lap all the way to the hotel. The Sanchez gala was in full swing. Through the glass doors, I could see the shipping company’s name on the wall behind the reception desk. The men at the entrance knew Adam. They’d spent the evening waving through everyone his father wanted to be seen with. Adam called again as I got out of the cab. “Valerie’s waiting at the front doors,” he said. “She wants to thank you. Be gracious about it.” “All right.” Valerie came out as I stepped under the awning. There was a dark stain down the front of her gown. I lifted the garment bag so she could take it by the hanger. She slapped me before I got a word out. My head snapped to the side. I caught myself against the stone wall, and the bag slipped out of my hands onto the wet pavement. By the time I looked at her again, she was crying. “If you didn’t want to bring it, you could’ve said so,” she said, loud enough for the men at the doors to hear. “Why did you have to throw it on the ground?” I was still trying to understand why she’d hit me when the hotel doors opened behind her. “Adam,” she said, turning to him. “You told me she’d behave. You said she wouldn’t give me any trouble.” He looked at the bag on the ground. Then he hit me across the other cheek. “I’ve let you get away with too much,” he said. “Apologize to Valerie. Now.” I laughed. It hurt to move my mouth. “Did you even look at me before you hit me, Adam? Where do you think the mark on my other cheek came from?” Valerie caught his sleeve. “I slapped her,” she said. “Are you mad at me? I lost my temper when she threw the dress down. You know how I get.” Adam put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I’m not mad,” he said. “She deserved it.” Valerie rested her head against his shoulder. From there, she could look right at me. She smiled. I smiled back. I could feel tears running down both cheeks, and for once I let him see them. I’d left a hospital bed to bring him the gown he’d ordered for our wedding. There was no making that look less foolish. In three days, he’d be at the courthouse with Valerie. Caroline’s plane would be waiting for me. I could get through three days. I looked at Adam once more. I hoped he never ended up like my father, telling strangers what he’d done after the people he owed an apology to were gone.

It had taken my father eighteen years to tell the truth about what he’d done. By then, the woman he owed an apology to was dead, and all he had left was a camera and an audience. I’d thought about that video often enough to know what an apology could be worth. “I’m sorry, Valerie,” I said. “I shouldn’t have let your gown fall.” The garment bag lay between us on the wet pavement. Valerie looked down at it. The zipper was still closed. “An apology ought to look like one,” she said. “How else am I supposed to know you mean it?” “What do you want me to do?” “Go inside and tell them you begged Adam to keep you as his mistress. Tell them you’re just like your mother.” She glanced at Adam before she added, “Actually, Rosie, I think you’re worse.” “I don’t want to be anyone’s mistress. Adam and I are done.” I twisted the ring off my finger. He’d turned it until the stone sat straight when he put it on me. I’d let him do it because I thought it was the ring I’d wear at our wedding. “Take it back, Adam.” He’d started toward me. He stopped when he saw what I was holding. I let the ring go between us. It struck the stone and rolled against his shoe. “If I say you wanted him, you wanted him,” Valerie said. She caught me by the hair and dragged me through the glass doors. One of the Sanchez men at the entrance stepped aside. The other looked straight at Adam before he did the same. The band was between songs when we reached the ballroom. Valerie’s voice carried all the way to the tables by the bar. “Everybody, look. Here’s a woman who begged to be somebody’s mistress.” A man near the door set down his drink. “Isn’t that your girlfriend, Adam?” “Valerie Herring is my girlfriend,” Adam said. “She works for me at the shipping office.” A few people laughed. They’d seen me at his side at every Sanchez gala since we’d started dating. Some of them were sitting at tables I’d assigned them myself. A woman stepped out from between two of those tables. “I always said a mistress’s daughter would grow up to be one. Remember when you used to defend her, Adam?” “She even slapped herself twice to get his attention,” Valerie said. “Look at her cheeks. She thought he’d feel sorry for her.” She let go of my hair and slipped against Adam’s chest. “But Adam has principles,” she said. “He wouldn’t fall for something that cheap.” His eyes went to my face. For a moment I saw the same discomfort I’d seen in the car, when he’d looked down and realized my hand was bleeding. “Whatever you say, babe.” I opened my mouth to tell them which cheek he’d hit. Someone threw champagne in my face. “Are there no single men left?” the woman in front of me said. “You had to go after hers?” I’d taken a breath just as the champagne hit. I bent over coughing, one hand against my ribs. Another glass caught me across the side of the head. “Homewreckers deserve to die,” somebody said. After that, I couldn’t tell whose glass was whose. One went down the front of my dress. Someone behind me poured another over my head. A hand closed around my jaw and forced my mouth open. I tried to turn away, and liquor ran down my throat faster than I could cough it back up. I looked for one of the men who’d been guarding the doors. They were still there. Neither had moved. Someone shoved me down. My knee struck the floor first. Then came a fist against my shoulder and a shoe in my ribs. I put both arms over my head. My mother had been surrounded like this in a hotel before she died. People had called her names, poured drinks on her, and watched her try to get away. She’d made it into the elevator. It had taken her all the way to the roof. When Adam asked me to be his mistress, I’d said no before I could talk myself into making an exception. I knew what my mother had done. I’d spent years afraid I’d end up in a room full of people who thought that told them everything they needed to know about me. And here I was anyway. Through a gap between two people, I could see Adam with his arm around Valerie. She said something I couldn’t hear. He smiled down at her, his eyes bright under the ballroom lights. I remembered him pulling a clean chair over for me in the dining hall. He’d made every person in that room answer one simple question before they could say another word about my mother. I’d give anything to know what he would have said to himself tonight. The next time someone reached for me, I caught their wrist and shoved it away. I got one foot under me, then the other. I ran for the elevator with one hand pressed to my ribs. The doors shut before anybody caught up. I hit the button for the roof. My phone was still in my coat pocket. I sent Caroline the hotel name and one line. I need out now. I’m going to the roof. Her reply came before the elevator stopped. There’s a helicopter at the docks. Stay by the rooftop door until you see it. Outside, the rain had eased enough for me to see the lights across the harbor. I stayed by the door. Below me, the gala was still going on. I could feel the bass through the soles of my shoes. Then I heard the rotors. The helicopter came over the roof and held above the open terrace. A crewman lowered a ladder. Its bottom rung swung once before settling within reach. The rooftop door slammed open behind me. “Rosie!” Adam’s face was white. His eyes went straight to the parapet. “Rosie, don’t!” He’d remembered my mother, too. I took hold of the ladder, put my foot on the first rung, and climbed.