The Widower's Tale

by Julia Glass

  I was speechless, but not because of my desire. As my left hand kneaded and stroked the corresponding side of her marvelous chest, I felt a distinct knot, separate from her nipple. A small, discrete … what? A stray bit of cartilage?

  I was about to search for a parallel form in her other breast when she turned around, still in my arms. “I have to pick up Rico in an hour,” she said, “but if we’re quick …” She turned off the water and, looking me square in the eye, pulled me close. Noticing that I was no longer aroused, she kissed me, more tender than amorous, and stepped through the shower curtain. This was one of her many virtues: that she changed course as necessary, sensed the faintest alteration in the mood or impulse of those around her.

  As she dried herself, she talked about the remainder of her weekend. She was—and she blamed me—falling behind on the commission she’d received to render a willow tree in a large panel that would fill a window at the turn of a grand staircase. The client was a radio host on Boston’s NPR station; Sarah had heard that he entertained a great deal, that she could hope this window would win her admirers with money to burn. She dreamed of the day she could give up her job at The Great Outdoorsman, spend a normal workday preoccupied by art alone. I did not share with her my view that such a life is rare indeed, especially if there are children to support.

  As for my Saturday, I would face the tricky, less creative task of sitting down with Clover and telling her about the counsel I’d received—hardly encouraging—from an old affiliate at the law school, a professor for whom I’d once researched the topic of divorce as represented in nineteenth-century British fiction. Yet divorce and stained-glass willows and gadabout NPR celebrities were relegated to the virtual lint filter of my consciousness as I focused on the lump I’d felt in Sarah’s breast.

  Sarah hurried about my bedroom, pulling on her skirt, searching the floor for her socks, buckling the wristband of her watch.

  “Please stop a minute,” I said, fearing she would dash downstairs and out the door. In our reunions and partings, we no longer stood on ceremony. Often, she was running late.

  “Percy?” She stood still, smiling sweetly. “I can stop for two seconds, but not a minute.”

  “Sarah, your breast. Your left breast.”

  Her right hand reached for it, as if she were about to say the pledge of allegiance. “My breast?”

  “I felt something there.”

  “That would be my heart. Which is yours.” But ever so slightly, she frowned.

  “What I felt was …” How difficult can one word be? I pushed it forward. “A lump.” I felt as if I’d shoved a knuckle in her eye.

  Yet she was smiling when she crossed the room. She touched my cheek with the hand that had occupied her breast. “Percy, I have … well, I’m lumpy by nature. I have cystic breasts. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  I watched her return to the bed and pull her thick sweater over her head, retrieve her damp hair from inside the cabled collar, smooth it with her fingers.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, good then. Good to know.” From my experience, admittedly scant, women take a superior attitude not just toward knowing their bodies but even, sometimes, toward knowing ours. By default, we men are biological dolts.

  She paused to squeeze my arm as she passed me to leave the room. She whispered, close to my ear, “I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  I stood there, still clad in nothing but my towel, shivering.

  I offered her my handkerchief. This was what I had feared.

  “I can’t believe what a mess this is,” she said, wiping her eyes. She hadn’t touched her tuna sandwich. I had polished off mine, ravenous after my night with Sarah, and had to resist the urge to reach across and help myself to Clover’s.

  “Daughter,” I said. “Sweetheart. I’m afraid that you would only squander thousands of dollars”—in all likelihood mine, I did not add—“to put yourself in an even more antagonistic position with Todd. Gerald told me that you would have to move back to New York, realistically, to approach winning even a shared custody arrangement.”

  Gerald had quizzed me over lunch at the Faculty Club, plates laden with the obscene bounty of the daily buffet, and the more I disclosed to him about Clover’s situation, the harder it became for him to remain his sanguine self.

  “Well, Percy,” he said at last, “is there any reason to believe the children would choose to be with their mother instead?”

  I felt myself redden as I told him that I had a feeling they would not. But how would I know the answer to this? I felt ashamed of myself. Clover had recently blurted out to me that part of what drove her away was a conversation in which Todd had told her he might be gay. Having subsequently forced Trudy’s hand on the subject, I now believe Clover’s story may have been true, but my knee-jerk reaction to her confession had been one of despair more than empathy: that this was a childish delusion, a ruse of her fragile unconscious. I did not share this part of the saga with Gerald. (Should I have done so? Was there some dirty-pool legal precedent by which a husband’s admission to a different so-called orientation might justify spousal breakdown or even render him unfit to father?)

  “Daddy, I can’t leave this job. It’s the best one I’ve ever had. Evelyn and I are a team.”

  “That’s heartening news,” I said.

  “But this just isn’t a fair choice!”

  How many times had I, like the next parent, told my children about the dearth of justice in this world? Cornered, I said, “What does your therapist say?”

  Clover sighed. “That I have got to stop fighting everything. That I have got to take a deep breath and be more … humble.” She covered her face with my handkerchief. I couldn’t tell if she was crying or hiding.

  She sat up straight and bared her face. She leveled at me a look of urgency. “Thanksgiving,” she said. “When they’re here for Thanksgiving, maybe you could talk with them. Or just Lee. He’s old enough. Maybe you could …” Her lips clamped shut. I had a feeling she wanted to issue the verb persuade or uncover or even convince.

  “You’ve spoken to Douglas, haven’t you?” I said. That I had a son-in-law who made a living sitting in a room with couples who’d already decided that nothing could induce them to remain together—or, rather, that he had gamely chosen this livelihood—never ceased to astonish me. At first I had wondered whether this vocation masked ulterior motives (to harvest material for novels, perhaps?), but eventually I realized that Trudy’s husband was simply that rare male who loves constructing a peaceful compromise the way a painter loves filling a canvas or an athlete loves winning a game.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to lean on Douglas. Trudy just isn’t …”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “She isn’t really on my side these days.”

  “That’s absurd. She’s your sister. She’s … I admit she’s a little intimidating, even to me,” I said, “but for God’s sake she loves you.”

  “Yes, she does, I believe that. But she has her own ideas about what that love means. Like, keeping me aware of what’s ‘good for me.’ From her perspective as somebody totally worshiped by about a million women whose lives she’s saved. Or that’s how they see it.”

  I sighed. “That’s a bit harsh.”

  A daunting silence ensued. “Ira,” Clover said at last.

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Ira, the teacher, the wonderful teacher who built the tree house.”

  “Have you invited him to Thanksgiving, too?”

  “No, no, Daddy.” She smiled weakly. “He has a roommate, a lawyer who handles divorces and custody and … that sort of thing.”

  A divorce lawyer with a roommate could hardly be a roaring success, I thought rather haughtily as I waited for her to unravel her next thoughts.

  “I’m going to meet with him on Friday,” Clover said. “Ira says he’ll meet with me for nothing. Once, anyway. A consultation. I think I have to take this dilemma by the horns. Myself. That’s part of the problem, r
ight? That I didn’t face up to my responsibilities on my own. That I ran back here, without stopping to think.”

  Amen crossed my mind. I waited to hear more.

  “So I’m going to do that. And I’ll go from there.” She picked up half of her sandwich and took a bite, then set it down and stood. “But thank you, Daddy. Thanks for trying,” she said. And then, as Sarah had done two hours before, she kissed me on the cheek and left the room.

  I ate the rest of her sandwich in a few speedy bites. In addition to pangs of esophageal distress, I was beset by an uncomfortable conflict of hopes: that my part in this particular drama was finished and that it would be better for all concerned if it were not.

  From: laurelc@matlockhistoricalforum.org

  To: bookman37@econet.net

  Subject: 28 days and counting!

  Dear Percy,

  I wager I’m as new to this technology as you are, but what a blessing it is as we approach the Big Day! Seven of the ten houses are ready to go—including mine, of course, but then I must be the shining example!—and the mailing has gone out as of Friday, not a moment too soon, so this is in part a warning shot across the bow that you may be approached at Wally’s or the P.O. about your participation. I believe there’s already quite a “buzz” in the autumn air. I’ve even had a call or two from people who feel slighted that they were not included; not entirely beneficial to the cause, but unavoidable. The *good* news is that tickets are selling briskly and we’re already talking about the lineup for next year! We’ve got ourselves a town tradition in the making!!

  What I’m wondering is if I could come by for a bit of a look-see sometime this week, to check if you need assistance with finishing touches. (How was Deirdre’s work on those wonderful portraits? She really is the best!)

  Any chance I could come tomorrow afternoon, once the E & F gridlock abates? Tuesday would work for me as well.

  Fondly,

  Laurel

  From: Trudy Barnes, M.D.

  To: Dad

  Subject: tgiving etc.

  dad: let’s talk re final plans. food etc. douglas wants to do brined turkey w oyster stuffing. 2 pies from me. robert bringing turo, will call tnt or tmw. need to catch up on other things too. sorry so brief.

  Xx

  trudy

  From: Robert

  To: GD

  Subject: hey!

  hey, g: sorry so out of touch—can’t wait for txgvg! hope it’s ok to bring turo; he loves hanging out with you and we may stay a night or 2, go hiking or if snow xc ski. ok? are mom’s skis still in the bsmt? does tgo still rent stuff?

  reading heavy now, 2 papers due early dec + lab demo. if this is minor cf. med school, not sure i’d cut it.

  widener not the same, g. nj! miss you as my main excuse to slack off. in ref rm, looked thru porthole and saw this yng bald dude, clrly the NEW U. too weird.

  yfg,

  rb

  The planets must have aligned in the house of communication, for rarely had I received more than two personal e-mails at a time, even checking my in-box every other day, as was my usual habit. Norval was the only person outside my family circle to whom I had given my address, so I was more than mildly annoyed to hear from Mistress Lorelei in this fashion.

  I noted that Laurel’s e-mail had been dispatched at 8:01 the previous evening—meaning that her “tomorrow” was in fact “today”—and that my daughter had sent hers at 2:24 a.m., Robert his at 4:07 a.m. Curious, these telltale time signatures, allowing me to deduce that my daughter was alarmingly overworked or suffering from insomnia—neither scenario heartening—while my grandson was keeping hours considered normal for an overachieving premed student at an Ivy League institution.

  My tripartite inclination, unnecessarily grumpy, was to delete my neighbor’s request without reply, to quiz my daughter about the hours she kept, and to wonder why my favorite grandson was so blatantly stroking my ego. His friend Arturo had certainly never “hung out” with me, though he did seem to enjoy the pastoral amenities of Matlock. I am, however, a great believer that “txgvg” is a holiday to be shared, especially with acquaintances orphaned by geography. The coward in me was also relieved that another outsider would be present when I introduced Sarah, formally, to my daughters. Had Clover not been so preoccupied with her quixotic assault on sensible family law, she would, I am sure, have been more inquisitive about my poorly camouflaged liaisons. I had a feeling that she knew and did not disapprove. As for Trudy, Clover’s remarks about being estranged from her sister led me to believe that she was, as Robert would have said, cosmically clueless.

  I took a deep breath. I glanced at my favorite tree, which, in its denuded wintry state, now looked like it was wearing a most unseemly wooden corset. “New me,” I said to myself, “chill.”

  I replied to Laurel that she could come by between three and five that afternoon. I replied to Trudy that I needed to have lunch with her any day that week; that I would meet her in town, wherever she chose. To Robert, I replied that his friend was welcome, that skis were in the basement but hadn’t been waxed in a decade, that TGO was probably a better bet, and that studying mattered a great deal more than keeping tabs on my well-occupied self.

  “New me,” I said as I clicked my computer to sleep (the screen blackening in instant obeisance, showing me my own bejowled, woolly-haired, stunned-looking visage), “keep up the good work.”

  Once through the vast, stubbornly autonomous revolving door, I felt as if I had entered a spaceship. Before me sprawled and soared an undeniably wasteful largesse of light and air—fashionably known as an atrium—sprouting in every direction a Seussian array of elevators, balconies, catwalks, stairways, and beckoning trajectories of patterned carpet. Here and there, cunningly artificial plants proffered false assurance that I hadn’t left the planet.

  I stood in the center of this space, looking up and around me, the hem of my raincoat and the tip of my umbrella dripping onto the marble floor. I had walked from the T.

  I saw the information desk, but several fellow earthlings were huddled there already. Male pride propelled me onward, willy-nilly, as once again I pictured Trudy’s directions sitting on the kitchen table back in Matlock.

  This was to be my very first visit to my daughter’s office. On the rare occasions when we met in town, always for dinner, she would name the time and choose the restaurant. Typically, Douglas would be waiting when I arrived. We would converse politely until Trudy arrived, late by half an hour or more. The advent of cell phones had given her license to be later than ever. From the moment I shook hands with Douglas, I’d simply wait for his pocket to ring.

  So that day’s appointment was a first, resulting from my flat refusal to let her put me off another week. Thanksgiving would not do, I’d said: I needed to see her in private.

  I had not been inside a big-city hospital for decades, not since the stroke that killed my father when the girls were small. I saw my own doctor in Ledgely, in a storefront office suite that shared a parking lot with the Narwhal and three other local merchants. To submit to the occasional X-ray or colonoscopy, and, most recently, as an escort to Norval when he endured a bit of surgery whose delicate nature I shall not disclose, I had visited the hospital in Packard of which Trudy so firmly disapproves. (“Dad, if you die of pneumonia one day in that ICU, I’m not sure which will upset me more: my certainty that you would not have died like that at St. Matt’s or my frustration that you won’t be around for me to say I told you so.”)

  I made my way toward a corridor that clearly spanned our galaxy. THE MAX STENHOUSE ARTERY, bellowed a row of chrome letters affixed to the wall. Along this curved thoroughfare hastened people of many colors and dimensions, most of them young, uniformed, and radiant with importance. Signs bearing dozens of arrows showed the way to every medical specialty known to humankind (including, my favorite, the Swallow and Speech Clinic) except for the one I sought. What would happen, I mused, if the Max Stenhouse Artery were to hemorrhage?

 
“May I help you?” A sharp-looking gal who sported a stethoscope, a blond ponytail, and oblong purple eyeglasses had noticed my inertia.

  “Oncology,” I said. “I am searching for oncology.”

  “Well, that depends,” she said cheerfully. “Here for a procedure or a checkup?”

  “I am here to see Dr. Trudy Barnes.”

  “Oh! Breast! Meeting a wife or daughter?”

  “Daughter.”

  She nodded. “Down there. See the drinking fountains? Take a right after the men’s room and you’re at the main elevator bank. If you hit Neurology, you’ve gone too far. Go to three and take the Rabbi Newman Bridge.”

  “Not to be mistaken for the Cardinal Law Aqueduct.”

  She paused. “Excuse me?”

  “Or the Phil Rizzuto Wind Tunnel.”

  Her expression froze. I thought of asking her where I could find Captain Kirk, but instead I patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you very much, young woman.”

  The elevator was posted with admonitions warning me that latex balloons and conversations about patients were, along with smoking, forbidden. I began to wonder if someone would demand to see my passport.

  The so-called bridge was nothing more than a passageway to an older building that must have been cannibalized by the mothership. The ceilings became lower, the lighting harsh, the signs few and far between. I took two compulsory lefts and found myself facing a doorway fashioned of dark, expensive-looking wood.

  THE GRAZIELLA MURCHISON GOLD ONCOLOGY SUITES

  RING BUZZER AND ENTER

  One rabbit hole after another. Starship Enterprise, via Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll. Whoville with a dash of Borges.

  My destination proved to be an elegant but chilly, windowless room furnished with saffron velvet couches and large watercolor paintings of birds in flight. Linen-shaded lamps affixed to the walls cast a soft, cheddary glow over half a dozen women who waited in silence, reading magazines or dozing. Two of them looked up and registered my arrival without a hint of surprise. I tried to seem equally blasé at the sight of a woman completely and effervescently bald.