The Widow’s Husband

by Sheila Evans

  Phil’s turn to tell a doctor joke. It’s about a duck that has chapped lips, a long circuitous story, too long, I think. The punch line is the duck saying, “Put it on my bill.” Again a groan, then a laugh. Amy gives him a doting look.

  Mr. Purdy makes a well of his mashed potatoes, fills it with peas, then floats the whole thing in gravy—Amy frowns, but I smile. Helen spreads apricot jam on garlic toast. Amy squeezes lemon on her fish, then passes the lemon segment to Phil, who finishes it off. How nice, teamwork, conservation. Bruce gazes about himself with a pleased although bemused expression, as if he doesn’t quite know how he got here, and perhaps he doesn’t. I myself make a barricade out of my potatoes so my salmon won’t touch my turkey, am disconcerted by the amount of food I’ve piled on my plate. I can’t eat all this. The last time I had such a dismaying plateful was at that Italian inn where Amy and I had dinner. The memory makes me turn a loving look at her. Such a good time, one I’ll remember.

  Phil is still talking, something about how we can control illness with a proper diet—which I don’t believe—and I study him as he speaks. So like Emmett, his voice, his gestures, his sense of humor. Sure of himself, full of jaunty good humor—and emotionally stingy. Then I scold myself: I couldn’t know that from our brief encounter. How judgmental I’ve become. To make up to him for his lack, or for mine, and to change the subject (Mr. Purdy’s face has that look, he’s going to argue), I praise his dedication as a leader of the youth. With the kids so distracted—the video age, instant gratification, junk food and all that—it must be hard to teach social studies. In the back of my mind, I hear Zack, the Zack at the singles’ dance: policemen and teachers: the two most represented groups among the rejects or the rejected.

  Phil frowns, and Amy says, “Mother, don’t call it social studies, it’s History. Phil teaches History.”

  “Amy, hon, it’s okay. Yes, Peg, may I call you Peg? I’m in my third year at Washington Middle School, but what I’d like to do is write. I want to write a book for young teens about medieval England, or more precisely, Wales. I’m Welsh, see, Llewellan, that’s a classic Welsh name, I feel my Welsh roots, and I think the Welsh have been overlooked. I’d like to write a Howard Pyle Men of Iron sort of thing. Set in Wales.”

  “If it’s been done, why repeat it?” says Mr. Purdy rather sharply, and now I want to throttle him. He adds, “’Course, I haven’t read it, but just the same—”

  Phil purrs, “Good ideas are repeated all the time.” Patient teacher with the backward stubborn student.

  Around a mouthful of food, Helen says, “I read somewhere there are only four basic plots in all of literature.”

  “Five. Five in all of literature.”

  Bruce says admiringly, “Just think! To write a whole book. Say, could you pass the dressing? This is great, Peg.” Then he adds, as an afterthought, “Why don’t you tell us about your book?”

  Helen seconds the motion, raises her wineglass, says, “Here, here!”

  “See,” says Phil gesturing with his fork, lecturing us, his audience of twelve-year-olds, “Pyle’s book … anybody read it?” Helen says she thinkss he has, but she’s not sure. “Pyle’s book is about knights and kings, the élite. I want to depict the rest of society. The average people, what they were doing in those times. What it was like for them.” Phil sets down his fork and smiles. I think that the little girls in his classes would develop crushes on him, the handsome teacher, until he graded them harshly. He would grade harshly.

  Mr. Purdy snorts. “The average people, have you seen Monte Python, what was that movie? One varlet telling the other one that there goes the king. It must be the king because he doesn’t have any shit on him.”

  Helen gives out a belly laugh. “I love Monte Python.”

  Bruce says, “I remember the skit about the parrot, the dead parrot.”

  Helen adds, “The one about Spam and eggs, what a riot. That British sense of humor, always thought I’d like to see England, Ireland, Wales.”

  Mr. Purdy says, “With the price of gas going up, I’ll be lucky to make it to Oakland this year.”

  Helen says why would he want to go to Oakland, and he explains that he’s got a cousin there. But on his last visit she’d annoyed him tremendously by inflicting him with a scrapbook commemorating her Caribbean cruise. There she was in her photos, red-eyed in the camera flash. A woman her age wearing a party hat, a low-cut gown that showed her wrinkled arms and chest, acting coy, kittenish. She described a flirtation she’d had with another old geezer at her dinner table. This woman, his own cousin, who’d been a widow for years, she should know better!

  Helen says, “She needed one of these digital cameras—you can cut out the red-eyed shots, these new cameras are so nifty—”

  She wants to go on, but Mr. Purdy hasn’t finished. The cruise line, he says, they should know better. They’d allowed his cousin to bring her dog on the trip. A snippy toy poodle so old it was toothless, so spoiled it demanded its food chewed up for it, which his cousin did.

  Amy puts down her fork. “Disgusting.”

  I say, rushing in, “Little dogs lose their teeth faster than big ones. I read where—”

  But Mr. Purdy still isn’t finished. No, now that he thinks about it, he’ll do something different this year, vacation-wise. He’ll take Amtrak to Yosemite, although the mobs there bother him. But it’s close, and reasonable. Enough bang for the buck.

  Enough bang for the buck. His modern slang surprises me. Once, about Amy’s lack of marketable skills, he said she was “between a sweat and a stink,” which had annoyed me considerably at the time.

  Bruce says, “Vacation’s a long way off. I don’t look forward to it anymore, without the family.”

  Helen guffaws. “I never looked forward to it with my family.”

  I want to follow up on this, because I’ve never heard much about her parents, her brothers, sisters—if she has any. And I want to follow up on Phil and his book idea, which Amy then brings us back to. She announces that she and Phil are thinking of going to Wales. At my startled look, she adds, “So Phil can do research. For the book. Besides, it’s cheap living there. You can find a tight little cottage down a country lane, and still keep in touch through the ’Net, and e-mail, cell phones—modern technology.”

  This is Phil talking, not Amy. She’s parroting him too soon. The subjugation of one’s personality should take longer. At least put up a fight. “Well, it’s a fun idea,” I say. “More turkey? More … uh, salmon? Pass the rolls, Helen. Mr. Purdy, how about pouring more wine?”

  “None for me, thanks,” says Amy.

  “No wine? But you like a nice white wine … this is good, Helen.”

  Phil says he and Amy are considering going overseas as soon as he can arrange with an exchange program to teach in a Welsh school. He has an uncle who’ll sponsor them, and there are advantages to living in a worker-friendly environment. State-paid health insurance and leave, the pure and simple life, in an area that respects and welcomes scholars.

  Amy takes up the chant. The lush value-rich lifestyle, the music, the gray-green curl of sea, the stone abbeys, the fiery sunsets. She can hardly wait. “Honey,” she purrs to Phil, “bring in those pictures your uncle sent you.”

  By now we’ve finished eating, and I start clearing off dishes. Romantic nonsense, and I bang around plates in the kitchen.

  Phil returns from his car with the snapshots. “See, here’s my uncle, and my cousins in their garden … here’s the local street fair and there’s the cathedral in the background. The whole tribe of them at the breakwater in the harbor … oh, and the castle … did you see Braveheart? Part of that movie was filmed right here.”

  They are passing around photos, making the appropriate noises, but I can’t concentrate, my mouth has gone dry. They really mean this. “If you go, how long would you stay?” I ask.

  “Moving, Mother. A permanent move.”

  “No! You can’t mean that! You’d go there to live?”
>
  “You got it. Don’t worry: you can visit. It’s cheap to fly, if you watch for specials on the ’Net.”

  I have no answer. I am shaken, at a loss. I can’t conceive of not having Amy nearby. True, we haven’t always gotten along, especially lately. But that she would go so far away.… No, this is not possible. It’s a joke, a hoax, they are trying to scare me. They are chasing will-o’-the-wisps, pipe dreams, phantoms. But I look again at the set of Phil’s shoulders, at his hard blue eyes; I see his square chin, and even with the dimple, I can tell he’s stubborn. He’s going to take Amy away from me. He already has.

  I ought to be glad it’s Phil, because Amy’s previous boyfriends have not been exactly full of good sense, restraint, responsibility. I am glad, of course. Sooner or later, it had to be somebody, and it might as well be this Phil, who is an odd combination of wild fanciful dreams and stern authoritarianism. I admit it: in a sense, I am glad to be rid of her. She could still be a burden I cannot afford, that I do not want to bear. I’m suddenly teetering on the edge of depression, because I thought I had moved beyond this kind of selfishness, and I have not.

  We’ve had lovely times together, Amy and I. And Emmett. She is a connection to him that I feel slipping away, one that I had wished to sever, but now, it’s like slipping off the mooring lines, casting myself into the sea. I feel a chill … this silly outfit has let me down. I rub my arms, which have goosebumps. I get up, and reach in the hall closet and grab that embroidered denim shirt of Emmett’s still in there from the garage sale. Does Amy recognize this shirt? Does she remember how I worked on it at Calavaras Big Trees? Does she remember playing in that little creek, so small it was merely a series of puddles amid rounded boulders? Does she remember the water spiders? What does she remember of growing up with Emmett and me? I try to catch her eye, to communicate with her in a sort of code, but she’s intent on Phil and his plans. Although we may not have much of a present, or a future from the sounds of it, Amy and I have a past, and I don’t have that with these other people here. What are they doing here, these strangers? It’s time for them to go home.

  But not yet. There’s still dessert. By now Helen and I have cleared the table, and I present the cheesecake. It’s when I put Amy’s sliver down in front of her—although she objects, says she’s already over-eaten—that I see a bottle of vitamin pills by her water glass. Prenatal, I read on the label. Amy is pregnant. The blood leaves my head, I think for a second I’ll faint. Then I have to laugh at this: Amy is the one pregnant, and I’m sick. Sometimes life makes no sense.

  It makes no sense that she’s pregnant. She knows better, she knows how not to be. She’d allowed this to happen, perhaps to get clear of me? Or to land this guy, Phil? Is he that important to her? I yearn to ply her with questions, but cannot in front of everyone. Again I want them to leave.

  Finally the company goes home, or most of it. Mr. Purdy leaves first. Helen follows him out, saying she’s going to a late show with Eileen, the friend she acquired at the Jolly Roger. Despite all my bottled-up questions, I walk Amy and Phil out to their car, which is dwarfed by Bruce’s rig parked behind it. It’s a little economy model, a beige Ford Escort. There’s a bumper sticker. It reads VEGETARIANS DO IT WITH RELISH. I suffer an evil obscene image: a long pink hotdog, throbbing with heat, spread with mustard.

  Only it isn’t a hotdog.

  Perhaps I conjure up that obscene image because Bruce is waiting for me in the house, as the rest of my guests must have realized. Helen had left with a knowing smirk.

  Bruce in his brown leisure suit. I don’t know how much I want to do this, or if I’m ready for it, but I wave goodbye to Amy and Phil and then trudge back into my own kitchen. Is this any way to start a love affair?

  Love affair. Another oxymoron.

  CHAPTER 12

  On Thanksgiving, the anniversary of what Bruce then began calling “his liberation,” enabling him to put a new spin on his breakup (probably for my benefit), we begin our odd affair, or courtship, or romance—whatever you want to call it.

  After seeing Amy and Phil off—I packed up the rest of the salmon and sent it home with them—I go back in the house to Bruce perched stiffly in my little plaid chair, deigning Emmett’s La-Z-Boy. I consider, briefly, that I’d free up a lot of space by getting rid of the old recliner. But why bother? I don’t spend much time out here, now that the TV’s in the bedroom. Nevertheless, it dawns on me that Emmett’s chair maintains a presence in the room that has become dampening, as if Emmett’s disapproving ghost still hovers. At one point this sense of him would have been welcome. But no more.

  “He must have been quite a guy,” Bruce says, staring at Emmett’s wall.

  “He had consuming interests, you know, a hobby freak.”

  “He was good at everything.”

  “He did okay. You want more cheesecake?” I feel heat mount in my cheeks, because that sounds like I’m offering him a striptease, a girlie show, which maybe I am.

  “No, thanks. You want me to rekindle the fire?” And now color mottles his cheeks, because of what he’s offering.

  “Sure, or do you want to watch the news?” For that, we’ll have to go down to my bedroom. A blatant invitation from a sex-starved old broad?

  He follows me down the hall, into my bedroom, into my bed. At first it’s just homey and sweet. I am tired; the dinner wore me out. He rubs the fatigue out of my shoulders, out of my back, my feet—God, a foot massage, sexier than dinner and dancing; a soak in a hot tub, with champagne. He flops on the bed beside me, and I’m ready to open the door and let him come. In. And I do. He is gentle, patient, and slow, too slow because I reach that point and surprise myself by going off like a firecracker. “Hey, wait for me,” he chuckles, but with alarm in his voice, too. However, I can double back and pick him up, because I seem to have them lined up and ready to take off, like jets at Oakland International. There’s nothing here I couldn’t have done alone but that foot massage loosened me up, and it’s nice to share Brace’s surprisingly educated fingers.

  He’s the one with a problem. He is unable. It’s like trying to fire a rubber gun. Finally he rolls over and says, “It’s no use. It’s this bed, this house—he’s in here with us.” I know what he means—Emmett’s aura’s everywhere. However, I assure him it’s my fault. I’m not doing something right, I lack a sexual gift of some sort. Then I wonder why I must protect him. I don’t owe him anything, not even a cover story.

  I am too lazy and replete to make a really strenuous attempt, although I, too, deliver a foot massage: his feet are narrow and thin, blue-white as skim milk, nails neatly trimmed, his toes tufted with brave bits of hair. Emmett’s feet had been tough as tree roots because he’d liked to go barefooted. My mother had scoffed at that. Only the poor, or the self-indulgent rich, went barefooted. Emmett hadn’t been rich, but he’d indulged himself.

  “It’s no use. Leave it, Peg.” Bruce gets up, starts to put on his clothes.

  “Wait. Don’t you want to see Brian Williams and the news? He’s on soon. I like to watch how his eyebrows—” I’m about to say pump up and down, which would be indelicate, and substitute instead, “—swivel.” But Bruce goes into the bathroom. When he comes out, he’s resolved to go home. I call down the hall after him, “Would you make sure the cat’s in, and the door’s locked? Oh, and grab that container of turkey out of the fridge. Julia Child’s description of ‘forever’ is one person and a turkey.” Truth to tell, I’m not sorry to see him go. Earlier I’d noticed that MYSTERY Channel is showing Bullitt and Three Days of the Condor, with my two favorite blonds. That will get me off to sleep at three, which will do. Tomorrow’s an easy day, everyone in the office slow and sated with overeating.

  But I never see the end of Bullitt, my favorite Steve McQueen movie (never did like The Sand Pebbles). Wake up with the TV playing to itself at five-thirty, turn it off and doze … until I’m late for work. Scramble into my clothes, into the Bronco, which doesn’t want to start. However, I beat Vi who
arrives from Oakland with a replacement for Zack. He’s a whistle-clean kid named Timmy, who resembles, I think, a young Bruce. He catches on quickly, works hard; Helen reports good things of him at lunch, which, for all of us, is turkey sandwiches. Tiffany has called in sick, so the air in the office has extra ions, as if washed by the sea. I sail out at quitting time, looking forward to oyster stew with Mr. Purdy.

  Saturday morning Bruce calls with an offer I accept. He will drive me to Sacramento to look at a VW replacement for the Bronco, if he can use the washer and dryer. Saturday is his laundry day, but everybody has the same idea in his complex, and it’s hectic to get at the machines. I’m glad to have Bruce. Emmett made fun of women alone dealing with car salesman, wearing their naïveté like sandwich boards.

  He arrives early, and while I’m in the house fretting over my appearance, he’s been out front pulling weeds, accumulating a workman-like pile of dandelions. He tells me sternly, “If you get these now, they won’t go to seed.” I hang my head, yeah, I know. But he doesn’t push his lecture; he merely brings in his duffel bag of clothes. Fussily, he separates whites from coloreds, gets the first batch going. We leave the machine running, which I don’t like to do, but the morning is slipping away. While crossing town to get on the freeway, he says there’s a home & garden show he’d like to pop in on.

  “Home & garden! Do we have the time?” I’m cross—lack of sleep is catching up with me?—or is it the new person I’m changing into? I am becoming irascible as I revert into who I’d been before I met Emmett, coagulating into an obdurate boulder in my own stream of life, despite the eroding wash and roil of circumstance. I cringe when I remember all those blueberry pancakes with orange syrup that I coddled Emmett with. I don’t even like orange syrup. How I kept the Sunday paper virginal, for Emmett to break open. Meatloaf—whether cracker crumbs or oatmeal, I don’t bother with either one because I don’t like meatloaf.

  Bruce backs down. “You’re right, of course. Some other time. Auto row it is. Then maybe lunch? How about Chinese?”