The Good Widow_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  I smile at him to let him know I understand. I remember that feeling with James. Being so in love that the world felt like it belonged to us and everyone else just happened to be living in it.

  “When we were first dating,” I said, “we had an entire weekend with nothing planned. So we decided to spend it in bed. We’d just seen some romantic comedy where the couple did that. I think we lasted twelve hours until we finally had to get up because there were crumbs everywhere and we got sick of binge watching whatever show it was.” I leave out the part about how we had sex three times and decided we were just too tired to go for a fourth. James had asked, “How do people in porn do it?” and shook his head as he pulled on his boxer briefs.

  “Isn’t the beginning the best?” Nick asks, and I nod. “And the middle. I just didn’t think we’d get to the end part so soon. I thought we’d grow old together. Like blue-hair-and-plastic-hips old.”

  I notice a pair of newlyweds nuzzling in front of me, her diamond ring and wedding band hard to miss as she wraps her hand around the back of his neck, returning his kisses. I’m jealous. They’re celebrating the start of their life together. The same way we did.

  James and I also honeymooned in Maui.

  This is something I haven’t mentioned to Nick, because saying it out loud will cheapen that experience for me. Like it’s no longer special to me and James because he also took his mistress there. Which, if I’m being completely honest with myself, is true.

  I watch the couple toasting each other with their Bloody Marys. The layers of their onion haven’t started to peel back. They aren’t to the part where she has to bite her tongue when he leaves his wet towel wadded on the bathroom floor again, and he hasn’t had to swallow his shitty remarks when she buys yet another pair of two-hundred-dollar shoes they can’t afford. The niceties and threshold for understanding haven’t slowly morphed into insults and raised voices. They’re still in that blessed time before the gloves come off, before they say fuck it, roll up their sleeves, and get in the ring.

  “I feel bad for pushing you to get on this plane.”

  “Don’t. I made up my own mind—I’m a big girl,” I say, pulling my jean jacket tighter across my chest, the recycled cold air blasting me from the overhead fan above us. I reach up to twist it closed but can’t quite get it.

  “Here, let me.” Nick barely raises his long arm and shuts it off. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you decided to come. I don’t think I could have done this alone.” His voice catches, and he looks away quickly.

  “Do you believe in karma?” he asks.

  “You mean do I think they died because they were being unfaithful?”

  “No, I actually meant do you ever wonder if you did something at some point and the universe is saying, ‘Here’s your retribution.’”

  Before I can answer, he keeps going. “Sometimes I wonder what I did.” He looks down. “I’ve beaten myself up for the times I snapped at her after I’d been on a tough twenty-four-hour shift or when I lost my temper with a driver who cut me off on the 405 freeway. I wasn’t even close to perfect. Not to others. And certainly not to Dylan.”

  “Neither was I,” I say, seeing flashes of our argument the last day I saw James. Dresser drawers slamming as he packed his bag. The accusation he slung at me, his words as heavy as a baseball bat. My hot tears after his ride pulled away.

  “The last time you saw her—where did she tell you she was going?” I ask.

  “To Arizona to visit her parents. That she’d be back in a few days.” He shakes his head. “She insisted I didn’t need to drop her off at the airport—something I still did, even after almost two years together. Now I know why.” He turns and looks out the window, and I follow his gaze, squinting at the sun.

  I think of the first time James dropped me off at LAX. We’d only been dating for six weeks, and Beth and I were taking a girls’ trip to Vegas.

  “You don’t have to drive us,” I said as I printed out my boarding pass, excited to be in group A on Southwest.

  “I want to drop you off. I’m going to miss you,” he said, circling his arms around my waist as I watched the paper slide out of the printer. “Three days apart!”

  “Are you really this romantic? Or is it because we’re still in the honeymoon stage? This is going to wear off, right?” I laughed, leaning my head to the side so he could kiss my neck.

  “Never,” he said, turning me around to face him.

  “Good,” I said, putting my hands on his stubbly cheeks and kissing him.

  And he was right; it didn’t wear off.

  It broke off.

  As abruptly as a plate that falls to the kitchen floor. Seconds before, you’d held the perfect porcelain circle in your hand. And then, as soon as it hits the tile, it breaks in two jagged parts. Which is exactly how I’d describe the shift in James when he stopped loving me the same way. My romantic, big-hearted husband changed shape—into a fragment of who he’d been.

  “What was it like between you and Dylan the last time you saw her?” I push aside the sound our front door had made when I’d heaved it closed behind James with all my strength, how it had rattled in the doorjamb so hard I was sure the window next to it was going to shatter, just like we already had.

  “That’s the worst part for me, I think.” He pauses.

  “If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. It’s personal.” I jump in and fill the space, realizing I don’t want to answer the same question. Because now he has me thinking about karma and my role in all this. And I don’t want to go there.

  “I think we’re past personal at this point.” He smiles, but his eyes don’t join in. “I was just remembering her face—she was glowing. She looked so beautiful that day. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Just pink lipstick, I think. Yeah, that’s what it was. Because when I went to kiss her, she told me she didn’t want to get it on me and have me get shit from the guys at the station. I was on my way to work.”

  He stops, and I can picture the scene in my mind. I imagine her wearing a T-shirt and jeans and watch as she playfully brushes off his kiss, standing on her pixie tiptoes and hugging him so she doesn’t have to feel his mouth on hers.

  “I’ve replayed our conversation over and over looking for clues. But she seemed totally normal, talking to me about her last shift, and how she’d spilled a glass of red wine all over a woman wearing white linen pants. We’d laughed about how mortifying it had been—Dylan had grabbed a black cloth napkin to blot the wine off the woman and ended up making it worse—the napkin actually shed on the stain.” Nick smiled. “I remember watching her as she tried to mimic the woman’s Australian accent and thinking, wow, she’s in a great mood, she seems happy. I make this woman happy.” He stops again. “But it wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who did that for her.” He rubs his palms over his eyes. “Sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize—especially not to me. I’m riding this emotional seesaw too.” I think about being in my bathroom this morning. Grabbing what I thought was my Prozac, prescribed by my gynecologist a couple of years back to help with the mood swings I’d started to experience around my period. I’d put them in the back of the medicine cabinet above our sink with the label turned away. James never said this, but I knew they were a reminder that I wasn’t pregnant.

  I decided this morning that before I got on the plane, it might help to take one of my happy pills, as my doctor had referred to them after I told her about the anger I’d feel in the days before my cycle started. My recurring nightmare about James losing control of the car and plummeting down the cliff had kept me up most of the night, and I’d almost called Nick three different times to cancel, telling myself I’d made a huge mistake agreeing to go to Hawaii. But instead I’d accidentally grabbed a bottle of muscle relaxers that had been James’s—then dropped it like it was a hot skillet, the tiny white pills scattering around the sink. I’d clutched the edge of the counter as I watched the meds roll down the drain,
some of them getting stuck and causing a pileup, and remembered why he’d had them in the first place.

  He threw out his back helping the deliverymen carry that pine dining room table I purchased while he’d been traveling, the one my mother-in-law can’t stand. The one I’m pretty sure James never liked either. It was heavy and awkward, and he raked one of the legs on the doorframe as they were carrying it inside. He caught my eye as I directed the man holding the front toward a nook just off our kitchen, his eyes blazing with annoyance—that I’d made yet another purchase without consulting him. And I shot him an angry look and shrugged, because I made money too. I had a right to spend it. And don’t you dare imply that because I don’t make even half what you do on my teacher’s salary, I don’t have a right to buy this table. Another reason the damn thing means so much to me. It has always made me feel stronger to have it, even though it was brought into our house during a low point.

  He’d traveled fourteen days the month I bought it, and I’d been lonely. And I was tired of him telling me to get a hypoallergenic dog (he was allergic) to keep me company. And I was sick of having dinner with my sister and her husband and my nieces and nephew and feeling sorry for myself as they passed around their perfect bowl of quinoa pasta with basil and fresh tomatoes and perfect sautéed broccoli and garlic and talked about their perfect days. I’d end up drinking half the bottle of red wine I’d contributed to the meal, missing my husband and sad we didn’t have a family of our own to sit around the ginormous pine table I’d just purchased.

  As James and the deliverymen set it down on the gleaming travertine in our kitchen, James let out a cry and fell to the floor. Let’s just say his embarrassment over his back collapsing in front of two twentysomething men—with their proper weight belts and wide eyes, who could’ve carried it without his help—didn’t bode well for the already fragile state of our marriage. We didn’t speak for two days. I think about those arguments now—the ones where we’d be in a battle of wills, not talking, daring the other to be the first to give in—and realize we’ll never have one again.

  I guess you won, James.

  “Did you read the emails?” Nick interrupts my thoughts.

  I nod, thinking back to the hours I spent poring over them like they were going to explain everything. My husband’s words still lingered. I miss you. Can’t wait to see you. Can’t stop thinking about you.

  The old James was splayed across the pages. His flirtatious banter. His sexy talk. His persuasiveness. He’d been just like that with me in the early years. He’d write naughty notes and stick them in random pockets of my clothing until I eventually found them—sometimes months later. And Nick was right: there was no indication they’d loved each other. And as dangerous as I knew it was to latch on to hope, it had given me some. Maybe it had just been a casual thing. Just maybe.

  “And?”

  “You were right. It helped.”

  He gives me a look, waiting for more.

  “It was just flirtation. Early stuff. Maybe their relationship didn’t mean anything?”

  “Maybe,” he agrees. But I know we’re thinking the same thing. It probably did.

  “It did hurt like hell to read them, though,” I add, thinking about how I called Beth and read some excerpts to her—specifically about the eyes. How she listened as I howled into the phone. I don’t want to go back to that place right now. I can’t. I already feel gutted—he never said anything like that to me about my appearance. He called me pretty and sexy, but never pinpointed a certain body part or characteristic that he obsessed over, the way he had with her. It made me feel plain in comparison.

  “I know,” Nick says, and we fall into a silence for several minutes—an unspoken agreement to stop talking about them.

  Nick is the first to break it. “Here’s that list I was telling you about.” He hands me his phone, where he’s made his notes.

  Westin Ka’anapali

  Concierge

  Maui Jeep Rentals

  Restaurants

  Sightseeing

  Chopper ride

  Snorkeling

  Whale watching

  Surf school

  Booze cruise

  Horseback riding

  Officer Keoloha

  Kuau store

  The road to Hana?

  “James wouldn’t ride a horse,” I say after scanning the list, thinking of a conversation we had when we were first dating. It was one of those nights where we talked into the early-morning hours about everything, from pet peeves to favorite foods. When we got to the part about things we’d never do, he said horseback riding without even a moment’s hesitation. I laughed, thinking he was joking because of his matter-of-fact attitude. I’d suddenly had an image of him saddled on the back of a thoroughbred, ambling along a path, and wondered what could be so bad about that. Then a shadow crossed his face, and he told me he was serious, that he simply wasn’t a horse person. It was obvious there was more to it than that, but I didn’t press. I never wanted to press James. About anything. Only later, after he’d drunk too many whiskeys, did I find out that his brother had loved horses—and that after his brother had died at the age of five, James could barely even look at one without feeling the loss all over again.

  “I don’t mean this the wrong way.” Nick pauses, and I can tell he’s trying to be careful about the next words he chooses. “But isn’t it fair to say that you might not have known your husband as well as you thought you did?”

  I think about the last morning I saw him, before we got into the fight. How I’d been lying in bed when he got out of the shower, and I studied him as he brushed his teeth—marveling as I always did that he actually took the full two minutes to clean them and never skipped flossing afterward. He had one of our taupe towels wrapped around his waist—the one that had hung on the hook in our bathroom until I finally threw it into the wash when I packed for Maui last night. I thought to myself, He looks good. He looks really damn good. I should get my ass to the gym more often, like he does. Or try running again. And I was about to suggest that when he got back from Kansas we should sign up for a 5K I’d seen advertised at our Starbucks, when he yelled, “Goddamn it, Jacks!” His towel fell to the floor as he stormed into the bedroom and stood at the end of the bed, glaring at me in all his nakedness. And then I saw the pregnancy test in his hand. But instead of saying I was sorry, I fought back. I wish I could’ve known that none of it was going to matter. But I had no clue. No fucking idea.

  “Yes, that’s fair,” I finally say to Nick. “I obviously did not know my husband at all.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DYLAN—BEFORE

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Dylan asked, chewing on her lower lip as she watched James. He’d barely spoken since they’d met at the security line at LAX. From the moment he’d removed his belt and put it in the white plastic bin next to his wallet and loose change, she could see it on his face—he’d fought with Jacqueline, again. Dylan preferred not to refer to James’s wife—even in her mind—by her nickname. It seemed wrong, like more of a betrayal. She knew how ridiculous that sounded. She was already sleeping with the woman’s husband; what did it matter if she said her name? But, to her, it was one small thing she could do. She only wished she could ask James to stop using it. Hearing his wife’s name slip easily—too easily—from his mouth made Dylan conjure the image of her that day in the restaurant—her full lips, dark eyes, silky hair.

  Dylan knew she was a teacher. And she sometimes imagined her standing in front of her classroom while wearing a smart black pencil skirt and slowly trailing the loop of the z as she taught her fourth graders cursive. Was she patient? Kind? Strict? Dylan would try to escape these thoughts, because she didn’t want to think about Jacqueline as a real person who had feelings. Dylan preferred to live in the bubble that she and James had created. And there was no room inside of it for reality.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” James finally said through gritted teeth, the muscles in his neck ti
ghtening.

  “You don’t seem fine.” Dylan tried again, raising the armrest between them. Wanting him to let go of whatever it was. To climb into the bubble with her.

  “Dylan.” James’s lips formed a thin line as he gave her a look. He wanted her to stop. To let him cool off the way he always did. To go through his separation process. He called it that. His separation process. The time he needed to transition from his marriage to his relationship with his girlfriend. The first time he’d said that to her, she’d wanted to scream that she had to go through the same thing. She had to shift from the way it felt to hug Nick, so tall she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his shoulders, versus James, who was just a few inches taller than she. To readjust her mind so she remembered it was Nick who hated to wait in lines and it was James who got impatient when he had to repeat himself. She had to transition from Nick’s incessant need for her attention to James’s tendency to keep her at arm’s length. It wasn’t easy for her either.

  But James never acknowledged that. Because he was the married one. The one who’d stood at the beach, the wind whipping through his hair as he’d said his vows, the one who shared a checking account with someone else, the one who had a mortgage with another person’s name on it. He’d never said that to Dylan, exactly, but she could tell he thought his stakes were higher.

  Dylan decided to let James have his space and watched as he closed his eyes and nodded off to sleep. She pulled out a magazine and started flipping through the pages. She didn’t want to hear about their argument anyway. She wanted to get to Maui and erase the rest of the world. To lie on the beach and daydream about what it would be like if James weren’t married, or if she were the most important woman in his life—something she thought about often, but was reluctant to bring up to James in any serious way. Sure, they’d talk in ifs. If Dylan ever came to James’s workplace, what would she think of his boss? Or the inappropriately short skirts the receptionist wore? Or if Dylan’s father ever met James, would he accept him? Or would he reject him, like he had with Nick?