The driver/ex-tennis-champion-hopeful/recovering alcoholic hands me his card, embossed with a racquet.
"If you ever want to work on your swing . . ." he says, winking.
My swing . . . Is my driver/ex-tennis-champion-hopeful/ recovering alcoholic hitting on me? I do believe he is. I take the card, ignoring the wink. "Thanks." In the wake of Artie's cheating, I've been so austere, so tough, that no men have flirted with me—at all. Am I looking vulnerable? Am I losing my austerity just when I need it most? Or maybe it's the fact that I'm drunk in the afternoon . . . I tip, modestly. I don't want to give the wrong idea.
He offers to tote my suitcase.
"No, no. I'm fine." I'm one of those drinkers who stiffens up to compensate for the looseness. Artie called me a stilt-walking drunk. I stilt-walk over to my suitcase and stilt-walk up to the house, relieved to hear the van pull away without some sassy honk.
Someone's been keeping up the garden, weeding, trimming. I suspect my mother—she has compulsions of these sorts, always has. I make a mental note to tell her to cease and desist. I walk in the front door. It smells like my house—a mixture of sweet cleanser and Artie's aftershave and soap and garlic and the damp woodsy smell from the empty fireplace. And, for a moment, it feels good to be home.
Our wedding picture—the two of us in an old Cadillac convertible—still sits on the mantel. I poke through a pile of mail on the lowboy. I walk through the kitchen, the dining room—there I find the sofa, the one he had reupholstered for our anniversary—the bright poppies. My chest contracts with a sudden pang. I close my eyes and walk away.
I can hear a television in the den. I walk down the hall and find a young nurse wearing one of those uniform jackets with cartoon crayon drawings of kids printed on them. She's asleep in Artie's recliner. Did she have to be a young nurse? Couldn't she have been old and pruned? Did she have to be so blond? Sure, her presence was probably a random, computer-generated assignment, but still, it seems particularly, cosmically insulting.
I leave the nurse dozing and walk up the staircase, glancing at the photographs lining the wall. This is the spot you'd usually hang family photos, but these are artsy pictures I took before I met Artie, back during my artsy photographer phase: pictures of a dog with its head stuck out of a sunroof, speeding by; a girl in a frilly dress riding a pony at a fair, but crying hysterically; a Hare Krishna talking on his cell phone. These are my quasi-art moments. And I'm relieved they aren't the standard family shots right now. I couldn't take the fakeness of Sears renditions of a happy home life. And I'm relieved that they aren't old photos of our parents and grandparents—Artie and I both hail from scoundrels of one kind or another. We couldn't have ever made the convoluted decisions of which sets of families to include. For example, which of my mother's husbands would make it in a staged photo with her? My father, who abandoned us? Husband number four, who was by far the sweetest, but, while wrestling an ancient, bulky antenna, fell off the roof and died because, as my mother put it, His tragic flaw was that he was too cheap for cable? Or the most recent divorce, because she got the best settlement out of him? How to choose? No, I'm happy to see my old artwork. I was numb to them when I left, but now they strike me as, well, funny and sad, as I had intended, I guess, back when I had intentions of this sort.
But at the top of the stairs there's a new framed photo—one that Artie took, not me. I know it immediately. It's a picture of me looking down at the freckles on my chest—no obscene nudity—inked out to represent Elvis, midcroon. I'm looking away, laughing, my chin tilted back. I know now that Artie has been expecting me. He's planted this framed photograph as a way of buttering me up with nostalgia, and my heart responds. I can't help it. I miss that moment in our lives together, so intimate and so bound together. But I don't let myself dwell on that. I'm in no mood for manipulation. I march up the final stairs.
I walk down the hallway, quietly, toward the nearly closed door of our bedroom. The last time I saw Artie he was standing on the other side of airport security, staring at me, wide-eyed, his arms opened, frozen, as if in the middle of an important question. I was supposed to have taken it as a plea for forgiveness, I guess.
I place my hand on the door. I'm afraid to open it. He's been existing in my mind for so long that I can't imagine his body, his voice, his hands. I'm afraid, suddenly, that he'll look so sickly that I won't be able to bear it. I understand the idea of Artie's sickness. I'm not so sure I'm prepared for the reality of it. But I know that I have to.
I push the door open a crack and see Artie in bed. He's staring at the ceiling. He looks older. Is it just that I have this youthful image of Artie in my mind, one that some part of me refuses to update (probably because I'd have to update my own), or is it the sickness that has aged him? He's still beautiful. Have I mentioned that Artie is beautiful? Not traditionally. No. He was punched as a kid—yes, over some girl—and has an offset nose, but a gorgeous smile and a certain boyishness, a restlessness that gives him such ebullient energy, but also probably the same part of him that led him to other women. He has broad shoulders—a bulky manliness—but he's uncomfortable with them. He slouches. He has always looked best at the end of the day, loosened by a drink, when the light gives up and things fall into shadows. He has thick dark hair tinged gray and a way of pushing it roughly off his forehead, and blue eyes—soft, sexy dark eyes under heavy lids.
And now? Now. Artie's dying in our bed and it is still our bed, after all, and, although there is a knot of hatred in me, I want nothing more in this moment than to crawl into bed next to him, to lay my head on his chest while we take turns telling each other everything we've missed—my overly positive assistant, the lady on the plane—and in this way saying: it's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right.
"What are you looking at up there?" I ask.
He turns his head and stares at me. He has a charming smile—a little cocky, but also affectionate and sweet. It's as if he predicted today was the day I'd come, and it had gotten late, but he'd remained confident, and then I actually showed up, proving him right. He smiles like he's won a gentleman's bet. "Lucy," he says. "It's you."
"Yep. Here I am."
"I planned on doing this some other way, you know."
"Doing what?"
"Winning you back," he says, eyes crinkling. "I mean, dying wasn't really what I had in mind. It lacks charm, frankly."
I don't know what to say. I don't want to talk about dying. "What was the other plan?" I ask.
"Reformation. Penance. I was going to make amends and become a new man," he says, tilting his head. "I wasn't against renting a white horse."
"I don't think I would have bought into the white horse." Artie has always loved a grand gesture. More than once my fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants were stuffed, behind the scenes, with more intimate notes. He once had a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet write a sonnet for my birthday. In a fit of nerves, I told a garish hostess how much I admired her necklace—a gaudy, spangled, Liberace affair—and for my next birthday, there it sat in an enormous velvet box. I loved Artie's desire to surprise me, but I truly loved the quiet, unplanned moments— cooking pastries together, finding ourselves powdered with sugar or arguing about some principle of physics or the construction of aqueducts in ancient Rome—those things neither of us know anything about. I've always loved Artie most when he wasn't trying to be lovable.
"Well, the white horse might have been my little fantasy," he admits. "I envisioned a desert scene, you know, a little Lawrence of Arabia. But deserts are hard to come by here. And I don't think I'd have looked so great in eyeliner. Basically, I'd planned on avoiding death."
"Ah, cheating death. Now that is part of your pattern."
"Let's not start in with that so fast, okay?" His voice is tired. He is dying, after all. The exhaustion comes on quick. It's a quiet moment. I don't have anything else to say. And then he adds, "My heart's turned on me. I thought you'd appreciate the irony of me having a bad heart."<
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I don't say anything. My damn eyes well up with tears. I let them tour the bedroom like it's a gift shop. As I pick up curios and perfume bottles off the dresser, I inspect them absentmindedly. They're mine but they feel like someone else's things, someone else's life.
"You used to think I was funny," he says.
"You used to be funny."
"You should laugh at a dying man's jokes. It's only polite."
"I'm not interested in polite," I say.
"What are you interested in?"
What was I interested in? I look at the shoes I'm wearing. I paid too much for them. I can feel them fading out of fashion in this very instant. I am here, in these shoes, standing in my bedroom because my mother told me to come home. That's not all this is. I'm not simply a dutiful daughter who doesn't know what to do and so does what she's told. But I am a daughter—my father's daughter, the father who left my mother and me for another woman. I swore I'd never repeat my mother's mistakes, but hadn't I? Artie, the older man. Artie, the cheat. How could I have known he would cheat on me? Was I drawn to him subconsciously because I knew that he would? Did my subconscious dupe me? Did it force me to marry my father? Am I just playing out some twisted Freudian scene—now I'm required to play out my father's death? Required to tend to Artie?
"Do you have a round-the-clock nurse?" I ask.
"It makes me feel better to have someone else in the house. They don't stay all night. Marie is here now and she'll give one last call—like at a bar. Insurance doesn't cover it all, but now that you're here . . ."
"We'll keep the nurse," I tell him. "I'll be sleeping in the guest bedroom downstairs."
"You could play nurse," he says with this playfully sad expression. Irrepressible. My heart feels full, like there is a tide within me, and I steady myself with one hand on my bureau. This is Artie, the man I love, in spite of reason. I'm here because I love him—arrogant, cheating, busted-hearted Artie.
I can't quite look at him. I manage to focus on the bedside table. It's overrun with pill bottles. Artie is dying. I'm going to be the one to hand him over to the mortician, to death. Alone. Regardless of those other women in their other lives, I'm his wife, and this strikes me, suddenly, as hugely unfair.
"I'd like to know where they all are now, Artie. Where are they?"
"Who?"
"Your other women. They were there for the good times," I say. "Where are they now?" I sit down on a chair next to the bed. I really look at Artie—our eyes meeting for the first time. His blue eyes are watery, darker because of it. "Am I supposed to go this alone?"
"Are you going to go this?" he asks.
"All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem right that I should have to. I didn't say whether I was going to or not."
He reaches out and tries to touch my face. No, no, Artie Shoreman. Not so fast. I jerk my head away, then stand up and begin to pace the room. I can feel him watch me pick up a photo of the two of us on the back of a ferryboat to Martha's Vineyard. Suddenly I remember holding hands as we toured the gingerbread-looking houses in Oak Bluffs, gazing out over the cliffs at Gay Head, and Artie praying for our future together, blessed by abundant blubber, at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. I look at his arms around me in the picture, and I remember that exact moment—how warm he felt against me, how cold the wind was on my arms, and the little, wizened old granny who snapped the shot for us and smiled that old patronizing smile. Now I know why she was smiling. Just wait until he cheats on you and then dies on you. I turn to face Artie. He's looking at the ceiling again.
"Call them," he says. "Call them up."
"Who?"
"My sweethearts. Call them up," he says. "You shouldn't have to be alone in this."
"Your sweethearts?" I hate this little euphemism. "Are you joking?" I ask, incredulous.
"No," he says. "I'm not joking. Maybe it'll be good for everyone. Maybe one of them would actually be helpful." He looks at me and smiles a little. "Maybe some of them would hate me so you don't have to."
"And what should I say? This is Artie Shoreman's wife? He's dying? Please call to schedule your turn at his deathbed?"
"That's good. Say that. Maybe I can still go with my old plan to win you back," he says.
"The one with the rented white horse in the desert?"
"I could still reform, do penance, make amends." With some effort, he pushes himself up onto his elbow and roots out an address book from a drawer in his side table. He hands it to me. "This book is filled with people I should make amends with." As I reach for it, he holds on to it for a moment, tightly, the way people sometimes stall for a bit just before handing over their shoddy accounting records for an audit. He looks worn—maybe my presence has weakened him. His face is completely serious now, pained, the lines deeper than before I left, his hair maybe a little grayer. I feel a deep ache in my chest. "I'd like to see my son, too," he says.
"You don't have a son," I remind him.
He lets go of the book so that it slips into my hands. "I've been meaning to tell you. I had him when I was just a kid—twenty. His mother and I never got married. He's grown now. His last name is Bessom. He's in the B's," he says.
I'm suddenly aware of heat in the room. It's rising up inside me. I know I couldn't murder Artie Shoreman on his deathbed (though surely wives have killed husbands on deathbeds before), but I wouldn't mind beating a couple of weeks out of him after this delicious little bombshell. Couldn't he have told me in flower bundle #34? I love you so much, you made me forget to tell you that I have a child with another woman. I pick up the picture of us on Martha's Vineyard and, before I'm aware of the impulse, I throw it across the room. A corner of the frame catches on the wall and makes a solid dent. The glass shatters, littering the floor. I look at my empty hands.
I've never been the type to throw things. Artie gapes at me, completely surprised.
"I know that Bessom is in the B's, Artie. Jesus, you're an ass. A son, you tell me now after all of this time? That's lovely!"
I storm out of the room and almost knock over Artie's hot little nurse, who has been listening at the door. I can't tell who's more stunned, me or her.
"You're fired," I say. "And tell the agency only male nurses from now on. Got it? Ugly male nurses. The burlier and hairier the better."
Chapter Four
Your Mother Is a Woman You Don't Have to Become
Marie left quickly, apologetically, and in a few hours a new nurse came to do Artie's late-night last call. The nurse is a man—though not as burly and hairy as I'd hoped. But he is a nurse—older and quiet—with one of those modern Toddish names that begins with the letter T.
He walks by the kitchen doorway and looks at me. He circles back the way he came. I eat a few crackers, then he appears again. He stalls in the doorway. "There's a woman in your yard. I think she's weeding. In the dark," he says, sounding more surprised by the dark than by the weeding.
I'm not surprised. I stand up and walk to the front door. And there is, in fact, a nicely dressed older woman pulling out some weeds at the base of our shrubbery. I turn on the outdoor light.
The woman stands up, holding the weeds, roots and all. It is, of course, my mother, wearing one of her velour sweat suits—royal blue, zippered only halfway up to show off some cleavage. "Lucy, dear! How are you? You look awful. Have you started smoking again?"
"I've never been a smoker. That's you," I tell my mother.
"I confuse you and me, sometimes. We're so similar."
"No we aren't."
"I've brought dinner," she says, placing the bundle of roots in a tidy pile on the ground.
She walks back to her car and lifts up a casserole dish in a canvas bag with the words Hurray for Potluck stitched onto it.
"Like that, for example. I don't even own a canvas bag, much less one that says Hurray for goddamn Potluck!"
"Don't cuss," she says, wagging her head. "Some women think it's sexy, but it's not."
*
I stare out
the back window at the swimming pool while my mother, Joan, buzzes around the kitchen. She arranges plates on the kitchen island. She flutters around fixing the dishes, getting silverware, dishing up food. Did I mention that she's brought her dog, Bogie? Bogie is a well-endowed dachshund. He is so well endowed that her fourth husband called him the five-legged dog. The fifth leg is, however, a sad appendage. First of all, neutered and ball-less, it's been rendered pretty useless. Second of all, because of the dog's swayed back and four stumped legs, it had started to drag a bit on the ground—not so bad in shag carpeting but difficult when it came to, say, gravel. This was a problem. Eventually, the thing might get calloused from such dragging, and is that any way to live? Really? My mother decided it was not any way to live, that it was embarrassing, in fact, so a few years back she fashioned some penis supports for dear aged Bogie. A doggie support lederhosen, she called it. But Artie and I were quick to correct her: it's a doggie jockstrap. So that the most important protective gear stays in place, the doggie jockstrap is an elaborate harness system reaching around Bogie's hind legs, over his front shoulders and snapping midback. This would be fine, I suppose, if my mother didn't have such a fashion flair for doggie jockstraps—a hidden talent, really. She uses wide ribbon and bows, always color coordinated with holidays—orange in fall, red and green in winter, robin's egg blue in spring . . . As a result, Bogie always looks like he's dressed for some upcoming event. He's a handsome dog, nearly show-dog quality to begin with, as my mother is quick to point out.
And so here is Bogie, waddling around my mother's feet in his dapper jockstrap. He always holds his chin high, but can't ever shake the watery, worried look in his eyes that makes his cockiness seem like a fragile mask for deep insecurities. Of course he's insecure, and who can blame him, really?
My Husband's Sweethearts Page 3
