"Bogie is looking good these days," I tell her.
"He's showing his age," she says. "Aren't we all?" She bends down and lifts up one of his small paws, bobbing it at me in a wave. "Hello, Lucy!" she says in this high fake voice that's supposed to be Bogie's. "I wanted to bring him along because he's missed you!" she says.
"And I've missed him," I say. Bogie, really, rarely enters my mind, although I have to admit that when certain subjects come up in conversation—like pervie stuff bought for a bachelorette party—I can't help but think of Bogie, whom Artie calls the oh-so-sad Marquis de Sade of the dog world.
My mother pours us both a stiff drink. She lifts it. "To Artie! Dear, dear Artie! May he pull through!" she chirps.
"He isn't going to pull through. You said so yourself."
"Yes, but that information doesn't make a good toast. Toasts are positive."
"And why are we eating like he's already dead?" I ask.
My mother doesn't answer.
The Hurray for Potluck bag has reminded me of a running joke that Artie and I used to have. My mother went through a phase of cross-stitching every sappy saying known to man—of the If you love something, set it free variety—onto pillows, blankets, shirts, wall-hangings, pot holders, and trivets. Artie started pointing out some of my mother's philosophies that she'd neglected to cross-stitch for all of posterity—for example: You should marry your first husband for his genes; the second for his money; the third (or fourth or so) for love. "Where's the pillow with that sentiment?" Artie would ask. "Where's the pillow that says: Never let thine ass give in to gravity?" Artie loves my mother and, even though she was dead set against our marriage, she loves him, too.
My mother and I both take our swigs and set our glasses down. I pick at my food.
"I know he's hurt you but you have to forgive him," she says. "He's just like that. Put on the earth that way."
"I don't think he was an adulterous baby," I say.
"Don't be so literal. It's unbecoming. You know what I mean."
"I'm not sure I do know what you mean," I say.
"I mean, you know I was never crazy about your marrying Artie. I told you he'd probably make you a widow— I had no idea how young. But listen to me. I forgave my husband and it made me the bigger person."
"Which husband?"
"Your father, of course." She pauses while she flips through her mental marital filing cabinet. "And husband number three."
"Neither of those men deserved to be forgiven." After my father left my mother, he moved to the West Coast and downgraded his role in our lives to one card on my birthday and one on Christmas with twenty bucks in it. He died of an aneurism, mowing his lawn.
Bogie's tags jingle as he chews one of his paws.
"But I was the bigger person," my mother says. "And that's what allows me to fall asleep at night."
"I thought you took drugs to fall asleep at night."
"What helps me fall asleep at night—that's an expression, dear. You really shouldn't be so literal all the time. It's bad for you."
I'm about to argue with her—because I think that there should be a measure of truth spoken here—but there's a knock at the door. I look at my mother. She looks at me. We aren't expecting anyone else.
The male nurse walks briskly into the kitchen. "That'll be the doctor. He said he'd stop by."
"The doctor?" my mother says enthusiastically, touching her hair.
"Please don't use this as a shopping opportunity to pick out husband number six."
"Don't be gauche."
The nurse walks to the front door, but stops shy of answering it. As I follow him down the hallway, I can hear my mother rustling and primping along after me.
"How's the Buddhist?" I ask, wondering if that relationship has flatlined. My mother is unfailingly loyal to her husbands and beaux, but once it's over, it's over. She'd never miss, for example, the opportunity to flirt with a handsome orderly wheeling husband number nineteen to the morgue or the dashing minister who presided over the graveside service of number twenty-one.
"He's been reincarnated," she replies with a certain amount of disinterest.
"Into someone else's boyfriend?"
She continues to primp, which means yes.
"So soon?"
"His karma will catch up with him."
I open the door.
The doctor is my mother's age— gray-haired, professionally concerned.
"Come on in," I say.
"So glad you're here!" My mother can't contain her glee. He's her hero. I want to remind her that Artie's still dying, but decide not to get in the way of a beautiful thing.
The doctor sees Bogie, who's motoring toward him to smell his shoes. I can tell he's about to ask about the jockstrap, but something in him stops him short—a good bedside manner? A hidden fear that the problem is medically related—why add the chronic medical conditions of a dachshund to his laundry list?
I usher the doctor upstairs, then my mother and I watch from the doorway as he examines Artie, asking questions, answering in hushed tones.
I hear the chime of ice on crystal and see my mother polishing off her vodka.
"Don't you want to be the bigger person here?" she asks.
"I don't know what that entails," I say.
"For better or for worse. You took a vow. In sickness and in health, you said."
"He has a son."
"Does he? Artie? Was he married before? Was this . . . out of wedlock?"
A few years ago my mother asked me to help her update her vocabulary so she wouldn't seem old. She said: Just tell me when I say something that's dated. Promise?
"People don't really use the phrase out of wedlock anymore," I tell her.
"Oh," she says, "I knew that. I'm just so . . . scandalized by it."
I don't tell her that people are rarely scandalized either. We, as a culture, have gotten too used to scandal to be scandalized. "It happened when Artie was twenty. He and the woman never got married."
My mother regains her composure and reaches a hand out to touch my arm. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry. How old now?"
"He's a grown-up in his thirties. Artie wants to see him before . . ."
"That's overly dramatic. Why didn't he tell you earlier? I don't care for this kind of secrecy."
"I don't either," I say.
"See, we're so much alike." My mother raises her glass, gobbles an ice cube, and smiles at me sadly, out of half of her made-up face. "You'll get through all of this."
I'm not so convinced. I turn to walk back downstairs. My mother follows, slurping at her ice cube. "A son. Oh, no, I don't care for that at all."
*
Later, as the gray-haired doc is preparing to leave, my mother has recovered from her disgust for men. She gazes at him adoringly.
"I've finished up," he says, more like a coroner who's just done the embalming than someone paid to bring people back to health. My mother primps in the background, riding out her vodka buzz.
"Do you think he's in a lot of pain?" I ask.
"The pain should be under control. The infection has done its damage to his heart. He's weakening at a very quick rate. It won't be long now."
"How long?"
"He could hold on for a week or two. A month at the outside. I'm sorry."
I can feel blood rushing to my face. I want to slap the doctor. A month at the outside? It sounds like he's placing bets. And I don't want his sympathy either, not this kind so easily handed over. I know I'm not being rational, that the doctor is doing the best he can. I look at the floor and then back at him and it seems, now that I'm taking a moment to regard him, that he is genuinely sorry. I manage to say thank you.
My mother isn't saying anything either. She's turned her attention to me. I can feel her love for me; for the moment anyway, I'm the sole focus of her worry.
The doctor lets himself out while we stand there. It's too hard to fathom that Artie is upstairs now, breathing, shoving his hair across his for
ehead the way he does—and that soon he'll be gone.
I look at my mother.
"Oh, honey," she says.
"I'm still too angry to grieve." This isn't the life I expected with Artie. And what was that life? I can't even remember now. A good life. Some babies. Kids in the pool. Birthday parties. Artie coaching Little League. He could have managed a Little League team. Vacations at beaches. Growing old together, wearing Bermuda shorts. Simple things. I feel a surge of anger. Artie and I have been robbed. The anger is flooded with helplessness.
"You can be angry," my mother says. "That's okay. The grieving will come. There's plenty of time."
I look at her—this small woman zipped into her tight velour sweat suit. She knows grief. "Okay," I say. That's all I can manage right now. "Okay."
Chapter Five
Is a Bad Decision—Which Changes Your Life for the Better—a Good Decision in the End? (Or: What's the Difference Between a Good Decision and a Bad Decision? About Three Drinks)
I'm drunk again. I blame my mother and her endless toasting. Not long after the doctor left, she put her arm around me and steered me back down the hallway to the kitchen, poured us drinks, and let the toasting begin. She toasted the strength of women. She toasted mothers and daughters. She toasted Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, just because. She toasted anger and sadness and hope. And now she's toasting love.
"To love!" she says. "It springs up in the middle of everything else where we least expect it!"
I can't remember a time in my life when I was ever drunk twice in one day. In college? Senior year of high school on spring break?
My mother falls asleep on the sofa in the dining room—the anniversary gift from Artie. I still have a hard time even looking at it. My mother will be up and gone before dawn.
I find myself in the first-floor guest bedroom and decide to settle in. I unzip my suitcase and then heft it onto the bed. But I should have hefted it first and unzipped it second because I fumble the heft a little and the clothes flop out onto the floor. I find my drawstring pajama bottoms and a Black Dog T-shirt from the Vineyard. I'm still sipping my last drink. I start sloppily shoving clothes into drawers, trying to force the overstuffed drawers shut. I shove so hard I get a little winded, then give up, letting them sit there, overstuffed.
I then see my pocketbook across the room. It looks innocent enough, but I know that all of the love notes are inside—the complete set, numbers one through fifty-seven.
I pick it up, grab a handful of notes, open the bedside table drawer, push them to the back of the drawer, then another handful, then another, until they're all there, messy, out of order, crumpled. The driver/ex-tennis-champion-hopeful/recovering alcoholic's card is there too. I could call him. I could take him up on his offer to improve my swing. For a moment this seems like the perfect revenge, but I don't even like the driver/ex-tennis-champion-hopeful/ recovering alcoholic. I rip up the card, thinking that I don't want this kind of revenge, but at the same time, knowing that I do want some kind of revenge—as horrible as that sounds.
And then I'm startled by a voice. "I'm taking off for the night." It's the male nurse.
I open the door, still holding my drink. I can see him in the hall light—my mother is snoring lightly in the distance.
"Is he asleep?" I ask.
"Soundly."
"Thanks for everything," I say, and it dawns on me that I am thankful. I'm flooded with gratitude, in that way you can so suddenly flood when drunk. "I don't think I could do it . . ."
The male nurse says, "I'm just here to take care of his physical needs so that you can concentrate on all of the important things, like his emotional needs."
This seems like an unfair division of labor. I'm annoyed. I stiffen up. "Is that my job? Am I supposed to be Artie Shoreman's emotional needs manager?"
Todd—let's call him Todd—says, "I don't know. I mean . . . not necessarily. I was just saying . . ."
"Don't worry about it," I tell him. I know I'm drunk. I have some self-awareness left.
"Good night, Mrs. Shoreman." He hustles to the door.
I mumble, "Good night," but it's too late. He doesn't hear me.
I shut the door and look around the guest room—the new mess I've made (record time!), my pocketbook on the bed, and on the bedside table (filled with Artie's love notes), Artie's address book (filled with Artie's old lovers and, somewhere in the mix, the three women he cheated on me with, a woman who loves elevators, and the address and phone number of the son he never mentioned—in the B's).
I pick up the address book and thumb through it. I notice small red marks beside some of the names—only by the women's names. Some are red X's; some are dots— a code. He's had the book for ages, the pages are worn at their edges, almost feathery. I know that most of these women came long before I ever knew Artie—some may even go back to high school. They knew Artie when I didn't. They have access to a version I will never be able to know. This seems cruel. Was he the same person then—in some deep unalterable way? Do we ever really change?
It's strange to see their names—Ellen, Heather, Cassandra. Who are these women anyway? I realize that I've fully envisioned Springbird—the one name that I've had for months now, albeit only a screen name. She's short, blond. She's perky, but when the perk fades, she's quick to whine. But this is all imagination. Of course I won't find her screen name in the book. I keep flipping forward. The names come at me as I turn the pages—Markie, Allison, Liz . . . I don't want to read another name, but I can't stop myself either. The ache is deep in my chest.
I hear myself say, "I don't want to be Artie Shoreman's emotional needs manager."
I sit down on the edge of the bed. I finish my drink and look up at the ceiling where, above, Artie is sleeping soundly, where Artie is dying. And it dawns on me that he knows that I would never call up one of his sweethearts, that I haven't wanted to know anything about the three of them from our marriage, the other ones from his past. I get up and pace. "Artie, you son of a bitch. You don't think I'll do it, do you? You think I'm just going to play my role here. Forgive you. Be the good wife. Pretend nothing ever happened. Go it alone. Be the bigger person."
I open to the A's, let my finger cruise down to a name with a red dot. Kathy Anderson. I take another drink. I dial. It's long distance—one state away—after midnight. The phone rings twice, and then the machine kicks in, a woman's voice with New Agey wind chimes in the background. I immediately hate the woman. After the beep, I go ahead as planned. "Artie Shoreman is dying. Please call to schedule your turn at his deathbed."
I slam down the phone. But this feels strangely good. I call the next number with a red dot. This time a woman answers. I've obviously woken her up.
"Artie Shoreman is dying. When would you like to schedule your turn at his deathbed?"
"Artie Shoreman? Tell him he can rot in hell for all I care." This name has a red mark by her name—an almost violent X—so the code is pretty easily broken, even by someone in my drunken condition.
"Understandable," I say. "Maybe next Thursday?"
"What?"
"Do you like elevators?"
The phone goes dead.
I smile. It doesn't make sense, but I can't stop smiling. I turn to the B's. There it is: John Bessom. No red mark. A number and address and a business name: Bessom's Bedding Boutique. I run my fingers over the letters, wondering what Artie's son would be like—what our son might have been like if we'd had one. Does he look like Artie? Brush his hair off his forehead in that rough gesture like Artie? Does he own Bessom's Bedding Boutique? Or does that belong to his mother? Her name is here too—Rita Bessom. Did he offer to marry her?
It's too much. I flip past the Bessoms, to the back pages. I find another red dot—it's a large dot. Obviously Artie let his red felt-tip pen sit there for a while, let his mind wander. I pick up the phone, dial the number, look out at the night sky, the fat moon.
A machine picks up. The woman's voice is young and jaded. "This is
Elspa. You know what to do."
But it strikes me then that I don't know what to do. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I don't say anything at first. I just listen to the dull static, and then I say, "Artie Shoreman is dying. Please call to schedule a time at his deathbed." And then I pause. "Artie is dying."
Chapter Six
Forgiveness Doesn't Wear a Rolex Knockoff
While I pour my coffee—hung over and miserable—a new male nurse is arranging a tray of soft foods and a number of pills in little white paper cups the size of creamers—which remind me of the creamers I used to drink and stack while at fancy restaurants with my mother and her various husbands. I believe I did this not only because I loved the cream, but because it irritated my mother to no end. Actually, Artie's #42 is about how I'll still sometimes pop open a creamer in a restaurant and down it like a shot of tequila, which struck him as charmingly odd and uninhibited. The male nurse's hands are huge, and I marvel at how he can handle all of the dainty cups with such dexterity.
I realize that he's fixed Artie a lunch platter, which seems all wrong except that I look at the clock, which tells me it's noon. The burly nurse picks up the tray and the plates rattle—loudly—so loudly that I'm reminded how very much I drank last night. I wonder just how many of Artie's sweethearts I called. (And I realize now that I've absorbed the term sweethearts. Even as I hear the word echo in my head, I pronounce it with a sneer. It's a term of derision, not endearment!) Did I call a half dozen? A full dozen? More? And why did I call them? I can't remember. A dare? It seemed like a dare. Was I calling Artie's bluff? Did one of the women tell me to report to Artie that he can rot in hell?
The burly nurse glances up at me. I've been staring. I know that he's doing my job, really. I should be the one with the tray. "I'll take it to him, if that's okay," I say.
"Sure," the burly nurse says. "He knows the drill on the meds."
"Has anyone called this morning?" I ask.
He nods. "A bunch of hang-ups, actually," he says. "Maybe three?" And then he looks at a pad of paper held to the fridge by a magnet. "One woman called and said"— and here he begins an exact quote—" 'Tell Artie I'm sorry but I can't forgive him.' "
My Husband's Sweethearts Page 4
