"Fair enough," I say. "My method may have had some flaws."
"Any luck with Bessom?" my mother asks.
I nod. I'm still jangled from the meeting. It dawned on me during the car ride home that in addition to saying I'd rough him up, I also used the word proposition, which in retrospect, seems much worse. I'm not sure whether I'm overthinking my responses because I'm nervous about messing up Artie's chance to meet his son or because I find myself so inexplicably attracted to his un-Artie looks, his way of looking at me, talking to me. "He's in," I say. "I think he needs the money."
"Well, I left time slots open for his visits as well," Eleanor says, pointing to the chart. (Did I mention it's color-coded?) Bessom's visits are marked in dark blue.
"Where's Elspa?" I ask.
"She's lying down in the guest room," Eleanor says. "Writing about her parents, and, well, it's harder to do than she thought."
This worries me. I hope that Elspa can do it, that she won't give up on this. It's too important.
"Elspa isn't as lucky as you are in the parental department," my mother says, without any irony, and pats my hand.
I ignore this little self-congratulatory moment. She shouldn't be encouraged.
"And Artie?" Eleanor says excitedly, with one fist held up near her heart. "When are we going to inform him of our plan? I've filled in time slots starting tomorrow morning."
I put both hands on the table and push myself up. "How about now?" Why not now? I already have nervous energy to burn, and there's something inside me that wants to punish Artie. Is that becoming a habitual desire? I'm aware of how very much I want to see his expression when he hears the plan.
"Now?" my mother says.
"Sounds good to me," Eleanor says, gripping her chart.
"I still would like to state, for the record, that I don't think this is a good idea," my mother says.
"There is no record," I say. "It's just us, making this up as we go."
"But still," my mother says. "Artie, well, poor Artie . . ."
"He asked for this, don't forget. He told me to call up his old sweethearts. This was, in part, his idea!"
"You know how I feel about men," my mother says. "I just feel like they are . . ."
"Delicate creatures?" I ask.
"I prefer the term weak," Eleanor says. "Delicate implies that it's our responsibility to handle them with care."
"Boys will be boys," my mother says, shaking her head. "There's no changing them."
"This is the problem," I say. "I mean, once we started excusing their behavior with that phrase 'boys will be boys,' men had no reason to change, to grow, to become something new. Women have continued to evolve, because we've had to. Elasticity is the female's strongest evolutionary trait—it's why we survive. There was never anything expected of men once someone invented the phrase 'boys will be boys.' They could all just be themselves—and their repertoires shrank to burps and groping."
"And lying and cheating," Eleanor adds.
My mother takes this in. "You're saying that this is a step for mankind?"
I think about that. "Yes," I say, "for mankind."
And then a voice pipes up behind me. "For Artie, too," Elspa says, walking into the kitchen. "Digging up your past is hard, but it's important."
I'm relieved to see Elspa. She's been working hard. She hasn't given up. She should be with us for this. "Okay, then," I say.
*
The four of us stand in a loose semicircle around Artie's bed. He's asleep, but even in sleep his breath sounds a little labored.
"Let him rest," my mother says, holding Bogie and nervously patting his head.
"He's tired," I say. It surprises me how much he's aged. "Let's go. We can do this tomorrow."
We start to head out the door, but then Artie's eyes blink open and move from one of us to the next. He lifts himself to his elbows. "Have I died and gone to heaven or do you all always watch over me in my sleep?"
"He's unbearably cocky," Eleanor mutters.
"Ah, well, this is not heaven evidently—unless you're crashing," he says to Eleanor. "I thought you were leaving."
"I was asked to stay, brought in on a special assignment."
"Oh, really," he says. "To murder me? Don't go to the trouble. Didn't you hear? I'm dying."
"No," Eleanor says, "there's no real murder plot. This is more of a send-off of sorts."
He turns to me. "Lucy, what's she talking about?"
"We have a plan. It's the one you wanted from the beginning and Eleanor is overseeing it," I tell him, with some strange false cheer in my voice.
"Just for the record, Artie," my mother says, rubbing Bogie's ears, "I was not in favor of anything of this sort. I—"
But I glare at her sharply and she zips it quick.
"We think you need to sort through your past," Elspa says. "We think that it could be cleansing."
"Cleansing?" Artie repeats.
"Your sweethearts," I explain. "Eleanor has set up visits with them. It turns out that people take things more seriously when they aren't called up by a drunk woman in the middle of the night."
"Really?" Artie says, sitting up in bed, thinking all this over. I wonder if this is all he has to say. No squirming? He isn't anxious or unnerved by the idea. He seems . . . pleased with himself. In fact, he's overly pleased with himself. I'm more than a little disgusted. "Well, that's nice of them. I mean, they don't have to, but I suppose, well, I suppose they want to."
"You're actually looking forward to this," I say, a bit surprised.
Artie recovers. "No, no, I'm not looking forward. That's not right. It's just, well . . . it is flattering . . ."
Eleanor is fuming. "Perfect then. We'll start tomorrow."
"Who's coming tomorrow?" Artie asks, still way too eager, a boyish grin on his face.
"You see," my mother says, pointing at Artie like he's evidence on display in a court of law. "I told you. Old dog. New tricks. He can't be changed! Men are delicate creatures!"
"Old dog?" Artie says, insulted. He looks to Bogie for support. "Don't listen to her," he says. "She's just intimidated by our masculinity."
"You know what I mean," my mother says. "It's an expression."
"I'm going home," Eleanor says to the rest of us.
"Don't go," Elspa says.
"I'm the old dog?" Artie says, jokingly.
"You'd better be nice," my mother hisses at Artie. "I'm in charge of your funeral. I may just decide to bury you Liberace-style. Imagine, arriving in heaven in a purple velvet suit!"
"Or like poor Bogie there, oh so sad Marquis de Sade of the dog world? In an elegant jockstrap? Don't be cruel," Artie says. "It's unbecoming."
"Stay with us, Eleanor," my mother says, glaring at Artie now. "Artie may never change. But it may be worthwhile to try to make him."
"Please stay, Eleanor," Elspa says.
But Eleanor doesn't relent. "Good night."
"C'mon, give me a hint," Artie says. "Who's coming?"
"Good night," Eleanor says, limp-marching to the door. Her limp doesn't seem like a weakness, but a force that propels her forward, as if her injured leg gives her more momentum. "We'll see if you're still all smiles when this is over, Artie Shoreman. We shall see." And she slams the door.
"She always was uptight like that," Artie says.
I'm fuming now, too, however. This was supposed to feel good. This was supposed to help me even the score. What if these women are coming to adore him? What if they aren't going to teach him any lessons? What then? I realize all at once that this entire plan is built on assumptions and that I could be completely wrong. "Your son is coming, too," I say to Artie. "But I had to bribe him. You'll have to explain yourself to him." I say this with a hateful tone.
This part of the plan does startle Artie—the news and maybe my tone as well. He looks nervous suddenly. "John?"
"I found his name in your book, in the B's, just like you said. Bessom."
"I'll have to take a bath in
the morning. This will require a shave, too." He's feeling the hairs on his neck, talking to himself more than to the three of us. "Are you sure?" he asks, and his face goes soft. His eyes are wet, shimmering, and for the first time in a long time, he reminds me of the man I first fell in love with—love struck, anxious, almost shy—and this makes me ache for him. I miss that uncomplicated version of Artie with a sharp desperation that catches me off guard.
"John Bessom," he says, "after all of these years. My son."
Chapter Eighteen
Occasionally, in Life, Myths Become Real— Be Thankful for It
I remember a boyfriend I once had, Jimmy Prather, who mythologized his exes. There was the glamorous one who left him to go to Hollywood, the archfeminist who went into politics, the insane one who made him run naked through the snow to prove his undying love for her—she went on to some ministardom right at the dawn of reality TV. There was no competing with these myths, and, worse, I could feel him mythologizing me when I was standing right there, flesh and blood, in front of him. We didn't last long. I wonder if Artie's sweethearts will be mythic. Will I be able to endure a parade of them, one after the other? After they've all gone, will I discover a psychic pattern that I fit into? Will I see myself in them?
I'm thinking about all this in the middle of the night— still not asleep. To distract myself, I turn to my own parade of sweethearts—which, by the way, is not a good idea if your aim is sleep. I open a floodgate. Jimmy Prather is only the beginning. I shuffle through some high school boys— a few athletes, a drummer in a bad garage band—and college—one guy who, after the breakup, went through a bit of a stalker phase, a lazy business major I later heard turned into a junkie, and a guy I was desperate about who went into the foreign service. And then the string of bad decisions before Artie—coworkers, a few guys met in bars, two bogus proposals, a let's-move-in-together that lasted a record three weeks.
I've been no prize. I mean, if I were told I'd have to confront a parade of my own sweethearts, I might have reacted like Artie first did—delighted to be able to see them all again—a little segment of This Is Your Life. But what if one or two (or more) had some real axes to grind? The reason the let's-move-in-together only lasted three weeks? I cheated on him. I know betrayal from the inside out. Sure, I wasn't married. I hadn't taken a vow. Artie's sins are much worse, but still, my record isn't pristine.
And then I find myself thinking of Artie—our simple Sunday morning routine of newspapers and bagels, our first-warm-day-of-spring celebration when we'd take off from work and get drunk in the afternoon, the time he took me fishing and I caught an enormous trout.
Around 5 a.m. I fall asleep with the remnants of a guilty conscience and dream about being trapped underground with a newspaper, bagels, and an angry raccoon that's wearing my watch.
*
I wake up late and, still a little bleary, I shrug on jeans and a T-shirt and walk into the kitchen to find Eleanor running things with a little too much brusque professionalism, clipboard in hand. While I'm having breakfast—made by my mother, who's still hovering in the kitchen—I hear the doorbell ring. Eleanor cries out, "I've got it," and rushes to the door. I can hear her ushering a woman into the living room, telling her to make herself comfortable. And then, to my astonishment, I hear her rattle off a number of questions. "Do you have any weapons? Poisons? Explosives?" I hear the woman faltering, but responding with indignant no after indignant no. And then Eleanor says that someone (I'm assuming Eleanor) will be right with her. Throughout it all, she maintains a forced gentleness in her voice, the kind reserved for gynecology office help and therapists' secretaries.
While I replay the images that flashed through my mind the night before—the raccoon, the parade of my exes in comparison to Artie's (now, in this version, some of them are armed)—my mother tells me that she's canceled the nurse for the day and that Elspa is upstairs, helping Artie get ready. My mother is scrubbing the pan she fried my eggs in. I can't eat the eggs. I just push them around on my plate. It's too early to feel my first pang of jealousy—Elspa taking care of Artie again—so I stop myself. Let her get him ready for his dates, I say to myself. But then I picture Artie slapping cologne on his cheeks, and this makes my neck itch.
Eleanor reappears long enough to open her cell phone, but then the doorbell rings again, and she's charging off with the clipboard. When she returns to collect a tray of coffee and Styrofoam cups and creamers and sugar packets, she says, "Our ten-thirty came early and our nine-thirty wants to be bumped." I stare at Eleanor. She picks up on it immediately. "My husband was an orthodontist. I used to run the office. This is what I do," she clarifies.
My mother and I both nod.
"And have you worked for the airlines? Security?" I ask.
She's confused. "No," she says.
"I think the rundown of questions about being armed is, well, a little over the top. It has an impending strip-search vibe."
"Are you going to start confiscating their toothpaste and nail clippers?" my mother asks, enjoying this.
"I was just being precautious," Eleanor says. "God knows we've all wanted to kill him at one point or another, so . . ."
"I think we can omit the list of questions," I tell her. "You know, let's just run the risk."
"Fine by me," she says. Her cell phone rings and she quickly abandons the tray to answer.
And now everything sinks in. Two of my husband's sweethearts are sitting in my living room, waiting to visit with him, and I'm the one who brought them here—to teach him some sort of lesson before he dies? What's the etiquette? Do I introduce myself? Do I bring them the coffee tray, offer bonbons, a stick of gum?
In any case, I have to see them with my own eyes. I'm compelled to try to understand why they've decided to come and what they might have to say to Artie. And, of course, there's the unsettled matter of the pattern of sweethearts that I may or may not fit into.
The two women are sitting on the sofa, side by side, backlit by the bay window. One, an intimidatingly leggy brunette, is thumbing through a copy of People, as if this truly were a waiting room. Did she bring it? Has Eleanor provided magazines as a courtesy? I feel like there should be a fish tank and a little check-in area with a sliding glass window.
I can't approach them. I zip on by, up the stairs. I'll check in on Artie instead.
First off, I can smell him from the top of the stairs. Aftershave, cologne—his favorite, a muscled scent that has a hint of the great outdoors and a tennis pro. I brace myself. He's going to be all done up, and I know it. And, in fact, when I step into the room, I see it's worse than I imagined. He's propped up in bed, all the pillows at his back. His dark, shaggy hair is purposefully mussed with plenty of product. He's looking out the window, where I'm pretty sure he can only see the tops of trees. He looks wistful. Actually, maybe it's worse than that: he's practicing looking wistful.
"Is that a smoking jacket?" I ask.
He doesn't look at me. Maybe he's a little embarrassed. "It's a robe. I don't want to sit here in my pajamas."
"It looks like a smoking jacket," I tell him, and it does. It's black and shiny—maybe even velvety. Where did he get such a thing? "You could just get dressed."
"Too much effort," he says, as if he hasn't gone to tons of effort.
I realize now that Artie is nervous. He's sitting up here like a teenager who's primping before a prom, and, of course, he's accentuating his newest attribute—namely the heroic drama of a man facing death. "It's too much effort for someone who's dying, you mean? You have to look the part, right?"
"I am dying," he says, a little defensively. "I'm not making it up."
For a brief second, I want to believe that he is lying, that he's made up all this business about dying just so he can have a moment like this—the smoking jacket, the sweethearts. I'm wrong, of course. Artie is vain. Maybe that is his greatest weakness, his need for adoration. Did I not give him enough adoration? Could any one person have given him enough? The desir
e to slap him rises up inside me so quickly I'm shocked by it. "And so you want to enjoy the role, right?"
"I'm a crowd pleaser," he says, now looking at me. "I give 'em what they want. Plus, you know, not everyone gets to play this role. A person can get hit by a bus. The end. No real death scenes at all."
"I'd lose the smoking jacket," I tell him. "You look a little desperate in it—like my mother in that gold dress with all the cleavage."
"It's not a smoking jacket," he says. "It's a robe!"
"Whatever you say."
I walk out of the room and down the stairs. I'm offended that Artie wants to see all these women. I hadn't expected him to be so eager. Couldn't he have at least faked some disinterest for my sake? It isn't so much that these women may do exactly the opposite of what I'm hoping for—that they might come here and ruin everything by giving him even more adoration. The real problem is that, even now, I feel like I'm still not completely enough for Artie. His heart still isn't wholly mine.
However, the fact that Artie is nervous makes me more confident. I want retribution, a good dose of revenge. I want Artie to own up, once and for all, to the lousy way he's treated women, accept responsibility for his actions. I pause at the bottom of the stairs and then cross the hall quickly and step into my own living room, in jeans and a T-shirt, without any makeup, with my hand poised for shaking. I say, "Hi, I'm Artie's wife."
The leggy brunette drops the magazine to her lap and stares at me blankly. The other woman is small, with a blond bob and wispy bangs. She'd been gazing toward the stairs, and I've startled her. "Oh," she says, her hand on her chest. "I didn't expect to see you."
No one meets my half-hearted attempt to shake so I shove my hand into my back pocket.
"Artie's married?" the leggy brunette says, completely shocked.
"Didn't you know that?" the blonde asks.
"How did you know that?" I ask.
"Oh," the blonde says. "The woman on the phone mentioned it."
The brunette shakes her head, and then looks me up and down. "So, then, he finally settled down." I don't like the way she's stressed the word settled, and there is an implicit for you that I don't care for. Suddenly I regret not dressing up, not wearing full makeup and heels. My mother would have pulled out the big guns for such an occasion. And maybe she's right. My lack of dressing up was supposed to be a statement of my confidence, as in I don't need to dress up to compete with all of you. That competition is long over and, unless you forgot, I won. But instead, I feel unpolished, vulnerable, settled for. Did Artie choose me from all these women because I represented something safe, but all the while he desired something more dangerous?
My Husband's Sweethearts Page 11
