My Husband's Sweethearts

by Bridget Asher

  I still like the night shift. I sing Artie every lullaby I know, and when I run out of lullabies, I sing Joan Jett songs in a soft lilting voice.

  These last few days are each a kind of eulogy. I have John to thank for that. I tell Artie the story of the bird in the shutters of our friend's guesthouse. I tell him about proposing to me with the crew shells gliding along the Schuylkill River and the pygmy marmoset at the aquarium. I tell him about praying for our future together at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. And sometimes, when he is too tired to listen to stories, I hold his hands and pray. And when I do, I always pray for abundant blubber—a richness not of money, but of a kind of happiness.

  Early on, I stop praying for more time. There will be no more time doled out.

  *

  Artie asks me if my mother has any sayings that she never cross-stitched into a pillow revolving around the subject of the soul.

  I can hear Rose downstairs talking to the television, a PBS show about cats. "I don't think so," I say.

  It's become harder for him to speak. The projection of his voice is a strain, and so he whispers. "A soul should never be larger than a handbag?" he asks, looking down at Bogie asleep at the foot of his bed.

  "Never let thine soul give in to gravity?" I say. "You don't want to show up in heaven with a flabby soul."

  I want to know whether Artie has learned something— about himself or his soul. I feel like I've been through such a whirlwind of change, but he's the one who's been through the most. "And?" I say. "Will you?"

  "Will I what?"

  "Show up in heaven with a flabby soul?"

  "Does my soul look fat in this body?" This is meant to be funny, but there's nothing fat about Artie now. He's gaunt. His cheekbones rise sharply from his face. Downstairs, I hear Rose clapping her hands and now Elspa is singing along with the cat show.

  "I guess I want to know . . . I'm not sure. I want to know if you've learned anything."

  At this moment, Eleanor walks into the room. She's holding a tray of food that Artie will only pick at. "I'd like to know the answer to that, too," Eleanor says, "if you don't mind."

  "Have you learned anything?" he asks Eleanor.

  She sets the tray down, and it rattles a little against the wood of the bedside table. "I'm not here to learn something. I'm here to teach you something."

  "Really?" Artie says. "That's a waste of your time then."

  "Listen, you're the one . . ."

  "What do you want from me, Eleanor?"

  I get up to leave. "I have to, um . . ."

  "No, it's okay, Lucy," Eleanor says. "I know what I want. I want the world to be different. I want men to be sweeter. I want sincerity, honesty. I want to be able to believe people. A little trust wouldn't hurt."

  "Well," Artie says, matter-of-factly, "I love you, Eleanor."

  "Don't be an ass," Eleanor says.

  "I love you, Eleanor," he says again, working hard to speak loudly.

  "Shut up," she says.

  "I love you, Eleanor," he says.

  And then I say it, too, caught up in the moment. "I love you, Eleanor."

  She stares at the two of us, horrified. "What in the world are you doing?"

  I'm not exactly sure of the answer to this question, but luckily Artie is. "Giving you a chance to believe people again, if you want, or not," he says.

  And now I know his reasoning, exactly. I say, "There isn't much you can do about the world and men and an overall lack of sincerity and trust. But the last thing you mentioned . . ."

  "That's idiotic," she says, and then she turns, swinging her stiff leg forward, and marches toward the door, then stops. She pounds the doorjamb with her fist. "Goddamn it, I love both of you, too. Okay then? Fine."

  And she walks out of the room.

  "That was actually pretty sincere," I say.

  Artie agrees.

  *

  In the middle of one particular night, Artie startles awake. His breathing is so labored now, each breath is forced out by his stomach. He's on a heavy dose of morphine to alleviate the sharp, deep pain in his chest. The oxygen tank in the corner is kicking up heat, but I also have the window cracked open—at Artie's request—and so the humidity seems to billow around the room like rolling fog. I'm the only one there, sitting on the edge of the bed. I haven't been able to sleep. I'm sitting on the edge of the bed where, once upon a time, Artie sat in a towel with shampoo still in his hair and confessed to me.

  Hospice nurses have taken over. They give the morphine injections and oversee all his pills. But they do so much more than that. They are, perhaps, the most exquisite form of human being I've ever known. They've told me it won't be long now.

  Between gulping breaths Artie says, "Listen." He reaches out and I hold his hand. "I'm afraid that . . ." His eyes fill with tears. "I'm afraid that I would have only broken your heart again."

  I realize that I know this about him, that maybe I've known it for a long time. He would have cheated on me again. There's something inside him that he could never really trust. And would I really want some grand conversion, here, at the end of Artie's life? One that wouldn't ever be tested by the temptations of the real world? Is that what I've been waiting for?

  No. Artie's come to the truth about himself and has given me a worthy confession—that he's afraid he'd have only broken my heart again if he lived. I prefer the truth. "I know," I say. "It doesn't matter now."

  He says my name. "Lucy."

  And I say his name.

  It's as quiet and simple and plain as an exchange of vows.

  And then he closes his eyes. He's gone.

  *

  The funeral, I'd handed it over to my mother completely, and it's everything a funeral should be, of course. My mother knows funerals. She's chosen all the right flowers, gorgeously displayed, the urn—Artie had requested cremation— and the photo of Artie on the beach, looking windblown and a little sunburned. Still, it all strikes me as more than a little surreal. Artie is gone. I understand that. I've accepted it, more or less. (My acceptance comes in waves.) But the funeral seems off—as if it should be reserved for the truly dead. Artie will never really be truly dead—not for me.

  And as living proof that Artie is still alive, here are his sweethearts. They arrive slowly at first, trickling in one by one, mixing with Artie's business colleagues from the Italian restaurant chain. But then they start to arrive more quickly. A crowd has gathered, and now we're at standing-room-only capacity.

  There is Marzie, dressed in a boxy suit, holding her motorcycle helmet. She's with a woman about her own age with long, windblown hair. They hold hands in one of the pews. The redheaded actress who was once a nun in an Actors' Equity production of The Sound of Music weeps dramatically, grasping the chair rail for support. Artie's former algebra teacher shows up, too, Mrs. Dutton, arm in arm with an elderly scowling husband— Mr. Dutton, I presume—wearing a crumpled boutonniere. The mother and daughter who, much to their surprise, met in my living room, arrived separately and are sitting on opposite sides of the room. There's the smirking brunette from the first day, sitting next to the ever-on-edge Bill Reyer. She's glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

  Springbird Melanowski. I wait for her and wait, but she never shows up, not even to lurk in the back. For some reason, I'm disappointed in her.

  And there are many women I don't recognize—old and young, tall and short, of various races and nationalities. In fact, the third row looks like an all-female United Nations meeting. I never thought I'd be glad to see a swarm of Artie's sweethearts. But I am. I'm glad they're here, each handing over some portion of love (and some measure of reasonable regret, even a couple of worthwhile grudges—Artie deserves those, too).

  And, of course, there are Artie's sweethearts who have become my sweethearts, too: Elspa wearing a loose-fitting black linen dress, showing her tattoos; Eleanor sitting with a proper formality, though her eyes are smudged with mascara; and Artie's chosen son, John Bessom, who f
ound his father and now is suffering, but the good kind of suffering, the one you're allowed to have only because you've really loved someone. He's sitting right next to me. Sometimes my elbow brushes against John's. He's been steady and patient, and, like each of us, consumed by what's happening now. All these sweethearts of mine sit beside my mother and me in the front row. But I know, too, that John's been waiting for an answer of some kind from me, some indication of my heart's leanings. I'm waiting, too.

  And then there's Rose—she's sitting on Elspa's lap and wearing her shiny shoes, brushing the back of a stuffed corduroy frog with a plastic Barbie brush. I love her soft dimpled hands, the way she cups the frog gently and sometimes whispers to it, apologizing for tangles.

  Lindsay is there, too. She arrives late and sits in the back, but she catches my eye. Her suit jacket fits perfectly, like she's finally gotten one tailored. She looks all grown up, taller even, and it's wonderful to see her—like seeing part of myself that I don't want to lose.

  So this is the funeral—there are black dresses and flowers and an urn and everything is going fine until the funeral director starts in with a one-size-fits-all eulogy. He has a pomp of hair on top of his head, swirled like a cinnamon bun. He's talking about living life to the fullest. He's talking about Artie, whom he didn't know, but whom he admires because of "the legacy of love that he's left behind."

  It's bullshit, of course. I look back over my shoulder at the roomful of sweethearts—and the occasional businessman—and no one else is buying it either. They're squinting at the funeral director and whispering to one another. There's a good bit of glaring. Artie was Artie. They've come for something honest and true.

  My mother pats me on the knee and smiles sadly in a way that's supposed to mean You should smile sadly, too, dear. Do as I do. This is not her fault. She's trying to lead me in the world as best as she can. But she's trying to lead me through the world as she knows it. And that world is foreign to me.

  This is the moment when John leans against me, shoulder to shoulder. "What we need is an Irish bar," he says.

  And he's right, of course. Why didn't I think of it? This has nothing to do with Artie. Not really.

  After the funeral director finishes up monotonously, I nudge John. "Invite everyone back to that Irish Pub," I say.

  "Right now?" he asks.

  I nod.

  *

  The problem is I'm not sure how to start a wake. I have no agenda to pass around, no charts, graphs, no PowerPoint display. The sweethearts are here. No longer hushed by the funeral parlor's churchiness, they're loud now, ordering drinks, talking to one another and the bartender and the men who were here whiling away the afternoon watching a basketball game on the ceiling-hung TV.

  Eleanor, my mother, John, and I are sitting at a table with Rose, who's drawing with crayons that John rounded up from the waitress. Elspa isn't here. When we arrived, she said, "I forgot something. I have to get it. Can you all watch Rose?"

  "Is everything okay?" Eleanor asked.

  "Fine, fine. I just forgot something important. I didn't know the day was going to take this kind of turn." She smiled.

  We told her to take her time, that Rose would be fine with us. And she was out the door like a shot. I watched her through the window, running down the street to her car. I have no idea what she's forgotten, but she's right. The day has taken this dogleg turn. Artie's funeral is becoming something else.

  "This feels more like it," John says. He's taken off his suit jacket, loosened his tie. He looks tired—these weeks have been hard on all of us—and rumpled—not unlike the first time I met him. I find myself drawing on one of Rose's sheets of paper, borrowing her crayons. I'm nervous. This feels more like it. I haven't been inside this bar since the first time I met Artie. It's exactly how I remember it: Irish and pub-ish. I remember how it felt, watching Artie here that night, all those years ago, as he told the story of catching the bunny in that suburban neighborhood, and later, how it felt just to be next to him. He was put on this earth so fully charged.

  John has gotten us a round of drinks. Rose has a Shirley Temple with its bobbing cherry. She takes a sip. "The bubbles are in my nose!" she says, rubbing her cheeks. I'm not sure why, but everything is resonating deeply now. Rose with the bubbles in her nose seems like it's some grand comment on life—something optimistic and poignant and simple.

  "How do you start a wake?" I ask John.

  "I don't know," he says. "I guess someone starts talking."

  I look at my mother.

  "What?" she asks.

  "You always have something to say," I tell her. "Why don't you start?"

  "Talk about Artie?" she asks. "Something nice?"

  "Something true," Eleanor says.

  "Anything," I say, "just to get things going."

  My mother stands up, walks to the middle of the bar, and then whistles through her teeth like a longshoreman. She holds up her hands and everyone turns and stares.

  "This is a wake. I have to say that I'm opposed to these kinds of honest displays of emotion, as a rule. I like a generic funeral myself. But I've been asked to begin the wake with a few words about our Artie." She smiles at me as if to say: So far so good! "Now I like feminism except, of course, when it asks me not to wear a support bra. My question to you all is this: Why did we love him? Will his kind persist? In our current society, is he the kind of big lovable ornery beast who will become extinct? Will the next generation put up with such nonsense of the masculine variety?" She pauses here as if she's actually waiting for an answer—from whom? Rose? Is she the next generation? After a brief pause, my mother goes on. "I'm not sure that it matters. We love who we love—even when we hate them. The heart does what it pleases. And we all loved Artie, in our own ways."

  The truth is Artie would have loved this speech. It's filled with sayings that my mother never cross-stitched into a pillow—gem after gem.

  I find myself crying in a way that seems wholly new to me.

  John raises his glass. "To Artie!" he shouts.

  Everyone raises their glasses and drinks, and this is how it begins. The sweethearts tell stories about Artie— one of him sitting through a dog birthday party wearing a fur-trimmed pointed birthday hat (Artie would have hated a dog birthday party); one of him skinny-dipping in a community pool at night; and one—from Eleanor—of him dancing with her for the first time in her life. I'm surprised she's told this story, but I know it's even more important for her to tell than for everyone to hear. And maybe that's the way it is with wakes—everyone hauling in their stories and unloading them.

  John gets up and says, "Artie Shoreman became my father on his deathbed. But no one was more alive, even while dying." He looks beautiful, choked up, but smiling. His eyes are teary, but he doesn't cry. "I loved him with all my heart."

  Elspa reappears while one of the sweethearts is talking about Artie pretending he knew how to play the piano by clanging atonally, claiming a deep admiration for a new composer named Bleckstein. She hands me a tall cardboard box that still has shipping labels stuck to it.

  "What's this?" I whisper. Now I've had a few rounds. My cheeks are flushed and sore from laughing. I'm a little drunk myself.

  "Open it," she says.

  The thing inside is covered in newspaper. I dig a little and then pull out a strange blue object. It's a sculpture— rounded at the bottom and then boxy, cylindrical, slightly veering up top. It takes me a minute to figure it out.

  "It's Artie," she says. "Part of him. You said once that you wanted to see it. I had to call a few people to track it down and have it sent."

  I start to laugh. The sculpture of Artie's penis. Here it is. "It is abstract," I say. "But I think you've captured something of Artie here. Some essence." And this word, essence, strikes me as even funnier than the sculpture.

  Elspa starts laughing, too. "Some essence all right."

  Eleanor, my mother, and John all look over. "What is it?" they ask.

  I hold the sculptu
re up for them to see—hold it like it's an Oscar. "Artie," I say. "It's Artie, abstract. Maybe that's his best look."

  I grab Elspa and give her a hug. We've come a long way together. This sculpture seems to report just how far.

  Rose is holding up her drawing. "Look, look!" she says.

  Elspa takes it in her hands and says, "Is this abstract, too?"

  I look down at my own drawing. Here are my simplistic renditions of Elspa and Rose and my mother and Eleanor. I've drawn Artie, in his bellhop uniform again— the way John depicted him on the restaurant's paper tablecloth—with epaulettes and a suitcase. I've drawn John and me.

  He's listening to the woman in the middle of the bar. She's a little drunk, too—maybe just about all of us are a little drunk now. She's slurring through something about Artie and that wakes are really for the living. I fold my drawing in half and then in half again and fit it into my pocket.

  I look at John. He senses it and turns to look at me. I move my chair close to his. I only say, "Hi," and slip my hand into his, which is warm and soft.

  He smiles and squeezes my hand. "Hi," he says.

  This seems like a beginning instead of an end. I know I'll hand him the drawing at some point in the future—a new version of what the future might be. I look around the table—at John, my mother, Eleanor, Elspa, and Rose. And it looks like a family to me—close enough.

  I don't know what I'll say when my turn comes. I have so many stories to tell. But I don't know that it matters, really, which one I choose, in the end. We each say what we have to say, and we will spend this long afternoon crying and laughing at the same time, so much so that I can no longer tell which one is the truest form of grief.