Still Life with Husband

by Lauren Fox

  His e-mails to me are usually longer, a little bit sloppier. He discusses the newsroom in detail, complains about his colleagues, describes his latest article about Milwaukee’s mayoral race, about the current scandal rocking the city’s sanitation department, about anything, about nothing.

  Sometimes I write about my husband. I tell David that Kevin skipped dinner one night recently in order to attend a seminar on mortgages, that he has stopped even pretending to hear my objections to moving away from the city and into a subdivision. I write about how we hung around the apartment last Sunday but only said 172 words to each other the entire day; I counted. But in the messed-up moral cosmology that is an affair, I try to stay somehow ethical when it comes to saying too much about Kevin. I feel—there’s no other way to put it—loyal to him. So I don’t tell David what I need most to confess: that lately the thought of actually spending the rest of my life with my husband knocks the wind out of me so hard I sometimes can’t breathe. This, I keep to myself.

  When it gets late, and our messages have become shorter and shorter, one of us finally says good-bye.

  “I can’t wait to see you again,” David will write.

  “Me, too.” I’ll write back, and then I’ll hit “send,” and the truest words of the night will disappear from the screen in an instant.

  MY MOTHER IS HAVING A ROOT CANAL. SHE’S BEEN PUTTING IT off for months, so my dad wouldn’t let her cancel, despite her protestations. My mother’s teeth are prone to cracking under the slightest pressure, like cowardly spies, and to spectacular rotting, despite her excellent oral hygiene; she seems to need a root canal every three or four months. Because of the frequency of her visits to the dentist, or maybe in spite of it, she’s made my dad come with her: for molar support, he says. And Kevin is home fast asleep. He didn’t come to bed until 3:00 a.m. The squeak of the door woke me up as he tiptoed into our room, and I rolled over and looked at him. He was grayish and out of sorts, and he mumbled, as he climbed stiffly into bed, that he had gotten caught up in a late, late movie, and then he rolled over without another word and sighed deeply. This is why I find myself alone at the airport at nine-thirty on a cold Saturday morning in November. I’m meeting Heather.

  Like every other family, we’re mostly just a rerun of ourselves. I always feel giddy and excited before Heather comes to visit, then blurry and inarticulate while she’s here, then surly and pissed off when she’s gone. Right now, I’m at gate 32E, breathing in the airport smell of Starbucks and shoe leather, standing behind a freakishly short family, waiting for Heather to walk off the plane. I’m bouncing a little, standing on my tiptoes, although there’s no need to, since no one in the family in front of me could possibly be taller than five-foot-three. Like a limo driver meeting a CEO, I’m carrying a sign for Heather. This one reads ANITA MANN. Others, in our history of airport pickups, have included Pat Hetic, M. T. Headed, and Drew P. Drorrs. Heather and I subsist on a diet of silly inside jokes and old habits. I’m beaming at the uniformed check-in ladies, at the luggage cart drivers, at every overburdened traveler who catches my eye. I can’t wait to see my sister.

  Ten minutes later, I’m still waiting, poking my head as far around the corner as I can: it looks like everyone has disembarked, but there’s no Heather to be found. She must have missed her flight. I can’t believe it. The man standing next to me rushed to his girlfriend as she stepped off the plane and swept her into a passionate embrace five minutes ago; they’re still going at it a few feet away. A blond woman got off the plane, and a small Asian child nearby raced into her arms, buried her head in the woman’s neck. The short family surrounded an improbably tall man who had to bend double to receive their kisses. They’re all long gone. Still no Heather. I look around, wonder if she’s playing a joke on me, realize that that would be difficult, since I’ve watched every single passenger walk off the ramp and into the terminal. My cardboard placard is resting at my feet, defeated, a joke fallen flat.

  And then there she is, walking slowly down the ramp, the last person off the plane. Heather, my beautiful sister, her hair thick and shiny and pulled back into a heavy ponytail at the nape of her elegant neck, her camel-colored coat buttoned all the way up, her long legs loping toward me: it’s like seeing a gazelle version of myself. Heather, my partner in crime, my companion, my confidante. It hits me in a flash: I’m going to tell her about David Keller. We’ll put our curly heads together and I’ll whisper my secret to her, and she’ll know what to say. Who ever would have thought that I’d be the one with the unpredictable life? Heather sees me and raises her hand in a gleeful wave. “I fell asleep on the plane!” she calls. “I’m so sorry!” My sister has always enjoyed her naps.

  She waves some more. I see her, she sees me, but she keeps waving. I wave back. Then she tilts her head to the side and waggles her fingers dramatically, and I finally notice it: the diamond on her finger. In the fluorescent airport lighting, it practically winks at me. It takes a second for the stubborn synapses in my head to make the impossible connection: my sister, the impulsive troublemaker, the renegade Ross, my sister is engaged.

  My mouth drops open, and an “Eeeeeeeee!” that Becky and Angie would be proud of escapes from it. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” I scream, as Heather throws herself into my arms.

  “Memma,” she says, calling me by the name she used before she could say Emily, an echo of our primitive connection. “Can you believe it?” She kisses my ear. “Can you even believe it?”

  I squeeze her. “Tell me Every. Single. Detail. How did it happen? When is the wedding? Why didn’t you tell me over the phone?” I squeeze her again. “Did Sam propose? How did he do it? Where did he do it? When did he do it?”

  She pulls back from our dancing hug. Love for her washes over me. We study each other for a second. My God, she has good skin. My baby sister is getting married. She smiles, but sheepishly. “Erm…yeeaaahhhh,” she says, drawing it out into a long syllable, like a deflating balloon. “Yeahhh. Well, see, Mem, it’s not exactly…it’s not…” She chews on her lip for a second. “Well, it’s not Sam.”

  Not Sam? She’s engaged, but not to Sam? My hard drive is crashing. My brain is full of squiggly lines and indecipherable characters. “Can we sit down somewhere?” she asks, and without waiting for an answer, she hoists her suitcase, takes me by the hand, and pulls me away from the terminal. We head for the coffee shop at the end of the corridor.

  In line, we don’t talk. My brain is still struggling to reboot. Heather is intent on the task at hand: ordering herbal tea, dunking the teabag; pouring what seems to be a very specific amount of honey into her cup. I order a black coffee, set it down on the table, and look at it for a while. Finally, Heather says, quietly, “It’s all been kind of crazy.”

  “I bet it has,” I say. “What happened?” It’s so strange to be here with my little sister, in a crowded airport coffee shop, so strange to be surrounded by the bustle of travelers as we sit in our vacuum of stillness, as I wait for the gory details of Heather’s crazy life. I lean toward her, prop my chin on my elbows, as curious as I’ve ever been in my life. “What on earth happened?”

  She blows on her tea. “Before I tell you, can you please promise not to judge me?”

  I feel myself snarl at Heather before I can stop my lips from curling. “That is so mean,” I say, recoiling. “I don’t judge you!” I do, of course. “I can’t even believe you’d start with that, after we haven’t even seen each other in—”

  She cuts me off. “Emily, I don’t want to fight with you. Can we skip all of this, please? All of this I’m-the-unreliable-one, you’re-the-good-girl crap? I just want to tell you about what have been probably the most important and…” She waves her left hand again, this time in an attempt to find the right word. “…fateful few months of my life. I just want you to be my sister and listen to me.”

  I sigh. There’s so much rivalrous, disputable history in what she just said. I could lead a group of scouts through the twisted underbrush
of those accusations. For God’s sake, I’m not the good girl! But Heather looks tired again, and I realize that she has a point. “’Kay.”

  “Well!” she says, buoyed by my easy capitulation. “I met him…and by the way, Mom and Dad don’t know. I met him on a business trip to Colorado.” Since when does Heather take business trips? What does she even do for a living these days? Last I knew, she was working in a bakery. “We had this crazy fling in Boulder,” she continues, “and I can’t explain it. It just felt right. And it happened so fast,” she says, her eyes wide, as if, in telling me the story, she’s surprised by it herself. “We both just knew it.” And I think of David Keller, and I want to clap my hands together and shout, “I know what you mean!,” but do I? I’m not exactly registering for fine china with David Keller. Of course, I am already married. “So I told Sam,” she continues without pausing, without, I think, even breathing, “which totally sucked, I still feel totally awful about that, and I moved out of the apartment, and then I moved in with Rolf.”

  “What,” I say slowly, still trying to process the barrage of information that has just come at me. “What…what kind of business trip was it?” It’s all I can think to ask.

  Heather doesn’t miss a beat. “Did I tell you I got promoted at work? The Reeds—they’re the couple that owns the bakery, ’member?—made me the morning manager. Of course I was the only person who worked the morning shift, and they didn’t give me a raise, so it was meaningless, except for I got to go on this trip. It was the first annual Tiny Business Management Conference, for establishments of two or fewer employees. It was totally lame. Of course, after I met Rolf I didn’t end up going to half of the workshops, but they sounded lame. ‘Synergizing Your Very Small Staff,’ ‘Your Employee, Yourself.’ Rolf,” she continues proudly, “owns the only kosher-style deli in Minneapolis.”

  “Rolf,” I say. The name is a tennis lob on my tongue that stops at my front teeth. Kosher-style deli?

  Heather takes a huge swig of tea. “Rolf is sixth-generation Swedish! He has more than one employee, of course, but he was giving the keynote address. He’s very successful,” she says proudly, glancing, unintentionally I’m sure, at her ring. “So then, anyway, I got fired. Because the Reeds found out I blew off the whole stupid conference. Because Jessie, the girl who works afternoons, was there. She got promoted, too. Anyway, she ratted me out. Which I was totally pissed about, but in the end it was actually for the best, because now I’m working at Rolf’s deli, and we’re together all the time!”

  “Heather, I—” I don’t know what to ask her, but there must be more questions.

  “Wait, just wait. There’s one more thing.” She takes a deep breath, licks her lips.

  “More?” I ask. I feel my mouth drop open a little bit, and I press my lips back together.

  “Rolf is…well, he’s a little bit older than I am.”

  “How much older?” I ask evenly.

  She licks her lips again, as if she’s tasting how old Rolf is. “He’s, um, kind of in his late thirties.”

  “Late thirties,” I say, waiting. “How late?”

  “He’s forty-three.”

  “Heather! He’s fifteen years older than you!” It shoots out of my mouth like a bullet before I can stop myself, and she immediately glares, leans back in her chair, crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “It’s not that big a deal! I mean, fifteen years, so what? Right?” I do quick, silent calculations: he’ll be a doddering, forgetful seventy-year-old when Heather’s a trim fifty-five. She’ll probably be running marathons and mastering tae-kwon-do, and he’ll need one of those little beeping plastic containers to remind him to take his pills. He’ll be one-hundred-five when Heather’s a spry ninety! “That’s no big deal!” I say again.

  “And he has a toddler,” she mumbles, so fast I’m not sure I’ve heard her correctly.

  “A rottweiler?” I ask, hopefully.

  “No,” Heather says, finally smiling at me again, this time the toothiest grin, a smile like she’s swallowed the whole word. “A toddler. A little boy. Silas. He’s…he’s three. He’s a terrific kid. I’m going to be a stepmommy. A stepmommy!”

  I close my eyes.

  “Rolf has joint custody with Salomé, his ex-partner,” Heather continues.

  Forty-three. Stepmommy. Salomé. Ex-partner. Oh, God. “Congratulations,” I tell her calmly, as neutrally as I can manage. “That’s wonderful.” I look around, take in the panorama of travelers who are rushing past the coffee shop toward their gates, the people at tables near us who are not Receiving Momentous News, who are simply having coffee.

  “It is wonderful, and I hope you can see that.” Heather fiddles with the top button on her coat, her shiny ring reflecting the light. “I know this must sound crazy to you, but, listen, it’s right. I know it is. Rolf and I are going to get married and we’re going to be a family, with Silas, and I so want you to be happy for me, but even if you can’t be, it’s still right.”

  “I am happy for you, Heather; of course I’m happy.” I feel like a blender has been turned on inside my stomach. “It’s true, it does seem…well, it did happen kind of fast, but why wouldn’t I be happy for you? You’re my sister. Of course I’m happy.”

  Heather pushes her chair back and moves around the table, toward me. She pulls me up into a hug, nuzzles her face into my neck. “Thanks,” she says, and I hug her back.

  “Hey,” I say finally, pushing her gently away from me. “Meg’s pregnant.” Heather and Meg have never gotten along. They’re just similar enough—both beautiful, gregarious, opinionated—that they can’t stand each other. They each insist that they’re nothing alike. “You two will finally have something to talk about—you can talk about being mommies.” Heather bends to pick up her suitcase, and I grab it before she can. She loops her arm through my free one, and we head toward the exit.

  From the shower I hear the phone ringing. Kevin is already gone for the day, and Heather is asleep on the couch. I don’t want it to wake her, so I leap out of the bathtub and run, naked and dripping wet, into the living room. Since she arrived three days ago, though, Heather has been zonked on our couch for ten or eleven hours a night, able to sleep through ringing phones, blaring police sirens, and the TV blasting from the apartment next door. I remember this just as I grab the phone. I glance over at Heather; her head is buried underneath the blue striped blanket Aunt Mimi crocheted for me before I left for college. Her feet are dangling over the end of the couch. She can’t be comfortable. A puddle of water pools at my feet before I remember that the phone is cordless. I head back toward the bathroom.

  “Emily,” Dr. Miller says briskly, and I wonder in a flash how exactly I’ve screwed up this time. Dr. Miller, my other boss, Dick’s coeditor, has called me at home before, early in the morning, more often when I first started the job, but once or twice in the past few months. He always claims he’s calling because he can’t find something I’ve misfiled, or because I haven’t finished something I promised to have for him by the end of the previous day. Usually his phone calls are meant to remind me that I’ve messed something up, not because he really can’t find what he says he’s looking for. Once, during my second week on the job, he called at six-thirty in the morning to tell me that seventy-four doesn’t come after seventy-five; I had accidentally misnumbered the manuscripts. Dr. Miller is the real prick of Dick.

  “Hello, Dr. Miller,” I say sweetly, rubbing the foggy bathroom mirror with a corner of my towel. I steadfastly refuse ever to let him know that he’s flustered me.

  “Emily, I have some bad news. I’m sorry to tell you that Dick is dead.”

  At first I think he means the journal. At first I think he’s referring to Male Reproduction by Kevin’s and my nickname for it. At first I think, Well, there’s me, out of a job. But then I get it. And although I had expected this for some time, although I had actually imagined this very phone call once or twice in the past year, my knees turn to jelly, and I ha
ve to steady myself on the sink, and it’s like I’m seeing myself from across the room. I hear a gasp, and it’s coming out of my own mouth. “Oh,” I say. “How?”

  “Emily.” Dr. Miller’s rough tone is a bit softer. “Dick had been in congestive heart failure for the past year.” He clears his throat. “I think that’s why he’d been so distracted lately,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “He knew he didn’t have long. He died at home last night.” Dr. Miller’s voice breaks on “night,” and he’s silent.

  “Okay,” I say, my throat thick. Dick knew he was dying. He died. He’s dead. I’m still dripping, and now I’m shivering, too. The bath mat underneath my feet is sopping. I readjust my towel. “When is the funeral?”

  “Tomorrow at eleven. At North Shore Presbyterian. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes,” I say, even though I don’t. I wonder if I should still come to work today. “Is there anything I should do?” There are still papers on the testosterone levels of spawning salmon to reject, vast quantities of files to organize—Dick’s haphazard files, specifically. Last Friday, before he left for the day, Dick came into my office, his Sherlock Holmes hat perched jauntily on his head. “Emily,” he said, “I thank you for your good work, and I bid you a fond adieu.” He patted me on the head and ruffled my hair as if I were his beloved dog, a cherished French poodle. I remember thinking that from anyone else, this gesture would have been intolerable, but from Dick, it just was what it was: an expression of pure, loopy affection. I looked up at him then and smiled, and I did not say “woof,” even though I was tempted to. I wonder if the journal will shut down after all. I wonder if I ought to resign in protest. Dick should not have died.

  “I’ll pass along your condolences to Dick’s family,” Dr. Miller says crisply, his voice resuming its usual imperious tone. “I’ll see you back at work tomorrow,” he says, and hangs up.