The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating

by Carole Radziwill

  Eve’s eyebrow rose. “Did he get high with Keith Richards?”

  “I don’t know. He certainly got some virginal milestones, though.”

  Eve stopped stirring. The cat twitched its tail. A handful of thick raindrops rattled the window.

  “What is it? What?”

  “Your sage doesn’t look good,” Eve said.

  “No! What does that mean?”

  “Sage is the symbol of love and relationships. What I see here is a struggle.”

  “No, that’s wrong, that can’t be, there’s no struggle. Look at the rosemary. Add more pot.”

  Eve gently laid the small stick against the side of the bowl.

  Claire shifted in her chair. Eve’s scarf, what had first impressed her as a striking taste in accessories, had become unsettling. Its orbs and bulbs and embryo-shaped colors, spooning against each other, swimming the perimeter of Eve’s clavicle, disturbed her. It was entirely too quiet in the room. She cleared her throat.

  Eve smiled.

  “My advice, Katherine? Focus on work.”

  10

  The reading of Charlie’s will was anticlimactic, despite the delay. Besides Claire and Richard and Charlie’s lawyer, there was Ethan, and then Grace on the speaker. They gathered in Richard’s office the first week of September, just over two months since the day Charlie had died.

  Charlie wasn’t a particularly complicated man; all of the assets went to Claire.

  His final manuscript, incomplete at his death, the one Ethan was now trying to assemble from eight different files he’d uncovered, also went to Claire.

  “In the event that my demise happens in the midst of my work, I bequeath all unfinished, unsold texts to my wife. She will write, edit, and annotate as she sees fit, to ready such work for sale through my longtime, long-suffering agent and son-of-a-bitch Richard Ashe.” Before Claire had a chance to react, through the speakerphone came Grace’s cough. “Richard?”

  “Yes, Grace. Right here.”

  “What does this mean? How much work is there unfinished, unsold? Where is there work?”

  Claire looked from Ethan to Richard. Richard looked from Ethan to Claire. She doubted Grace Byrne had read the Post.

  “Well, there’s a book he was working on, Grace. We’re not sure yet what stage it’s in. There is a manuscript, some papers, some loose things here and there. Ethan is going through documents and files, and will have an accurate assessment for us soon.”

  “And when is soon, Richard?” Grace asked. Molly and Morton, her large mastiffs, a gift years ago from Charlie and Claire, barked, and Grace admonished them.

  “We’ll have an accurate assessment one month from today.”

  The lawyer, dogs, and Grace all departed in succession, leaving Ethan and Claire facing Richard across the room.

  “Well, Clarey,” Richard said, in an attempt to make the afternoon feel light. “One thing you might do, while you’re cooling your heels, is read up on Huxley.” With dramatic flair, he plopped his legs atop his desk, leaned back in his chair, and threw his hands behind his head as he watched this sink in.

  “What? Why? Aldous Huxley?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Richard answered, then waited two long beats. “Jack.”

  Claire looked at Richard and tilted her head the way dogs do, to better hear.

  “Charlie was writing a book about Jack Huxley?”

  Ethan typed the name into the search engine on his phone and turned it theatrically around to display the infamous face.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why not? He’s practically the international symbol for sex.”

  Is this a joke? Claire thought, mentally booking her plane ticket to Hollywood. Then she almost laughed out loud. Her dead husband had just set her up with Jack Huxley—indecently handsome, movie star, rogue. Charlie was writing a book about narcissism and sex, about himself really, by way of the most famous baller in the world.

  11

  By autumn the stories of summer had simmered down. The names and faces that had riveted the media three short months before had gone stale. Bigger and better scandals had popped up. Celebrities tried to sneak off to rehab, politicians were in violation of the law, Oprah had lost then gained back thirty pounds. The bit players of the Charles Byrne Show had faded to black. Evelyn and Walter White resumed their position on the style pages of the Times as if nothing had happened, smiling again at all the galas. The yogi had got a small part in a movie and was dating an outfielder for the Mets. The publicist, Claire had heard, Charlie’s last pre-mortem stand, was screwing an editor at Vanity Fair, good for her. And the father-son art cons lingered comfortably in house arrest, awaiting a trial years off, their days filled peacefully with chess games and small meals. Paul Bowman, whose eyewitness account of the falling fake had briefly gone viral, was served divorce papers by his wife, who made great use of the anecdotal material anyway. Her colleagues at Rutgers ate it up. It put her, after all, two degrees from both Giacometti and Charles Byrne. Paul Bowman, with his brief, newly found notoriety, was dating a stripper.

  RULE #5: Don’t sweat it—everyone’s fucked up.

  The path of Claire’s own life, however, was much less clear.

  Focus on work, said the seers. She thought about what they’d told her. Beatrice had said in so many words that there’d be sex but no love—ha, it was so Charlie. There was time to kill, and enough money, she didn’t really have to do anything. There was a will, but no law, that said she had to finish Charlie’s book. She was comfortably idle; it’s the ruin of some.

  In lieu of a plan, she went to dinner. After three months of moping around, Claire thought it time to get out.

  Since the day of Charlie’s funeral there’d been a steady stream of invitations: a life that was beckoning her, whether she was ready for it or not. However, it wasn’t just Charlie’s life that had ended. It was Claire-and-Charlie’s life, too—the one they’d strung up together, the one where people counted on him and her, but not just her. There was no longer that. Now there was this. Friends knew they were to do something with Claire, you don’t abandon the young widow, but they weren’t sure just what. Their own routines were the same, but Claire’s had changed. How did they approach this? Could she get around by herself? Were they to avoid certain topics? Could she be seated next to a man—yes, she’d need to be!—but whom? There are never enough good single gay men to go around.

  New York needed Claire to be the way she was before—essentially, married. The situation only slowly dawned on her. Invitations piled up, as if widows were in high demand and Claire was a coup for the guest list. She could have had any room at any weekend house in the Hamptons. There were invitations to join book groups, to attend cocktail and dinner parties, to sit at overpriced tables at charity functions—even one at Princeton, which Claire assumed came via Grace, still after her to “honor Charlie’s name.”

  The one she finally accepted, to rejoin the fray, as it were, was on the Upper East Side at the Starks’. Melanie was a real estate agent with a knack for leveraging divorce properties. Howard was a lawyer. The Starks and the Byrnes had been friendly. They’d gone to dinner a few times a year, and they were in the same social circles. Charlie and Howard played tennis at the club. Claire and Melanie had been at NYU at the same time. Melanie was filthy rich and sweetly wholesome. She’d had a schoolgirl crush on Charlie. She liked having an intellectual—a randy one at that—to round out her table. They’d had a harmless flirtation, as did Claire and Howard, for that matter; it was balanced. With four of them together, they’d kept everything in check. Facing the Starks alone, Claire was anxious. She agonized over her outfit (“Black, honey,” Sasha said. “What do you think everyone else will be wearing?”). She decided on charcoal, a jersey knit dress with a thin red belt to deflect any mourning.

  It was a long ride uptown.

  “Claire!” Howard called out when she came through the door. He parted mingling guests, kissed her hard on both cheeks, and too
k her coat. “You’re just in time—we’re about to seat.” He squeezed her hand. “We haven’t seen you since the funeral. How have you been, sweetheart?”

  Melanie popped up out of nowhere at his side. “Claire!” she squealed. She looked unnaturally straight in five-inch heels that made her a head taller than Howard. “How are you, honey? You look ravishing.”

  Claire smiled, nervously. She was suspicious of words like ravishing or stunning. She touched her face, checking for flaws, discreetly glanced at her chest. Something felt off.

  Melanie gave Howard an odd look and squeezed his elbow. “Honey, would you check with the caterer. Make sure we’re ready for the first course?”

  As Howard walked away, Melanie snatched Claire’s arm. “So listen,” she whispered, “I have a client here. And he’s wonderful. He’s very successful. An architect, he did a gorgeous museum in Berlin. And, guess what?”

  Claire smiled and shrugged.

  “His wife just died!”

  Melanie was grinning at Claire with big, thrilled, round eyes.

  Claire felt her own eyes contract in return. “Oh, wow … that’s awful.”

  “Sweetie, he’s so darling and charming and I think you’re very compatible.”

  Claire’s head twitched a little. What? Compatible? “You do?”

  “His name is Brian!” Melanie’s teeth were bright and square and her eyes looked like gel paint. She was too close, too vivid. Her face was making Claire dizzy. “I thought about you two when she was still alive, to be honest. It isn’t something that just popped into my head.”

  “You mean when … Charlie was alive?”

  “Well, no, I don’t mean that. You know what I mean. After.”

  Claire’s vision blurred a little. The room got big, then small, then big again. She felt ambushed. Oh my God, she thought … Is this how it’s done? Like Go Fish—do you have any single men? No. Guess again. Do you have any widowers? Yes. Melanie seemed so sincerely enthused. Claire did her best to smile back.

  “So I’ve put you next to each other, and I’ll let him tell you about himself over dinner. He’s very, very successful, I said that, right? Oh, and he’s Jewish.” Melanie mouthed the word Jewish. “And I don’t think he really loved his wife, by the way. She was sick.” She mouthed “sick,” too. “But he’s a good man.” For some inexplicable reason, Melanie also mouthed man and then mouthed one last word, as a coda—rich.

  Seconds away from her first fix-up in ten years, Claire panicked. What would she talk about?

  Brian, I hear your wife’s dead. That’s a drag.

  “Melanie, this is really thoughtful of you, but…”

  “I know, honey. Girls look out for each other.” Melanie winked. “Come on, let’s meet your date.” Melanie took Claire’s hand and led her down the hall into the dining room.

  Brian’s wife hadn’t been sick, it turned out, she’d been old. Like Brian. She was dead from old age. Soon Brian would be, too. The last time he’d seen blueprints, Claire estimated, she was going to junior prom. They compared funerals over the risotto. Brian had used Wanamaker and Sons, too, and yes, he remembered Carter, a very competent young man. Claire didn’t tell Brian about her smelling salts, or Sasha’s flask, or the way Carter’s thighs had looked pressed smooth against his slacks.

  They spent most of the osso buco course talking about Brian’s dead wife: how they met in college, the summer in Europe before Ann got pregnant, their beach house on the Cape with the children and now the grandchildren. Ann’s lobster salads, impromptu game nights, and gin fizzes at the club. The crab bakes, the anniversaries in Paris, their favorite bistro on la rue Saint-Marc with the steak au poivre and Veuve Clicquot. Claire found herself consoling him. She patted his hand, like a child. Oh my God, what was Melanie thinking?

  When they’d moved on to another room and digestifs—an apple brandy Claire could barely choke down—a woman interrupted the banal small talk between Claire and the woman’s husband with a frosty glance and an urgent matter. Left alone, Claire checked the front of her dress again. Again, she touched her face. What the hell was going on? The same thing happened with another couple across the room. Claire recognized the same wary glance Melanie had given Howard.

  They were frightened of her, she realized. They’d only known her to be attached—to Charlie. Now that she was single, and vulnerable, there was a slight shift in attention. Husbands lingered; they hovered too long. Their wives perceived this. She was a threat.

  She tested out her theory at a charity cocktail party the following week, and at a gallery opening the week after that—different social circles, different attendees, all people she and Charlie had known, and the same protective response. She felt like a circus animal—everyone wanted a look, but women kept the men carefully out of reach.

  Did divorcées go through this? she wondered. She suspected they didn’t. Divorce came with baggage, the presumption of issues; a mess. Husbands weren’t as interested in what another man walked away from so much as they were in what he unwillingly left behind.

  So this is what she was faced with. Interactions laced with either suspicion or pity. There were awkward crossings with people who—unbelievably—did not know her news. “Claire! Great to see you. How’ve you guys been?” Oh, I’m not too bad, thanks. But Charlie’s dead. And there were chance encounters with people who hadn’t seen her since the funeral and felt obligated, still, to mourn. The latter involved limp hugs and watery eyes, and usually happened as Claire engaged in the most banal of tasks—sorting through the olive bar at Whole Foods, for instance, or buying tampons at the Korean deli. They used a special tone; they placed careful hands on her forearm. “Oh, Claire, sweetie, how are you?”

  “Did you love him, then?” asked Lowenstein during one of their sessions.

  Love had seemed beside the point. They both knew there was a certain absurdity in the question, not to mention a range of possibilities.

  Claire replied, “I think so.”

  Franz Kafka lusted for his fiancée’s best friend, Grete. No one disputes this. Grete’s claims, however, that he fathered her son were inconclusive; Kafka wouldn’t come clean. There is love and there is sex, and there is some confusion surrounding the two. There are panderers and seducers and men who are vain. There is always, somewhere, a woman in fuchsia courting danger.

  “Claire, did you love your husband?”

  “Well, I’d become very used to him,” Claire said. “And that’s something.”

  12

  Claire weighed her options.

  She could follow in the footsteps of the Mailer and Roth wives and write a memoir. She could say Charlie was lousy in bed—they’d line up for blocks to read that. There was his unfinished book, of course: a manuscript that would eventually, Richard hoped, become a posthumous bestseller. She could pick up freelance work again—interview actresses in Los Angeles for Misconstrued. It might be nice to get away. She could even write her own book. Why not? One afternoon with a file of notes and a laptop beneath her arm, Claire poured an iced tea and got comfortable in a chair. She had a pile of Charlie’s old reviews, excerpts from his books, and the pieces Ethan had found of his new one. Jack Huxley.

  A Google search turned up predictable results. There he was with movie directors, with the president, with his costar on the red carpet at the Oscars. He looked unnaturally self-possessed. Thick hair, boyish grin, dark eyes. There were countless photographs of him with the same girl, this one a blonde, this one a brunette, all of them bikini-toned, long-legged Barbie doll–shaped things, all coached for the camera, clutching his hand like little girls. She understood why Charlie had been intrigued. Like Jack Huxley’s, Charlie’s ambling prick was at least as famous, if not more so, as his body of work. And he was at least equally proud of it. No doubt her husband had admired the man. Huxley was the kind of guy’s guy whom other men could be enthralled with. Good-looking bastard, they might say, and shake their heads approvingly. He was the kind of guy’s guy men would b
e flattered to have sleep with their wives. He was the kind of man both women and children adore, and the kind who is careless with both.

  Claire hadn’t seen many of his films—though, thumbing through a stack of Charlie’s old reviews, she realized she didn’t know much of her own husband’s work, either. She’d always been unimpressed with Thinker’s Hope. She’d secretly agreed with Ben Hawthorne: it should have been a flop. The public sometimes flocked to Charlie’s books the way they flocked to NR movies, more for the graphic sexual nature than the artistic or narrative quality. But Hawthorne was the only critic to point it out.

  In fact, his 723-word review of the book’s 723 pages had created a buzz in literary and academic circles, two otherwise dull and isolated communities. Writers spend the better part of their years indoors and alone, or indoors in the same small groups. They live for the occasional scandal—when the poet Elizabeth Dewberry left her Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist husband for a media mogul. Or when Ben Hawthorne ruthlessly skewered Charlie Byrne’s Thinker’s Hope on its tenth-anniversary re-release. Reading Hawthorne’s review again now, Claire smiled, impressed. Cute and scruffy Ben Hawthorne had taken on a giant:

  Goats and Goethe: Byrne Lost Me at Hello

  BEN HAWTHORNE

  Charles Byrne’s Thinker’s Hope might have the distinction of being the most ridiculous publication ever reviewed in these pages. Were we at The Atlantic Monthly to give serious treatment to a Zsa Zsa Gabor advice book on marriage, it would be no less ludicrous than to assign this salaried staffer to pick up, open, and then fix his eyes upon the first of over 230,000 words, not one of them of much use. Here are otherwise perfectly good words that Mr. Byrne has arranged into a pretentious and unintelligible shape called Thinker’s Hope.

  Mr. Byrne’s intent—according to material his publisher sent with the book—was this: to write “an intellectual novel, a work that is both witty and wry and sends up some of the world’s greatest thinking men, and great artists, and all of their central philosophies.” At the same time, he promised to offer a “frank sexual portrait of the common man, with all of his predicaments and peccadilloes.”