An Available Man

by Hilma Wolitzer

Off, when they both complained about having much too much to read and admitted that they were merely skimming most of the essays. On, when they became hungry for literate writing, for opinions that sustained or argued with their own, or when they simply feared the threatened loss of the printed word. Bee used to inhale the inky fragrance of the Times in the morning before she started reading it, with an expression that was already nostalgic.

  In the months that he’d been alone, Edward read while he ate his supper—sometimes with the television set mumbling in the background, for noise, for company—and at bedtime, and in the middle of the night when he came abruptly awake as if his name had been called. He went through everything in the Times and The New Yorker and the NYR, except for the personal ads in the latter, which didn’t interest him in the first place, and reminded him of Bee’s wicked delight in them.

  “No,” he told Nick, as offhandedly as he could. “I have my copy here. I’ll take a look at it later.”

  But he didn’t even remove his jacket before he reached for his glasses, grabbed the paper, and dropped into a chair at the table. His eye was caught by some of the headlined names on the cover—Tony Judt, Freeman Dyson, Elizabeth Drew, former seductions—but he quickly turned to the back pages, where phone sex was advertised in discreet code, alongside rentals in Tuscany and the Loire Valley, and offers for the editing of manuscripts by acclaimed authors.

  Jesus, there it was, crammed between ads for two divorcées of competing charms.

  Science Guy. Erudite and kind, balding but handsome. Our widowed dad is the real thing for the right woman. Jersey/Metropolitan New York

  Balding! He ran one hand over his slightly thinning hair and squinted at his reflection in the toaster. He wasn’t about to resort to a comb-over yet. And handsome was another overstatement, of course. But would people still recognize him somehow, anyway? Science Guy could refer to anyone from Bill Nye to a Big Pharm researcher to some loner in a remote weather station. The term sounded suspiciously like one Nick had come up with, despite his self-proclaimed innocence and indignation. Erudite must have come from Amanda—it was a word she used—and kind from Julie. A collaboration, then. He’d kill them all.

  He read the ad again, with slightly less agitation this time, parsing it for meaning with what he imagined would have been Bee’s point of view, thinking, with a jolt, that she could have contributed the real thing herself. She had told him, more than once, that his best quality was his authenticity. “You are what you are,” she’d said in a kind of cockeyed parody of Popeye.

  No phone number or email address was given, thank God, just the number of a post office box. They’d probably had to pay extra for that; good money after bad, as Gladys would say. And they hadn’t mentioned how old he was. People’s ages were usually included, or hinted at, which used to be only more fodder for Bee’s disdain: fiftyish, she was certain, meant at least sixty, and young at heart could be anywhere from seventy to senility. Men, no matter how old, she’d pointed out, were always in the market for women of childbearing age. “You men,” as she put it to Edward, leaning over to poke him for emphasis, as if he’d placed one of those ads, himself, as if he was in the market for anyone at all.

  He made himself look at a few of the other ads, most of them from women, single or unhappily married, using the language of high-powered salesmanship. If they were all that great, why did they have to advertise? And if they weren’t, then why did they exaggerate like that? Because they’re lonely, a voice in his head murmured.

  At least the kids hadn’t gone overboard about him, he’d give them that. Balding would surely be off-putting to many women, evoking visions of Mr. Clean sooner than Sean Connery. And erudite could easily be read as stuffy, couldn’t it? He probably was a little stuffy, even when he was younger. Once in a while, Laurel used to say, “Oh, Edward, lighten up!” That still rang in his ears sometimes, like a schoolyard taunt.

  In a couple of the other ads, placed by men, one declared himself a physician in his forties, a world traveler and a gourmet, and the other a “retired millionaire.” So why would anyone choose to pursue Science Guy, a man who ironed women’s blouses for recreation, an aging, balding middle-school teacher with a basement laboratory, to which he’d often retreated to cry like a baby, or to fantasize about cloning his dead wife from the DNA in the hairs still trapped in the bristles of her brush?

  Dating After Death

  There were forty-six replies waiting for Science Guy in the post office box. Bee’s children were thrilled, and Edward simply bewildered. He didn’t think the person depicted in the ad—him—had sounded particularly appealing; he could only imagine how many responses that bon vivant of a doctor and the retired millionaire must have received.

  Julie called Edward from the law office where she worked as a paralegal to whoop and cheer at the count, as if she’d just heard favorable election results. He tried to reconcile her wild enthusiasm with how inconsolable she’d been less than a year before at the death of her mother, and the many bouts of gloom in between. He’d spoken on the telephone with both Julie and Amanda after he’d seen the ad, chiding them for their impulsive act, which, he pointed out, was ill conceived, if well intended. “We don’t want you to be alone, Dad,” Amanda said. And Julie said, “Mom would have approved, I just know it.” What was she talking about? Bee had been proprietary when it came to Edward, even a little jealous.

  She hadn’t liked the way Lizzie Gilbert always kissed him (and all the other men in their crowd) on the mouth in greeting and farewell, although Ned never seemed to mind, or even notice. But Bruce Silver, Bee’s first husband and the father of her gung-ho children, had screwed around. It was a violation, she’d told Edward, that she had foolishly tolerated for a while, but never would again.

  When Bee and Edward wrote new wills, about a year after they married, their lawyer half-jokingly mentioned something called the “Floozie Clause,” to protect the children’s inheritance against Edward ever remarrying unwisely and in haste. He’d laughed, but she had not, although she decided against the clause. And he remembered her once reading aloud to him about a woman urging her husband to marry again after her death, but forbidding him to ever sleep with his new wife. Bee hadn’t found that hilarious, either. She might have preferred him lying down beside her in the earth to his starting up with a bunch of strange women.

  Amanda and Nick had had the NYR letters forwarded to them, and they hand-delivered them to Edward that evening. Nick upended a grocery sack onto the kitchen table while Amanda opened her arms like a magician’s assistant and said, “Ta da!”

  Several of the envelopes fell onto the floor and slid away in different directions. Bingo sniffed and poked at a couple of them with his snout—nothing to eat—while Amanda scurried around the room, picking them all up and throwing them back onto the pile on the table. Then she ran her hands almost sensuously through them, sending some of them back onto the floor. Edward was reminded of those movies where the bank robbers lie in bed in a state of delirium, covering themselves with stolen bills.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Hold it. I don’t get this.”

  “What don’t you get, Schuyler?” Nick said. “You’re the man.”

  “An available man,” Amanda added. “Go ahead and open one. Please.”

  He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready for this. And the whole thing’s just not my style.”

  “It’s only a civilized, practical way to meet new people,” Amanda said in that pedantic tone she sometimes affected, the way she probably spoke in her motivational talks to young women in the workforce. “It’s not like we’re suggesting you speed-date or anything.”

  “But maybe Julie should try that,” Nick said.

  Two young teachers at school had discussed speed-dating one day in the faculty lounge, to Edward’s fascination and horror. As far as he could tell, it was a version of musical chairs in which one was supposed to find love in addition to a seat.


  How could he explain to Nick and Amanda that even the word dating was a little abhorrent to him? Their eagerness touched and troubled him at once. He never doubted their benevolence, but they were so pleased by their own marriage that they probably wanted to spread the word, like missionaries pushing religion on people they considered barbarians. The main thing was that he didn’t feel available. The ghost of his marriage still inhabited the house, even if Bee herself was missing.

  He knew he should have disposed of her clothing by now—at least he’d given the few valuable pieces of jewelry she’d owned to Amanda and Julie. Amanda was wearing the rose gold Victorian slide bracelet right then. But it wasn’t just Bee’s personal belongings that tugged him backward. All those commonplace domestic artifacts—dishes, lamps, pillows, books—were compelling souvenirs of the daily life they’d shared. How could he even think of someone else when he was constantly reminded of what he’d had and lost?

  He supposed that Julie had merely caught the proselytizing fever from Nick and Amanda. At twenty-seven, she was still somewhat child-like and dependent, and her own love life always seemed to be in crisis. She called Edward more often than he suspected most women of her age called their biological fathers, giving him a rundown of her days, seeking his advice and, he was certain, his approval.

  Bruce Silver, who sold paper for a living, had married again, twice, and had a brand-new family now, those kids more than twenty years younger than Nick and Julie. His contact with his older children was sporadic, and not always pleasant. Recently, he’d accused Julie of being moody when she was sad in his company. Edward had to talk her up after that encounter. Bruce hadn’t even come to Bee’s funeral, although Julie kept looking toward the entrance of the chapel for him until the service began.

  And then there was the matter of Gladys. Her husband, Jacob, her first and only sweetheart, had died about ten years before. When Edward finally worked up the courage to tell her of Bee’s, her Beattie’s, fate, she’d swooned into his arms like some felled, boneless creature. But despite the natural laws of succession and her frequently expressed wish to die, she continued to survive her daughter. “That Mother Nature,” she said wearily to Edward, “is a real bitch.” His devotion to Bee’s memory, he was certain, helped to sustain her.

  Lately, there was some noticeable decline on her part, the usual failures of hearing and vision and balance that come with great age. The jigsaw puzzles she was addicted to required a magnifying glass now, in addition to her spectacles. She was almost ninety-two, after all. But she wasn’t quite “the Wreck of the Hesperus” she claimed to be. And her mind remained astonishingly acute. She reported that when she’d told her doctor she was losing it, he said that she’d likely had too much to begin with.

  Bee had tried vainly to get her to move from her co-op apartment in Teaneck into an assisted-living facility. Now Edward took up the cause, urging her to consider someplace nearby with planned activities and the company of her peers; she had outlived most of her friends as well as her only child. Gladys shuddered at the idea of organized senior recreation, which she summed up as “sing-alongs in hell.” And even old people, she said, didn’t really want to be with old people.

  “I’m leaving here feetfirst, honey,” she told Edward, “and not a minute too soon.” Lately, she called everyone “honey,” from the mailman to her grandchildren, in preparation, she said, for when she’d have forgotten all of their names. But Edward knew that she secretly took pride in her excellent recall, even as it caused her psychic pain. Just recently she’d said, “If only I could forget, just a little.”

  “Dad, Dad,” Amanda said. “You’re not listening.” She was holding up a fan of envelopes. “Pick a card, any card.” Her eyes were shining with merriment, the bracelet winking from her wrist.

  Edward reached out and plucked an envelope from her grasp. When Nick and Amanda continued to gaze at him expectantly, he took a paring knife from the rack on the counter and slit open the envelope. There was a rush of a sweetly floral scent, as if he’d pulled the stopper out of a perfume bottle. “Ooh-la-la,” Amanda said, and Edward forced himself to smile at her before he put on his glasses and opened the folded note.

  “Dear S.G.,” it said. “Your ad intrigued me. I am widowed, too, and my late husband was also a man of science, with his own pharmacy until Duane Reade took over Hackensack and the world. I know that dating after death isn’t easy, but we should give it a try, no? Sincerely, Eleanora Perkins.”

  There was a snapshot in the envelope, too, taken from a distance, of a woman standing near a tree, with a house in the background. Amanda took it from him. “I can hardly make her out,” she complained, squinting at the photo. “Why didn’t she just send an aerial view?”

  Nick took the magnifying glass from the pencil holder on the counter and peered through it at the photo. “Not bad,” he said. “Late fifties, I’d guess.”

  Amanda grabbed the magnifying glass. “Hmm,” she said. “Nice legs, actually. And that doesn’t look like the state loony bin behind her. Dad, I hope you’re not going to wear that dorky eyeglass chain on a date.”

  They continued to comment, but their voices seemed to recede into the background, dimmed by the refrigerator’s hum, the distant sounds of traffic on the turnpike, and the mating call of some denizen of the woods behind the house. Dating after death, Edward thought grimly, that’s a good one.

  Love Letters

  Hi!

  My name is Kristi Womak and I caught your ad at the dentist’s. My Mom is widowed, too, although she was divorced first (long story!). Anyway, your kids put in that ad for you and I’m answering it for my Mom. So this is sort of like Sleepless in Seattle + You’ve Got Snail Mail! (lol) One question—did you go bald early? Mom is only 39 and she doesn’t want to date anyone old (no offense if you are). Her name is Mary Lynn, not Marilyn, which she hates when you make that mistake. Anyway, you can call—

  Dear Mr. Science Guy,

  We have many beautiful Russian brides waiting to meet you. You can view them online right now—15,000 choices for only 98 USD—

  Dear Bill Nye,

  I’m one of your biggest fans, and I could hardly believe that someone as famous as you has to advertise—

  Hello there, handsome,

  I am your fabulous, fiftyish fantasy—

  When the doorbell rang, Edward tossed the newly opened letters into the trash and shoved the others into the crazy drawer in the kitchen. Then he went to let Sybil, Lizzie, and Joy in. They’d come, at Sybil’s suggestion a few days earlier, to help him dispose of Bee’s belongings. “Don’t you think it’s time, Edward?” she’d asked—a diplomatic rhetorical question. But he could imagine her telling Henry that Edward was becoming morbidly attached to artifacts, straight out of “A Rose for Emily,” and she didn’t even know about the ironing.

  And now there she was, armed with two sidekicks and a stack of cartons. “Your cleaning brigade has arrived!” Joy announced gaily in the doorway, as if the three of them were really there to mop up after a wild party. It was only nervousness that made her blurt things out like that, Edward knew. She often put her hand over her mouth right after she spoke, as if to stem the flow of any further faux pas.

  Edward squeezed her arm. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “All of you must have better ideas than I do about this stuff.” This stuff. He could have clamped his hand over his own mouth. Instead, he took the cartons from Sybil and led the women upstairs to the master bedroom, where he flung open Bee’s closet. “I guess we can start here,” he said, and Joy burst into tears.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, fluttering her hands helplessly before dabbing at her eyes. “It’s just—”

  “We know,” Sybil said, slapping Joy sharply on the back, as if to dislodge a fish bone from her throat. Then she began pulling hangers off the rack and laying Bee’s clothing out across the bed. The long gray velvet skirt, the pale green silk suit she’d worn to Nick and Amanda’s wedding, the blouses Edward had so
carefully ironed falling into a limp, shapeless heap. The other women quickly joined in, Lizzie piling shoes on the floor next to the bed, and Joy gently placing one of Bee’s favorite dresses—with a pattern of violet sprigs—on top of the blouses.

  Edward opened the drawers of her dresser and added underwear and panty hose and nightgowns; they slithered so easily through his fingers. From the corner of his vision, he saw Lizzie briefly hold the violet-sprigged dress against her body while glancing into the full-length mirror inside the closet door. “If there’s anything anyone would like to have …,” he began, and then abruptly stopped. He’d had a vivid image of a future dinner party where every woman showed up wearing something of Bee’s.

  “No,” Sybil said, yanking the dress from Lizzie’s hands. “No. Bee would have wanted it all to go to some charity. She said something about it once, don’t you remember, Edward? We’ll put the boxes in the garage and you can arrange for a pickup. Maybe we can get them to that flooded area in the Midwest …”

  “Yes, perfect,” Edward said, his motives less altruistic than Sybil’s. He just wanted everything to be taken as far away from there as possible.

  When they were done, he opened the drawer in the dresser where Bee had kept her costume jewelry in a tangled mass, like a child’s dress-up treasure box. “I know she would have liked each of you to have something of hers as a keepsake,” he said.

  It would be tolerable, he’d decided, to spot one of her Bakelite bangles in a crowd one day, or a string of glass beads that actually might have belonged to anyone. Most of them had belonged to someone before Bee. She’d loved to shop at flea markets and garage sales, sometimes speculating on the previous owners of her finds as possible kindred souls.

  Each of her friends chose a single piece of jewelry and the rest went into one of the cartons destined for distant strangers. The four of them carried the cartons into the garage, and Sybil gave Edward a list she’d prepared of organizations that might pick them up and distribute them. Edward felt oddly lighter and heavier at the same time.