The Widow’s Husband Read online

  I experience a totally unexpected surge of peace. I unbend, unfold, flow formlessly within myself, like a strain of dye in water. I am weightless, light-headed; I’m in danger of wafting off in an out-of-body episode. Either that, or of dozing right here. So welcome, this sudden sense of futility, of soothing finality. Nothing matters. Something has ended; something else is about to begin. In either case, there’s no help for it, nothing I can do. And I am here. It’s Emmett up there in the box.

  Soon enough, though—too soon—I jar back to reality. I have to face the rest of this barbaric ceremony. The beefy pallbearers carry Emmett out. They load him into a hearse the color of stainless steel, windows draped with velvet curtains, as if poor Emmett needs protection from prying eyes, or living people need to be protected from him. The hearse takes him away. Amy and I follow, rattling around in a huge limousine.

  At the cemetery, the crowd, Emmett’s crowd, gathers around the precisely hollowed-out rectangle, the dirt from which is piled nearby on a tarp, ready for replacement. The air smells of earth, of mold and compost, although this seems to be the only excavation. I wonder how they dig such square corners with such big machines—off in the distance is the back hoe, ready for reemployment as soon as we finish our chore here. My seldom-worn high heels dig more little holes in a crisply cut plot of grass, the sort of grass Emmett would have approved of. With a sense of rising panic, I watch the box disappear. The minister gives the “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” finale. I bite my lip, sigh, and dig again for a tissue. I am going to cry. I can’t help it. I am going to blubber in front of all these people.

  I remember cozy times of lying in bed with Emmett, cuddling with him. In particular, I recall once when he reached for me, not for sex—that had happened rarely in the last few years—but to hold me because he knew I’d had a bad day. I’d been temping at a firm that makes dehydrating equipment, the kind people use in their homes for drying fruit. I mentioned to a coworker that I wanted one of the contraptions for myself; I wanted to dry apple slices, pears, cherries. Later I overheard the girl say to her friend, “Why bother? Just do whatever you do to your face.” I had been hurt, and shocked at how hurt I was. I asked Emmett if I looked dried out. The remark had made me feel old and tired, too old and tired for temp work, which requires a young person’s stamina. All that adjustment, readjustment every day, every day in a new place.

  Emmett held me tenderly, said of course not. I was a fine looking woman, and he was proud of me. Oh, yes, Emmett had been my solace, my bulwark against the casual and random hurts of life.

  He’d been a good man, a wonderful man. A joy to have around the house. The kind of man who could, who did, fix anything and everything. The kind who kept the lawn looking as good as this memorial park’s. The kind who maintained the lawn mower, the sprinkler system, the weed eater, all things mechanical in good running condition. On that score alone, I am going to miss him sorely.

  Amy begins to cry, too, letting her mascara run raccoon tracks down her cheeks. Next to Amy stands her current boyfriend, yes, I remember him now. This one is Larry, and he is, superficially, a nice kid, but he has a slick edge, and is too smoothly good-looking to make him the kind of guy I am comfortable with. He seems the sort who’ll open doors and hold coats, but who will drive a vehicle from which issues a raucous stereo, the bumper pasted with a sticker reading, “IF IT’S TOO LOUD, YOU’RE TOO OLD!” (His sleek pickup has no such sticker—I already looked—but I maintain the unreasonable suspicion that he’s just razored it off.) Larry is caressing the back of Amy’s neck, murmuring in her ear, seemingly not to console her, assuage her sorrow, but … it looks like a seduction. Much too carnal for a graveside.

  Then I remember what that fight had been about, the one that sent me careening off into the night to sleep behind the bank. Emmett had found out about me taking Amy to the doctor for birth control pills. Because on that long-ago field trip chaperoning Amy’s class, I saw Amy necking with her then-boyfriend; I saw that she was on the verge. I watched a pimply kid fondle my daughter, and I knew it was time.

  Emmett had blown up when I told him about the prescription we’d had the pharmacy fill. “No daughter of mine is going to screw around!” he’d shouted, his jaw set in that hard line I’d grown to dread. “No sirree!” So we had that fight and I roared away in the VW.

  Eventually the story of my sleeping behind the bank passed into family mythology. “That crazy woman, once she slept all night behind the bank,” Emmett liked to announce to a table of his company. Or to Amy, “Your crazy mother, remember that night she disappeared, didn’t come home till dawn?” Sometimes I got a kick out of him telling it; sometimes it embarrassed me, or made me angry. It depended on how he told it: with stealthy admiration, or scorn, or quizzical amusement.

  About those birth control pills—I tried to talk him down, get him to bend. All the girls, I told him, all the girls that Amy knew were on the Pill. After all, Amy was sixteen, kids develop rapidly, these are fast times. Parents are not in control anymore, what with their children being bombarded with outside influences. The growth and prevalence of the corrupting mass media, destruction of the ozone layer (global warming leading to wearing scanty clothing which arouses risky hormonal responses), the death of religion in the home, etc. I threw that last one in, my equivalent of a right jab to the solar plexus: Emmett had no interest in the spiritual realm, but he felt that he should have had. It was his deficit, his lack. Kids now, I told him in concluding wheedling tones, were not like we’d been when we were growing up.

  But no, I couldn’t wheedle him. Emmett had been too bullheaded. He’d been uncompromisingly rigid, he’d been so black and white! Of course it was no one’s ideal situation to aid and abet a teenager in establishing a sex life, but the consequences of ignorance, of nonprotection, I told him, were absolutely dire, and life and times being what they were—

  “No excuses!” he’d said flatly. “No fuzzy-headed rationalizations!”

  But after the fight, the dust settled and the whole matter dropped, as if forgotten. I told Amy to keep her little disk of pills in her room, under some sanitary napkins that I knew Emmett would never touch. I told Amy not to bring it up, to leave her father alone. After all, Emmett was right, he’d always been right, and he thought his reaction and rejection were enough to thwart Amy’s sexual drive.

  He’d been that kind of a man. So moral, upright, virtuous—he thought everyone else should be, too.

  In many ways I failed him miserably, as I had in giving in to Amy. I should have told Amy no, that she was too young for birth control. I should have sided with Emmett; I should have reinforced his rules regardless of the consequences.

  If I could have him back, I’d make it up to him, I’d be a better person, more fair, more loving, more understanding. I’d live up to his standards, which I hadn’t worked at hard enough while he was alive. But he is gone, and I let my hot tears fall.

  CHAPTER 2

  Not over yet, this ordeal of a send-off for Emmett. My street is, alarmingly, lined solid with cars, vans, and pickups; and we park in the last available space. I pause, steeling myself to go in my own house. The whole of Freeway Furniture must be here.

  Among the vehicles, there’s a Miata, bright red, with its top down, despite an increasing hint of rain in the air—someone’s an optimist. Emmett had wanted a little sports car, talked of it often in the last year or so. Poor Emmett—now he’ll never have one. I gulp for air, wonder when I’ll be allowed to cry in peace.

  We’re the last to arrive because I stayed at the chapel to wind up my business. The director had presented me with a sheaf of paperwork, murmuring about last-minute expenses. I glanced through his figures, trying to look wise and businesslike, then said no, I didn’t want any of the extras—tape of the service, mementos, etc. Wished I could get rid of the one memento I did have, the image of Emmett lying there in his scratchy wool suit. I should have buried him in something more spring-like, but hadn’t figured
out what. Shopping for clothes for a dead man seemed a waste, even ghoulish. So, with shaky fingers, I wrote that final check, wondering about my financial picture. But what a time to think of money! It was Emmett, dead. That was what counted.

  Earlier, I’d had to go through Emmett’s desk, his big oak roll-top, to locate the checkbook. He’d hated for me to rummage through it. What I found tucked away in drawers and pigeonholes bothered me. For one thing, I discovered he hadn’t done the income tax, and it’s due in a week. I’ve never done the taxes—that had been his job. He hadn’t made even a start on the folders full of receipts and statements and bills. I berated myself for my lazy stupidity—I never so much as balanced the checkbook, let alone figured the state or federal income tax.

  I didn’t know what to make of the rest of his stuff. Travel brochures to Ireland-had he been considering a trip to the land of his ancestors? Emmett had been proud of his Irish roots; perhaps he’d planned a surprise for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary coming up soon. Or would have come up soon, if his heart hadn’t betrayed him. I think of his death in those terms: a traitorous heart let him down, let us both down. I needed him so badly, my rudder, my compass through life. But he’d allowed his heart to play him false.

  Also in his desk, junk mail, odd bits of this or that. An envelope from an attorney, not the one we’d made a will with, but another one, its back covered with dates and figures. Had he been working on a new will?

  A folder of poetry. Poetry! Later, I told myself, when I could think, I’d study his verses, after I went through the rest of his muddle.

  Now, staring at all these vehicles, I tell Amy that we should have held the reception or the supper or the party—what does one call the gathering after a funeral?—in the mortuary’s Hospitality Hall. But she’d objected, said Meadow Rest didn’t allow alcohol, and some of the people from the plant would like a drink.

  I snap, “So I’m to tend bar?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Larry will do it. After all, he is a bartender, on weekends. And the food’s potluck, Mrs. Russell from across the way has seen to it. It’s done—the supper, the tables, extra dishes, you don’t have to think about a thing. Molly Maids have been in to clean. They do that, in situations like this.”

  “Well, of course, I know that.” I am bone-tired. Talking seems such a bother, a drain on what little energy I have. “You forget I worked for them once.” But that’s not fair to Amy, because my stint as a maid had been a while back, a mere three weeks at that. Three weeks of dusting and pushing a vacuum, scrubbing floors and toilets for picky people with snotty kids. My back aching, my hands chapped, my stomach upset from eating on the run, I decided I better go back to school, at least long enough to get skills for temp work.

  “I’m sorry, honey, I don’t mean to be cross. I’m just frazzled.” I hadn’t slept since Emmett’s death. I’m sleeping on the couch, or trying to. Haven’t worked up enough nerve yet to use the bed, the bed Emmett died in. Amy is temporarily back in her old room, which is a comfort, but having her in the house requires a severe adjustment.

  The real reason I haven’t slept: I’m dreaming of Emmett as a young man, when I first met him. Emmett before he went to Vietnam, before he took on that hard edge, that moodiness, that exacting righteousness that exasperated me toward the end.

  I really fell for him, right off. I think of it as a fall, going over a cliff in a speeding car. I’d been crazy for him, for his laughing blue eyes, the same blue as his embroidered denim shirts. I’d adored his blond hair curling over the tops of his ears, his strong chin, his dimples. In my dreams I feel his arms furred with fine golden hair, those strong arms holding me tight. I dream of kissing him, long deep kisses. All my senses collected on my lips, all my energy, and, in dreams, I give myself up to the assault of those kisses.

  Kisses! I scoff on awakening, rolling over to find a better spot on the lumpy couch. A transitory pleasure, what’s the saying, “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the—”? No, that has to do with calories. When I broadened with a middle-aged spread, Emmett said that to me. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips,” he said with a wry laugh, with that look. It had stricken me, made me feel I was letting him down. Also made me resentful of his restraint, especially in the last year or so when he’d watched his diet and weight like a marathoner.

  Amy brushes at cat hair on my black dress, says soothingly, “I know you’re tired, Mom, we’re all tired. But everything’s cool. All you have to do is … well, you don’t have to do anything. Maybe enjoy yourself. Dad would want you to.”

  Amy has taken off her hat, and she leans into her reflection in the glass of a porch window, checking her hair. She tucks a long blond strand behind her ear, and I notice her turquoise earrings. Emmett bought her those earrings on a trip to Mexico, our last trip together, one of the few when it had been just the two of us. Had it been that much fun? He’d been preoccupied, distant, irritable. Well, of course it had been fun, I chide myself, we’d had a wonderful time.

  Feeling ill with nerves, I follow Amy into my own house, into my new life. Without him, it’s like going in naked. He’d always been there, my cover, my protection. Moreover, most of our social activities had been geared toward his interests. The Power Squadron; Emmett had been a whiz at boat handling, he could have docked the Queen Mary in a bathtub, which got him sent to Vietnam when most of his buddies managed to avoid active duty. The Marksman’s Club; but Emmett sold his guns years ago after Amy toddled in clutching the barrel of a loaded .32. The Poker Club was his most recent interest, apart from an incipient fascination with fishing. It met every Wednesday night, at alternating houses. This Wednesday it was to have been here … I experience a shock … did I cancel it? Well, someone must have called it off. I’m not even sure who the members are anymore, but they must have been present for the funeral. I should know who they are.

  But Emmett’s friends have all begun to look alike. Paunchy and middle-aged, wearing glasses and old men’s styles like Izod alligator shirts and pleated Dockers, the kind of pants for guys with big butts—that’s how Amy puts it. And jogging shoes, for guys who don’t jog, sneakers patterned with wild zigzags and lightning strikes of lurid colors. Most of these guys are cultivating a crop of gray in their hair, those lucky enough to have hair. A couple of them are bald. But not Emmett—he’d kept his thick hair, and what gray there was had been invisible. He’d never put on weight, not like the others.

  His interest in clothes, which had seemed odd to me, intensified in the last few years. Wild dress shirts, and flashy ties. Regis Philbin, I teased him; a man who wouldn’t sleep on colored sheets bought lavender button-downs and flamingo-colored ties. Dressy tailored natural fibers; he’d even gone back to denim. However, he depended on his specs, wire-rimmed half glasses that he peered over with that look I dreaded. A stern accusatory expression, the kind he gave me when I sneaked ice cream. I wonder if he used that look at the shop, on his fellow workers. I wonder who among my guests are his fellow workers.

  No matter what was meeting, Power Squadron, Marksman Club, or the poker night bunch, I was merely the hostess in charge of providing refreshment. After pouring the first beers, putting out dishes of peanuts, bowls of chips and dips, I kept out of the way. I savored anonymity, bestowing, as it does, freedom, irresponsibility. I admit that I viewed his social life with a trace of contempt, secretly scoffed at his effusiveness, his hail fellow well met, his hearty glad-handedness that seemed to border on appeasement. Let him deal with those gullible idiots, I thought.

  As somebody else has dealt with these people in my house. I follow Amy through the tiled entry, and turn into the dining room. Amy tells me that Mrs. Russell, Frieda, has been in charge of food. I know the woman only slightly, tend to steer clear of her. Her husband, Lyle Russell, is a silent hulk of a survivalist moron (in my opinion), who drives an aggressive looking four-wheel drive vehicle, with water cans strapped on its sides. He spends every weekend in the brushy hills above Ukiah, where
he’s building some kind of a fortress in which he’ll survive the coming holocaust. Frieda, or someone, has rearranged the dining room, pushing the table, with all its leaves in it, against the wall, for the buffet.

  A quarter of a century earlier, when Emmett and I were newly-weds, I’d bought that table at a specialty shop downtown. It’s teak, a Scandinavian design. I’d planned to add matching chairs, but Emmett had been lukewarm and I never finished out the set. After all, he said, he worked with furniture. He should know the hot number, and it was oak. Oak was the thing. Besides, he could get seconds, at the employees’ discount. I wanted to shout, “You’re in charge of the shipping department of that furniture plant, not the design crew! Please don’t tell me what I like.” But I never said things like that to him. Moreover, to be honest, I’d grown to like the golden sturdy practicality of oak. A symbol of Emmett himself.

  I met Emmett in junior college. One day in the cafeteria I wandered around with my tray loaded, a square meal representing all four food groups. In the crush I couldn’t find a place to sit, until Emmett got up and offered me his chair. Such manners, courtesy. A real gentleman, hard to come by in that tough new era. I was a raw freshman, too naïve to understand the fine points of college cuisine, that you don’t eat a whole cafeteria lunch; you go for something from the machines, or coffee and donuts.

  Emmett was a junior, an “older man,” enrolled in deadbeat courses (I discovered later) to hide from the draft. But the army got him anyway, right after he dropped out to work in the furniture plant. While he was overseas, we stayed in touch through a lively correspondence. In letters we decided to pursue the relationship when his hitch was up.