The Widow’s Husband Page 4

  Well, I know better now, I know what kind of man he’d been. I feel my anger flare even higher, I’ll burn myself up if I’m not careful. I long to lunge into my own den, and right there in front of those people, pull out that woman’s brilliant hair by the handfuls, snatch her bald-headed. Or maybe I’d read that expression somewhere, or perhaps my mother had said it. It sounds like something my mother would have said. I suddenly long for my mother, so I could tell her what Emmett has done. I also long to tear, rend, scream. Do something violent.

  But I can’t let those people know. I couldn’t stand that. To be laughed at.

  I do the next best thing. I fly out of my chair, clop across the deck, and fling open the sliding glass door, causing it to shriek on its metal track. But not before catching a glimpse of myself in the glass. A vulture, I’ve turned into a vulture. My black dress, bought for my mother’s funeral two years earlier, flaps and swoops around me, accentuating shadows and hollows in my face, which looks folded and bleak and ashy. I look like Emmett, lying there dead in our bed.

  I’m going to be ill, I think, stomping by the redheaded woman in green. I can’t resist glaring into those glassy green eyes … surely the woman’s wearing contacts. No one, outside of a Stephen King character, has eyes that eerie green color. And aren’t her earrings identical to Amy’s? Yes, they’re dangly silver feathers studded with turquoise … why, Emmett had bought two sets of them in Cabo San Lucas! I gasp to myself, I feel dizzy … but there’s the proof in clear view, beneath the masses of that snaky hair, so uncompromisingly, so preposterously colored.

  I turn away, but not before catching a whiff of the woman’s odd scent, a spicy green aroma. I must be imagining it, I must be delusional, I’ve lost my balance, my sanity. Nevertheless, with that odor in my nostrils, which I’m sure are flared and emitting smoke like a dragon’s, I elbow through the kitchen, the dining room, the entry, race out the front door. Thank goodness I’ve left my car keys on the floor mat. Burning with adrenaline, I start the Bronco, throw it in gear, wishing, longing to peel out. Peel out as I wished I’d been able to do years earlier in the VW on my way to sleeping behind the bank. I have to put some decent distance, some clean air, some psychic space between myself and this hateful gathering that is celebrating, or mourning, I no longer know which, the death of Emmett.

  CHAPTER 3

  Amy stayed five days, then packed up for home. Before she left, she and Larry had a fight in Larry’s pickup out front (I admit spying on them through the kitchen slats). At first I thought they were necking. Necking. That shows you where I am. What’s the word for it now? Emmett would have known. I could have asked him.

  A thousand times a day I think of things to ask him, or tell him. That the cherry tomatoes are the size of seed pearls; the dogwood’s going to be beautiful. The hydrangea, the roses, the irises—they’re bursting into glorious bloom. And the purple lilac that my mother gave us, it’s gorgeous this year. I imagine its perfume filling the yard. That neither my mother nor Emmett will be there to share it with me causes me to weep right out in the open, where any of the neighbors could have seen me, had they looked.

  After the spat with Larry, Amy bursts in red and angry, saying loud and bitter things about “control freak” and “pushing buttons.” She says she’d planned to stay longer, but she can’t. Larry’s lonely. (Not lonely, I think: horny.) Ah, yes, because Amy adds that he’s ready to go out and do some trolling. She says this with a wry twist to her mouth, but a pleased and satisfied glint in her eye. She holds sway over Larry, exercises the kind of sexual control I never dreamed of wielding over Emmett.

  Amy dismisses Larry with a shrug. She says he’s not the man she wants to marry, but she’s not through with him yet. As if he were one of the leftovers in the fridge. Can’t toss out the guacamole dip because avocados are so expensive, but one gets tired of it.

  So I help her pack hot rollers, crème rinses and hair gels, foundation preparations, toners, spandex workout suits, sets of wispy underwear, the kind advertised in Emmett’s Victoria’s Secret, secret, catalogues. The kinds of bras and panties that require hand washing. For days, the bathroom has flapped and dripped with something hanging on the shower rod, which has, truth to tell, begun to annoy me considerably.

  I help her box up nail polish, bottles and bottles of it. Her cuticle equipment alone overflows the shoebox her new Adidas, size 10, came in. The whole place has smelled of Amy, of lemon and lotion and shampoo and nail polish, or nail polish remover. So much gear, equipment, machinery. It’s like moving a military unit into combat. I take another look at Larry, so sly and slippery, but he’s no match for Amy. My respect for Amy increases. But it’s respect tinged with contempt—for both of them. For her to think such subterfuge important; for him to fall for it. What do these kids know?

  I also load her up with funeral supper leftovers. Neither of them really cooks anything. They live on takeout or microwave packaged goods, and oddities that Amy insists on like wheat germ, granola, soymilk from the health food section of the market. It’s a relief to clean out the refrigerator. Feeding just myself, even with Amy here, I’m amazed at how long food lingers. I need Emmett’s appetite; he would have polished off the chicken casserole, the beef stew which, yes, Maggie had brought—her name is on the bottom of the dish now washed and ready to return. He would have helped with the salads, but not with the cakes and pies. He’d cut sweets completely, in the last year.

  Every time I consider his diet, his demand for low-fat, no-sugar this and that, and then finding out the reason for his interest in maintaining a svelte figure, a knot of cold rage unravels in my stomach. The result is I can’t eat. I lose weight; I look gaunt and drawn, but this pleases me. At last, and at least, I’m into the thin end of my wardrobe, my jeans, my skinny pants, my size ten skirts. Take that, Emmett.

  These early days are full of drama. On the surface, and during the daytime, I am able, sometimes, to wrap myself in a cloak of problem-solving efficiency that Amy wholeheartedly approves of. For example, I call the AAA guy down on the avenue to come see to the car when it won’t start, and I find that Emmett let our membership lapse. I renew it, call again, and the guy comes out to give the Bronco a jump: its problem is merely a dead battery. But the battery’s a ten-year-old antique that needs replacing. The Triple A guy looks at the tires and says uh-oh, in dire tones. The upshot: the Bronc goes in for battery, tires, and brakes. What had Emmett been thinking! I fume. He hadn’t been the kind to let the car go. Unless he’d planned to get a new car—after all, there’s that Mazda brochure in his desk. Or leave me with the old car while he gets a new wife who already has a red Mazda Miata.

  Then too, there’s the matter of the strange attorney whose empty envelope I find in Emmett’s desk. Who is he? I look him up in the phone book, find that he specializes in “family law,” which probably means a divorce specialist. I consider making an appointment to ask him what the hell he’d had to do with Emmett, but think better of it. He would, rightly, regard me as a nut case; at the very least he’d claim confidentiality.

  Instead, I go to see the man who’d done a will for us years earlier. He helps me with various forms, the death certificate and paperwork the plant needs before I can file for Emmett’s benefits and his insurance. The lawyer, Mr. Devlin, assures me that our affairs appear to be in order, I should be all right.

  “I should be? What does that mean?”

  “Well, when you made this will, Mrs. Malone, there were ample resources, a savings plan, and stock in Emmett’s company. You still have all that, of course.”

  “Well, yes,” I mumble, wondering where it is, and how much it’s worth.

  He says, dismissing me, that when the plant settles Emmett’s account, I should make another appointment, for an update. In the meantime, he advises me to file for an extension on the income tax, which I do gratefully, feeling all the while like a grownup, a full-fledged adult dealing with real life for the first time.

  Such a heady experience,
especially at the bank, making out withdrawal slips with an authoritative hand. Really, I think smiling at the chirpy little teller, really, what is so hard about this? Anyone can do this. Emmett had me buffaloed, was all. Why had he done that? Why had he done anything? Who had he been?

  I want him back. I want him seated stiffly upright at the kitchen table, not lounged comfortably in his La-Z-Boy; I want to fire a barrage of questions at him. What the hell had he been up to! What had he been thinking? planning? deciding? He owes me clear explanations. He owes me! Then too, I want him back so I can crow about my success at the bank, at the garage talking to the mechanic; I want to report my general progress in life itself.

  Feeling unusually confident, I run errands around town. I pick up Emmett’s dry cleaning: a burgundy cashmere jacket, wool slacks, his denim suit. I consider this suit. He’d loved it, the carefully cut and tailored denim, its slightly roguish style that established a fine balance between casual and dressy, a sassy cowboy chic. He once said it made a statement. I asked, “What does it say?” He’d continued knotting his paisley tie under his cerulean collar, said coolly, “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.” How that had irked me! Now, looking at his denim suit in its plastic bag from the cleaners, I think with a prickle of guilt—and resentment—that I should have buried him in it, he would have liked that. But the idea hadn’t occurred to me, and Emmett went into the ground in his fusty old wool.

  I hang his clothes in his closet, then stand there considering his outrageous wardrobe. His bomber jacket from L.L.Bean’s; his boots; his silk turtlenecks. His shirts … why, the man had become a walking fruit salad with these florid shirts—raspberry, lime, pumpkin. Once I told him he was Regis Philbin. He’d looked at me blankly, said, “Who’s that?” I couldn’t explain because “Regis and Cathy Lee” is a daytime show and he’d never seen it. Then Amy said that Regis is on at night, too, in some preposterous millionaire thing. Emmett and I had developed different TV habits, had watched our own sets in different parts of the house. I have no idea what he’d liked beyond sports and National Geographic specials. Again I wonder who he’s been, my husband.

  Well, it doesn’t matter now, and I briskly go about my routine. Today I’m functioning, a blessing I have to take advantage of. I clean house, a much lighter chore now without him, I admit to myself. I miss him, sure, Emmett in the shower singing “That’s Amore,” then stepping down the hall wrapped in a towel, filling my kitchen universe with the fragrant warmth of his pink skin. But tidying the bathroom’s a snap without his residue of whiskers in the sink, tooth flossings on the mirror, foot powder on the floor around the toilet.

  After a lunch of melted cheese sandwich, made with real cheddar, and an apple, but no milk—the half-gallon I bought had gone off and had to be dumped—I still feel strong, centered within myself, capable of paying utility bills. I park the Bronco in front of City Hall, and consider, smugly, that, according to the checkbook, this month’s bills are less than last month’s. I’ll save money without Emmett; undoubtedly I’ll have to. Finances are a fuzzy unknown; I don’t know if I’m rich or poor … well, I know I’m not rich, but will I have to disconnect the cable? Sell the TV? Give up designer coffee beans?

  The utilities cost less, without Emmett. But that’s probably because the California Central Valley is now in that blessed time slot between hot and cold, between forced air heating and air-conditioning. On the whole, I think, briskly stepping along feeling as temperate as the weather, I’m doing well. I square my shoulders, hold up my head while slipping my bills into their proper slots.

  But those are my good periods, and are overshadowed by my bad. Some days fill themselves with a sort of amnesia, of not remembering why I’m pacing from room to room, what I’m looking for. Or what day it is, what month. Or whether I’ve eaten yet; and if I have, what it had been. Some days I find myself waiting for Emmett to come home, listening for the sound of the car in the drive, the slamming of the door, his step into the kitchen. Even the cat, leaping out of Emmett’s chair at five o’clock to curl on the mat by the door, seems to wait. The two of us, me and the cat, holding our breaths, suspended, waiting.

  Even worse are spells of free-floating panic. Emmett is gone, the rock upon which I’d built my life. Some days I drift into the den and sit, not in Emmett’s La-Z-Boy, but in my chair, an upright affair with brown plaid cushions in an oak frame. I watch the light, almost clutching at a pattern of light that flows across the room like a tide. As the day progresses the light lengthens to flood the beige Berber carpet, and then shadows appear in the texture of the rug, creating a pebble-like surface, a bog of quicksand. Before receding in late afternoon, it splashes onto a wall, changing it from gold to red, to brown, then to black.

  Emmett paneled that wall in oak. It’s a background upon which to display his achievements. Marksman and skeet shooting certificates, photos of himself with a trophy won in the South Tower race—he crewed on a friend’s sailboat—commendations from the plant. He’d recently cleared space for a new passion. He’d taken up fishing, and dreamed of showing off a prize catch, either the fish itself, mounted; or a picture of himself, surrounded by an admiring crowd, congratulating him on the marlin or the swordfish or the shark dangling from a hoist at the pier. I study this empty space; I study the wall. I study the room itself, waiting for the abyss to open. My ability to fill time is gone. Futility overwhelms me.

  On that sort of day, I can’t open the blinds. I can’t answer the door, or bring in the paper from the driveway. On trash day, getting the can out represents a major victory. Also a major victory: returning to the neighborhood, one by one, the dishes left from the reception. Most of them have their owners’ names taped on the bottom; I have no excuse to put it off. And people are frighteningly nice.

  Mrs. Russell, Frieda, urges me to stay for coffee, and I do it. I follow Frieda through the entry into the dining room—Frieda’s floor plan is identical to mine, as is Irene’s down the street, and Mr. Purdy’s next door—and then into the kitchen. I perch on a kitchen barstool while Frieda grinds coffee beans. Frieda says she thinks French roast beans are the best. (I don’t tell her I like Colombian.) She says she uses only bottled water, because city water is chlorinated. She instructs me on how to heat the water, gently, just to a boil. “If it’s at a hard boil, it bruises the beans, brings out the tannins.” She says that, with the air of imparting a state secret. No mass production here: coffee’s made one precious cup at a time.

  The aroma swells in Frieda’s oak and gingham kitchen, and Frieda, with a gentle touch, propitiating her coffee god, reverently decants the rich dark brew into white mugs. Although I find it bitter, and thick as motor oil, I pay the expected compliments, which Freda accepts as her due. I admire the woman, her self-assurance, her confidence … her ability to live with that survivalist kook. I chide myself for incubating this negative aspect of Frieda, and of her husband, but I can avoid it no more than I can avoid the smell of coffee flooding me.

  I smile, I sit up straight on her gingham cushion. I listen as Frieda’s chiseled lips pour forth stories of good luck, auspicious beginnings, and happy endings. Frieda says she’s been able to pay for her new kitchen décor—curtains, wallpaper, paint—with a run of luck at Tahoe. Frieda plays the slots, she has a foolproof system. She confides this information with a knowing look, a mental wink. Frieda likes to go up to the lake on a bus The Business and Professional Women’s Club charters. Frieda is a member—she works part-time as a court reporter. She says the BPW does such fun things, the gambling trips merely one example. The club holds formal dances, the kind that the society section of the newspaper reports on, for which the group rents The Eagle’s Hall. Women starved for a chance to dress up can shake out the tulle, the lace, the satin, and swish off for a romantic evening. I smile and nod, not able to imagine Mr. Russell in anything other than his camouflage suits.

  The club members design a float for the New Year’s Day parade downtown, spend whole weeks folding colored
Kleenex into flowers to decorate a chicken-wired Jeep. They organize runs and rummage sales for charity. They put on a Home Tour, which allows ordinary people to inspect the homes of the town’s élite, to wander through immaculate rooms done to a fare-thee-well, to meander along paths in designer gardens while sipping white wine. Frieda urges me to visit her group, to “network,” to ratchet up to becoming a member. I say yes, no, maybe, my eyes darting away from Frieda’s. Frieda’s eyes are the same glassy blue you sometimes see in Alaskan huskies. An eerie lunatic blue. Frieda’s hair is coiled into the shape of a hotdog bun, and is tinted the same color, too, what hairdressers call “champagne blond.” When she lowers her head to glance into her coffee, I find myself staring at her pink scalp through gaps in the puff. She wears too much orangy-pink makeup, and I look for a line on her jaw where it stops, but she’s too clever for that.

  In consternation, as if I’ve tried to see something Frieda would rather not display, like her bank account, or her weight, I avert my eyes, gaze around the room. I focus briefly on those puffy blue curtains, knickknack shelves, a border print of geese wearing blue ribbons. I smile and smile and smile, stretching my mouth over my teeth, thinking the visit itself is stretching out like a string of Mozzarella cheese. Finally, I get to go home, shaking and sweaty, with pounding heart and queasy stomach. As if I’ve experienced a close call in the car.

  “You’re having a nervous breakdown,” pronounces Amy firmly. “The thing to do is push yourself. Little by little, you’ll get over it. Besides, you should listen to her, about getting out, I mean. You’re going to have to do it sometime, to start your routine.”

  “I know,” I mumble, feeling scolded and humble, but not resentful. After all, it’s Amy, and Amy believes in action and direction. Amy believes in taking charge. In exercise.