The Widow’s Husband Read online

  “How long since your Millie, well, how long have you been alone?”

  “Let’s see, it’s going on twenty-five years. Once thought I’d get hitched again, but that wouldn’t a worked out.” He fixes me with a look, holds his fork aloft. “When you had the best, you can’t replace it. Better to be by yourself. ’Course for a woman … maybe it’s different, maybe a woman’s got to reconnect. For various reasons. Not you, on account of you had Emmett lookin’ out for you, but some women—”

  “Yes, some women,” I echo vaguely. But I’m not thinking of Emmett savaging our stock plan. Instead, it’s my lovely dream of getting the perfect job. I was hired by the dime store to sit in the window and create animals out of balloons. I inflated them with a canister of helium, then twisted, tied, and tweaked them into whimsical shapes. The audience on the sidewalk outside laughed and clapped, celebrating my creations that were rapidly filling up the display area. Their particular favorite was a hot pink poodle, complete with beribboned ears. It bumped along the ceiling of my cell-like work area, generating huge approval from the crowd. This was happening not in the new variety store in the mall, but in the old dime store downtown. The entrance was a bay-like space between angled sheets of glass, and the floor was paved with tiny hexagonal tiles. For some reason, these details had been important in my dream; and the whole of it so real I awoke with a sentence on my lips, about to say something important, illuminating, cheerful. I also awoke feeling rested, as if I’d escaped to a lovely place for a vacation, for a good long time.

  Mr. Purdy smiles. “You’re doing fine, look younger every day,” he says, paying tribute to Miss Clairol. “You just hang in there. You want me to look at that weed eater? It don’t seem to want to run right.”

  My first impulse is to deny the problem, reassure him that everything’s fine, but instead, I say, “Would you, please? And I wanted to ask you about changing the filter in the furnace. Do you know someone I can call to check out the air-conditioning? I hate to spend the money, but it’s going to start getting hot.”

  As ill luck would have it, Amy pulls in to pick me up just as Mr. Purdy is crossing the side yard from my house to his. She’s early for our outing. Outing. I’ve begun to think of the trip as an airing. As you take out an old mattress or rug, give it some air. I need an airing, a dusting, something to shake out the cobwebs.

  Amy flounces in and says, “What’s he doing over here? That old guy, look at his posture, why doesn’t he stand up straight!”

  “Amy, he’s seventy-eight years old! Mr. Purdy’s going to feed the cat while we’re gone. I was showing him the routine, giving him a key. While he was here, he shot some graphite into this mechanism on the door—remember how it stuck? See how easy it opens now? He’s been a help to me, Amy.” I hate the high wheedling tone in my voice, as if I have to get Amy’s approval before establishing friends of my own. As if I need a replacement for the role of censurer. “Here, take this out for me,” I say, changing the subject, handing over a suitcase, but Amy is staring.

  “Mo … om!” Two syllables. “Look at you!” She laughs, rudely, I think. “Your hair!”

  “So?”

  More laughing. “I can’t believe you did it!” Now a note of disapproval.

  “You bought the stuff, it was your idea to color it.” By now Amy and I are hooking up seatbelts.

  “I know, I encouraged you. I just didn’t … I thought … it looks good, really. Not quite right, not quite your real color, but never mind. Nobody else would know. I’ll get used to it. Okay, there’s the map, see where we’re going? Out to 101, then north to this cut-off, then west. Not far.” She adds bitterly, “Not far enough!” and hits the steering wheel with her fist. But I notice a good sign: her nails are painted a fiery red.

  “Oh, honey, it’s Larry, isn’t it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she snaps, but then does. She describes how Larry came in smirking just as she was leaving, reeking of the other woman’s perfume, a jasmine scent. He was wearing a shirt Amy’d given him, flaunting their former relationship (Amy thinks), taunting her. They’d immediately begun sparring over a division of the electronics they’d bought together, mainly a large screen TV and an “entertainment center” crammed with equipment, including CD and video collections. He wanted to trade the equipment for the collections, but Amy said what good would that be, having all those CDs and videos and no way to play them. They were at an impasse.

  (An impasse solved by me giving Amy replacements for her relinquished TV—my little set from the bedroom—and my second-line VCR and a CD player. I tell myself I don’t mind, I don’t need two of those things. After all, now there’s just me.)

  Larry also wanted to trade a computer that neither of them knew how to run, that they were still making payments on, for the vacuum cleaner. His new girlfriend didn’t have a vacuum, and her place was a sty. That was Larry’s term, a sty.

  “No argument over … over the rest of the stuff?” I’m at a loss. What else did they have? Their furniture was second-hand, shabby—a dirty orange velveteen sofa and two chairs, battered tables, a mattress on the floor. They kept their clothes, which are mostly the kind that you don’t hang up—except Larry’s bartending outfits—in cardboard storage boxes.

  “Yeah, sure, I get the junk,” Amy mutters.

  I’m on the verge of saying something stupid about Amy going back to school to get a real job, one that pays well, but I stop in time. That won’t go down well with her. I admit that I view her career at the Fitness Center as temporary, something she’ll outgrow, as you outgrow Santa Claus, lollipops, Saturday matinees. In the beginning, Amy said it was a “fun job”; she could help her fatties lose weight, and keep herself in shape at the same time. Amy dismissed Emmett’s outright criticism, his negative opinion that she’d get bored, fed up with the gymnasium atmosphere, reeking of hot foam rubber, sweat, and deodorant.

  However, Emmett had to give Amy her due. She’d always been independent, emotionally secure, self-reliant. She could probably support herself, Emmett admitted, although he’d been forced to pay off her new car when she floundered in debt. Well, he’d told her not to buy a new car and dump the old VW we’d given her—he was quick to condemn the new car. He also told her to stay away from the Mustang—although he was a Ford man and disliked it less than her first choice of a Toyota Celica. “That piece of shit can’t get out of its own way,” he said. “It just looks sporty, but it’s got no power package, it’s all show and no go.”

  He told her not to buy on credit, to avoid payment situations, to keep the VW. So what, he said, if it didn’t always run right, didn’t have much “soul”—at least it was paid for. Emmett felt that if he were involved financially, he had the right to give advice. For her part, Amy felt that she had not only the right, she had the duty to turn a deaf ear. I watched the two of them, I tried to stay out of it. I’d never presumed so far as to give either of them any suggestions.

  Emmett also paid Amy’s and Larry’s rent when Larry’s hours were cut. Larry works days part-time as assistant manager at Circuit City, where he gets electronic stuff on employees’ discount, and nights in a trendy pub downtown. The kind of place done in brass and brick décor, trailing plants, menus of beers on chalkboards, as if they’re dinner entrees. Emmett had snorted at the prices, but he’d never been a beer drinker, said it was a waste of money.

  I begin to wonder how much Emmett spent subsidizing Amy, then I suffer an unpleasant thought: without Larry, Amy might have to move back home again. It took both of them to pay the rent. Well, everyone’s kids suffer fits and starts, advances and retreats. Still, the prospect alarms me. Those hot rollers in the bathroom, the smell of nail polish, dripping lingerie in the shower. I almost wish that Emmett were here now, because he’d take care of this for me; he’d tell her no way, Jose.

  To cover my self-inflicted panic, I babble about trees again. “Look, eucalyptus, I know what those are. You can smell them, sort of like camphor. I read some
where that Jack London—he lived in the area—Jack London imported fifty or sixty thousand eucalyptus, timber for railroad ties. Only it didn’t work. The wood split too easily, or maybe not easily enough—I forget. He got them from Australia. Remember you dad’s joke about pandas, they come from Australia, don’t they?”

  “China,” says Amy.

  “Anyway, this panda walks into a café, orders lunch, then pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter. One bystander says to another, ‘Why’d he do that?’ The other one says, ‘I don’t know. Let’s look up panda in the dictionary, see what it tells us.’ So they do, and they find the answer.”

  “I remember this one. Panda: eats shoots and leaves. Dad was so corny.” Amy is impatient, exasperated, but she smiles.

  We turn off 101 onto a series of progressively smaller roads, drive past a tiny settlement consisting of a derelict gas station, a deli-grocery and a bakery around which stand ranks of gleaming bicycles. Then pastures populated with sleek horses, cattle, llamas, even emus. Here and there a few redwoods, I think they’re redwoods—needle-bearing trees that disappear into the sky above Amy’s Mustang. Curves in the road become sharper, the sections in full sun are awash with lazy dust motes, and an earthy aroma. A warm soil and sawdust aroma, and I sigh with pleasure.

  We arrive at the town. On our right an old-fashioned inn, such as you might find in a foreign country, Spain or Italy, commands a greensward. It’s made of stone, with a deep porch behind rock pillars. Across the front stretches a brick walkway punctuated with redwood benches. On them sit a few people eating ice cream, reading the paper. On a grassy verge, couples walk hand-in-hand, kids play. A woman with long straight gray hair parted down the middle, wearing a patchwork vest and leather sandals, reads a paperback. A man hooked up to a headset keeps time to his private music. Helmeted bicyclists, in bright Spandex, weave through what little traffic there is, and bicycles, the kind that cost as much as Amy’s car, are racked in front of an espresso stand. In the Inn’s parking lot are Jaguars, Saabs, Mercedes, and a Lexus that gleams like pewter. “Amy,” I breathe, alarmed. “This is too expensive!”

  This damned new awareness of money! Of adding and subtracting prices in my head! Emmett always dealt with the finances. When he was alive I assumed that bills were paid, tips figured, credit cards dealt with. If he were alive, I wouldn’t have to worry. On the other hand, if he were alive, I wouldn’t be here. Because toward the end, he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere.

  If that were true, why had we gone to Mexico? It hadn’t been my idea; it’d been his. Then in Cabo San Lucas, Emmett hadn’t perked up from his funk. He hadn’t enjoyed himself. He’d been bored, and out of sorts. Then why—

  Why! Why! I’m sick of it. The bottom line is that I am here, and Emmett is not. I feel a wave of peace, of happiness, a weight lifting. Something that was there before is not there now, an ache, a longing, a sadness. For now, that’s enough.

  Amy turns left, away from the Inn. “No, we’re not staying there. Our reservation’s this way.”

  We drive a hundred yards or so on a gravel road that winds across an area of clipped grass—the whole place has the careful atmosphere of a park. She pulls up to a rustic cabin, one of a set. “This’s where we’re staying, see? Close to the restaurant over there in the Inn, so we can park and walk. No driving for a couple of days, unless we want to go to the coast, look at the ocean. Or there are trails everywhere. Or we can do nothing. Is this okay?”

  I feel almost dizzy. Everything seems clear, easy, my life is as plain as a palm print. I can see from this new perspective, from this distance away from home, that I’ve been absorbed with putting one foot in front of the other, of getting from one room, one meal, one chore to another, to another, to another. And I’ve been calling it a day, a week, a life. But here, under these trees, in this light and air, I’ll rediscover my purpose—if there is one. Surely there must be one.

  “Is this okay!” I exclaim. “Is it okay! Do you suppose I could get work here? I know real estate’s been bought up by Bay Area folks. But I could rent, I could live on minimum wage. I could cook, clean—”

  Amy gives a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, sure, you’d like that, all right.”

  She opens the cabin door—it has been left unlocked against our arrival, the key inside on the table. The interior: just what I’d hoped for. Knotty pine, a low ceiling, a rock fireplace, braided rugs on wide board floors. One big room, with alcoves for kitchen and bath. A pair of double beds stretches out peacefully under quilted spreads. Small paned windows curtained with home-sewn red plaid material. A nest, a lair, a safe harbor. Yes, this will do, this is perfect. I inhale the room’s atmosphere, I breathe in a history of wood fires, coffee, damp wool; and something earthy, perhaps mildew, something that ought not to be good, but is. A musty smell, a good smell, as if from an older time when life was simple.

  While Amy inspects the bathroom—she’s delighted that the toilet tank is overhead, operated by a pull chain—I wander around the main room, bewitched. My low-grade panic is at bay; the quiet in the room seems to hum, as if a cat purrs nearby. The real sounds are distant laughter, crunch of tires on gravel, creak of the old wood floor under my tread. And my stomach growling. I am hungry. How long since I’ve really looked forward to food?

  To feel hunger, to feel anything—what a gift I’ve been given, and how I’ve wasted it.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Six dollars for a bowl of soup!” Amy and I are in the lobby of the Inn, reading a chalkboard of lunch specials.

  “Shh, not so loud. But it’s great soup, and comes with this cunning little loaf of bread, and herbed butter.”

  It’s Amy’s kind of menu, mostly vegetarian, except for a couple of hamburger items, a BLT—and a veal dish; I wince inwardly.

  I stride into the dining room behind her, relishing but also disapproving of the stares she elicits from men diners. Amy does look spectacular in a tartish sort of way. She wears a tight yellow tee shirt, cropped so short it reveals a sliver of her toned belly, and black stretch pants that fit her like a second skin. Her long hair is in fetching disarray, piled up in a knot secured by a gadget like a bear trap. Wispy little tendrils frame her face and neck. It’s a look carefully designed to convey a message—I’d watched her engineer it, tweaking at it—and that message is something about a roll in the hay. As if she’d just enjoyed one, and is willing to go for another.

  She’s wearing her silver feather earrings, like Maggie Quinn’s at the funeral supper. But since then, I’ve noticed the feather design is common, and popular—every store sells, every woman wears, silver feather earrings.

  Every woman, that is, but me. I’ve never had my ears pierced, obeying my mother’s rule that one does not put holes in, or designs on, one’s body. However, I’ve begun to consider pierced ears. I found, in a secondhand store where I was looking for chairs to match my table, a pair of earrings I want. They’re also silver dangles, but pinecones, not feathers. Bits of glitter, like diamond chips, are tucked in the folds of the cones, so they’re a tad on the flashy side, but I want them anyway (or maybe I want them because they’re flashy). Would Emmett have approved of them? I don’t know. Can no longer attest to his taste, what sort of style he’d favored. One thing for sure, though: he would have known what kind of tree the cones are from.

  Amy heads toward a small table in the back, out in the open, not next to the wall. A good vantage point, she says, to “scope out the room.” She flounces down, rattles her bracelets on the arms of an oak captain’s chair. The room is rustic, suggests a hunting lodge. It’s dominated by a huge stone fireplace, now full of what look like tumbleweeds; and a chandelier made of animal horns, with real candles, now unlit. I frown up at it, and Amy says flatly, “Elk lose their racks in autumn, Mother, they fall off. Don’t worry about it.” Then she adds, “At least there are no heads,” and laughs in an edgy way I don’t like. She’s making fun of me, but she wouldn’t like it either, if there were heads.

  I pull my eye
s away, then say, “A real tablecloth, Amy, that means we have to leave a twenty percent tip.”

  “Not if it’s got a piece of glass over it. Dad told me that once.”

  Yeah, Emmett would have known a thing like that. The waiter arrives to take our order, and he stares at Amy. I clear my throat, then order quiche. Amy is having fish. She tries to be a vegetarian. Her rationale for eating fish: “At least they had a chance to be free, weren’t raised in a crate, their feet never touching the ground.” At this point, Emmett, ignoring logic, reason, the parameters of the argument, would have retorted, “Fish don’t have feet.” Amy would have replied, “No, and they don’t need bicycles, either,” and they’d be off, at each other, the dinner table not quite World War II, but not détente, either.

  Amy whispers, “Mom, don’t look now, but that guy over there, the one with the silver buzz cut, he’s checking you out.”

  “Not me, Amy. You.”

  “No, Mom, definitely it’s you. When you get a chance, glance that way … I’ll signal you … okay, now, real casual like, he’s looking down, take a peek.”

  “It’s you he’s looking at, Amy. If he’s looking at all.”

  “You should get up and go to the restroom, walk by his table and make eye contact. Smile a little.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. See, here comes his wife.” We watch a woman shaped like a cello march toward the lone man. However, she passes him by, heads to the restroom. “Well, so that’s not his wife. You can bet he’s got one somewhere who wouldn’t appreciate strange women ogling him.”

  “No, he looks single to me. He’s on the prowl. He’s done to the nines, the Silver Fox, very spiffy. Nice red shirt, I love that cranberry shade. It’s his color, perfect on him. Now, that guy over there, he’s married.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “He’s preoccupied, spaced out, almost harried. He’s letting himself go, he’s getting a potbelly. His shirt is rumpled, and it looks hard-finished, rayon or acrylic. His pants are too short. Sitting down, he shows too much bare leg, and trousers shouldn’t be that green color, ever. His shoes are weird, off a bargain rack at Kmart or something. If he were single, he’d be more careful of details.” Amy gestures at another man. “Now, he’s a good bet. He’s loose.”