Ruth was the most beautiful one among our group of college friends. The tall, willowy dance student with perfect posture and delicate hands, long fingers storming through moody Chopin preludes on the piano. She was so focused and independent that she seemed aloof, which drove guys crazy with longing. Jocks, nerds, professors—every variety of guy was in love with her. In awe of her perfect cheekbones, high grades, and killer volleyball serve that always sent the other team ducking and stumbling. She could have any guy she wanted. So I don’t understand why she has this loser boyfriend in Ashland: Tony. He reminds me of a ferret—thin and slithery, with a pointed nose and two protruding front teeth. I swear I’ve seen him on
Cops.
I figured it would be just Ruth, me, and her daughter, Simone, in Ashland, both Ruth and me single, the way it was when we were roommates the first year out of school and we’d stay up late painting each other’s hair with henna (hers “honey,” mine “mahogany”). But now this Tony sleeps over at her house every night.
Ruth, Simone, Tony, and I eat breakfast together every morning. Simone spoons cereal into her mouth, looking at Tony, looking at her mother, Cheerios falling in her lap and on the floor. She’s only four, but you can see the thought bubble over her blond little head:
Who is this guy? Where’s my father?
Ruth’s dentist husband, Mark, took off with his hygienist shortly after Simone was born. For the most part Tony ignores Simone, whom he begrudgingly calls the Munchkin.
“Where are you from, Tony?” I ask as we sit down to the buckwheat pancakes I’ve fixed.
“Albuquerque.”
Ha! They are always filming
Cops
in Albuquerque. I’m about to ask what brought him to Ashland when Ruth shoots me a look that says,
That’s enough, Barbara Walters.
She pushes away from the table, leaving her pancakes unfinished.
“Gotta run,” she says. She manages the admissions office at the university in town and she’s always there by eight, dressed in her sensible wool kilt and sweater and clogs, her long blond hair pulled into a pretty French braid. She kisses Simone, then Tony gives her a long, wet kiss. I look away, feeling embarrassed, peripheral.
While I clear the dishes and clean up the kitchen, Simone plays in the living room and Tony watches TV. Whatever his job is, it doesn’t start until after noon. I’ve volunteered to watch Simone, whose baby-sitter is sick with bronchitis. As I rinse the plates, I try to think of something to fix for supper. I want to contribute by cooking, but it’s a bit of a challenge since Ruth is a healthful vegetarian and I’ve been on the Godiva plan. In the next room Simone plays with her jack-in-the-box—an annoying toy that plays “Pop Goes the Weasel” until you’d like to pop the thing with a hammer.
“The
end
!” Tony snaps. I hear him grab the gadget out of Simone’s little hands and hurl it into her toy box. She shrieks and cries. I poke my head out of the kitchen in time to catch Tony standing over her.
“Crybaby,” he hisses. He steps away from her when he sees me. I bolt over and gather Simone into my arms. She digs her little red Keds into my thighs, wraps her sticky fingers around my neck, and buries her head in my shoulder.
“Do you think Simone minds that Tony sleeps over every night?” I ask Ruth later that night as we sit down to dinner. Tony’s still at work; he usually doesn’t show up until after Simone’s in bed.
“We have a consistent schedule,” Ruth says crisply, taking a mouthful of tofu casserole and chewing vigorously.
“Sorry to be nosy.” I pour her more wine and pile salad onto her plate. “But is he really your type?”
Ruth stops chewing and narrows her eyes. “I guess I don’t
have
a type.”
I shrug. “It’s just that he’s not very nice to Simone.”
Ruth puts down her fork and folds her arms across her chest. “Yeah, he’s far from perfect.” She pushes her plate away.
“I’m not saying you need someone who’s perfect. But you and Simone need someone who’s good for you.”
“Good for me? Mark was supposedly
good
for me.”
Mark was Ruth’s first real boyfriend. In college, he won her over essentially by wearing her down—filling her dorm room with roses, singing to her from under her window. A month after graduation they were married. Now, Ruth seems worn down by everything, raw and brittle. It’s mind-boggling why Mark took off with his hygienist, Missy, who’s the opposite of Ruth—a silly laugh that bubbles over without cause and a childish collection of stuffed animals in the back window of her car.
“I don’t need you critiquing my love life,” Ruth says.
“It’s just that I’m
sure
you’re the most eligible woman in Ashland, and—”
“Right. With a four-year-old!” Ruth clears her plate. I’m a little hurt as she shoves her casserole down the disposal.
She’s hardly aged since school—beautiful smooth skin, two rosy knobs for cheeks, thick blond hair the color of corn. We nicknamed her Dove for that perfect skin. Tony or no Tony, I want to start the evening over. When you live far away from your best friend, all you remember are the General Foods International Coffee ad moments. You forget that you ever had the capacity to fight.
“You’re a snob,” Ruth continues. “Just because Tony didn’t go to college—”
“It’s not about him going to college. It’s about you and Simone having someone you deserve.”
“It doesn’t matter what I deserve. MIT graduates aren’t strolling the streets of Ashland, Soph.” She faces the sink with her back toward me, scrubbing her plate. “I would rather be with Tony than be alone. I know you find that despicable, but it’s the truth.” She sighs, sets the plate in the drainer, and drops her hands at her sides.
“I’m not saying you have to date Einstein. But what about Simone? He yelled at her.” My hands tremble as I clear my plate. I haven’t been this forceful in a long time. “Tell me you disagree with me. Tell me that Tony’s good for you and Simone.”
In the next room, a group of syrupy children on a
Barney
video sing a song about Mother Goose, and Simone giggles.
Ruth turns toward me and brushes tears from her cheeks.
“Yeah. He doesn’t seem crazy about kids.” She pours her wine down the drain.
“That’s all I’m saying.”
“All right. Point
taken.
”
I sleep in the guest room at the back of Ruth’s old Victorian until I can find a rental of my own. The room is spinsterish, perfect for a widow, with its prim lace curtains and yellowing doilies on the dresser, the faint smells of mothballs and stale rose sachets. The arthritic wood floor that creaks under my bare feet. It’s as unsexy a dwelling as you could possibly find. Which is good: Nothing about the place reminds me of Ethan. It’s hard to miss the absence of his weight in the single bed that droops like a hammock. And I can’t really imagine him showering in the old claw-foot tub in the adjoining bathroom.
Still, I dream about Ethan every night. He’s always sick in the dreams, and it seems as though I’m not dreaming about my husband, I’m dreaming about cancer. While Ethan was dying I hid my fear, worrying that it would only make him feel worse. You constantly try to be optimistic when someone’s sick, to look on the bright side, even if the bright side is only their ability to swallow a spoonful of applesauce or walk to the bathroom. After they’re gone, you’re left with endless fodder for nightmares.
In one dream Ethan’s driving us across the country.
“You don’t want to live in Oregon,” he says. “It rains all the time.”
There’s something wet, warm, and sticky on the seat. I look down and see that it’s blood, as slick and dark as motor oil.
Some nights I can hear Ruth and Tony on the other side of the bedroom wall: low voices, giggles, the steady bump of the headboard. Intimacy. Then there’s the swell of TV show music and laughter. The top ten reasons why you should get a job and find your own place.
I stash my boxes in a storage facility out on I-5, figuring I won’t need them until I find my own apartment or house. But after a week at Ruth’s I begin to miss Ethan’s belongings. I buy an X-Acto knife and drive out to the locker and cut through the layers of cardboard and packing tape back into his world—closing my eyes and inhaling the smells of his musty old textbooks and leather belts and shoes.
Sitting on the cold cement floor, I flip through Ethan’s high school yearbooks, running my fingers over the spidery ballpoint inscriptions from his classmates. One of the smartest kids in his class, he obviously helped a lot of pretty girls with their homework.
Dear Ethan,
wrote a girl with feathery blond hair and lots of mascara,
thanks for helping me with my trig!
Someone named Emily wearing a puka shell choker scribbled,
Hey, Ethan, thanks for showing me how to work the Bunsen burner.
I have the urge to look these women up and see if they remember my husband. I’m afraid the fickle world will forget him entirely.
I rescue Ethan’s flannel shirts, sweatpants, and baseball caps, packing them into grocery bags to carry back to Ruth’s house. Finally, I find his ski sweater. As I pull it on over my head, the tightly knit wool is like armor against the damp Oregon air.
“I have sweaters you can borrow,” Ruth says, eyeing Ethan’s boxy sweater skeptically when I get back to her house. I haven’t had it cleaned since he died, and there’s a long teardrop-shaped tea stain in the middle of the yellow stripe.
“I like this one,” I tell her.
It’s an easy walk from Ruth’s house to downtown Ashland, and the town is much prettier than the strip mall landscape of Silicon Valley. The Siskiyou Mountains scoop around East Main Street, shrouded with capes of cottony clouds and sprinkled with sugary snow. Colored flags for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival top the lampposts lining the street.
I discover Kit Whittaker, a realtor who handles rentals in town, in an upstairs office across from the Chamber of Commerce. Kit’s friendly and handsome—olive skin, green eyes flecked with gold, and thick, curly brown hair. But I find filling out his rental application form daunting. I don’t have enough of a life to answer the questions. No employer or set annual income. For references I put down my father, which seems childish. Then there’s the worst part:
Person to contact in case of emergency.
I pause, then fill in Ruth’s name. Next to
Relationship,
I write
friend,
hating the absence in my life of the word
husband.
I look up at Kit, who sits behind his big oak desk, peering thoughtfully through wire-rimmed glasses at paperwork. There’s a picture on his desk of a pretty woman with long black braids standing beside two little girls.
“Twins?” I ask him. He smiles and nods, and I have the urge to write
his
name down on the form in case of emergency. I imagine him stooping over the gurney in the emergency room, green eyes glittering, and whispering,
Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.
Kit picks me up at Ruth’s house the next morning, bringing me a cup of coffee with milk and sugar and a fresh pile of rental listings. The real estate market is slow in Ashland in the winter, so he has time to point out landmarks and actor hangouts and fill me in on town gossip—the rivalry between bed-and-breakfasts and the story of a terrible flood that ruined much of East Main Street one winter. The coffee is hot and sweet, and Kit’s car door is heavy and a little difficult to close. I feel safe inside as he snaps the locks shut.
After two days of touring rentals with Kit, I’ve got a crush on his whole life. His corduroys and cable-knit sweaters, his appreciation for wood floors and French doors, his conscientiousness for always calling his wife when he’s running late, his two little girls, even his car: the sweet cowboy smell of new leather seats.
I imagine that Kit becomes a widower, his wife and girls suddenly gone somehow. Poor Kit! Then I’m bringing dinner to his house—maybe Bolognese sauce—and then, don’t ask how, we wind up making love on his kitchen floor. I imagine Pergo cold and hard against my back. No, this is plain crazy! I would never have an affair! Besides, Kit’s married. I’m married.
Was
married. Still
love
Ethan. It’s just that Kit has this calm, thoughtful expression and broad shoulders punctuated by a narrow waist. A waist you could curl your arms around while skinny-dipping in the ocean. That’s all I want. Not to have an affair. To go skinny-dipping in the ocean, just once, with my realtor. Loneliness. This must be loneliness talking. As much as I hated my job, suddenly I wish I were trapped back in the office, the fluorescent lights and bad coffee sucking the vitality out of me. Now that I’m regaining my energy, I’m not sure I like how it makes me feel: alive again, with all the weaknesses of the living. Realtor lust! Surely this isn’t a stage of grief.
It’s not just Kit. Suddenly I’m noticing guys everywhere. Even Tony’s denim-clad rear is something to consider, despite his weaselly face. For months, men have been genderless blurs, nondistinct shapes orbiting around me, occasionally moving close enough to give off heat or the soft brush of a cotton sleeve.
I feel guilty because I don’t miss just my husband. I miss
men.
The truth is, I developed little crushes on other men while Ethan was alive. The attentive guy at the nursery who knew the names of all the salvias (unlike Ethan, who couldn’t tell a plastic palm from a blooming rosebush). The cracks of the nursery guy’s palms were caked with soil. Once, as he loaded gallon containers of lantana into my trunk, I imagined helping him wash his hands. That night I
dreamed
about the hands—that his fingers swept up under my shirt, calluses tickling my belly. Then there was nuzzling and necking, and I awoke next to Ethan, gasping for air.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asked tenderly.
“I’m
fine
!” I shouted, clutching the duvet under my chin and telling myself:
You did
not
just have a lusty dream about that twenty-something nursery guy. You’re
married.
Kit must think I’m a little off, because now when he picks me up in the morning I don’t want to look at him. Shyness envelops me, and small talk sticks in the back of my throat.