My Husband's Sweethearts (10 page)

"What were you like?" Elspa asks.

"I wasn't so closed off."

"I think that you should try to find a way to forgive
Artie," Elspa says.

"I think that would be good for your soul," my mother
adds.

"To hell with forgiveness," Eleanor says.

"I guess I'll have to figure it all out," I say. "Well, I
guess my plan will have to be figuring out my plan."

As I'm getting ready to leave the house
for my first mission, there's a real buzz.
Eleanor has been thumbing through
Artie's address book, looking at all the red Xed names.
She's set up shop at the breakfast nook and is now talking
to someone on her cell phone. My mother is on the land
line, already in negotiation with three funeral homes.
She's started writing out a list of questions for Artie. Elspa
is pacing, notebook in hand, on the patio. I've given her
the assignment of jotting notes on the inner workings of
her parents' psyches. Who are her parents? What motivates
them? What makes them tick? Their politics, religion,
failures.

Artie is in the bedroom above. Is he aware of the
buzz? He must be. He has to feel the energy, the new stirring
of air. But he doesn't know what's coming. He
doesn't know what Eleanor has in store.

Lindsay's calls have come to punctuate the days like
hearing the same pop song over and over on the radio. I
never know when they might happen, but when they do, I
know I've been expecting them. On the way to Bessom's
Bedding Boutique, she rings me. I feel myself floating
away from the concerns of work that used to consume me.
I'm shocked at how easily I talk Lindsay through things.
"Yeah, that will take care of itself," I hear myself saying.
"Don't worry so much about that one." I sound like a
stranger—my voice even sounds detached, as if I'm not
speaking at all; it's really someone behind me, or just off
to the side. Work used to consume me, but now, faced
with Artie dying, it's a little scary, actually, how little it all
fazes me.

"How are you doing?" she asks.

"I have a plan," I say.

"You make great plans," she says. "I miss your plans."

"Well, I don't know about this one. It's a little wobbly.
It deals with a lot of variables—like the human heart."

"Oh," she says. "Well. The human heart! What can
you do?"

"Exactly."

After Lindsay and I finish up, I try to reach John on the
way in. No one has been answering the phone. I call three
times from the highway. The ringer lapses over to the
machine—John's voice saying, "You've reached Bessom's
Bedding Boutique. We are temporarily closed. We hope to
resume store hours in the near future to serve your needs.
Please leave a message."

The first time I hang up, wondering what's gone
wrong. I remember the banker type talking to him in front
of the shop when Elspa and I came for the mattress and
wonder if John's business has gone belly-up. The second
time, I listen to his voice carefully. It sounds a little
rougher than I remember, a little more worn down—and
then I hang up. The third time, I'm sure I hear a catch in
his throat halfway through. The catch is moving, in a way,
even though I'm not sure what it signifies, and I leave a
message. "I'd like to come by, to talk, about Artie . . . I
hope you don't mind. It's just that . . . Well, hopefully I'll
talk to you in person." I leave my phone number and then
I pause a moment, wondering just how dithering I must
sound. "I'm going to say good-bye now before I say anything
else." But I don't say good-bye. I just hang up,
which is what I meant.

The sign on the door of Bessom's Bedding Boutique
reads Closed, but when I push, the door swings open so
quickly that I feel like I've been pulled inside. There is no
bell. Is it turned off? Broken? The beds, all decked out in
their comforters and layers of pillows, look big, fluffy,
bright.

This is part of the plan—something good has to come of
Artie's impending death, something good for each of these
people who've been thrown together. But now that I'm
standing here among the beds and staring at the office door
in the back of the showroom, I feel completely unsure.

The door is open just a crack. As I walk up to it, I can
hear someone inside—a rustling of papers. I feel awkward,
and I should. I'm trespassing. I raise my hand to
knock but I'm afraid I'll startle him. It dawns on me that I
should have at least waited for him to return my call. He
needs more warning.

I pull out my cell phone and select the number. His
phone starts to ring. He ignores it. The message kicks in—
his voice echoing in the small office—the words: ". . . Temporarily
closed . . . Please leave a message."

"It's me, Lucy." I can hear my own voice now from
inside his office. "I'm here. I mean, I am really right here."
I turn away from the door then back again. "I mean I'm
on the other side of your office door. I didn't want to scare
you."

There's a moment of silence as, I guess, this announcement
settles in.

"What are you, the big bad wolf? I've had bigger badder
wolves at my door," he calls out jokingly. "What do
you want?"

I talk halfway into the phone and halfway into the
crack in the door. "To talk."

"You can put the phone down," he says.

I flip it shut.

"And you can open the door."

I do. The door creaks. He looks up from his desk,
smiling a little, that crooked grin—and a gentleness
around his eyes. His shirt collar is unbuttoned and askew,
revealing one of his collarbones.

"You can come in," he says. I step inside. I've given up
on the hope of little green plastic army men. John is
Artie's son, but he's no kid. But what I'm not prepared for
is the fact that it's obvious he lives here. There's a
minifridge humming in the corner, a fruit bowl with two
green apples and a bruised banana in the middle of the
paper piles on his desk, and towels stacked on the filing
cabinet. The closet door is open, revealing shirts and
pants on hangers, and a tidy grid of shoes below.

"How are you doing?" he asks.

"I've been better." I try to sound light, but I don't pull
it off. "I'm sorry about how things turned out the other
night. That's not the way I had it planned."

"No, I'm sorry," he says. "I mean, he's your husband
and I can't imagine how you must feel, knowing . . ."

I shake my head. "It's okay. I'm not good with the
whole death thing. I suppose I'll have a bunch of sympathy
cards with lilies on them at home soon enough."
There's a lull. He's not sure how to proceed. Neither am I.
"I'm here on business, in a way." I look around the small
office. "How is business?"

"Not exactly going swimmingly." The phone starts
to ring.

"It isn't me, I swear," I say.

He picks up the cordless receiver, without answering,
and looks at the incoming caller's name. He hits a talk
button once and then again, hanging up. "Wolves at the
door," he says. His eyes look tired, his face a little slack.
He shrugs a little, a bounce in his collarbone. "That's an
accurate description of how business is going, actually.
Why do you ask?"

I don't quite know how to put all of this. I fiddle with
my phone, opening it, closing it. I talk about money at
work all the time. It's never this personally messy. It's
never attached to the weight of my own emotions. I decide
to fake it, at least for a moment, to revert to my professional
self. I square my shoulders. "Artie has a will, and
you're in it."

This takes him by surprise. He's intrigued. He flips
through a small stack of papers without really looking at
them. He leans forward. He's about to say something. He
even raises his finger. But then he shakes his head. He
pushes the papers around on his desk again. "I don't want
any of his money."

"I don't know that it's up to you."

"Who is it up to then?"

I was wondering when we'd get to this part. So soon?
I can no longer hold the professional pose of Lucy-as-auditor.

I walk to a small chair and sit down. In fact, I
slump. I glance up at him and then away. "Me. Artie wants
me to decide what portion of his money will go to you."

"You?"

There's an awkward silence. "It wasn't my choice."

He stands up, as if overcome with a sudden restlessness.
He's taller than I remember him, taller and leaner,
more handsome, too, and I'd thought he was pretty damn
handsome before. "Look, you've heard me say this before
and I'll say it again . . ."

"I know—there's nothing between you and Artie
now." I'm tired of this take. "Maybe you think of yourself
as some immaculate conception, but your mother doesn't
have any problems taking Artie's money."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"As far as Artie knows, he has never stopped supporting
you. Your mother's been cashing monthly checks all
your life."

"She has?" He's stunned. Angry, too. He stares at the
papers on his desk—overdue invoices, debt collection notices.
He leans on them with both of his fists clenched.
And then he starts to laugh. He shakes his head.

"What's so funny?"

"Rita Bessom," he says. "I've been giving her monthly
checks, too. That's my mother!"

"Her checks from Artie are ending," I tell him.
"That's up to me, too."

"It's about time," he says, and then he sits down again.
"Listen, I don't want any part of it. Let's just move on. I, for
one, have a lot going on here. I'm in over my head and . . ."

I'm here for a reason and it really doesn't have anything
to do with Rita Bessom, or even that much about
money. "Don't you want to know something about your
father? Aren't you curious?"

He rubs his forehead. "I understand where you're
coming from, but it's not exactly like that . . ."

I want him to love some part of Artie Shoreman, and I
want him to know some of Artie's failings, too. I want him
to understand his father. "I didn't get much of a chance
with my father," I say. "He left when I was young and then
he died before I was old enough to have a real relationship
with him. I have stories about him—good and bad—and
they help. What I'm saying is that this is important. I don't
want you to miss out on getting to know Artie, even if just
a little bit. This is your only shot at that. If you don't do it,
you might end up regretting it."

He stares at me like I'm some exotic bird that's come
into his office to squawk. I can tell he isn't quite sure what
to say. He tilts his head to one side. We stare at each other
for a moment—a long moment. It makes me blush, but I
refuse to glance away.

"Look," he says, and I know that he's going to try to
go back to his old stance.

I interrupt. "Let me get to the point. I want to make
you a proposition."

"You're propositioning me? It's not every day a
woman walks in to proposition me."

I ignore the comment. "Artie wants to leave you some
money. He left the amount up to me. You can use that
money to help your business or give it to blind children or
strippers. I don't care. All I'm asking is that, in return, you
meet the man and try to get to know him a little. I want
you to hear his stories—from his own mouth—and, just
so you don't get a lopsided impression, I'll be giving my
version, too. A short guided tour of his life."

"A guided tour of Artie Shoreman's life?"

"Yes."

"Complete with a PowerPoint presentation? And you
would be the guide?" he asks.

"It may not be state of the art, but I'll be the guide. I'll
do my best." I cross my arms and then uncross them. I
can't remember the last time I've felt this unnerved.

The phone starts to ring again. He ignores it.

"And then you'll decide how much money to give
me?" He squints at me, then leans back in his chair. "Are
you bribing me?"

I let my eyes wander around the room—the ceiling,
the microwave that I missed earlier, the green carpeting.
That's when I notice he's barefoot. The tan feet, the frayed
cuffs of his jeans—I feel like I'm gazing at something intimate.
I look up at him, and only barely recall the question.
Am I bribing him to know his father? "Yes," I tell him. "If
that's what you want to call it."

He smiles again and I'm staring at him—looking for
some remnant of Artie. I can only see the thinnest fraction
of some vague relation. But there's some other beauty
there—something more serious, more sincere. "Fair
enough. I'll do it. I'm in," he says. "Resorting to bribery.
You're quite a mobster."

Without thinking, the words fly out of my mouth:
"Next time I might have to rough you up." And as soon as
I say the words, they're on reverb in my head:
Next time I
might have to rough you up?
I think about trying to take
them back, stammering out some:
I didn't mean that the
way it sounded
—but I decide that will only make things
worse. I want to tell him that I'm not attracted to him, that
I would never say anything like this to Artie's son. What
kind of a creep would say something like that?

John is clearly enjoying this. He's trying to rein in a
smile. "I'll keep that in mind," he says.

I simply back out of the office, shut the door, and jog
to the exit. One chorus going through my head:
Next time
I might have to rough you up. Next time I might have to
rough you up
?

When I get home, it's evening. Dusk is
collecting at the edges of the yard.
A few ragged fireflies are blinking and
batting up into the trees.

I find Eleanor and my mother sitting at the kitchen
table, drinking coffee. Eleanor proudly shows me her
chart—I'm not the only one with organizational compulsions.
The chart is a plan for the next three days, organized
into half-hour time slots with built-in breaks for
meals and rest. Half of the time slots are already filled in
with women's names.

"How did you get them to commit?" I ask, pulling up
a chair.

"Well, it wasn't that hard. I just modified your method.
I called sober before midnight. Oh, and I appealed to their
vanity."

"Fair enough," I say. "My method may have had some
flaws."

"Any luck with Bessom?" my mother asks.

I nod. I'm still jangled from the meeting. It dawned on
me during the car ride home that in addition to saying I'd
rough him up, I also used the word
proposition,
which in
retrospect, seems much worse. I'm not sure whether I'm
overthinking my responses because I'm nervous about
messing up Artie's chance to meet his son or because I
find myself so inexplicably attracted to his un-Artie looks,
his way of looking at me, talking to me. "He's in," I say. "I
think he needs the money."

"Well, I left time slots open for his visits as well,"
Eleanor says, pointing to the chart. (Did I mention it's
color-coded?) Bessom's visits are marked in dark blue.

"Where's Elspa?" I ask.

"She's lying down in the guest room," Eleanor says.
"Writing about her parents, and, well, it's harder to do
than she thought."

This worries me. I hope that Elspa can do it, that she
won't give up on this. It's too important.

"Elspa isn't as lucky as you are in the parental department,"
my mother says, without any irony, and pats my
hand.

I ignore this little self-congratulatory moment. She
shouldn't be encouraged.

"And Artie?" Eleanor says excitedly, with one fist held
up near her heart. "When are we going to inform him
of our plan? I've filled in time slots starting tomorrow
morning."

I put both hands on the table and push myself up.
"How about now?" Why not now? I already have nervous
energy to burn, and there's something inside me that
wants to punish Artie. Is that becoming a habitual desire?
I'm aware of how very much I want to see his expression
when he hears the plan.

"Now?" my mother says.

"Sounds good to me," Eleanor says, gripping her
chart.

"I still would like to state, for the record, that I don't
think this is a good idea," my mother says.

"There is no record," I say. "It's just us, making this up
as we go."

"But still," my mother says. "Artie, well, poor Artie . . ."

"He asked for this, don't forget. He told me to call up
his old sweethearts. This was, in part, his idea!"

"You know how I feel about men," my mother says. "I
just feel like they are . . ."

"Delicate creatures?" I ask.

"I prefer the term
weak,
" Eleanor says. "Delicate implies
that it's our responsibility to handle them with care."

"Boys will be boys," my mother says, shaking her
head. "There's no changing them."

"This is the problem," I say. "I mean, once we started
excusing their behavior with that phrase 'boys will be
boys,' men had no reason to change, to grow, to become
something new. Women have continued to evolve, because
we've had to. Elasticity is the female's strongest evolutionary
trait—it's why we survive. There was never anything
expected of men once someone invented the phrase 'boys
will be boys.' They could all just be themselves—and their
repertoires shrank to burps and groping."

"And lying and cheating," Eleanor adds.

My mother takes this in. "You're saying that this is a
step for mankind?"

I think about that. "Yes," I say, "for mankind."

And then a voice pipes up behind me. "For Artie,
too," Elspa says, walking into the kitchen. "Digging up
your past is hard, but it's important."

I'm relieved to see Elspa. She's been working hard.
She hasn't given up. She should be with us for this. "Okay,
then," I say.

*

The four of us stand in a loose semicircle around Artie's
bed. He's asleep, but even in sleep his breath sounds a little
labored.

"Let him rest," my mother says, holding Bogie and
nervously patting his head.

"He's tired," I say. It surprises me how much he's
aged. "Let's go. We can do this tomorrow."

We start to head out the door, but then Artie's eyes
blink open and move from one of us to the next. He lifts
himself to his elbows. "Have I died and gone to heaven or
do you all always watch over me in my sleep?"

"He's unbearably cocky," Eleanor mutters.

"Ah, well, this is not heaven evidently—unless you're
crashing," he says to Eleanor. "I thought you were leaving."

"I was asked to stay, brought in on a special assignment."

"Oh, really," he says. "To murder me? Don't go to the
trouble. Didn't you hear? I'm dying."

"No," Eleanor says, "there's no real murder plot. This
is more of a send-off of sorts."

He turns to me. "Lucy, what's she talking about?"

"We have a plan. It's the one you wanted from the beginning
and Eleanor is overseeing it," I tell him, with
some strange false cheer in my voice.

"Just for the record, Artie," my mother says, rubbing
Bogie's ears, "I was not in favor of anything of this
sort. I—"

But I glare at her sharply and she zips it quick.

"We think you need to sort through your past," Elspa
says. "We think that it could be cleansing."

"Cleansing?" Artie repeats.

"Your sweethearts," I explain. "Eleanor has set up visits
with them. It turns out that people take things more seriously
when they aren't called up by a drunk woman in
the middle of the night."

"Really?" Artie says, sitting up in bed, thinking all this
over. I wonder if this is all he has to say. No squirming? He
isn't anxious or unnerved by the idea. He seems . . .
pleased with himself. In fact, he's overly pleased with himself.
I'm more than a little disgusted. "Well, that's nice of
them. I mean, they don't have to, but I suppose, well, I
suppose they want to."

"You're actually looking forward to this," I say, a bit
surprised.

Artie recovers. "No, no, I'm not looking forward.
That's not right. It's just, well . . . it
is
flattering . . ."

Eleanor is fuming. "Perfect then. We'll start tomorrow."

"Who's coming tomorrow?" Artie asks, still way too
eager, a boyish grin on his face.

"You see," my mother says, pointing at Artie like he's
evidence on display in a court of law. "I told you. Old
dog. New tricks. He can't be changed! Men are delicate
creatures!"

"Old dog?" Artie says, insulted. He looks to Bogie for
support. "Don't listen to her," he says. "She's just intimidated
by our masculinity."

"You know what I mean," my mother says. "It's an
expression."

"I'm going home," Eleanor says to the rest of us.

"Don't go," Elspa says.

"
I'm
the old dog?" Artie says, jokingly.

"You'd better be nice," my mother hisses at Artie.
"I'm in charge of your funeral. I may just decide to bury
you Liberace-style. Imagine, arriving in heaven in a purple
velvet suit!"

"Or like poor Bogie there, oh so sad Marquis de Sade
of the dog world? In an elegant jockstrap? Don't be
cruel," Artie says. "It's unbecoming."

"Stay with us, Eleanor," my mother says, glaring at
Artie now. "Artie may never change. But it may be worthwhile
to try to make him."

"Please stay, Eleanor," Elspa says.

But Eleanor doesn't relent. "Good night."

"C'mon, give me a hint," Artie says. "Who's coming?"

"Good night," Eleanor says, limp-marching to the
door. Her limp doesn't seem like a weakness, but a force
that propels her forward, as if her injured leg gives her
more momentum. "We'll see if you're still all smiles when
this is over, Artie Shoreman. We shall see." And she slams
the door.

"She always was uptight like that," Artie says.

I'm fuming now, too, however. This was supposed to
feel good. This was supposed to help me even the score.
What if these women are coming to adore him? What if
they aren't going to teach him any lessons? What then? I
realize all at once that this entire plan is built on assumptions
and that I could be completely wrong. "Your son is
coming, too," I say to Artie. "But I had to bribe him.
You'll have to explain yourself to him." I say this with a
hateful tone.

This part of the plan
does
startle Artie—the news and
maybe my tone as well. He looks nervous suddenly.
"John?"

"I found his name in your book, in the B's, just like
you said. Bessom."

"I'll have to take a bath in the morning. This will require
a shave, too." He's feeling the hairs on his neck, talking
to himself more than to the three of us. "Are you
sure?" he asks, and his face goes soft. His eyes are wet,
shimmering, and for the first time in a long time, he reminds
me of the man I first fell in love with—love struck,
anxious, almost shy—and this makes me ache for him. I
miss that uncomplicated version of Artie with a sharp desperation
that catches me off guard.

"John Bessom," he says, "after all of these years.
My son."