My Husband's Sweethearts (12 page)

In this moment, I realize what I've done. I've gathered
the wolves. I'm sending them in to seize Artie, one by one.
Does he deserve this? I look at Spring(bird?). Yes. He
does. Both of these woman are self-possessed in their own
ways. Artie wronged them. They deserved better. I deserved
better. I wonder if I'm just sending in these women
to do my own dirty work. And why don't I want to face
Artie? Am I afraid I'd lose heart, cave in? But what will
this fear cost me? It's possible this parade of sweethearts is
as much for my sake as it is for his. Maybe I set this up, on
some level, in hopes that the hurt of seeing all these
women will make it easier to let him go.

"Are you okay?" the blonde asks.

"That's going to be a bruise," the brunette says.

"I'm fine," I say. "Thank you for coming. Help yourselves
to some coffee."

I'm not sure how to exit gracefully. I'm not sure what
I'm supposed to do next. But I don't have to ponder too
long. I'm saved by a knock at the door. I've got a jump on
Eleanor. I excuse myself, rushing to the door, but stop just
shy of putting my hand on the knob. I feel nauseated because
I don't want to meet another sweetheart, another
woman hauling in her
People
magazine and her own secret
version of Artie into my living room.

But I have to answer the door. I'm standing here.
What else can I do?

I open it, staring at first at the stoop, willing myself to
look up.

Then I hear a man's voice. "I made it," the voice says.
And there stands John Bessom. He's running a hand
through his blond hair, patting it down on top, and then
he tucks in the back of his shirt, and suddenly he does
seem incredibly young, boyishly nervous.

"You made it," I say, filled with relief.

He glances around. "I know," he says, leaning forward.
"I just mentioned that."

I'm disoriented. His shirt is so blue. The day is cool,
the yard so green. There's a whole world out here.

"Are you going to invite me in?" he asks.

"No," I say.

And he's taken aback for a moment.

"Artie's schedule is filled." I look back over my shoulder.
"Thanks again," I say to the brunette, "for coming."
And then to the blond Ms. Melanowski, I say, "See you
later,
Springbird.
"

Her head snaps toward me with the shocked expression
of recognition—an unmistakable gesture of:
How did
you know that?

I turn to John. "Let's get out of here."

John is driving. He has the window down.
The car is gusty with warm air. I told him to
head into downtown Philly, so we're zipping
along Route 30. Almost everything I have to say about
Artie can be found downtown—his childhood on the
Southside, the hotel where he first worked as a bellhop, U
Penn, where he likes to say he went to school (he confessed
to me early on that he really only took a few night classes
there—one in art history, another in public speaking), and
the places where we met and had our first date. I'm enjoying
the ride, sitting back with my head on the headrest.

"I should start talking, shouldn't I?" I say. "I mean,
I'm a tour guide. I should be saying,
On your left, you'll
see . . . and on your right, keep an eye out for . . .
Well,
there are a lot of things I don't know about Artie—that's
what I realize now." I think about the leggy brunette's
smirk, the blonde's nervous nodding.

"Stick to what you know, then."

"Okay. We met at a wake, actually, in an Irish bar
called, cleverly enough, The Irish Pub."

"Really?" John says. "That's a little morbid."

"A man named O'Connor had died. Artie had known
him from when he was a kid, and I knew his daughter
from work. The wake was beautiful. People were laughing
and crying and drinking and giving grand speeches. Artie
told a story, a great story about the man losing his daughter's
bunny somehow and how he and Artie spent one
drunken afternoon and evening trying to catch it. Artie
was so full of zing. Turn here.

"I was the one who approached him. I was loaded. I
gave him my card. I told him that I wanted to book him
for my wake. I said, 'You give a great eulogy.' He said he
was expensive, but he'd be willing to give me a deal. Turn
here. It should be right around the corner."

John pulls up across the street from the bar. It's typical,
humble. It doesn't have a plaque out front that reads
Lucy and Artie First Met Here.

"Do you want to go in?" John asks.

"It's an Irish bar. No. You get the picture."

"I've always thought that eulogies come too late,"
John says. "People should get eulogies while they're still
alive. It should be mandatory."

I think about this a minute. "No casket. No lilies . . ."

"No embalming fluid," he adds.

"No funeral director with an assembly-line delivery."

"That can all come after. But everyone should hear the
eulogies. Just the good stuff."

"You're right, I guess."

"Did they catch it?" John asks.

"Catch what?"

"The bunny."

"Oh, the bunny. Yes, they caught the bunny, and they
were both so relieved and drunk that they cried. Both of
them together, two grown men and this little white bunny,
they just cried."

"I like that story." John pulls up to a red light. He
looks in both directions. "Where to?"

Where to?

My first date with Artie: the heart.

*

The Walk-through Heart is exactly the way I remember
it— two stories tall, enormous, red and purple plastic,
etched with major arteries and veins—except bigger, fatter.
Has it swelled up? We stand in line with kids and their
parents. The kids are shouting, muffled inside the heart,
but loud and bleating once out of it. They pull on their
parents' hands, usually circling back to the line to start
over.

"Artie had been to the Franklin Institute on a field trip
when he was a kid, but the heart was shut down—undergoing
surgery, their teacher said."

"Has the heart been here that long?"

"Since the fifties. It was supposed to be a temporary
exhibit and was first made of, like, papier-mâché. But it
was so popular that they kept remodeling it. That's when
Artie's class came through, during some remodeling. They
could see it, but couldn't go inside. That's why he brought
me here on our first date." I remember he told me the
story right here, waiting in this line. The kids were loud,
but he stood right behind me, whispering into my ear.
"Artie knew his parents wouldn't bring him back when it
was opened. He knew this would be his only shot, so he
let his class go on without him, lingered, tying his shoe,
and then darted into the roped-off area."

"Did he go inside the heart?"

"No. I asked that, too. He was too scared. I think he
just wanted to touch it, to see if it was beating. He placed
his hands on it, and then pressed his ear up to it, like a
doctor. But it wasn't a real heart."

It's our turn to step inside. We walk up the narrow
stairs that form the main artery leading to the heart. We
hear sound effects. It's beating, pounding blood. The
twisting corridors are dark. Artie kissed me in here—our
first kiss. I don't tell John this detail. I think of Artie
touching my cheek, turning my face toward him. The
pause. The kiss. But even this memory is filled with doubt
now. Did he really break away from his childhood field
trip to see if the heart was real? And if it did happen, how
many women did Artie seduce in this heart, maybe even in
the same chamber? Has my little Springbird Melanowski
been here? I realize this is precisely the kind of thing I
have to tell John. He doesn't know the truth about Artie,
and I'm here to present it. But I can't really. Not here.
Not now.

A herd of particularly rowdy kids all wearing the same
blue school shirts are pushing their way around me in the
right ventricle. The space is too small, too confined, for all
these people. I'm ready to go. Why linger? I look back,
but John isn't there. I push forward then, following the
flow through the chambers and then, finally, out.

I look around again, but John's nowhere to be seen.
I'm a little worried. I wonder if I've lost Artie's son. I remind
myself he's a grown man—not a five-year-old.

I get back in the line, which moves swiftly this time.
And when I get inside I say his name, quietly at first, but
then a little louder. Again, I find myself at the spot where
Artie first kissed me—the place I always thought of as
our
first kiss. How many women have I shared this with? How
is it that once someone is dishonest, everything about him
is shadowed in doubt? Is the heart beating louder? Or is
that my own heart, pounding in my ears?

"John!" I shout. "John Bessom!" I wish I knew his
middle name. If I did, I'd use the whole damn thing.

I steady myself with one hand on the plastic interior
and make my way against the flow of traffic, exiting one
chamber and entering another. I'm a little breathless,
standing there, searching the crowd, and then I find him
and I'm flooded with relief or joy. It surprises me how
strong it is. It's as if I thought for a moment that he was
really lost, that we'd never see each other again.

He's down on one knee inside the heart next to a kid
who's crying, his face glossed in snot. It's a little boy in a
white shirt, dotted with mustard. "She'll come back,"
John's saying. "She said to just stay put if you got lost. So
let's just stay put. This is a very big heart. It must have
belonged to a very big person. Don't you think?" He
looks so sure of himself with this messy lost kid, and
there's something about a person who can relate to kids,
isn't there? Something about a person who can see a kid
as a human being, who can, almost immediately, remember
what it was like to live in that world. His voice
doesn't have any of that fake singsong sweetness. He's
just talking, and tending to the boy, distracting him so he
calms down. The boy is staring up at the heart. He's
stopped crying for a moment. And I realize this is what I
want for myself—to be found, to be tended to. Maybe
it's what we all want. Is there much more we can ask for?

"John Bessom," I say, as if I'm saying his name for the
first time.

He looks up. "We got lost," he says. "But, see," he says
to the kid, "I got found by my person. You'll get found by
yours."

And then the kid shouts, "Mommy!" and, for a moment,
I think he's throwing himself at me. I even brace
myself, but then he shoots past. A woman with her hair
pulled back in a mussed ponytail catches him. He hugs
her thighs. "Okay," she's saying, "it's okay now. It's okay."

John looks up at me. I can tell by his expression that
my face has come apart in some way. He's a little worried,
but then he smiles and reaches out his hand. "You want to
hold my hand this time so I don't get lost again?"

I want to say,
Yes, yes, that's all I want right now. That's
all.
I take his hand, and he leads me out of the heart.

*

John drops me at home, and I walk into an impromptu
debriefing. Elspa, Eleanor, and my mother are all there,
eating baked pita and brie, drinking wine from some
glasses that Artie and I got for our wedding. Bogie has
been left at home, I'm guessing.

"Three were divorcées, two widows, one single,"
Eleanor says, consulting more charts. "There was a very
emotional attorney, a soft-spoken ex-stripper who's learning
sign language, a top-heavy Russian teacher . . ."

"Does Artie speak Russian?" Elspa asks me, always
looking for Artie's upside. "I didn't know that!"

I manage, "Um, I once heard him say the word
cigarietta,
which he claimed was Russian . . ."

"The Russian was a smoker," my mother says disapprovingly,
and not without a hint of fear that—if I could
pinpoint it—would lead me to believe she regrets having
let a Communist into my house. "She spent most of the
time on the front stoop, stubbing out cigarettes in a
planter."

"Was he wearing that smoking jacket through all of
this?" I ask.

"Smoking jacket?" Eleanor says. "No. Just his pajamas."

"Does Artie have a smoking jacket?" my mother asks,
a little impressed.

"What's a smoking jacket?" Elspa says.

"It's a jacket you smoke in," my mother tries to explain.

"Well, I liked the stripper," Elspa says. "She's doing a
residency in a deaf school to see if she likes it."

"And the crier. I liked her very much," my mother
says. "She stayed for some tea."

"Spring Melanowski?" I ask.

"Melanowski?" Eleanor says, checking the notes on
her clipboard. "Strange woman. She left before it was her
turn. She mumbled something about missing another appointment."

"Really?" I say. "Good." I want to know about Artie's
women and I don't. I feel like I did as a child watching a
horror flick, covering my eyes, but looking through the
slats of my fingers. Don't I want to know which ones he
dumped, which ones dumped him? Don't I want to know
details—the why and the how and the what went wrong?
No. Not really. I thought I'd have more stomach for it,
but I don't. All the women make me feel a little queasy. I
want them to be less attractive than I am, more fragile and
bitter, so I can afford the luxury of disdain, but I know,
too, that this is a club that I belong to—Artie's women—
so I don't want them to be too unattractive, fragile, and
bitter.

"I think we shouldn't get too involved with the
individuals.
It's a cumulative effect we're after here," Eleanor
says. "Let's keep our eyes on the prize. The long haul.
What's really important . . ."

"Wait," I say. "Just wait a second. What about Artie?
What about our prize? Does he seem repentant?"

"He's sleeping," Elspa says.

"Does he look like . . . Did he mention . . ." I'm not
sure what kind of question I'm trying to ask.

"Look," Eleanor says. "This is day one. These women—
even the ones who leave cigarettes in the planters, maybe
especially them—they will all have an effect. I have faith in
jilted women, in general."

My mother is concerned about me. Her face has
bunched up, and it's one of those strange moments when
you see yourself in your mother's face. It just passes
through quickly, a ghost of yourself within someone else.
"Lucy, tell us, how was your day with Artie's son?"

"I've scheduled him to meet with Artie tomorrow
morning for half an hour," Eleanor reports, perfunctorally.

"That will make Artie happy," Elspa says, making up
for the detachment in Eleanor's voice.

"Elspa has done some work on her parents," Eleanor
reports to me.

"It's not easy," Elspa says.

"Tomorrow, you and Lucy will go over it," my mother
says to Elspa, having forgotten her question about John
Bessom. "She'll get it all just right."

"The appointments begin with Artie's son in the a.m.
and then there's a woman driving in from Bethesda . . ."
Eleanor forges on.

The conversation has revved up again, and I'm tired.
There are too many voices. I mumble that I'm heading to
bed and walk out of the room.

My mother follows me though, catching me in the
hall. "Are you okay?" she asks. "Is it too much? If it's too
much, we can call everything off."

"All of this . . . life is too much," I say. "Artie's dying is
too much. Can you call that off?"

She smiles sadly and shakes her head.

"I'm going upstairs to watch Artie breathe," I say. I
want to know that his lungs are still pushing air.

She nods and watches me walk up the stairs.

*

Artie's room still smells faintly of cologne. I sit in an armchair,
pull my knees to my chest. I don't know who else
has taken a seat here today or what those women had to
say to him or what he had to say to them. I could shove
him awake and tell him that I ran into Springbird, and
grill him about the brunette, but I decide not to think
about that now.

His face is relaxed. He's breathing softly. The smoking
jacket is nowhere in sight. I think about one of his notes to
me—one of the ones shoved in my bedside table. I don't
remember which number it was. It read:
the way your soft
lips sometimes touch and puff while you sleep.
I don't remember
watching Artie sleep when we were together, but
he'd watched me. He has a depth of attention that comes
with his love that is keen and sharp. Does he really love
me? Could he love me and still have cheated on me? At
the very least, I feel like he owes me more love to make up
for his betrayal. He owes me.