My Husband's Sweethearts (3 page)

"Let's not start in with that so fast, okay?" His voice is
tired. He is dying, after all. The exhaustion comes on
quick. It's a quiet moment. I don't have anything else to
say. And then he adds, "My heart's turned on me. I
thought you'd appreciate the irony of me having a bad
heart."

I don't say anything. My damn eyes well up with tears.
I let them tour the bedroom like it's a gift shop. As I pick
up curios and perfume bottles off the dresser, I inspect
them absentmindedly. They're mine but they feel like
someone else's things, someone else's life.

"You used to think I was funny," he says.

"You used to be funny."

"You should laugh at a dying man's jokes. It's only
polite."

"I'm not interested in polite," I say.

"What are you interested in?"

What was I interested in? I look at the shoes I'm wearing.
I paid too much for them. I can feel them fading out
of fashion in this very instant. I am here, in these shoes,
standing in my bedroom because my mother told me to
come home. That's not all this is. I'm not simply a dutiful
daughter who doesn't know what to do and so does what
she's told. But I am a daughter—my father's daughter, the
father who left my mother and me for another woman. I
swore I'd never repeat my mother's mistakes, but hadn't
I? Artie, the older man. Artie, the cheat. How could I
have known he would cheat on me? Was I drawn to him
subconsciously because I knew that he would? Did my
subconscious dupe me? Did it force me to marry my
father? Am I just playing out some twisted Freudian
scene—now I'm required to play out my father's death?
Required to tend to Artie?

"Do you have a round-the-clock nurse?" I ask.

"It makes me feel better to have someone else in the
house. They don't stay all night. Marie is here now and
she'll give one last call—like at a bar. Insurance doesn't
cover it all, but now that you're here . . ."

"We'll keep the nurse," I tell him. "I'll be sleeping in
the guest bedroom downstairs."

"You could play nurse," he says with this playfully sad
expression. Irrepressible. My heart feels full, like there is a
tide within me, and I steady myself with one hand on my
bureau. This is Artie, the man I love, in spite of reason.
I'm here because I love him—arrogant, cheating, busted-hearted
Artie.

I can't quite look at him. I manage to focus on the bedside
table. It's overrun with pill bottles. Artie is dying. I'm
going to be the one to hand him over to the mortician, to
death. Alone. Regardless of those other women in their
other lives, I'm his wife, and this strikes me, suddenly, as
hugely unfair.

"I'd like to know where they all are now, Artie. Where
are they?"

"Who?"

"Your other women. They were there for the good
times," I say. "Where are they now?" I sit down on a chair
next to the bed. I really look at Artie—our eyes meeting
for the first time. His blue eyes are watery, darker because
of it. "Am I supposed to go this alone?"

"
Are
you going to go this?" he asks.

"All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem right that I
should have to. I didn't say whether I was going to or not."

He reaches out and tries to touch my face.
No, no,
Artie Shoreman. Not so fast.
I jerk my head away, then
stand up and begin to pace the room. I can feel him watch
me pick up a photo of the two of us on the back of a ferryboat
to Martha's Vineyard. Suddenly I remember holding
hands as we toured the gingerbread-looking houses in
Oak Bluffs, gazing out over the cliffs at Gay Head, and
Artie praying for our future together, blessed by abundant
blubber, at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. I look
at his arms around me in the picture, and I remember that
exact moment—how warm he felt against me, how cold the
wind was on my arms, and the little, wizened old granny
who snapped the shot for us and smiled that old patronizing
smile. Now I know why she was smiling.
Just wait until
he cheats on you and then dies on you.
I turn to face Artie.
He's looking at the ceiling again.

"Call them," he says. "Call them up."

"Who?"

"My sweethearts. Call them up," he says. "You
shouldn't have to be alone in this."

"Your
sweethearts
?" I hate this little euphemism. "Are
you joking?" I ask, incredulous.

"No," he says. "I'm not joking. Maybe it'll be good for
everyone. Maybe one of them would actually be helpful."
He looks at me and smiles a little. "Maybe some of them
would hate me so you don't have to."

"And what should I say? This is Artie Shoreman's
wife? He's dying? Please call to schedule your turn at his
deathbed?"

"That's good. Say that. Maybe I can still go with my
old plan to win you back," he says.

"The one with the rented white horse in the desert?"

"I could still reform, do penance, make amends."
With some effort, he pushes himself up onto his elbow
and roots out an address book from a drawer in his side
table. He hands it to me. "This book is filled with people I
should make amends with." As I reach for it, he holds on
to it for a moment, tightly, the way people sometimes stall
for a bit just before handing over their shoddy accounting
records for an audit. He looks worn—maybe my presence
has weakened him. His face is completely serious now,
pained, the lines deeper than before I left, his hair maybe
a little grayer. I feel a deep ache in my chest. "I'd like to
see my son, too," he says.

"You don't have a son," I remind him.

He lets go of the book so that it slips into my hands.
"I've been meaning to tell you. I had him when I was just
a kid—twenty. His mother and I never got married. He's
grown now. His last name is Bessom. He's in the B's,"
he says.

I'm suddenly aware of heat in the room. It's rising up
inside me. I know I couldn't murder Artie Shoreman on
his deathbed (though surely wives have killed husbands on
deathbeds before), but I wouldn't mind beating a couple
of weeks out of him after this delicious little bombshell.
Couldn't he have told me in flower bundle #34?
I love you
so much, you made me forget to tell you that I have a child
with another woman.
I pick up the picture of us on
Martha's Vineyard and, before I'm aware of the impulse, I
throw it across the room. A corner of the frame catches on
the wall and makes a solid dent. The glass shatters, littering
the floor. I look at my empty hands.

I've never been the type to throw things. Artie gapes at
me, completely surprised.

"I know that Bessom is in the B's, Artie. Jesus, you're
an ass. A son, you tell me now after all of this time? That's
lovely!"

I storm out of the room and almost knock over Artie's
hot little nurse, who has been listening at the door. I can't
tell who's more stunned, me or her.

"You're fired," I say. "And tell the agency only male
nurses from now on. Got it? Ugly male nurses. The
burlier and hairier the better."

Marie left quickly, apologetically, and in
a few hours a new nurse came to do
Artie's late-night last call. The nurse is
a man—though not as burly and hairy as I'd hoped. But
he is a nurse—older and quiet—with one of those modern
Toddish names that begins with the letter
T.

He walks by the kitchen doorway and looks at me. He
circles back the way he came. I eat a few crackers, then he
appears again. He stalls in the doorway. "There's a woman
in your yard. I think she's weeding. In the dark," he says,
sounding more surprised by the dark than by the weeding.

I'm not surprised. I stand up and walk to the front
door. And there is, in fact, a nicely dressed older woman
pulling out some weeds at the base of our shrubbery. I
turn on the outdoor light.

The woman stands up, holding the weeds, roots and
all. It is, of course, my mother, wearing one of her velour
sweat suits—royal blue, zippered only halfway up to show
off some cleavage. "Lucy, dear! How are you? You look
awful. Have you started smoking again?"

"I've never been a smoker. That's you," I tell my mother.

"I confuse you and me, sometimes. We're so similar."

"No we aren't."

"I've brought dinner," she says, placing the bundle of
roots in a tidy pile on the ground.

She walks back to her car and lifts up a casserole dish
in a canvas bag with the words
Hurray for Potluck
stitched
onto it.

"Like that, for example. I don't even own a canvas bag,
much less one that says Hurray for goddamn Potluck!"

"Don't cuss," she says, wagging her head. "Some
women think it's sexy, but it's not."

*

I stare out the back window at the swimming pool while
my mother, Joan, buzzes around the kitchen. She arranges
plates on the kitchen island. She flutters around fixing the
dishes, getting silverware, dishing up food. Did I mention
that she's brought her dog, Bogie? Bogie is a well-endowed
dachshund. He is so well endowed that her
fourth husband called him the five-legged dog. The fifth
leg is, however, a sad appendage. First of all, neutered and
ball-less, it's been rendered pretty useless. Second of all,
because of the dog's swayed back and four stumped legs,
it had started to drag a bit on the ground—not so bad in
shag carpeting but difficult when it came to, say, gravel.
This was a problem. Eventually, the thing might get calloused
from such dragging, and is that any way to live?
Really? My mother decided it was
not
any way to live, that
it was embarrassing, in fact, so a few years back she fashioned
some penis supports for dear aged Bogie. A
doggie
support lederhosen,
she called it. But Artie and I were
quick to correct her: it's a doggie jockstrap. So that the
most important protective gear stays in place, the doggie
jockstrap is an elaborate harness system reaching around
Bogie's hind legs, over his front shoulders and snapping
midback. This would be fine, I suppose, if my mother
didn't have such a fashion flair for doggie jockstraps—a
hidden talent, really. She uses wide ribbon and bows, always
color coordinated with holidays—orange in fall, red
and green in winter, robin's egg blue in spring . . . As a result,
Bogie always looks like he's dressed for some upcoming
event. He's a handsome dog, nearly show-dog quality
to begin with, as my mother is quick to point out.

And so here is Bogie, waddling around my mother's
feet in his dapper jockstrap. He always holds his chin
high, but can't ever shake the watery, worried look in his
eyes that makes his cockiness seem like a fragile mask for
deep insecurities. Of course he's insecure, and who can
blame him, really?

"Bogie is looking good these days," I tell her.

"He's showing his age," she says. "Aren't we all?" She
bends down and lifts up one of his small paws, bobbing it
at me in a wave. "Hello, Lucy!" she says in this high fake
voice that's supposed to be Bogie's. "I wanted to bring
him along because he's missed you!" she says.

"And I've missed him," I say. Bogie, really, rarely enters
my mind, although I have to admit that when certain
subjects come up in conversation—like pervie stuff
bought for a bachelorette party—I can't help but think of
Bogie, whom Artie calls the oh-so-sad Marquis de Sade of
the dog world.

My mother pours us both a stiff drink. She lifts it. "To
Artie! Dear, dear Artie! May he pull through!" she chirps.

"He isn't going to pull through. You said so yourself."

"Yes, but that information doesn't make a good toast.
Toasts are positive."

"And why are we eating like he's already dead?" I ask.

My mother doesn't answer.

The
Hurray for Potluck
bag has reminded me of a running
joke that Artie and I used to have. My mother went
through a phase of cross-stitching every sappy saying
known to man—of the
If you love something, set it free
variety—onto pillows, blankets, shirts, wall-hangings, pot
holders, and trivets. Artie started pointing out some of my
mother's philosophies that she'd neglected to cross-stitch
for all of posterity—for example:
You should marry your
first husband for his genes; the second for his money; the
third (or fourth or so) for love.
"Where's the pillow with
that sentiment?" Artie would ask. "Where's the pillow
that says:
Never let thine ass give in to gravity
?" Artie loves
my mother and, even though she was dead set against our
marriage, she loves him, too.

My mother and I both take our swigs and set our
glasses down. I pick at my food.

"I know he's hurt you but you have to forgive him,"
she says. "He's just like that. Put on the earth that way."

"I don't think he was an adulterous baby," I say.

"Don't be so literal. It's unbecoming. You know what
I mean."

"I'm not sure I do know what you mean," I say.

"I mean, you know I was never crazy about your marrying
Artie. I told you he'd probably make you a widow—
I had no idea how young. But listen to me. I forgave my
husband and it made me the bigger person."

"Which husband?"

"Your father, of course." She pauses while she flips
through her mental marital filing cabinet. "And husband
number three."

"Neither of those men deserved to be forgiven." After
my father left my mother, he moved to the West Coast and
downgraded his role in our lives to one card on my birthday
and one on Christmas with twenty bucks in it. He
died of an aneurism, mowing his lawn.

Bogie's tags jingle as he chews one of his paws.

"But I was the bigger person," my mother says. "And
that's what allows me to fall asleep at night."

"I thought you took drugs to fall asleep at night."

"
What helps me fall asleep at night
—that's an expression,
dear. You really shouldn't be so literal all the time.
It's bad for you."

I'm about to argue with her—because I think that
there should be a measure of truth spoken here—but
there's a knock at the door. I look at my mother. She looks
at me. We aren't expecting anyone else.

The male nurse walks briskly into the kitchen. "That'll
be the doctor. He said he'd stop by."

"The doctor?" my mother says enthusiastically, touching
her hair.

"Please don't use this as a shopping opportunity to
pick out husband number six."

"Don't be gauche."

The nurse walks to the front door, but stops shy of answering
it. As I follow him down the hallway, I can hear
my mother rustling and primping along after me.

"How's the Buddhist?" I ask, wondering if that relationship
has flatlined. My mother is unfailingly loyal to
her husbands and beaux, but once it's over, it's over. She'd
never miss, for example, the opportunity to flirt with a
handsome orderly wheeling husband number nineteen to
the morgue or the dashing minister who presided over the
graveside service of number twenty-one.

"He's been reincarnated," she replies with a certain
amount of disinterest.

"Into someone else's boyfriend?"

She continues to primp, which means yes.

"So soon?"

"His karma will catch up with him."

I open the door.

The doctor is my mother's age— gray-haired, professionally
concerned.

"Come on in," I say.

"So glad you're here!" My mother can't contain her
glee. He's her hero. I want to remind her that Artie's still
dying, but decide not to get in the way of a beautiful thing.

The doctor sees Bogie, who's motoring toward him to
smell his shoes. I can tell he's about to ask about the jockstrap,
but something in him stops him short—a good bedside
manner? A hidden fear that the problem is medically
related—why add the chronic medical conditions of a
dachshund to his laundry list?

I usher the doctor upstairs, then my mother and I
watch from the doorway as he examines Artie, asking
questions, answering in hushed tones.

I hear the chime of ice on crystal and see my mother
polishing off her vodka.

"Don't you want to be the bigger person here?" she
asks.

"I don't know what that entails," I say.

"For better or for worse. You took a vow.
In sickness
and in health,
you said."

"He has a son."

"Does he? Artie? Was he married before? Was this . . .
out of wedlock
?"

A few years ago my mother asked me to help her update
her vocabulary so she wouldn't seem old. She said:
Just tell me when I say something that's dated. Promise?

"People don't really use the phrase
out of wedlock
anymore,"
I tell her.

"Oh," she says, "I knew that. I'm just so . . . scandalized
by it."

I don't tell her that people are rarely scandalized
either. We, as a culture, have gotten too used to scandal to
be scandalized. "It happened when Artie was twenty. He
and the woman never got married."

My mother regains her composure and reaches a hand
out to touch my arm. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry. How
old now?"

"He's a grown-up in his thirties. Artie wants to see him
before . . ."

"That's overly dramatic. Why didn't he tell you earlier?
I don't care for this kind of secrecy."

"I don't either," I say.

"See, we're so much alike." My mother raises her
glass, gobbles an ice cube, and smiles at me sadly, out of
half of her made-up face. "You'll get through all of this."

I'm not so convinced. I turn to walk back downstairs.
My mother follows, slurping at her ice cube. "A son. Oh,
no, I don't care for that at all."

*

Later, as the gray-haired doc is preparing to leave, my
mother has recovered from her disgust for men. She gazes
at him adoringly.

"I've finished up," he says, more like a coroner who's
just done the embalming than someone paid to bring people
back to health. My mother primps in the background,
riding out her vodka buzz.

"Do you think he's in a lot of pain?" I ask.

"The pain should be under control. The infection has
done its damage to his heart. He's weakening at a very
quick rate. It won't be long now."

"How long?"

"He could hold on for a week or two. A month at the
outside. I'm sorry."

I can feel blood rushing to my face. I want to slap the
doctor. A month at the outside? It sounds like he's placing
bets. And I don't want his sympathy either, not this kind
so easily handed over. I know I'm not being rational, that
the doctor is doing the best he can. I look at the floor and
then back at him and it seems, now that I'm taking a moment
to regard him, that he is genuinely sorry. I manage to
say thank you.

My mother isn't saying anything either. She's turned
her attention to me. I can feel her love for me; for the moment
anyway, I'm the sole focus of her worry.

The doctor lets himself out while we stand there. It's
too hard to fathom that Artie is upstairs now, breathing,
shoving his hair across his forehead the way he does—and
that soon he'll be gone.

I look at my mother.

"Oh, honey," she says.

"I'm still too angry to grieve." This isn't the life I expected
with Artie. And what was that life? I can't even remember
now. A good life. Some babies. Kids in the pool.
Birthday parties. Artie coaching Little League. He could
have managed a Little League team. Vacations at beaches.
Growing old together, wearing Bermuda shorts. Simple
things. I feel a surge of anger. Artie and I have been
robbed. The anger is flooded with helplessness.

"You can be angry," my mother says. "That's okay. The
grieving will come. There's plenty of time."

I look at her—this small woman zipped into her tight
velour sweat suit. She knows grief. "Okay," I say. That's all
I can manage right now. "Okay."