The First Husband (19 page)

He put his arm over his eyes, not saying anything. Not to me.

And I remembered the first night we spent together—or, rather, the morning after. How I had tried to pretend I was sleeping then too. How he hadn’t bought it. And how he’d gone ahead and done it: the one thing I most needed him to do. He moved toward me.

Maybe that made it my turn, this time.

Eight inches. Griffin was eight inches away. I’d traveled clear around the world twice. I’d been to Dubai three times; Hong Kong, four. I’d found the tiniest town in New Zealand, which takes three days to get to by boat, and, then, only if you know exactly where you are going.

I could get as far away as possible.

And still. I couldn’t figure out how to move eight lousy inches toward the person I needed most.

A
few days later, I did something I didn’t ever think I’d do. I drove all the way out to Amherst, to the library at the state university there, to write my final column for “Checking Out.” The column was focused on Las Vegas—a city that, despite its close proximity to Los Angeles, I had avoided writing about the entire duration of the time I worked on the column. I picked several things about Las Vegas, several things that would make it a trip worth embarking on—a place where you’d want to escape. They included a beautiful hike out in Red Rock Canyon (for “Open Your Eyes”), an underground Korean restaurant (“Find the Special Sauce”), a bizarrely interesting lake community (“Take the Wrong Exit), and a private downtown casino—far from the strip—that was open only after midnight, and housed Edward, the longest-running blackjack dealer in Vegas, who had been dealing blackjack hands for seventyone years (“Leave Your Comfort Zone”).

And then, for the final one (“Discover the One Thing You Can’t Find Anywhere Else”), I chose something personal, the first and only personal thing I’d really shared about myself in the entirety of writing my column. I wrote about the chapel, the small chapel with orange shutters right on the Las Vegas city border, where you could have a quiet wedding, quieter then the rest of Las Vegas would certainly allow. Where the in-house chaplain would give you sweet bouquets of white and green flowers, and raspberry-infused champagne. He’d also give you a moment alone. Before and after the service.

But I didn’t write down any of that. What I wrote was this:

I hit SEND, and left the library quickly. Or, I should say, I intended to leave the library quickly. But, on the way out, I saw it—on a pole right by the main door—a poster announcing MOVIE NIGHT in the Student Commons. And the movie they were showing.
Roman Holiday.

I can’t explain exactly why I went over to the commons to watch it, why I gave in to my need to get lost in its comfort. Maybe because I felt so emptied right then, so very tired. Maybe because I felt something else, something more precarious—that tricky mix of lost and found—which, I was learning, meant I was entering the final moment where both outcomes were equally possible.

I got to the commons halfway through the movie, in time to see Joe Bradley and Princess Ann sitting together by the incredible Spanish Steps, as he convinced her to step outside herself and do the things she’d always most wanted to do—take a disallowed adventure through Rome’s glorious streets and cafés; ride a motorcycle and go dancing; find the magical wall where wishes came true. To give in, if just once, to her own heart.

I got there in time to see Ann sitting in Bradley’s car at the end of their adventure, looking dazzling and alive and brutally resolved, saying good-bye to her one love.

I got there in time for all of that. And I stayed until the very end, enjoying every single second.

And, forty-eight hours later, Nick came to take me home.

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.

I
t was the morning of Griffin’s restaurant opening and I decided it all came down to this: I needed to remember. Before I opened my eyes, I needed to remember—no, I needed to
know
—five things about this room. Five was a good number. It clearly counted as several, counted as many. I needed to prove to myself that waking up in someone’s house, someone’s house who was apparently my husband, waking up in a bedroom I had committed to living my life in, I knew
many
things about it for certain. From memory. From some place deep inside myself. Then, maybe, this was my home. Then I could decide what to do next.

Number one. On the wall across from the bed, there was a black-and-white photograph of the Strand Theater in Keyport, New Jersey. A beautiful photograph of the theater’s side view, taking up most of the wall. It was a photograph Griffin’s mother had taken, which he’d blown up and framed himself. She had taken it when Griffin was a kid, during a summer the family had spent down on the New Jersey Shore. Griffin told me he remembered standing there, beside his mother, when she took it. He remembered because it was the first time all day she hadn’t insisted that he and Jesse stand in the frame too. She’d wanted the theater alone. I had seen a remarkably similar photograph of the theater in the window of an art gallery in Venice Beach. It had struck me, even then, but I hadn’t gone inside to look at it closely. So maybe I was remembering wrong. What I thought had struck me, what I thought I’d seen. What I thought was connecting Griffin and me, even before we were connected.

Number two. Large glass doors covered the left wall of the bedroom, two beautiful french doors that led out to a balcony. This was my favorite part of the room. My favorite part of the house. Those doors, that balcony. The house—its sweet Craftsman quality—felt built around it. Griffin put a wicker rocking chair out there, and I loved sitting in it and looking out, toward the backyard, the forest, the river beyond it. The two times I had.

Number three. There was a desk in the corner of the room, an iron desk—slanted, like an artist’s desk, but with a slender drawer. A drawer that had a gold knob, which I had assumed would open the drawer. I’d assumed wrong. When I turned the knob, it fell off. I’d hidden it in the sock drawer. That tiny gold knob. Hidden the minor crime. And I still hadn’t told Griffin. I still hadn’t gotten around to telling him that either.

Number four. The walls were painted a pale blue. Not an ocean blue, not a deep royal blue. Softer than all of that. Griffin had these soft blue walls that looked lovely with his brown curtains, a combination that couldn’t help but draw your eyes upward, toward the sky itself. Toward Gia’s incredible design, living there. Still living right above me.

I opened my eyes. I was out. At four, I was out. I had thought there were two matching nightstands—iron and tilted, like the desk—but that was wrong. When I opened my eyes, I saw that there was only one. By my side. The side that ate my wedding ring. On the other side, on Griffin’s, there was a small table. His ring resting there, safe.

So there I was. At number four. Four was better than three. It wasn’t five, but it was better than three. So why was my heart pounding so loudly, and so hard, that it was starting to hurt? Why was I panicking? And what did it mean that, as much as I tried to push the question aside, it kept coming back:
How could I stay here?

Because there was this: There was a number five that I knew, only it belonged to me. My suitcase, by the bedroom door, still packed. And ready to be used. In a matter of minutes, ready to come with me out of here.

Just then, my eyes on the suitcase, Griffin reached out, and put his arm around me. His arm was surprisingly heavy—were many men’s arms this heavy? Nick ’s certainly wasn’t. I didn’t remember ever having an arm around me that was that heavy—that sturdy, that ready. Ready, in its strength, to try and keep me safe. His arm had this long vein, running down the middle, not in a straight line, but a jagged one, like the line in the middle of a graph, measuring stocks, or the weather in North Dakota over a five-year period. And when I turned his arm over, I would see on his wrist half a tattoo. Half an anchor tattoo—half his history. And, now, mine.

Griffin’s arm around me—the way it felt—this part, I already knew by heart.

G
riffin decided it came down to the music. The success or failure of the restaurant’s opening came down, he announced, to the perfect mix of the nine seminal albums he was compiling into one mix, music ranging from
Astral Weeks
to
Boxer
to
18 Tracks
to
In the Aeroplane over the Sea
to
The Blue Album
to
End of Amnesia
to
I’m Your Man.
Music that would seep into the way he prepared the food, that would seep into the way everyone tasted it.

We spent so long trying to get the song order just right (what would best complement an
amuse-bouche
of grilled figs stuffed with blue cheese? “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”? “Cyprus Avenue”?) that somehow, when it was time to open, I was still racing around with damp hair plastered to my head, in my highest heels, printing out the night’s menus, ignoring the still-empty walls, the not-yet-working fireplace. Ignoring the fact that we were still without a name for the place.

Griffin was right about one part, though: being nameless wasn’t a problem. Everyone in town knew exactly where to go. Everyone in the six towns over too, judging by the crowd present by 5:35 P.M., a mere five minutes after we soft-opened the door, when already there wasn’t an empty seat to be found.

There was barely standing room anywhere in the entire restaurant, in fact; the overflow of friends (and friends of friends) who hadn’t secured a table in the five thirty, seven thirty, or nine thirty seatings were all standing anxiously around the bar. Jesse was not yet behind it, as he had promised to be, and the lone bartender was unequal to the task of serving drinks to everyone choosing to wait, hoping that a seat would open up at one of the community tables, hoping someone they knew would walk through the big, red door with a reservation and ask them to join.

I, meanwhile, was of little help. It was my first night ever hostessing (note once again: the ill-advised choice to wear my highest heels) and instead of doing the wise thing of sending people on their way—graciously offering to make them a reservation to join us later in the week, or over the next weekend—I was busy making promises I knew I couldn’t keep. Hang here for just another half hour or so. Hang here until I can figure out where I can seat you.

I was so busy offering false hope that eventually I had to sneak into the kitchen (a pile of menus still in hand) to hide from our increasingly hungry and annoyed patrons.

“Why aren’t they going home?” I asked Griffin, peeking at their irritated faces through the small kitchen window. “Don’t they know I’m too busy to deal with them right now?”

If Griffin weren’t Griffin, this would be the moment he’d have said to me,
Seriously? I should be asking you the same thing.

But instead, he laughed—loose and easy—as he continued plating his warm peach salad. Getting ready to move over to the entrée station, where his sous-chefs, Nikki and Dominic, were readying his beautiful branzino and herbs soaking in its parchment paper, his homemade balsamic reduction sweet enough to eat.

“It’s not a big deal,” Griffin said, “Just go out to the wine shack and grab a bottle of the Prosecco. Look for the Adami. The Adami’s good.”

“The Adami,” I repeated. Then I realized: “And pour a tall glass for anyone determined to wait it out?”

He shrugged. “I was going to say, pour yourself one,” he said. “But that works too.”

I kissed him on the cheek, and headed toward the back door, holding it open against the wind.

“You’re a genius!” I said. “And a consummate professional!”

“Be careful though,” he called after me, as I stepped into the alley. “We didn’t install the lights in the shack yet.”

“I’ve got it all under control,” I said. “I’ll be back!”

“I’ll be here,” he said.

I made a beeline toward the small, wooden shack—the cold catching me anyway. And, yet, even as I wrapped my arms around myself more tightly, I couldn’t help but catch a glance of the sky. It was, after all, pretty spectacular. The incredible stars and late-winter moon, lighting it up. It was like nothing I had ever seen, a sky that impossibly bright. I couldn’t help but think that that felt like a good thing—like a good omen—for the restaurant. For the night ahead.

I removed the padlock and stepped up into the small shack, barely lit—only by that bright sky—and I said it out loud,
“Adami,”
reminding myself what I was looking for among the dark bottles, some still in boxes, most shelved and ready to go.

Then I spotted it out of the corner of my eye on a lower shelf—showing off its orange label, the flair of its bright green bottle. A row of Adami.

I reached down and lifted two bottles out, checking each of their labels to be certain. Which was when, from where he stood right behind me in the wine shack doorway, he spoke up.

“Hello, Adams. . . .”

Nick. Saying hello. Just like that.

I turned around fast. I turned around so fast—absolutely convinced I couldn’t have heard it, what I was absolutely convinced I’d heard—that I dropped them. I dropped both of the Adamis as soon as we were face-to-face, green glass flying everywhere, the sparkly, cool liquid covering Nick’s ridiculously heavy winter boots, my ridiculously open toes.

I dropped to my knees, immediately starting to search for the sharp, green shards—starting to sop up the bubbly wine. This instead of hello. This instead of,
what are you doing here?