The Widow Waltz (25 page)

“G
ridlock on twenty-seven,” Nat says from his cell phone. I break a sweat through my own gridlock.

Luey departed early this morning for Brooklyn, as nervous as I’ve seen her since she took a driving test. Early in the week I asked to accompany her to meet the couple she’d anointed, out of a field of forty-some candidates, as possible parents for the baby. She wisely refused, knowing I’d be wearing every feeling like a blinking emoticon.

I invited Nat to visit and told myself that for the next twenty-four hours I will think only of sex, which has put me in a born-again virgin state, wondering if I’ll be able to remember which parts go where. I am counting on my animal alter ego to wake from hibernation, though I’m unable to picture rapture, bodice ripping, or reckless endangerment. I’ve never been with a man other than my husband and hope my spinsterish equipment is still in working order. Birds do it, bees do it, even folks with old arthritic knees do it. Why not me? I don’t want to fall in love, necessarily. I just want to do it. I am afraid of what will happen when Nat and I make love, yet more afraid of what will happen if we don’t. I’m far too young for a life sentence of chastity.

“Can’t wait to see you,” says my knight-errant with his Zipcar steed. I picture my erudite Eros striding through the door armed with a wry grin and
The New York Review of Books
.

I say the same and hope my voice isn’t trembling.

I’m setting my expectations low, not vamping it up and answering the door in only a corset UPS’d from Victoria’s Secret. There was a sale at Target, however, a store I used to visit to load up only on detergent and paper towels, and I have invested in new underwear. Since the last time I shopped in a lingerie department—excuse me,
intimate apparel,
a term freighted with innuendo—reliable string bikinis have vanished. I wanted to Munch-scream as I hovered in front of the racks, sizing up the alternatives: commodious granny pants my own mother would reject, impermeable “shapewear” engineered by NASA, thongs only slightly bigger than their hangtags, and lacy boy shorts that would sit jauntily on my hips and leave my belly as exposed as a bowl of rice pudding. Butt or belly, butt or belly—which is the lesser evil? I considered going commando, then hedged my bets by picking one of each of the short-style in ecru and in navy blue. Black was too-too.

I’ve done all I can to prep my outer self for a man’s touch, thanks to a series of ablutions as long as childbirth. I’ve pedicured my feet in the fetching shade of Tart Deco, moisturized, waxed, exfoliated, and pumiced. Red wine awaits with cheese from the expensive section of the supermarket. Since a fifty-year-old woman is most flattered by male voices who might still think of her as young, I have set the mood by bringing out the sandpapery geezers—Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Barry White, and Kris Kristofferson. “Help me make it through the night”—or at least the afternoon.

If someone would coerce me into describing sex with Ben, I would have said that seduction improved over time and would pick words like
sensual
and
playful, intuitive
and
tender.
I’m not sure how much of the fulfillment came from him and how much from me. Can I be the same woman with another man? Was he different with Naomi?
Stop that, Georgia,
I tell myself. Today I’m hoping I will become another woman, as able to excite and satisfy as become excited and satisfied. Maybe I’ll need some new music.

“There’s my Georgia,” Nat says as he walks through the door and returns me to reality.

“There’s my Nat.” I wriggle my hands underneath his winter coat and thick turtleneck while Sadie and the lot greet him with the same boundless enthusiasm they might display if one of their beloveds returned from a tour in Afghanistan or a drive to the dump.

And then we kiss. “Now that’s a greeting,” he says as he drops his coat on the floor.

“No, this is,” I say, and wrap my arm around his waist as I lead him upstairs. Ben always ran first thing in the morning, “before he knew what hit him” and had a chance to change his mind. In this spirit, I’ve decided to take Nat immediately to my bedroom, and as I thank Ben for the pointer, tell him he can leave now. He’s not invited to this party.

“You’re like silk,” Nat says as he strokes me.

When a lover murmurs a cliché, what woman isn’t willing to consider it original and accurate? I have no language to return, or any wish to talk, only a caress here, a thrust there. The bedroom shades are half-drawn for maximal privacy and minimal cellulite exposure. When we start, I am overly aware of awkwardness—new sounds, new smell, new strokes—and I begin to doubt that making love in this bedroom will offer the home-field advantage I thought it might provide. But then I close my eyes and as Nat and I find our rhythm, I realize I am in no hurry to move away from this present perfect tense, our own rough draft of lovemaking grammar. He’s not an unblemished specimen and neither am I and it doesn’t matter. He’s had a wife—for eighteen years—and I’ve had a husband, but they are in the past, relegated to photo albums and, at least for me, a lobotomized portion of my brain. When we end, I turn and touch Nat’s face, glad to scratch this accomplishment off my list so we can do it again.

“How was your week?” he asks, exactly like a returning boyfriend might, as I fit myself into the V of his shoulder.

I don’t need to check the clock. “I’ll be hearing from Luey soon, hopefully. She met with a couple who want to adopt her baby.”

“I can’t imagine any of that—it must be hell—and I have a pretty good imagination.” He leers Groucho-like so I recognize the compliment.

I’ve tried not to lecture Luey on what she should and shouldn’t do, but I’m sure I’m about as transparent as a cellophane noodle. “This is almost the last situation in which I ever imagined my family,” I say to Nat. The last is Ben’s betrayal, because even if he didn’t leave me for Naomi, he considered it—and who’s to say if he had lived, he wouldn’t have changed his mind? And why am I thinking about this now, damnit, when I want to return to the moment of having made love to Nat? Mother trumps tigress, however, and my overriding concern is what Luey will do about her child. I do not want to lose my grandchild. I want her to keep the baby.

“You’re strong, Georgia,” he says. “One of the top fifty things I love about you.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“I’m already there.”

I had forgotten about the ancient art of postcoital conversation, where you need to display no wit to elicit a smile. After briefly drowsing under the covers, twined around each other, we begin again, a little less minimalist—classic with an omnivorous twist or two.

After round two, I watch Nat sleep, taking note of how natural he looks sharing my bed, and how unlike Ben, who spread his long arms and legs over three-fourths of the mattress. Nat is compact and pulls me close, as if he wants to make sure I won’t leave. I shut my eyes and doze. When I wake, it is past six. Nat is still here, and not just here but comfortably asleep.

I tiptoe downstairs. Luey has come and gone. A note says she’s meeting her friend Marc for dinner. I am tempted to call Luey, and am proud as I resist. I will need to wait longer for the big reveal.

The cheese and wine remain where I left them. I pour myself a glass while I sort the mail Luey’s brought in and left on the table. Two plant catalogs, gas and electric bills, a Brown alumni bulletin, and a letter from Westchester Hills, the woodland cemetery where Ben is buried a stone’s throw from George and Ira Gershwin, Tony Randall, and a mausoleum full of Guggenheims.

“Dear Ms. Silver-Waltz,” it begins. “In Jewish tradition it is customary for the grave marker to be put in place and an unveiling ceremony to be held no later than one year after the death. While many families wait until almost the full year has passed, an unveiling may be done sooner. In Israel, the stone is usually placed soon after the first thirty days of mourning. Please let us know your intentions on behalf of Benjamin T. Silver . . . .”

The kind sirs of Westchester Hills go on to suggest a variety of establishments where I, the bereaved consumer, might purchase a tasteful headstone. They suggest that it would be wise to place my order several months in advance of the unveiling and to begin considering an appropriate message.

On that score, Ben had something in mind. We stopped at a cemetery once in Southampton and he was taken by Jack Dempsey’s epitaph:
A gentle man and a gentleman.
I’m thinking more along the lines of,
Husband—father—son—philanderer.

I hear Nat, and stash my macabre mail in one the catalogs.

“Georgia,” he says, with a coaxing and ripeness almost like foreplay. He kisses me lightly on the lips and then the top of my head.

“Hey, you.” I like his white T-shirt hanging over his jeans, his bare feet, his compact paunch, his rumpled hair. I like everything about Nat and about today.

“Are we cooking?”

“That’s the plan.”

“No Luey?”

“Only me.” We cook and eat and shower and watch half a movie before we’re back in bed, the best day and night of my life for almost six months.

N
at leaves earlier than I expect, shortly after ten. “You need time with your daughter,” he says.

There’s sense and sensitivity in that, which I appreciate, but what’s the point of living near the Atlantic and paying fat taxes if you and a lover can’t have a briny hike on the shore, fulfilling the requirement of two out of three personal ads? I’d pictured us at the beach. As we stand by his car, I could take him upstairs all over again.

“I’ll be at the London book fair next week, but back here the weekend after—if you’ll have me,” he says.

“Of course I’ll have you.”
Don’t be such a girl,
I tell myself.
This is how things work. Stop imagining the swash is gone from his buckle. Nat’s as airborne as you are, but he has two stores to run, a trip to take, and, for all you know—and hope against—other women to see.
“I’m going to stand here until I can’t see you anymore.”

“I’m going to replay our adult movies, and hope I don’t crash.”

I wave as he drives off, and when his car turns the corner, I remind myself that this, too, is how it feels to be with a man, to miss the sound of his voice and laugh the minute he is gone. Hello, 1983.

I change into ancient jeans, a tattered sweatshirt, and one of Ben’s rattier baseball caps. Now that I’ve turned into both Adam and Eve, I need to attack the spring cleanup and plantings. Chip has lectured me on the necessity of curb appeal. His California customers liked the house enough to agree to a two-month postponement, which means that in four weeks I either accept their terms and set a closing date or pass up this chance and pray for another buyer.

Every day this week I raked and collected winter debris, and don’t my bones and muscles know it, especially after my workout in bed. Cutting grass will be tomorrow’s task—the lawn is greening up, and Luey scored a mower at a garage sale. I’d like a day off, but there’s a job to be done before a storm hits. I slip on my garden gloves and begin to turn over the earth in preparation for flats of pansies and petunias. The dirt is yielding, like stiff dough. I dig a hole, wiggle a plant from its casing, and pat it in place. I repeat the process again and again, finding peace in the repetition of homey horticulture. Soon two lines of plum pansies curtsy like kindergarteners. I can see why my brother draws the line at these flowers, but I have loved them forever, as I do the complete retinue of old-fashioned blossoms—asters and peonies, hollyhocks and cosmos, wisteria and lilies of the valley.

I am ready to start on the petunias when from across the yard Luey shouts, “Need a hand?” The dogs are off their leashes. They stampede in my direction, tails and limbs aloft, happiness distilled to a blur of reckless energy.

When she saw Nat and me together, Luey strained for blasé, as if every morning a man who wasn’t her father sat at her mother’s side with his thinning hair dripping from the shower. I imagined her trying to think about anything but what had recently transpired in my bed.

“You’re just in time!” I shout, eager for her company. “Why don’t you start on the vinca—if you’re not too uncomfortable?” Seemingly overnight, like a flower herself, Luey has blossomed. She is carrying her child exactly how she positioned herself in my womb—high, narrow, and vertical, as if she wanted to be introduced to whoever was out there.

Luey kneels on the ground with surprising grace. “It’s good to see Nat here,” she says, as she grabs the trowel and begins to dig.

“I feel the same way,” I say, though I hear my own reluctance. Can I be open to anyone again? Where is my money-back guarantee?

“He’s a great guy, Ma. I hope he’s more than a practice run.”

“My whole life feels ad-lib right now.” It’s surprisingly fine, I realize, to take each day as it comes. “I’m glad you like him.” I plant another pansy. “Does it seem strange to see us together in . . . that way?”

“It does,” Luey says. “Good strange. You’re special, Ma. You deserve the best.”

Like your father? Not like your father?
“I appreciate that.” I pat a plant in place, divot after divot. “What was that couple like yesterday?” I anchor my eyes to a petunia to tamp down my curiosity, which is acute.

“Pretty much ideal.” She praises the food, the house, and the books, details I would care about if she’d gone to a party, not to meet the potential mother and father of her child.

“You can tell this how?”

“They’re mature—they must be close to forty—and smart.”

If only people got wise simply by having birthdays. “You’re smart.”

“But they’re secure, reliable, prosperous, polished. Want me to go on?” Her usually well-modulated voice goes high. “I felt like a sham next to the wife, like I was wearing a pillow under my shirt for a school play and she was the one with a funky stripe down her belly and a belly button like a third nipple.”

Luey is trying—and failing—to laugh. I gather her in my arms, her pregnancy between us like a warm knot tying three generations. She smells both sweet and salty, like she did as a girl after coming in from roller skating in the park.

“It must have been hell,” I say, patting her back.

“They want this baby so badly.” A tear drops on my neck. “My baby.”

When Ben and I adopted Cola, we became a triptych greater than the sum of its parts. “Who can blame them? You could make their world.”

Luey doesn’t let go. “The whole ride home I started to think, what if the baby I gave away is the next Steve Jobs and when I’m fifty and go looking for him he spits on me? Or she’s a girl who publishes a memoir about how her mama abandoned her at birth? I don’t want to be the witch who does that to her child.”

I have no answers. All I can do is crush my daughter against me.

“I want to be more than an egg donor. Louisa Silver-Waltz, cautionary tale—that story’s getting old.”

“Listen.” I push her away to see her face. “Be whoever you want.”

“I want to be a mother, but I’m scared shitless.”

“If a pregnant woman says she isn’t scared, she’s lying.”

“The couple from yesterday aren’t going to be the parents for my baby,” she adds, answering the question no one has asked. “I can’t do it. I called them this morning.”

“My God, Luey.” She has buried the lede. Now I am crying, too. “Honey, what did they say?”

“The wife wouldn’t come to the phone. Her husband said I’m the third birth mother—God, I loathe that term,
birth mother
, like you can buy me at The Container Store
—
who changed her mind, and that he wasn’t surprised. When I was quiet during the visit, he thought he could see my gears shifting. He asked if I had a problem with them, begging for advice. I told him they’re perfect, that it was all because of me. Ma, it was awful, like I’m a conniving bitch.”

I ache for these strangers, but my allegiance is to Luey and her baby, to my family. “I think you owe them a letter. Put your feelings down on paper for them—get it out and send the letter—and then think of your baby,
only
of the baby.”

She wipes her tears on a sleeve and leans back, her legs stretched out on the grass.

“I’m proud of you for making this decision,” I say, my mind already on knitting a bunting.

“Maybe I’m an idiot.”

“Did you discuss all this with Peter?”

“Some.” She threw her hands up, as if caught red-handed. “None.”

I dare to ask, “Will you tell me now how things stand between you?”

Luey waits a moment before answering, pulling out a blade of grass and examining it. “He knew I was looking into adoption, that it had to be my choice.”

“Lu, do you think he’d want to be . . . involved?”

“He’s skittish—about me and especially about being with me and a baby—but he might come around, and if he doesn’t, so be it,” she says defiantly. “I’m making this decision without him. Obviously”—she pats her belly. “I don’t have time to wait for him to figure things out. I should call him, though.” She takes the trowel and starts to dig. “I thought telling the people from yesterday was going to be hard . . . .”

“It’s all going to be hard.”

“I have to get this right.”

Yes, she has to get this right.
Luey plants a vinca behind some pansies. I plant a petunia, then another. “I’m willing to be reprogrammed, inside and out, if that’s what it takes. Cola promises she’s on board, that she won’t go back to Europe, but I’m going to need you, too, Ma. Will you help me?”

I know I will try, day by day, in any wingman role she wants. “Of course. Darling, of course.”

I hear her sobs, as she can hear mine, but I can’t see her face. We plant flowers, side by side for ten or fifteen minutes. Then she reaches for my hand and puts it on her stomach. “Feel that?” she says. “Buffalo Baby’s kicking.”