Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction (7 page)

Clare took the semester off. She spent weeks in the public library, crying and wandering up and down the mystery section, looking for something she hadn’t read. A woman she didn’t know popped out from behind the stacks and handed her a little ivory pamphlet, the pages held together with a dark-blue silk ribbon. On the front it said,
GOD NEVER GIVES US MORE THAN WE CAN BEAR.
The woman ran off and Clare caught the eye of the librarian, who mouthed the words “ovarian cancer.” Clare carried it with her to the parking lot and looked over her shoulder to make sure the woman was gone and then she tossed it in the trash.

After the library, Clare went to the coffeehouse or to the Turkish restaurant, where they knew how to treat widows. Every evening at six, men would spill out of the church across the street from the coffeehouse. A few would smoke in the vestibule and a few more would come in and order coffee and a couple of cookies and sit down to play chess. They were not like the chess players Clare had known.

One evening, one of the older men, with a tidy silver crew cut and pants yanked up a little too high, approached Clare. (William had dressed beautifully. Clare and Isabel used to talk about how beautifully he dressed; Clare said he dressed the way the Duke of Windsor would have if he’d been a hundred pounds heavier and not such a weenie and Isabel said, “That’s wonderful. May I tell him?”)

The man said gently, “Are you waiting for the meeting?”

Clare said, in her Isabel voice, that it was very kind of him to ask, but there was no meeting she was waiting for.

He said, “Well, I see you here a lot. I thought maybe you were trying to decide whether or not to go to the next meeting.”

Clare said that she hadn’t made up her mind, which could have been true. She could just as soon have gone to an AA meeting as to a No Rest for the Weary meeting or a People Sick of Life meeting. And Clare did know something about drinking, she thought. Sometime after she and William had decided, for the thousandth time, that their affair was a terrible thing, that their love for their spouses was much greater than their love for each other, that William and Isabel were
suited
, just like Charles and Clare were suited, and that the William and Clare thing was nothing more than some odd summer lightning that would pass as soon as the season changed, Clare found herself having three glasses of wine every night. Her goal, every night, was to climb into bed early, exhausted and tipsy, and fall deeply asleep before she could say anything to Charles about William. It was her version of One Day at a Time, and it worked for two years, until she woke up one night, crying and saying William’s name into her pillow over and over again. Clare didn’t think that that was the kind of reckless behavior that interested the people across the street.

The man put “AA for the Older Alcoholic” in front of Clare and said, “You’re not alone.”

Clare said, “That is
so
not true.”

She kept the orange-and-gray pamphlet on her kitchen table for a few weeks, in case anyone dropped in, because it made her laugh, the whole idea. Her favorite part (she had several, especially the stoic recitation of ruined marriages, dead children, estranged children, alcoholic children, multiple car accidents—pedestrian and vehicular—forced resignations, outright firings, embezzlements, failed suicides, diabetic comas), her absolute favorite in the category of the telling detail, was an old woman carrying a fifth of vodka hidden in a skein of yarn. Clare finally put the pamphlet away so it wouldn’t worry Nelson when he came for Friday night dinner. Margaret Slater dropped him off at six and picked him up at eight-thirty, which gave her time for bingo and Nelson and Clare time to eat and play checkers or cribbage or Risk.

Nelson Slater didn’t know that William’s Sulka pajamas were still under Clare’s pillow, that the bedroom still smelled like his cologne (and that Clare had bought two large bottles of it and sprayed the room with it, every Sunday), that his wing tips and his homely black sneakers were in the bottom of the bedroom closet. He knew that William’s canes were still in the umbrella stand next to the front door and that the refrigerator was filled with William’s favorite foods (chicken-liver pâté, cornichons, pickled beets, orange marmalade, and Zingerman’s bacon bread) and there were always two or three large Tupperware containers of William’s favorite dinners, which Clare made on Friday, when Nelson came over, and then divided in halves or quarters for the rest of the week. Nelson didn’t mind. He had known and loved Clare most of his young life, and he understood old-people craziness. His great-aunt believed that every event in the Bible actually happened and left behind physical evidence you could buy, like the splinter from Noah’s Ark she kept by her bed. His Cousin Chick sat on the back porch, shooting the heads off squirrels and chipmunks and reciting poetry. Nelson had known William Langford since he was five, and Nelson had gotten used to him. Mr. Langford was a big man with a big laugh and a big frown. He gave Nelson credit for who he was and what he did around the house and he paid Nelson, which Clare never remembered to do. (A man has to make a living, Mr. Langford had said one time, and Nelson did like that.) Nelson liked the Friday night dinners, and unless Clare started doing something really weird, like setting three places at the table, he’d keep coming over.

“Roast pork with apples and onions and a red wine sauce. And braised red cabbage. And Austrian apple cake. How’s that?”

Nelson shrugged. Clare was always a good cook, but almost no one knew it. When he was six years old and eating gingerbread in the Wexler kitchen one afternoon, Mr. Wexler came home early. He reached for a piece of the warm gingerbread and Nelson told him that Clare had just baked it and Wexler looked at him in surprise. “Mrs. Wexler doesn’t really cook,” he said, and Nelson had gone on eating and thought, She does for me, Mister.

Clare put the pork and apples on Nelson’s plate and poured them both apple cider. When Nelson lifted the fork to his mouth and chewed and then sighed and smiled, happy to be loved and fed, Clare had to leave the kitchen for a minute.

After a year, everything was much the same. Clare fed Nelson on Friday nights, she taught half-time, she wept in the shower, and at the end of every day, she put on one of William’s button-down shirts and a pair of his socks and settled down with a big book of William’s or an English mystery. When the phone rang, Clare jumped.

“Clare, how are you?”

“Good, Lauren. How are you? How’s Adam?”

Her daughter-in-law would not be deflected. She tried to get her husband to call his mother every Sunday night but when he didn’t (and Clare could just hear him, her sweet boy, passive as granite: “She’s okay, Lauren. What do you want me to do about it?”), Lauren, who was properly brought up, made the call.

“We’d love for you to visit us, Clare.”

I bet, Clare thought. “Oh, not until the semester ends, I can’t. But you all could come out here. Anytime.”

“It really wouldn’t be suitable.”

Clare said nothing.

“I mean, it just wouldn’t,” Lauren said, polite and stubborn.

Clare felt sorry for her. Clare wouldn’t want herself for a mother-in-law, under the best of circumstances.

“I’d love to have you visit,” Clare said. This wasn’t exactly true but she would certainly rather have them in her house than be someplace that had no William in it. “The boys’ room is all set, with the bunk beds and your room, of course, for you and Adam. There’s plenty of room and I hear Cirque du Soleil will be here in a few weeks.” Clare and Margaret will take Nelson, before he’s too old to be seen in public with two old ladies.

Lauren’s voice dropped. Clare knew she was walking from the living room, where she was watching TV and folding laundry, into a part of the house where Adam couldn’t hear her.

“It doesn’t matter how much room there is. Your house is like a mausoleum. How am I supposed to explain that to the boys, Clare? Am I supposed to say Grandma loved Grandpa William so much she keeps every single thing he ever owned or read or
ate
all around her?”

“I don’t mind if that’s what you want to tell them.”

In fact, I’ll tell them myself, Little Miss Let’s-Call-a-Spade-a-Gardening-Implement, Clare thought, and she could hear William saying, “Darling, you are as clear and bright as vinegar but not everyone wants their pipes cleaned.”

“I don’t want to tell them that. I want—really, we all want—for you just to begin to, oh, you know, just to get on with your life a little bit.”

Clare said, and she thought she never sounded more like Isabel, master of the even, elegant tone, “I completely understand, Lauren, and it is very good of you to call.”

Lauren put the boys on and they said exactly what they should: Hi, Grandma, thanks for the Legos. (Clare put Post-its next to the kitchen calendar, and at the beginning of every month, she sent an educational toy to each grandchild, so no one could accuse her of neglecting them.) Lauren walked back into the living room and forced Adam to take the phone. Clare said to him, before he could speak, “I’m all right, Adam. Not to worry,” and he said, “I know, Mom,” and Clare asked about his work and Lauren’s classes and she asked about Jason’s karate and the baby’s teeth, and when she could do nothing more, she said, “Oh, I’ll let you go now, honey,” and she sat on the floor, with the phone still in her hand.

One Sunday, Danny called and said, “Have you heard about Dad?” And Clare’s heart clutched, just as people describe, and when she didn’t say anything, Danny cleared his throat and said, “I thought you might have heard. Dad’s getting married.” Clare was so relieved she was practically giddy. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “That nice, tall woman who golfs?” Danny laughed. Almost everything you could say about his future stepmother pointed directly to the ways she was not his mother—particularly nice, tall, and golfs. Clare got off the phone and sent Charles and his bride—she didn’t remember her name, so she sent it to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wexler, which had a nice old-fashioned ring to it—a big pretty Tiffany vase of the kind she’d wanted when she married Charles.

The only calls Clare made were to Isabel. She called in the early evening, before Isabel turned in. (There was nothing she didn’t know about Isabel’s habits. They’d shared a beach house three summers in a row and she’d slept in their guest room in Boston a dozen times. She knew Isabel’s taste in linens, in kitchens, in moisturizer and makeup and movies. There was not a single place on earth that you could put Clare that she couldn’t point out to you what would suit Isabel and what would not.) She dialed her number, William’s old number, and when Isabel answered, she hung up, of course.

Clare called Isabel about once a week, after watching
Widow’s Walk
, the most repulsive and irresistible show she’d ever seen. Three, sometimes four women sat around and said things like, “It’s not an ending; it’s a beginning.” What made it bearable to Clare was that the women were all ardent Catholics and not like her, except the discussion leader, who was so obviously Jewish and from the Bronx that Clare had to Google her and discover that she had a Ph.D. in philosophical something and converted to Catholicism after a personal tragedy. Clare got to hear a woman who sounded a lot like her great-aunt Frieda say, “I pray for all widows, and we must all keep on with our faith and never forget that Jesus meets every need.” Clare waited for the punch line, for the woman to yank her cross off her neck and say, “And if you believe that,
bubbeleh
, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you,” but she never did. She did sometimes say, in the testing, poking tone of a good rabbi, “Isn’t it interesting that so many women saints came to their sainthood through being widows? They were poor and desperate, alone in the world with no protection, but the sisters took them in and even educated their children. Isn’t it
interesting
that widowhood led them to become saints and extraordinary women, to know themselves and Jesus better?” The other widows, the real Catholics, didn’t look interested at all. The good-looking one, in a red suit and red high heels, kept reminding everyone that she was very recently widowed (and young, and pretty) and the other two, a garden gnome in baggy pants and black sneakers that didn’t touch the floor and a tall woman in a frilly blouse with her glasses taped together at the bridge, talked, in genuinely heartbroken tones, about their lives now that they were alone. They rarely mentioned their husbands, although the gnome did say, more than once, that if she could forgive her late husband, anyone could forgive anyone.

Clare dials, as soon as the organ music dies down, and Isabel picks up after one ring. Clare doesn’t speak.

“Clare?”

Clare sighs. Hanging up was bad enough.

“Isabel.”

Isabel sighs as well.

“I saw Emily a few weeks ago. I dropped off a birthday present for baby Charlotte. She’s beautiful. Emily seems very happy. I mean, not to see me, but in general.”

“Yes, she told me.”

“I shouldn’t have gone.”

“Well. If you want to offer a relationship and generous gifts, it’s up to Emily. Kurt’s mother’s dead. I guess it depends on how many grandmothers Emily wants Charlotte to have, regardless of who they are.” There was no one like Isabel.

“I guess it does. I mean, I’m not going to presume. I’m not going to drop in all the time with a box of rugelach and a hand-knit sweater.”

“I wouldn’t think so. Clare—”

“Oh, Isabel, I miss you.”

“Good night, Clare.”

When Clare gets off the phone, there’s a raccoon in her kitchen, on the counter. It, although Clare immediately thinks He, is eating a slice of bacon bread. He’s holding it in his small, nimble, and very human black hands. He looks at her over the edge of the bread, like a man peering over his glasses. A fat, bold, imperturbable man with a twinkle in his dark eyes.

Even though she knows better, even though William would have been very annoyed at her for doing so, Clare says, softly, “William.”

The raccoon doesn’t answer and Clare smiles. She wouldn’t have wanted the raccoon to say, “Clare.” Because then she would have had to call her boys and have herself committed, and although this is not the life she hoped to have, it’s certainly better than being in a psychiatric hospital. The raccoon has started on his second slice of bacon bread. Clare would like to put out the orange marmalade and a little plate of honey. William never ate peanut butter, but Clare wants to open a jar for the raccoon. She’s read that they love peanut butter, and she doesn’t want him to leave.