Still Life with Husband (24 page)

“It
is
wonderful, and I hope you can see that.” Heather fiddles with the top button on her coat, her shiny ring reflecting the light. “I know this must sound crazy to you, but, listen, it’s
right.
I know it is. Rolf and I are going to get married and we’re going to be a family, with Silas, and I so want you to be happy for me, but even if you can’t be, it’s still right.”

“I am happy for you, Heather; of course I’m happy.” I feel like a blender has been turned on inside my stomach. “It’s true, it does seem…well, it did happen kind of fast, but why wouldn’t I be happy for you? You’re my sister. Of course I’m happy.”

Heather pushes her chair back and moves around the table, toward me. She pulls me up into a hug, nuzzles her face into my neck. “Thanks,” she says, and I hug her back.

“Hey,” I say finally, pushing her gently away from me. “Meg’s pregnant.” Heather and Meg have never gotten along. They’re just similar enough—both beautiful, gregarious, opinionated—that they can’t stand each other. They each insist that they’re nothing alike. “You two will finally have something to talk about—you can talk about being mommies.” Heather bends to pick up her suitcase, and I grab it before she can. She loops her arm through my free one, and we head toward the exit.

From the shower I hear the phone ringing. Kevin is already gone for the day, and Heather is asleep on the couch. I don’t want it to wake her, so I leap out of the bathtub and run, naked and dripping wet, into the living room. Since she arrived three days ago, though, Heather has been zonked on our couch for ten or eleven hours a night, able to sleep through ringing phones, blaring police sirens, and the TV blasting from the apartment next door. I remember this just as I grab the phone. I glance over at Heather; her head is buried underneath the blue striped blanket Aunt Mimi crocheted for me before I left for college. Her feet are dangling over the end of the couch. She can’t be comfortable. A puddle of water pools at my feet before I remember that the phone is cordless. I head back toward the bathroom.

“Emily,” Dr. Miller says briskly, and I wonder in a flash how exactly I’ve screwed up this time. Dr. Miller, my other boss, Dick’s coeditor, has called me at home before, early in the morning, more often when I first started the job, but once or twice in the past few months. He always claims he’s calling because he can’t find something I’ve misfiled, or because I haven’t finished something I promised to have for him by the end of the previous day. Usually his phone calls are meant to remind me that I’ve messed something up, not because he really can’t find what he says he’s looking for. Once, during my second week on the job, he called at six-thirty in the morning to tell me that seventy-four doesn’t come after seventy-five; I had accidentally misnumbered the manuscripts. Dr. Miller is the real prick of
Dick.

“Hello, Dr. Miller,” I say sweetly, rubbing the foggy bathroom mirror with a corner of my towel. I steadfastly refuse ever to let him know that he’s flustered me.

“Emily, I have some bad news. I’m sorry to tell you that Dick is dead.”

At first I think he means the journal. At first I think he’s referring to
Male Reproduction
by Kevin’s and my nickname for it. At first I think,
Well, there’s me, out of a job.
But then I get it. And although I had expected this for some time, although I had actually imagined this very phone call once or twice in the past year, my knees turn to jelly, and I have to steady myself on the sink, and it’s like I’m seeing myself from across the room. I hear a gasp, and it’s coming out of my own mouth. “Oh,” I say. “How?”

“Emily.” Dr. Miller’s rough tone is a bit softer. “Dick had been in congestive heart failure for the past year.” He clears his throat. “I think that’s why he’d been so distracted lately,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “He knew he didn’t have long. He died at home last night.” Dr. Miller’s voice breaks on “night,” and he’s silent.

“Okay,” I say, my throat thick. Dick knew he was dying. He died. He’s dead. I’m still dripping, and now I’m shivering, too. The bath mat underneath my feet is sopping. I readjust my towel. “When is the funeral?”

“Tomorrow at eleven. At North Shore Presbyterian. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes,” I say, even though I don’t. I wonder if I should still come to work today. “Is there anything I should do?” There are still papers on the testosterone levels of spawning salmon to reject, vast quantities of files to organize—Dick’s haphazard files, specifically. Last Friday, before he left for the day, Dick came into my office, his Sherlock Holmes hat perched jauntily on his head. “Emily,” he said, “I thank you for your good work, and I bid you a fond adieu.” He patted me on the head and ruffled my hair as if I were his beloved dog, a cherished French poodle. I remember thinking that from anyone else, this gesture would have been intolerable, but from Dick, it just was what it was: an expression of pure, loopy affection. I looked up at him then and smiled, and I did not say “woof,” even though I was tempted to. I wonder if the journal will shut down after all. I wonder if I ought to resign in protest. Dick should not have died.

“I’ll pass along your condolences to Dick’s family,” Dr. Miller says crisply, his voice resuming its usual imperious tone. “I’ll see you back at work tomorrow,” he says, and hangs up.

All I want is to see David. All I want is to lie next to him. Since we started sleeping together, my reactions to things are buffed smooth and shiny: immediately upon hearing a piece of news, good or bad or anywhere in between, I want to climb into David’s bed. When Colby Wirth, my editor at
Me,
rejected my pitch on alternatives to traditional relationships (“Monogamy: The Relationship of Fools?”), I called David, picked him up at his office, and sped back to his apartment; we didn’t even make it all the way to his bedroom. When my mom told me that my second cousin Ronald lost his job, I felt a familiar liquid urge, and I told Kevin I was going to pick up dinner, which I eventually did. And when Heather first arrived, four days ago, I brought her home, made lunch, and then I told her I had to do some research at the library and drove straight to David’s. The immediate consequence of sadness, it turns out, is no different from that of disappointment, fleeting sympathy, or happiness laced with ambivalence. I finish drying off, sit down on the closed toilet seat, and dial David’s cell phone number.

“Hey,” I say quietly, when he picks up. The image of Dick in his rakish green hat is still in my head. “My boss died. I’m really sad. Are you busy? Can I see you?” I hear the noise of the newsroom in the background. Only seven people work at
The Weekly
full-time, David has told me, but they yell a lot and generally act like ace reporters from the 1940s, drinking and smoking and swearing. “I’m not writing alder
person
! That’s fucking bullshit!” someone shouts.

“I’m sorry, babe,” David says. “I’m sorry about your boss. I’m swamped, though.”

For the first time since Dr. Miller’s phone call, I feel tears well up behind my eyes. David has no idea how much Dick meant to me. But still. “Oh. Okay.”

“I’m on deadline for two articles and the calendar,” he says.

“Sure. I understand.”

He hesitates. The din in the background recedes. “You don’t sound so great,” he says.

“I’m not.”

David pauses again. “I suppose…I could…Okay, I guess we could meet…. No, why don’t you pick me up here in an hour?” There’s something unrecognizable in his voice.

“I don’t want to interrupt your work,” I say, barely able to get the words out. How can Dick be dead? How can David not want to see me?

“No, no,” he says, “no, no, no,” regaining his enthusiasm with each “no.” “Of course you’re not interrupting. Of course I want to see you.” His voice returns, its familiar register and the low crackle of desire. “Meet me here in an hour, okay?”

We hang up, and I slowly get dressed and wander back into the living room. An hour gives me time to hang out with Heather, who is awake now and has moved to a sitting position on the couch. Aunt Mimi’s blanket is wrapped around her shoulders; somehow, on Heather, it looks almost stylish.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask, sitting down in the rocking chair across from her. I smooth my hair and try to compose a normal face. The problem is, I have no idea what normal is anymore.

“You bet,” she says, still groggy, rubbing her eyes. “What should we do today?” Heather used to pounce on me in the mornings, jumping on my bed, sitting on my chest, threatening to drool on my face unless I got up and played with her. “What’s on?” she asks.

As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I understand that once one thing is a secret, everything is. “I’m going to work,” I say. I can’t tell Heather that Dick has died, because then she’ll wonder why I’m going to the office. The accordion of all the other things I can’t tell her unfolds. “I’ve got, uh, stuff to do this morning. I’ll be back in the afternoon, though,” I say, watching the disappointment skitter across her face and then lift. “We can go for a walk with Mom and get ice cream or something, okay?”

“I’ve got some reading to do anyway,” she says, motioning toward the stack of books she’s brought with her. Heather is reading up on nontraditional families the way Meg has been poring over pregnancy books lately—in the midst of their giddiness they both seem desperate for guidance, hopeful that a few select tips on what to eat during your second trimester or how to discipline a toddler when you’re not his mother will map the stars for them as they blast off into the solar system. But Dick is dead! And how can you predict anything? Heather studies my face for an uncomfortably long moment. “You okay?” she asks.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “You seem on edge.”

“Nope. I’m fine.” I’m not fine, and apparently I’m not a very good actress, either. Suddenly an hour seems like an awfully long time to sit here and not tell my sister anything true. “I should get going, though,” I say, rising. And before Heather can catch another glimpse of me, before her sympathetic face forces me to spill everything, I grab my coat and click the front door shut.

As soon as I see David, everything is all right. He’s waiting for me near the side of the building, his jacket collar pulled up around his ears, his shoulders hunched a little bit against the cold, sunglasses on. The sight of him is a Band-Aid on my heart. I pull in beside a
NO PARKING ANYTIME
sign and watch him for a minute before he spots me. I know the angles and contours of that body underneath the jacket and gray shirt and faded jeans. I know the taste of it. Just as I’m about to honk, David crosses his arms in front of his chest and looks up at the sky. Even from across the street, I can tell that he’s impatient. He must be as eager to see me as I am to see him, I think; he must crave my body the way I do his. The alternative—that he’s just feeling impatient—is not quite bearable.

He sees me before I beep and he dashes across the street, folds himself into the front seat, and moves toward me in one graceful motion. The cold air and his leathery scent fill the car. Without a word, he puts his hands on my face and kisses me. His icy fingers and warm mouth create a current that shoots through me. For a second, I consider sliding my clothes off right here in the tow-away zone. He moves his hand up under my hair and tugs it lightly. Just then, a delivery truck drives up and honks at us, so my plans for an uncomfortable romp in the car are thwarted. “Drive fast,” David whispers, and I do.

When we get to his apartment building, David practically pulls me up the stairs. We haven’t said a word to each other since we turned off Michigan Street, two miles ago. “I just wanted to see you,” I said then, slipping around the Buick in front of me. I thought about Dick again and how I hadn’t even told Kevin yet. I thought about how Dick used to bring me trinkets from medical conferences: a pad of paper or a pen emblazoned with a pharmaceutical company’s logo, a mug or a T-shirt, my favorite souvenir a smiling stuffed carrot sporting the name of a prominent anti-impotence drug. I felt my throat close up again and I had to concentrate on breathing.

“I know,” David said.

Now we’re in his apartment, now his bedroom, shedding clothes as we move toward the bed, the wrinkled blue sheets as familiar to me now as my own. Somehow, David wants this as urgently as I do, which seems impossible, since I want to disappear inside him. We’re puzzle pieces; we’re magnets; we’re fast hands and hot breath. Sometimes, with Kevin, I can’t help but think about the absurdity of it all, two bodies plonking around together. With David, no words come into my head, and I feel only friction, skin on skin, soft against hard, fusion. David cries out just as I’m pulling his head down toward my neck. When it’s over I feel just as hungry as I did when we started.

“I wish I could stay here with you all day,” David whispers a few moments later, still catching his breath. I’m lying in the crook of his arm. My body feels rearranged, a not unpleasant, shaken-up feeling I get every time we have sex. But my brain is still buzzing.

That’s nothing,
I think.
I wish I could stay here with you forever.

“But I really have to get back,” he adds quickly.

It occurs to me that David’s heated urgency thirty minutes ago might have been more about a newspaper deadline than about having sex with me, but I decide that, in light of today’s events, I will let myself push that thought to the back burner. Besides, the privileges of marriage, where you get to needle your spouse with your every insecure notion, don’t extend to an affair. David still thinks I’m confident and mysterious, which, I sense, is an important ingredient in the stew of our relationship. So I just roll onto my stomach and lean in to kiss him. “I’ll get dressed and drive you back.”

“No, it’s all right,” he says, already pulling his clothes on. “I’ll catch a bus. It stops right on the corner, and there’s one every ten minutes.” He’s getting public transportation back to work. I’m still warm from our lovemaking and he’s about to jump on a bus. This is tawdry.