The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (46 page)

I was watching the scene intently—Peter specifically now, because instead of becoming more comfortable with having a husband, after three years I was becoming more surprised by it. Or maybe I was more surprised not that I was his wife but that I was
anybody’s
wife, really. The word
wife
was so wifey that it made me squeamish—it made me think of aprons and meat loaf and household cleansers. You’d think the word would have evolved for me by that point—or perhaps it
had
evolved for most people into cell phones and aftercare and therapy, but I was the one who was stuck—like some gilled species unable to breathe up on the mudflats.

Although Peter and I had been together for a total of five years, I felt like I didn’t know him at all sometimes. Like at that very moment, as he was being back-clapped and jostled by the guy in the pink-striped polo shirt, I felt as if I’d spotted some rare species called
husband
in its natural habitat. I was wondering what its habits were—eating, chirping, wingspan, mating, life expectancy. It’s difficult to explain, but more and more often I’d begun to rear back like this, to witness my life as a
National Geographic
reporter, someone with a British accent who found my life not so much exciting as
curious
.

The ice-cream shop was packed, and the two high school girls on staff were stressed, their faces damp and pinched, bangs sticking to their foreheads, their matching eyeliner gone smeary. I’d finally made my way to the curved counter and placed my order. Soon enough I was holding a cone of pistachio for Peter and waiting for a cup of vanilla frozen yogurt for myself.

That’s when the more beleaguered of the two scoopers finished someone else’s order and shouted to a customer behind me. “What do you want?”

A man answered. “I’ll have two scoops of Gwen Merchant, please.”

I spun around, sure I’d misheard, because
I
am Gwen Merchant—or I was before I got married. But there in the line behind me stood a ghost from my past—Elliot Hull. I was instantly overwhelmed by the sight of him—Elliot Hull with his thick dark hair and his beautiful eyebrows, standing there with his hands in his pockets looking tender and boyish. I don’t know why, but I felt like I’d been waiting for him, without knowing I’d been waiting for him. And I wasn’t so much happy as I was relieved that he’d finally shown up again. Some strange but significant part of me felt like throwing my arms around him, as if he’d come to save me, and saying,
Thank God, you finally showed up! What took you so long? Let’s get out of here
.

But I couldn’t really have been thinking this. Not way back then. I must be projecting—backward—and there must be a term for this: projecting backward, but I don’t know
what it is. I couldn’t have been thinking that Elliot Hull had come to save me because I didn’t even know I needed saving. (And, of course, I’d have to save myself in the end.) The only conclusion I can draw is that maybe he represented some lost part of myself. And I must have realized on some level that it wasn’t that I’d been missing only Elliot Hull. I must have been missing the person I’d been when I’d known him—
that
Gwen Merchant—the somewhat goofy, irreverent, seriously un-wifely part—two scoops of
her
.

Careening past airline counters toward the security check-in, I’m explaining love and its various forms of failure to Lindsay, my assistant. Amid the hive of travelers—retirees in Bermuda shorts, cats in carry-on boxes perforated with air holes, hassled corporate stiffs—I find myself in the middle of a grand oration on love with a liberal dose of rationalizations. I’ve fallen in love with lovable cheats. I’ve adored the wrong men for the wrong reasons. I’m culpable. I’ve suffered an unruly heart and more than my share of prolonged bouts
of poor judgment. I have lacked some basics in the area of control. For example: I had no control over the fact that I fell in love with Artie Shoreman—a man eighteen years my senior. I had no control over the fact that I am still in love with him even after I found out, in one fell swoop, that he had three affairs during our four-year marriage. Two were lovers he’d had before we got married, but had kept in touch with—held on to, really, like parting gifts from his bachelorhood, living memorabilia. Artie didn’t want to call these
affairs
because they were spur-of-the-moment. They weren’t
premeditated
. He trotted out terminology like
fling
and
dalliance
. The third affair he called
accidental
.

And I have no control over the fact that I am angry that Artie’s gotten so sick—so deathbedish—in the midst of this and that I blame him for his dramatic flair. I have no control over the compulsion I feel to go back home to him right now, bailing out of a speech on convoluted SEC regulations—because my mother has told me in a middle-of-the-night, bad-news phone call that his health is grave. I have no control over the fact that I’m still furious at Artie for being a cheat just when one might, possibly, expect me to soften, at least a little.

I’m telling Lindsay how I left Artie shortly after I found out about the affairs and how that was the right thing to do six months ago. I tell her how all three affairs were revealed at once—like some awful game show.

Lindsay is petite. Her jacket sleeves are always a bit too long for her, as if she’s wearing an older sister’s hand-me-downs
that she hasn’t quite grown into. She has silky blond hair that swings around like she’s trapped in a shampoo commercial, and she wears small glasses that slip down the bridge of a nose so perfect and narrow I’m not sure how she breathes through it. It’s as if her nose were designed as an accent piece without regard to function. She knows this whole story, of course. She’s nodding along in full agreement. I forge on.

I tell her that this hasn’t been so bad, opting for business trip after business trip, a few months hunkered down with one client and then another, every convention opportunity—a life of short-term corporate rentals and hotel rooms. It was supposed to allow me some time and space to get my heart together. The plan was that when I saw Artie again, I’d be ready, but I’m not.

“Love can’t be ordered around or even run by a nice-enough democracy,” I tell Lindsay. My definition of a democracy consists of polling the only two people I’ve chosen to confide in—my anxiety-prone office assistant, Lindsay, who at this very moment is clipping along next to me through JFK airport’s terminal, and my overwrought mother, who’s got me on speed dial.

“Love refuses to barter,” I say. “It won’t haggle with you like that Turkish man with the fake Gucci bags.” My mother insists I get her a fake Gucci bag each time I’m in New York on business; my carry-on is bulging with fake Gucci at this very moment.

“Love isn’t logical,” I insist. “It’s immune to logic.” In my
case: my husband is a cheater and a liar, therefore I should move on or decide to forgive him, which is an option that I’ve heard some women actually choose in situations like this.

Lindsay says, “Of course, Lucy. No doubt about it!”

There’s something about Lindsay’s confident tone that rattles me. She’s often overly positive, and sometimes her high-salaried agreement makes me double-think. I try to carry on with the speech. I say, “I have to stick by my mistakes, though, including the ones that I came by naturally through my mother.” My mother—the Queen of Poor Judgment in Men. I flash on an image of her in a velour sweat suit, smiling at me with a mix of hopeful pride and pity. “I have to stick by my mistakes because they’ve made me who I am. And I’m someone that I’ve come to like—except when I get flustered ordering elaborate side dishes in sushi restaurants, in which case I’m completely overbearing, I know.”

“No kidding,” Lindsay agrees, a little too quickly.

And now I stop in the middle of the airport—my laptop swinging forward, my little carry-on suitcase wheels coming to a quick halt (I’ve only packed necessities—Lindsay will ship the rest of my things later). “I’m not ready to see him,” I say.

“Artie needs you,” my mother had told me during last night’s phone call. “He is your husband still, after all. And it’s very bad form to leave a dying husband, Lucy.”

This was the first time that anyone had said that Artie was going to die—aloud, matter-of-factly. Until that moment it had been serious, surely, but he’s still young—only fifty. He comes from a long line of men who died young, but that shouldn’t mean anything—not with today’s advances in medicine. “He’s just being dramatic,” I told my mother, trying to return to the old script, the one where we joke about Artie’s dire attempts to get me back.

“But what if he isn’t just being dramatic?” she said. “You need to be here. Your being away now, well, it’s bad karma. You’ll come back in your next life as a beetle.”

“Since when do you talk about karma?” I asked.

“I’m dating a Buddhist now,” my mother said. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Lindsay has grabbed my elbow. “Are you okay?”

“My mother is dating a Buddhist,” I tell her, as if explaining how terribly wrong everything is. My eyes have filled with tears. The airport signs overhead go blurry. “Here.” I hand her my pocketbook. “I won’t be able to find my ID.”

She leads me to a set of phones near an elevator and starts digging through my purse. I can’t root through it right now. I can’t because I know what’s stuffed inside—all the little cards that I’ve pulled from little envelopes stuck in small plastic green forks accompanying the daily deliveries of flowers that Artie’s ordered long distance. He’s found me no matter what hotel room I’m in or apartment I’m put up in anywhere I happen to be in the continental U.S. (How does
he know where I am? Who gives him my itinerary—my mother? I’ve always suspected her, but have never told her to stop. Secretly, I like Artie to know where I am. Secretly, I need the flowers, even though part of me hates them—and him.)

“I’m glad you kept all of these,” Lindsay says. She’s been in my hotel rooms. She’s seen the flowers that collect until they’re all in various stages of wilt. She hands me my license.

“I wish I hadn’t kept them. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of weakness,” I tell her.

She pulls one out. “I’ve always wondered,” she says, “you know, what he has to say in all of those cards.”

Suddenly I don’t want to find my way into the line at security with a herd of strangers. The line is long, but still I have plenty of time—too much. In fact, I know I’ll be restless on the other side, feel a little caged myself—like one of those cats in the carry-ons. I don’t want to be alone. “Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?” She raises her thin eyebrows.

I think about it a moment longer. I don’t really want to hear Artie’s love notes. Part of me is desperate to grab the pocketbook out of her hands, tell her
sorry, changed my mind
, and get in line with everyone else. But another part of me wants her to read these cards, to see if they are as manipulative as I think they are. In fact, I think I need that right now. A little sisterly validation. “Yes,” I tell her.

She plucks the note and reads aloud, “Number forty-seven: the way you think every dining room should have a
sofa in it for people who want to lie down to digest, but still be part of the witty conversation.” She glances at me.

“I like to lie down after I eat—like the Egyptians or something. The dining room sofa just makes good sense.”

“Do you have one?”

“Artie bought me one for our first anniversary.” I don’t want to think of it now, but it’s there in my mind—a long antique sofa reupholstered with a fabric of red poppies on a white background and dark wood trim that matches the dining room furniture. We made love on it that first night in the house, the boxy pillows sliding out from under us onto the floor, the aged springs creaking.

She pulls out another one and reads, “Number fifty-two: how the freckles on your chest can be connected to make an approximate constellation of Elvis.”

A crew of flight attendants glides by in what seems to be the V formation of migrating geese. A few of Artie’s old girlfriends were flight attendants. He made his money opening an Italian restaurant during his late twenties (despite a lack of any real Italian blood in him) and then launching a national chain. He traveled a lot. Flight attendants were plentiful. I watch them swish by in their nylons, the wheels on their suitcases rumbling. My stomach cinches up for a moment. “He actually did that once, connected the freckles, and documented it. We have the photos.” I’m waiting for Lindsay’s righteous anger to become apparent, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, I notice that she’s smiling a little.

She pulls out a third. “Number fifty-five: the way you’re afraid that if you forgive your father—once and for all—he might really disappear in some way, even though he’s been dead for years.”

Lindsay raises her eyebrows at me again.

The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

BRIDGET ASHER