My Husband's Sweethearts (11 page)

I remember a boyfriend I once had, Jimmy
Prather, who mythologized his exes. There
was the glamorous one who left him to go
to Hollywood, the archfeminist who went into politics,
the insane one who made him run naked through the
snow to prove his undying love for her—she went on to
some ministardom right at the dawn of reality TV. There
was no competing with these myths, and, worse, I could
feel him mythologizing me when I was standing right
there, flesh and blood, in front of him. We didn't last long.
I wonder if Artie's sweethearts will be mythic. Will I be
able to endure a parade of them, one after the other?
After they've all gone, will I discover a psychic pattern
that I fit into? Will I see myself in them?

I'm thinking about all this in the middle of the night—
still not asleep. To distract myself, I turn to my own parade
of sweethearts—which, by the way, is not a good idea if
your aim is sleep. I open a floodgate. Jimmy Prather is only
the beginning. I shuffle through some high school boys—
a few athletes, a drummer in a bad garage band—and
college—one guy who, after the breakup, went through a
bit of a stalker phase, a lazy business major I later heard
turned into a junkie, and a guy I was desperate about who
went into the foreign service. And then the string of bad
decisions before Artie—coworkers, a few guys met in bars,
two bogus proposals, a let's-move-in-together that lasted a
record three weeks.

I've been no prize. I mean, if I were told I'd have to
confront a parade of my own sweethearts, I might have reacted
like Artie first did—delighted to be able to see them
all again—a little segment of
This Is Your Life.
But what if
one or two (or more) had some real axes to grind? The
reason the let's-move-in-together only lasted three weeks?
I cheated on him. I know betrayal from the inside out.
Sure, I wasn't married. I hadn't taken a vow. Artie's sins
are much worse, but still, my record isn't pristine.

And then I find myself thinking of Artie—our simple
Sunday morning routine of newspapers and bagels, our
first-warm-day-of-spring celebration when we'd take off
from work and get drunk in the afternoon, the time he
took me fishing and I caught an enormous trout.

Around 5 a.m. I fall asleep with the remnants of a
guilty conscience and dream about being trapped underground
with a newspaper, bagels, and an angry raccoon
that's wearing my watch.

*

I wake up late and, still a little bleary, I shrug on jeans and
a T-shirt and walk into the kitchen to find Eleanor running
things with a little too much brusque professionalism, clipboard
in hand. While I'm having breakfast—made by my
mother, who's still hovering in the kitchen—I hear the
doorbell ring. Eleanor cries out, "I've got it," and rushes to
the door. I can hear her ushering a woman into the living
room, telling her to make herself comfortable. And then,
to my astonishment, I hear her rattle off a number of questions.
"Do you have any weapons? Poisons? Explosives?"
I hear the woman faltering, but responding with indignant
no after indignant no. And then Eleanor says that someone
(I'm assuming Eleanor) will be right with her. Throughout
it all, she maintains a forced gentleness in her voice, the
kind reserved for gynecology office help and therapists'
secretaries.

While I replay the images that flashed through my
mind the night before—the raccoon, the parade of my
exes in comparison to Artie's (now, in this version, some
of them are armed)—my mother tells me that she's canceled
the nurse for the day and that Elspa is upstairs, helping
Artie get ready. My mother is scrubbing the pan she
fried my eggs in. I can't eat the eggs. I just push them
around on my plate. It's too early to feel my first pang of
jealousy—Elspa taking care of Artie again—so I stop myself.
Let her get him ready for his dates,
I say to myself. But
then I picture Artie slapping cologne on his cheeks, and
this makes my neck itch.

Eleanor reappears long enough to open her cell
phone, but then the doorbell rings again, and she's charging
off with the clipboard. When she returns to collect a
tray of coffee and Styrofoam cups and creamers and sugar
packets, she says, "Our ten-thirty came early and our
nine-thirty wants to be bumped." I stare at Eleanor. She
picks up on it immediately. "My husband was an orthodontist.
I used to run the office. This is what I do," she
clarifies.

My mother and I both nod.

"And have you worked for the airlines? Security?" I ask.

She's confused. "No," she says.

"I think the rundown of questions about being armed
is, well, a little over the top. It has an impending strip-search
vibe."

"Are you going to start confiscating their toothpaste
and nail clippers?" my mother asks, enjoying this.

"I was just being precautious," Eleanor says. "God
knows we've all wanted to kill him at one point or another,
so . . ."

"I think we can omit the list of questions," I tell her.
"You know, let's just run the risk."

"Fine by me," she says. Her cell phone rings and she
quickly abandons the tray to answer.

And now everything sinks in. Two of my husband's
sweethearts are sitting in my living room, waiting to visit
with him, and I'm the one who brought them here—to
teach him some sort of lesson before he dies? What's the
etiquette? Do I introduce myself? Do I bring them the
coffee tray, offer bonbons, a stick of gum?

In any case, I have to see them with my own eyes. I'm
compelled to try to understand why they've decided to
come and what they might have to say to Artie. And, of
course, there's the unsettled matter of the pattern of
sweethearts that I may or may not fit into.

The two women are sitting on the sofa, side by side,
backlit by the bay window. One, an intimidatingly leggy
brunette, is thumbing through a copy of
People,
as if this
truly were a waiting room. Did she bring it? Has Eleanor
provided magazines as a courtesy? I feel like there should
be a fish tank and a little check-in area with a sliding glass
window.

I can't approach them. I zip on by, up the stairs. I'll
check in on Artie instead.

First off, I can smell him from the top of the stairs.
Aftershave, cologne—his favorite, a muscled scent that
has a hint of the great outdoors and a tennis pro. I brace
myself. He's going to be all done up, and I know it. And,
in fact, when I step into the room, I see it's worse than I
imagined. He's propped up in bed, all the pillows at his
back. His dark, shaggy hair is purposefully mussed with
plenty of product. He's looking out the window, where
I'm pretty sure he can only see the tops of trees. He looks
wistful. Actually, maybe it's worse than that: he's practicing
looking wistful.

"Is that a smoking jacket?" I ask.

He doesn't look at me. Maybe he's a little embarrassed.
"It's a robe. I don't want to sit here in my pajamas."

"It looks like a smoking jacket," I tell him, and it does.
It's black and shiny—maybe even velvety. Where did he
get such a thing? "You could just get dressed."

"Too much effort," he says, as if he hasn't gone to tons
of effort.

I realize now that Artie is nervous. He's sitting up here
like a teenager who's primping before a prom, and, of
course, he's accentuating his newest attribute—namely
the heroic drama of a man facing death. "It's too much effort
for someone who's dying, you mean? You have to
look the part, right?"

"I
am
dying," he says, a little defensively. "I'm not
making it up."

For a brief second, I want to believe that he is lying,
that he's made up all this business about dying just so he
can have a moment like this—the smoking jacket, the
sweethearts. I'm wrong, of course. Artie is vain. Maybe
that is his greatest weakness, his need for adoration. Did I
not give him enough adoration? Could any one person
have given him enough? The desire to slap him rises up
inside me so quickly I'm shocked by it. "And so you want
to enjoy the role, right?"

"I'm a crowd pleaser," he says, now looking at me. "I
give 'em what they want. Plus, you know, not everyone
gets to play this role. A person can get hit by a bus. The
end. No real death scenes at all."

"I'd lose the smoking jacket," I tell him. "You look a
little desperate in it—like my mother in that gold dress
with all the cleavage."

"It's not a smoking jacket," he says. "It's a robe!"

"Whatever you say."

I walk out of the room and down the stairs. I'm offended
that Artie wants to see all these women. I hadn't
expected him to be so eager. Couldn't he have at least
faked some disinterest for my sake? It isn't so much that
these women may do exactly the opposite of what I'm
hoping for—that they might come here and ruin everything
by giving him even more adoration. The real problem
is that, even now, I feel like I'm still not completely
enough for Artie. His heart still isn't wholly mine.

However, the fact that Artie is nervous makes me
more confident. I want retribution, a good dose of revenge.
I want Artie to own up, once and for all, to the
lousy way he's treated women, accept responsibility for
his actions. I pause at the bottom of the stairs and then
cross the hall quickly and step into my own living room, in
jeans and a T-shirt, without any makeup, with my hand
poised for shaking. I say, "Hi, I'm Artie's wife."

The leggy brunette drops the magazine to her lap and
stares at me blankly. The other woman is small, with a
blond bob and wispy bangs. She'd been gazing toward the
stairs, and I've startled her. "Oh," she says, her hand on
her chest. "I didn't expect to see you."

No one meets my half-hearted attempt to shake so I
shove my hand into my back pocket.

"Artie's married?" the leggy brunette says, completely
shocked.

"Didn't you know that?" the blonde asks.

"How did you know that?" I ask.

"Oh," the blonde says. "The woman on the phone
mentioned it."

The brunette shakes her head, and then looks me up
and down. "So, then, he finally
settled
down." I don't like
the way she's stressed the word
settled,
and there is an implicit
for you
that I don't care for. Suddenly I regret not
dressing up, not wearing full makeup and heels. My
mother would have pulled out the big guns for such an occasion.
And maybe she's right. My lack of dressing up was
supposed to be a statement of my confidence, as in I don't
need to dress up to compete with all of you. That competition
is long over and, unless you forgot, I won. But instead,
I feel unpolished, vulnerable, settled for. Did Artie
choose me from all these women because I represented
something safe, but all the while he desired something
more dangerous?

"It's nice to meet you," the blonde says, trying to make
up for the awkwardness. "I'm just so sorry. I mean under
these circumstances." Her eyes well up, and I'm worried
about her. Is she going to give Artie hell or is she going to
go in there and mourn?

"Under these circumstances?" the brunette says.
"Artie's lucky to have made it this far. Lucky he didn't get
shot in bed with someone else's wife." She glances at me.
"No offense," she says, but I'm not sure whether she's
saying this because I'm Artie's wife or just because I'm a
wife in general. "When did you and Artie get married?"
she asks.

"When did you and Artie date?" I counter.

"A decade ago," she says. "But he still pisses me off."

"Artie can have that effect," the blonde says, and then
adds, "I mean I'm sure he's a great husband. He was just a
lousy boyfriend. I mean, if you're not his favorite."

"What's your name?" I ask the blonde.

"Spring Melanowski," she says.

"Spring?" I repeat. As in
Springbird
? I want to ask.

"I was born in April," she says. And then her eyes go
teary again. "I just don't want to be surprised if he looks
very, well, different," she says. "If he's too sickly. I mean,
does he look, you know, like he's . . ." This display of emotions
makes me think that Artie is a fresh wound. How
fresh?

"Artie's a showman," I say. "I'm sure he'll perk up for
you." And then because there's a slack moment in the
conversation, I add, "You know Artie!"

This is a grave mistake.

The blonde nods her head nervously. And the
brunette smiles at me in a way that means
I sure do.
And
suddenly my chest is swarming with jealousy and more
than a little embarrassment. These two women do know
Artie. They know him each in their own private, intimate
ways. They know him in ways I never could. All these
women I now know who have pieces of Artie . . . And
this Spring Melanowski's piece could have led to the
destruction of my marriage. Once upon a time, I'd at least
had the illusion that he was mine, wholly, but now I can't
pretend.

The blonde is crying again, and this irritates the leggy
brunette and, more important, me. "Look, honey, I know
why I'm here," she says, and then asks the blonde, accusatorially,
"Do you?"

It's a tense moment, and I wonder if the blonde is going
to fall apart. Why is she here? All of these women have
X's by their names. They all ended on bad terms with
Artie. The blonde takes a tissue from her pocketbook. She
blows her nose and flips her bangs from her eyes. The
brunette and I are both waiting for her answer. Will she
answer? The blonde glances at me and then at the brunette.
Her voice becomes steely. "I sure as hell do know
why I'm here," she says.

I didn't realize it until this moment, but I've been
hunched toward the two seated women, and now I kind
of rear back. I'm unsteady and, overcompensating for tipping
backward, I take a step forward, banging my shin
into the coffee table, where I've placed the tray. There's a
clatter of spoons. I bend over, steadying myself on the
table. "Fucking shit," I say.