The After Wife (22 page)

I stood, turned, and bumped straight into Lance Armstrong. He was still holding the coffee that I’d made him order.

“Oh … hi,” I stammered. “I was just leaving …”

“Hey, Joon,” Lance said. “I hope you helped out our customer here. Did you tell her about our newest homeowner policy?”

Kim looked puzzled. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know—”

“Why don’t you step over here … I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Lance said.

“I never threw it at you,” I said. “It’s Hannah. Hannah Bernal.”

“Hannah,” he said, “you have a nice smile—that is, when you smile. Follow me.”

I’m smiling?
I asked myself, as I followed Lance. He was still in his biking gear. If he looked ridiculous at Peet’s, he looked like ridiculous times a hundred in a bank, even in Santa Monica. I felt my face as I entered the office, a nameplate on the door—Tom DeCiccio.
Yes, I was smiling
.

* * *

I am excellent at apologizing—like most women, I’ve been doing it all my life. I’m pretty sure “I’m sorry” were my first words. Examples: “I’m sorry I made you cheat on me.” “I’m sorry I bumped you while you were stealing my purse.” “I’m sorry my breathing annoys you.” So, I just dove right in: “I’m really sorry about my Lance Armstrong comment.” I thought about using my widow card.

He waved. “No worries. I look ridiculous in my biking gear.”

“You’re in incredible shape,” I blurted out. “Oh, God. I’m sorry for that comment, as well. And I’m sorry for anything else that embarrasses me or you, or the both of us.”

Tom slipped off his cap and sat down behind his desk. “Now what can I do to help you?”

“What can you do to help?” I asked. “Are you ready?”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” Tom said. “It’s been a tough couple years for a lot of people.”

“Okay,” I said, then, “I lost my husband. I lost my job. I’m going to lose my home.” I bit my lip to keep from crying. Please, please don’t cry in front of cute Tom, I implored myself. Too late. At this point, I could cry at a
Jersey Shore
rerun. I was as sensitive as a blister, a human blister on the bottom of the foot of humanity.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tom said. He did look genuinely sorry, not just “I’m sorry I opened my office to this batty woman with the half-combed hair” sorry.

He handed me a Kleenex box. I pulled out a tissue, then another. I couldn’t keep my tears from running. Nothing worked. Not images of silly dog tricks or fat baby elbows or Dwight Howard’s foot-wide grin.

“Did he … leave you?” Tom asked.

“Did who leave me?” I asked, through the sheet of salty, snot membrane covering my mouth. What’s more attractive than a sniveling widow? Try
everything
.

“Your husband?” he asked. “Did he leave you?”

“No. I mean, yes. My husband died. One bright morning, he’s
healthy, happy, not a care in the world—so carefree that he forgot to pay off his quarterly life insurance bill—the next minute, he’s dead. And no one wants to talk about it. I mean, grief meetings—they don’t even want me—how many husbands have to die before I qualify?”

“My wife died,” Tom said. He flipped through his calendar while I composed myself.
Did I hear correctly?

“Let’s see, just passed the five-month anniversary not long ago, that would be the twenty-eighth …” He looked at me. “Yes, so, Patchett left us on August 28 …”

“Patchett?” I said, before I could stop myself.

“It was a family name. Her great-grandmother’s last name.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. Patchett? I found myself wondering what she looked like: A Patchett would be tall, blond, jumping horses before noon … everything I found hard to relate to in one name.
Why was I hating on a dead woman?

“Cancer … her brain. There was nothing we could do. She was very brave.”

She was brave. Of course. Everything I wasn’t. I suppose she was a doctor, as well.

“She was a pediatrician.”

Who went to Harvard.

“She graduated from Yale.”

I had to chuckle, “I called Harvard.”

“How’d you know?” Tom asked. “She went to Harvard under-grad.”

I was going to walk out of the bank with no bank loan, no second mortgage, and no self-esteem. At least it hadn’t taken longer than thirty minutes.

I focused on the silver-framed photographs on the chest behind him. Exquisite blond girls, hair bands, green eyes, one with braces.

“Your children?”

“Three. Three daughters,” he said. “You?”

“One daughter. She’s three …” My voice caught in my throat. “Oh my God. Her birthday is coming up.” I was crying again.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said. We sat there for a few moments. My sobs were like the drunk party guest who wouldn’t shut up.

“I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes,” I finally managed. “I just … you’re really going to think I’ve lost it … I just got this tattoo …”

I pulled my sweater off my shoulder, exposing the frying pan that would live in infamy.

“Wow,” he said. “A frying pan.”

“Yeah, right?”

“That’s pretty terrible.” Tom nodded. “But I think I win.” He pulled up the tight, short sleeve on his biking shirt, exposing a bleached shoulder. And a tattoo. A Gold Amex card. The name PATCHETT MILLER DECICCIO, complete with credit card number and that guy’s head.

“Oh my God. Truly, truly … awful,” I said. Was I flirting?
Put the flirt away. Put it away, now!

“No one understands,” he said. “Not even Hairy Eddie.”

“Who’s not even hairy,” I said. “What’s that about?” I was in the presence of the Widower. Dee Dee had gotten her recognizance wrong: He was supposed to hang out at Caffe Luxxe, not Peet’s. And fuck it if he didn’t look like George Clooney, you know, pre-Darfur. Before he was Dar-furrowed.

“Would you like to have coffee sometime?” Tom asked.

“I … I don’t know. I mean, I should probably drink less coffee because you know, heart palpitations, but what’s one latte—”

“It’s just coffee, Hannah,” Tom said, using my first name. “I just don’t meet many people in the same … situation.”

“It’s not like I’m cheating—you can’t cheat on a dead man.” Even if you are still talking to him. “I can do coffee. I mean, why not, right? As long as I do the ordering …” I gathered up my purse, and my used Kleenex. “Oh … but what about my … housing situation?”

“Let me crunch the numbers. I think we can work something out,” Tom said. “At least for the time being, until you get your feet on the ground. I don’t want you to worry. By the way, that’s a truly awful tattoo.”

“Thanks. And yours makes mine look like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.”

The Hannah Bernal who walked out of the bank was a different person than the one who’d walked in. For one thing, this new Hannah Bernal felt a tingle she hadn’t felt in … since John.

“I wonder if the tingle police will get me,” I said, as I walked past the window of a real estate office. Dee Dee Pickler’s face was plastered on flyers featuring “awesome condo’s (sic)” in Santa Monica. I saw my reflection in the glass. I barely recognized this girl—smiling eyes, hair blowing in the breeze. My shoulders weren’t pressed against my earlobes. Could bad luck have skipped off to warmer climes? Taken a break poolside in South Beach? I crossed my fingers and headed to my car.

Tom called two days later, and we set a coffee date. It seemed to take hours to decide which coffee shop; the wrong place could set off a whole ugly chain of events.

“What will you be wearing?” I joked. “So that I’ll recognize you.”

“Um, a gray suit, light blue shirt, maybe not the light blue shirt—maybe white—”

“Tom?”

“Yes?”

“I’m kidding.”

“Sorry. Right.” We decided on the Pirates, my hometown favorite; I’d yet to see a set of hemp-wearing triplets in line.

“The Jurassic?” Salvador, one of the baristas, asked, as we got to the front of the line. He was built like a Mayan runner, short and compact, with a black braid to his waist.

“No.” I couldn’t order my usual bran muffin with Tom next to me. I had dubbed it “The Jurassic” because it looked like something dinosaurs left behind after breakfast.

“Just a vanilla latte.” Salvador smiled. I had a flashback of Salvador’s
face when I told him John had died. Why had I come here with Tom? I went to pay for my latte.

“Not going to happen,” Tom said. “Let me get that.”

“I barely know him,” I said to Salvador, my upper lip sweating like a bribe-taking senator on
60 Minutes
. “He’s my banker. We just both like coffee, as it turns out.”

Salvador watched as Tom helped me to an outside table and pulled my chair out, angling it so the sun wouldn’t be in my face. We sat and talked about our lives, pre- and postapocalypse. We laughed. We paused. Salvador came out several times to check on us.

“Is he giving me a dirty look?” Tom asked. “I think he just tried to kick me.”

“He loved my husband.”

“Ah, I understand,” Tom said, checking his watch. “Oh, hey, look at the time. Do you realize we’ve been here almost two hours?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing, for what, I didn’t know.

“No, no,” Tom said. “I just … I usually don’t talk this much.”

“Misery loves coffee,” I said. He laughed. I liked the wrinkles around his eyes, the hair that was too gray for his age. The polished outside and damaged interior. An interior that I was particularly qualified to understand.

“Will you do this again?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “It was fun … I mean, not fun, like the eighties—you know what I mean.”

As he left, a black Range Rover turned the corner and raced past, just missing a pedestrian in the crosswalk. Reminding me that I needed to call Detective Ramirez. Reminding me that I was still in a relationship, albeit a complicated one. My cellphone rang.

“Are you dating the Widower?” Dee Dee Pickler asked.

“No,” I said. I turned to see if she was following me.

“Two-hour coffee date?” Dee Dee said. “I call that an engagement party.”

“Bye, Dee Dee.”

“The Turk is all fired up and ready to go,” she was saying, as I hung up.

* * *

Aimee was undergoing radiation treatment, and had moved in. She didn’t ask, of course. I insisted, of course. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it work, as Aimee couldn’t be in the same vicinity as Brandon.

“Are you ashamed you have cancer?” I asked. “Is that why you don’t speak to him?”

“No,” she said, “I’m just a snob.” I didn’t buy it. I was feeding Ellie toast points dipped in over-easy egg yolks when Brandon walked in and handed Aimee
The New York Times
. (Yes, she is the one person still reading newspapers.)

“Hey, all,” he said, as he poured orange juice. Brandon had the sleepy look that a five-year-old gets when he first wakes up. I guess it’s the look we all have, but Brandon’s is missing wrinkles and folds.

“Hey, B,” I said.

He smiled and shuffled out. I looked at Aimee. She hadn’t even raised her head. I was getting a little fed up; like my widow card, her cancer card was almost expired.

“Why didn’t you thank him for bringing you the paper?”

“Didn’t I?” she said.

“C’mon,” I said, as Ellie slurped on her sippy cup. (I know; she should be drinking from a regular cup by now—I know I know—sippy cup = bad bite = lisp = braces = low self-esteem = blow jobs at twelve = pregnant at sixteen = trailer park in Riverside. Every decision I make for this child has her ending up in a trailer park where the trailers are held together with duct tape and child molesters are at the top of the food chain. It’s a wonder any single mother bothers to wake up in the morning—you can’t win.)

“You treat him like he’s invisible. He’s over six feet of visibility.”

Aimee shrugged. “I don’t know why you all think he’s so cute.”

My front door opened. I heard Chloe, followed by her …

“Don’t bring those things in here,” Aimee said, “I have cancer!”

“What’s cancer?” Ellie asked. I wiped the yolk from her chin.

“Something Auntie Aimee is getting a lot of mileage out of,” I said sweetly.

“Dogs give you cancer?” Chloe asked. “I’ve been taking mine to St. John’s for years—they’re therapy dogs.”

“Therapy dogs,” Aimee said, as they started barking wildly. “For them or you?”

I was helping Ellie down from her seat when I turned to see an elegant gentleman with slicked-back snowy hair, wearing a dark, old-fashioned three-piece suit, seated next to Aimee. His long body was squeezed into the chair and he was holding a pocket watch. I recognized him from my steamed vagina interlude. I almost dropped Ellie.

“Mommy!” she said, looking up at me.

“Are you cold, Ellie?” I asked, shivering. Chloe rushed her barking dogs outside and tried to collar Spice, but he wouldn’t leave. He was circling the man, his head low …

“Why’s Spice acting so strange?” Aimee said. “I wonder if we’re going to have an earthquake.”

“Why are you here?” I said to the man. “You scared me—I almost dropped my kid.”

“Hannah, are you all right?” Chloe asked.

“Quick, hand her a therapy dog,” Aimee said.

“Chloe, take Ellie outside,” I said. “Now.”

“C’mon, El,” Chloe said. “Come on, let’s go play with the puppies—”

Aimee shifted to stand. “Stay there,” I told her. “He’s sitting right next to you. I remember him from the spa.”

“Who?” she asked. “Hannah, please stop this—”

“He’s … related to you.” The fine facial features. The long limbs. He was calmly waiting. Waiting for what?

“What would you like me to say to your granddaughter?” I asked.

Aimee jumped up. Orange juice hit the floor.

“Stay!” I ordered. Her grandfather started fiddling with his pocket watch.

“Okay, come on,” I said, “I have to get Ellie to school.” I was losing my patience with the dead. The living have to get on with it, you know? The dead, what, do they have business meetings? Nail appointments? Looming bankruptcy? No.

“What-what’s he doing?” Aimee asked. I could feel her body shaking from across the table. “Why’s he here? Is he here? Hannah, please, I can’t take this.”