The Lost Husband (2 page)

“I know it sounds crazy—” I started.

“It doesn’t just sound crazy.” His voice was tightening. “It actually
is
crazy.”

I looked down.

“What if I had some insane dream about you?” he went on, pushing his advantage. “What if I woke up one morning steaming mad because you’d burned the house down? Or totaled the car? Or bought a tiger as a pet? And then I walked around all day resenting you for it?”

“Point taken,” I said.

This was not the first time I’d had a dream like this about Danny. In fact, we’d worked out a fully developed theory about how my neglectful mother, who had once driven off with the moving van before realizing she’d left me behind, had given me a fear of abandonment. But it didn’t seem to change much in practice. I still kept expecting him to leave me. And nothing he could do—including repeatedly
not
leaving me every day for eight years—could convince me otherwise.

This bugged him. After a while, it really bugged him. Because he was a good guy, and he got tired of being treated like a scoundrel.

The problem, in some ways—and we’d discussed this, too—was that he
was
such a good guy. He was exactly the guy I’d always hoped for. He was fun, he was affectionate, he helped with the dishes. But the trouble with getting what you’ve always wanted is that once you have it, you have to worry that you’ll lose it. And the more you tamp down that fear, the more it comes out in funny ways. Fear of burglars, for example. Or natural disasters. Or trapeze artists.

My life before Danny—or maybe it was just my mother—had taught me to expect the worst. And yet the worst never seemed to happen. So, about four times a year, I’d get mad at Danny for something I made up.

In my defense, dreams can be very real in their own way.
“But,” I started again—and here we got to the crux of the matter—“you’re still in love. With me, I mean. Right?”

It was a stupid, vulnerable question—one I felt ridiculous even asking. One that had a razor’s-width range of possible right responses. And as he squeezed his eyes shut in irritation, I knew for certain that he’d get it wrong.

He turned around. “Where the hell does that come from?”

I couldn’t have answered him even if I’d tried. Maybe the fact that he’d been working twelve-hour days for over a year. Or the fact that he always seemed like he was in a rush to get somewhere else. Or the fact that his life was 90 percent grown-up stuff, and my life was 90 percent kid stuff, and I wasn’t sure anymore where we overlapped.

I did not seriously think that he was having an affair. Still, I’d have taken a little reassurance. I wouldn’t have said no to that.

But that’s when Abby woke up, and we heard her shout, amplified on the monitor: “Is it morning yet? Hello? Is it morning?” And that woke her brother in turn, which started the wheels cranking on our morning routines—the kids and me heading downstairs for banana coins and oatmeal, and Danny sweeping past us later in his suit, pausing just long enough to kiss all three foreheads on his way out to the car. I wasn’t sure if we were still fighting or not, honestly, by the time he was gone. And by noon that day, I’d left several voice mails apologizing and asking if we were okay.

“Just checking in,” I said, substituting singsongy for actual cheer.

I’d been to Gymboree, made fruit salad and mac ’n’ cheese for lunch, dropped Abby at art camp, and put Tank down for his afternoon nap before I heard anything back.

In the late afternoon, a text from Danny finally arrived. “We R OK. C U @ dinner.”

But I did not see him at dinner.

That evening, as Danny entered a busy access road after picking up Abby, a pickup truck crashed into his Jeep. The impact was so strong, it crumpled Danny’s side of the car before he had his seatbelt on. And it crushed Abby’s femur into enough pieces that she still walked with the tiniest limp. Danny lost consciousness on the way to the hospital, and that text message turned out to be our final conversation. One that I’d decided—in a moment I would regret forever—not to even answer.

Now it was three years later. Three impossible years later. And I was doing okay. I had, in fact, somehow managed to carry on, like they say you’re supposed to.

But that’s not quite right. I hadn’t so much carried on as been carried. All I’d really done was remain in the current of the living world—something that was less of a choice than a lack of choice—and let it pull me along.

Three years is a long time. In three years, our kids had gone from two and four to five and seven. Tank had gone from being a dumpling-cheeked toddler to a long, skinny
boy
. Abby had lost four of the baby teeth she’d worked so hard to grow, started reading chapter books, and grown her brown hair down to her waist—not to mention all the work she’d done to heal her injured leg. The accident and its aftermath had become the past, and neither of them remembered their dad as more than a photograph, or maybe a feeling. And, in truth, I didn’t remember him as well as I once had, either.

The sharpness of grief had given way to a dull ache, one that for a long time I had assumed was a response to loss. Though in recent months I’d begun to suspect that the ache came not so much from loss anymore as from location. My location in particular, and its proximity to my mother. Who had her good qualities, but who was also, as they say, a real piece of work.

Moving in with her had seemed reasonable after we’d lost our house. In fact, it had seemed like the only option at the time. It turned out Danny had made some bad investments without telling me, and then—also without telling me—he had used our savings and his life insurance to get square. Which would have worked out fine if he’d lived, because he was good at making money, and he had a plan, from the looks of his papers, to put it all right again. Instead, he died. And I was left with a house I couldn’t pay for, full of things I couldn’t keep.

And so, within a year, I’d sold it all off, bit by bit, and taken a job as a bank teller, which was the best position my B.A. in math qualified me for after years as a stay-at-home mom. I’d also moved the kids out of their fancy schools and resigned myself to the sofa bed in my mom’s condo so they could have the guest room.

I got through the day focusing on minutia: lunch boxes, permission slips, grocery lists, bills to pay. I had no interest in seeing the big picture. I kept my head down and my eyes on just what lay before me. Anything else made me dizzy. I was alive, though I wouldn’t exactly call it “living.”

The night my aunt Jean’s letter arrived at my mother’s place, my mom was trying to convince me to get highlights in my hair. It was four days after Christmas, but she’d already taken down the fake tree and packed away the wreath.

“Just a little brightness around the face,” she said. “A girl shouldn’t look middle-aged at thirty-three.”

I didn’t respond.

“Or you could go whole hog and become a blonde again, like when you were little.” She squinched up her face in sympathy. “I hate seeing you all mousy.”

I was still in my blouse and skirt, doing dishes after standing for a full day at work and making dinner and putting the kids to bed. I filled the sink with soapy water.

Next she started insisting I needed a man. That was her plan the whole time—to get me out of her condo via the New Husband Express. “We need to snag you a provider,” she liked to say.

I said, “I’m not the type of woman a provider is looking for, Mom.”

“Not anymore,” she agreed. “But we could fix you up! You used to be quite pretty.”

“Mom,” I said, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why not? I’ll pay.”

I closed my eyes. “And then what? I’ll hit the bars and go trolling for a husband?”

“If you have to. Yes.”

“And what am I supposed to do with the kids?”

“Sweetheart, that’s why they invented television.”

“Really?” I said. I had such a headache. “
That’s
why they invented television?”

She didn’t care about the details. “Libby, I’m trying to help,” she said. “I just don’t want you making the same mistakes I did.”

It was too mean, but I said it anyway: “Mom, if I spend my entire adult life chasing after men and ignoring my children, I
will
be making the same mistakes that you did.”

True. But so what? So she had forfeited friendships, meaningful
work, and even her relationship with her only child, just to be disappointed by three different husbands. What was she going to do now? See the light? Change the past? Get to work weaving a rich tapestry of varied and satisfying human relationships? Hell, no. She was going golfing with her boyfriend, Jerry. And stopping for a squirt of Botox on the way.

My mother blinked. “I just want to see you happy again.”

At this, I rinsed my soapy hands—one of which still wore my wedding ring—under the faucet, walked over to her, stood inches away, and said in a quiet voice meant to end the conversation, “I will
never
be happy again.”

My mother gave a sigh. “I know it’s been hard.”

For a moment I couldn’t help but hope that I’d gotten through.

Then she went right on with the talking. “But that’s a bad attitude. You’ll never find a man that way. I know lots of widows—
tons of them!
—and the trick is getting back in the saddle. Do you think I wanted to go to that fat farm after my last divorce? I did not! But I reinvented my relationship with food and lost twenty-five pounds! Do you think I’d be with Jerry now if I hadn’t?”

Jerry wore polo shirts with sprigs of chest hair at the V, and his standard greeting was to squeeze your upper-arm fat. Then he’d use your name over and over in conversation:
Libby, great to see you! Your mom doesn’t agree, Libby, but I think you’re looking wonderful. Tell me, Libby—when are you going to quit that awful bank job and start modeling?
Squeeze, squeeze.

“I don’t need a fat farm, Mom,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “you couldn’t afford it, even if you did.”

“Mom?”

“What?” Her feelings were hurt now.

“We’re done here.”

I went back to the dishes, my head now throbbing, and she
picked up a stack of mail and began to sort noisily—and with narration: “Bill. Bill. Catalog. Junk mail. Bill.”

I was just about to start banging my face against the fridge when she said, “And a letter for you from Aunt Jean. That crazy cow.”

I went over to look, and I had to wrestle the thing out of my mother’s grip. I ripped it open as she tried to read over my shoulder.

“What does it say?” she asked.

I moved to the other side of the island and read to myself:

Dear Libby
,

It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for—dear Lord!—two whole years, and I’m writing to see if you’d like to be rescued
.

I run a little farm in Atwater, and as I get older, I find it’s harder to get my chores done. Do you need a place to stay? If you’d be willing to help on the farm, I can pay you a little and offer room and board
.

I was very sorry to hear about your husband. He must have been quite a guy. I have never seen so many people at a funeral
.

Let me know what you think!

Warmly
,
Your horrible aunt Jean

My mother was leaning across the island, trying to read upside down. “What does she say?”

“She’s offering me a job on her farm.”

“On her farm? That bitch.”

“I hate that word, Mom,” I said.

“It’s the only word that fits.”

I’d been hearing about horrible Aunt Jean forever. She was a “hippie,” a “weirdo,” and a “freak.” According to my mother, she did not wear antiperspirant or use soap. She washed her dishes with dirt. She shot squirrels with a rifle and ground them into burgers. She was our standing reference for the lowest form of human existence. Whenever my mother saw a wild-looking homeless person, she’d say, “There’s your aunt Jean.” And as much as the adult part of me thought my mother had to be exaggerating, the childhood part of me that had Aunt Jean in the boogeyman category kind of expected to see smears of dirt—or possibly even squirrel blood—on the letter itself.

I’d met Aunt Jean once. She’d showed up at my high school graduation in overalls and gave me a tight hug that stuck in my memory. She hadn’t looked weird or particularly filthy. Just no-nonsense, with salt-and-pepper hair, and—okay, maybe a little eccentric—a crumpled straw hat. She also remembered my birthday every year, which is more than I could say for my mother. And now, apparently, she’d come to Danny’s funeral, too. If I’d seen her there, I didn’t remember—but I didn’t remember much from that day.

“She came to the funeral?” I asked.

My mother nodded. “She was the fat lady in the balcony.”

“I don’t remember a fat lady in the balcony.”

“Don’t you?” my mother asked. “You don’t remember a fat lady and the stench of goats? I could smell her from the front row.”

Atwater was the town where my mother and her sister had grown up. I’d never been there, or even seen pictures, but Aunt Jean had moved back home with her hippie boyfriend in the seventies. A lifestyle choice my non-hippie, non-goat-farming, nonfat mother did not condone.

“She must have extra space in her house,” I said.

“Extra space!” my mom burst out so loud I thought she might wake the kids. “She sure does. And it’s not a house. It’s a mansion.”

“It’s a mansion?”

“Didn’t you know that?”

I shook my head.

My grandmother, in her will, had left the hundred-year-old family homestead and four-hundred-acre farm to Jean—and Jean only. It had happened when I was maybe four or five. Now, all these years later, whenever the topic came up, my mother still got so mad I thought she might pass out.