The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (21 page)

“You’re sweet,” Claire said, “but I’m fine.”

She and Charlie never made a big deal of the holiday. Charlie called it amateur’s night and refused to leave the house. They had their own tradition, which hadn’t seemed like a tradition until now. In retrospect, it seemed so indulgent—and sweet. Charlie would cook an elaborate dinner for the two of them. Cooking relaxed him. He’d spend hours on the dish—a chicken galantine—deboning the bird, sewing the savory mixture of meats and herbs back into the skin, accompanied by Rachmaninoff, which set the tone for the evening. They feasted on his work over television trays in front of a string of old movies, then switched to ABC shortly before midnight, to count the night down.

What was Jack Huxley doing?
This year she fell asleep with the television on, shortly before Anderson Cooper dropped the ball.

Claire woke uncharacteristically early the next day and used the extra hours to write. She was determined, or at least on the first day of the new year, to focus, as Beatrice divined, on her work. As she fidgeted in her chair a single image loomed large in her mind, quite possibly because Dr. Ahearn, her college literature professor described it frequently, and that was of the young Thomas Wolfe at work. Dr. Ahearn told this anecdote about Wolfe, which may or may not have been true: that he wrote standing up, in his kitchen. He was very tall and had difficulty finding a comfortable position in which to write, so he had his papers stacked on top of the icebox and stood in front of it writing. As he finished his pages, he slid them off onto the floor. Dozens of pages, she imagined, such was the prolificacy of Wolfe. Tens and dozens of pages fluttering to the floor like leaves shed from trees in October.

Now Claire wanted to be epic and careless and in love with the world again. She sat slouched at her desk, filled pages up spuriously in longhand, and flung them wildly off to the floor.

The problem was that once she’d flung four or five, she couldn’t stop herself from gathering them and neatly stacking them up in order. Inevitably, she returned to her computer and, thwarted by abandon, worked with the digital representations of Charlie’s curt words: stiff letters on a cold, flat screen.

His smile: when he smiled he captured the room. Huxley had a sharp eye for the absurd; the paradox of the career he’d chosen didn’t escape him. He kept a signed copy of
Brave New World
on a shelf—signed not to him, but to Bruce Bozzi “with fondness.” He’d bought it on eBay, $37.99 his final bid. Like all practiced narcissists, he considered himself self-aware.

29

“What do you mean by that, ‘further along’?” Lowenstein wanted to know. “Where, exactly, is further?”

It was sunny for January. There’d been snowfall; it was melting. Claire’s socks were damp through her boots. Sunlight streamed through Lowenstein’s hair; she looked ablaze.

“We didn’t start with my dream.”

“Yes, all right, your dream, then.”

Claire was beginning to tire of this doctor, but she feared her enough to stay. Lowenstein had adopted condescension in her manner. She seemed impatient. It made Claire think she wasn’t worthy enough to leave.

“It’s okay. I don’t have a dream. It’s just that’s usually where we start.”

“What would you like to talk about, then?”

“I’m irritable today, that’s all.” Claire crossed, then uncrossed her legs.

“Yes.”

“And I feel like a helium balloon that’s half-deflated. Or half-inflated. Which one is better?”

“Why do you feel this way?”

“I’m hovering. I’m lingering. I’m suspended in air. I don’t know that this is worthwhile.”

“We’ve gotten nowhere with your dreams.” Lowenstein said this haughtily, almost hostilely. It stung.

“Where were we supposed to get?”

“Tell me this, Claire. What makes you think you’re so special? What progress, exactly, do you think you ought to have made?”

“I don’t know, I just think … Well, Charlie’s cousin Sara, for instance. I saw her Christmas Eve, at Charlie’s mother’s. They were all there, Charlie’s mother, his cousin, his aunt Agnes—a room full of widows. The surviving men just looked shell-shocked. Anyway, Sara’s husband died only seven months before Charlie, he had a brain tumor, and she’s already engaged. She’s engaged! It’s been barely a year. She’s getting married, to a mechanical engineer. I mean, her first husband owned two Koo Koo Roos and now she’s marrying a mechanical engineer. No one even knows what that is.”

“What is it about that scenario that disturbs you? Do you think you should be engaged?” Lowenstein’s face was alarmingly still.

“No. I mean, it would make things easier, but I don’t think it’s the—”

“Do you define yourself by whom you’re betrothed to, Claire?”

“Well, a little, I guess. Doesn’t everyone?”

“We define ourselves by many different things, some of which may or may not include a mate.”

“It’s just, a consistent lover would be nice, or someone to get coffee with or read the paper with.”

“And where are you, exactly, with Jack Huxley, then?”

Last week Lowenstein had complimented Claire on her perfume. This time they began at the possibility that Claire’s unconventional new relationship was not a positive development in her treatment. Lowenstein had been erratic since Claire had returned from L.A. But Claire did not know how to go about breaking up with a shrink, so she didn’t.

Instead, after her session, she called the griot.

The sidewalks were slushy; it was uncharacteristically warm for a New York winter. There were a tourist, a young hippie, a man with a backpack, and a dwarf. The griot was late and the small group lingered uncomfortably, fiddling with phones through their gloves, feigning interest. After fifteen minutes, two men, one of whom she recognized, could be spotted on the sidewalk, two blocks down, on the opposite side of the street. They were talking animatedly, which means they were using their hands and arms. The man with the griot, Claire recognized him as they got close, was Ben Hawthorne—funeral-crashing, Charlie-bashing, scruffy-haired Ben Hawthorne. For a brief, unguarded second, she smiled. She was surprised, but happy, to see him.

He smiled back—he had a nice smile. Ever since Huxley, Claire took greater notice in smiles. It was an awkward chance meeting but not entirely off-putting.

The griot passed out his card. The word today on it was
Unfulfilled.
They stood on the northeast corner of Twenty-Third and Seventh.

“What are you doing here?” she mouthed to Ben.

“Shh,” he signaled, a finger to his lips.

The griot was a stickler for quiet.

The griot began. “We’re looking at the site where, among others, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, and Simone de Beauvoir—when she was in town—stoked their creative and lascivious powers. We are near where Dorothy Parker wrestled with alcoholism and the defeats of a lifetime, and failed. Where Arthur Miller, the playwright, wrestled with his conscience and Dylan Thomas, the poet, died from whiskey. Sid Vicious famously bludgeoned his girlfriend in the bathtub here, after a drug-fueled night. Sid was twenty-one years old and his girlfriend, Nancy, was twenty. He overdosed on heroin four months later in a different lover’s bed.”

Then the griot began a personal story. It was about his grandparents, Millie and Oren Crews. They were married for forty-three years, raised four sons, and were respected in their small town in Oklahoma. Millie was active in her church and Oren was on the city council. They’d managed a comfortable existence and after their children were raised they traveled some. But then Oren got an itch. He came into a small inheritance and began frequenting the saloons in town. There were rumors that he’d taken up with the town prostitute, Flore Collins.

“When Grandma Millie got wind of this, she got an itch of her own. She took Oren’s shotgun to the hotel where Flore worked and used it to get the desk clerk to let her into Flore’s room, where she found an unlocked cashbox and several salacious notes in her husband’s familiar handwriting. She took the three hundred dollars and change from the cash box. Then she took the shotgun to the Buckaroo Room where Oren’s pickup was parked and she waited. He walked out at two in the morning and as he relieved himself by the side of the building, she shot him with his own shotgun in the scrotum.” The griot put his fingers into a gun shape and aimed them at his own crotch. “And then, after an excruciating wait, Millie shot him again in the head. When Flore heard the news, her heart stopped and she died on the spot. Grandma Millie lived out the next ten years, happily for the most part, in a county jail. She was teaching herself Portuguese when she died.”

The griot and his village walked a few blocks east listening to traffic. The walk was serene, like being the passenger in a car on a scenic drive. Claire paid no mind to where they were headed but relaxed in the journey.

Ben Hawthorne broke the silence. He’d hung back, and Claire had been so entranced with Derek’s story, she’d forgotten he was there.

“Well,” he said after the griot played his flute and scurried off. “Great material, right? Do you follow him for inspiration? Who was it who said, ‘Love and death are the only things worth writing about’?”

The few followers, as was their custom, had dispersed.

“I think it was Maugham, and I don’t have a clue what any of that means. You were walking with him, and talking to him. Do you know him?”

“Derek, yes I do. He was an intern at the magazine last summer. Now he does this. We’re doing a story on him. I’m not writing it, but I wanted to catch him at work.”

“Oh,” Claire said. “That kind of spoils it.”

Ben Hawthorne laughed. He had a nice laugh, inviting. “Come on, we won’t ruin him. And it isn’t going to run for another six months. You’ll have moved on by then.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Claire felt Charlie glowering, frowning at her from somewhere.

“We should call a truce,” Ben said. He held out a hand.

Claire shook her head. “We’re not in a fight. I hardly know you.”

Ben contemplated her for a moment. “Good. Take care, then, okay.”

And Ben Hawthorne, without fanfare, went off.

30

And then he called.

Time had moved uncertainly since Claire’s second encounter with Jack Huxley and she had spent it in a jumble of long, wandering walks, drinking wet cappuccinos, and carelessly buying sidewalk trinkets she had no use for. She continued to work on the manuscript—dabbled was a better word. But the absence of the flesh-and-blood Huxley had been disturbing. Now there was a phone message that she didn’t know what to do with, so she booked a double session with Spence.

Spence wasn’t the worst way to kill time.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“That’s fine,” Spence said, tapping his pen against his notepad.

“I was going to cancel,” Claire said and sat in the chair.

“Can I ask why?”

“Today is Charlie’s birthday.”

“Are you acknowledging it?”

“No”

“You shouldn’t hide from your life, Claire. You try to watch it from around the corner, then you avoid having to engage.”

Claire fidgeting in her chair.

“But I’m engaged in my subconsious dream life.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I already covered this with Lowenstein.”

“Who is Lowenstein?”

“Never mind.”

Claire hailed a cab from Spence’s office, but she didn’t feel like going home.

“Ethan?” she said. “Can you meet me for a drink?”

RULE #13
: Don’t bear the weight alone when you can dump some on a friend.

They went to Jack Demsey’s, with no
p
, in Midtown. It made Claire think of a sign the Worrells, her neighbors growing up, had kept hanging by their pool.
WELCOME TO OUR OOL
.
NOTICE THERE
’
S NO P IN IT
.
LET
’
S KEEP IT THAT WAY
.

The bar was a comfortable mix of daytime drunks, college-aged tourists, and mid-level executives. They ordered stout beers.

Claire licked the foam from the top of her glass.

“Cheers,” Claire said.

“To birthdays?”

“Yes. To Charlie. Happy birthday.”

They clinked glasses and the dark liquid sloshed out of Claire’s cup.

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was playing full blast and a picture of Don King with a manic grin hung in front of them.

“To scoundrels, too,” Claire said, nodding at the photo. “And flatterers and seducers, to the best of them.”

“To those, too.”

The bartender brought a plate of crackers and sardines and Claire wrinkled her nose.

“Vitamin D, Lollipop. One of these little babies is like a month in the Bahamas for your endorphins and libido. They don’t taste as bad as you think.”

Charlie Daniels gave way to Johnny Cash.

“You know where that started, right?”

“What?”

“The clinking of glasses, the cheering.”

“Um, no. I don’t.”

Ethan was looking around the room, distractedly.

“Is this a gay bar?” he asked. It was a fair question. Claire alone represented her gender.

“It’s from the Middle Ages, because they were always poisoning each other. So before anyone drank, they hit their glasses together to make the wine slosh out and into other glasses. This way, if there was poison, they were all going down.”

“How about that.”

Claire examined the room, too. The bar was dark. The energy was low. The patrons did not look gay.

“Ethan, do you think I’m boring without Charlie?”

“Sweetheart,” he said, and kissed Claire on the cheek. “It’s different without him, that’s all. He was big and bold and swaggered into rooms. You’re small and chic and you move like a cat. It’s just different. You were two different people.”

“
I
am two different people now,” Claire said. “It’s weird, I don’t know how to be without him. Like losing a sidekick. I never thought of him like that, or me like this, but we had roles and mine was a supporting one and now I feel desperate up onstage sometimes. Like a stand-up comic who’s bombing.”