To My Ex-Husband (16 page)

What's he trying to get me to see? I don't know. Maybe he's daring me to think things I haven't dared to think. Not unlike Dr. Bloom.

I thought it was a telling omission, by the way, that he seemed never to have heard about Esther. But both you and Dr. Block wrote her off as though she were an insignificant character in an amateur theater production, somebody who walked onto stage left, delivered a dinner tray, bowed, and exited. I adore the notion, of course, that Esther has evolved into a sort of below-stairs person, as it were. But my God. To say now that you never loved her, or that you thought you loved her, but that “love” was the heading you gave it so that you could feel justified, like a job description … I don't know that I buy that.

FEBRUARY 9

We were at Cafe Nola when Nina told me that Esther was coming to town for a visit. It's a good thing I was eating; otherwise I would have been upset. Of course, I know Nina, and I know she did it deliberately. She was going to do a review for Wednesday's food section, and she figured that was the best way to break it to me, over shrimp remoulade and blackened redfish.

There's no reason why they shouldn't be friends. I just wish they weren't. Nina says that Esther and Don are building a house. I guess it's safer than having a baby.

FEBRUARY 24

My mother has a boyfriend. She's known him for forty-nine years, but now he's her boyfriend. I love it. Fred Graham and his wife, Lillian, came to our wedding, though you probably don't remember them. They were part of a group that used to get together to play canasta when I was growing up. When his wife died a little over a year ago, my mother went to the funeral and they got reacquainted. How could anyone have guessed then, as my parents, the Grahams, and the Wills sat around drinking their highballs, that one day there would be this big shake-up, and my mother would land in Fred Graham's lap?

The Grahams retired to Florida, to reenter our lives annually, on Christmas cards; Doug Will died, and his wife married her ex–brother-in-law and moved to Monterey.

This development on the part of my mother gives me a whole new, and not unprovocative, perspective on certain couples as I see them orbiting around the neighborhood on Saturdays. Maybe you're the one who'll live with Nina and retire to Wrinklewood. Stay tuned. Life can be pretty interesting after sixty-five, if you're around to participate. And if you're not, maybe there's satisfaction in the hereafter of knowing that you were one of the ones who made it all possible.

MARCH 6

Harvey had a date last weekend with a woman who's a really good friend of a really good friend of someone who works with Nina. I'd met her on a couple of occasions, and I thought she was terrific. So naturally we were all waiting to hear how it went. We didn't have to wait long. Harvey called me the next morning—from her place.

Not an unusual story in itself, but I found it disappointing because I know Harvey and I know what it means. It means that he has unwrapped the package and, knowing what is inside, he'll no longer be interested. Not, mind you, because there is anything wrong with the contents, but simply because he knows what they are.

Here we go again
, I thought. And piles of packages to go before we sleep.

I have to remind myself that Harvey's just another guy. But, as you know, I've always felt so close to him that I believed we were practically the same person. All through our second adolescence, in our thirties, when we were smoking transcendental substances and staying up half the night to write “Saturday Night Live” skits that only we could have thought amusing—remember “The Turnpike Psychiatrist,” who understood why you just
had
to pass?—having Harvey next to me was like having another me, only smarter and funnier and more disorganized. I was a watered-down version, and thus more conventional, but the essential person found in Harvey a twin. This aspect of him, though, the all-American guy part, this notch-in-the-belt stuff, is foreign to me, and I hate it.

As for
her
part, I don't know what to say. If Harvey's just into unwrapping packages, she might as well know it and be done with it. She's never been married, and has lived a quite exciting life on her own. Maybe she's used to it. Maybe she takes it in stride. Maybe she's a good sport. But it's such a waste. Harvey said he liked her—a lot. He said they had a great time. He confessed to me later, however, that she was “a little heavy.” (Has Harvey looked at himself lately? If I had to choose between his body and his mind, I'd definitely take the mind.) So this is the story in a nutshell. Men are perfect, and women are grateful.

Meanwhile, June, who is all heat and no heart, and has always been the exception to any rule, has decided to exercise her libido by taking up with her mechanic, none other than the charming Klaus who declared our Beetle dead some years back. I can only conclude, despite telling me when we were in the car market, that the Mazda “vas a pice ov jonk,” he had better luck with June's. Now
that
's gratitude.

I wouldn't say this to just anyone, but I've always sort of lusted after Klaus myself, having a weakness for foreign accents. What stopped me were the fingertips. How does one proceed in any amorous fashion with insoluble wads of black grease stuck to one's fingers? But June's just marking time until she finds an investment banker, someone wholly unlike Harvey, someone steady and predictable, with zero creativity and unlimited funds.

APRIL 2

Edward was waiting for me when I got home last night from our hour with Dr. Block. It wasn't the first time that he's been there to see the effect these sessions have, to take my temperature. I'm always a wreck. I don't want him to see how torn I am, because I know that would be hurtful; nor do I want to appear unmoved, which would be inaccurate.

I could tell by the way he walked over to the car that this time I would not have to find the right balance. The decision had been made for me.

I started to walk toward the house, but he stopped me. He wasn't coming inside. “I'm not asking you not to do this,” he said. “I think you should do it. But I can't stand by and watch. And I can't promise I'll be here if you come back.” And with that, he kissed me good-bye, told me he loved me, and left.

It was the right thing to do. Edward's not someone who would sit on the shelf. If he were, I wouldn't be interested in him. He's doing what he has to do; he's protecting himself.

My impulse was to run after him down the street. I had an image of catching up to him and begging him to roll down his windows, of his setting his jaw and driving faster and faster, more determined to shake me off.

I never had any illusions about Edward. He'll be all right, much more all right than I want to think about. But he isn't someone who pretends. This is hard for him, very hard.

And I have to be honest. I miss him. I can't listen to an opera. Last Sunday afternoon, public radio aired
Madama Butterfly
. I happened to tune in at the beginning of Act Two, when Butterfly is singing,
“Un bel di,”
which is about her joy on the day that Pinkerton's ship will sail into the harbor. My hand shot out to change the station, but the damage was done. For the rest of the day I was consumed with thoughts of Edward.

At the same time, I see you each week being more like the Nick I knew, affectionate, sensitive, and compassionate, the man who knew me, truly knew me, and cherished me. You did cherish me once. Nancy used to say that to me with such envy:
Nick cherishes you
. I believe you now; I believe
in
you. But even if you're sincere, is that good enough? Haven't we changed too much?

APRIL 29

I'm sorry to have upset you by calling you “Edward,” though I'm not going to apologize for thinking of him, nor for wishing sometimes that I'd have a crisis, a hemorrhage of the gums, just so I might have an excuse to call him, though for professional reasons I've already been passed on to Edward's partner, a man who, I'm almost certain, gets his hair permed. Curettage will just never be the same.

Nina and Stephen saw Edward at Umbria having dinner recently with a woman who, by her description, sounds like someone he knew, a doctor, before he met me. “Phyllis the Physician,” he used to call her. She's an internist, in which connection Edward has probably developed all kinds of mysterious and exotic malaises. Edward once told me he hated casual sex; Phyllis may have been an exception. He pointed her out to me once, some months ago, from a distance. She looked rather sultry, with full, flaccid lips. He told me that she liked whips and things, and liked to be tied up; I knew he was joking, but I couldn't get that impression out of my mind when I saw her, reading everything I had heard into a single glimpse. She was quite pretty, so I wanted to believe that she was a masochistic sort, given to severe periods of gloom and, most important, that he had never had any real interest in her.

Nina was no doubt hoping this piece of news would bring me to my senses. She's disgusted with me. She shouldn't be. She knows I've never had her clarity of thought, or her decisiveness. Besides which, women aren't supposed to be doing this anymore; mourning is something our mothers did. Today, we put everything behind us, wave it away. “He's history,” we say.

She does like Edward; that makes it hard. And she likes him for me. To make matters worse, Edward's really fond of Nina and Stephen. He told me that if we broke up he'd continue to see them, that he had become their friend in his own right. We actually got into an argument about it, as though it had all gone sour and all that remained was to divide up the property. Over my dead body would he take another woman to Nina and Stephen's summer house, I said. He could see Stephen if he wanted to, though I'd prefer he didn't, but Nina was mine. So, for that matter, was Harvey, which was the next topic. Harvey happens to be yours, too, though, which is why Harvey's really the only person I can talk to about any of this. He carries the same sentimental baggage. He also knows you and shares my affection. I don't have to explain.

Part of my agenda with Nina yesterday at lunch was to go over some of the ground rules, a sort of friends-as-property agreement. We were supposed to meet at 1:15, which is in itself an imposition for someone like me, who's hungry by 10:30. She wanted to review a new Thai restaurant on Second Street. It was such a gorgeous day that I stood outside waiting. One always waits for Nina—and you thought
I
had no sense of time. At 1:35, I saw her hopping down the street. To her credit, she looked as though she were in a hurry, as though she did understand that she was late and that someone was waiting. But then she spotted some interesting items in a sidewalk display in front of a crafts store, and went in. I couldn't believe it. Nina is never too late to do a little shopping.

I ran down the street and practically dragged her out of the store by her hair. She wasn't even contrite. It was her way of exacting the price I would pay for seeing you. Nina does not want to hear about twenty-year investments, about the short term and long term. She doesn't want to hear about the Big Picture, at least not
our
Big Picture.

I sat across from her, with the steam from the
Tom Yum Goong
soup curling up into my nostrils, running out of adjectives. I said that if she didn't play fair, I would give away her identity; I would start some conspicuous note-taking. (Nina had ordered the
Thai Inter Duck
for herself, which made me a little cranky because that meant I would get a taste of that, while she would get a taste of the soup. What I wanted, since I outweigh Nina by about thirty pounds, and since it was hours past my lunch hour, was a taste of the soup and all but a bite of the duck. But there is, in this business, such a thing as a free lunch, and these were the rules.)

All the same, on a fuller stomach I might have more confidence in what you and I are doing, and more sensible resistance to Nina, who has her own agenda. Get rid of Nick; marry Edward. Period.

She's always said how much easier it is to leave a marriage and start over than it is to fix one. So many of our conversations revolve around whether people can really change. She's more doubtful than I.

MAY 10

I wanted to call you all day yesterday, but I didn't know what to say. Or maybe the problem was that I didn't know what to say first. I never went to sleep Saturday night, and I was pretty sure you hadn't, either. It was an awful night. Everything I said and did struck me as wrong and offensive. Everything you said and did struck me as vague and confusing.

There aren't many books on how to date one's estranged husband. Neither of us has been able to find the right note on how to behave.

First, the flowers. Opening the door and seeing you with the roses reminded me of that first anniversary after you left. You'd sent me a plant. I remember bursting into tears and being so undone that the delivery boy had to sign for me.

A single word didn't exist for what I felt at that moment; but the full reality of our positions came crashing down on me. I was touched that you had wanted to acknowledge the day in some way. At the same time, it was a sad reminder that on a day we once celebrated we were now living apart. Then, too, it was a public—by that I mean visible—gesture that should really have been private. Annie was naturally curious about where it had come from, and highly protective of you.

“Did you send him anything? No, of course not,” she snapped before I could answer, and stormed out of the room. She had been seething in those days, but rarely had I been so aware of it as just then.

Anyway, it all came back on Saturday when I opened the door and saw you there with these roses and the sweetest smile. I wanted to be appreciative, but the flowers made me nervous. They seemed so bold, so red, so full of implication and expectation. There was even pressure in their perfume. Had I made a promise I couldn't keep? Worse, had I made one I couldn't remember? It was one statement to bring them, another to accept them. I was uncertain of both statements, uncertain and frightened.