An Available Man (7 page)

Jesus, there it was, crammed between ads for two divorcées of competing charms.

Balding! He ran one hand over his slightly thinning hair and squinted at his reflection in the toaster. He wasn’t about to resort to a comb-over yet. And
handsome
was another overstatement, of course. But would people still recognize him somehow, anyway?
Science Guy
could refer to anyone from Bill Nye to a Big Pharm researcher to some loner in a remote weather station. The term sounded suspiciously like one Nick had come up with, despite his self-proclaimed innocence and indignation.
Erudite
must have come from Amanda—it was a word she used—and
kind
from Julie. A collaboration, then. He’d kill them all.

He read the ad again, with slightly less agitation this time, parsing it for meaning with what he imagined would have been Bee’s point of view, thinking, with a jolt, that she could have contributed
the real thing
herself. She had told him, more than once, that his best quality was his authenticity. “You are what you are,” she’d said in a kind of cockeyed parody of Popeye.

No phone number or email address was given, thank God,
just the number of a post office box. They’d probably had to pay extra for that; good money after bad, as Gladys would say. And they hadn’t mentioned how old he was. People’s ages were usually included, or hinted at, which used to be only more fodder for Bee’s disdain:
fiftyish
, she was certain, meant at least sixty, and
young at heart
could be anywhere from seventy to senility. Men, no matter how old, she’d pointed out, were always in the market for women of childbearing age. “
You
men,” as she put it to Edward, leaning over to poke him for emphasis, as if he’d placed one of those ads, himself, as if he was in the market for anyone at all.

He made himself look at a few of the other ads, most of them from women, single or unhappily married, using the language of high-powered salesmanship. If they were all that great, why did they have to advertise? And if they weren’t, then why did they exaggerate like that?
Because they’re lonely
, a voice in his head murmured.

At least the kids hadn’t gone overboard about him, he’d give them that.
Balding
would surely be off-putting to many women, evoking visions of Mr. Clean sooner than Sean Connery. And
erudite
could easily be read as stuffy, couldn’t it? He probably
was
a little stuffy, even when he was younger. Once in a while, Laurel used to say, “Oh, Edward, lighten up!” That still rang in his ears sometimes, like a schoolyard taunt.

In a couple of the other ads, placed by men, one declared himself a physician in his forties, a world traveler and a gourmet, and the other a “retired millionaire.” So why would anyone choose to pursue Science Guy, a man who ironed women’s blouses for recreation, an aging, balding middle-school teacher with a basement laboratory, to which he’d often retreated to cry like a baby, or to fantasize about cloning his dead wife from the DNA in the hairs still trapped in the bristles of her brush?

Dating After Death

T
here were forty-six replies waiting for Science Guy in the post office box. Bee’s children were thrilled, and Edward simply bewildered. He didn’t think the person depicted in the ad—
him
—had sounded particularly appealing; he could only imagine how many responses that bon vivant of a doctor and the retired millionaire must have received.

Julie called Edward from the law office where she worked as a paralegal to whoop and cheer at the count, as if she’d just heard favorable election results. He tried to reconcile her wild enthusiasm with how inconsolable she’d been less than a year before at the death of her mother, and the many bouts of gloom in between. He’d spoken on the telephone with both Julie and Amanda after he’d seen the ad, chiding them for their impulsive act, which, he pointed out, was ill conceived, if well intended. “We don’t want you to be alone, Dad,” Amanda said. And Julie
said, “Mom would have approved, I just know it.” What was she talking about? Bee had been proprietary when it came to Edward, even a little jealous.

She hadn’t liked the way Lizzie Gilbert always kissed him (and all the other men in their crowd) on the mouth in greeting and farewell, although Ned never seemed to mind, or even notice. But Bruce Silver, Bee’s first husband and the father of her gung-ho children, had screwed around. It was a violation, she’d told Edward, that she had foolishly tolerated for a while, but never would again.

When Bee and Edward wrote new wills, about a year after they married, their lawyer half-jokingly mentioned something called the “Floozie Clause,” to protect the children’s inheritance against Edward ever remarrying unwisely and in haste. He’d laughed, but she had not, although she decided against the clause. And he remembered her once reading aloud to him about a woman urging her husband to marry again after her death, but forbidding him to ever sleep with his new wife. Bee hadn’t found that hilarious, either. She might have preferred him lying down beside her in the earth to his starting up with a bunch of strange women.

Amanda and Nick had had the
NYR
letters forwarded to them, and they hand-delivered them to Edward that evening. Nick upended a grocery sack onto the kitchen table while Amanda opened her arms like a magician’s assistant and said, “Ta
da
!”

Several of the envelopes fell onto the floor and slid away in different directions. Bingo sniffed and poked at a couple of them with his snout—nothing to eat—while Amanda scurried around the room, picking them all up and throwing them back onto the pile on the table. Then she ran her hands almost sensuously through them, sending some of them back onto the floor.
Edward was reminded of those movies where the bank robbers lie in bed in a state of delirium, covering themselves with stolen bills.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Hold it. I don’t get this.”

“What don’t you get, Schuyler?” Nick said. “You’re the man.”

“An
available
man,” Amanda added. “Go ahead and open one. Please.”

He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready for this. And the whole thing’s just not my style.”

“It’s only a civilized, practical way to meet new people,” Amanda said in that pedantic tone she sometimes affected, the way she probably spoke in her motivational talks to young women in the workforce. “It’s not like we’re suggesting you speed-date or anything.”

“But maybe Julie should try that,” Nick said.

Two young teachers at school had discussed speed-dating one day in the faculty lounge, to Edward’s fascination and horror. As far as he could tell, it was a version of musical chairs in which one was supposed to find love in addition to a seat.

How could he explain to Nick and Amanda that even the word
dating
was a little abhorrent to him? Their eagerness touched and troubled him at once. He never doubted their benevolence, but they were so pleased by their own marriage that they probably wanted to spread the word, like missionaries pushing religion on people they considered barbarians. The main thing was that he didn’t
feel
available. The ghost of his marriage still inhabited the house, even if Bee herself was missing.

He knew he should have disposed of her clothing by now—at least he’d given the few valuable pieces of jewelry she’d owned to Amanda and Julie. Amanda was wearing the rose gold Victorian slide bracelet right then. But it wasn’t just Bee’s personal
belongings that tugged him backward. All those commonplace domestic artifacts—dishes, lamps, pillows, books—were compelling souvenirs of the daily life they’d shared. How could he even think of someone else when he was constantly reminded of what he’d had and lost?

He supposed that Julie had merely caught the proselytizing fever from Nick and Amanda. At twenty-seven, she was still somewhat child-like and dependent, and her own love life always seemed to be in crisis. She called Edward more often than he suspected most women of her age called their biological fathers, giving him a rundown of her days, seeking his advice and, he was certain, his approval.

Bruce Silver, who sold paper for a living, had married again, twice, and had a brand-new family now, those kids more than twenty years younger than Nick and Julie. His contact with his older children was sporadic, and not always pleasant. Recently, he’d accused Julie of being moody when she was sad in his company. Edward had to talk her up after that encounter. Bruce hadn’t even come to Bee’s funeral, although Julie kept looking toward the entrance of the chapel for him until the service began.

And then there was the matter of Gladys. Her husband, Jacob, her first and only sweetheart, had died about ten years before. When Edward finally worked up the courage to tell her of Bee’s, her Beattie’s, fate, she’d swooned into his arms like some felled, boneless creature. But despite the natural laws of succession and her frequently expressed wish to die, she continued to survive her daughter. “That Mother Nature,” she said wearily to Edward, “is a real bitch.” His devotion to Bee’s memory, he was certain, helped to sustain her.

Lately, there was some noticeable decline on her part, the usual failures of hearing and vision and balance that come with great age. The jigsaw puzzles she was addicted to required a
magnifying glass now, in addition to her spectacles. She was almost ninety-two, after all. But she wasn’t quite “the Wreck of the Hesperus” she claimed to be. And her mind remained astonishingly acute. She reported that when she’d told her doctor she was losing it, he said that she’d likely had too much to begin with.

Bee had tried vainly to get her to move from her co-op apartment in Teaneck into an assisted-living facility. Now Edward took up the cause, urging her to consider someplace nearby with planned activities and the company of her peers; she had outlived most of her friends as well as her only child. Gladys shuddered at the idea of organized senior recreation, which she summed up as “sing-alongs in hell.” And even old people, she said, didn’t really want to be with old people.

“I’m leaving here feetfirst, honey,” she told Edward, “and not a minute too soon.” Lately, she called everyone “honey,” from the mailman to her grandchildren, in preparation, she said, for when she’d have forgotten all of their names. But Edward knew that she secretly took pride in her excellent recall, even as it caused her psychic pain. Just recently she’d said, “If only I could forget, just a little.”

“Dad, Dad,” Amanda said. “You’re not listening.” She was holding up a fan of envelopes. “Pick a card, any card.” Her eyes were shining with merriment, the bracelet winking from her wrist.

Edward reached out and plucked an envelope from her grasp. When Nick and Amanda continued to gaze at him expectantly, he took a paring knife from the rack on the counter and slit open the envelope. There was a rush of a sweetly floral scent, as if he’d pulled the stopper out of a perfume bottle. “Ooh-la-la,” Amanda said, and Edward forced himself to smile at her before he put on his glasses and opened the folded note.

“Dear S.G.,” it said. “Your ad intrigued me. I am widowed, too, and my late husband was also a man of science, with his own pharmacy until Duane Reade took over Hackensack and the world. I know that dating after death isn’t easy, but we should give it a try, no? Sincerely, Eleanora Perkins.”

There was a snapshot in the envelope, too, taken from a distance, of a woman standing near a tree, with a house in the background. Amanda took it from him. “I can hardly make her out,” she complained, squinting at the photo. “Why didn’t she just send an aerial view?”

Nick took the magnifying glass from the pencil holder on the counter and peered through it at the photo. “Not bad,” he said. “Late fifties, I’d guess.”

Amanda grabbed the magnifying glass. “Hmm,” she said. “Nice legs, actually. And that doesn’t look like the state loony bin behind her. Dad, I hope you’re not going to wear that dorky eyeglass chain on a date.”

They continued to comment, but their voices seemed to recede into the background, dimmed by the refrigerator’s hum, the distant sounds of traffic on the turnpike, and the mating call of some denizen of the woods behind the house.
Dating after death
, Edward thought grimly,
that’s a good one
.

Love Letters