The Ex (3 page)

“That’s absolutely wonderful!” She did seem genuinely pleased.

“We think it is.”

“What does your Molly do?” Deirdre asked. “Other than wifely duties?”

“She’s a freelance copy editor. Publishers farm out work to people like her, manuscripts that need help.”

“Then you and she have your work in common.”

“We have a lot of things in common.”

“And Molly and I have something in common.” She made a face at her own faux pas. “I’m sorry, David. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“I guess I’m the leopard that can’t change its skin.”

David smiled. “There’s no real reason for you to change, Deirdre.”

“Why, thank you! A compliment!” She seemed immensely pleased.

“Maybe I should have given you more of them six years ago. God knows, I loved you enough.”

“Nobody’s to blame for the past, David. Life teaches us all. Usually too late. Like I learned too late I shouldn’t have left you.”

She’d finished her sandwich. Now she patted her mouth with her white paper napkin with exaggerated delicacy, then slid across the booth’s bench as if preparing to stand.

“It’s been marvelous seeing you, David. Tell Molly I said hello, and that I wish both of you all the happiness in the world. She’s lucky, you’re lucky. And me…” She shrugged. “Well, I haven’t been
un
lucky. And I haven’t been unhappy the whole time after we parted.”

“What about now?”

“Now? Oh, I’m reasonably content these days. Good job, enough money even if I’m not rich. And right now contentment’s enough for me. I’ve learned it’s more than most people have.” She stood up from the booth, then leaned forward unexpectedly and pecked him on the cheek. It was a kiss like fire. “Bye, David. Take care, hey.”

She edged through the crowd at the serving bar, moving toward the counter.

Biting his lower lip, he watched her stride from the deli. Out of his life again.

He suddenly felt much too warm, and the pungent scent of the food was making him nauseated.

He got up and made his way outside, dropping his suit coat from where it was folded over his arm. It landed to form a puddle of cloth on the sidewalk.

“Here, David.”

Deirdre picked up the coat and brushed it off, folded it neatly as if she were going to lay it on a bed or chair, then handed it to him.

“I thought—”

“I was about to hail a cab,” she said.

“They aren’t easy to get this time of day.”

“So I’ve been told, but nothing ventured, nothing obtained.”

She smiled and strode to the curb, raising her arm. As if to prove her point, a cab immediately swerved across Third Avenue and coasted to a stop next to her.

She opened the cab’s rear door and turned toward him. “Make the rest of your life happy, David!” Then she lowered herself quickly inside and pulled the door closed.

As the cab drove away, David stood staring at the back of her head framed in the arc of the rear window, this woman who was like a stranger but wasn’t a stranger. She faced straight ahead as rigidly as if her neck were in a brace. She might have been crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe he was simply imagining her tears because he felt like crying.

Deirdre pushed aside the roiling emotions she’d experienced after seeing David. Their meeting had been less and so much more than she’d imagined in the instant their eyes met.

On Broadway, she gazed through the cab windows at the crowded sidewalks and asked the driver to pull to the curb beyond the next intersection. She paid through the little rounded scoop set in the plastic dividing panel, leaving a suitable tip, and climbed out of the cab.

It felt wonderful to be lost in the middle of all the people, all the energy that swirled noisily around her. It was as if she were protected by movement and blaring horns and masses of humanity. And it was true, she told herself, she
was
safe here in New York.

A man with a raincoat slung over his arm almost ran into her, swerving at the last second and smiling at her. She smiled back, and he hesitated, then walked on. Deirdre held her head high, her shoulders back, and joined the flow of pedestrians. Workers hurrying back from lunch, shoppers, sightseers…she was one of them, and it felt glorious with the afternoon sun warming her shoulders and glancing brightly off the buildings and the contoured steel of the yellow cabs stuck in the impatient, laboring traffic. There was a strong exhaust smell, but she didn’t mind that. It was better than a lot of smells.

A woman carrying a shopping bag emerged from a revolving door and bumped into her. “Oh, hey! Deirdre!”

Deirdre looked at her and smiled. She’d literally bumped into the one other woman she knew in New York. “Darlene! You’ve been shopping.”

“Charging up a storm. I’m happily addicted to plastic.” Darlene spoke in a clipped, cultured voice that sounded natural to her but probably wasn’t, like a long-ago affectation that had taken root. She was about Deirdre’s height but much slimmer, with a long, elegant neck, slender calves like a teenager’s, and practically no breasts. She wore her hair combed back severely and neatly braided above the nape of her neck. She had the kind of dark-eyed, delicate features that enabled her to get away with that kind of hair style, Deirdre thought with envy. Darlene looked successful, her own woman, rich. It had been one of the first things Deirdre noticed about her when they’d struck up a conversation at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That and her distinctive voice.

“I just left an old friend,” Deirdre said. “David.”

Darlene looked puzzled. A running man brushed Deirdre, knocking her toward the building. She moved out of the stream of pedestrians. Darlene followed.

“I thought I told you about David,” Deirdre said. “At Port Authority.”

Darlene’s soft brown eyes widened. “That’s true, you did. He’s your ex, am I right?”

“Right,” Deirdre said. “He and I had lunch together, a nice visit.”

Darlene grinned with tiny white teeth. “That’s not the way people usually talk about their ex. Any chance of it becoming more than a pleasant lunch?”

“The bastard got married while I was gone,” Deirdre said.

Darlene was still grinning. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Aren’t you naughty?” Deirdre laughed. Two women stared at her and had to walk around her. “Walk with me?” she invited Darlene.

Darlene glanced at a silver watch that fit loosely on her thin wrist, then shrugged. “Sure. I’ve got some spare time before I have to meet some friends.”

Deirdre started to walk, and Darlene fell in beside her. They entered the dark shade of a building, where it was noticeably cooler, then emerged into hot sunlight.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” Darlene reminded her.

“I don’t know the answer,” Deirdre said honestly. There would be some things they’d never talk about, at least for a while.

Darlene smiled at her. “The way you look, Deirdre, you can make the answer whatever you want.”

Deirdre smiled back. “You really think so? I mean, you’re the one with the young Audrey Hepburn looks. Men go for the delicate, breakable type. You’re built like a model or a ballerina, and I’m built like…well, sex.”

“I’d trade anytime,” Darlene said. “The way the world is now, there aren’t many men looking for the kind of woman they’d take home to Mother.”

“You’re serious?”

“Of course. They want to take you home, but believe me, Mother doesn’t figure into it.”

“Except with
some
men,” Deirdre said. “Mothers can have a terrible influence on some men.”

“David?”

“No. Not him at all. David could always…”

“What?”

“He was always a good lover.”

Darlene stopped walking, causing Deirdre to barely avoid bumping into her. She raised her elegant thin arm and glanced again at her expensive watch. “I’d better get going or I’ll be given up for lost,” she said.

“I don’t want to make you late for your friends,” Deirdre said. She wondered for a moment if Darlene would invite her along.

But Darlene was silent, glancing around. She had such a sweet, clean profile. They moved over and stood on a corner with a cluster of people waiting for the traffic light to change to Walk.

“Are you going to be in town long?” Darlene asked.

“Awhile.”

“Me too, this visit.”

“Her name’s Molly.”

“What?”

“That’s the name of David’s wife. The one who took my place. Molly.”

Darlene stared at her oddly, maybe with disapproval.

“They have a child,” Deirdre said. “A little boy named Michael.”

Darlene was silent.

“I thought you should know.”

“I don’t understand why,” Darlene said.

“You should know about Molly and Michael, as well as about David. But especially about Molly. It will help you understand what’s going to happen.”

Darlene appeared confused for only a second, then shrugged, as if whatever happened, it would be fine with her. “You said at the bus station you were going to find a hotel. Where are you staying?”

But the light changed and she was virtually swept away by the surging crowd before Deirdre could answer. She smiled helplessly at Deirdre and waved.

Deirdre stood on the corner and watched her disappear in the streams of pedestrians that flowed along Broadway’s wide sidewalk like competing currents in a river. For an instant her entire fragile body was visible, striding along with rhythm if not strength. Then only her slender upper body could be seen, and after a while only her head and long, pale neck. And then she was gone.

Darlene reminded Deirdre of a woman who was drowning.

“Most men probably feel that way when they unexpectedly see their ex-wife after years have passed,” Molly said.

She and David were lying in bed in the sultry dimness of the summer night. It was cool enough that they didn’t have the window-unit air conditioner on. She liked it that way, so she could hear Michael if he woke up. Still, she could feel the sticky dampness of perspiration beneath her on the smooth sheet, slowly molding her form to the contours of the mattress.

Beside her, David sighed. It was more a sound of frustration than of weariness.

“I’m glad you told me about meeting her,” Molly said. She raised her upper body and strained her neck so she could kiss his cheek. It was damp and warm and he needed a shave. Traces of cologne or soap still lingered with the scent of his perspiration.

She stayed propped up on her elbows for a few seconds, then let herself fall back, her head sinking into her pillow.

“She surprised me, Mol.” David said softly.

“Sure she did. It’s like your past sneaking up on you while you’re thinking about lunch.”

“That’s exactly what it was.”

Molly was suddenly and acutely curious about Deirdre. She’d never even seen a photograph of her, other than a blurred snapshot David had made a show of tearing up and throwing away. A tall woman—at least she’d appeared tall in the photo—with a lot of hair and a fiercely beautiful smile. “How did she look?”

“Oh, the years have made her…kind of plain, I’d guess you’d say.”

“There was no need for you to worry over telling me about it,” Molly said. “So you ran into Deirdre at the deli and talked to her for a while. What were you supposed to do, spit olives at her?”

He laughed softly in the shadows. “I wish that had crossed my mind.”

“You’re not the first man to see his former wife and experience discomfort. It doesn’t mean anything other than that you’re human.”

“Being human can be a problem.”

“You’re happy,” Molly said, “right?”

She instantly regretted the doubt that had crept into her voice. Or maybe only she had heard it.

“Hell, yes, I’m happy.”

The bedsprings whined and she felt his hand brush her cheek, then gently caress her breast through the oversized white T-shirt she slept in. She was aware of a tightening deep inside her and her breathing quickened. The T-shirt was wound around her body so that much of its excess was pinned beneath her. Across its chest, distorted by the twisted fabric, it was lettered
FOR SLEEP OR SEX
. She’d received it at a bridal shower as a gag gift, but she found it practical and comfortable. The thin cotton strained and stretched, and David’s hand was beneath the shirt and sliding slowly toward her left breast. His breath was warm in her ear, then his tongue.

“Wait a second, please!” she breathed.

“What’s wrong, Mol?”

“Nothing. Really.”

He withdrew his hand and she swiveled on the mattress and stood up. The firm wood floor felt cool beneath her bare feet. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and tossed it in a twisted, pale heap on a chair. Then she slid her panties down to her ankles and stepped daintily out of them, as if relieving herself of shackles. Sounds from the street were filtering in through the screen, cars swishing past outside, faint voices shouting blocks away, the throbbing bass beat of a car radio that faded quickly, a distant siren making exuberant loops of sound. The sheer white curtains swayed slightly in the faint breeze as if in a slow, ghostly dance. She left the window open and switched on the air conditioner mounted in the window alongside it.

When she was sixteen, her father had left her mother and her for another woman. Her mother died two years later, and Molly had never quite escaped the notion that the terrible stress of the desertion had triggered the cancer. Her father had left his new lover, and a few years ago had remarried, to a woman named Verna who owned an art gallery in Detroit. Molly wasn’t sure if she’d ever forgiven him, or if she fully understood what forces had moved him. Had there been something lacking in her mother? In herself?

She tried to shake such thoughts from her mind and returned to David’s shadowed and patiently waiting form on the bed.

David moved close to her. “What’s wrong, Mol? Still thinking about Deirdre?” He kissed her neck. “Well, I’m not. Like she said, the past is buried and dead.”

Molly lay very still. “My past with you has been my happiest time.”

“Mine, too,” David whispered.

“Men leave women,” she said softly. “I know it’s unreasonable of me to think that way, and it’s because of my childhood, but it’s the kind of thing that inundates the mind and changes things forever. That’s how I feel and I can’t help it. Men leave women.”

She felt the backs of his knuckles lightly caress her cheek. “Not this man, Mol. Not ever.”

She turned to him and they kissed, and his hand found the small of her back and pressed her to him. She could feel his erection hard against her thigh.

“Try not to wake Michael,” she heard herself say.

But it was she who moaned and cried out, clinging possessively to him as they made love.

In the morning, while David showered, she made coffee and stuck two slices of whole-kernel wheat bread in the toaster.

He came into the kitchen and kissed her, dripping water from his hair still damp from the shower. Neither of them spoke about last night or about Deirdre. Everything seemed reassuringly normal to Molly.

He cooked eggs and bacon while she quietly finished getting dressed, careful not to wake Michael. After breakfast, she and David would deliberately rouse the child and play with him for a few minutes, then David would leave for work and Molly would dress and feed Michael and walk him to the Small Business Preschool, six blocks away.

“You working on something today?” David asked when they were seated opposite each other at the kitchen table.

“Book on architecture from Link Publishing,” she said, salting her scrambled eggs. “I’ve got the rest of the week to finish it.”

He took a sip of coffee and smiled. “What do you know about architecture?”

“What’s an architect know about dangling participles?”

“Good point. You gonna finish on time?”

“Easily. It’s going to be mostly photographs of European cathedrals. The text is all about flying buttresses, opposing stresses, Gothic spires, that sort of thing.”

“Saaay, you
do
know about architecture.” His sarcasm was good-natured, and not the sort of remark he’d have made if he felt any tension between them. Grinning, he forked in a final bite of egg, then washed it down with a swallow of coffee and stood up. He was the usual David, all right. She smiled, feeling pleased and secure. “Gonna wake up Michael now?” he asked.

“We can.”

She stood up from the table and David followed her into Michael’s bedroom. It was a small room, painted pale blue with decals of fish and sea horses on the walls. Toys were piled in a blue rubber laundry basket in a corner. More toys were lined on shelves alongside a narrow dresser. On the top shelf was a penny-stuffed piggy bank Michael’s grandfather—Molly’s father—had sent him from Detroit last winter when Michael had had the flu. A delicate butterfly mobile dangled from the center of the ceiling, swaying gently in the stirring of air caused by the opening door.

Muffin, the brown and orange cat that was a gift from the previous tenant, uncoiled from where he’d been curled near the foot of the bed, stretched, then left by way of the window that was propped open six inches by a stack of weathered paperback books to allow him access to the fire escape.

Molly and David watched their son sleep for a few seconds. He was fair and blond, as David appeared in his childhood photographs. His round face was set in the blank-slate serenity seen only on children in slumber. He was lying on his side, his knees drawn up, his tiny ribs starkly prominent with each deep and even breath. Mortality was so apparent in the very young. He was perspiring slightly and his down-like hair was plastered to his forehead.

Each morning was like the beginning of a new and fascinating chapter for Molly when she stood alongside her sleeping son. She knew she would nudge him awake, kiss him, and another day would unfold in their journey to his adulthood while they learned from each other. He was her reminder that life was an exploration.

She touched his soft, bare shoulder and he stirred and opened his eyes. Smiled.

“Big Mike,” David said, and bent low and kissed him gently on the forehead.

Michael stretched out his arms and David lifted him effortlessly, holding him well away until he was sure he hadn’t wet the bed. Then he hugged him, kissed him again, and while Michael was still chortling he handed him carefully to Molly and turned to leave for work.

This must be a ritual as old as the family, she thought. Fathers readying to leave for the hunt on primal, misty mornings lost forever in the past. She smiled. Not a politically correct thought? She wasn’t sure. But it was a lovely thought, even if she was soon to begin work herself.

David turned back as if on a whim and kissed her forehead, then ruffled Michael’s hair. Michael reached up and rufffled his father’s hair right back.

“Have a good day, you two,” David said, and left the bedroom.

She heard the floor creak as he walked into the bathroom, probably to recomb his hair, as she sorted through the dresser drawers for something Michael hadn’t outgrown.

David laid his folded suit coat on the toilet lid and ran water in the washbasin. He wet his hands and slicked back his hair, then raked a comb through it and checked his image in the mirror. He’d splashed a little water on his shirt but the spots would dry soon.

As he scooped up his coat to put it on, something fluttered from one of its pockets and landed on the hexagonal white tiles alongside the vanity.

A small piece of paper, folded once so sharply that it would be permanently creased. He picked it up and stared at it, trying to remember if it was a note he’d written to remind himself of something. He couldn’t recall putting it in the pocket.

He unfolded the paper and saw a phone number scrawled in black ink. Below the number was a message:
Don’t be silty. We should be friends. Call me, please. Deirdre. P.S. Say hello to Molly and Michael.

David crumpled the paper and lifted the toilet lid.

But he paused and stood with his hand above the water. He was slightly surprised that he couldn’t release the note. Couldn’t press the lever that would remove it from his life.

He glanced at himself in the mirror, then looked away as he stuffed the note into his hip pocket, shrugged into his coat, and left the bathroom.

He could dispose of the note on the way to work, in the subway station, or at the office. There was no rush. This wasn’t some kind of goddamned test. Despite a persistent discontent some mornings in the dawn of waking, or at bad times during the day when he would contemplate the futility of his job, he was a settled and happy husband and father, probably less worried about the future than most men his age. Certainly he was more blessed than many he knew. He had unexpectedly run into his former wife yesterday and had an uncomfortable moment, that was all. They were grown-up folks living out their lives as best they could while trying not to experience or cause pain; there was no need for adolescent conflict here.

And no need for him to see Deirdre again before she left town. He would either disregard the note, or he’d phone her and politely repeat his opinion that it would be best if they let the past lie undisturbed. Whatever in its chemistry might tug at him, he could and would ignore.

He called goodbye again to Molly on the way out.