To My Ex-Husband (23 page)

Obediently, I walked over, without thinking about what I would see. The box was gone. The charred remnants of my father's skin were curling away in layers as they burned, like so many sheets of a newspaper. Some of the smaller pieces broke off and floated to the ceiling of the vault. And then, looking down my father's body, toward his legs, I saw something lift, like a long finger.

“Amazing, isn't it?” Crispini said, aware that I had pressed closer to the window. “Men get erections. I meant to warn you.”

I should have been horrified. But I was fascinated. My father, always quite the ladies' man, would have loved it.

Later, when we rounded up the children and spread my father's ashes in the garden, I was struck by how all of our grand schemes fall victim to circumstances that have nothing to do with our wishes as we originally conceived them. My father had wanted to be beside my mother in the woods behind the house they built. Then he wanted to be beside his second wife on a hillside in California. And here we were, putting him in a garden that I don't believe he ever noticed.

We, too, had an idea once. We each wanted our ashes tossed into the Mediterranean, near Positano. That way, at least the one who was left to do it would get to go back to this wonderful place; there would be consolation, and peace, in that. The second one to die would leave that task to the children. It would be done in the same place, and in the same way.

But geography changes with our lives. I don't know now where I want my final place to be. What I can't get used to is that even when I do, it won't matter to you.

MARCH 13

You would have loved to overhear the conversation Edward and I had on Saturday night after he ran into you and the new object of your affection at the liquor store.

Of all the times for me to decide to stay in the car—damn! I knew something was up by the way Edward bounced back into the driver's seat. He was practically licking his lips, savoring this coveted morsel like a well-fed crocodile. “You're going to be
sooo
sorry,” he crooned, “that you didn't come in with me.”

I got right to the point. “Is she pretty?” I asked, wildly cursing myself for not helping him select the wine that we were taking to dinner at Nina and Stephen's.

“Mm, yes, I'd say so,” he replied thoughtfully.

Shit
, I thought. “What kind of hair does she have?” I asked, quickly adding, “Curly?,” knowing he'd need guidelines as to the content I was after. Men just don't take in the right stuff, usually. A woman can walk into a party, and within minutes she'll know who's there, who's with whom, what they're wearing, and how everybody's getting along. Men can tell you how many people were present.

In Edward's defense, I have to say that he's much better than the average man. He'll tell you every single detail about the food, right down to the kind of olive oil that was used in the marinade for the roasted red peppers. But I had my work cut out for me, given that food was not the focal point here.

The answer to the curly question was, “Not really.” And the color, for your information, of your new love's hair is brownish, grayish, blond. His inability to absorb these simple details was maddening. I could forget about the fine-tuning. I knew perfectly well that if our positions had been reversed, that is, if I had found myself face-to-face with Pamela and a new boyfriend, I'd have returned with a thicker portfolio, so to speak.

Edward couldn't even tell me how you were dressed, whether it looked like an evening out, something really special, or whether you looked as if you might be stopping in for wine before going back to her place. He was equally useless on what she seemed to think of running into Edward, your ex-wife's boyfriend. I mean, it is possible to get a reading on these things, on whether, for instance, someone is indifferent—or not.

Now you might ask, as Nina has asked—loudly, I might add—what makes me think that who you're going out with is any of my business. When you seemed to be getting serious about Isabel, and I was full of objections (I thought Isabel was absolutely wrong for you), Nina said, “Just a minute, Emily. You can pick your first husband and you can pick your second husband, but you do
not
get to pick your first husband's second wife.”

I don't know why not. Who's in a better position, after all, to determine the most appropriate mate for a man than the woman who lived with him for twenty years? Not that I'm going to be completely objective. As June said of Harvey's new girlfriend, “She's incredibly good-looking, and she makes a boatload of money. I just know she'll never make him happy.”

No doubt June pictured Harvey with someone less glamorous, and more wholesome, which is to say heavier; someone, well, more his type. Women naturally prefer to be succeeded by “nice” and “down-to-earth,” and perhaps a touch wide in the hips, as opposed to gorgeous.

It's not that I don't wish you well; I do. However, it's one thing for me to wish for your happiness and quite another to wish for it in quantities that exceed whatever we had at our happiest. It grieves me to think of you and your new love lazing in bed on Sunday mornings, looking up at a peeling ceiling that is one big water spot and planning the New Wing. (Incidentally, since the children are so much older now, don't you think that we should move the nursery to the guest wing?)

How I loved those times. They were not momentous; they were merely moments. But they were the links that connected us to each other in ways that were unique. Now they're in danger of being relegated to obscurity by the presence of strangers. Our past as each of us remembers it will bear us no witness.

All the more reason, then, that I should choose your new mate. Like me, she should be sensitive to the tug of history, which is to say she should be a woman of my age and perspective, someone with a past of her own, some gray hair, and a former husband whose uniqueness only she knows. Such a woman is more apt to appreciate the sanctity of those recollections than someone younger, whose history has yet to occur.

I keep thinking about the woman Edward saw in the liquor store—the one with the not-really-curly, brownish, grayish, blond hair. I think of her and I imagine Harvey or June coming to me one day and saying, “She's perfect—the woman he should have married in the first place.”

Forgive my proprietary interest, but I can think of somebody better. What's wrong with the woman you should have married in the second place?

APRIL 23

It could only happen to Harvey. The day that he came to give us the news will live on in my memory as one of the more telling episodes of Harvey's life, at once awful and hilarious. I was dying to talk to you about it then, but no one was to know. “You can't say a
thing
,” Harvey had said. I knew, though, that he'd probably been saying that to all his best friends. Harvey can't keep a secret, even—probably most especially—his own.

Now, since the word is officially out, I can share the story with someone who'd appreciate it. He came by on a Saturday a few weeks ago, and before I could say hello, he was racing around the house, breathlessly closing all the doors so that he wouldn't be overheard. It was a move that made sense, considering that my house often has the appearance of a youth hostel these days. But spring break was over, Tony was back at school, and Melissa was spending the weekend with a friend. I explained this, but he continued sealing us off room by room. Finally, when there was no place to go but into the kitchen closet, he sat down and said, “You won't believe this.”

“I'll believe it,” I said, which was true, because only unbelievable things happen to Harvey. He makes the unbelievable completely believable.

“Meg is pregnant,” he said.

“I don't believe it,” I said, and sat down.

Just then Edward came home, walking into an atmosphere of stunned silence.

“What's up?” he said, after a quick glance at Harvey, who was wearing his wide-eyed, I've-really-done-it-this-time expression. Edward didn't believe it either, not that Meg was pregnant, but that Harvey was going to get married.

“Married!”
Edward said. “People don't have to get married anymore, especially not fifty-year-old people.”

Then Harvey told us about the tests he was having, to rule out cancer. He thought he had an ulcer.

“Harvey,” Edward said, with a black cackle. “You're the only guy I know for whom cancer could be construed as a solution. The bad news: Meg's pregnant. The good news: You only have twenty-four hours to live.”

Well, as I said, it could only happen to Harvey. Meg is going to have the baby, period. She doesn't want Jamie to be an only child and, at thirty-eight, she's getting short on time. Harvey's feeling is that he can't not be part of it. So there you are. He probably would have gotten married anyway because he loves Meg, but he would never have
decided
to get married. Harvey doesn't decide things. Fate decides. Well, fate has made some good decisions, ultimately. I hope it does as well with his divorce. Harvey isn't sure if anyone has filed yet.

p.s. Everyone tells me that the woman in your life—Linda?—is “really nice.” Harvey apparently thought I was strong enough for him to add “cute.”

MAY 29

I keep waiting for things to change between us, but they never do. Maybe the trouble is that I'm not waiting; I'm expecting.

I'm not sure which is worse—that you couldn't be happy for me, or that you couldn't pretend to be. I suppose, given the choice, I'd rather have the truth, but it doesn't exactly facilitate the occasion. You seem so much happier now yourself—the house, Linda—that I thought you could afford to be more generous, more gracious. Edward says that in Italian there's an expression,
“ti auguro ogni bene,”
for which there is no exact English equivalent, but it means, I wish the best for you. It hurts me to see that you can't wish the best for me, that this is what it's come to, even when your life is going well.

Which brings me to what I believe has been at the core of so much of my frustration with you: You don't want me to perceive you as happier. Whenever things work out for you, whenever there's the smallest ray of sunshine seeping in under the window shade, you're quick to point out how slight that ray really is, and that just behind it all is dark and hopeless. It's true you've bought a house; it's nice, but I'm given to believe that it hasn't changed anything. You're still alone. You still miss your family. You're seeing someone named Linda, yes, but you're seeing a lot of people. You say that for you, there's only one marriage in life, one person. Every other woman seems wrong somehow, an affair. You've forgotten that at one time you didn't seem to have any problem with that.

There's nothing so terribly wrong, I guess, in being determined to be miserable. But I do think there might be something wrong in using it the way you have used it—to make me feel guilty, to diminish whatever pleasure I might have. You said once, in Dr. Block's office, when you were apologizing for all the “bad” things that you had done, that you knew that you had been the agent of pain, not just for me, but for Annie and Peter. I wore the effect on my face; it moved you.

I feel that way now. I avert my eyes so that I won't be brought in. Your unwillingness to let go and move on is a hook you hold out at arm's length to snag me in my path.

You remind me of a child whose mother has left him at camp to have a good time and who, in spite of himself, has a good time. He learns to swim and play dodge ball. He makes friends. His misery is something he forgets. But when he comes home, there is reproach in his every look, every gesture. His mother has left him, and now the payment is due.

There was a time when I was furious about all this, especially when your vulnerability had so much power. Everybody bent over backward to protect you. The kids didn't mention my name in your presence; I was careful never to say “we” when I talked to you, as if Edward didn't exist. I didn't want him to pick me up at the airport after Annie's graduation because I didn't want to run the risk that you would see him. It was enough for you to be in your shoes. Why did I have to be in there, too?

Then, one morning, Dr. Bloom asked me whether it would help if I knew that, for whatever neurotic reason, you couldn't do better. “Couldn't?” I had thought the word was “wouldn't.”

And with that Dr. Bloom deprived me of much of my reason for being angry. I didn't like giving my anger up. It had given me my energy; it had served me. But it was a habit, like smoking. What am I going to do instead, I wondered; what's going to make me interesting? I didn't have any idea, but it would be fun finding out.

JUNE 6

I wasn't going to tell you this; I wasn't going to tell anyone. But now, since I've told everyone, it only seems fair that I should tell you, too. Besides, I want to keep the record straight and this isn't the time to start omitting things.

Edward and I were nearing the end of a bottle of zinfandel on Saturday night when I mentioned to him that you were having Linda and Annie to dinner so that you could introduce them. (Bear in mind that, although I'd heard a lot of nice things about Linda, I'd never actually seen her, and Edward wasn't much help in filling me in.)

Edward listened, staring thoughtfully into his wine and twirling the stem of his glass between his fingers. “What exactly did you have in mind?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just that I'd love to go peek in the windows.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” he said, putting down his glass and reaching for the car keys. I couldn't believe it, a man who would indulge my mischievousness, my naughtiness. But then, as I was beginning to discover, Edward himself is naughty.
Incredible
, I thought. A naughty dentist. The man was full of surprises.