The Widow's Husband

Joel

CHAPTER 1

I’d fantasized leaving him. Not often, and not for long—and certainly not forever—but after a blowup, I’d drag out the idea and play with it, twist it this way and that way, a kaleidoscope of my anger. Savor it, my delicious anger: midnight ice cream sneaked behind the refrigerator door. Yeah, I’d leave him, clear out, slam doors, squeal tires, grind gears—I’d be gone. I’d show him.

I had left him, in the past. But now, at his funeral, such confusion in my mind, I can’t remember what we fought about. I recall the delicious heat of battle—but over what?—followed by hours of blind driving, windows down, radio blaring out KROK, a station dedicated to the sort of middle-aged soft rock Emmett had scorned. He’d preferred Dixieland, which I despise. Okay, I’ve never been into the likes of Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, or Aretha Franklin either, but I blasted it out through opened windows in a spirit of rebellion, and to spite Emmett. It kept me going, my mood up.

The closest I came to really leaving him had been once after a fight when I stayed out all night. Slept, or tried to, in my VW behind the bank, the one where I keep my secret little account.

What had that fight been about? Emmett can’t tell me anymore, lying there in his dark itchy suit on such a nice April afternoon, although the cloud-splattered sky has a tentative look: the weather could go either way. It’s chilly here in the mortuary chapel. The reason for this floral scented, icy-edged air seems rather ghoulishly clear. Thoughts like these make me shiver even more. If I ever get out of here, I’m going to go somewhere and bake in the sun.

So much Emmett can’t tell me now. How to light the pilot on the water heater. Where to recycle plastic. Who to see at City Hall about the utility bill. He’d always been there to sand down the rough edges of everyday life, although I’d accused him of ignoring my inner needs, my real needs. Of abandoning me. Now I am abandoned, and a prickle of raw fear, of incipient panic, surges from the backs of my hands into my hair.

I’d been afraid, too, that night behind the bank. But after my excitement about what I was doing to him died, after I’d gotten cold and cramped, when the sun was nowhere near to coming up and night seemed a permanent condition, well, even then I’d been loath to go home and face him. He could be so cold and punishing for such a long time. He hated what he called my hysterics, and I was sure he’d called that wild flight hysterical, and worse. How unfair he could be! Or rather had been. I have to learn to think in the past tense.

I have to learn to think, period. I’ve been lazy, true, I let him think for me. It’d just been easier. Easier to get along if I went along. Easier to cower there in the dark that night behind the bank than go home and thrash out our differences, even after I got over being angry. Even after rational (or irrational) thinking had kicked in and I imagined maniacal shapes in the dark, ominous noises filling the long black hours. Even then I wanted to stay there, hunker down in the VW, prolong my mutiny.

Amy still lived at home, a hell-bent teenager, at war with both her dad and me. I worried that night in the car behind the bank. I worried about Amy getting herself off to school in the morning. I thought Amy still needed me to dole out lunch money, check on getting a ride home and at what time, and if she had done her homework. Emmett didn’t deal with what he called trifles—and I suppose he was right. But he wasn’t right to ignore Amy. By then, he was angry with her, too. According to him, she’d grown (regressed he said) from cute toddler to troublesome teen. He was critical, when he was aware at all, of Amy’s teenage traumas. In fact, critical or oblivious pretty much described his attitude toward any household management, and I much preferred the latter.

I chide myself for thinking such hateful thoughts and I glance over at Amy beside me here in the chapel. Is she grieving for her father? Is she afraid? That hardly seems likely—Amy’s a strong independent girl, almost (I admit this to myself) a selfish girl. She is her own person, now that she’s out of the house. She’ll get along fine without her dad. After the service, which seems at once too long (we don’t hold much belief in religion, nor do we know this minister provided by the mortuary), and too short (I dread the tangle of decisions and actions that awaits me at its close), I’ll ask Amy about that fight. I’ll say, Remember that row your dad and I had, and I didn’t come home all night? Remember that night I slept behind the bank? What had we been fighting about? I’ll say that with a sigh or with a rueful downturn of my mouth to show my consternation, my understanding of the futility of such questions now, when that part of our past is as dead as Emmett himself. Maybe Amy can recall the roots of that blowup.

All I see of Amy is the tip of her nose under her black straw hat. It’s just the two of us here in this section reserved for family, an alcove screened from the chapel’s main room, presumably so we can grieve in private. We can hear muffled sounds from the outer area, the kind of noises I associate with the threadbare rituals of churchiness: rustle of clothing as people fidget, faint coughs and throat clearings, a sob—someone out there is crying? Someone shushes a child, someone whispers. More people out there than I’d thought would show up, and I begin to worry about the impending funeral reception.

The minister says something about a loving and generous heart. That was true—just look at the turnout from his office, from the whole plant. I knew he’d been a different person there, a jovial, easy-going fellow with a sunny-side-up personality. Who wouldn’t like him, like that?

Of course it had been a masquerade. Emmett admitted that, had once told me that I was the only person who really knew him. That had pleased me, had made me feel honored, approved of. To be his confidante. His intimate.

Besides, doesn’t everyone wear a disguise? I myself put on an outward show of competence, of patience and reliability. The one who could be counted on to be room mother, to supply cakes for bake sales, to help with carpooling or chaperoning (which was how I found out about Amy and that kid, her pimply former boyfriend). I’m the one who volunteers for the diabetes Walkathon, the Cancer Prevention crusade, the March of Dimes collection drive. After the walk or the crusade or the drive, the organizers assign me to the back room to do filing or telephoning. This is a kindness, because they think they understand my diffident nature, my preference for low visibility. However, they, whoever they happen to be, know I’ll come through, will murmur, If there’s anything I can do to help, please call me. Which is doubly ironic because half the time I don’t care a fig for the cause itself—I can be, usually am, sly rather than shy—and because I feel that I need help myself. Emmett’s help.

Abruptly I’m aware of the depth of my anger toward Emmett for going off and leaving me to muddle through this ordeal alone! To tend to this mob of his fellow workers when I barely know them. He should have to cope with my fellow workers, although how many of them would turn out for me is problematic. I tend to make few permanent connections, am something of a loner, which is why I like working temp. The gist of it is that Emmett is shirking his social responsibilities, something he’d rarely done in life. I have the illogical feeling that he’s the host of this gathering, and he’s not doing his part; he’s in the other room telling off-color jokes, or serving drinks, or shooting the breeze with the boys. He’s leaving it all to me, the fragile partner, the brittle, the less able member of the union.

He’d been the strong one, the sturdy one. So he’d had that one little attack—the doctor termed it a wakeup call—but he’d been following orders, he’d lost weight, quit smoking. Only forty-seven, two years older than I am, he was supposed to maintain, to prevail, to be my stalwart companion, my defense against the world. Husbands often die before their wives, due to job stress or life style choices—all that cigarette smoking, or drinking, or eating of red meat. But not Emmett, oh, no. Not him!

True, of late he’d seemed tired and listless, but I put it down to working all those extra hours. Why had he been working so hard? I vaguely recall some talk about deadlines, shortfalls, make-or-break projects with hair triggers. Meant nothing to me at the time, and I confess I listened to him the way he listened to me. With scant attention. It was just Emmett again, the way he was, always putting pressure on himself. Your dad, you know him, I’d say to Amy on the phone. Now Amy has her own condo across town, living with that fellow, what’s his name? Again I shoot her a look, but she’s bent under her hat, engaged in a study of her nails. They’re painted an odd shade of lilac, hardly the thing for a funeral, but what is she supposed to do? Paint her nails black? Besides, since that awful morning, Amy has more or less moved back in with me and hasn’t had time or inclination to tend to herself properly. I suppose that’s it. Why else would she paint her nails lilac?

The minister’s sonorous voice intones, Unto the Lord, he was a faithful servant, working in the fields, bringing in the sheaves …

No doubt about it, Emmett had been a worker, the engine, our power source. Last to turn in, first one up. Until that morning just a few days ago, although it seems years back now. The alarm went off and I climbed out of bed before him, which should have warned me something was wrong. I talked to him from our half-bath while he dozed, or I thought he was dozing. Then I yelled to him from the kitchen, Come on, lazybones, better get up or you won’t have time to look at the paper.

I went back to prod him, had actually shaken him rather roughly, a fact that later made me feel bad. You have to get up. I’m filling in today at the library downtown, you have to give me a ride.

As I said earlier, I work as a temp, but only occasionally—not enough to warrant the expense of my own wheels. We’d been juggling around one car since giving Amy the old VW, the one I slept in behind the bank. At the time, Amy had just moved out and was borrowing it, borrowing and borrowing. Finally in a fit of exasperation, Emmett threw her the keys and said, Here, take it, but when it needs tires or brakes, don’t come to us. When I objected—after all, it was my car—he said, Listen, it’s going to need real money put in it soon, and I don’t want to do it. Let her foot the bill.

Well, how fair is that! I said.

Time she learned what real life is like. I know what I’m doing, and besides, this is between me and her.

I’d been bitter about the deal at the time, mad at both of them. But that was Emmett, the way he’d gotten with Amy, and with me, too. Besides, he’d usually been right about cars, although cars did not interest him. I respected his judgement, even when I didn’t agree with it.

You have to get up and give me a ride. You know I like the library gig, and it could last all week. I don’t want to start out being late, I said, scolding him, shaking him. His form was inert, and his body moved easily under my touch, like a rag doll. From his mouth issued a thin trickle of blood, puddling on his pillowcase. My voice rising, Emmett? What’s wrong?

His cheeks, usually ruddy, were chalk white. I suddenly realized his color, which I’d attributed to health and vigor, had come from a spider webbing of broken blood vessels. This webbing now formed a network of brownish-purple, making a pattern against the cold marble of his skin. It resembled a map of the freeway system into Sacramento, such a wild profane image for me to entertain, at this august moment of his death—I knew he was dead, even then—and I was ashamed. I put my hand on his forehead, found it, yes, cold. Cold as stone.

Emmett! I wailed as fear and shock took the place of reason. A part of my mind registered that he would not approve of my reaction. He would label this response hysterical, lacking in qualities necessary for control. This made me even more tentative and clumsy, and I hated myself for it. Would I never achieve some authority, some resources of my own? My own self-doubt caused my hand to shake while turning back the covers—the Wedding Ring quilt, the white wool blanket, and the top sheet. As if by exposing him, I’d cause him to catch a chill. At the very least, I was infringing on his personal privacy.

Maybe I was. The last few years he’d slept nude. He said his pajamas bound up on him, whatever that meant. His exposed naked body looked weak and vulnerable. And small, much too small to contain the energy, the spirit of Emmett. He hadn’t been large—five ten or so, one hundred sixty-five pounds, but he’d always given the impression of a lean and rangy fellow, wired with sinewy muscles.

His skin, ashy white, was almost a match for the sheets. Even then, at that point, I thought bitterly of the colored sheets I’d once bought that he refused to sleep on. (Had that been the cause of that out-all-night fight? No, I don’t think so.)

Emmett! I shrieked and began to blubber. So deathly white, his only color that weird spider webbing, and a tattoo of an American flag on his shoulder he’d had done in Da Nang. Between his knees drawn up in a fetal curl, in the pocket of his crotch, lay his penis. It was gray, shriveled into a sort of ashy rosebud. A rosebud nestled in the misty baby’s breath of his pubic hair, also gray. Why was he gray? Why was he chalky white? I covered him up again, tucking the blankets under his chin, as if he’d resurrect should I keep him wrapped up. I knew my actions were foolish, a way, really, to protect myself from the shocking sight of him.

I remember thinking: that is not my husband. That is not Emmett. Someone has substituted that dead thing for Emmett, who’s alive at this moment, in another place. (I had the same reaction later in the mortuary, seeing him stretched out in his dark blue wool suit, that awful hairy thing, his hands folded across his chest, his cheeks rouged, his lashes beaded with mascara. I thought, That’s not Emmett. They’ve substituted a mannequin for Emmett, a wax dummy with makeup and stiffly combed hair.)

Standing there in our bedroom, I began to keen, to cry open-mouthed, making a sound like an animal—I couldn’t help it. My knees shook going down the hall to the kitchen phone, although there was a bedroom extension. As if I didn’t want him to overhear me, didn’t want to provide him the opportunity to criticize the way I gave directions, or details, or the way I communicated my information. Out of habit, I began dialing Amy’s number, then hung up quickly and punched in 911.

I managed a disjointed description of the situation, and, no, Emmett would not have approved of the way I stuttered and stammered. But the competent woman understood, said help was on its way. Then I called Amy, managing a little better. After sobbing the news, I hung up, paced around, trying to make sense of Emmett’s death. Yes, his death. Use the word. Get used to the word.

Emitting static, crackling with what I assumed was vital information received on its bristling antennae, a police cruiser arrived, and parked on the driveway. Then an ambulance pulled in. It didn’t look like a proper ambulance, which I picture as a fancy station wagon. This thing was a truck, like the one that transports money from the bank. An armored car, yes, although a huge red ECNALUBMA blazed across the front in letters so garish I couldn’t read them, even after I realized—and I already knew it, I knew that—the word was on there backward. Why backward! I am unaccountably angry at this nonsense why would they spell it backward? So you could read it in your rearview mirror, I seemed to hear Emmett’s patient explanation. Still, it was a damn fool thing to do, because you automatically reversed the spelling. My mind played with this idea, fastened onto it, something to hang on to in the collapse of my world.

Tough go, Mrs. Malone, said one of the young and hardy attendants, coming out of my house, breaking into my wild skein of thought. A mere kid with a ponytail and earring, he patted my shoulder in an avuncular manner. Listen, he said, it’s a good way to go. He never knew what hit him, we should all be so lucky.

They were trundling Emmett off just as Amy careened up the driveway, slammed out of her lemon yellow Mustang, the same color as her workout suit. She stammered something about the morning commute holding her up, although she’d been going against the main stream rushing into the Bay Area. When I called, she’d been almost out the door, on her way to Fitness World where she teaches an early morning aerobics class.

There on the driveway, for all the neighbors to see, I clung to my daughter, inhaling Amy’s strength and substance, and the faint lemon scent of her lotion. A part of me was shocked, even disturbed, at the feel of Amy’s body, at its heat and firmness. We’d never been a family that touched much, so Amy’s solidity and strength seemed foreign, disconcerting. As if by developing all that muscle tone Amy was betraying her femininity, becoming a stranger.

I blurted out the story of my tragedy. Amy patted me, as the ambulance attendant had done, then we repeated the story to a circle of sympathetic neighbors who’d been drawn to the driveway by the commotion. I lengthened the tale, embroidered emotions and medical facts and symptoms into its cloth, partly to postpone going back into the suddenly empty house, the house of death; and partly to refine the telling, to achieve a crisp grasp of my situation.

Which was that Emmett had died of a heart attack. Everyone’s time comes, and that kid driving the ambulance had it right: we should all be so lucky as to go in our sleep.

Not that that’s much comfort here, now, in the mortuary. I draw a deep ragged sigh, shuffle, dig for a tissue. I try to defeat a knot of tears about to dissolve in my head behind my eyes by paying closer attention to the minister. He’s a nondescript fellow that I can’t describe even while I’m looking at him. He’s trying to prove something by telling us the Good Shepherd story. Out of habit, I scoff. After all, why was He so happy to find that lost lamb? Why, indeed! To increase His profit in the wool trade, and soon, in lamb chops. Sheer exploitation.

In tones heavy with certitude, finality, and power, the minister concludes his elastic one-size-fits-all sermon. He counterbalances the booming Shepherd story with a soft and pious benediction, and then retreats to sit in the shadows. Recorded organ music swells in the dim room, mingling with the scent of flowers. The sun breaks out from behind the clouds, beams through a stained glass window, and, as if on cue, tints our alcove with a rosy glow. Ah, well. Poor Emmett.

I experience a totally unexpected surge of peace. I unbend, unfold, flow formlessly within myself, like a strain of dye in water. I am weightless, light-headed; I’m in danger of wafting off in an out-of-body episode. Either that, or of dozing right here. So welcome, this sudden sense of futility, of soothing finality. Nothing matters. Something has ended; something else is about to begin. In either case, there’s no help for it, nothing I can do. And I am here. It’s Emmett up there in the box.

Soon enough, though—too soon—I jar back to reality. I have to face the rest of this barbaric ceremony. The beefy pallbearers carry Emmett out. They load him into a hearse the color of stainless steel, windows draped with velvet curtains, as if poor Emmett needs protection from prying eyes, or living people need to be protected from him. The hearse takes him away. Amy and I follow, rattling around in a huge limousine.

At the cemetery, the crowd, Emmett’s crowd, gathers around the precisely hollowed-out rectangle, the dirt from which is piled nearby on a tarp, ready for replacement. The air smells of earth, of mold and compost, although this seems to be the only excavation. I wonder how they dig such square corners with such big machines—off in the distance is the back hoe, ready for reemployment as soon as we finish our chore here. My seldom-worn high heels dig more little holes in a crisply cut plot of grass, the sort of grass Emmett would have approved of. With a sense of rising panic, I watch the box disappear. The minister gives the Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust finale. I bite my lip, sigh, and dig again for a tissue. I am going to cry. I can’t help it. I am going to blubber in front of all these people.

I remember cozy times of lying in bed with Emmett, cuddling with him. In particular, I recall once when he reached for me, not for sex—that had happened rarely in the last few years—but to hold me because he knew I’d had a bad day. I’d been temping at a firm that makes dehydrating equipment, the kind people use in their homes for drying fruit. I mentioned to a coworker that I wanted one of the contraptions for myself; I wanted to dry apple slices, pears, cherries. Later I overheard the girl say to her friend, Why bother? Just do whatever you do to your face. I had been hurt, and shocked at how hurt I was. I asked Emmett if I looked dried out. The remark had made me feel old and tired, too old and tired for temp work, which requires a young person’s stamina. All that adjustment, readjustment every day, every day in a new place.

Emmett held me tenderly, said of course not. I was a fine looking woman, and he was proud of me. Oh, yes, Emmett had been my solace, my bulwark against the casual and random hurts of life.

He’d been a good man, a wonderful man. A joy to have around the house. The kind of man who could, who did, fix anything and everything. The kind who kept the lawn looking as good as this memorial park’s. The kind who maintained the lawn mower, the sprinkler system, the weed eater, all things mechanical in good running condition. On that score alone, I am going to miss him sorely.

Amy begins to cry, too, letting her mascara run raccoon tracks down her cheeks. Next to Amy stands her current boyfriend, yes, I remember him now. This one is Larry, and he is, superficially, a nice kid, but he has a slick edge, and is too smoothly good-looking to make him the kind of guy I am comfortable with. He seems the sort who’ll open doors and hold coats, but who will drive a vehicle from