Saturday Night Widows

by Becky Aikman

  Her cryptic expression gave little away as I coaxed out her life story. “I knew that whatever I did with my life, I had to use my intellect,” she said of her childhood in New York. But I began to discern an essential dry humor as well. After law school, she briefly joined a litigation practice with her father. “We’d butt heads all the time, because he was pigheaded and I was pigheaded.” So she headed into corporate law instead, negotiating contracts. Even now, she often found herself the only woman at the conference table, but no one dared to patronize Marcia. “Even if they are inclined to in the beginning, it takes them about twenty minutes to change their minds,” she said, gratified at her power to intimidate. Her sharp mind knew its stuff, and her sharp elbows defended her turf. After a merger with another company, she and a new colleague overlapped in expertise. “They had to separate us before we killed each other.”

  She never lost her temper, she assured me. “If I go after the other side, it’s very calculated. If you want respect, you have to stay in control. I’m by nature, as I’m sure is apparent, very controlled.”

  Very apparent. We were halfway through sculptural French-Asian entrées at that first encounter before I saw the first crack in her shell.

  “I love doing a deal,” she told me. “The excitement—it’s amazing.” In the heat of negotiation, she allowed herself to be consumed by the action, but there were also constraints. “You don’t want the guys you’re dealing with to identify you as an emotional woman,” she said. “You want them to see that you’re stable, that nothing’s going to crack you, that no matter what happens, you’re not going to break.”

  Her description of her husband, Martin, hinted at another side. He was a holistic healer with an advanced degree in biology and the jovial host at their weekend parties in the country. He also hung out in local pubs with John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, two of the biggest carousers in rock ’n’ roll. Marcia’s father had set the unlikely pairing in motion after he conducted a legal negotiation with Martin’s father, who had brought Martin along. He had a soft way with his stubborn parent, could get him to yield without going at him directly. He seemed like the perfect counterbalance for Marcia. “You want to meet my daughter?” her dad asked.

  This union of opposites flourished for twenty-nine years, but the last five months, following Martin’s diagnosis of stage four colon cancer, were fraught with friction. “He desperately didn’t want to do chemo, even if it meant he was going to die,” Marcia said. It was too late for surgery, so she went along with his plan for alternative treatment, wanting him to have a better quality of life, but when the disease progressed, she was all for blasting those tumors with the strongest stuff traditional medicine had to offer.

  For the first time since she and I sat down at the restaurant, Marcia’s assurance wavered. “The last few months were really tough. Because not only was he dying, but our relationship … there was a lot of tension in it. I was trying to get him to appreciate that the treatment wasn’t working.”

  “The cancer had already metastasized to the liver,” I said, wanting to reassure her. “The odds were against any other route curing him.”

  “I always tell myself that,” said Marcia with the same crisp assurance she adopted when she spoke about her job. “Otherwise I’d go insane.”

  Marcia and I shared some of that ability to suppress emotions, along with a sense of displacement once we were widowed. Her friends, like mine, were married. Like me, she had no children. She was close to three nephews, nearly grown up, her godsons on Martin’s side, but she wasn’t close to the rest of Martin’s relatives, who no longer included Marcia in family events. She worried that she and the boys would become estranged now that Martin was gone.

  She joined a widows’ support group, but the others were older, and none of them worked. For Marcia, now more than ever, work was everything. Weekends were bleak, so, like me, she planned ahead. She took an advanced photography course, learning to operate a super-complicated camera, but everyone in the class was younger. Younger people, older people—like me, Marcia had difficulty finding people like her.

  I dithered over whether she belonged in the group I was forming. I explained that we were supposed to be freeing ourselves from the past and freeing ourselves from grief through adventure and experimentation. Everyone needed to be open to change. On the surface, Marcia struck me as someone wedded to routine. But I saw that she might engage her drive and intellect in what we were doing if she viewed it as a project, that the idea of participating in an experiment based on ideas might appeal to her. She weighed the logic of my argument, and then warily said she would give it a shot. I warily agreed to include her, half kicking myself that Marcia would forever be the odd woman out.

  I’LL GIVE HER CREDIT ; for the first few meetings, she dutifully followed the program. The spa was a little more free-form. It would have been easy for Marcia to hole up in her room reading legal briefs. We had negotiated a sweet group rate that included all sorts of vigorous or not-so-vigorous self-improvement activities, so the morning after our fireside wine tasting, we went our own ways. Denise headed for back-to-back yoga sessions. Lesley signed up for a hike. Tara and Dawn kept up an all-day patter through fitness classes and facials and pedicures.

  I took a kayak out on the lake, pondering how to raise the prickly subject of the final trip I envisioned for the fall. I’d spent the last few weeks talking to adventure travel organizers, salivating at the options, and I’d sent potential itineraries to the others, but no one had breathed a word about it since we arrived. It looked like I’d have to force the issue. But first, I let Denise talk me into getting in touch with my inner something-or-other at Meditation to Quiet the Mind. Forty minutes of envying Denise’s posture and trying not to fixate on how the lotus position aggravated my knee only confirmed what I’d long believed—that remaining perfectly still while thinking about nothing was not my idea of entertainment. I repaired to the pool and hot tub, wondering what Marcia was up to.

  She had shown up at breakfast in her full athletic ensemble, her agenda crammed with so many activities that I suspected her assistant must have booked them weeks in advance. She took on all comers: yoga with Denise, swimming with me, and something called Barefoot Dancing with Tara and Dawn, where they learned a pastiche of provocative moves that left the rest of us begging for mercy around the fire that night.

  “I’m telling you, girls, all I needed was a pole,” Dawn said.

  The three of them demonstrated what they’d learned, which seemed to involve a lot of revolving the hips as if using one’s tush to scrape cake batter from a bowl.

  “Left, left, double, double, right, right, double, double,” Tara purred, taking charge. “Now do the whole bowl.” She and Dawn, despite potentially crippling laughter, translated these ridiculous directives into pure seduction, while Marcia moved around off to the side like a stiff apprentice in an actual cake-baking class at Le Cordon Bleu.

  “I don’t understand the instructions,” she grumbled.

  “You’re not supposed to,” Tara commanded. “It’s all in the attitude.”

  Marcia kept at it, assuming something akin to the stance that had worked for her with the hula hoop.

  “My favorite is when you slink down,” Dawn said. “I can’t do it now in my heels.” She tried anyway and pulled it off. “I love the little wiggle on the way up.”

  “You have no shame!” Lesley cried. In a flash, she joined the line. “I want to try this when I get home.”

  “How am I supposed to remember all this?” Marcia asked.

  Tara and Dawn turned to her. “Marcia,” Dawn ordered. “Just do it. Just do it.”

  “Let loose,” Tara piled on. “Don’t overthink!”

  “I actually like it,” Marcia shrugged, flashing her secret grin.

  They danced a bit more, Dawn and Tara and Lesley looking like headliners on the night shift at the Pussycat Lounge. Denise and I joined the lineup, too, swearing that there was no one else on earth
we’d allow to see us in this ludicrous state. All the while Marcia kept giving it her all, the odd woman out, the woman who promised she never cracked. Marcia, the great lawyer, Marcia, who rated her wine by numbers, who ran her life by numbers—Marcia had a killer swivel. She slowly peeled back the façade, one stiff outer leaf at a time.

  We collapsed back into the rocking chairs. Marcia hunched toward me, cryptic expression restored, and cupped a hand around her mouth. “I get a kick out of these women,” she said.

  Our weekend was wrapping up, and the whole crew was still scrupulously avoiding the matter of my push for an ultimate trip. I seized the Kumbaya moment in hopes of striking a deal. “Did you look at the possible itineraries?” I asked the group.

  Silence descended, and the five of them stole guilty glances. They had been talking behind my back.

  “What about Nepal?” I said. I envisioned glorious views as we tramped through the foothills of the Himalayas. The others looked as if I’d proposed a tour of the subterranean railyards of the subway system. “The scenery is spectacular,” I tried.

  No one spoke for a moment. It was as if I’d thrown a firecracker into a circle of cats. “I wonder how good the hotels are,” Lesley said slowly.

  “And the flight would take forever,” said Dawn. “I was thinking maybe a beautiful beach somewhere, where there’s a Four Seasons.”

  “But I want us to have an amazing, transcendent experience,” I said. “I’d like us to feel a sense of accomplishment. This has to be different from any other trip we’ve ever made. What about Machu Picchu? It’s one of the wonders of the world. Imagine entering the Gate of the Sun at sunrise.” I tried an incentive. “The first night would be at a five-star hotel.”

  “In Peru,” said Marcia.

  Dawn suggested we hire a boat to take us along the coast of Turkey, but Marcia had gone there on her honeymoon. I wanted us to visit a place where none of us had set foot before. I suggested the Galápagos as a compromise. Even though I had been there, no one else had. “We’d travel on a boat,” I pointed out, weakly, trying to play on Dawn’s longing for sun and fun. But I felt obliged to note that there would be nature walks, bordering on the educational.

  “I’m more of a people person than a nature person,” said Lesley.

  Almost everyone pushed for a barge trip in France, with a stopover in Paris, of course. Only Denise kept her opinions to herself. “I want us to discover a culture completely different from our own,” I implored. “That’s what being a widow is all about: navigating a foreign land, triumphing over adversity.”

  Their faces went dark, and it wasn’t due to the fading fire. They weren’t looking for adversity, and why should they? Their lives were foreign enough. They had reveled in the pampering at the spa. They wanted a respite, not a forced march through intimidating terrain, a room with a lumpy mattress. This strenuous trip was my loco idea, not theirs. If forced to be honest with myself, I’d probably choose a Four Seasons, too. Still, I was crestfallen.

  “Morocco might not be bad,” Lesley conceded, sensing my misery. “The flight is shorter than some.”

  “There would be a four-day camel trek through the desert,” I felt obliged to mention.

  Marcia grew rigid next to me. “We’d have to sit on camels? I can’t ride a camel.”

  “You’re allowed to get off and walk.”

  “In sand?” yelped Dawn, the four-inch-heels girl. “I cannot walk in sand.”

  “And where would we sleep?” Marcia demanded.

  “In deluxe tents.”

  “What’s deluxe about a tent?” Marcia was horrified.

  That got everyone worried about bathroom facilities. My assurance that there was a separate toilet tent did little to reassure them. Cries of “I cannot pee in the desert” rang out in the night.

  Tara silenced them with authority. “I can pee … anywhere,” she said. “Maybe Becky can keep all of our comments in mind. Maybe she can present some … other choices.”

  Right, I thought. Play personal concierge to the dancing divas and devise an adventure trip with no walking, no camping, no nights on sheets with less than a six hundred thread count, and no peeing in untoward locations. I retired to my room, all benefits of massages and body wraps evaporated, and spent a tortured night. It was me against the, uh, Blossoms, and they weren’t about to wilt. No question, some of the women had been seriously unhappy at the prospect of the trip. I feared if I pushed it, I would tear the group apart.

  chapter

  SIXTEEN

  i hadn’t been looking for a bunch of docile widows, and I certainly didn’t get them. In the days after I returned from the spa, I looked at the bright side: they were turning corners, beginning to flourish, rediscovering themselves. They were asserting themselves, too. If they were rediscovering that they didn’t like adventure travel and asserting themselves with me, I might have to redefine my strategy.

  But I wasn’t going to give up without a scuffle. All that talk of turning corners at the spa was heartening, a reminder of how I had turned a corner during my mind-altering trip to the Galápagos. I remembered that after I returned, I no longer drowned in my dreams. Instead, I choked. Trust me, it was a step up.

  One night after that trip, approaching the two-year mark after Bernie died, I dreamed that I was seized with a fit of choking. I stumbled forward, gripping the sides of a mirror, an antique that had belonged to Bernie’s mother, in the entrance hall of my apartment. Something was wedged in my throat, cutting off my air. I retched and coughed and fought for breath, struggling to expel the deadly obstruction. Still it would not dislodge, and I felt my legs grow weak, give way. I was alone, of course—no one to save me. Then whatever it was that was choking me popped out of my throat and landed in the palm of my hand.

  It was a bee. A freaking honeybee. But it was hard as a stone. I took a breath; my lungs swelled and relaxed. I turned the bee over in my hand, lifted it to the light. It was fossilized in some way, encased in amber, every color and detail perfectly visible. It was exquisite, a thing of wonder. My fear melted away as I cupped it in my palm, held it up to my face, and delighted in the discovery of a phantasmagorical treasure.

  The front door of the apartment opened, and Bernie walked in. In every dream I had dreamed since he died, the Bernie who appeared had been the sick Bernie, the Bernie who was lost and confused and needing my rescue, my rescue that always failed. But in this dream, I saw immediately that this was the well Bernie. His eyes were alive with mischievous pleasure at seeing me again, his body alert and erect. He no longer needed me. I needed him. He opened his arms, and I ran into them, sobbing with joy. He swept me up and we landed somehow on a fold-out couch where we never sat during his life.

  Even in the dream, I knew that Bernie was dead. I knew that we were being granted an extraordinary visit. It was more than I had dared to hope. The well Bernie had returned, if only in an incandescent dream.

  When I awoke to our half-empty bed, I felt joy nearly as intense as any I had ever known. Crazy, I know. I knew that Bernie was gone. But the dream had seemed realer than real, a high-definition, Technicolor immersion in what we once had. Seeing him again, well and aware, as I had forgotten he once had been, made me so euphoric that I wept like a teenybopper at a Beatles concert.

  I was thrilled to be allotted what little I could get, a memento of who Bernie had been before he slipped away, bit by bit and then all at once. I had been struggling to forget the sick Bernie and remember the well one, and the dream brought him alive again in my mind’s eye and my mind’s ear and touch. I could hear his voice the way I could before it became hoarse, talk to him as I could when he had filled my head with ideas, hold his hands when they were strong. From that moment forward, I knew, I could summon this fresh memory of Bernie as he really was. I could carry it with me as I tried to carry on.

  I told the bee dream to the women at the spa, and I welled up with emotion when I reached the climax, when the healthy Bernie appeared. I was supposed to
be the observer in the group, but here I was, only the second of us to shed a tear at our gatherings.

  “Wow, look at that,” Marcia said.

  Tara reached across the dinner table to take my hand and began to puzzle through the symbolism of the dream. The bee had been encased in amber, she said, like a relic from the past. “It was a symbol of memory,” Tara said. “Your unhappy memories were … choking you. Your memories of when he was ill. But when you were able to cough them up and see them in the light, you saw the beauty in the past again.”

  “That’s when my memory of the well Bernie was restored to me,” I said, “when he came back to me in the dream.”

  “The bee represented both sides of your memories, the happy and the sad,” said Denise. “It makes sense, because bees are a yin-yang symbol. They sting, but they also make honey. Your memories of Bernie had been painful up to then, but you recognized that they could be sweet, too.”

  And bees perform a sort of alchemy as they transform nectar into honey, I pointed out. I was in a state of transformation. Perhaps I was ready for a more creative phase in my life, perhaps ready to retrieve my true voice, now that my throat was clear.

  I understood the significance of the fold-out couch, I told them. It meant that Bernie was a guest who could not stay. After he disappeared again, all that would be left was the beautiful bee, the memory of a past before cancer and decline and death took him away. Left on my own, I would need to hold the sweet memories close, let them supersede the painful ones. The bee dream held the secret for how I could be happy. And it marked a genuine turning point for me. I seemed to stop choking and learned to breathe again.

  When I told the bee dream to the others, they assured me that I was not alone. They had experienced meaningful visitations from their husbands, too. Lesley revealed that for a long time she felt that Kevin in some form wandered into her bedroom at the same time every night. Her Staffordshire terrier, spooked, would run into the hall, but Lesley found the visit reassuring, in her way, sensing that her guy was checking up on her. Tara said that a week after David died she sat up most of the night conducting an imaginary talk with him, speaking aloud into the emptiness. “After that,” she said, “he was gone … and the demons were gone, too.”