Saturday Night Widows

by Becky Aikman

  “How do you know my name?” I demanded, my flirting no better for paltry practice.

  “Fred told me,” he said. “I enjoyed the article you wrote last week. You really drew me in.”

  “You’re interested in potato farming on Long Island?”

  “No, actually. I was interested in you.”

  It took a moment to sink in. This was Fred’s guy. I unconsciously leaned away. “Do you live in Connecticut by any chance?” I should have known: I was in the middle of a dreaded public fix-up. Ambushed. No escape.

  Nice move wearing the dowdy sweater, I thought. I considered shucking it, decided to let it be. A plate of risotto landed in front of me, and I dug in with antic zeal. “This stuff is total decadence,” I blubbed, mouth full.

  The guy took a careful bite and lit up with pleasure. He and Fred swooned over the ingredients. Parmesan, they guessed, and pears and balsamic vinegar for sweetness. This was no Doritos guy.

  “You know about food?” I switched into reporter mode: get the story, walk away. I took care not to make direct eye contact.

  “I love to cook, sure. Fred and I met about a zillion years ago, traveling around Sicily with Julia Child for some articles I was writing. We had a blast, but I’m still trying to lose the weight.”

  It didn’t seem like he needed to, not that I was noticing.

  “You know Fred well?”

  “I don’t get to see him much—I live too far away. But he’s taken me to the opera a few times.”

  “You actually went?”

  “Yes.” He looked confused. “But I’m a rock-’n’-roll guy at heart.”

  This may have been an ambush, but it was shaping up as one I could survive. At least I’d have a diverting evening. I uncovered more details. For some lucky woman who lived in the right state, this guy—let’s call him Bob—had definite cool boyfriend potential, if you could say that about someone who played with Bruce Springsteen when he was an opening act. Bob had left the music business to become a writer, publishing some highly regarded biographies, most recently of the Beatles.

  He kept me laughing with self-deprecating stories about cooking disasters and single-dad mishaps, and he seemed to find my tales of the Gulag more amusing than the reality. We were rudely tuning out the rest of the table, where diners diplomatically assessed the wines and Fred and his mother discreetly watched over us like hens with their chicks. By the time some braised duck turned up, we had moved on to personal matters. Bob had decamped from the city to Connecticut nine years ago. A well-ordered life, everything in its rightful place—a wife, a daughter, a dog, a mortgage—five years later it all turned out a mess. His eyes grew wary and distant when I asked about the divorce. He seemed to take it as a personal defeat.

  “I take it you’re single, too.”

  So Fred hadn’t told all. “My husband died,” I said, bracing for the reaction.

  “I’m sorry.” Bob considered this slowly, observed me with deeper curiosity. “That must have been an incredible blow. How do you go on after something like that?”

  I found myself telling him all about it, the miserable support group, the strange dislocation from my peers, the gasping for contact, the few pathetic dates. I was halfway through an animated travelogue to the Galápagos when cackly laughter broke out across the room, where the Glamazons were holding court.

  “Sorry to rattle on. That sounds like the fun table,” I said.

  “Nah, I caught their act on World Wide Wrestling,” he said. “Seriously, they’re basically kids. What would we talk to them about? I like a woman with something to say.”

  His eyes trailed lightly over my face. Strange, I couldn’t tell whether they were brown or blue. They darted imperceptibly to the side just before mine did. Shit, shit, shit. This guy was doing something to my follicles.

  By the time I turned back again, he was excusing himself to phone the babysitter. It would be well after midnight before he got home. Daughter, dog, home in a remote location. Here was a man with obligations. And I was a woman without, with visions of pain and loss that shadowed any impulse toward attachment. I should do him a favor and hit an afterparty with the Glamazons.

  Bob returned, considering what to say. “You got me thinking, Becky. When my life got shot to hell, that’s when I found out what mattered to me. My daughter, my work—I try to stay true to that. I spent a lot of lonely nights talking to the dog, trying to figure it out. As David Bowie would say, ‘Turn and face the strange.’ But all those ch-ch-changes …”

  He smiled and shrugged. He was injured, same as me. “I guess in the end they weren’t all bad.”

  I regarded him directly. Hazel, that was it. His eyes were hazel.

  chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.” I had just asked Professor Wortman, the grief expert from Stony Brook University, why she thought my group wanted to go lingerie shopping together. “I can’t imagine,” she sputtered. “It’s the last thing I would want to do.” We were about to go seriously off the grid.

  I saw her point. In my first couple years of widowhood, even during my first wan stabs at meeting a man, I felt about as sexy as a grilled cheese sandwich. Put me in a push-up bra and a garter belt, and voila!—you’d have a grilled cheese sandwich in a push-up bra and garter belt.

  Maybe what I needed was a dose of Lesley and Dawn in a lingerie shop. It might have spared me a couple years of celibacy. Maybe some of those Internet guys would have got lucky. Maybe when I met Bob at Fred’s dinner, I would have made a preemptive move.

  The lingerie outing in June was Tara’s idea, not mine. I didn’t entirely understand the appeal of trying on underwear with a cheering section of friends, but the rest of them, except perhaps Marcia, were dizzy with anticipation. I was glad for another opportunity to demonstrate my team spirit. If I agreed to squeeze myself into a negligee and matching thong for them, I hoped they might venture a night in a desert tent for me.

  Tara breezed into the glossy white La Perla shop in SoHo on a steamy day, happy to explain her reasoning to the rest of us. She thought we should throw something into the mix that celebrated us as women, something that was also silly and fun. “And honestly … get ourselves out of the Mummy pants,” she said in her most sultry voice. She gave an approving once-over to the profusion of lace and satin on display. “Think of ourselves outside the dreadful box we’ve been in.”

  We’d been dancing around the topic of sex ever since the first meeting. It was time to give some serious consideration to where we all stood on the matter. What role did we want it to play in our lives, and what roles were we willing to play to make it happen?

  There was only one subject scarier, and that would be love. A subject for another day.

  Today would be all about pleasure. First we cheered Marcia, who had returned from our spa weekend determined to overcome her qualms and buy that apartment she’d been mooning over. She met her real estate agent on the roof at sunset a few days later and made a deal. Maybe it wasn’t the best deal she’d ever negotiated, but it was the best deal for her, with the location, the view, and the pool fusing the pleasures of city and country that she’d relished with Martin. She’d be moving in the fall.

  Then we turned to the lingerie. Lesley flapped her wings with delight when she spotted a hanger holding a garment, if that’s what it was, assembled from strips of nude-colored mesh and a few strategically placed feathers. It could have been the illegitimate love child of a slingshot and a feather duster.

  “That makes a statement,” I said.

  Lesley lifted the item off the hanger with a finger, one eyebrow raised. “Yes, it says, ‘You are a new woman.’ ” Indeed. “It says, ‘Try having sex with someone new, after thirty years with someone else.’ ”

  She held it over her T-shirt and gave a wiggle. “Craig tells me the only place for sexy lingerie is on the floor,” she mused. “But he did ask me to look for a teddy. Is this a teddy?”

  I didn
’t answer, too busy trying to envision the Belle du Jour lifestyle of the woman who on a daily basis wore underpinnings that cost more than a trash compactor. Surely no one in the feather getup would ever have to shovel a driveway or meet a payroll. Just as surely, that was part of the appeal. I had to hand it to Tara. The La Perla shop, with its soft-core allure, captured her aesthetic of subtly withholding chic. No bordello décor, nothing sleazy or garish. The place had the spare ambiance of a first-class lounge at LAX. I felt a kind of dull lust kick in, a lust for objects of desire way beyond my financial standing. This place was a total tease.

  Dawn was savvy enough to ask for everything that was on sale in her size. Then she and Lesley disappeared into dressing rooms in the center of the store with an ample stash. It wasn’t long before they whipped aside the curtains and flaunted their finds to appreciative shrieks.

  “Dawn, you can’t buy that,” Lesley said. “You’re going to give some guy a heart attack.”

  She was right to worry. Dawn’s look-at-me figure strained inside a black mesh slip with a few satin ribbons slashed across some high-risk territory. I remembered some dialogue from Body Heat, when Kathleen Turner wondered why William Hurt suggested she shouldn’t wear an outfit and he answered, “You shouldn’t wear that body.”

  Lesley pirouetted in a silver bra and panty set that had us sh-bopping like the Shirelles.

  “Oh, mama!” Tara said.

  “This one’s headed for the bedroom floor,” Lesley announced, all cocky confidence.

  The rest of us clucked around the racks while the two of them ducked in to change again, speaking through the curtains as the lace flew. They kept Maria, the assistant manager of the store, hopping, sending her to the stockroom for more sizes. She had opened early to give us the run of the place and won our hearts by admitting she had a complex about her thighs.

  “Is this what you expected from a group of widows?” I asked her.

  She put down a box of panties. “I get it,” she said. “I lost my mother. It’s not the same, but when you lose someone you love, you have to put on a face every day for your work, for your kids. Beautiful lingerie is another kind of mask. It’s a mask that says I feel sexy, I feel beautiful.”

  Meanwhile, Dawn was saying, “I’m going to want way too much stuff.” She whipped aside the curtain to show us a clingy champagne-colored nightgown trimmed with a suggestion of lace. “I need a little piece of lingerie for when I go on a trip.”

  “You’re going on a trip? A trip where you need lingerie?” I asked.

  Dawn let loose one of her throaty laughs. “I don’t have one planned. I’m trying to project one.”

  In fact, she had scheduled a getaway with Adam, the widower she’d been seeing, in conjunction with taking their sons to camp. But once again the relationship had hit turbulence, and they were planning to drop the boys and turn right back. The drive alone could make or break the situation.

  This lingerie wasn’t for him, she said; it was for her, a reward for getting in the best shape she’d achieved in years. Denise had inspired her to commit herself fully to yoga, Dawn said. “I realized how good I’d feel if I got stronger.”

  She turned this way and that in front of the mirror to evaluate the nightie that Adam was destined not to see. If this was what strength looked like, I made a note to spend the summer strapped to a cross-trainer.

  The second anniversary of Andries’s death had just passed, and in some ways, to Dawn, it was worse than the first. It was especially hard on the kids, and it made her suspect that they had been putting on a brave front for her sake up to now. She imagined they associated the time of year—school concerts, the last weeks of classes, the onset of summer weather—with his death, and her daughter had become moody and withdrawn. The other day, out of the blue, she shouted and pounded her fists: “I want my daddy back! I want him here now.”

  Dawn gave a last twirl in front of the mirror. “Ooh, it would be nice to wear this for someone,” she said. “But this is for me. If I can grab five minutes of feeling good for myself, I’ll take it.” She slipped back into the changing room.

  “You should be the official La Perla spokesmodel,” I said.

  Tara looked after her fondly. “I was describing Dawn to a friend the other day,” she told me. “I said she’s like every man’s fantasy … and seemingly every woman’s nightmare competition. But she isn’t, because she’s so sisterly.”

  I couldn’t help but notice that after pushing us to schedule this fling for months, Tara was hanging back, lingering by the dressing rooms, unable to focus. Yet there was a radiance about her that was impossible to ignore. She grabbed me by the arm to explain. It seemed that everything was changing for her just in the few weeks since our spa weekend. The curtain that had been blocking her had opened, and she was stepping out. She had sold her family’s house and bought a new one, a smaller one—happily, a few blocks from where Lesley lived.

  “Hooray,” Lesley called out from the room. “We can hula-hoop together.”

  Tara smiled. More requests were coming in for voice-over work, she added. And the guy Tara had just met when we visited the spa, the guy who sent all the text messages—she could barely contain her astonishment at how their dates had evolved.

  “You’re getting along?” I asked.

  She widened her eyes in amazement. “Yeah.” She paused to collect her thoughts, but they scattered like mercury. “Really, out of nowhere,” she began, barely audible. “Like a bolt out of the blue. There are connections and feelings there … and equally on his part.” She looked off to the side, unable to meet my eyes. “I don’t know whether it’s because I’m feeling better and I’m embracing life and it’s coming through to others, but … all this stuff is coming my way. I’m sort of overwhelmed by this guy.” She turned back to me, genuinely flustered. “Not sort of overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed.”

  Boy, could I relate. After all but giving up hope of finding passion again, to feel a connection with someone—someone male—was a shock. I saw it all in her face, the thrill and the trepidation over what might unfold. This man was coaxing feelings to life in Tara that she had nearly forgotten, that she thought she might never feel again.

  Lesley returned to the mirror in a cream-colored gown, form-fitting but not transparent. It came with a matching robe, the better to wear with Craig’s son in the house. “This is kind of virginal,” Lesley said, pulling a face. She was distracted by Tara’s flustered demeanor. “Tara, what’s with you? What happened after the sexting?”

  “It wasn’t sexting. It was flirting via text.”

  “Did it get better? Did you go on a date? And?”

  Tara didn’t speak for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she said, “He is … an amazing man. Lovely.”

  “She’s been so quiet about it,” Marcia said.

  “Her socks have been knocked off, girls,” said Dawn. She peeked out from behind the curtain.

  Will was going through a divorce, Tara told us when we pressed for details. He was fifty-eight, almost four years older than Tara. “He’s very … we both love words. He’s got a great brain. He’s an amazing father. His daughter is seven.”

  “Seven!” Lesley exclaimed. “I thought I was mad with a thirteen-year-old boy.”

  Tara hadn’t met the girl yet. “We’re taking it slow. He’s very respectful. I didn’t see it coming. I feel completely giddy.” She waved us away and squeaked out a giggle, bordering on the hysterical. “All the things I didn’t think I’d feel, I feel all of them. Unbelievable.”

  Tara’s good news gave us a helium lift, and we returned to our flighty mission. Marcia corralled Maria and disappeared to a dressing room in the back. Denise and I turned to helping Tara. Her daughters had been urging her to “get out of those microfiber, flesh-colored whatevers,” so she sought one special piece, a piece that would make a statement and give a boost of confidence, something subtly seductive, “not too tarty … because I am not a tart.” We
hit upon it, and I laced her in: a black silk bustier with corset stays up the back. Tara planned to wear it under a black tuxedo. It was classic. It was smoldering. It was Tara all over. No one understood better than Tara that elegance is refusal.

  “Go, baby, go,” Dawn said. “Lady, this looks beautiful on you.”

  “It’s a fortune,” Tara said. “I have never, ever splurged on myself on something like this.” She closed her eyes and handed a credit card over to Maria.

  I breathed deep to savor the vicarious shopping high. It pleased me to think how different we were from the pitiful widows in a Dickens novel or even from a real-life widow of fifty years ago; how, within reason, we could spoil ourselves if we chose. We had made our own way and could spend our own money however we wanted, and who was to tell us otherwise? For the most part, we modern women hadn’t been financially dependent on husbands. Some in the group had been the big earners in their families. No one, I thought with pride, was lost without a man.

  Tara still looked guilt-stricken, whether over the expense or something else, I wasn’t sure. I thought of a theory Camille Wortman, the grief researcher, had put forward when I pressed her to think harder about why my group wanted to perpetrate this spree together. “Maybe it helps a widow overcome inhibitions,” she said. “Maybe going with a group makes it less like she’s buying something intended for someone who is not her husband. It’s more acceptable, because she’s doing it for the group.”

  Imagine my surprise when Marcia headed toward the cash register with a little cache of unmentionables.

  “Talk about being out of your comfort zone,” she said with her suppressed smile. “This is it for me.”

  “Marcia, you’re blushing!” Dawn said.

  Marcia’s cheeks burned deep red. “I have to do this gradually,” she said. She stuffed her purchases quickly in a bag.

  “This was something I would never have done if I hadn’t been with this group,” she confessed to me while we waited for the others. “But now that I’ve been here, I would probably come back. It’s another thing to learn. I’m changing, partially because I have to. And partially just for the hell of it.”