Husbands and Other Sharp Objects

by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

  Beyond Harvey’s stash, I could see cross-country and downhill skis. Looking at it all, you would have thought that my children had never walked on anything but snow. From Elisabeth’s first Barbie tricycle to Ben’s treasured ten-speed, the bicycles reminded me of a family—a large one at that. Then there were the souvenirs of life, all randomly tossed: Amanda’s menagerie of stuffed animals, textbooks, pom-poms, and sombreros. A six-foot cork bulletin board with a prom picture and a pink invitation to Elisabeth’s sweet sixteen.

  I stared at the door to the portion that was actually supposed to be for storage and knew it was too much for me. I parked myself on the basement steps. How would this monstrosity ever be cleaned out? But more important, why did I care? If something had been in the basement all these years, why would I ever need it? It was all just stuff.

  If I moved out of the house and Harvey moved in, the basement and everything in it would be his problem. The ultimate revenge! Harvey would be the one who had to clean up. Beg the kids to take their stuff. Or, at minimum, call a service to do it. But I knew he wouldn’t do that until he had gone through everything. The memories of Bountiful Bosom could not simply be pillaged.

  But there was more. What could be more freeing than leaving everything behind? I imagined myself in a new place with new things. Things I picked out in my own good time. That would be honestly, truly starting over—from scratch. I hadn’t moved in over thirty years. Moving was my move.

  I called Judy the Realtor. I told her my plan. Because we were friendly, she asked why I had finally made the decision to move. I told her it was easier than cleaning my basement.

  We settled on a price point to start negotiations. She asked when I wanted to move in.

  “Whenever they want to close.”

  “They’ll want to close right away,” she said. “After all, the property is empty, and it’s owned by an estate. The other Realtor told me the estate needed the cash.”

  “Estate? You mean ‘the children’ own it.”

  “Marcy, it is always a great buy when you are buying from a dead man’s kid.”

  Yellow house, here I come.

  Chapter 15

  Jon and I went to the movies during the week, because on Saturday there was always a line. Like most couples, Jon and I had developed an entire set of rituals. I was amazed how this had happened in such a short time. Our most ritualistic behavior took place at the movies.

  We both disliked fountain sodas. So I always carried our canned drinks in my bag. I know full well you’re not supposed to bring food and drinks into a movie theater, that they make most of their income from the refreshment stand, but after years of marriage, I did have some serious Harvey in me.

  The first time I suggested bringing our own sodas, Jon was horrified. Until he met me, he just didn’t drink at the movies. But once we started doing it, he liked it. He said it washed down the popcorn. By the way, we always got a large. Jon didn’t like as much butter as I did—enough that the bag leaked—so I also brought a container to divvy up the popcorn so he didn’t have to wallow in my butter.

  On a Saturday night before I took ownership of my new house, we decided to go to a movie. This time (it was his turn to pick, so we had to see something where everyone was being pillaged), I didn’t have cans of soda in the house, so I poured orange juice into a water bottle. As I was about to leave the house, I caught sight of the Ketel One on my counter and topped off the juice. We slipped into our seats just as the previews were ending and we were being warned about turning off our cell phones, which I always had to do at the last moment. I handed the bottle to Jon, who was already holding the popcorn, and he put it in the holder between our two seats. The movie started with the star shooting his way out of a building, and Jon nudged me. He pointed to the bottle as he took a slug. I mouthed, “Vodka.” Halfway through the movie, when the star was shot but we knew he wouldn’t die, because he was the star, we started giggling. I hit Jon in the leg and whispered, “Stop.” But he couldn’t. A woman behind us tapped my chair.

  Then I began to laugh. I heard someone a few rows back say, “Quiet. It’s a movie.” That’s when Jon and I lost control. We both stood up and hurried out of the theater. We sat down on the first padded bench against a wall and laughed uncontrollably.

  “Never drive drunk in a theater,” Jon said.

  “And never yell ‘Vodka’ in a crowded one.”

  “Is there any left?” he asked.

  I shook the bottle. Empty. “Get a grip, and we’ll go back in.”

  “I don’t want to go back in,” he said.

  “You don’t?”

  He put his hand on my tights and then moved up my denim skirt.

  “We both know the bad guy is going to die in the last frame.”

  Instead of going back into the movie, we walked to the parking lot for Jon’s car. “You make the movies so much fun,” he said. “I’ve been looking for someone like you.”

  I looped my arm around his and huddled close. For a moment, I closed my eyes, even though I was walking.

  He mentioned my move, and I opened my eyes.

  “I can go to Maine, borrow my brother’s truck, and move everything for you,” he said, trying to be helpful, as usual.

  Moving was something I had to do on my own. First off, I didn’t want to feel as though Jon and I were moving into a house together. We weren’t. I wanted this to be my thing, my accomplishment, and the true starting point of my new life. I knew that if I could close the door of the house I had lived in my entire adult life—the house I had brought my kids up in, the house my mother had visited—and drive off, I could accomplish anything.

  “Thank you so much,” I replied sweetly, “but as I mentioned, I am only taking my clothes and some personal items, so I can move it all. I’ll just do it piecemeal. I don’t need help.”

  “You’re saying that now, but you will change your mind.”

  I knew I wasn’t going to change anything . . . except houses.

  “I’m ready, willing, and able,” he insisted as he walked in front of me, then turned to face me. “You know how able I am, right?”

  I laughed, but I needed him to back off. In fact, Jon not backing off was the single most annoying thing about him.

  I could hear Mom. “He wants to help. So that’s so bad? What—you want a man who lets you schlep? Then go back to Harvey.”

  “Mom, Harvey never made me schlep. He always hired someone to do the schlepping.”

  I touched Jon’s hand. “I have to do this myself.”

  “You’re very brave,” he said.

  I took his hand. I loved when he said something good about me. I wanted it to continue, so I said, “Why am I brave?”

  “Marcy, you are pushing forward. You could have just stayed where you are. In a very large and beautiful home with memories of everything that ever happened to you.”

  I am brave, I thought. I’m practically a Navy SEAL.

  Dana called to give me the name of a moving company. I told her I was mostly taking clothing and, of course, important things like the vase Ben had made at camp. She was aghast.

  “Are you nuts? You’re leaving him with the goodies? I don’t care if you want all new accoutrements. At least sell the furniture before he takes it and you don’t get a cent for it. Besides, you have silver and good china and . . .”

  “Calm down.” Her concern was giving me the hives.

  “There are going to be things you want, and maybe you won’t be able to get them later. I wanted all the record albums when I divorced my first husband. But he wanted them too.”

  I hadn’t heard the words “record albums” in years, maybe thirty plus. “You’re dating yourself.”

  “I meant cassettes.”

  “So who made off with the albums?”

  “We alphabetized all the performers, and we each got every other one.”

  “So he got . . .”

  “Captain and Tennille.”

  “And you scored . .
.”

  “Eric Clapton.”

  Way to go, Dana. “Who took the Monkees?” I asked.

  “He did.”

  “Micky Dolenz was so cute.”

  “The point is I wish I had walked away with all the albums.”

  Chapter 16

  The key to the new house was in my hand, and my hand was shaking. I had not lived in a place that was my own since I had attended graduate school in my twenties. Back then, I had rented a studio in Greenwich Village. I had kept my clothes and shoes behind a curtain of beads. My finest piece of furniture had been my desk, which I had pushed against a wall in a corner to stop it from wobbling. My living conditions changed radically when I met Harvey. He was older than me and well established in his family’s business. A week before we tied the knot, I moved into his apartment in a doorman building with a courtyard. It was on the Upper West Side.

  We resituated to Atherton, mostly because Feldman insisted we needed to purchase a house for the tax deduction. A lot of my life decisions came about that way. Deduct, deduct, deduct. I had preferred a cozy country home like the one I was about to move into. Harvey had insisted on a behemoth.

  After a while, I grew to love my Atherton home and all the memories we created in it. The sounds of the kids trampling noisily down the stairs to a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread. Dozing off at the kitchen table at three in the morning while Ben was completing his science fair project, a solar system made of Silly Putty. Piling into the family room, the fire roaring, the hot buttered popcorn in a ceramic bowl, watching a video together on a snowy Saturday night. There was another thing that was important to me—I loved that my mother had been in my house. Her spirit, her being, had touched everything. It was as all-encompassing as air. This was something I would never be able to say about the residence I was clutching the keys to now.

  Often, now, I recalled the sounds of Mom’s slow, cautious steps on a staircase. She herself had lived her adult life in a ranch home, everything on one floor. She had never become accustomed to and didn’t like what she saw as the inconvenience of a home with two levels. When my children were infants, she would call several times a day to remind me to be careful when carrying the baby down the stairs. “Hold on to the railing” was her mantra.

  This new house wouldn’t have Mom in it, but then, it wouldn’t have Harvey in it either.

  Never in my life did I think I would ever be this grown up.

  I stood inside the yellow house with the Yankee-blue door left open. I lifted my arms out. I jumped once up and down on the beautiful oak-plank floor. I had always adored broad planks, but Harvey had thought they reminded him of a farm. So moo this. I bent down and ran my hand over the polished wood. I wondered who else had touched those floors. Who had lived in this house? Did they have children? Were they happy?

  I wondered if anyone had ever died in the house. I felt myself shake. What if someone had died in the house or, worse, been murdered? You can do this, Marcy. Stop with the morbid ruminations that make you think you can’t.

  I looked at the walls with nothing on them, just a coat of white paint that covered so many other coats of paint that had decorated the house. I wondered what colors the house had been before.

  I heard my mother. “White gets so dirty. Paint a color.”

  But what color would I paint? I needed paint chips. Pronto. And it was going to be easy to choose from infinite shades of blue, because I had Candy to help me. Even Jon. I decided I had made a good decision becoming close with artists.

  Then I thought, I’ll hang Jon’s art on my walls. I had to ask him about it.

  I peeked into the living room on the right, the redbrick fireplace in the center of the longest wall. There was a mantel of gray slate. I decided immediately that I wanted one of Jon’s Maine abstracts above the mantel. I thought about the one that Moxie disliked—the pier in Maine. I liked that one more than ever now. Maybe Jon had another one that was similar.

  I turned my head to the dining room. There was enough room for a table that seated six to eight. I could have a dinner party, or I could have a large affair with everyone roaming about. Come for cocktails, I thought. Join me on Saturday for cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and scrumptious desserts from Sweet Heaven Bakery. Join “me.”

  I loved the way that sounded.

  Most of all, I prized how the house was delightfully void of my history—no furniture, no pictures, no mementos—a clean slate. Excited, I stamped my feet until a heel came off my shoe. I picked it up and looked at it and laughed.

  I decided I had to see what it was like to be in every corner of the house, so I took off my shoes and walked heel-to-toe the entire perimeter—downstairs and then upstairs. In addition to a living room, dining room, and kitchen, the first floor had a laundry room, a half bath, and a bedroom I would use as a home office. Upstairs, there was a large, light-filled master suite to the right, a smaller room to the left, and another full bath in the hall.

  I sat down at the bottom of the stairs. I cried. Happiness. Relief. I looked at my watch. It was four in the afternoon. I called Candy and Dana and Jon and left messages for them to come over. Candy was the only one I reached. She said she was with Ellison. Was it okay if he came too?

  I carried the suitcases of clothing I had brought from the car into the house. I went back out for the kids’ college graduation photographs. I had taken them off the walls of the old house. But I had left the hooks up—for Harvey. Harvey would head up the stairs his first day back in the house and see hook, hook, hook. If only we had had more kids so I could have left more hooks.

  I had a few other favorite pictures, including one of Amanda and me. We were on a weathered two-seat rocker in the fall. I looked peaceful in a fisherman’s sweater. Amanda was three or four, with big eyes, a big smile, and little pigtails.

  As I reached in the back seat for my parents’ wedding picture, I heard a honk. I turned to see who it was. I saw Jon in his Subaru.

  Jon stepped out of his car in jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. “I brought a gift. And of course, I need a grand tour.” He carried in three large paintings wrapped in paper and blankets. In the living room, he unveiled each one. “I’d say these walls need some color.”

  As we were deciding where the paintings should go, we heard a car in the driveway. It was a Porsche. I could see Candy and Ellison in the front seats. They waved as they got out.

  Jon extended his hand to Ellison, who was wearing a sports jacket, a T-shirt, and corduroys. Candy wore a skirt and blouse as usual. I was thrilled they had come.

  I had a new house—and a new kind of family as well. No, I would not be alone.

  As always, Candy had brought gifts. She had flowers, a basket of fruit, and a bottle of champagne. But she had forgotten glasses. I pointed that out. She said the champagne wasn’t for drinking. It was for christening the house. Jon cracked it open against the front door. Then he chased me around the yard with what was left of the champagne.

  I tagged Ellison, then screamed, “You’re it!”

  The game began. We chased each other like kids.

  Finally, Jon yelled, “Marcy, it’s time to come home for supper!”

  He went to his car and carried an old red-and-white Coleman cooler to the porch. It was filled with four beautiful new glasses, green grapes, duck pâté, French bread, and two bottles of wine.

  “Thank you, Mr. Thoughtful,” I said. “You are one of a kind.”

  We relaxed on the porch. Candy raised her glass. “To the house of Marcy.”

  Chapter 17

  Jon and I drove to Elisabeth’s. She lived nearby, in a former factory town that had been transformed by young artists and hipsters. You could buy anything you wanted in town as long as it was organic, vegan, and gluten-free.

  We climbed the three flights to her one-bedroom apartment. After she welcomed us, we maneuvered our way around her ten-speed bike in the foyer.

  “I’m sorry, Jon, but I have nowhere else to keep it.�
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  “I have a canoe in my living room, dead center,” Jon said.

  “You do?”

  “He does,” I said. “He made it himself.”

  “You know how to make a canoe?”

  “He’s a Renaissance man,” I said.

  “I guess he is,” Elisabeth said, smiling as she stood at the counter and poured wine into our glasses. Elisabeth knew Jon was a professor and an artist, but there was something about the canoe that made her think Jon was unique, thank heavens.

  “I’d like to invite you over sometime,” Jon said.

  Elisabeth sipped her wine. “Can I sit in your canoe?”

  “Your mother certainly does.”

  My nerves were soothed. This was going so well. I couldn’t wait for Ben to come. Nobody was easier than Ben. He was like me. He wanted everything to be pleasant. Mr. Congeniality.

  We stood at the counter. Elisabeth had assembled a groaning board of cheeses, olives, pâté, and crackers. There was also a display of fruit. She began talking about one of her patients. Lucky for me, Jon had an aunt who had the same disease.

  There was a hard bang at the door, then another and another.

  “Hold your horses!” shouted Elisabeth as she hurried to the door.

  Ben blustered in. He was in a drenched raincoat and hiking boots. He could have been in the shower and would have had less water on him.

  “I guess it started raining,” I said.

  “Sudden and torrential,” Ben said, wiping water off his face. “And there was no parking nearby. I had to go all the way down to the movie house.”

  “Take off your boots,” Elisabeth said.

  “I’m not taking off anything,” Ben said in an angry tone that was so unusual for him, I thought it came from a ventriloquist.

  Jon was king of social cues. He glanced at me and then glanced away. He plucked his wine from the counter, backed up silently, and went to the couch. He sat back like a voyeur.