by Darcey Bell
Sean and Nicky scattered her ashes in the woods behind their house. I don’t think Nicky understood what they were doing. And Sean didn’t make it easier by telling him that they were throwing his mom’s spirit to the wind. Later Sean told me that Nicky kept asking, “Where is Mom’s spirit supposed to be? Where is Mom? And there isn’t any wind.”
Sean had read about the ritual on a Buddhist website, which I thought was really beautiful and not anything one would expect from a handsome, hypermasculine British guy who works on Wall Street. It made me think that his hidden sensitive side was part of what Emily loved about him. And it was certainly part of what I loved.
Sean asked if Miles and I wanted to be there when they scattered Emily’s ashes. I would have liked to, more than anything, but I felt that it would be better for Nicky if we weren’t. Maybe I’m superstitious. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt right about scattering the ashes of a woman whose husband I might be in love with.
Sean showed me a copy of the autopsy report. He told me to look at the “findings” that described severe liver damage suggesting heavy, long-term use of alcohol and opiates. Not only scars, but ongoing damage. Apparently that had tipped the coroner toward the suicide verdict, but even so they couldn’t be sure.
I said that it wasn’t possible. One of us would have known if Emily was drinking heavily and abusing drugs. Sean insisted that it was highly possible. When he was at university, four of his most brilliant classmates were serious junkies. Two of them graduated at the top of their class, with firsts. And no one ever knew.
“You knew,” I pointed out.
“I was their roommate,” Sean said. “I must be drawn to those sorts of people.”
It bothered me to hear Emily described as a sort of people. But what sort of person was she? How could you know someone as well as I thought I knew her and not know the most basic things about her? Some people beat the odds and lead high-functioning, productive lives while maintaining a habit. Emily had kept it together. Work, a job, a child, a family. A well-organized and even (on the surface) glamorous life.
I went over every conversation I’d ever had with Emily, every afternoon we’d spent together. What had I failed to see? What had she been trying to tell me and I hadn’t been able to hear?
What kind of best friend had I been?
* * *
The first time Sean and I had sex I remembered what I had been missing. The pure, crazy pleasure. One of his hands cupped my breast, while the fingers of his other hand trailed lightly up my thigh. He flipped me over so he could kiss the back of my neck and all the way down my spine, then turned me back over again and put his head between my legs. I was shocked by how good he was in bed, but why should I have been surprised? Our skins and our bodies, it all felt so good, nothing else existed except the rush of feeling—of gratitude and yes, of love—for someone who could make you feel like that. The desperately wanting to come and the desperately wanting the sex to never end.
At the time, I wasn’t thinking about anything except how good it felt. But afterward, it came back to me: everything I’d forgotten or put out of my mind when I’d been with Davis. I realized what I had settled for, what I had been willing to live without, to give up in return for a comfortable marriage, a respectable widowhood, and a life in which I put Miles’s needs above my own. Now that I remembered, I refused to live without that pleasure and joy again. I had needs, my body had needs, that weren’t all about Miles. It was as if sex with Sean had made me remember that I was a person.
I tried not to think about Emily saying that sex had always been the best part of her marriage, that it made everything else seem less important. That she could deal with Sean’s absences, with his obsession with work, with his subtle put-downs and his failure to appreciate her if he just came home and (her word) fucked her.
Most of all, I tried not to think about how Emily would have felt if she knew.
Strangely enough, our affair began with one of Nicky’s meltdowns.
He’d begun throwing tantrums, crying and screaming. About nothing, it seemed. But of course it wasn’t about nothing. His mother was dead. How could his tears not break my heart?
Sean was taking Nicky to the therapist who had seen Miles after Davis’s death. Dr. Feldman was soothing and reassuring, as he had been before. But he had no real suggestions except to be patient and wait it out. He told us he’d be happy to see Nicky once a week, but Nicky refused to go that often, and the doctor said it was better not to force him.
The first night I had sex with Sean, we were all eating dinner at my house. Miles and Sean and I were having steak. Nicky was playing with his guacamole and chips, angrily scooping up the mashed avocado and jamming the chips into his mouth. The creamy green goo dripped down his chin.
Suddenly Nicky shoved his plate to the middle of the table and stared at the platter of steak, sliced, sitting in a pool of blood and juice.
Nicky said, “That’s my mom. That’s her. You’ve killed her and cooked her”—now he was glaring at me—“and we’re eating her. Like in that movie I saw.”
It hurt my feelings, especially after how much I’ve done for Nicky, how much I care about him. I reminded myself that he was a little boy who had lost his mom, a boy in unimaginable pain. And really, it had nothing to do with me . . . or with my (still repressed) feelings for his dad.
“What movie?” Sean asked Nicky. He didn’t look at me to see how I’d reacted to Nicky’s accusation. Ordinarily, that might have hurt my feelings too. But because the intensity of Sean’s focus on Nicky showed how deeply—and instinctively—he cared about his son, it made me love and respect him even more.
“I saw it with Miles on his TV. We sneaked into the den and watched it after his mom was asleep,” Nicky said defiantly, daring me to contradict him.
Sean and I looked at each other, smiling slightly, but concerned. It was as if the part about their watching the (probably forbidden) movie had erased the part about my killing and cooking Nicky’s mom.
“You’re busted,” I said to Miles. Miles laughed.
Then Nicky threw himself on the floor and began to scream. It seemed almost as if he was having a seizure. Thank God we don’t have near neighbors. What if this were happening in a city apartment? Oh, poor Nicky!
First Sean held him; then I took over and tried to calm him down. But Nicky didn’t want me touching him, and he squirmed out of my arms and went back to his dad. Neither Sean nor I lost patience. Not for one second. We never gave up. It was as if Nicky was our child, our son, and we were helping each other be the best parents we could be. I stroked Nicky’s arm while Sean stroked his hair, and Miles tried to hold his hand, even though Nicky was trying to punch his father’s shoulder.
“Sweetie,” I told Miles. “Leave Nicky alone. He’s sad.”
Miles didn’t need to see this, but it felt wrong to make him leave the room. I decided to let him watch cartoons on my iPad, which I try not to do very often.
It was a solution. Not a great solution, but a solution. Even Nicky calmed down a little. As I settled Miles in the comfortable chair, his dad’s old chair which I still have, and set him up with the cartoon, I could feel Sean watching me and liking what he saw. Knowing that he was admiring my skills as a mom was weirdly hot, but the truth was that—given the way I felt about Sean, no matter how much I tried to overcome those feelings—anything would have been hot.
Nicky was exhausted. He passed out in Sean’s arms. Sean held him sleeping for a while and then carried him to Miles’s room and lowered him into the bottom bunk bed and gently tucked him in.
“It’s bedtime,” I told Miles.
“Not for another half hour.”
“Now,” I said. “We’re tired. Nicky’s having a hard time.”
“We all are,” said Miles.
Sean and I exchanged glances that said, Miles is a beautiful kid.
Miles was right. We were all tired, all having a hard time. Nicky’s meltdown had stripped us bare and lef
t us raw and defenseless.
I put Miles to bed and made sure both boys were all right. Then Sean and I slumped onto the couch and collapsed, and Sean searched for the next episode of Breaking Bad. We’d stopped watching it after we’d gotten the news about Emily’s death—the violence and the darkness were too much for us—but we’d recently started again.
Just our luck, it was the sexiest episode, maybe the only romantic segment in the series. Jesse Pinkman and his girlfriend are falling in love. It was like a date movie in the midst of all that meth-cooking and gore and murder, except that his girlfriend’s a junkie.
I sat close to Sean. He put his arm around me. I leaned my head on his shoulder.
We were trembling. We both could feel it, though it was unclear which of us was shuddering.
We started kissing. He kissed my neck, then my shoulders, then lifted my shirt and kissed my breasts.
That was how it began.
There were so many questions we should have asked, questions we needed to ask. But during those first weeks, we were so happy to be together and do what we (or anyway, I) had been dreaming about for so long that we didn’t ask any questions that weren’t about sex and what felt good.
We were careful. The boys never knew. We agreed that we would do it only when the boys were in school. Sean slept over less often than before. Having him in the house and not being with him was torture.
We didn’t have a name or words for what we were doing. We didn’t ask if it would last or what we planned to do next. We didn’t ask, What about Emily? Are we betraying her memory? We hardly spoke. Even though the house was empty, we tried not to make any noise.
Did I worry that Sean was thinking of Emily when he was with me? No, I didn’t. He couldn’t have been. I would have known. No one is that good.
Now, at night, alone in my bed, I don’t sleep well. As soon as I lie down, I fall into a slumber so heavy I feel drugged, but after three or four hours I wake up and lie awake until the light comes up and it’s time to get Miles (or Miles and Nicky) ready for school.
There’s something so ecstatic about the present moment—about my affair with Sean. But what about the future? Can the four of us go on living together like this, as an unofficial family?
Sean could go back to his office. I could drive the boys to school and pick them up every day. Nicky will get over his grief. Everyone does, sooner or later. Even if they never forget the pain, they don’t feel it every minute.
Sometimes I think that the affair is totally sinful and wrong. I torment myself. I think, Sean and I have to stop. But one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not good at stopping something I want to do, especially when that something involves sex. And besides, who are we hurting?
God knows what Sean is feeling. Does he feel guilty about having sex with his wife’s best friend so soon after his wife’s death? Or does he think it doesn’t matter because Emily’s dead and she can’t know or care what he does anymore? Or is he doing it to get back at Emily? Does he secretly wonder if she killed herself? I’ve been reading a lot about suicide, and I know how often the survivors are enraged at the person who died, furious in ways they can’t admit to themselves or even understand.
I would hate to think that Sean was sleeping with me because he’s angry at Emily. Whenever that thought creeps into my mind, I push it away by reminding myself that we were attracted to each other before we knew she was dead.
And then I feel guiltier than ever.
16
Stephanie's Blog
Draft Post (never posted)
Emily’s ghost follows Sean from his house to mine. She is always there, watching and listening. She knows when we meet for breakfast in the diner after we’ve spent nights at our own houses.
We concentrate on Nicky. That’s what Emily would have wanted, though you might ask why someone who cared so deeply about her child would take massive doses of pills, wash them down with alcohol, and go for a swim in the lake.
17
Stephanie's Blog
Everyday Grief
Miles knew when Nicky and his dad were going to scatter Nicky’s mom’s ashes. Though Nicky might not have understood, Miles did. Maybe because he had more experience with death. He said that he and I, in our own backyard, should have a quiet moment on the afternoon when Nicky and his dad were giving Nicky’s mom’s spirit back to the woods.
For a long time Miles and I stood with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. I crouched down and leaned over so we could put our arms around each other.
You moms all know how strange it is, our children growing up. Just yesterday Miles was a baby in my arms. Now he is still a child, but he’s also a little man I can lean on. I would never put that sort of burden on him, but he is my little rock. We’ve had practice dealing with grief. We’ve learned that it will pass. Maybe Miles told Nicky that. Maybe it made their bond stronger.
For months after my husband and brother were killed, I cried every day. Sometimes I cried on and off all day. I remember looking at strangers and thinking they were suffering and I couldn’t see it, just as they couldn’t tell what agony I was enduring. But if there were some version of luminol, the stuff they use to find blood at crime scenes, to detect the presence of grief, half the people we pass on the street would light up like Christmas trees.
I don’t remember when the constant suffering eased up. But it did. I can’t remember how I first got through the day without tears. I can’t remember the first morning I awoke without wanting to go straight back to bed. Forgetfulness is kind.
I miss my husband and brother and now my best friend. Sometimes the pain is so sharp that I groan out loud. I hear myself, and I think that someone else must have made that heart-wrenching noise. But there is never a day when I’m afraid that I can’t live through it.
Having Miles means everything. I’ve learned to put myself aside and live for my son. Which isn’t to say I’ve forgotten, or that I don’t remember every second of the day when my husband and brother died. Every minute of that afternoon is seared into my brain.
My husband and my half brother always disliked each other, though they pretended not to. They were both proud and decent and kind, and it was important to them both that they appear to get along. But that was impossible. Both were alpha males: Chris in his street-macho way, and Davis in his equally hard-headed old-family WASP way.
When we lived in the city, Davis hired Chris, who had become a builder, to contract out the Fort Greene renovations he was doing then. The tension between them improved somewhat when Davis and I moved to Connecticut and they stopped working together. My brother would visit every month or so. Miles adored his uncle. Chris and Miles had special names for each other that Davis and I were not allowed to know.
It was a pity that Davis and Chris didn’t get along. They had a lot more in common than you might think. They liked boxing and baseball. They knew a lot about cars. They both cared about me, though I know that was a big part of the problem.
One summer afternoon we were all sitting on the front porch of our house in Connecticut and drinking lemonade. A showy vintage car drove down the road.
Davis said it was a Hudson from a certain year, and Chris said no, it was a Packard from another year. They were both positive that they were right, and the discussion got heated. Finally they made a bet.
“Okay,” said Davis. “Here’s the deal. Let’s check it out in my vintage auto encyclopedia. Then we’ll drive to the butcher shop. The loser pays for the ribs and steaks. If we’re both wrong, we’ll split it.” They’d been planning to barbecue. They both got a kick out of grilling, though neither one knew his way around a kitchen or a stove.
“Deal,” said Chris. “I’m thinking porterhouse. That’s how sure I am.”
Davis told Miles, “Go get Daddy’s book, Buddy.” I hated it when he called our son Buddy. Chris volunteered to go with Miles, who was way too small to carry the heavy volume. His dad was joking about him being able to get it.<
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All three of my guys leaned over the book as they looked for the mystery car. Miles was so excited. You would have thought that he could read, though he was only two.
Finally Chris said, “Aha! There you go!”
Chris was right. Davis was wrong.
“You win, man. The steak’s on me,” my husband said. “Let’s buy something great.” He kissed me, just a casual peck, and went to get his keys.
Were those the last words I heard him say? The steak’s on me. Let’s buy something great.
Davis was driving the 1966 Camaro he took out for fun drives in the summer. Chris was riding shotgun beside him.
I know what the last words they heard from me were. They were always the last words that anyone in my family heard from me before they left the house. I couldn’t let them leave without saying: I love you. Drive safely.
To this day I thank God every waking moment that I put my foot down and refused to let Miles go along with them. He wanted to be a big boy, to go for a ride with his dad and his uncle. But he needed to take a nap if he was going to make it through dinner. And I thought the guys might have more fun if they didn’t have to worry about him, if they didn’t have to buckle and unbuckle him from his car seat, if they could skip all the fun stuff I did all week.
Later the cops would say that a truck came barreling up Route 208, way too close to their side of the road. Davis swerved to avoid it and lost control, and they slammed into a tree head on.
Just like that.
Treasure every moment you are lucky enough to spend with your loved ones because we never know what will happen just a few heartbeats later.
I just looked down and noticed that there are tears on my keyboard. So I guess the healing process hasn’t progressed quite as well as I thought. As I’d like to think.
Thank you, sweet moms, for listening and responding.