The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating

by Carole Radziwill

  The griot and his village walked a few blocks east listening to traffic. The walk was serene, like being the passenger in a car on a scenic drive. Claire paid no mind to where they were headed but relaxed in the journey.

  Ben Hawthorne broke the silence. He’d hung back, and Claire had been so entranced with Derek’s story, she’d forgotten he was there.

  “Well,” he said after the griot played his flute and scurried off. “Great material, right? Do you follow him for inspiration? Who was it who said, ‘Love and death are the only things worth writing about’?”

  The few followers, as was their custom, had dispersed.

  “I think it was Maugham, and I don’t have a clue what any of that means. You were walking with him, and talking to him. Do you know him?”

  “Derek, yes I do. He was an intern at the magazine last summer. Now he does this. We’re doing a story on him. I’m not writing it, but I wanted to catch him at work.”

  “Oh,” Claire said. “That kind of spoils it.”

  Ben Hawthorne laughed. He had a nice laugh, inviting. “Come on, we won’t ruin him. And it isn’t going to run for another six months. You’ll have moved on by then.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. Claire felt Charlie glowering, frowning at her from somewhere.

  “We should call a truce,” Ben said. He held out a hand.

  Claire shook her head. “We’re not in a fight. I hardly know you.”

  Ben contemplated her for a moment. “Good. Take care, then, okay.”

  And Ben Hawthorne, without fanfare, went off.

  30

  And then he called.

  Time had moved uncertainly since Claire’s second encounter with Jack Huxley and she had spent it in a jumble of long, wandering walks, drinking wet cappuccinos, and carelessly buying sidewalk trinkets she had no use for. She continued to work on the manuscript—dabbled was a better word. But the absence of the flesh-and-blood Huxley had been disturbing. Now there was a phone message that she didn’t know what to do with, so she booked a double session with Spence.

  Spence wasn’t the worst way to kill time.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “That’s fine,” Spence said, tapping his pen against his notepad.

  “I was going to cancel,” Claire said and sat in the chair.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Today is Charlie’s birthday.”

  “Are you acknowledging it?”

  “No”

  “You shouldn’t hide from your life, Claire. You try to watch it from around the corner, then you avoid having to engage.”

  Claire fidgeting in her chair.

  “But I’m engaged in my subconsious dream life.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I already covered this with Lowenstein.”

  “Who is Lowenstein?”

  “Never mind.”

  Claire hailed a cab from Spence’s office, but she didn’t feel like going home.

  “Ethan?” she said. “Can you meet me for a drink?”

  RULE #13: Don’t bear the weight alone when you can dump some on a friend.

  They went to Jack Demsey’s, with no p, in Midtown. It made Claire think of a sign the Worrells, her neighbors growing up, had kept hanging by their pool. WELCOME TO OUR OOL. NOTICE THERE’S NO P IN IT. LET’S KEEP IT THAT WAY.

  The bar was a comfortable mix of daytime drunks, college-aged tourists, and mid-level executives. They ordered stout beers.

  Claire licked the foam from the top of her glass.

  “Cheers,” Claire said.

  “To birthdays?”

  “Yes. To Charlie. Happy birthday.”

  They clinked glasses and the dark liquid sloshed out of Claire’s cup.

  “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was playing full blast and a picture of Don King with a manic grin hung in front of them.

  “To scoundrels, too,” Claire said, nodding at the photo. “And flatterers and seducers, to the best of them.”

  “To those, too.”

  The bartender brought a plate of crackers and sardines and Claire wrinkled her nose.

  “Vitamin D, Lollipop. One of these little babies is like a month in the Bahamas for your endorphins and libido. They don’t taste as bad as you think.”

  Charlie Daniels gave way to Johnny Cash.

  “You know where that started, right?”

  “What?”

  “The clinking of glasses, the cheering.”

  “Um, no. I don’t.”

  Ethan was looking around the room, distractedly.

  “Is this a gay bar?” he asked. It was a fair question. Claire alone represented her gender.

  “It’s from the Middle Ages, because they were always poisoning each other. So before anyone drank, they hit their glasses together to make the wine slosh out and into other glasses. This way, if there was poison, they were all going down.”

  “How about that.”

  Claire examined the room, too. The bar was dark. The energy was low. The patrons did not look gay.

  “Ethan, do you think I’m boring without Charlie?”

  “Sweetheart,” he said, and kissed Claire on the cheek. “It’s different without him, that’s all. He was big and bold and swaggered into rooms. You’re small and chic and you move like a cat. It’s just different. You were two different people.”

  “I am two different people now,” Claire said. “It’s weird, I don’t know how to be without him. Like losing a sidekick. I never thought of him like that, or me like this, but we had roles and mine was a supporting one and now I feel desperate up onstage sometimes. Like a stand-up comic who’s bombing.”

  “He was the flower and you were the gardener. The sun and the moon; the beach and the waves.”

  Claire looked confused.

  “The train and the station.” Ethan continued, “Complements. Those are the only relationships that work.”

  “Those are song lyrics.”

  Claire took a bite of sardine. It was salty and delicate. He was right—it didn’t taste bad.

  She chewed on the crackers as she talked. “There was the Claire of Claire and Charlie, and I feel obligated to try to maintain her. But it’s unfair because it was a double act. Like Martin and Lewis and remember what happened when Jerry Lewis went solo?”

  Ethan motioned to the bartender. “No, I don’t. I’m thirty-one.”

  Ethan ordered another. Claire was only halfway through her first. The bartender—a stocky man with a long nose—faced her, wordlessly, waiting for a cue. She shook her head no. Two Madison Avenue types were talking loudly behind them about a woman named Jennifer.

  “You could still know who they are. You know Oleg Cassini and he’s been dead since you were two. Anyway, Jerry Lewis really sucked without Dean; he nearly blew his whole career. No one wanted him by himself. I don’t know how to go solo. No one ever makes it.”

  “That’s not true. Cher won an Oscar after Sonny, and Sonny won a congressional seat.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s hard. That’s all.”

  From the bits Claire picked up in the conversation, the larger and less attractive of the two men had slept with Jennifer. Women value certainty, in sexual pursuit, much more than any physical charm or characteristic of a mate, or whether or not a potential sexual partner is nice to his or her mother. Charlie wrote it in The Half-Life of Sex.

  “This is great stuff, Clarabelle. But I bet it all has to do with not getting a phone call. I bet it’s as simple as that.”

  She had, in fact, gotten the phone call. She decided not to tell him.

  “I need to run off soon. Atlanta tomorrow morning. Haven’t packed.”

  “What’s in Atlanta?”

  “Kevin.”

  “Oh,” she said brightly. “Good for you.”

  Ethan finished off his stout. “I miss him, too,” he said.

  RULE #14: Don’t confuse love and sex. One is a feeling, the other an event.

  Char
lie was not who she was thinking of.

  Late that night Charlie’s literary rival, Jonathan Rochet, called the apartment, on Charlie’s phone, the one in his office. It woke Claire and without thinking she got up to answer it. Jonathan’s words ran together. He was drunk.

  “Listen, Claire, I’m really sorry … calling, so late. I’ve been thinking—”

  There were sniffles on the other end, and the pitch of Jonathan’s voice fluctuated wildly.

  “It’s not the same, it just isn’t. Fuck.”

  Charlie had hated Jonathan, and Claire was sure the feeling had been shared; she guessed Jonathan Rochet missed having the perfect nemesis.

  Last month, when the National Book Review panel granted Charlie a posthumous lifetime accomplishment award, Claire had gone to the ceremony to accept it. There were cocktails after, and dinner. The chicken was unreasonably bland. The bottles of wine were opened at a ferocious pace.

  Jonathan Rochet had cornered Claire right away. He politely raved about Charlie for ten minutes—the man, his talent—then took a minute more to inquire about Claire. Then he came out with it. “I’ve always wanted to fuck you.”

  Claire politely demurred. “It’s not me. I’m just the straw man.”

  She didn’t take it personally. It’s easier, sometimes, to fuck than it is to talk. It was just another method of expression. There were people she herself longed to fuck, for similar reasons, though Jonathan Rochet wasn’t one of them. Claire had learned from Charlie never to take sex personally. Although, look at her. She was doing just that with Jack Huxley.

  “I know,” she said into the phone at one in the morning on Charlie’s birthday. “I miss him, too.”

  31

  The call that had prompted Claire’s double session with Spence, and Midtown beers with Ethan, had been from, yes, you know already, Jack.

  He summoned her and she came.

  She booked a flight and reserved a car. She took the 6:30 p.m. American and upgraded to business with Charlie’s frequent flier miles, now hers. She read fifty pages of The History of Loves, ordered a vodka and tonic, and took one sip before falling asleep. She woke up as the captain announced their descent.

  Her phone rang, in the rental car on the 405 North to Sunset from the airport.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “You’re here,” he said.

  The phone added years to their relationship. His voice, in just two words, took on the voice of a man who had known her all her life. The boy next door, who’d gone away and come back looking for her.

  Here she was. “Yes. I am. I’m on the Four-Oh-Five. Ten minutes from—” They hadn’t discussed where she would stay. It felt awkward to assume anything. She had made arrangements at a hotel just in case.

  “Good. Perfect. I’m headed back, too. I’ll meet you at my house in fifteen. You need to eat. I have a great place to take you to.”

  “Okay.” Claire hung up and dialed the Bel-Air. “I have to cancel my reservation. I won’t be needing the room. Something suddenly came up.”

  If only, Claire thought, she could channel Lena Olin. Have longer legs, an accent, keep her lips always parted just so. Instead, she had clammy airport skin and imperfect hair; she was in jeans and old Converse sneakers and the faux foxtail poncho Ethan swore was big this season.

  She made it to Jack’s house. She pressed the buzzer at the gate; it swung open, and she parked her car at the far end of the driveway. She brushed out her hair in the rearview mirror, then messed it up again. She put concealer under her eyes and added a smudge of lip gloss. She threw her sneakers and the poncho on the passenger seat and grabbed heels from her bag in the back.

  Jack Huxley, he’d told her, is never late. If he’d been fifteen minutes away, then he would already be here. She walked carefully up the long driveway. It was quiet except for the snappy click of her heels, and barely lit. The last thing she needed was an unplanned somersault dumping her at his feet. There was a truck in the drive, delivering to Jack Huxley; a housekeeper emerged from the house to retrieve the package. There was a white van near the garage that read HOLLYWOOD PARTY RENTALS. The side door was open. A man placed crates of glasses inside, then closed the door. The van pulled away, and then the delivery truck pulled out. And on the other side of that, after everyone had pulled back: the reveal. There was Jack Huxley leaning casually against a sports car. Arms folded, legs crossed, his back against the driver’s-side window. A little two-door Porsche that looked all wrong for him, and yet all perfect. He was smiling up at Claire. Claire smiled back.

  “Hey. You didn’t have to park so far away,” he said. “Sorry. I should’ve given you time to catch your breath.” His smile dazzled, his eyes twinkled, his whole body seemed tuned exactly to her. She felt if she moved too far back, or left or right, there’d be static. He was the Sandman, Mr. Darcy, and Josh, her first prom date, all rolled into one.

  In the car he talked in a steady stream, as if there was so much he had saved up to say; there was nothing required of her. She heard all of it and none of it. She absorbed the smooth, chocolate-coated sound of his voice and parsed through the creamy richness of his words. Words. What Claire lives on. His words, strung together like Christmas lights.

  “I don’t mean to rush you, it’s just that there’s this great little place and I know you’ll love it. I’ve been dying to take you to it and I don’t know if we can make it tomorrow. They get crowded on weekends. They have the perfect pasta with red sauce, the way you like it.”

  He turned to her and smiled. He rubbed her knee.

  Claire had never eaten out with Jack Huxley, but the detail seemed minor.

  “I thought we would order in. I’m in jeans—”

  “You look great.” He paused, then leaned over—they were at a stoplight—and kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

  She turned toward the window so he would not see her blush.

  “Tomorrow we’ll order in. I don’t usually go out on weekends, unless I have to—unless it’s for work. We’ll get a pizza and I have Love in the Afternoon.”

  French art films and pizza. If it were anyone else she might think this pretentious, but it wasn’t just anyone else. It was him.

  Musical themes played in Claire’s head when she spent time with him. Each one came with a different fantasy. For the Love Story version, the pleasant lilt of Francis Lai. For the Redford and Streisand The Way We Were versions of themselves, Marvin Hamlisch’s haunting melancholy notes.

  Jack Huxley left early the next morning for the studio; he left a note. There was fresh orange juice and bagels and the paper folded neatly. He left a driver to take Claire anywhere she wanted to go.

  Uh-oh, Claire thought. I could get used to this.

  32

  “After these visits, are you in touch with him?” asked Lowenstein back in New York.

  “He texts. Not every day. He calls now and then. We text back and forth, mostly.”

  “Why texts?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, he has an unusual schedule. And there’s the time difference.”

  “Do you think this is something positive for you? Or do you think it’s hurting something real you could be having?” Lowenstein looked up from her notepad.

  “Really? I’m having a little romance with an extremely attractive man. What’s not positive?” Claire didn’t wait for Lowenstein to answer. “Listen, he’s the first person who hasn’t brought my dead husband into the room. I mean, there was no trace, no hint, not the slightest remnant of Charlie around. I felt so completely relaxed. No ghosts.”

  “Does he talk about Charlie?”

  “There’s no reason for him to. It already happened, and it has nothing to do with him.”

  “But Claire, the reason you met, the reason you even know Jack Huxley at all is because of your late husband.”

  “Well, there’s that, sure.” Claire was uncomfortable at the mention of the book.

  “He looks at me without seeing Charlie. Like
he’s just an old boyfriend there’s no reason for him to think about. I don’t feel guilty. I think that’s it. Everyone here, in New York, has this look in their eye, like they can see someone over my shoulder, watching them. You know, like Jolly. In that Sally Field movie … what was it?… Kiss Me Goodbye.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Well, her husband, Jolly, dies and she wants to marry Jeff Bridges and move him into her house, but then Jolly’s ghost shows up and starts talking to her all the time.”

  “Do they marry?”

  “Barely. Jolly was very charming. She starts falling for his ghost. But only Sally Field could see him, and it’s the opposite for me. Everyone else seems to see Charlie, but I can’t see him and I don’t know what the hell he’s telling them. We’re almost out of time. Do you want to hear my dream? I had an interesting one,” said Claire.

  “Yes, then,” Lowenstein said.

  “So Jack and Charlie are both my husband. They lavish their kisses on me. Charlie weeps, kisses my hands, and says, ‘See, darling, how beautiful it is now?’ Jack is weeping and kissing me, too, and we are all very happy. It seems, finally, to make sense.”

  “Um.”

  “But when I woke up, the dream weighed on me like a nightmare.”

  “That’s very nice, Claire. Though Anna Karenina, as I’m sure you know, already had that same one.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “That same dream?”

  “That exact same one.”

  “Well, it’s a good dream.”

  33

  Jack Huxley called again the next week.