The Black Widow

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She’s been arguing the point with her conscience all evening long.

  Why do I have to tell him?

  To clear the air. It’s the only way you’ll be able to move on. You have to be completely honest.

  It’s what Jaz would say.

  It’s what the marriage counselor used to say, too: that they had to tell each other what was on their minds.

  Okay. So maybe she has to try to explain to him what had happened; what she’d thought back then and how she reacted because of it.

  Telling him won’t right her wrong, but if she can own it—if she can be accountable for her role in destroying their marriage—then maybe he can love her again despite that terrible flaw, just like he said all those years ago.

  “Gaby?”

  “Yes?” She looks up to see Ben watching her, wearing a tentative expression.

  “I think I lost you somewhere in there. I didn’t mean to bore you with the architecture stuff.”

  “You didn’t bore me.”

  “Good. I hope I didn’t upset you either, talking about all the old tenements that are going to be demolished to make room for the new office tower. I know that’s not exactly your favorite topic.”

  She shakes her head, remembering the many discussions they’d had about that topic back when they first met. That wasn’t long after the Edgar Allan Poe building near Washington Square Park was deemed historically insignificant enough to be demolished to make way for NYU’s new law school building.

  “Out with the old, in with the new,” Ben said about that, with a shrug.

  “But Poe lived there!”

  “Poe lived everywhere, including the Bronx. You once said yourself that the guy was a Gypsy. See? I appreciate your literary talk after all,” he added, having been accused of the opposite in the past.

  “Oh, sure, use that against me.” She shook her head.

  “As much as I appreciate your literary talk—and your preservationist soul—you can’t stand in the way of progress, Gab.”

  “You can when progress means sacrificing history and character and tradition.”

  “Not every decrepit old building in this city is worth saving,” was his usual response back then.

  He repeats it now, and she nods absently.

  Imagine that it all seemed to matter so much back then. How could she have argued—sometimes to the point of tears—as though it were a matter of life and death? As though they were talking about saving human lives, not piles of bricks and mortar that had seen better days . . .

  Life and death. Back then, before Josh, she thought she’d seen the best and worst of both. How little she knew.

  She remembers giving birth to her son, holding his squirming body in her arms . . .

  Remembers lifting his stiff, cold body on that last horrible morning . . .

  It was so different from her experience a few years earlier. She was the one who found her father-in-law dead of a heart attack one morning when she went to visit. He was still living in that same small Co-op City apartment, all alone now.

  She had let herself in, same as always, because his feet had been bothering him and he couldn’t get to the door. But she had a feeling, even as she opened the door, that something was off that morning. She walked warily through the living room calling his name, knowing, somehow, what she was going to find.

  He was in the bedroom, in his bed. Even from a few yards away, she could see that he was dead.

  But with Josh, it was different. With Josh . . .

  “Okay, what’s up, Gaby?”

  “What? Nothing. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  She nods and sips her wine.

  You have to tell him . . .

  Ben shrugs and lifts his own glass: Bourbon and water on the rocks.

  “Nothing cures a cold like a shot of Bourbon . . .”

  She can still hear him saying that, long ago, when he was nursing his post-marathon cold in the days before Josh died. Both their grandmothers had often said the same thing. Good old-fashioned folk medicine.

  “Well, the baby can’t have Bourbon if he catches it from you,” she’d told Ben as he paused to cough into the crease of his elbow while pouring himself a shot on that long ago November night. “So be careful with your germs.”

  Be careful.

  But even if you’re careful . . .

  “How’s your Merlot?” he asks her.

  “It’s good.”

  “But it’s not Malbec.”

  “It’s okay. I like it.”

  There was no Malbec by the glass on the wine list. Ben had said they should just go ahead and get a bottle, but she didn’t think they should drink that much.

  He’d teased her about being afraid of what might happen if she got tipsy.

  She’d laughed, but the truth is, she was afraid. The other night, they’d wound up back at her place.

  Is that what she wants tonight?

  Is it right to keep careening forward without resolving the past?

  I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know what I want.

  She watches Ben toy with his glass, wishing he’d go on talking, desperately wanting him to make things go back to normal, somehow, the way they were before, before . . .

  November twelfth.

  The last night of normal.

  They hadn’t even spent it together. Ben worked late, as he often did. Had dinner with his boss and a client. She was sleeping soundly when he came home close to eleven, so exhausted after a string of sleepless nights with her teething baby that she never heard him come in.

  She knows that he checked on Josh before going to bed, and found him sound asleep.

  Just asleep. Still breathing. Still alive.

  Life . . .

  Ben was certain of that, he’d told her and the paramedics who burst into the apartment the next morning, there to save Josh. But it was too late, too late . . .

  Death . . .

  There are many things she doesn’t remember about those awful hours in the wake of discovering her son’s body in his crib. But she does remember trying to hear what Ben was telling the medical team, and that his voice was nearly drowned out by the terrible sound of someone screaming and sobbing hysterically, and she remembers not realizing at first that it was coming from her own throat until Ben wrapped his arms around her, hard, and tried to quiet her.

  She pushed him away. It was the first of many times she would do that, literally and figuratively; the dawn of the dreadful new normal.

  He’d been the last one to see Josh alive.

  Was there any indication that something terrible was about to happen?

  She’d asked him that, countless times, and the answer was always the same: “He was sleeping, Gaby. He was fine.”

  No, he wasn’t!

  You said he’d be fine if he caught your cold, and he did, and he wasn’t fine!

  Had Ben been paying close enough attention when he looked in on the baby that last time? Or had he been too worn-out from the long day at work to notice that something was amiss, the slightest little something that could have made the difference between life and death?

  You have to tell him.

  She lifts her glass to her mouth to keep words from spilling out of it, feeling as though she’s going to choke on the wine, on the words, on the congealed lump of grief rising in her throat.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Gaby.”

  She shakes her head mutely.

  Ben puts his hand over hers. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know if I can get past this. I thought I could, but . . .”

  “Past what?”

  “Blaming you.” There. She said it. It’s out there.

  Only it came out all wrong.

  “Blaming me? For leaving? I told you, it wasn’t because I’d stopped loving you. It was because—”

  “No, not for that.”

  “Then what?”

  No turnin
g back now. She forges ahead. She has to be honest. It’s the only way to heal.

  “For . . . Josh.”

  “What?” The word is an incredulous whisper.

  “I know it’s wrong, Ben. I know it wasn’t your fault. But . . .”

  Something has already begun to harden in Ben’s eyes. He lifts his hand abruptly, pulling it away from hers.

  “You thought it was my fault? That our son died?”

  “I told you I know it’s wrong. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

  “You’re repeating yourself. And contradicting yourself, for that matter.”

  “I know. It’s because I . . .”

  “Right. You know it’s wrong. You know it wasn’t my fault. You don’t have to say it again. I heard you the first two times.”

  “Will you please let me talk?”

  “Go ahead,” he says. “I’m listening.”

  But the bond of trust and love that had begun to grow again between them has been snuffed like tender green shoots in a late killing frost.

  Her thoughts are spinning. What the hell was she even trying to say to him? Why did it seem so important to bring this up?

  Honesty. Healing. Forgiveness.

  “When you got that cold after you ran the marathon,” she begins, “and I was worried that—”

  “That’s what this is about?”

  “No. It’s not. I know it’s not. Just let me talk,” she tells him when he opens his mouth to cut in. “Let me say this.”

  He shrugs.

  She talks. She started this. She has to finish it.

  “Back then, after it happened, I was so devastated that I—losing Josh destroyed me, Ben. It destroyed me.”

  “It destroyed me, too.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’m not the one who let it destroy us.”

  She tries to swallow back the sob that rises in her throat. He’s right.

  “Sorry. I was letting you talk. Go on.” Ben picks up his glass, takes a drink, swallows it hard.

  Gaby’s eyes fill with tears.

  She lost Josh. She lost Ben.

  Now she’s losing Ben again.

  “It hurts to be without you,” she tells him. “But I don’t think it hurts as much as it did when I was with you, after it happened. And I’m afraid that if we’re back together, it’ll go back to hurting that way again. I’m afraid we’ll never figure out how to forgive each other.”

  “I already figured that out, Gabriela. I already forgave you. I gave it everything I had. You’re the one who didn’t try. You’re the one who can’t get past it. Not me.”

  What is there to say to that?

  He’s right.

  She pushes her glass away, slides her chair back. “I have to go home.”

  “Okay.” He pulls out his wallet, looking around for the waitress. “I’ll put you in a cab.”

  “I can put myself in a cab.”

  “Gaby, wait two seconds while I—”

  “No,” she tells him, already on her feet. “I’m fine. I do it all the time. I go home by myself. I go to bed by myself. I get up by myself. I take care of myself. And I can, Ben. Did you know that?”

  “No one ever said you can’t.”

  “I take care of myself, and I’m used to it. I’m used to being alone. That’s the way it is now. That’s the way it’s always going to be.”

  She was a fool to think it could be any other way.

  She heads for the door.

  He’s on his feet, too, coming after her. “Gaby—”

  “Sir?” Behind him, the waitress materializes.

  “I need the check, please. Gaby—”

  She keeps walking.

  There are no cabs on the quiet side street outside the restaurant, and she doesn’t dare stop and wait until one comes along. He’ll have caught up to her by then, and she doesn’t want to continue this conversation tonight.

  She doesn’t want to continue it, ever.

  It’s over.

  As she zigzags cross-town and uptown blocks, her phone in her pocket buzzes with an incoming text.

  Probably Ben.

  She ignores it.

  It vibrates again as she reaches the subway station for the west side local. She leaves it in her pocket and takes out a Metrocard instead, casting a glance over her shoulder as she hurries through the turnstile, half expecting to see Ben behind her. The platform below is crowded. Good. It means she didn’t just miss a northbound train, and she can lose herself in the crowd, just in case Ben really does show up.

  But then, why would he?

  This isn’t his line. He’d have walked over to Union Square to catch an east side express train.

  No, he’d have taken a cab, and would probably have expected her to do the same at this hour.

  He always used to worry about her on the subway at night.

  But she’s not his problem anymore, is she? He should be relieved, and so should she.

  The train roars into the station. The doors open, spilling far fewer passengers than are waiting to board. As Gaby wedges herself into a car, she catches a glimpse of Ben at the opposite end.

  Her heart skips a beat. So he did come looking for her. That means—

  It means you’re delusional, she realizes, seeing that it’s not Ben after all. It doesn’t even look that much like him.

  But if you really want to see something . . .

  She closes her eyes and turns away.

  After letting herself into the house with the key hidden under the back doormat—Fool! Alex thinks again—she begins to feel her way through the darkened, airless rooms on the first floor. The place smells stale, as if it’s been years since the windows were open with a fresh breeze blowing through.

  She bumps her hip on the hard edge of a table and winces.

  If she had been thinking more clearly when she left the house earlier, she’d have remembered to grab her headlamp before setting out on this evening’s mission. Even just a flashlight would have come in handy.

  Rubbing her hip, she listens, hoping the slight thump didn’t wake Mr. Griffith. But all is silent above. He must be sleeping by now—especially if he took one of those pills the doctor prescribed for him.

  The pills were, initially, the reason she’d decided to come here tonight, right? She just needed something that will help her to relax and sleep.

  God knows that prescription will do the trick without leaving her groggy tomorrow morning the way some over-the-counter medications do.

  Oh, who are you kidding?

  This isn’t just about stealing a bottle of sleeping pills. It’s about alleviating this pent-up anger and frustration the way she did years ago, when she unleashed it on her mother-in-law.

  Carmen never suspected the old lady’s death hadn’t been a tragic accident. No one did. And even if they had, they never in a million years would have connected her to what happened.

  No one will connect her to this either.

  Slowly, Alex makes her way to the staircase. She’s glimpsed it so many times from the front door when she dropped off his medications. She knows that it’s steep, and that the steps are carpeted with a worn runner, the better to muffle her footsteps.

  She bumps into something parked at the foot of the steps: Mr. Griffith’s walker. It hits the wall with a clatter. She freezes, listening, poised to bolt through the door at the slightest hint of movement from above.

  All remains still.

  After a long wait, just to be sure, she carefully pulls the walker upright again. Then she begins the long ascent, one step at a time, poised on each tread to listen for movement above.

  She did this in her mother-in-law’s house, too, years ago—how long ago?

  Dante was a baby then, so at least, what, ten years? Twelve? No—more. Dante has been gone a long time.

  How long?

  What does it matter?

  As she nears the top of the flight, she can see a night-light plugged into a baseboard socket in the short hal
lway.

  There was one in her mother-in-law’s house, too.

  It illuminated the human shadow standing at the top of the stairs. The old woman had heard something and was out of bed to investigate.

  “Quién es?” she’d called, and Alex knew enough Spanish by then to know that she was asking: Who’s there?

  Alex didn’t answer, just kept coming up the stairs, hands clenched into fists, thoughts spinning.

  Carmen was away on another endless business trip.

  Her mother-in-law had done nothing but intrude.

  “You go ahead. Go up to bed. I’ll take care of the baby,” she’d said earlier, cradling Dante to her breast.

  “He’s my baby. I’ll take care of him.”

  “You should get some rest . . .”

  She had realized, in that moment, with a stab of horror, that her mother-in-law was trying to get her to leave so that she could nurse Dante.

  Alex didn’t know how it was even possible, but it was happening. She was certain of it. Carmen’s mother was sneaking around nursing her baby. Little by little, she was taking her place in her son’s life.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  There was only one way to stop her.

  Long after Dante had been safely tucked into his crib and her mother-in-law went home with a promise to return first thing in the morning to “help,” Alex found Carmen’s key to the house down the street and slipped out into the night.

  She had to leave Dante alone while she was gone. It wasn’t a good idea, but of course, she wasn’t thinking clearly that night. Anyway, it was her only option, and it wouldn’t be for very long.

  Her plan was to smother the old lady in her bed with a pillow as she slept.

  As it turned out, that would have been a bad idea. She hadn’t considered the potential consequences, hadn’t considered the fact that smothering wouldn’t have looked like an accident.

  Not like a fall down the stairs.

  No one—not even Carmen—ever suspected that the old woman hadn’t tripped over the hem of her nightgown that night, or that she hadn’t been alone when she drew her last breath at the foot of the stairs. No one ever knew about Alex’s bitter confrontation with her mother-in-law at the top of the stairs before she mightily shoved her to her death.

  She didn’t die right away, though.

  Alex descended to find her lying there on her back, bleeding and moaning.