The First Husband

by Laura Dave

  15

  In the entirety of my time writing “Checking Out,” I had been to Peter’s midtown Manhattan office only a handful of times. I couldn’t begin to count the number of phone calls between us—Peter becoming a free-floating voice of calm, his sweet face largely one I’d drawn onto him in my mind. This was only one of the reasons it was so disconcerting sitting across from him—his sleek, modern desk between us—a black-and-white photograph of his beloved Steinbeck gracing the wall above his head. He looked like an alternative version of himself—less sweet, more reserved—with a rather large mole on the tip of his nose. I couldn’t stop asking myself, how had I not noticed it before? And why was it all I could see now?

  It had been five days since his phone call had come in. Five days since Peter had said that we needed to talk in person. So there I was in my black sheath dress and black blazer, my hair in a severe bun—looking more than a little like I was going to a funeral. Waiting for him to have at it, whatever it was.

  “My love, you know that joke where the doctor tells his patient that he has good news and bad news?”

  Apparently it was a punch line.

  “I don’t think so. . . .”

  “Well,” Peter said, “the joke goes that a doctor walks into an exam room and tells the patient he has good news and bad news and asks the patient which he wants to hear first. The patient picks the bad news. The doctor grimly tells him he has only a few months to live and needs to get his affairs in order. At which point, the saddened patient looks up and questions the doctor, ‘What is the good news?’ The doctor smiles and says, ‘This morning, I had my best golf game in years.’”

  I offered a small, conciliatory smile. “That’s funny, Peter.”

  Peter shook his head, laughing. “Isn’t it?” he said. Then he got serious. “So which would you like to hear first, my love, the good news or the bad news? It’s your choice.”

  “Am I supposed to say the bad news?” I asked.

  “That sounds right,” he said. “And the bad news is that I’m being forced out of my position on the paper by the new editor in chief, Caleb Beckett the Second, who, in addition to having no journalism experience whatsoever, also happens to be quite an impressive postadolescent prick.”

  “I’m not following,” I said, remembering our conversation from a few months ago, when the paper first changed hands. “Didn’t you say that you liked the new publisher? That he was a gentleman of the oldest order?”

  “I did. He is. But that’s Caleb Beckett the First. This is Caleb Beckett Number Two. His son. And it’s his son who he just made the editor in chief, and who he has given the latitude to do whatever he wants here in order to turn the paper into his darling. Except maybe . . . rent a car.”

  I tilted my head, trying to understand.

  “The boy is twenty-four,” he said.

  I nodded. “Got it.”

  “Fine, he’s closer to your age, but he may as well be a child, the way he is trying to do things. Australians . . .”

  “Peter, what am I missing here?”

  “Caleb’s bringing in all these bloody television people to run the enterprise. Former classmates of his from Yale, who don’t even read newspapers. They read the Internet. On their silly, electronic phones.”

  “I’m so sorry, Peter. I’m so sorry. You are an incredible editor. They are beyond lucky to have you,” I said. “And believe me when I tell you, I am less than excited to work for someone like that.”

  “Well, that’s when we get to the bad of the bad news,” he said. “It’s not going to be your option.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When your contract’s up next month, they have decided they’re not going to renew.”

  I looked at him, shocked. “They’re canceling ‘Checking Out’?”

  He nodded. “They are, love. They’re, in fact . . . checking out.”

  I gave him a look.

  “Not a good joke?” he asked, sincerely surprised.

  I shook my head, trying to understand. “But you said they were so happy with me. That I was a driver for advertisers, the bedrock of the travel section, that the column was one hundred percent safe.”

  “It turns out one hundred percent is a very tricky number.”

  I stared down at his desk. Had I just lost my job? After all this time? It seemed impossible—impossible without any warning signs. There was supposed to be safety in numbers, wasn’t there? And I had at least some numbers on my side: columns, years, readers. None of those things had disappeared. All of those things were supposedly growing.

  Then I started to wonder if maybe they were there, and I had missed them: the warning signs. Maybe I just hadn’t been looking closely enough to see them. Maybe I had been looking in the wrong place entirely, so I could pretend they weren’t there, so I didn’t have to see what they were trying to tell me.

  “They want to go big with the travel section,” he said. “Create international appeal. Everything has to be a platform. Complete with a possible movie tie-in and a happy meal. That’s the only thing that will sell newspapers these days. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

  “Do you follow what you’re saying?” I asked.

  “Maybe we should be looking at the bright side,” Peter said. “You haven’t been focused on the column in a while. Not the way you used to be. Maybe it’s a good time to move on.”

  He kept talking, though at some point I stopped listening. I just sat there trying to take it in. It was over. “Checking Out” was over. The one thing in my adult life I had been able to count on. The one way I could feel free.

  Finally, I looked back up at Peter.

  “And what’s the good news?” I said.

  “The good news? ” He started to beam. “Well, earlier this week, I sold my novel to a brilliant young editor at a certain publishing house right down the road,” he said. “It will be coming to a bookstore near you this time next year.”

  I smiled, my heart opening a little. “That’s great, Peter,” I said. “That’s really great.”

  “The editor says that she sees the novel more in the vein of Jack London than John Steinbeck, though. Can you believe that? I guess, in the end, we really can’t control these things.”

  “I guess not.”

  Then I forced a bigger smile, and looked him right in the eye, trying to hold back my tears.

  Peter reached across the table, taking my hand. “Don’t be so sad, my love,” he said. “This is a blessing in disguise. There are a million writing opportunities in Los Angeles. They have one of the best travel magazines in the country, there’s the L.A. Times there. LA Weekly is doing some interesting things. . . .”

  My heart clenched, started filling up my chest. “I live in western Massachusetts now, remember?”

  “That’s a permanent thing?” he said, genuinely surprised.

  “Peter . . .”

  “So, that’s not the end of the world. I have several contacts in Williamstown for you. They have some wonderful writing opportunities, I’m sure, related to theater and art.”

  “I live in Williamsburg.”

  “Right,” he said. “Probably less there.”

  It hit me all over again. If I’d still lived in Los Angeles, this would be scary. But in California I had contacts, potential for moving forward. Finding other opportunities. Where I was now, I had just about none.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Anything, my love.”

  “You said I haven’t been focused in a while? On work. Haven’t my columns been good?”

  “Sure, they’ve been good,” he said. “But it’s different recently.”

  “Define different.”

  “ ‘Partly or totally unlike in nature, form, or quality,’ ” he said. “ ‘Dissmiliar. Divergent’. . .”

  I gave him a look. “In regards to me.”

  “My love, you could probably write your fifteen hundred words in your sleep by now. You could visit new citie
s, and find their glory, in your sleep too. None of that is the problem. I know that.”

  “What is?”

  “Is that what you really want?” he said. “To keep writing this column indefinitely? ”

  “I don’t know,” I said, truthfully.

  “Well, I know that too,” he said. Then he paused. “Everything has a season, my love.”

  I nodded. “But what does that mean I do now?”

  I must have seemed like I was waiting on Peter for the answer. Only, I think we both knew, the question was more for myself than for him.

  Then I thought of something. The moment that Nick told me I was priceless. It came rushing back to me. The actual moment. I had helped him rework that final scene in his movie and after he’d said, You’re priceless, he’d said something else, something about how visual I was. And I’d thought of the green canvas box under the bed, which housed the photographs I’d taken—the hundreds and hundreds of photographs I’d taken—during all the years I’d been writing “Checking Out.”

  I had shown Nick some of the photographs on occasion, and he’d been mildly complimentary. Sometimes more than mildly. But in that moment, when Nick gave me that compliment, I felt brave enough to ask him what I hadn’t been brave enough to ask him before: what would he think of my trying to do something with them? The photographs. Of my trying to do something with how much I loved taking them. Only, by the time I asked the question, he was already focused on his script. He was already focused on what he was trying to fix, what he was trying to do next. And so I let it go. My question. Whatever answer he would have given me.

  I looked at Peter. “Maybe this will all have a happy outcome,” I said. “Maybe they’ll want me to do something else here? At the paper? That’s always a possibility, right?”

  Peter reached across the enormous impasse of the table and took my hand, squeezing it tight.

  “Absolutely, but I don’t think we should count on that,” he said. “It’s a little like Steinbeck says, isn’t it? ‘We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.’ ”

  As he let go, I closed my eyes.

  “Peter, do you really think you still should be quoting Steinbeck?” I asked.

  “No, my love,” he said. “Probably not.”

  16

  You discover this early on. Even the most upsetting, disappointing, and disheartening trips will have one great moment. Especially, in fact, on these terrible trips does the one great moment find its way to shine. The rental car breaks down in the middle of the night, the luxury hotel turns out to be a mold-infested nightmare, you get a debilitating case of the stomach flu the very moment the plane hits the ground in paradise. And yet, you go for one moonlit bike ride along the coast in Ireland, you take a hike in summertime Aspen, you wake up, healed, on the last morning in Anguilla, just in time to see the most brilliant sunrise you’ve ever laid your eyes on. And this rare moment of joy, especially when it is so hard-earned, feels like the entire truth. This moment of perfection makes the rest of the terrible trip worthwhile.

  On the way back from New York City, the packed Amtrak train stalled twice. Once outside Stamford, Connecticut, for forty-five minutes. Then again, outside Bridgeport, for over an hour. When I finally got back to Williamsburg, it was late, almost 10:00 P.M., and the dark house made me think everyone was sleeping, or everyone but Griffin, who I assumed was still at the restaurant. I didn’t blame him for this. With only a little time left until the soft opening, I’d be there as much as possible too, if I were him. To do everything I could think of to make it go as smoothly as possible.

  Besides, with how overwhelmed I was feeling about everything—my new house, my new life, and now my new lack of employment—I almost convinced myself I was grateful for the silence.

  But then I turned on the living room light to find Griffin standing there, cupping one daffodil in his right palm—the entire room behind him filled with matching daffodils in jelly jars, candles lining the bay window.

  I felt a smile start to form. “What is going on in here? ” I said.

  He handed me my flower. “What do you mean? This is just how I plan to greet you from now on . . .” he said, a smile forming on his face. “A room full of flowers. Perhaps even a candlelight dinner of eggs and lobster.”

  I looked up at him, still a little confused. “But where is Jesse?” I asked. “And the twins?”

  “I sent them away to an all-you-can feast at Pizza Hut and a triple feature in Hadley,” he said. “They won’t be back until later. We have the place to ourselves. We have the place to ourselves for as long as we want it. . . .”

  I threw my arms around him, holding there, against his chest, as he cradled my head. His strength, coming in, filling me up.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been at the restaurant so much. I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much as I want to be.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry . . .” I said. “I got canned.”

  “I had a feeling.”

  I sighed, sitting down on the soft couch, running my fingers slowly through my hair.

  Griffin sat down beside me.

  “I know that there is an argument to be made that it’s for the best,” I said. “I mean, recently I’ve even thought maybe I’d be better off if I didn’t have the column. And I thought that it would force the issue. Force me to figure out what I really wanted. But now that it was taken from me . . .”

  “Now that it was taken from you, what?” he asked.

  “Now it’s what I really wanted,” I said.

  Griffin laughed softly, reaching over, and rubbing my back gently.

  “It’s going to be okay. I swear to you . . .” he said. “And I know it’s probably not making it easier imagining starting again from here. I know the tip of the Berkshires is not exactly the bastion of journalistic activity.”

  I looked up at him, tilting my head. “Did you just say ‘bastion’?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  I smiled at him. “I did.”

  “So, that’s one good thing.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. Then I shook my head. “I just sat there, so still, the whole train ride back here, trying to figure out, what happens now? And I couldn’t seem to come up with anything, like an answer.”

  “Well, what do you want to happen now?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said, which was when I remembered what I’d thought about in Peter’s office. That conversation with Nick. The conversation before the last conversation with Nick. The almost conversation.

  “What?” he said. “I see you thinking something. What are you thinking over there?”

  I shook my head. “It’s silly,” I said. “It’s really . . . I don’t know. Too silly to even mention.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’ve taken a lot of photographs. Since I started writing ‘Checking Out.’ With all the traveling, the thing that started interesting me the most was how people made a life in all these places. So I started taking photographs of . . . homes.” I shrugged. “Different homes. In all the different cities I’d go to. Homes that struck me somehow. Maybe that would teach me something about how to do it, make one for myself. If that makes sense . . .”

  He was quiet, for just a minute. “Do you have them here?” he said.

  “The homes?”

  He gave me a smile, ignoring my snarky joke. “Sure. Or,” he said, “your photographs.”

  I nodded. “They’re in a canvas box. Up in the bedroom.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “Now?”

  He stood up, and reached out his hand for me to take, reached out to help me up.

  “Now works for me,” he said.

  We spread them all out on the floor—all of the photographs I had taken, all the negatives, all the rolls of films that still needed developing. Six years of a secret love, staring back at us: houses in cities as distinct from each o
ther as Hai Phong, Vietnam, and Marietta, Georgia; houses near steep cliffs in the fishing village of Klima, on the Greek island Milos, and, midrenovation, on a tiny river in Winchester, Tennessee; a lone rocking chair in front of a one-bedroom house in Cuba. We spread them all out and sat on the floor, looking at what was or wasn’t there.

  It took Griffin a very long time of looking at each photograph—and looking again—before he said anything.

  Finally, when he did, he didn’t smile. Not at first. Then he did.

  “I think these are good,” he said. “I think they’re very good.”

  I gave him a disbelieving look. “That’s not biased or anything.”

  He shook his head, his eyes back on the photographs. “Well, you can take my opinion for what it is, but I think they’re strong photographs. They’re interesting. And surprising. And unique.” He looked right at me. “They’d make me want to know you if I didn’t. Which, for me, is usually my first indication I’m around something pretty great.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Is that true?” I said.

  “Very, very true.”

  I covered my eyes in embarrassment. “Can we please change the subject now? ” Then I peeked at him. “And thank you,” I said.

  He smiled, right at me. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Griffin moved the photographs gently out of the way and, less gently, pulled me toward him until my legs were around his waist, his palms cupping the back of my neck.

  “I still need a plan. In my entire life, I’ve never not had a plan.”

  “Maybe you don’t now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I think sometimes we plan the most when we’re the least sure and we want to feel okay about that. . . .” He paused. “You have something you want to do. Something you like to do. Something you’re good at. Why don’t we start with that? Why don’t you let that be the entire plan for now?”

  “I can’t just . . . decide that.”

  He leaned forward, our faces less than an inch apart. “What if you just did?” he said.