The First Husband

by Laura Dave

  “That’s a good sign!” she said. “That’s a very good sign! And you start this week?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  I spotted Melinda through the window, which wasn’t hard to do. She was doing a little tap dance for a group of guests—a chocolate layer cake in her hands, the guests applauding wildly. Whether it was for her or for the cake wasn’t entirely clear.

  “My new boss seems pretty great, actually,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes! It’s good, Annie, it’s right.. . .” She paused. “And have you seen Nick yet? You know he’s still there.”

  I almost hung up the phone, right there. “You’re fired,” I said.

  “Okay, okay. I take it back,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter. You’ll call him, you won’t call him. I’m just glad it’s all coming together out there in the world.”

  Through the window, I saw Melinda still tapping away, holding the cake high above her head now, moving it up and down in quick succession. Then I looked around the room at everyone else: Peter and the other editors, Melinda’s many friendly friends. The nice greetings they’d all given me.

  And I couldn’t help but think of what Thomas the driver had said, just a few hours earlier, the two of us standing by my new living room window.

  “It’s a ready-made life,” I said.

  “Who couldn’t use a ready-made life?” Jordan said. “Nothing wrong with that, at all.”

  32

  The next day—more than a bit hopped up on a third cup of coffee, the jet lag having reached its full force—I found myself at my new desk in the crowded newsroom of Beckett Media’s print headquarters. I had, at most, ten square feet of cubicle real estate, but it was good real estate: a big-windowed corner looking out at Buckingham Gate, at the Hong Kong Association and Society, their beautiful gardens, the boats in the river beyond them.

  I was trying to lay out a plan of attack for my first new column—something exciting and something new—when I gave up and turned to the window, drawn to the river, feeling content staring at it. Or maybe content wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was closer to lonely, which at least felt more honest.

  Then I heard someone slide by my desk, giving its side a soft knock, pulling me out of my reverie. I looked up to find Melinda staring down at me in a slightly different polka-dot skirt than she’d been wearing the night before—and I do mean slightly: this one more cherry red than burnt orange, if someone were looking closely enough. Which, apparently, I was.

  “Good skirt,” I said.

  “Good taste!” she said. “So, what do you think of your new space? I had to move someone from Architecture to get you the corner with the views.” She paused. “That’s a bit ironic, actually, isn’t it?”

  I smiled. “It’s great,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Great! So, Annie girl . . .” she said. “Does anyone call you Annie girl?”

  I shrugged. “My mother, maybe,” I said. “When I was six.”

  “Well, I don’t want to bring that memory back,” she said.

  “Probably for the best.”

  Then she tossed down—from her station, up closer to the sky—a Montblanc pen and a yellow legal pad, which, by some small miracle, I managed to catch.

  “Walk with me,” she said.

  We headed down the hall, Melinda moving at a rapid pace, me moving at an even more rapid one, trying to keep up with those legs.

  “Well, when I finally got the last hanger-on out my door last night,” she said, “I read all of your columns over. . . .”

  “All of them?”

  She gently linked her arm through mine, which should have been hard to do considering our height discrepancy, but she managed it beautifully.

  “Every single one, Annie,” she said. “And I can honestly say I’m a fan now. We are going to have a lot of fun with the column’s evolution. I am swimming with ideas.”

  “That’s so nice to hear.”

  She smiled down at me. “I was struck, though, that perhaps you have a bigger story to tell about all the places you’ve been,” she said. “Especially after so many. I feel like we need to think outside the box to figure out the right formula. To make the column feel bigger, more universally bonding.”

  “You think so?” I said.

  “I do.”

  I felt myself—in spite of myself—start to get a little excited, a smile breaking out on my face. I almost started to tell her right then about my photographs—about all those homes, waiting to have their stories told. But then I stopped myself, remembering that they’d been lost. Remembering how. Remembering, also, what was lost along with them. The twins, Jesse, Williamsburg. Griffin. All of it quickly becoming a mirage, becoming a world I didn’t know anymore.

  “You look like you’re having a thought parade over there,” she said. “What’s happening?”

  “No no no.” I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Well, if it ever is something . . .” She gave me that big smile again. “Just know that I’m open to all ideas. I know people say that, but it’s true in my case. Bad ones, good ones. Especially good ones.”

  I smiled.

  “And, while you’re thinking, what I’m looking for, primarily, is a way to simplify the column so we can brand it. Get more of you. You know what I’m asking?”

  “If I say maybe, is that bad?”

  She laughed, throwing her head back. “I’m not making a lot of sense yet, but just keep your thinking cap on,” she said.

  “I can do that,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, unlinking her arm from mine as we approached the conference room. “Big changes are coming. Great ones.”

  Then with a wink, she disappeared into the conference room—me catching just a peek of Peter before the door shut.

  I looked down at the legal pad. On top she had written Annie Girl = World Travel Connoisseur.

  Below that, all over the page, she’d mapped out several divisions of Beckett Media: television shows related to travel, their radio programs, their Web sites. Putting them all in one large circle, Annie Girl written in the center, again—in the bull’s-eye.

  I, apparently, hadn’t written anything.

  The next Friday evening, in celebration of my first full week, Peter and I decided to see a play on the West End. To go out for a late meal, afterward, at a noodle place he loved.

  But we had only just gotten in a taxicab when the night felt a little ruined. I got a message on my phone that I had a new e-mail. My heart was beating as I opened my phone, hoping against hope that it was going to be some word from Griffin. As more time went by, I got more and more worried that word from him was never coming. What did I want him to say, anyway? Anything, was the answer. Anything at all. But why was I surprised that something from Griffin wasn’t what was waiting for me. Something from Nick was.

  This was what he wrote:

  A-

  This isn’t to put any pressure on you. Just to let you know I’m thinking of you. Not just when you’re in Massachusetts and married. Not just when I’m not supposed to be. In case you thought that was what this was about. The chase. It’s not. It’s about everything else.

  I’m supposed to leave London a week from Monday. I hope to see you before then.

  I hope to have a reason not to leave, at all.

  Yours,

  N.

  “Good e-mail, no?” Peter said.

  I turned to find him leaning over my shoulder, reading for himself.

  “Peter!” I said.

  “Oh, right!” he said. “Like now is a good time to start playing the role of bashful.”

  “Anyway,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know that I can put it into words.”

  Peter patted my hand. “There’s my star writer,” he said.

  “It’s just that Nick says
he wants to give me what I want,” I said. “He wants a chance to do that now.”

  “And what’s the problem?”

  The problem was that I wasn’t just angry with Nick for leaving and putting us in such a difficult place then, or even for walking back into my life when he shouldn’t have and putting me in such a tricky place now. If I was being honest with myself, it was more that I had started to wonder if what Nick was offering me was less what I want, and more what I wanted. Past tense.

  “The thing is,” I said, “I’m not sure I’m clear on want I want anymore.”

  “If you’re waiting to be clear on that, you may be waiting forever.”

  “Gee. That’s comforting.”

  He squeezed my hand.

  “Why not just give it another chance? I’ve always liked Nick.”

  I gave Peter a look, surprised somehow—and not—for that to be what came out of his mouth.

  “Peter, you’ve never met Nick.”

  “That’s why I like him.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “Since you married Griffin, you’ve been so preoccupied. You haven’t even wanted to travel,” he said. “With Nick, you had freedom.”

  Freedom. There was that word again. I had organized my life to hold on to it, hadn’t I? Everyone seemed to think so. Everyone—myself included—seemed to think I needed the possibility of going anywhere at any time, of infinite openness. But I was starting to wonder if maybe I had missed what freedom really looked like. Maybe it had less to do with always having a way out. Maybe it had something more to do with finding the way deeper in.

  “So this is about you?” I said. “What you want for me?”

  “No, it’s about what you want for you.” He paused. “I’m only saying that he’s just your first husband. He certainly doesn’t have to be your last!”

  With that, Peter turned to look out the taxi window, apparently done with this conversation.

  “That’s a lovely exit line,” I said, sarcastically.

  “Look, love, sue me if you must, but that’s how I feel. I just think that you and Griffin . . . the whole thing just seems complicated.”

  “Define complicated.” I said.

  “ ‘Confusing, messy. A lot to take on,’ ” he said. “ ‘Often difficult to analyze, understand, or explain.’ ”

  I felt my chest constrict, start to close down, just discussing Griffin. Maybe because I couldn’t make sense of all of it yet. When I had been in Massachusetts, I had felt overwhelmed and unsettled. So why, all the way across the world, was I feeling something else so intensely? A feeling I didn’t even know before that moment, not in just that way. I was, undeniably, homesick.

  “And, really,” Peter continued, “no need to be angry with me just because you want to see him.”

  I drilled him with a look. “I don’t want to see him,” I said. “Wait . . . which one are you talking about?”

  “You know which one I’m talking about,” Peter said.

  “Not really.”

  He squeezed my hand. “It’s obvious,” he said.

  33

  After the play that night, I couldn’t fall asleep. This was what I was up against: one job firing, one botched restaurant opening, a marriage proposal from someone else. No trips to speak of, no big birthdays, one awkward meeting each with the other’s parents. A cold, windy, small town. Where I had no obvious job prospects. No obvious future. Where I had a crazy brother-in-law and a full house of mothermissing twin boys and five hundred ruined photographs. Where it was too cold to walk outside after 5:00 P.M., where it was too noisy to be inside anytime before that. Where my husband (if he still thought of himself that way) had a beautiful, homespun ex-girlfriend, a mother who didn’t like me in the least, and a new, nameless restaurant in the middle of our lives, locking us in there. Locking us into the immeasurable quiet, where I could hear all of my fears that I’d chosen a life on impulse. All of my fears that I’d forever remember the one guy I’d always thought would be my answer. That one love now offering me everything. For the first time.

  And this. And this too. A growing sense that maybe just once in this life someone loves us for the us we don’t even know how to be yet. And if we lose him too early—in the name of all the promises in the world: a new job, a new city, an old love offering us happily ever after—we may just lose that chance to be our best self.

  34

  The next Sunday, the night before Nick was scheduled to leave London for good, I went for a late-night walk around my neighborhood, dressed in a pair of sweatpants that didn’t belong outside the house. My Massachusetts coat with the rhinestone hearts keeping me warm against the rain. Despite the wet, I ended up walking for so long that I left my neighborhood altogether, heading east—not admitting to myself that I was walking in the direction of Victoria station, closer to where I might run into Nick, closer to where he was living. I walked until I actually wound up in Pimlico, in front of a popular gastropub called the Orange.

  I wasn’t planning on going in anywhere—on my flashy hearts making a public appearance—but even though the Orange was crowded, I went inside, and found a seat at the end of the bar, right near the piano, an older couple miraculously getting up to go just as I was getting there.

  As I swept into the man’s seat before I lost it, the barkeep walked over and wiped down the counter in front of me, trying a little too hard not to take in my ensemble, not to stare at my rhinestone hearts.

  What she didn’t know was that I had no choice but to leave it on. Underneath was a kitschy T-shirt from Niagara Falls with little rainbows all over it and I FELL FOR THE FALLS written in blue. I’d picked it up during an early travel reporting gig. It made the rhinestones look like haute couture.

  “What would you like?” she asked, above the noise.

  I took a quick glance at the menu—trying not to remember that I’d had a full dinner a few hours before.

  “I’ll take a double order of the rosemary fried potatoes,” I said. “And whatever you’d recommend to drink. Your call.”

  “I make a good basil martini,” she said.

  I smiled. “Anything but that,” I said. “And maybe add some bourbon and extra salt?”

  She smiled back. “Coming right up,” she said.

  The older couple had left a copy of the Guardian on the bar, and, as I waited for my drink, I started reading, not noticing that someone was standing over the empty seat. The older woman’s.

  “You probably should’ve gone for the basil martini,” he said, his accent undeniably American.

  It was so loud in there—bass music blasting, people shouting to hear each other—that for a second I thought that it was Nick. Nick, whom I had picked up the phone to call a half-dozen times, each time changing my mind before all the numbers were entered. Each time feeling like his answering wasn’t going to give me the answer I was looking for. The battle between Nick and Griffin, Griffin and Nick, feeling like something else. Something that had more to do with something in me. And still, my heart picked up at the thought that Nick was standing there, which I could have taken as some sort of message from the universe, from the masters of fate. (Forgetting the fact that I helped them out by moving myself directly to the most popular pub in his neighborhood.)

  But fate was offering me something else entirely.

  I looked up to see the man was carrying a full basil martini in one hand—and a briefcase and another copy of the Guardian in the other. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, despite his attire—a suit and tie that would probably cost me a month’s salary, newly shined shoes. Wire-rim glasses that looked eerily similar to Nick’s. And there was no denying he was handsome—in a movie-star way—tall, with a strong smile, a matching strong chin.

  And from the way he threw his briefcase on the bar and sat right down next to me—sans the courtesy ask—I was guessing there was no denying that to himself either.

  “I’m sure I’ll be good with whatever t
hey’re bringing me,” I said. “But thank you.”

  Just then the barkeep came back carrying a martini glass full of bright orange liquid, an even brighter yellow umbrella sticking out the side. I looked back toward Mr. Suit, who was casually moving his martini my way, and motioning to the barkeep for a new one.

  “Just go for it,” the man said. “I haven’t even had a sip yet. It can be my rental cost.”

  “Rental cost?”

  “For the seat.”

  I gave him a smile and took the martini, just as a second one was getting delivered to him.

  “Thank you, that’s very nice of you,” I said.

  He clinked his martini glass to mine. “Enjoy, then,” he said. “Cheers.”

  He looked down at his newspaper, which I thought meant we were done with the niceties, and that I could return to mine. But then, eyes still on his paper, he started talking again.

  “How long have you been an expat?” he asked.

  “Not long,” I said.

  “How not long?”

  I looked over at him, trying to decide how much I didn’t feel like answering. Whether it involved my moving seats or just giving a clipped response. What about my sequins suggested I wanted company?

  “A little less than a month,” I said.

  “What brought you here?”

  Now he was looking back up, right at me. I took a sip of my drink, tried to shake myself into it. Friendliness. Reminding myself that I lived here now.

  “Work,” I said. “You?”

  He shrugged. “Forty-two percent work, fifty-eight percent personal,” he said. “Approximately.”

  “Just approximately?”

  “I’m excellent with percentages,” he said.

  I smiled and went back to the paper, turning the page to the national news.

  “So when I saw you at Melinda’s party . . .” He pointed toward the ceiling, as if doing the math, figuring out the percentages on that. “It must have been right when you arrived, yes?”