Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  Her eyes widened with surprise. “Me, too,” she said softly. “I really am.”

  I wanted her to be some evil demon who’d stolen my husband with promises of chandelier sex and perfect Baked Alaska. But as I looked into her blue eyes—such a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.

  “I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”

  I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.

  I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.

  two

  Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister, Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.

  I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.

  For something to do, to keep me from thinking.

  At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.

  The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life, that the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. “Good man…loving husband…devoted son.”

  At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.

  The house where we were going to start a family.

  He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.

  But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten checkups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.

  I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.

  My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. “Are you okay, Penny?”

  “Yeah.” As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. “Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—”

  “No. I’m going back to Florida, back home.” She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. “I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?”

  She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.

  “Yeah. I feel the same way.” Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?

  A stranger?

  I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched on to Lillian soon after meeting Dave.

  “Thanks for being here for me the last two days,” I said. “I needed the support.”

  “I needed you just as much, dear,” Lillian said, then sighed. “He’s gone for both of us.”

  And for someone else. I bit my tongue. “He would have hated this, you know. The big funeral. The music.”

  “The flowers.” Lillian laughed. “God, how Dave hated flowers at funerals. Said they were a waste of good landscaping plants.”

  I thought of the mums in our garage, the ones we’d planned on planting this weekend. He’d left me with a bunch of plants and a life half-done.

  In the space of a day, my life had been thrown into a shredder, taking with it what I had hoped for my future, what I believed about my past, and what I thought I knew about my heart.

  Talk about killing a whole bevy of birds with one stone. Dave’s death had pretty much wiped out a species.

  We pulled up in front of the house, the limo easing to a stop without even a squeak of the brakes.

  Through the car’s tinted windows, I saw her. Again. Like a bad nightmare I couldn’t get rid of. Sitting on the swing—the swing Dave had installed last month—on my front porch, waiting.

  “Who’s that?” Lillian asked. “I don’t think I saw her at the funeral.”

  “She’s a good friend of Dave’s.” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not today. Maybe not ever. Heck, even I didn’t want the whole truth.

  “I’ll let you two visit,” Lillian said, giving me a final, comforting pat. “I want to go see Kevin again before I head to the airport.”

  Later, when I was ready, I’d corner Kevin and see what he knew. He and Dave had been close, going on annual fishing and hunting trips. He had to have told his older brother something.

  Then as soon as I solved this mystery—and dealt with any financial ramifications—I’d bury it all in the back of my mind and get back to my predictable days.

  It was the only way I knew how to deal.

  I got out of the limo, said goodbye to Lillian, then strode up my walkway, not looking at the newly mulched beds waiting for plants. Ignoring the freshly painted white picket fence, the new front door. Projects we’d done last weekend. Apparently my weekend with him since the one before he’d been in “Toronto.”

  A fresh wave of pain slammed into my chest. Toronto, Denver, Dallas—how many of those trips had been lies? And to think I’d packed his suitcase, even throwing in a sexy note once in a while, and one time, a pair of my panties, because I felt bad for him attending those boring insurance conventions and client meetings.

  I’d thought I was being so clever, such a perfect wife. Clearly, I hadn’t, not if my husband had gone out and found himself a spare.

  The other wife rose when I approached, still clutching that lace hanky. “I should have introduced myself,” she said, extending a hand. “Susan Rey—” She cut herself off before giving me my own last name. “Susan.”

  Susan. It wasn’t the name of a woman you could hate. It was one of those nice names, the kind given to the girl down the street who always let you play with h
er Barbies. She should have been named something else—Bambi, Cinnamon, Cassidy—something I could latch on to and despise.

  “Penny,” I said, shaking her hand and feeling weirdly like we were at a cocktail party, meeting for the first time over the crab dip.

  “I know you probably have a million questions,” Susan began, her voice filled with a nervous giggle.

  I nodded. Actually, I thought a million was a low estimate.

  “And I’d love to answer them,” Susan said. She was neater today, more put together in jeans and a black top, but still with the same damned shoes. “But they’ll have to wait.”

  “Wait? Why?” I wanted her to just tell me everything, to rip that Band-Aid off in one quick swoop.

  Susan shifted on those heels and bit her lip. Her lipstick was darker than mine, I noticed, a shimmery cranberry compared to my muted coral. “Well…I have a favor to ask you,” she said.

  “A favor? You’re asking me for a favor?” The whole day had become as surreal as a Jackson Pollock painting. I wanted to hit the wall, hit the mums, anything. Hit her, actually. “I want a favor, too. I want to know what you were doing with my husband.”

  “I can’t—” She pressed a hand to her eyes, then fluttered her fingers. “I can’t talk about that right now. I need a little space. I just found out about you, too, you know. You have to give me some time.”

  I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her. I wanted to hate her. Right now, anger was a lot more comfortable to wear than grief.

  But damn it all, she had that nice name and big blue eyes and looked like the kind of woman I’d have coffee with. Not someone I could give a permanent placement on my shit list.

  “Later, I promise,” Susan said, and for some reason, I believed her. “But for now, I need you to take care of something for me. It’ll be easy, I’m sure.” She smiled, then stepped back and gestured into the shadows of my porch. When she did, I saw a cage.

  It was small and tan, and filled with something that was so excited—or so vicious—it was shaking the plastic crate, causing it to tap-tap-tap on my wooden porch.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Harvey the Wonder Dog,” Susan said with a burst of enthusiasm, as if she’d just given me a long-awaited Christmas present. She backed down my stairs and onto my walkway. “And he’s all yours.”

  “He’s what? But—”

  “I can’t take care of him,” Susan was saying, still moving very fast, considering her shoes. “Dave had left him at my house while we went into the city and then…” She left off the rest. “Anyway, I’ve brought all his things. You’ll love him. Really.” Then she was reaching for the door of her black Benz, a car much like mine.

  What had Dave done? Bought everything in pairs?

  “Wait!” I shouted, barreling after her. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving.” Susan withdrew a set of keys from her pocket and thumbed the remote. “Sorry.”

  “You’re sorry…Sorry you married my husband? Sorry you showed up at his wake? Sorry you were on my porch, waiting for me to come home from burying him? Or sorry you dumped an animal on me that I don’t want?”

  Susan wheeled around, her hand on the door handle. “Sorry. But I’ve had him since Thursday and I can’t take care of him anymore.”

  “He’s your dog. Yours and Dave’s,” I said, the words thick as a turnip in my throat.

  “No, he’s not. I’m not even a dog person. He was Dave’s. I never even met Harvey or knew Dave had a dog until Thursday. Now, he’s yours.” Susan let out a sigh. “Think of Harvey as a part of Dave, left to you.”

  Then, before I could ask her anything else, Susan had climbed inside her car, slammed it into gear and left, leaving me choking in her exhaust.

  And apparently with one more member of the Dave Reynolds fan club.

  three

  Harvey the Wonder Dog came with his own bed, a backpack of toys, his own special food and a rather vague set of notes, written in a six-by-nine composition book in Dave’s tight scrawl.

  The book had plenty of information about Harvey’s tricks—balancing a beach ball on his nose while standing on his hind legs, barking the “Star Spangled Banner,” complete with the high notes—and data on where he had appeared—Letterman twice, Animal Planet seven times and Good Morning America once.

  But not a word about why Dave had kept this circus side of himself, or the extra wife, secret. After Susan left, I brought the dog into the house, opened his crate to let him out, then sat down to read. Three hours later, I looked up to find Harvey the Wonder Dog still in his cage, shaking like a leaf, apparently not wonderful enough to conquer his fear of my kitchen.

  How had he ever gotten up the gumption to appear on Letterman?

  Then I remembered the note on page three. For every good deed he did, Harvey received a treat.

  As I went to retrieve the bag of Beggin’ Strips that had come with the dog, I wondered if that had been Dave’s philosophy for everything. The new house, the tennis bracelet on my wrist, the love seat I’d admired in the showroom window of Newton Furniture—each thing bought after I’d done something that Dave decided needed a celebration. A new promotion, landing a big account—

  Accepting his proposal of marriage.

  I hated my husband right then, hated him as much as I had loved him. I felt the hatred boiling up inside of me, choking at my throat, begging for release. I wanted to tell him he’d screwed up my life but good by dying and then springing a secret existence on me at his funeral.

  I didn’t even want to think about what his dual marriage was going to do to our finances. To the life insurance, the 401(k) money. The house. Not to mention to my plans, my life.

  “I hate you,” I screamed at the walls. “I hate what you did. I hate how you left me. And I hate that you left me a dog instead of a goddamned explanation.”

  Harvey let out a bark and raised himself onto his hind paws, begging.

  My sister, who’d always been a bit on the flaky side, would have said it was Dave’s spirit, communicating through his canine counterpart to offer contrition. To me, it was a dog who’d spied the bag of treats in my hand and knew when to put on his sad face.

  “Sorry, Harvey. I wasn’t talking about you.” I withdrew one from the package and waved it in Harvey’s direction. “Here, puppy.”

  He bounded out of the crate, snatched the strip from my hand, then sat down in front of me, tail swishing against the floor. He didn’t eat it, just held it between his teeth, his mouth spread so wide it looked as if he was grinning. His pointy brown-and-white ears stuck up, tuned to my every move.

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” I said. “I’ve never even owned a dog, for Pete’s sake.”

  Harvey wagged his tail some more.

  “And I can’t take you to—” I looked down at the book, flipping to the page of upcoming appearances “—the Dog-Gone-Good Show on Thursday. I have a job, you know, and it’s not puppy chauffeur.”

  Harvey stretched his front paws across the floor, then laid his head down on them and let out a sigh. The Beggin’ Strip tumbled from his mouth and landed on the beige ceramic tile.

  “I’m just going to have to find you a good home.”

  Harvey looked up at me, wide brown eyes in a tiny, triangular face, and waited. He wasn’t an ugly dog, I reasoned. Why had Dave bought him? Trained him? Toured the country with him?

  And most of all, why had he kept him secret?

  A snippet of a conversation came back to my memory. Years ago, Dave had asked about getting a dog. I had turned him down, afraid that adding one more thing into my perfectly balanced life would make everything topple.

  It was why I had gone into accounting. Nice straight lines, perfect columns of numbers. Everything adding up at the end.

  Before I put one foot on the floor of my bedroom, I liked knowing what was coming each day and how the day was going to end. And yet, I wanted more. Wanted to have a taste of spontaneity, which was wh
at had attracted me to Dave.

  He was the Mutt to my Jeff, the Felix to my Oscar. I’d married him, thinking he’d help me loosen up a little, and he’d said he’d married me to keep him on track. But once we had the joint checking account and the mortgage to pay, it seemed those plans were dampened a bit.

  I had liked our life just fine. Dave, clearly, had not.

  The fact that I could have been so wrong hammered away at my temples. How could I have let details like this slip past me? What had I missed?

  I looked again at the book, flipping back to the prior appearances page. Harvey had been at the Dog-Gone-Good Show last year. And the year before. Where had I been then? Where had I thought Dave had been? I tried to think back, but my mind was as jumbled as a bag of jelly beans. “Maybe there are some people there who knew Dave,” I said aloud, talking to the dog, for God’s sake. He barked, as if he agreed that it was about damned time I tried to sort this out and restore order.

  He was right. If I was ever going to move past the shock of Dave’s second wife—and his well-trained dog—I had to find out where things had gone so totally wrong. “I need to find some people who can give me some answers.”

  Harvey perked up, his ears cocking forward. His tail began again.

  “And maybe I’m just nuts for talking to a dog about my cheating late husband.” I tossed the book onto the sofa and crossed into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.

  The knock on my back door made me jump and nearly spill the Chardonnay. Through the glass oval I saw my sister. I groaned.

  I love my sister, Georgia, and though we’ve always been close, our personalities couldn’t be more distant. We were as far apart as Venus and Earth. She’s the Venus, I’m the Earth. Georgia believes in taking life as it comes, living by the seat of your pants and saving for retirement when you get over the hill, not while you’re still climbing it.

  The most spontaneous thing I ever did was buy Tide without a coupon.