The Widow's Season

by Laura Brodie

  “What would you like me to get for you?” she asked.

  “I want fresh fruit.” David replied without hesitation. “And imported beer. And some good steaks . . . I want clean sheets for my bed, and Woolite, and a clothesline with clothespins. Books, and magazines, and a Sunday New York Times. More canvases, more paint, and a lot more toilet paper.” She scribbled a list of abbreviations, until he reached his last request.

  “And try to see how Nate is doing. You know how depressed he was when Mom died. Maybe you can cheer him up.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Maybe I can.”

  That evening they gathered comforters and pillows from the chilly bedrooms and spread them across the braided rug in front of the fire.

  “It’s like a winter picnic,” Sarah said as they opened another bottle of wine. By the second glass, she had pulled off her sweater. By the third, she had unbuttoned her blouse. David lifted his shirt over his head, revealing a chest neither so smooth nor muscular as Nate’s, but still the body of an attractive man.

  So, thought Sarah. It was time to touch her husband—to place her hands upon him and feel the depth of his change. She put down her glass, reached out her right-hand fingers, and pressed them to his chest.

  What she touched was cold, very cold. Cold as the bottom of the river. It’s natural, she assured herself. The air in the cabin was freezing. But still she shivered as she pulled her hand away.

  “You’re like ice,” she murmured, and he nodded.

  “Warm me up.”

  PART THREE

  Resurrection

  • 21 •

  Arriving home on Sunday morning, Sarah opened her front door and was struck with a vision of spring. Lilies graced the hall table and chrysanthemums bloomed in the kitchen. The living room’s red roses now mingled with pink and white, and yellow snapdragons fanned out from the top of the piano. Each room was a kaleidoscope of petals, which she took to be Nate’s version of an exit, until she saw Judith’s card lying on the hall table. The flowers are for you, left over from the show. Enjoy the moment.

  Sarah crumpled the card. Enjoy the moment indeed. She could imagine Judith’s lilting smile, the arch of her penciled brows when greeted at the door on Saturday morning by a bleary-eyed Nate. So be it. She walked into the kitchen and tossed the card into the trash. The gods will have their little jokes.

  On the refrigerator, Nate had left a note as laconic as her own farewell.

  Sorry I missed you. Give me a call.

  Yes, she would call him. She would telephone during work hours and explain to his home machine that she was oh, so busy. Maybe they could get together after Thanksgiving.

  Inside her room, Nate had made the bed with precise, hospital corners. She lifted a pillow and inhaled the lingering scent of his hair, then stripped the pillowcases, bundled the top sheet in her arms, and paused at the sight of the fitted sheet, with its Rorschach test of wet spots. The memory of Nate’s soft lips made her dizzy, and she lay down on the bed with the linens hugged to her chest. Five minutes—that was all she would allow herself. Five minutes to absorb his sweet narcotic, to slide backward forty hours into the care of his warm hands.

  Red numbers clicked by on her digital clock: ten, eleven, twelve minutes. Sighing, she stood and pulled off the fitted sheet, carrying the guilty linens into the basement. As the washer filled with water, she poured in a cup of Tide, and when the load was almost swimming, she added another. Upstairs, she opened the linen closet and took out a set of flannel sheets, soft and innocent as the lining of children’s sleeping bags.

  Resting on her newly made bed, she pressed the blinking button on her answering machine.

  “Hello, love.” Margaret’s voice was a ray of sunlight. “My refrigerator is full of leftovers from the show. Judith brought them all this morning. I want you to come for dinner and help me make a dent.”

  Next came Nate, calling on Saturday night. “Hi, Sarah. Just checking in. Call me when you’re back.”

  Then Margaret spoke again, repeating yesterday’s invitation. “Where are you, my dear? I can’t eat all this alone.”

  And so, at five o’clock Sarah found herself in Margaret’s kitchen, bracketed by granite counters arranged in a cold smorgasbord—cream cheese with red pepper jelly, salmon with dill sauce, a bowl of spinach dip circled with torn chunks of bread.

  “You’re looking well.” Margaret admired the color in Sarah’s cheeks. “Did you finally get some sleep?”

  “Yes.” Sarah smiled. She had never before appreciated the tran quilizing effect of sex.

  Margaret poured two glasses of red wine. “I hope you were pleased with the show. Everyone I’ve seen this weekend has been going on about it. Judith was still excited when she came yesterday. She was wondering where you were.”

  Sarah stirred a slice of bread in the bowl of spinach dip. “The weather was so nice, I went for a long walk by the river.”

  “Well, be sure to call her. She’s got some questions for you.”

  “Sure. How are your daughters doing? Are they coming for Thanksgiving?” Sarah was adept at subject changes—No, she had lost the baby, but weren’t the cherry trees looking lovely?

  “Beth is coming on Wednesday to help me bake our usual pies, pecan and pumpkin and apple. We always make extras so that each girl can take one home. And Kate will be here Thursday with her boyfriend.”

  “The one who works at the music store?”

  “Yes, the budding disc jockey.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “It’s not a question of liking. I suppose he’s very likable. But he’s one of those sweet types who’s always at loose ends.” Margaret dipped a chicken skewer into a plate of mango chutney. “Can you join us for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Thanks”—Sarah stared into her wine—“but I’m going to visit Anne.”

  “Oh, good. How is she?”

  “She’s busy with all of her daughters’ activities. Dance class and music lessons and that sort of stuff.”

  “I remember it well.” Margaret spooned a pile of blueberries onto her plate. “And what are you doing for the next few days?”

  “I’m in charge of the campus food drive, so I’ll be carting lots of boxes over to St. Francis’s.”

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No.” Sarah balanced a slice of salmon with a trio of capers on a Table Water cracker. “Some fraternity brother is supposed to do the lifting.”

  “Men do serve their purpose,” Margaret said.

  “Yes.” Sarah blushed. “They do.” Her fingers shook ever so slightly, causing a caper to roll off onto the floor. She leaned over to pick it up, and when she lifted her eyes again to Margaret, Sarah detected a smile in the corner of her friend’s lips.

  “Clumsy of me.”

  “It’s not that.” Margaret laughed. “It’s your expression. I can always tell when you’re hiding something. Your eyes are so obvious.”

  Sarah dropped her gaze to the bottom of her wineglass, where the stem formed a dark pupil. “Yes,” she murmured. “I do have a secret. A big secret.”

  She envisioned David, thigh-deep in the river, water dripping over the rim of his hip boots. His fly rod hissed across the water’s surface, and as she listened for its words, Sarah opened her mouth and let the syllables fall.

  “I slept with Nate. It happened after the show. We were drunk and I could barely remember what happened the next morning. But there he was, lying beside me.” She laughed. Saying it aloud made it seem almost comical. “I was so embarrassed I fled the scene. I haven’t answered his calls since. It was a stupid thing to do . . . It won’t happen again.”

  Margaret remained quiet until at last Sarah flinched.

  “What?”

  Margaret smiled. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

  “Wouldn’t you protest, if you had slept with your brother-in-law?”

  “My brother-in-law”—Margaret laughed—“is bald, fat, and gay . . . Anywa
y, it’s not surprising, the way Nate was doting on you all night. And with Judith there, playing the panderer. It’s sort of natural, isn’t it? You’ve lost your husband, he’s lost his girlfriend and his brother. Maybe you two could do each other some good.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Well . . .” Margaret hesitated. “He’s not the sort I would have chosen for you. Nate’s a little too sleek for my tastes. I prefer men with more obvious imperfections.”

  “Nate has imperfections.”

  “Ah.” Margaret nodded. “There you go.” She took a sip of wine. “My only question is whether you really like Nate, or whether he’s just a way of holding on to David.”

  Once again Sarah’s eyes turned to her wineglass. “I think I’m holding on to David in all kinds of ways . . . But to tell you the truth, I’ve always had a little crush on Nate. Purely physical, never an emotional attraction. It’s hard to have a brother-in-law who’s so damn handsome.”

  Against the nearest window a dying leaf had pressed its yellow face, black-veined and dotted with age spots. Sarah watched the wind peel it away from the glass. “Our neighbors would be so appalled if they knew that I had slept with my brother-in-law. And David only gone three months.”

  “Christ.” Margaret planted her glass on the table, causing a tiny red tidal wave to splash over the rim. “We are both too old to give a damn about what the neighbors think. The question is, what do you think?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I think I’m going to hide from Nate.”

  “Right. Good plan.” Margaret rolled her eyes as she dabbed a sponge at the puddle of wine. “Can I ask you something very personal?”

  “Since when have you ever asked permission?”

  “All right, then. When was the last time you and David had sex?”

  Sarah almost laughed. She thought to say “yesterday” just to watch Margaret’s expression, but instead her mind traveled back over the last year of her marriage, in all of its dull grays and muted browns—the bitter politeness, the numbing routine, the occasional kiss on the cheek. After her third miscarriage she and David had stopped having sex. The act had become tainted, love and death intertwined just as the poets always said. Still, on David’s forty-third birthday she had imagined her body as a gift, a bit worn and faded, but nevertheless a three-dimensional object that might be dressed up with a bow.

  “Four months before he disappeared.” Sarah flashed Margaret a biting smile. “You think I’m in need of some sexual healing?”

  Margaret did not flinch. “I think you’ve been in mourning for a long time. Long before David died. And I think you are entitled to a little joy in your life, wherever it comes from.”

  When Sarah did not respond, Margaret lifted a silver platter from the counter to her right. “Enough of this . . . Have a tart.”

  • 22 •

  The next morning, as she drove a blue campus van down fraternity row, Sarah mulled over Margaret’s words. It was true that she had been in mourning for a long time, and for her, mourning took the form of hibernation, a retreat into dreams in her Victorian cave. She supposed it was high time to rejoin the living, to set aside her brooding and find some pleasure in the world. After all, if David could be resurrected, transformed according to some lost vision from his youth, then why not her? She certainly had the time and the money, and enough years ahead to make a new life possible. But it would take a mighty effort to wake from these past few months. She imagined Rip Van Winkle rising from his mountain knoll—the calcified limbs unfolding, the eyes still cloudy with dreams. What force of nature broke that character’s long siesta?

  Nate had roused her body with the pressure of his lips. That was the role of the handsome prince, to wake the cursed woman from her hundred years’ sleep. But even his expert fingers had not managed to touch her heart. That was her own task, she told herself. The goal to which she must consecrate her life. From this day forward—Sarah pledged to the traffic—she must resurrect her own dormant spirit.

  And perhaps this was a start, she thought as she parked at the PKE house. This was how widows had repaired their broken lives for centuries, by stepping out of their houses, out of their own thin skins, and into the lives of strangers. There were always other people whose situations were more desperate, people open to the charity of lonely women. The only danger Sarah foresaw in her middling philanthropy was that she might measure her life by the scale of local suffering and end up taking solace in the misery of others.

  But there was no misery on fraternity row, where the white pickets gleamed like well-tended teeth. The PKE house had symmetrical staircases that curled in vast parentheses up to a wide verandah. Sarah’s fingers trailed along the railing as she approached the double doors—twelve panels of solid oak, and a half-moon glowing above the transom. She lifted the brass knocker and dropped it once, enough to beckon a sixties-ish housemother whose pleated tennis skirt matched her wrinkled cheeks. Sarah explained that she had come to meet an unnamed senior who was supposed to help with the campus food drive. The woman pointed toward the living room.

  “Have a seat in the parlor while I check upstairs.”

  The “parlor” was a thirty-foot room with high ceilings, wood floors, and a vast Oriental rug. Its intricate weave of reds and blues seemed perfect for hiding decades of mud, beer, and vomit, but the furniture was less forgiving, with stains on the chintz upholstery and nicks in the legs of the walnut chairs. So much careless wealth—plastic lawn furniture would have been more appropriate.

  She remembered standing in a room like this seventeen years ago, when she and David were still dating. They had come to visit Nate in his senior year of college, to attend a Halloween party his fraternity was hosting. David was dressed as Frankenstein and she was his terrible bride—a parody of the undead even in their early days—she with a beehive perched on her skull like a giant Brillo pad. Together they had walked from room to room in search of the too-beautiful brother, finding him in a space like this, with Persian rugs and French doors and leather couches with white creases.

  Nate was a young Count Dracula; black circles framed his blue eyes. He was lounging on a sofa, bowing his mouth to the neck of any girl who ventured within reach, and all of them ventured, his ever-willing victims, as if Nate were a bishop offering Communion. He marked each throat with a slimy gel that squirted from the tip of his fangs.

  Sarah’s neck alone remained untouched, for when he spotted his brother Nate popped the fangs from his mouth and rose with a benign grin.

  “You don’t want to suck my blood?” she had asked when Nate shook her hand.

  She still remembered his reply: “Some other time.”

  Sarah piveted at a noise in the hallway. The housemother was back, followed by a lanky boy in wrinkled khakis whose hair poked east and west.

  “What’s your name?” Sarah asked.

  “This is Zack,” the woman answered. “He should be very helpful.” She addressed these last words to the yawning student, heaving a cardboard box full of tin cans into his arms.

  Outside, as they descended the curving staircase, Sarah admired the spring in Zack’s legs, and the effortless way he slid the box into the back of the van. When he turned and looked at her, she blushed. “I appreciate your help.”

  Zack shrugged with one shoulder and flung his hair back from his eyes. “Our house is on probation. We’ve each got to do five hours of community service before we can have another party.”

  “I see.” She smiled. “You are a paragon of altruism.”

  Together they walked fraternity row from door to door, along sidewalks barely shaded by skeletal trees. Most of the houses were immense brick structures with round white columns and covered porches. Respectable facades, she thought, for havens of debauchery. Often when they entered, they discovered an empty box waiting in the foyer where Sarah had deposited it three weeks ago. Zack was especially useful then, buttonholing anyone found lounging in front of a television.

  “Hey!
” He waved the empty box like a cardboard manifesto. “You assholes didn’t leave any food for the poor! Get off your lazy butts and find something in the kitchen!” And when a sheepish boy returned with a few cans: “Don’t give them that crap! Nobody wants to eat that.”

  “You have a flair,” Sarah said, which made Zack grin.

  At the Sigma Nu house, while Zack was off corralling sophomores, Sarah stood in an alcove and stared out the window. Nate had danced in a space like this on Halloween night—a wood floor, a bay window, stereo speakers three feet tall. She had expected him to gravitate to the most beautiful girls, to reserve himself for partners who approached his own perfection. But no, Nate danced with a pink-haired clown whose waist was twice his size. He danced with fairies, danced with ghosts, danced with a red-lipped Elvira in fishnet stockings. Dark skin, pale skin, freckled and rouged—he was utterly catholic in his taste in partners, bowing to a trio of witches who circled their wands above his head.

  But he never danced with Sarah. And now, as she looked out at the leaves crushed beneath the wheels of passing cars, she remembered how she had felt on that distant Halloween, how she had wanted Nate to cross the room and extend his hand—to lead her to the dance floor with the tips of his long, plastic nails. Somehow David’s presence had always rendered her untouchable. She had been waiting seventeen years for her dance with Nate.

  “Are you ready?” Zack stood in the doorway with a tower of pasta boxes.