Dec 9 | ARE YOU STILL WRITING? YOU ONCE TOLD ME YOU WERE WRITING STORIES
SOMETIMES I THINK OF HOW, IF WE’D GOTTEN MARRIED, HOW WE’D SIT BY THE FIRE AFTER SEX ON SNOWY WINTER NIGHTS AND READ OUR STORIES TO EACH OTHER, SIPPING ON EXPENSIVE RED WINE.
You’d be a good critic. Good-humoured but honest with me. You would challenge me. I’d sit with a pen and only be a little pricked by your criticism as I listened and nodded and crossed out and circled things, writing pretend notes in the margins. You’d stroke the dog’s head absentmindedly with your free hand, the one not holding my stapled-together pages, your feet up on an ottoman, your brows furrowed.
I’d probably be a little more gentle with you because, let’s face it, you don’t have that much time to spend on your writing with your finance job that keeps us in such a nice house with a real stone facade and a wood-burning fireplace. But I’d be unprepared for some of the good stuff that would come out. The real scraped-away honest stuff that makes your voice tremble as you read it out loud. I’d nod and drink my wine as though thinking very hard about a particular turn of phrase you used and the crackle of the fire would be all there was between us. We’d watch the fire until eventually I’d say something to try to mask my envy, which might come out as anger about something unrelated. Like how you’re always leaving your plates in the sink for me to rinse and put into the dishwasher when it’s right there. I’m not your maid. Or your mother. She did too much for you. I might actually get angry about it then and have to walk away.
I’m sorry about that.
“Cathartic,” I repeat as though mulling it over. “Sure. It’s cathartic for sure.”
I consult a pretend watch at my wrist, which, even if it did exist, would have been covered by several layers of winter clothing. “Oh geez. I have to get back. I have someone coming to look after Felix. I have an appointment.”
“Sure, of course. I know how busy things can get for you guys. Don’t mean to hold you up.” He moves his arm and for a second I think he’s going to pat me on the head. Instead he squeezes my shoulder through my parka. “It was so great to see you, Katie. I remember those nights at the bar. Just barely now—like it was another life. God. Like a life someone else lived, know what I mean?”
“Yeah, totally. Another life. I know exactly what you mean,” I say.
Dec 12 | I MISSED MY CHANCE. I KNOW WHEN IT WAS NOW. SHIT.
SHIT SHIT SHIT.
Remember the time you came by the bar to say hi, months after you stopped working there?
You were with some short dark-haired girl. I didn’t get a good look at her. It was a busy night. You and I were yell-talking over the music and the crowd, leaning in close over the bar. My hair was piled up on my head in falling curls. I wore a short black dress and high boots. I was feeling good that night. I rolled my eyes at my annoying co-bartender and you smiled. Dimples. I had to get back to work. Five deep, the people around the bar. In the weeds, we said. When you were leaving you put on your coat and held your hand up to your ear like an imaginary phone. Call me, you mouthed from behind the girl.
I guess I must have been near some kind of happiness then because, anyway, I didn’t call. So I missed my chance.
Is that the girl you married? Was that Kaia?
“Really good running into you, Katie,” he says, looking right at me, before tossing his empty coffee cup in the garbage. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets as though he’s just realized how cold it is and looks at me again. “I mean it. It’s so great to see you.”
He holds my gaze for a second and I imagine I see some kind of plea. And then, for the first time that morning, Felix lets out a wail, saving us all.
Dec 17 | I THINK I SAW YOU WALKING ONE NIGHT
A LONG TRENCH COAT FLAPPING OUT BEHIND YOU.
Such a businessman. And so handsome. Chiselled, people would say, but still with a real glint of life in your eyes. It was years ago now and it must have been fall because it was dark but not that late; I had just finished work and was heading for the streetcar. I stood at the corner, not crossing. I didn’t want you to see me. You were looking straight ahead and not around you, as your tribe is wont to do. Striding straight ahead to some place where someone was waiting for you (home, I assumed; some swank loft with high ceilings and low furniture), briefcase in one hand, a just-bought bottle of red in the other. I can’t confirm that part because it was tucked in a brown paper bag, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, a good bottle from the Vintages section. Just an ordinary Tuesday night. Nothing around you seemed to matter. You were happy to be going where you were going, striding away from the rest of us. You had stories to tell to someone you loved for the time being. I stood heart in throat and watched you pass and didn’t say “Hey! D—! It’s me!” because that would have been so casual and breezy and in no possible way could I be either of those things. I’m not good at being casual to begin with, and certainly not under those circumstances.
I stand at the corner praying for the light to change, the impression of Dev’s body still lingering against mine despite the bulk of our coats. He hugged me tight when he said goodbye, and held on a beat longer after I’d dropped my arms.
I pull out my phone. Three missed calls from Mitch.
I slip it back into my coat pocket as the light turns green, and set off for home, bracing against the wind.
Dec 26 | SOMETIMES WHEN I’M DOWN AND OUT AND WONDER WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
I THINK ABOUT TWO THINGS:
1. The way you looked at one of your old girlfriends as she danced by the bar. She was blond and so obviously putting on a show for you and you were eating it up. While you watched her, ravenous, you told me that she was a Tae Bo instructor and had killer abs.
2. I will never have abs. None to be talked about in an admiring way with another person, behind a bar. And I think that would have mattered to you.
The front door opens and a blast of cold air reaches us on the living room floor.
“Hello! Hello?” my mother-in-law, Carol, calls from the hall. Felix sits propped by couch cushions beside me, turning a knitted monkey over in his hands.
“We’re in here!” I call back, not getting up.
“Jesus, the fucking snow,” she yells. “Almost broke my neck on the walkway. Not your fault, I’m not saying it because of that. I know you can’t go out and do it now, with the baby I mean. No one expects you to! It just came down fast is all.” Her voice gets lost as she bends over to untie her boots, the scarf still coiled around her mouth.
Felix looks at me with big eyes. I make a face that is meant to be reassuring but his expression morphs from uncertainty to alarm.
“Do you have salt?” Carol calls out. “I can go put some down, in case the mailman. They could sue. Not that I think they would! You can’t be the only one who hasn’t shovelled. I was out front at my place at seven this morning so I could clear a path and lay the salt and still make the 803. I’m not saying you should. I don’t have babies. I’m just saying that it’s a process and not everyone can so I’m sure you’re not the only one. The mailman can’t sue everybody!” Her laugh gruff, her throat still recovering from the cold.
“Hold on now! I see it…there’s a bit of salt left in this bag. Okay. Wait a minute.” She grunts as she yanks her boots back on, a current of arctic air chilling us before the door slams shut once more.
Jan 1 | I’M SORRY I MADE OUT WITH YOUR BROTHER INSTEAD
(SEVERAL TIMES.)
I’d go to his loft at the end of the night, when he was in town. There was this one time he put his hand under my skirt and went to touch between my legs but he just ended up rubbing the crotch of my tights because they were too short for me and about 3 inches away from my body. He kept rubbing anyway. I don’t think he noticed.
I guess by then I figured it would never happen between you and me. Before we were make-out friends, I’d ask him about you and he’d say things that meant you were off the market. I thought of you the whole time though.
Is that sick? He was as close as I would ever get. And everyone always talked about how hot he was, which was true, but he wasn’t you. Still, I went back there after my shifts for a time. He’d lead me past his buddies who were always there playing Xbox in the fluttering dark. A single strand of Christmas lights draped over the dresser in his room.
I’ve seen him a few times since. He’s always so warm and friendly, telling me how great I look. I don’t mean to, but I usually ask about you too fast. Sometimes it’ll be mid-hug and I’ll be released from his lean arms and his face will have changed. I take it to mean that this is a question he gets often and that maybe he was your proxy for other girls too.
“He’s great!” He told me not long ago. “He’s got kids now. So really good. Really good.”
I’ve got kids too. A toddler and a baby. Boy and girl, so a perfect family.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? The joy?
Felix rolls over and hits a button on the musical frog. Digital Mozart. Piano Concerto no. 21, “Elvira Madigan.” I only know that because I Shazam-ed it when it was playing one time and was surprised that it worked. The song is now nightmarishly out of tune, the frog terrifying as its eyes light up purple then blue then green to the warbled melody. I’m adding batteries to my mental list of what I have to pick up this afternoon, when the front door opens and closes again. I tense against the frigid blast.
“Okay! It’s done. It wasn’t so bad, the ice underneath. Where we are we have to go at it with a chisel!” Carol’s taking off her coat now, unwinding her scarf that’s wrapped four or five times around. I knitted it for her the Christmas I got engaged to Mitchell, in yarns of orange and yellow. She says it makes her think of sunshine and summer all winter long. It makes me think of that fall I made it, when Mitch and I sat on the couch drinking Merlot and binge-watching The Wire, cigarettes burning on the chipped bread plate we used as an ashtray. Creeping to bed in that old apartment with the stuck kitchen drawers and cracked bathroom tiles. All the sex, in all the rooms.
“No lawsuit now!” She laughs loud and turns with her arms already extended to take the baby from me. He is rooting, bobbing his head on the faded Beaver Canoe label at my breast, but she takes him anyway.
Jan 9 | I GOOGLED YOU
TO SEE YOUR PICTURE.
There’s one beside the announcement of a recent promotion. I saw the building where you work. I now know you’re on the 38th floor because it says. I also know your extension and the number of your executive assistant. I imagine your office has windows and I can see you rotating in your leather businessman chair to look out over the darkening city. Your fingertips tap against each other as you consider an important merger. Check that—your fingertips tap against each other as you think about me. I realize I’ve only ever seen that world on television, because then I imagine it cutting away to the next scene, which is me, here. Sweatshirt and limp ponytail and leaking breasts, sitting cross-legged on the couch with my laptop. There should be a song playing in the background, something melancholy, as I turn to look out the living room window at a tree covered in snow.
You look different from what I remember, but I’m trying not to think about it.
My phone rings. Mitch’s picture lights up the screen. He’s wearing a straw cowboy hat and sunglasses with fluorescent green frames, the shot taken the last time we were in Mexico. I can’t remember what year. We were laughing so hard when I took it.
I grab the baby back from Carol and tuck him under one arm as I head for the couch, lifting up my sweatshirt on the way. “It’s Mitch,” I tell her, as if to explain, answering the phone.
“Hey,” I say.
“What the fuck? I’ve been calling. I thought something happened.” Mitch’s voice doesn’t match his picture. My pulse quickens and my milk doesn’t flow. Felix unlatches and looks up at me, then bobs again on my nipple, fussing, trying to stimulate.
“No. Your mom is here.”
“Shit. Did you shovel?”
I flip the baby around to the other boob.
“Other people have babies,” Mitch says. “You’re not the first one. Other people can have babies and shovel the walk.”
“It’s shovelled.”
Someone says something in the background, one of his crew. They laugh together. “Hello?” he says back on the phone, his voice bent now by a smile for someone else.
“Your mom is here, and I’m trying to feed the baby. Is there something you need?”
“Just wondering if they called.”
“No. I told you I would text if they did.”
Felix starts to wail.
“Shit. That sucks. I thought by now for sure.”
“Mitch, I gotta go.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go.”
“Wait. What time are you coming home?” I breathe deep, breathe deep. Put my nipple back in the baby’s mouth.
“Can’t say. Hard to know on a day like this, lotta variables. Why?”
“It’s just. I could use some help here.”
“Well I don’t know when, Kate. Jesus. We’ve got this project. Delivery didn’t come last night, so we’re behind.” He inhales. “Anyway, that’s why my mom’s there, isn’t it? To help?”
“Are you smoking?”
“What? What’s wrong with you?” He exhales, further from the phone this time. “Jesus. What are you, the SS? I’ve got shit to do, Kate. I know you do too, but it’s like, I need to keep my sanity. Someone’s got to stay sane in that goddamn house.”
I close my eyes and take a breath. Keep the milk going.
“Anyway, what are you worried about? It’s not like I’m smoking over the goddamn crib. Stay off Google. I’m not even in the fucking truck. Jesus, Kate.” He inhales again, blows the smoke out like a heavy sigh. “I told you, the delivery. And plus they still haven’t called, so what do you want me to do? Huh? I thought we were a team here.”
Milk trickles down my flaccid belly, dripping from the other breast. I flip the baby back to that one, the phone gripped between my shoulder and ear. Carol unloads the dishwasher, putting bowls on the shelf for wineglasses.
Someone calls to Mitch again, wind in the receiver. “Oh, they’re here? Fuckin’ A. Babe—delivery just got here. I’m probably going to be late. I’ll call. Love you.”
I stare at the phone after he hangs up. Instead of throwing it at the wall, I tap the blog icon and adjust Felix on a pillow so I can type with my thumbs while he nurses.
Feb 2 | I DIDN’T THINK I’D SEE YOU
DIDN’T THINK WE’D TALK.
I took a detour after the baby’s appointment this morning.
Thought we’d pass your office on the way to the subway. Tempting fate, I guess. I’m still shaking.
You look good. Better than your picture—or, pictures, I should say, because I’ve seen a few of them. I’ve seen a few of them because I’ve been to your house. I’ve been to your house because your wife invited me there. She’s very pretty, Kaia. So pretty it’s hard not to look at her. I caught just about everyone in our memoir-writing course staring at her at one point or another. That moms’ cathartic writing class she took? I took it too, enrolled in the fall, after Felix was born. It was a continuing-ed thing at the university, though, not just for moms. Or women.
She’s a good writer. Did you know that? It took her a few weeks, a few tries, but when she got real—whew! She wrote this piece about decorating your cottage, room by room. Sitting there by the big bay window with the view, listening to the designer go through a whole book of white paints while she touched a dozen fabric swatches spread across her lap, trying to feel something. The cicadas outside droning like air raid sirens, the Percocets she downed with a mug of vodka when the designer drove away. How she lay on the dock like a starfish, spiders crawling through her hair.
I told her how much I liked it, after that class, how vivid it was. We talked about kids, about writing. She asked me over. I brought Felix with me—my daughter’s in preschool, too. He was still so small and could s
leep anywhere. She served cappuccinos and biscotti and when she went to get napkins, I got up to look at her wedding picture on the gallery wall.
I didn’t hear her come back in, didn’t hear her next to me. Think I was in shock. She said some things about updating the photos, about it being on her list of things to do, about what I must think after hearing her stories.
I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I was in your house, your living room, breathing your air. I was sucked into a vortex of spinning memories: laughs behind the bar, whispers by the pool table, our bodies pressed together for late-night slow dances, feigning innocence. I could smell the beer and the sweat.
I kissed her. I turned and I kissed her pretty, pretty mouth. Lips that parted, briefly, and let me in, the way they do for you. I kissed her the way I wanted you to kiss me so long, long ago, the way I want to be kissed right now.
Sorry, I said, when she stepped back. I said it again. I told her I was tired, delirious.
She said it was okay but she looked hurt. Disappointed. I think she wanted us to be friends.
I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Something woke up when I saw your face, when I felt her loneliness. Maybe you were lonely too. Maybe we both took a wrong turn. That night, after a 3 a.m. feed, I opened my laptop and yelled into the dark the only way I could. Writing to you was like a bridge out of here, a lifeline flung through time, a middle finger flipped to my shittiest, loneliest days.
The phone dings, a text from Mitch.
Deflate tonight. Wrong delivery.
Told Steve would grab a beer after.
Rough go with his wife. Will call. Lv u
Felix has fallen asleep, his suction loosened, his mouth still near. I keep typing.
And then there you were. Here you are. On the street, in a coat and shoes and a scarf knotted just so, with eyebrows and nose hair and a self-satisfied smirk while a wife in despair echoes all around you. Close enough that I could smell the cologne and hair product and dry-cleaning chemicals which don’t at all resemble the sweet sourness of our T-shirts at the end of those nights, your breath in my ear, my nose in your neck.
The Dead Husband Project Page 8