Single Wife

by Nina Solomon

  “SWEETIE, TELL LAZ that they’re predicting a bad storm for late tomorrow. Is he flying into Kennedy?” her father asked.

  “I think so,” Grace answered.

  “Could be long delays. He may even have a layover. Tell him to call ahead to make sure the flight hasn’t been canceled.” As she listened, Grace thought the three of them made a good, if unwitting, team.

  By the time the Sugarmans arrived, her father had printed out two copies of the five-day local forecast from the National Weather Service.

  Francine Sugarman was a renowned cook among their circle of friends, and these Sunday Scrabble games were often more about food than etymology, although Bert always faithfully lugged his Oxford English Dictionary from their apartment on East Sixty-fifth Street in case of any disputes, which he clearly relished. Bert and Laz shared a love of words. For Bert, his dictionary was like a thirty-pound, two-volume security blanket, while for Laz, words were the source of some greater understanding, as if when the roots of a word were traced back to its source, there was order at last.

  “Your mother tells me Laz isn’t going to be joining us,” Francine said to Grace in the kitchen. Francine’s silvery white hair had recently been cut severely short, further accentuating her pale blue eyes and her distinctive nose, which Grace’s mother suspected had been “done.” “And I made my famous sweet-and-sour meatballs just for him,” she added. And they were for Laz. Certainly not for Bert, who was diabetic and for whom the meatballs were supposedly off-limits (although he was known to sneak a few when Francine’s back was turned), or for Grace, who was a vegetarian. “You know you can freeze them and then thaw them out when he gets back. I’ll send you home with a container of them.”

  Francine’s containers had her name embossed both on the lids and the bottoms, and with masking tape, their contents labeled in indelible ink. As Grace looked at the assortment of containers on the kitchen counter, she wondered when this meal had actually been prepared. In Francine’s skilled hands, thawing had been elevated to an art form.

  “Your microwave heats much more evenly than mine,” Francine commented as she and Paulette watched a serving bowl turning inside the microwave oven.

  “Paulette,” Milton called from the dining room, where he was arranging the tiles upside down and in a diamond pattern, “remember what the doctor told you about your eyes.”

  “What?” Francine asked.

  “Oh, nothing, just something about microwaves causing cataracts,” Grace’s mother answered, dismissing him as if she were shooing a fly. She opened the door to the microwave and gave the meatballs a stir.

  “You could always try smoking marijuana,” Bert chimed in from the dining room.

  Grace had heard this exact exchange dozens of times, and she could predict what Francine would utter next with more accuracy than the National Weather Service could predict tomorrow’s weather.

  “Honey, I told you before—that’s for glaucoma,” Francine called back from the kitchen.

  THE GAME PROCEEDED uneventfully, at least in terms of Grace and her dissembling. Her husband was mentioned throughout the game in statements such as Laz would have gotten the triple-word score, or Milt, save some meatballs for Grace to take to Laz, or Doesn’t Laz’s shirt look cute on Gracie? Bert won the game, which he attributed to the fact that Laz was not there. In the final round, Grace had a q, y, x, r, blank, m, and w, but she was challenged by Bert when she put down quim, which would have been her highest score of the game.

  “That’s not a word,” her mother said. “Don’t you have a t or something?”

  “It’s a word all right,” Bert said, with a customary downward swivel of his head, which looked more like he was trying to suppress a burp than an illegitimate word.

  “What does it mean?” her father asked.

  “Oh, never mind,” Grace said, snatching the tiles off the board. She felt as if she had been caught by the principal kissing a boy in the stairwell at a high school dance. Laz often read aloud to Grace from obscure nineteenth-century volumes he found at the Strand bookstore downtown. Some of the books were on the racy side. Quim was one of their favorite words. Like buzz or gargle, it sounded as it felt. Grace wondered if Bert’s dictionary contained the archaic word for G-spot as well.

  “It is a word. But it’s slang and therefore not permitted,” Bert said officially.

  “Good, honey,” her mother said. Grace looked at her mother, who obviously thought she had bestowed upon her daughter the most lavish of compliments. “Next time you’ll get it right.”

  THAT EVENING, WHEN Grace returned home, she put the container of Francine Sugarman’s sweet-and-sour meatballs in the freezer. Francine said the meatballs would keep for over a year. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary, Grace thought, as she drifted off.

  2

  JANE MEETS THE INVISIBLE MAN

  The dimness in the dining room was bothersome to Grace. So in order to compensate for the burned-out Duro-Lite, the next morning, after leaving coffee for José, she carried in a standing lamp with a pink bulb that she found especially pleasing. When she plugged it in, she discovered that the outlet was not near enough to the table, and went into the pantry to find an extension cord. Grace was absolutely certain that there was one in the utility cabinet above the broom closet. The cabinet smelled of old rubber cement and lemon oil as she pushed aside rolls of duct tape, tins of shoe polish, and old rags.

  After several minutes of searching to no avail, she began to grow testy and felt a sudden craving for Saltines that she attributed to having had two cups of tea on an empty stomach, which often left her queasy. She reached farther in the cabinet, thinking the cord might have been shoved to the back. Laz referred to the cabinet as the black hole of household products, and now Grace understood why. She was trying to think of other likely places an extension cord might be when the telephone rang.

  “Grace?” It was Kane. “You sound out of breath. Something wrong?”

  “Hi, Kane,” she answered, brushing the hair off her face. “I was just looking for an extension cord.”

  “Literal or figurative?”

  “Kane, really.” She was not in the mood for his playfulness. “I’ve turned the apartment upside down looking for it.”

  “You lost it?” he inquired.

  Grace could practically hear the wheels in his head turning. “What are you implying?”

  “Just that maybe it’s time that you cut the cord.”

  “Kane, I’m talking about an extension cord.”

  “So am I.”

  “And anyway, I didn’t lose it, I misplaced it,” she said.

  “My point exactly, but you’ll never admit it. I’m just calling to let Laz know hockey’s canceled this week because of the Peewees.”

  “I’ll tell him as soon as he gets back.”

  After Grace hung up the phone, she returned to the cabinet, rummaging around a little, but still unable to locate the missing cord. She did find several odd items and miscellany, like a beaded evening bag with a broken strap, several remote controls with no batteries, a pumpkin carving kit, and a mismatched glove she thought she might someday make finger puppets out of.

  Just as she was about to close the cabinet and step down, she caught sight of a photograph. She’d never been fond of the picture. Kane had copied it for them. It was taken seven years ago at the Halloween party at which Grace had first met Laz. They were all in costume. She was standing next to Kane, and Laz had his arm around Grace’s friend Chloe. There was a layer of dust over the plastic frame, and Grace removed the picture to look at it more closely. Laz had joked that he wouldn’t show up on film since he was, after all, dressed as the Invisible Man. But he was quite visible then.

  GRACE HAD MET Kane before she met Laz. Technically, she and Kane had been dating, although it was laughed off as a non-event for both of them. As with all such events, it was often funnier in the retelling.

  Once Laz and Grace laid eyes on each other, of course, it was a
fait accompli to Grace—she knew that they would be together, despite the fact that she was dating his best friend. After the party, Laz simply took Kane aside and told him that he was going to steal his girlfriend from him, to which Kane responded, “Be my guest.” It wasn’t until much later that Grace even questioned the sequence of events. Mostly, her ego was a bit bruised that Kane hadn’t put up more of a fight, but she wouldn’t have changed a thing. She might not have married Laz otherwise.

  Grace and Kane had had friends in common and were introduced to each other the summer before the party at a group house in Great Barrington. It was the Fourth of July. Kane had been playing blow pong, and in between sips of beer and Louis Armstrong–like exhalations that sent the Ping-Pong ball sailing across the table, he’d flirted with Grace. They shelled peas into a large glass bowl for dinner, decorated shortcakes in patriotic splendor with blueberries, strawberries, and whipped cream, and by the end of the weekend had formed a certain bond. Over dinner one night, Grace heard numerous references to Kane’s friend Laz, his name invoked as if he were some sort of legend. Once back in the city, she and Kane went to a few movies together and kissed only once. He brought her a bouquet of yellow roses, which Grace later interpreted as a friendly, rather than amorous, gesture.

  That Halloween, Kane had invited Grace to a costume party, and she’d asked if he had a friend for Chloe, her oldest friend, who was in town from Chicago. Grace dressed carefully, pulling her wavy brown hair up into a Wilma Flintstone–like hairdo and adjusting her strapless bra under the off-the-shoulder leopard outfit she had dug up in the back of her closet. She wore a pair of faux-lizard sandals even though it was raining, and she had to jump over puddles to hail a taxi. Chloe was less than enthusiastic—she hated costumes—but with a little prodding, she succumbed to wearing a peasant blouse and a white kerchief. With her tattooed ankle, spiky black hair, rhinestone cross, and blue Doc Martens, she looked like a punk rock milkmaid.

  It was almost eleven-thirty by the time they arrived at 120th Street and Riverside Drive at an unlived-in mansion belonging to a friend of Kane’s. The mansion was the perfect setting for a Halloween party. It was legendary for its underground tunnels and passageways that led to the river for unspecified purposes, which were the subject of much speculation during the evening. Kane had opted for an S-and-M Tarzan, complete with a leather whip and a wild black wig, to complement Grace’s Jane. Halloween was not Grace’s favorite holiday. While walking on the streets of Manhattan around Halloween, she often couldn’t tell who was in costume and who wasn’t, and it unnerved her.

  The moment Grace first saw Laz standing in the darkened vestibule, something about him struck a chord in her, in spite of the fact that his face was wrapped in gauze and he was wearing a hat and mirrored sunglasses. She said hello and then proceeded to spill beer on him when she nervously tried to shake his gloved hand.

  “You, I won’t forget,” he said with a smile as he dried his hands with a cocktail napkin. She knew that first impressions could be misleading—she had been misled before—but this was different. When Laz asked Chloe if she’d like a tour of the mansion, Grace thought it was very gracious of him to entertain her friend, but then she remembered that Kane was her date and she turned to him.

  “I know,” Kane said. “Women and dogs—it’s like he casts a spell on them.”

  It wasn’t just women and dogs, though, it was everyone. People seemed drawn to him, like a long-lost friend.

  Grace was amazed that by the end of the evening Laz, who had undone the gauze but kept on his sunglasses and gloves in deference to H. G. Wells, knew intimate details about everyone present. Of course, they knew of him, too, from the articles he wrote for Esquire and his appearances on public television, but mostly for the Amnesty International award for his book on Kosovo, from where he had just returned. His book, entitled Waking the Ghosts, documented the six weeks he had spent impersonating a mute Muslim prisoner in a Serbian concentration camp, which he had done in order to write firsthand about the atrocities there. The account was deemed groundbreaking and courageous, catapulting him to almost rock-star status among other journalists. The book had done remarkably well—it was a sensation, actually, and it led to a two-book deal. There was even a Pulitzer nomination. Grace had read an excerpt in Vanity Fair. It didn’t hurt that Laz was also photogenic and well spoken, and gave the impression that none of the money or acclaim mattered to him, which only seemed to earn him that much more respect.

  As Laz talked animatedly about the impact on children orphaned by war, Grace tried to listen attentively, but all she knew was that when he looked at her, which he did often, her cheeks flushed as if he could tell she was busy unwrapping the rest of him in her mind.

  After the party, the four of them walked north on Riverside Drive past Grant’s Tomb to where Laz’s Saab was parked. The rain had stopped, but the weather had grown colder. Laz put his jacket over Grace’s shoulders and took her arm. Even their strides matched.

  The Invisible Man had terrified Grace when she saw it as a child on Creature Feature. Her parents had left her with a new babysitter who made Jiffy Pop then turned out all the lights and closed the curtains in order to create the proper mood for watching the film. For months and even years afterwards, Grace had the distinct feeling that she was being followed on her way to school and that when she showered, she could feel the Invisible Man’s fingers tickling her back. But with Laz, none of those old associations applied.

  Laz drove them back to Grace’s building to her one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a brownstone. Grace made hot chocolate and the four of them played a game of Trivial Pursuit. After they all left, Grace took off her costume and picked up the gauze Laz had left on the coffee table, wrapping it loosely around her hands and up her forearms as she sat on the windowsill and finished her cup of cocoa.

  GRACE SLID THE photograph back into the frame. She and Chloe had since drifted apart, but she couldn’t remember why. When had they last spoken? It had very likely been nearly a year. Their lives had taken such different turns, and, in truth, Chloe and Laz had never really warmed to each other.

  She considered what it would mean to see him walk through the door right now. He could, she knew, at any moment. He had done so before. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t again. Grace never questioned why he was with her. For her, the answer was plain. She had witnessed the lulls, which often turned into dark sieges, when he’d crawl into himself, sometimes not calling for days. She gave him room to breathe, always welcoming him back, no questions asked and demanding no answers. He felt safe with her. Safe to withdraw because he knew she’d always be there to fill in the gaps.

  The first time he’d left like this, he was gone for two days, sending Grace into a hysterical frenzy. The night before, they’d talked until dawn and had never seemed closer. He told her about his father’s abandoning him when he was three and said that he could never bear to lose her, too. When he finally fell asleep, he looked like a small child. The next day, when he didn’t come home for dinner, Grace telephoned friends and family, then eventually the police and hospitals.

  Francine Sugarman brought over platters to feed the dozens or so people keeping vigil in Grace’s apartment. She even offered to spend the night, having arrived equipped with an overnight bag and her electric blanket, which then blew a fuse. Kane brought bagels and whitefish salad; Grace’s mother, a noodle kugel and a package of generic English muffins she’d found at a two-for-one special. Relatives from New Haven, whom Grace hadn’t seen for years, dropped by for a few hours, lining up on the sectional couch as if for a matinee. Bert Sugarman took one look at the assortment of people and food and joked, “Who died?”

  Grace still remembered the expression on Laz’s face when he walked through the door to a roomful of anxious people, all clamoring for an explanation from him, although he had hidden his displeasure well.

  “Where on earth have you been?” Grace’s mother demanded.

  “Wh
ere were you?” Milton asked.

  “We were worried sick about you,” Francine said.

  “You couldn’t have just picked up the phone?” Bert asked.

  Laz shrugged his shoulders and kissed Grace on the cheek.

  “If I’d known I’d be getting such a big reception, I would have shaved,” he said and laughed, but underneath his smile was an icy look that still made Grace shiver, as if she were the one who should apologize for causing such a stir.

  Everyone present sat back and gave a collective sigh of relief. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  The second time Laz disappeared, she called only Kane. “Don’t worry, I’ll find him,” he told her. “I think I know where he might be.”

  Four hours later, Kane and Laz walked through the door. Laz had gotten in the car and just kept driving until he reached Kane’s lake house. When Kane found him, Laz was sitting on the front porch. Grace helped him off with his shoes and put him into bed, watching him until he fell asleep.

  “Next time, don’t get anyone involved, Gracie,” he said when he finally emerged two days later. “No one understands me like you do. Not even Kane. I’ll always come back. I promise. You have to trust that.”

  The third time he left was longer, although she couldn’t remember exactly how much longer. Grace vowed to tell no one, waiting each night for Laz to return and occupy an apartment that he apparently had decided not to live in.

  The next few times after that were even less distinguishable, and it began to matter less and less to her. Grace knew that any attempts at questioning him would be fruitless. He would provide no answers for her. And while she tried in earnest to feel her way around the perimeter of his defenses for a way in, he’d already slipped out the back.

  For Grace, the wedding vows would always fall short. Even if Laz had taken a vow to be physically present along with the vows to love, honor and cherish, it could not have kept him home. Laz was not a conventional missing man. He wasn’t out with the boys, carousing the town, slumped over a drink in a smoke-filled, mildewy bar, or playing poker or bowling until all hours with his buddies, or even hanging out at a strip club. That would have been easier to accept. Boys will be boys, after all. But Laz wasn’t acting out. He was simply unlocatable.