Single Wife

by Nina Solomon

  “THERE’S A PACKAGE for you,” José said, as she walked into the lobby. Grace was afraid that it was another dozen Duro-Lites. Her second thought was that her mother had dropped by with more spoils from her Loehmann’s spree.

  José went over to the concierge desk and lifted up a small, unmarked carton, which he brought over to Grace. “It was delivered by messenger,” he told her. She cautiously took it from him. It was almost weightless. She turned it around to read the return address. There, in bold pink lettering, she read the words A Perfect Match.

  Upstairs, Grace opened her front door to the sound of the telephone. It had been several hours since she’d left her parents at the gallery with the Sugarmans. They were likely to be checking up on her. Grace placed the box next to the stack of Katharine Hepburn movies on the hall table and picked up the phone.

  “Grace—it’s Griffin.” His voice was muffled, as if he was talking to her from another planet.

  “Griffin,” she repeated. “I can barely hear you.”

  “I hope it’s not a bad time.”

  “No, I just walked in. Is everything all right?” she asked, shrugging off her coat and walking into the living room. The satin pants her mother had given her at the gallery were slippery and made a distracting swishing sound as she walked. She sat down on the Victorian love seat that she’d just had reupholstered in a lilac chintz, and she had to hold on to the armrest to keep herself from sliding off.

  “Well, I just thought you should know that they’re going to start the abatement Monday morning.”

  “The abatement?” Grace asked.

  “For the asbestos,” Griffin answered. “They said it should take about a week or so. They’ve already covered everything in plastic.”

  “How can you sleep there?” Grace asked.

  “I sort of made a slit in the plastic large enough for me to slide through. It’ll be fine,” he assured her. He paused. Grace could hear what sounded like hail falling on an air conditioner in the background. “Except for the falling plaster, that is.”

  “What plaster?” Grace asked, beginning to grow alarmed.

  “They’re working on a pipe upstairs.”

  “Griffin, it’s not safe for you to stay there.” She thought about the dismal black netting on the windows and imagined Griffin covered head to toe in white dust. She scolded herself for not having checked on him when she was there.

  She was about to tell him that he should look for a room in one of the residence halls on Broadway when, without thinking, she told him he should come stay with her. There was plenty of room. It made perfect sense. There were two extra bedrooms, which were unoccupied. The more she thought about it, the more the idea of having somebody around began to appeal to her. It would only be for a week, and she was going to Chicago on Friday anyway.

  “Are you sure that would be a good idea?” Griffin asked. Grace knew he was referring to Laz’s lack of responsiveness. In a way, she thought his staying at their place would mollify the situation somewhat.

  “Please consider it. I’d like to get to know you better.”

  Griffin hesitated. “You really don’t need to do this,” he said, finally.

  “I know. I want to.” Grace began to feel animated, more so than she had in weeks. She wanted to ask him all sorts of questions, like what kind of cereal he ate in the mornings, how he took his coffee, what section of the paper he read first. Toast or English muffins? Or she could make waffles. He was a bit on the thin side, after all, she could hear her mother saying.

  She harbored a secret hope that he would eat Grape-Nuts cereal with two-percent milk, take his coffee black with two sugars, and read the Op-Eds followed by the sports section while holding a slice of lightly toasted raisin bread in his hand—just like Laz. Then with a start, she corrected herself. It wasn’t Laz who liked raisin bread, it was Kane. How could she forget? Laz liked a currant scone covered with crème fraîche and a spoonful of raspberry jam, which inevitably dripped onto the newspaper.

  It was agreed, after another few rounds of demurring and insisting, that he would come first thing in the morning. Grace sat in the darkness, holding the phone in her hand and enjoying the quiet with the knowledge that the end of solitude was in sight. She was also half-waiting for her father’s postdinner, just-checking-up call, which, surprisingly, never came.

  It was almost ten o’clock when she went into the kitchen to get a knife and proceeded to open the carton from A Perfect Match. Underneath several crumpled sheets of packing paper, she found a small, rectangular box sealed in bubble wrap. She undid the tape and let the wrapping fall away.

  Inside were three pristine silver tubes. She cradled the lipsticks in her hand, reluctant to open them. How the lipsticks had arrived so speedily, she did not know, but she didn’t question it.

  She chose one, carefully pulled off the top, and twisted the bottom of the tube to reveal a perfectly angled tip, which she touched to the back of her hand. The consistency was smooth and cool, like the skin of an apple. She applied the lipstick without a mirror, following the contours of her mouth, and pressed her lips together. She could reorder to her heart’s content and never run out. She walked over to the mirror.

  Since Laz had left, except for hibachi night, she’d become accustomed to just a light coating of gloss. Velvet, the lipstick that she’d put on every morning for years, the color that had become second nature to her, now looked unfamiliar. She turned the dining room light on high and stared into the mirror. Her lips looked almost fake, not like hers at all. This was not the person she remembered. The Christmas tree began to blink as if objecting, too. Grace ran to the bathroom and wiped off the lipstick with a tissue and threw the tubes in the wastebasket. They landed with three hollow thumps on the bottom.

  21

  DOWN THE HATCH

  A little before eleven o’clock, the telephone rang. Grace let the machine pick up. She wanted nothing more than to rest and forget this strange day, and she was in no mood to hear the details of Francine’s farewell dinner. She heard the sound of her mother’s voice as she walked down the hall to the bedroom.

  Darling, it’s Mom. We had a lovely evening with the Sugarmans. A shame you weren’t feeling quite yourself. Dad wants to know if you’ll tape his show for him. He felt a little twinge, so we took him to Lenox Hill for a thallium stress test. We’re just waiting for the . . . Grace ran to the kitchen and grabbed the phone so quickly that it almost flew out of her hand.

  “Mom?” she said, out of breath.

  “Grace. I was in the middle of leaving a message,” she said, sounding slightly irritated that she’d been interrupted. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” she added as an afterthought.

  “No. I’m up. I heard the message. Why didn’t you call me earlier? How’s Dad?”

  “We didn’t want to worry you. It’s probably nothing. They’re just being very thorough.”

  “Do you want me to come over?” she asked, trying to hear through the static in her ears even though the line was clear.

  “That’s sweet of you, but Bert and Francine are here. Bert bumped into one of his old college friends in the waiting room. The man’s wife has gallstones. Anyway, it shouldn’t be too long. Don’t worry. We’ll call you first thing. You need to get some rest, dear. Give our love to Laz when you speak to him,” she said and then hung up.

  Feeling helpless, Grace went into the living room, sank down onto the couch, and stared at the blinking Christmas tree lights. Beside her was the bag of yarn still untouched from the other day, the perfect over-the-counter antidote to her racing mind. She took out some yarn and began a chain stitch, mindlessly crocheting as she allowed her thoughts to unravel. She could no more stop the obliterating effects of the drug in her system than influence the outcome of her father’s tests, or telepathically summon Laz back to her side. However, she could create something out of, or in spite of, the chaos, something that had order, symmetry, and purpose—whatever that might be.

  She continued
crocheting well into the night and must have dozed off for a while when the telephone rang. The sky was pink—not a predawn pink, but the kind of pink that might signal snow. It could have been three in the morning or sometime past eight; it was impossible to tell. She’d tucked the phone underneath her legs, and she could feel the warmth emanating from the battery pack.

  The results of her crocheting efforts covered her lap—a rectangle approximately two feet by four. It confounded Grace how the intervening hours had slipped by unnoticed, but the proof was in her hands. The dimensions were unremarkable. The stitches were plain, but pleasingly regular. It was too small for a throw and too large for a scarf for Griffin.

  As she folded it back to retrieve the phone, tiny sparks of electricity sent a tingling sensation down her arms as she realized that what she had unwittingly crocheted was a baby blanket. She held the blanket in her arms, but it only accentuated the weight of an unfillable absence. She knew there was no way to mourn an unacknowledged loss, although her hands had so deftly tried to orchestrate a symbolic remedy. For the briefest of moments, she allowed herself access to the knowledge that she felt pain.

  The phone continued to ring. As she pushed the button on the handset, she expected to hear her mother’s voice telling her that everything was fine, but she was startled by an unfamiliar man’s voice.

  “Mrs. Brookman. Adrian Dubrovsky here.” Grace bolted upright. “Mrs. Brookman?” he said again.

  Grace could hear the quiet tapping of computer keys on the other end. Her father often fiddled with some gadget, too, while he spoke to her on the phone. She walked into the kitchen to check the time. The clock on the microwave read six-fifteen. “Do you realize what time it is?” she asked, slowly gathering her wits.

  “I apologize for disturbing you so early, but my schedule is quite erratic and I felt that we must speak.” His accent was difficult to place. “I got your message. When I met you at the Pink Tea Cup, it was not as it seemed,” he said. “That is all I can say at this time.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Grace said.

  “I was there under false pretenses,” he continued. “My situation has changed, and although I cannot go into the details, I’m afraid that my working for you would be a conflict of interest. But I would like to arrange to pick up my book. I was concerned that it might have gotten into the wrong hands.” Just then, another call came in and Grace asked Mr. Dubrovsky to hold on. She pressed the call-waiting button.

  “Up and Adam,” her father said in his chipper, early morning voice. He’d been saying the expression wrong for as long as Grace could remember, but she would never think of correcting him. He was usually up well before five in the morning, reading; and by six, he was ready to socialize.

  “How are you feeling?” Grace asked.

  “Fit as a fiddle. I got a clean bill of health. Just some acid reflux. The doctor said I just have to lay off the spicy food, that’s all.”

  “I’m so relieved,” Grace said. Then she remembered that Mr. Dubrovsky was on the other line. “Dad, I’m going to have to call you right back.”

  “We have to go to Wal-Mart for supplies. Call us around ten.” Grace knew how much her father disliked shopping. He had devised a schedule that required them to shop only once every month, except for perishables, which they had delivered from the Food Emporium.

  “Supplies? For what?” Grace asked.

  “The blizzard. Could be two feet by tomorrow night. The worst in fifty years.”

  “Dad, I’m glad you’re okay. You had me worried. Oh, and thank Mom for the pants,” she said, looking down at the satin pants she was still wearing.

  Just before she pressed the button to get back to Mr. Dubrovsky, she heard her mother call out from the extension, “Don’t mention it.”

  There was a dial tone on the other end. Mr. Dubrovsky had hung up. An odd bird, she concluded, picturing him in his striped pajamas listening to The Brothers Karamazov on tape. Clearly, A Perfect Match needed to better screen their members—she, like Groucho Marx, not wanting to count herself among them.

  Trying to put the whole conversation out of her mind, she walked into the kitchen to prepare José’s coffee. On the way, she noticed Mr. Dubrovsky’s copy of Oblomov next to the stack of Katharine Hepburn movies on the front hall table and picked it up.

  The book had obviously been well read, some pages stained and rippled from water damage. She sat on the couch and flipped through the book, trying to find the place where she and Laz had last left off. A line, marked in pencil, caught her eye: You had really parted before your separation and were faithful not to love but to the phantom of it, which you had yourself invented—that’s the whole secret.

  The line was impossibly apt. It seemed almost as if Oblomov were addressing Grace directly and not his beloved, Olga. Could this be just a random coincidence, or was it a flicker of prophesy from the nineteenth century? Or did Mr. Dubrovsky know more than even Grace had supposed? She turned the page and read more. The man before you is not the one you have been expecting and dreaming of. Wait, he will appear and then you will come to yourself.

  The passage took her breath away. They were the same lines that Laz had read to her, but never before had they reverberated as they did now. She found herself unable to concentrate on Goncharov’s words and wanted to banish them, along with her feelings, to a place even less hospitable than a Siberian gulag. They were too close, as if resonating from inside her almost.

  Just as she was about to close the book, she thought she recognized two words written in the margins in smudged blue ink. She held the book closer and examined the letters. The words were written in some language that resembled neither Anglo-Saxon nor Cyrillic, appearing more like a strange hieroglyphic code. She could have sworn she read the words as Brookman Redux. She looked again more closely, but the words swam on the page like a deep-sea Scrabble game with no rule book.

  She gazed out the window at the pink sky. This was turning out to be an unsettling morning. She tried to focus on Griffin’s arrival, but there were too many loose ends that nagged at her, and she thought it might help her clear her head to get some fresh air. If there was going to be a blizzard, it would be a good idea to do some shopping just in case they were snowed in as Milton had predicted. She would go to the Food Emporium, which was open twenty-four hours a day; on the way back, she’d return the videos.

  Laz never returned anything on time. Every library book and video he had ever rented was kept well past its due date. Once, he was fined over two hundred dollars for losing After Hours. They’d never even gotten to the end of the movie. Grace had found it years later, stuffed in a box containing an old orange clock radio, some letters, and other miscellany that he’d no doubt neglected to return along the way. For Laz, like the movies he rented and the books he borrowed, this was a marriage in which he was willing to incur late fees, rather than to submit to a lifetime commitment. Grace was beginning to become aware that hers might be a marriage on loan, and not for keeps.

  She poured José’s coffee into the cup and pressed the lid on tightly. Then she grabbed her coat, along with the stack of videos, and went downstairs.

  Grace placed the coffee cup on the mahogany concierge desk. As soon as she removed her hand, she imagined the gold letters that encircled the cardboard cup rearranging like air-popped popcorn until finally settling on another phrase, one more in keeping with her mood that morning: We Are Happy to Preserve You.

  THE BLAZING LIGHTS at the Food Emporium gave it a surreal, timeless quality. The aisles were virtually empty, except for several stock boys who were sitting on boxes, reshelving items that seemed in plentiful supply. She thought of her parents at Wal-Mart, pushing their supersized carts down the wide aisles, buying gargantuan quantities of food. Her parents had shopping down to a science, each taking a list and a cart and heading in opposite directions, somehow always meeting in the frozen foods section simultaneously.

  Grace began to fill her cart with food. The pre
dictability of the store was reassuring as she went up and down each aisle, pulling items off the shelf that she thought Griffin might like—pretzels, blue corn chips, a six-pack of Coke, Mint Milanos. It had been a while since she’d been shopping. Filling the cart felt so satisfying. For herself, Grace stocked up on Boca Burgers, fresh vegetables and fruit, soy nuts, and bread. Gone were her cravings for pastries and sweets. She decided to prepare a spinach lasagna for dinner, so she went in search of part-skim ricotta cheese.

  She went down the next aisle and stopped short. She found herself surrounded by neatly stocked rows of small jars of pureed vegetables, infant formula, tiny spoons, teething rings, sippy cups, shelves of diapers, and wipes. She had the urge to empty the shelves into her cart, as if by doing so, the rest would follow.

  From a distance, she saw a woman wearing a familiar-looking silver trench coat reaching to pull down a box of Kleenex from a high shelf. The woman’s back was turned, but as Grace drew nearer, she saw that it was Francine and walked over to help her.

  “Francine, let me get that for you,” she said, reaching up to get the box of tissues. Startled, Francine spun around, toppling over a tower of paper towels in the process.

  “Grace,” she said, with a tight smile. “So nice to run into you. Glad Dad’s feeling better.” Grace was about to respond when Francine thrust the box of Kleenex into her cart and said, “Sorry, but I’ve got to dash.”

  Francine’s eyes were rimmed with streaks of black mascara, which Grace had the urge to wipe away with a moistened Q-Tip, as her mother surely would have done. Francine was wearing the same outfit she had on the day before, but then Grace looked down and realized so was she.

  “Is everything all right?” Grace inquired. Francine began to busily rearrange things in her cart and then, grabbing two double packages of napkins, placed them on top, as if in an effort to conceal what was inside.

  “Oh, yes. Everything’s fine. Good to see you,” she said quickly, and then with a quick wave, and in a blur of silver, she was off. As Francine rounded the corner, her cart practically tilting on two wheels, Grace caught a glimpse of its contents. There were dozens of bottles of chili sauce and at least twice the number of jars of Welch’s grape jelly, along with several bags of minimarshmallows—strange things to stock up on, stranger still since Bert was diabetic.