Single Wife

by Nina Solomon

  The building smelled faintly of incense, and she saw the requisite bulletin board covered with church announcements. A notice for a lecture that evening caught her eye: It’s never too late to become who you could have been. She recognized the quote from George Eliot. The lecture had probably been canceled because of the snow. She zipped up her jacket and was about to leave when she heard voices coming from inside the church. Wondering if the lecture was in progress, she opened the door a crack and peered inside. The pews were sparsely filled, and at the front of the sanctuary stood a man in his thirties wearing a jade-green fleece pullover, jeans, a backwards baseball cap, and hiking boots. His hair was long and shaggy, and he had a few days’ growth on his face. He looked familiar. Laz occasionally didn’t shave on the weekends, and by Monday morning, his face would be completely covered by a full beard. Once, when he had left the building after not having shaved, the doorman hadn’t even recognized him.

  Grace opened the door wider and tried to slip in unnoticed. The man at the front caught her eye and nodded. She sat down in the last row and listened.

  “Try to think back to a time as a child when you were so occupied in something that you were completely unaware of the passing of time,” the man said. “You were lost in your true selves. You haven’t lost that, you’ve just forgotten.”

  At first the things he was saying were the kind of typical pop psychology that was promoted on daytime talk shows. It wasn’t as if Grace even thought she needed to discover her authentic self. She was simply curious what these people thought they lacked.

  “We all know,” the man continued. “We either forget who we were, discount it, or never seek it because it didn’t fit into the scheme of our family’s, lovers’, friends’, employers’, husbands’, wives’, or children’s expectations. Remember: It’s never too late. Who could you have been?”

  He stopped, left the lectern, and walked down the aisle in Grace’s direction. She glanced behind her, assuming he was headed toward the back of the church. But he wasn’t. She felt like someone about to become an unwilling magician’s subject. As he approached, Grace suddenly realized who he was and tried to reach for her bag in an attempt to escape before he recognized her. Too late. He stood in front of her.

  “I’ve never. . .,” he said, addressing Grace, with a wink. “You fill in the blank.” He stared at her, waiting for a response. She stared back at him. Her heart began to pound. This meeting in the church was no drinking game. And whatever it was, Grace no longer wanted to play. Without the bar between them, she felt completely vulnerable.

  “I’m sorry,” she mustered. “But I really have to go.” And she ran out of the sanctuary. On the street, she oriented herself and realized that she was directly across the street from Laz’s old building. The snow was falling heavily and the streets were empty. The yarn and afghan in her bag were dusted with snow. She looked both ways. Thankfully, Mr. Dubrovsky was nowhere in sight. She decided to cut through the lobby of Laz’s building. Her father had turned her into an urban groundhog, capable of giving a potentially dangerous stalker—as well as an intrusive moonlighting bartender—the slip. She hurried through the revolving door into the lobby of Laz’s building and then into the elevator and up to the fourth floor.

  When she opened the door, she saw that the apartment was covered entirely with sheets of plastic and a layer of fine white dust. By the window, under a single sheet of plastic, was an orchid. She went over to uncover the plant, which from a distance had looked too perfect to be real. There was no white dust on the leaves and, strangely, the soil was moist.

  If Laz had been there, he had left no tracks. For now, the two of them, like the magnetic spinning pups, had reversed their polarity. It seemed that they could only push each other away. Snow swirled in the courtyard outside and Grace imagined a flurry of white business cards fluttering to the ground.

  She was in no hurry to go home, now that Griffin was out of town. Here, in this unoccupied apartment, where no one else could possibly leave her, she felt safe. Still wearing her red parka, she lay down on the plastic-covered couch. Her eyes felt heavy. What was it about this apartment that always made her so sleepy? she wondered, her last thought as she drifted off. She awoke to the sound of the asbestos workers entering the apartment the next morning. She left quickly, taking the orchid with her, her hair and clothing now covered in white dust.

  GRIFFIN WAS DUE back that night. By nine o’clock, still not having heard from him, Grace decided to go to bed. She’d spent the evening packing—both her suitcase and a bag for Laz. With just a few well-chosen items, she was able to evoke the semblance of a whole life. At this point, Grace had it down to a science. The black satin pants that her mother had bought for her, when folded, took up no more room than one of Laz’s pocket handkerchiefs. If she packed for Chicago according to her mother’s principles, she would require a bag no larger than a manila envelope. She could mail her clothes to Chicago.

  She pulled down a small duffel bag from the closet, filling it with Laz’s clothes, shoes, an extra-warm sweater, as well as several talisman-like items, such as his eyeglasses and the gold pocket watch from his father. Ostensibly it was for Chloe’s benefit—if she came to the hotel, there would have to be signs of Laz around the room, but it was really just as much for Grace’s own peace of mind.

  She opened the top drawer of Laz’s dresser. Inside, there were belts from every trip Laz had ever taken—a white belt with blue embroidery from Morocco, a cowboy belt from Durango, a camel hair belt from Egypt. Grace could practically construct a map of the world by laying out the belts in longitudinal lines. Next to his passport, she placed the key to his old apartment. There was no need for her to ever go there again. Then she closed the drawer.

  Her parents telephoned later that evening, wishing her a safe flight and a happy birthday in unison. Call as soon as you land. What’s the flight number again? You know it’s going to be bitter cold in Chicago. Maybe you should go in the spring instead.

  When Grace finally heard the front door open around midnight, she remained in bed, as if physically weighted down. She couldn’t face another leave-taking, not even one from this near stranger. She heard music coming from his room. Grace recognized the melody and the sound of Aimee Mann’s voice—One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one. Laz had played that song, too, sometimes over and over again.

  She stared at the ceiling and thought about the fragment of the dream she’d had in Laz’s apartment on her post-Thanksgiving visit. Laz had walked through the web with nothing sticking to him. She wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her to try walking through the doorway herself.

  The next morning, she left for the airport two hours early, long before Griffin would be up.

  GRACE SETTLED HERSELF into the plush first-class seat. The seat next to hers was reclined, the buckle fastened as if a body were actually occupying it. Grace returned the seat to its upright position and opened her book.

  She thought back to her first solo plane ride, when she was eleven. She had been going to Iowa for Christmas to visit Chloe, where Chloe’s father lived. Grace’s parents had driven her to the airport, but at the gate, Grace panicked and refused to get on the plane. Her father gave her half a Miltown tranquilizer that he had in his breast pocket. About fifteen minutes later, she was sitting limply strapped into the orange airplane seat on her way to Iowa City, even less present than Laz was now.

  About forty minutes after the plane’s takeoff, Grace found herself growing anxious. For the first time since Laz had left, she was traveling out of her comfort zone. Living in the city had lately become almost as provincial as a small town for Grace. Her life for the past six weeks had been mostly contained within the very circumscribed twenty-block area of the Upper West Side. But now she was taking “her act” on the road and suddenly, after this many weeks of performing, it was as if she couldn’t remember her lines. Her mouth was dry. She a
sked for a glass of water.

  Grace unwrapped a skein of the lavender angora yarn that she had bought the other day, her lifeline to familiar ground. As she began to crochet, the feeling of dread began to lessen, until gradually it was a mere wisp like the cirrus clouds that skimmed the blue sky. It wasn’t like a pill that she had popped or like a muscle relaxer to soothe the mind during periods of turbulence. By creating something new out of whole cloth, her fingers were trying to show her she could lead the way.

  A pattern began to emerge, and it was clear that this project was going to require more than the seven skeins she’d brought along with her. The yarn was so light that it took almost half a skein to crochet just five inches. She tried to ration herself, but as much as she willed herself to slow down, she couldn’t. Before they had been airborne even an hour, the bag was nearly empty. Only one skein remained.

  The flight attendant gushed over Grace’s work as she passed by on her way to get the drink cart. Grace envisioned the finished crochet weightlessly skimming the top of the dining-room table.

  She put down her crocheting and pressed her forehead against the window, peering out at the horizon. An image began to encroach like a storm cloud over her mind. She saw herself with Laz on the ski slope on their first Valentine’s Day. From the vantage point of thirty thousand feet up in the air, she saw Laz’s face as he had taken her hand and led her to the lift. You’re too sensitive, he’d told her. Who would ever want kids? They just tie you down. He had proposed that afternoon on the last run of the day. The ski lift had taken off as the words left his lips. Marry me. She remembered how once they returned to the city, he didn’t call for three days.

  Despite all their premonitions and warnings about the weather, her parents never counseled their daughter on the fault lines and sinkholes of real life. They scoured the skies for forces of nature, but they didn’t see that human beings and bad marriages have their own high-pressure systems. They misguidedly thought that Laz would elevate their daughter, but they confused his breeding and background with his worth. They hadn’t been able to foretell that he would only elevate Grace to the status of a single wife.

  Suddenly, she felt a tug on the yarn, as if she’d caught a fish. Before fully registering what was happening, Grace watched in horror as, row by row and down the aisle, her crocheting began to unravel, caught in the efficient wheels of the drink cart. The more she tried to save it, the faster it unwound. Grace’s attempt to recover the unraveling yarn sent several opened cartons of milk and cups of coffee toppling over (and the flight attendant to lose her footing), until the entire length of the plane, from first class to coach, looked as if a soggy, purple spider’s web had descended upon it.

  24

  SOUL KITCHEN

  The woman at the reception desk at the Four Seasons hotel very kindly informed Grace that they would require a different credit card.

  “Has it expired?” Grace asked.

  “No, actually,” the woman answered with a sympathetic tilt of her head, “it’s been frozen.”

  “That’s impossible,” Grace said. “I just used it.” But as she uttered the words, she didn’t remember exactly when the last time was that she’d used it. In fact, she couldn’t recall having received her last monthly statement. Due to some recessive gene passed on through her mother, she was in the habit of paying with cash. What she hadn’t inherited was her mother’s penchant for haggling. Her mother would have asked the hotel concierge if she could do a little better on the rate.

  “Let me call them,” Grace said.

  A lengthy conversation with the credit card company, a few choked back tears, and a dose of reality later, Grace returned to the reception desk. The card had indeed been frozen, but by whom, Grace wasn’t sure. She had just enough cash on her to pay for the deposit and a day’s worth of expenses. She picked up her bags, noting how light Laz’s duffel bag felt in her hand in comparison to hers and went upstairs.

  THE ROOM SHE’D booked was spacious and tastefully decorated, if slightly generic. There was a vase of purple freesia and a fruit basket by the window, a floral down comforter and king-size pillows on the bed, cherry-wood dressers with matching night-stands. The room was orderly and utterly free of any residual history, which held a certain guilty allure for Grace. She felt as if she’d entered the Platonic ideal of a stage-set life.

  Through the sheer curtains, from the forty-first floor window, Grace could see the shores of Lake Michigan. Noticing that the phone’s red message light was blinking, Grace pressed the button and listened to Chloe’s voice, welcoming her to Chicago. Grace called back, and they arranged to meet for an early dinner at a restaurant near Chloe’s apartment in Wicker Park. Grace made the usual excuses for Laz, saying that he had a reception he had to attend.

  Grace spent the day shivering as she wandered around downtown Chicago in her pink coat, visiting the tourist sights. Then she took a short walk along the shore. She returned to the room just after five o’clock and put on a thick pair of thermals and several sweaters over an ankle-length knit skirt. She removed the present she’d brought for Chloe from her suitcase—a blank book that she had made. On the cover, she’d mounted a packet of seeds for Chloe to plant in the spring on her porch. Underneath the packet, Grace had glued one of the fortunes that Kane had given her. The fortune had seemed more appropriate for Chloe, who was working on a novel: You are a lover of fiction. Grace had made the pages from shredded newsprint with flecks of wild flowers, spraying the pages with essence of bergamot, Chloe’s favorite perfume. Grace thought that she might have overdone the perfume, as now the entire contents of her suitcase smelled like a very strong cup of Earl Grey tea.

  Before she left the room, Grace gazed at Laz’s unopened duffel bag on the wooden rack. Usually it made her feel less alone to display Laz’s things, but in her present frame of mind, the last thing she wanted was his clutter to mar this wonderfully unblemished scene.

  SOUL KITCHEN WAS nearly full, even though it was still early. The crowd was unusual, too—very young, tattooed, and imaginatively pierced. Chloe was seated at a round table in the center of the room. Her hair was no longer cropped short or dyed black, but fell past her shoulders in blond waves. She was wearing ripped jeans and a vintage cardigan covered with intricately beaded flowers over a pale blue T-shirt with the words All About Me embroidered across the front. Every once in a while, the light reflected off the beads on her sweater in a certain way, sending a sparkling shower of colors around the room.

  “They’re hipsters,” Chloe said, referring to the other patrons. “It just comes naturally. We were never that cool.”

  Grace tried to take off one of her sweaters, but it got caught on her necklace and Chloe had to help her pull it off. The waiter, dressed in red jeans and a light-green shirt with depictions of major historical events on it, smirked as he filled her glass with ice water.

  “Great shirt,” Chloe told him. “Did you get it at Village Thrift?”

  “No, at Una Mae’s.”

  “I have to take you there, Grace,” Chloe said. “You’ll love it.” The waiter and Chloe continued talking about their favorite vintage stores, and Grace thought at one point that he was going to join them at the table.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, turning to Grace for the first time during the whole conversation.

  “New York,” she answered. Grace watched as the lines in his brow began to furrow.

  “Like where? Upstate?”

  “No, the city,” she said.

  He glanced at Chloe as if for verification. “Cool,” he said, then went off—rather quickly in Grace’s opinion—to get them menus.

  Grace could barely finish half of the sweet potato ravioli and grilled spinach with dandelion greens. The waiter wrapped it up for them, and as they were getting their coats, he asked Chloe for her telephone number.

  “I guess you like it here,” Grace said, as they walked outside onto Milwaukee Avenue. They passed a small group of people who stood in li
ne, waiting to get into a club next door. On the corner, Grace noticed a cluster of teenagers in hooded jackets, congregating in front of a small deli.

  “A lot. I never felt like I could be myself in New York. I know you love it, but I just couldn’t take looking out my window at a brick wall. Now that Mom’s gone, there’s not much left for me there.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’m still sort of waiting for her to come back.” They walked around the corner toward the elevated train. Chloe stopped and turned to Grace. “If you have time, you should come over and see my apartment. Too bad it’s not spring. We could sit on my porch.”

  “I’d really like to, but I think Laz will be finishing up with his conference soon, and I told him I’d meet him back at the hotel.” She was thankful it was dark out.

  “Grace—” Chloe began but then stopped. She put on a hat that looked like she’d sewn it together from some old sweaters scraps. “That’s all right. Another time, then.” She rummaged through her red vinyl purse for her keys. A cab pulled up in front of them. “Thanks again for the journal. Call me tomorrow and let me know what your plans are. I have a birthday present for you.” As they hugged, Grace thought of the empty hotel room that awaited her. Chloe began to walk away.

  “Chloe . . .” Grace called, waving the cab off. Chloe turned around.

  “Did you forget something?”

  “I think I have time to stop by your apartment. Let me call Laz and tell him I’m going to be late.”