Read Online My Father's Wives by Mike Greenberg - Free Book Online

people we lived on the street that Bob Dylan used to live on, which was true. My mother loves Bob Dylan. “In his lyrics,” she says, “you can find the answers to just about anything.” I listened to Dylan on my iPod all the way into the city that day, but nowhere in his songs could I find what a man is supposed to do when the only promise he really cares about has been broken.
    I picked up two steaming lattes and two chocolate croissants from the café on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker streets. Not from Starbucks. Never Starbucks for my mother, who began bemoaning the loss of identity of her beloved neighborhood the day they opened the Banana Republic on Sixth Avenue. When I rang the bell I could hear yoga chimes behind her voice over the intercom. “Surprise,” I said.
    “I’ve been expecting you,” she replied. “Hold on.”
    A moment later I heard the cavalcade of locks on the door being turned, one by one. A crank, a click, a slide—nine in all, the same nine locks that have guarded that door since 1978. The sounds they make, in the order my mother opens them, are burned into my memory.
    After the ninth lock, a lengthy, crackly slider, the door flew open and I found my mother exactly as I expected her: bare feet, yoga pants, baggy T-shirt, headband.
    “Chocolate?” she asked, pointing at the paper bag.
    “Absolutely.”
    “Can’t resist that,” she said, and took the bag from beneath my arm. “Now, what the hell is going on with you?”
    The apartment smelled of burning incense and espresso, and from the old-fashioned stereo came the chimes and sounds of the ocean that my mother listened to on cassette while she did her yoga. I pointed toward the mat in the center of the room. “Did I ruin this?” I asked.
    “I was just about done,” she said. “Do you want to do some sun salutations with me?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “You want a decaf espresso?”
    “I brought lattes,” I said. “In the bag.”
    “Yum.” She sat at the kitchen table, pulled a croissant from the bag, and took a bite without a plate or napkin, just a hand beneath her mouth to catch the crumbs. “Oh, that is just delicious,” she said, and took the top off one of the lattes, held it up to her face, and inhaled deeply. When she looked up, a tiny bit of foam was on the tip of her nose.
    I sat across from her and pulled the other croissant from the bag, took the biggest bite I could, and felt the warm chocolate ooze in my mouth. Delicious. I took another bite.
    “Jonathan,” my mother said. “Put that down and finish chewing.”
    I smiled, laid what was left of the croissant on the table. “Like I’m still eleven years old.”
    “Not like that at all,” she said. “When you were eleven years old I was concerned you were going to choke. It’s obvious to me now that you can manage to eat without killing yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have any idea what eating is for. If all you’re doing while you are chewing is waiting to take another bite, then you aren’t experiencing what you’re eating. You’re eating just to eat. Something like this is meant to be experienced.”
    I looked down at the table. I had almost none of my croissant left. Mother had taken just the one bite and was licking the flaky crumbs from her hand.
    “I need to talk to you about something important,” I said.
    “I’m not in a hurry if you’re not.”
    I nodded and took a sip of my latte. “I have reason to believe that Claire may be having an affair.”
    AFTER I HAD TOLD her all I could think of to tell, and all the croissants and coffee were finished, my mother looked across the table at me with a serious face. “So, you were outside the door?”
    “Yes.”
    “You didn’t go in the room?”
    “No.”
    “You didn’t actually see her?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know what?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know what I don’t know. I saw someone. It looked like her. I think I was in shock; maybe I still am.” I