pretended not to see him. I’m not sure why.
It was at events like this where the married women would eventually clump together. I could see such a group congregating around one of the tables in a far corner next to one of the air-conditioning fans. And as much as Elysius felt like conversations among women turn always to children, I had been aware, throughout my marriage and now, of how conversations among women will, inevitably, turn—as if by a will of their own—to husbands.
Disappointing husbands. Emotionally inarticulate husbands. Weary husbands. Crabby husbands. Demanding husbands. Thoughtless husbands. Late husbands. Unfaithful husbands. Messy husbands. Lazy husbands. Workaholic husbands. Cheap husbands. Bad-father husbands.
Not to mention those men who could never man up and become husbands, and their counterparts, ex-husbands.
The truth was, I’d always tried to avoid these groups, even when Henry was alive. Not even my fights with Henry were worth talking about. We would hurt each other from time to time, but what was hardest was when one of us had to tell theother we’d been hurt—we were so sure that it was unintended, and yet it wasn’t something we risked keeping quiet.
When we were first married, I tried to tell stories about our fights. My friends’ eyes would glaze over.
“Are you serious?” one of my friends said to me once. “Not to belittle your issues with your husband, but you don’t really have any. I mean, when you guys fight over where the can opener is, the can opener is just a can opener. It’s not some larger issue.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s fine,” my friend said. “Just so you know, it’s a little chafing to others.”
Henry and I agreed that, in general, it was the men’s faults—by and large. They were clumsy with affection, ill-equipped for conflict; they got angry when they needed to be sorry, lied when they should have opted for full disclosure, disclosed opinions they should have kept to themselves … etc., etc., etc.
“Talking sofas,” Henry said.
“And look at
my
sofa!” I said. “He learned to walk upright and not bifurcate his emotions!”
“I’m a non-bifurcated upright walking talking sofa. What can I say?”
Most of all, however, we knew we were shit-lucky, because in other environments, with other partners, we’d have said all of the wrong things, done all of the wrong things, made all of the same mistakes.
One time Elysius overheard me say at the end of a phone conversation with Henry, “I like you, too.”
And after I hung up, Elysius said, “Don’t do that in front of others.”
“What?”
“It’s one thing that you two love each other. What’s so offensive, though, is how much you
like
each other. It’s unbearable.”
Was it unbearable? I was aware that Henry and I had created one life together. And sometimes, if Henry was a little late or when we kissed each other goodbye before one of us took a trip, a small flash of fear would run through my body—something almost electric.
What if this is the last time I see him? What if he dies? What if I die?
We confessed that we’d each imagined wrecks of various sorts, but that we couldn’t see much beyond it. “What would your life be like without me?” I asked him.
And Henry, who usually had an answer for everything, didn’t know. He could only shrug. “What about me?” he asked.
“I don’t know how I’d survive it,” I said.
But then Henry died.
And here I found myself, inexplicably, surviving it.
What was unbearable now? How much I’d taken for granted and the fact that I had only seemed to want more.
I sat far away from the clutch of women, pushed my high heels off, and rubbed my aching feet together under the table. As if sensing that my guard was down, one of myaunties teetered over. Aunt Giselle was my grandmother’s youngest sister, now quite elderly. My own grandparents had died when my mother was young—one from cancer, the other a faulty
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