The First Husband (11 page)

“It’s so soft,” I said, wrapping the scarf around my neck and instantly feeling better, the cool starting to seep out of me.

“Excellent, because I cannot look at you all exposed like that,” she said. “And I’ll give you some more lessons in finding warmth in Williamsburg while we work.”

“Don’t I just get more clothing?” I asked.

She sighed. “If only it were that simple.”

I smiled, looking toward the next group of paintings and realizing we were coming up on the series of purple Christmas trees. And then I was right in front of it: the double tree bearing the names SaMMMMMy and DeXXXXX. Written just like that. Sadly, they weren’t exactly good trees—even forgetting the purple. One could confuse them with flagpoles instead. Or pretzels.

I ran my fingers over the tree anyway, over the letters of their names. “These are them,” I said.

“Them who?”

“My nephews,” I said. “Sammy and Dexter Putney . . .”

“Sammy and Dexter?” she asked.

And then she went white. She went so white, right in front of my eyes, that suddenly I understood the expression “seeing a ghost.” All of a sudden, I could see one.

She stared at me for a long minute. “So are you related to Jesse’s wife or something?” she said. “You must be related to Cheryl, right? She has a stepsister, I think. Or maybe you’re just a good friend of the family. The kind of friend they call aunt . . .”

But she started talking very low. She started talking very low, and in the voice of someone who already had a question’s unfortunate answer.

“No, I’m actually married to Jesse’s brother, Griffin,” I said. “Just recently, though.”

The air started to close out of the room. I didn’t know how—or why—but I could feel it condensing around us.

“How just recently?”

“We met in Los Angeles while he was filling in at a restaurant near where I live. Or where I lived, I guess.”

I gave her a smile, but she wasn’t having it. So I kept talking.

“The whole thing happened really fast, actually . . .” I said. “I probably shouldn’t tell you how fast or you’ll get the wrong impression about me. I’ve never done anything like this before. Impulsive like this, before.” I felt myself blushing a little. “And I’ve always hated people who say things like, ‘When you know, you know.’ I’ve never just known about anything else. Not even a pair of socks.”

She was staring at me, as if with a growing level of concern that I might be a lunatic.

“Well, maybe there was one pair of socks at some point. For the gym or something . . .”

Nothing. She said nothing. I was still talking, telling her more than she could possibly want to know, more than anyone could. But I couldn’t seem to stop. I couldn’t seem to stop trying to do something to bring her color back.

Then I noticed it on the inside of her wrist—the other half of Griffin’s tattoo. The other half of the anchor. The right half. The sharper one.

“Oh my gosh, wait. You’re Gia?”

She nodded. “I’m Gia.”

“Griffin told me about you! I guess not your last name, though,” I said. “But he told me about the tattoo. I love it. I mean, I love the tattoo. But I also love that you guys did that together.”

I was still smiling. This is the worst part: I was still smiling when I said this. I didn’t quite know yet that I shouldn’t be. Then Gia, my former new friend, walked away from me. She turned and walked away from me, fast.

And I got my first idea.

S
omething else I discovered from writing “Checking Out,” something that should not be underrated, is the joy people feel when they get to pretend to be someone else for a while. When you travel, you can become anyone. No one knows you. No one is telling you who—based on your history, or their ideas about your history—they’ve decided you are. When you travel, everything is unfamiliar and possible again. Like with a brand-new job or a brand-new partner. Like with a first kiss. For a short, perfect while, you get to see yourself—you get to experience yourself—as new. Until the inevitable (and inevitability surprising) reminder: you are still you.

I walked through town in a fog, the directions to Griffin’s restaurant in my fleece jacket’s pocket, taking too many wrong turns anyway. Then I found a small, barnlike structure—slightly hidden from Main Street, unless you knew to look for it—with an amazing red chimney, scaffolding surrounding it, a sign (matching the chimney’s red) without a name on it yet, still resting on the ground by the front door, still waiting to be raised.

I walked inside—the Rolling Stones’
Exile on Main Street
blasting out its glory from a floor-side stereo—to find the place midconstruction, working toward its own glory: unfinished floors and markings on the walls, electrical wires coming from the ceiling. A large, rectangular hole in the far wall that I imagined was going to be the bar area. A cool, metal chandelier waiting to be raised above it, Griffin touching its top as he talked to several men.

When he looked up and saw me standing there, he gave me a big smile and headed my way.

“You’re here,” he said.

“I’m here.”

He pulled me into the unoccupied corner, giving me a long kiss.

“Is it crazy that I missed you today?” He pulled back, taking a look at me. Then he began running his hands over my cheeks. “And why are you so cold? You can’t be dressing like that. You’re going to get pneumonia.”

“I wish everyone would stop pointing that out. And I wish it would stop getting worse.”

He looked at me, confused. “Getting worse?”

“The length of my hospital stay.”

He started laughing, which quickly turned into a cough and just as quickly turned scary, leaving me completely unsure what to do as he braced himself on his knees, trying and failing to catch his breath. He managed to reach for the inhaler in his pocket, putting it to his lips and taking a long, deep puff. His breath, the coughs, finally starting to slow.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He nodded, his voice returning. “Fine,” he said. “It sounds a lot worse than it actually is.”

He was still resting on his knees, though.

“It’s all the dust in here,” he said. “It got right into my lungs. Brutal.”

“Maybe it’s not such a good idea to be around it?” I said.

“Definitely not,” he said.

But he was standing up again and smiling as he said it. Only then did I realize how fast my heart was beating.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It sounds worse than it is.”

“You said that already. . . .”

“So I guess it must be true.”

He took my hand, giving it a firm squeeze, then a second one as if to say,
I’m fine, really
.

I squeezed back,
I’m glad.

Then he motioned toward the ceiling and all around himself, proudly. “So?” he said. “I know it’s just the bones of the place still, but what do you think? What do you think of our so-far-unnamed endeavor?”

I looked at Griffin for another second and then looked around, trying to envision the restaurant—what it would be—beneath the construction. The bones were already hinting at how great it was going to look: wide-open beams and rafters, rustic tables of different sizes and a hearth oven, lanterns everywhere. And, of course, that large fireplace leading to the red top.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” I said. “Really amazing.”

He gave me a big smile. “The Stones are seeping into the walls,” he said. “Giving the room some flavor.”

“Maybe you should call the restaurant the Stones, then?”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“How about Annie’s Place then? Or just . . . Annie’s? Everyone likes a place called Annie’s. I think both have a certain ring to them.”

I smiled so he’d know I was mostly kidding. In response, he wrapped his arms around me.

“I’ll put those in the file for sure,” he said, bending down and kissing the side of my face, holding there. “And how has your day been going? I was getting a little worried. I called the house a few times and you didn’t pick up.”

“I ended up bringing the twins to school.”

I thought I felt it then, just the softest tension—his lips against my cheek starting to release. But then, almost as quickly, he was back with me, lips pressing against my skin.

“That was nice of you.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said. “Jesse needed to get into Boston for a meeting with his dissertation adviser.”

“It was a big deal,” he said. “Aren’t you on deadline for your latest ‘Checking Out’?”

Another reminder that I was on deadline—Peter anxiously reminding me himself via phone and e-mail, at increasingly frequent intervals. A looming deadline not only to turn in the new column, but to make a decision as to where I wanted to travel next. The answer no closer to coming to me.

But I just smiled and shrugged. “It was kind of fun, actually,” I said. “I saw a little of the town. Got to hang with the twins, and see their school. Plus, I met Gia.”

This time I knew I wasn’t imagining his tension.

“You met Gia?” he said.

I nodded. “In the breezeway. We ended up talking for a little while and she seemed lovely to me. A little like she could give Martha Stewart a run for her money, but I actually thought maybe I made a first friend here. I know that sounds like I’m in high school, but it felt like I knew her or something. She just seemed . . . lovely to me.”

“You mentioned . . .”

“Is she not?”

“No,” he said. “She is. She’s lovely.”

I looked up, met his eyes. “Right, so I’m trying to figure out how I offended her. All I know is she walked away from me quickly after I told her we had gotten married. Why would she care about that? You dated in
high school
.”

Griffin closed his eyes, slightly shaking his head. “Shit,” he said.

“What? She can’t still be into you after all this time. That’s crazy. I mean, I’ll never get over you, but . . .”

Griffin opened his eyes, looking at me, not smiling at my joke. Or, for that matter, at me.

“Annie,” he said, “I never said that Gia was just my high school girlfriend. I never said that to you.”

“What do you mean? Yes, you did.”

I racked my brain for the information I was holding on to, until I recalled the conversation I’d been thinking of, the one in which he mentioned her: the two of us sitting next to each other at the hotel bar, my fingers on his half of the tattoo, Griffin talking about the night he got it.

“You said you got that tattoo at eighteen, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

Then I started to get it, what apparently I’d missed. “You and Gia were together longer than that?” I said.

He nodded again. “Right.”

“How much longer than that?” I said.

He looked behind himself toward the workers, a few of whom were looking our way, waiting for him. “Maybe we should go outside for a minute. Let’s go outside and have a real discussion about this.”

“How much longer, Griffin?”

He looked right at me, looked right into my eyes. “Thirteen years,” he said.

“Thirteen
years?
”

I was dumbstruck. I’d always hated that expression—still hate it—someone being dumbstruck. And, yet, in writing a travel column, one would be surprised how many times Peter thought it was appropriate for me to be so: dumbstruck at the Burj Al Arab hotel, dumbstruck at the Big Ben. Dumbstruck at the Milan Duomo. I never was—or I never wrote that I was, at least. But standing in front of my new husband and learning he had been with someone before me for close to
a decade and a half,
I wasn’t sure how else to articulate the feeling. No other word seemed to do it.

“Look, it’s all a little complicated,” he said. “And I really didn’t want to burden you with it, for all the reasons I told you in California. I don’t think it’s helpful in a new relationship to get into it all too much.”

“How about getting into it just a little? Just a little might have been good,” I said. “And what do you know about new relationships anyway? You’ve had the same girlfriend since you were a fetus.”

He ignored me, which was probably wise right then.

“I can’t believe you were with someone so long,” I said. “I can’t believe you were with someone
else
for that long.”

I felt it bubbling up inside of me, jealousy, and something like a revelation: if time were at least part of the measure of real love—how long it would take, how long it would have to take—for us to know each other the way we’d known the people who came before.

“The important part is that we were broken up well before you and I got together,” he said. “We broke up before I even left for Los Angeles.”

“How long before, Griffin?” I asked. “Six months?”

“Closer to nine,” he said.

“Oh, well, then . . .”

“I was going to get into the details, but I wanted to speak to Gia first. I thought it’d ease things once I knew where she was with everything. I was hoping that by my leaving town for a while, it would put our separation in a better place for her. That she would understand, as hard as it was, that going our own ways was really for the best. For both of us.”

“So you left her?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

He looked pained. “Annie, it was over with Gia for a long time before it was over,” he said. “I can’t explain it exactly. I couldn’t do it anymore, if that makes any sense. It certainly didn’t to her.”

I nodded. Because it did make sense—at least the part about Gia’s not understanding. That’s the brutality of a breakup, isn’t it? The people leaving think they did everything possible, the people left behind think what is possible hasn’t even been tested yet.

“Look, we can talk about this more. We can go into all of it tonight, if that will help. But you need to believe that. You need to believe we were done before I met you. I should have been more forthcoming about how long our history was. But it really is history. I think you know that’s true.”