The First Husband (3 page)

In those first days after Nick was gone, I couldn’t help but wonder if Nick had done a “Checking Out” column about me, what would he have put in it? And what would be the final thing? This was what I wanted to know most. What was the final thing that helped him decide he’d had the experience of me? And it was okay—it was time now—for
him
to go?

One small blessing was that after Nick broke up with me, he was the one to go. He left that very afternoon to stay with his family, or his new friend, or the Village People. I didn’t ask and Nick didn’t offer. What he did say was that he wouldn’t come back to the house or call or begin the process of disentangling our lives (our joint bank account, our house, our cars, our shared computer, our one stock) until I was ready. I could call him when I was ready for that. When we were more healed. He’d used that word.
Healed.
It is a miracle, when I let myself think about it, that I didn’t slap him.

I was too stunned, right when it happened, to be that angry. Or even that sad. Then I was that sad. I was sadder than I’d ever been. All this time later, the best way that I can describe those first days is that I couldn’t do much but lie in bed at night and listen to the creak of the floorboards. And pretty much all day I’d do the same thing. My heart seemed to have moved in my chest—actually managed to move itself—right into a place it didn’t belong, where it felt heavy and stuck. I’d lie there, listening to nothing, feeling my heart like that.

Then, on the tenth day, my closest friend, Jordan (aka Jordan Alisa Riley, international defense attorney, great beauty, asskicker) came barreling into my house, her three-year-old daughter, Sasha, in tow. Jordan used her key, which meant I didn’t get much of a warning, just a loud hello. A loud,
We’re here.

Jordan and I had been best friends since week one of our freshmen year of college when we were placed in dorm rooms next door to each other. Her roommate was crazy (there was a shrine to
Saved by the Bell
involved). So by week two of freshmen year, Jordan was pretty much living in my dorm room. The rest was our history. Our lovely and loving history. We knew each other so well by this point—knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you’re still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.

As an example, Jordan and I knew each other so well that on the morning of day ten, post-Nick, I got up and showered, “dressing up” in jeans and a purple tank top. Because even though she hadn’t called, I knew she’d be coming, and I wanted her to see that I was okay when she got there. Purple equaled okay in my mind. Sad, pathetic people didn’t wear purple. They wore black. Or maybe green.

This was also the reason that I was sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to be working. I did it for Jordan. I figured it would make her worry about me less. And, as a bonus, I thought it’d be a good message to be sending in case she happened to speak to Nick.

Because there was that too: Jordan was Nick’s sister.

We had met—Nick and I—at Jordan’s and my college graduation. Nick liked to say that he fell in love with me then, graduation day, the first time he saw me. I always doubted that story. For one thing, we didn’t start dating until a few years later. For another, a cap and gown isn’t the best look for anyone.

Jordan stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms on her hips as she studied me.

“Well, the good news is,” she said, “you’re tiny. You’ve lost six pounds, maybe seven . . .”

I pushed back from my chair and got up to hug her, wrapping my arms tightly around her neck, Sasha holding on to both my legs. Jordan, meanwhile, was crying. She was crying harder than I was, which was disconcerting. Jordan wasn’t the sentimental type. Not soft. Though she did write a letter to the editor every time one of my “Checking Out” columns came out, which I took as proof of her secretly sweet heart. Still, in almost fifteen years of friendship, I had seen her cry exactly twice. This counting as time number two.

“So here’s the deal,” she said, pulling away and wiping at her tears. “I brought you some of that disgusting kale salad you love from the vegan restaurant in the Palisades.”

“You did?” I said.

She nodded. “It smells like turkey in there, by the way, but I got you a pound of the stuff. And a vat of your favorite coffee. So, first things first, we’re going to sit down and you’re going to eat.”

It wasn’t exactly a question.

“Okay,” I said.

“That’s step one. You’re going to do that
immediately
before the kale gets even colder and grosser than it is,” she said.

“What’s step two?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

We sat at the kitchen table, Sasha coloring in her Wonder Woman Coloring Book, Jordan and I sitting next to each other, the pound of kale between us. The sun streamed through the windows, spotlighting the kale, making it look more than a little like kryptonite.

As I poured myself some coffee, Jordan picked up a piece of kale, smelled it, and put it back down.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve been waiting patiently for you to call, but I have to go to Italy tomorrow for work, and I couldn’t wait any longer.”

I took a sip, and tried to think of how to say it. “I didn’t want to put you in the middle.”

“Put me in the
middle?
” Jordan leaned closer toward me, made me meet her eyes. “What is this middle you speak of? For the record, I hate my brother for this.”

“For the record,” I said. “I’m not crazy about him either, at the moment.”

“He’s obviously gone insane. That’s number one. And this Pearl person?”

Pearl.
She had a name. It was Pearl.

Jordan shook her head, sitting back in her chair. “I never liked her, even when I
knew
her,” she said. “She grew up down the street from us. Did Nick tell you that?”

“Not exactly.” I paused, not wanting to ask—and having to ask. “What was she like?” I said.

“A hundred years ago? The head cheerleader, the homecoming queen, the nightmare of every girl whose boobs came in late.”

“Fantastic.”

“So what?” Jordan said, disgust in her voice. “She’s also bossier than me and that’s saying something! And
Pearl?
Seriously? Who’s even named that under the age of ninety?”

“I think one of the baristas over at Caffe Luxxe is named Pearl and she’s definitely in her twenties, maybe her early thirties . . .”

Jordan put up her hand to stop me. “The point is, Nick’s a nutjob if he thinks this is okay by me. He asked if we could all have dinner next Sunday. I said, ‘That sounds great. In a world where
great
means the worst invitation anyone has ever offered me.’ ”

I laughed, which made Sasha look up and smile. Her smile matched Jordan’s—same curving of the lower lip, same half giggle behind it—which was somewhat surprising considering that Jordan was technically Sasha’s stepmother. But in a way it made perfect sense. Jordan loved Sasha as though as she was her own, it often seemed. The other time I’d seen Jordan cry? When Simon had taken Sasha to visit his folks in Martha’s Vineyard. Jordan hadn’t gone because of work. That was that last time she’d chosen to be apart from Sasha because of anything.

“Bottom line? As far as I’m concerned, Nick has less than five minutes to get the h-e-l-l over himself and stop being a c-l-i-c-h-é.”

I looked at Sasha, who was coloring again. “Why are you spelling c-l-i-c-h-é?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I got carried away.”

I squeezed her hand.

“It just makes me mad, you know?” she said. “And this is not me defending him,
believe me
. But between Facebook and BBM and every other type of technology that makes you two clicks away from
anyone
in the universe, nowadays you’ve got to try
not
to get emotionally involved with someone new. You have to try
not
to reach out to an old fling and start shrieking about
maybe we’re meant to be
. You know what I’m saying?”

I shook my head. “I can’t say I do.”

She gave me a look. “I’m saying hazy is the new black,” she said. “All this pseudo-hiding-behind-computer-banter in the name of love . . . it makes me sick. What happened to the good old days when cheating meant actually cheating?”

I stood up, gathering the plates to bring them to the sink. “Jord, I need you to hear me, okay? Nick loves you more than anything in the world. You’re his best friend too. Don’t be mad at him on my account. He hasn’t actually done anything wrong. I think he left so he wouldn’t. That’s fair. It’s not fun or anything, but it’s fair. Plus, I’m not innocent in this. I’m away all the time, as he’ll gladly tell you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying he has a point. It’s hard to maintain a good relationship with someone who’s not around. And I’ve always been like that, right? I moved twelve times before I even turned eighteen, and now I travel half the year for work.” I shrugged. “I don’t think in my whole life I’ve been in the same place for more than a week.”

Her eyes opened wide, as though she understood something for the first time. “Oh, I see! So it’s your fault that your mother is a lost loon, and that Nick is having an early midlife terror attack? Both of those things are on you?”

Before I could answer, she started looking around the room. Then she turned back to me.

“Where’s the dog?” she said.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You let him take the
fucking
d-o-g?” she asked.

“You spelled the wrong word,” I said.

“You
love
Mila. In that gross, irritating way where people talk about you behind your back.”

“So does Nick.”

She gave me a stunned look, but I turned away. How could I explain it, anyway? Even now, after Nick had caused me pain, the truth was I didn’t want to cause him any. Wasn’t that love, after all?

Jordan turned toward her daughter, shaking her head. “Sasha, do you believe this? ” she asked. “Your aunt is being loyal to a
man
even in the face of his questionable moral character. Don’t do that. In fact, that is what not to do. When you grow up and some guy is being bad, you turn on him like the wind. Understood?”

Sasha kept coloring, smiling at her Wonder Woman creation, Wonder Woman’s costume now entirely bright orange.

“Acknowledge that you hear me, baby,” she said.

“I acknowledge, Mommy,” she said. Then she picked up a different crayon, a new shade of orange, and started on Wonder Women’s hair.

Jordan kissed Sasha on the forehead, pushing her soft curls back away. Then she kissed her again.

“So here’s what I’m thinking . . .” she said, turning back to me. “And I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

I sat back down, giving her a smile. “That’s shocking.”

“You’re going to come with us to Venice, until the dust clears. I have an embezzlement case there that should last twelve weeks or so. We’re getting a great house walking distance to the Rialto. Right by the single best coffee shop in the world. And, as no small bonus,
this
Venice,” she motioned around herself, “will feel a million miles away.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said.

“Great. Then it’s settled.”

I shook my head. “I have to work,” I said.

“I’m sorry, don’t they have computers in Italy?” she asked.

I didn’t have a good answer, but I wanted her to understand how impossible it felt to take her up on her offer. “I can’t walk away from my life right now.”

“Annie, I think it walked away from you already,” she said.

I drilled her with a look.

“Not helpful?” she said. “I’m sorry. I suck at this. I just don’t want this to get as bad as it might get.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ” I asked, even though I knew. I wasn’t one of those women who moved on quickly: had a new boyfriend a week later, had a new way of looking at the old one. My “process” was a little less forgiving than that. First I had to blame myself for everything that went wrong. And then everything that didn’t.

“Come to Venice, Annie,” Jordan said. “Nick will get over this. Life will go back to normal. In the meantime, let’s have some fun! Be the opposite of you.”

Be the opposite of you
: those words hit me, right away, penetrating the fog.
Be the opposite of me?
It was day ten and this was the first thing I remember hearing that sounded like a good idea. It was the first thing that sounded something like a real plan. For getting on with it.

“It would help me out too,” Jordan continued. “Simon and I can actually spend a little time alone. Have a romantic dinner, occasionally. Go for a long walk.” She paused. “See? This isn’t even about your needs. I’m basically using you for child care.”

I laughed. “I don’t know, Jordan. . . .”

“Yes. You do.” She looked right at me. “We both know Nick’s coming back to you. It’s just the five-year itch. That’s a very real thing. I plan to be in Morocco for mine. Speaking of which, I’m going to need some hotel recommendations when the time comes. Something with a spa.”