The Glass Wives (2 page)

Evie read Laney’s lips from across the room.

“You never go to a shiva house empty-handed,” Laney said to Beth as she stacked bakery boxes on Nicole’s kitchen counter.

Laney saw the world in black and white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Evie’s life was shades of gray. Like her hair.

Evie’s almost-black, wavy hair with its questionable roots hung past her shoulders in an attempt-to-be-trendy array of scattered layers. Her sweeping bangs weren’t doing any sweeping, they were just hanging.

The kids were smart to hightail it out of there. Evie didn’t want to talk to anyone either, but she
was
content to people-watch. Richard’s cousins from Cleveland huddled in the corner; the older aunts and uncles who migrated to Florida sat in a semicircle talking louder than they should. Neighbors Evie last saw on Halloween and their mutual grad-school friends who were strangers outside e-mail mingled with Pinehurst College faculty and Richard’s Ohio State fraternity brothers he had not seen since graduation. Why did they come? For themselves? Richard? The kids? Nicole? For memories? It didn’t matter. They were equal when gathered for sadness. But their presence was also akin to a gapers’ delay on the tollway, where everyone slowed to see the pileup and then floored it to get away.

*   *   *

“Not exactly the scenario
she
planned when she snagged herself a married man and had a baby,” Laney said behind a sesame bagel. She eyed her husband. Herb furrowed his brow and sucked in his lips, trapping his words. Laney winked at him and a smile broke through Herb’s full lips and mustache. He put his arm around Laney’s waist. Evie squelched a gasp. This was normally where Laney would feign an itch on her ankle and step away, but she didn’t move, except closer to Herb. Evie watched her friends and counted.
One, two, three.
She gave it more time.
Four, five, six.
Flabbergasted, Evie continued.
Seven, eight, nine
. And with a deep breath—the finale …
ten
. Laney did not move away. Richard’s death had initiated a truce.

Evie watched Laney as Laney watched Herb. He kissed Laney’s head and walked away. Laney then moved to the couch close to Evie, even though Laney could have claimed a whole cushion for herself. She was protective; almost possessive. Beth sat on the other side of Laney, bagel-less, a more suitable space between them. Beth put her arm around Laney and extended it, patting Evie’s back.

“This is so sad,” Beth said.

Laney sat taller, even though she was already the tallest. She flared her nostrils in disapproval. “Don’t you dare feel bad for
her
. What goes around comes around,” Laney said with a bagel bite in her mouth. Laney’s shoulders relaxed and she glanced from Beth to Evie. “At least you don’t have to deal with her anymore. Or the baby.”

Evie hadn’t been thinking about Nicole. She’d been thinking about her kids without a father. Herself without an ex-husband. How dare Richard leave her to raise the twins alone—not just sometimes alone—and to juggle a half brother and a stepmother and a Christmas tree! But was Laney right? Was
that
the silver lining? Would Sam and Sophie even have a stepmother? It would make things easier if they did not. But only easier for Evie.
Damn conscience.

“Your kids will be okay no matter,” Beth said, as if reading Evie’s mind. That possibility was comforting as well as disconcerting because Evie craved more than okay. Evie craved normal.

Laney turned ninety degrees, faced her friends, and pointed at Evie, which startled her out of her daze. “Ms. Evie Glass,” she said as if taking attendance, “you are now a divorced mom with a dead ex-husband. JDate will never be the same.”

Beth hung her head and, without looking up, smacked Laney’s finger. Evie didn’t need JDate and Laney knew it. Evie had been dating Scott Miller every other weekend for the past six months, and when the kids were with Evie and she couldn’t see Scott, they e-mailed, texted, and talked on the phone late at night. They’d just come back from a weekend in Michigan. That meant something. Evie just wasn’t sure what.

*   *   *

After the rabbi led the evening
minyan
and finished the service with the traditional
Kaddish
prayer, Beth and Laney wrapped their arms around Evie in the tightest group hug three people could give. The rocking motion enveloped her in safety, staving off death and Christmas folderol. Then, a shadow blocked the overhead light. The jumbled group separated. There stood Scott with a plate of rugelach.

From that angle, he looked tall to Evie, but he was Jewish five-nine, which meant
five-seven
—something Evie learned quickly when she started online dating. He held a Christmas paper plate filled with Evie’s favorite—the two-bite, flaky, rolled cookies filled with chocolate bits or raspberry jam or nuts or apricot preserves. They had been her grandmother’s,
Bubbe
’s, specialty.

Though sweets seemed counterintuitive for mourning, everyone reached into the plate. Evie reached instead for Scott’s other hand and noticed his nails, clean, trimmed and buffed as always. He was her man of the moment and foreseeable future. The
boyfriend
label seemed childish, and the
significant other
moniker seemed, well, too significant.

“This is Beth and Laney,” Evie said, pointing with her chin so she didn’t have to let go of the rugelach, or of Scott. For three years—The Divorced Years—Evie had kept her random dating escapades distant from her kids, her friends, and her pristine Chicago suburb of Lakewood. But the best-friend trio had agreed—it was time for Beth and Laney to meet Scott. He was a gentleman, a banker’s banker with a receding hairline, an ex-wife in California, but no kids. He made Evie laugh and think and he was great in bed. Evie pointed to the last rugelach, but he shook his head.
Such a mensch.
Any man who gave up the last rugelach must be a keeper.

Evie smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. He smiled, but he didn’t squeeze back.

“This is Scott,” Evie said, releasing the plate onto her lap. She didn’t know what else to say.

“We met at the funeral,” Beth said. “Nice to see you again. Well, you know what I mean.”

Laney nodded in agreement.

“Sure, same here,” said Scott, taking his place on a separate cushion, keeping his physical distance, but watching Evie, never averting his eyes. He looked as if he were in a trance, so that meant he was either riveted or bored. To Evie, everything and everyone was tired-blurry. She blinked hard in lieu of rubbing her eyes, even though she had on no makeup. Evie pointed out her parents and sister. Laney named each Lakewood friend and foe. For Laney there were always foes.

“Where are your in-laws?” Scott said. “I mean, your
ex
-in-laws?”

“Richard’s parents died young,” Beth whispered. She mouthed the word
cancer.
“He was an only child.”

“That’s his great-aunt and -uncle over there,” Evie said. “I don’t think I’ve seen them since the wedding.”
That wasn’t very nice. They were old.
She and Richard should have visited them. Or invited them to Lakewood. Paid for the plane ticket. Yes, they—
Richard
—should have done all those things and much more.

“Which ones belong to the widow?” Laney said.

That was a good question. Where was Nicole’s family? Evie knew almost everyone. Where were the strangers? The other side of Richard’s new family? The new friends that went with the new life? Evie shrugged. “No clue.”

“They must be here somewhere.” Scott looked around the room without moving his head, his eyes appearing to follow a bouncing ball.

“I don’t think so.” Evie scanned the crowd in more of a tennis-match movement, quick and side to side. Frantic to find the missing members of Nicole’s family, Evie looked around the room. Had they been there all along, lost in the crowd, unseen because they weren’t being sought? No. There were sitters and standers and leaners. The real helpers, the pretend helpers, and the ones who had no intention of helping. The grazers, the pilers, the pickers. The Christmas sweaters. The Christmas sweaters might be Nicole’s family, but then why weren’t they cuddling Luca or bringing Nicole cups of grief tea? A subtle awareness tugged at Evie as if a memory, or facts, were just out of reach. She pushed aside the thought. She could ask Nicole about her family later, if Evie remembered.

*   *   *

As the shiva crowd thinned, Evie’s parents and sister carried wooden kitchen chairs and placed them near the couch, joining the elite group of leftover mourners. Shirley, Evie’s mother, looked at her watch and then raised her eyebrows. Laney then looked at
her
watch.

“When are you going home?” Laney said to Evie.

“Later.”

“You’ve done enough
,
Evelyn,” Shirley said, shaking her head. “You don’t need to be here any longer.”

“I’ll stay till the kids are tired. They want to be here.”

“It’s time for you to go home,” Evie’s dad, Bob, said. “This doesn’t make sense, staying here, helping out. Enough is enough.” He remained standing and crossed his arms.

“We’ll come back with you tomorrow, promise,” Lisa, Evie’s sister, said. She was only eighteen months younger, but Lisa was a divorced, no-kids D.C. attorney with a town house in Georgetown who wore yoga pants
only
to do yoga and washed her hair even if she wasn’t leaving the house. She scoffed at the well-married, luxury-minivan-driving, stay-at-home soccer moms of Lakewood, but never lumped Evie into the same category.

“The kids just want to stay longer.” Evie dumped her empty plate into a passing trash bag carried by one of her neighbors. Maybe she should have used a doggie bag, but instead she checked her fingers and lap for rugelach crumbs and popped a few sweet escapees into her mouth. “Please don’t make this harder for me.”

Evie’s parents and Lisa left for Evie’s house. They’d take care of the dog and stay up late discussing her fate, which they’d undoubtedly share with her in the morning. She couldn’t wait.

As if lights had blinked indicating it was time for everyone to go, neighbors hugged Evie good-bye. Acquaintances touched her shoulder. Strangers nodded in her direction. She was glad to have them all graveside and then back at Nicole’s; the hum of their voices and their buzz of activity kept her thoughts in the present. She knew that for most, a death gathering mirrored a one-night stand—gratifying, brief, and tinged with regret. Evie envied their right to keep moving when her own feet were stuck to the floor. Tomorrow other families might be ice-skating in Millennium Park and then searching the
Cloud Gate
sculpture—
The Bean
—for their frozen, bundled reflections. Her family would not.

Her family.
For three years, Evie had defined
family
as her and Sam and Sophie. And for Evie, that still held true. But the shape and breadth of her children’s family had changed forever. Nothing for them would ever be the same, which meant nothing would be the same for Evie. Again. She inhaled deeply, the air snagging in her lungs, then exhaled to make sure she could.

The twins walked to the couch and in silence took their designated places on either side of Evie. They leaned their heads on their mother’s shoulders and wrapped their arms around her torso, and each other. When the twins were babies and toddlers, they both climbed into her lap at the same time. Evie knew if they did that now, her lap would still have been the right size, because a mother’s lap is always the right size. She kissed each of them on the head, and simultaneously each child took one of her hands, squeezed tight, and held on, as if they might fall.

Evie needed to find her footing again and find it fast. Because if she stumbled, they all
would
come tumbling down.

A cold wind whipped into the living room. A chill sped down Evie’s spine as if a snowball had struck the back of her neck. She shivered, turned her head, and noticed Scott leaning by the open front door. His camel cashmere overcoat buttoned to his neck, hands in his pockets, his head tilted and resting on the doorjamb in a classic
GQ
pose. Scott winked at her. Evie smiled and closed her eyes in silent gratitude.

When she opened them, he was gone.

Chapter 2

W
HEN SHIVA ENDED, SO DID
the catered meals and constant company.

Evie was a mixed bag of glad and sad when her parents and Lisa had flown home the day before. They’d done the driving, the consoling, and the laundry. For Evie, those were equally important. But without them there was no worrying about Lisa’s part-time vegetarianism or her parents’ bouts with acid reflux. Her family came, they comforted, and they conquered the kitchen by filling the pantry with boxes of cereal and granola bars, stocking the freezer with ice cream cones, and loading the fridge with bags of apples, oranges, and containers of homemade meals. But Evie knew her kids best—so tonight they would forgo Shirley’s pot roast, Bob’s turkey burgers, and Lisa’s veggie chili, to cook hot dogs in the fireplace. Evie’s mantra of the day:
Nitrates and carcinogens in moderation never hurt anyone
.

After dinner, showers, and check-in phone calls to her parents and sister, Evie read aloud to Sam and Sophie from their well-loved book
Freckle Juice
. It didn’t matter that it was the twins’ favorite three years ago. There was safety and familiarity within those pages. And they always laughed. A silent mom-prayer went out to Judy Blume for images of Andrew Marcus drawing freckles on his face with a Magic Marker. Evie would much rather have her kids dreaming of freckle-juice-drinking monsters than of a limousine ride to a cemetery.

Sam and Sophie snuggled into sleeping bags and listened, or pretended to. Evie read until her tongue felt thick with words she said but didn’t hear; until the twins’ eyes flittered shut and mouths dropped open, their winter complexions lit and warmed by the dwindling fire.