The First Husband Read online

  “She says I need to figure out what I need for me.”

  She says. He kept saying that. She says. Three hundred times now, if I was counting correctly. Probably because he knew that if he took the she says out, his words sounded harsher. This was my first clear thought. My second was sadder. What had I done to make him want to leave?

  Which was when he started to get to the truth.

  “Also,” he said, far more quietly. “There may be other reasons why I’m confused.”

  At least he had the courage to say that.

  “There may be other reasons?” I said. “Do you want to check with your therapist first?”

  He hit me with a sad look. “That isn’t helpful,” he said.

  Maybe it wasn’t helpful, but it was also not entirely uncalled for. Nick ’s “therapist” wasn’t even a real therapist. He had never seen a therapist before in his life. But someone from his work had recommended that Nick meet with this woman, who was closer to a psychic, or a life counselor. Or, as she called herself on her silky blue business card, a FUTURES COUNSELOR. Meaning after hearing your stories, she told you what she saw in your future and then helped you get there, or helped you to avoid it. For, you know, $650 an hour.

  This was when I realized what he was trying very hard not to tell me.

  “Who is she?” I asked, but I already had a guess: Michelle Bryant, Nick ’s ex-girlfriend and college sweetheart. They had gone to Brown together, dated all four years there, and lived together for the last two of them. Then they had lived together in a picturesque carriage house in Brooklyn for two years after graduating. Michelle was a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University of California, up in San Francisco. And, because neurosurgery apparently wasn’t impressive enough, she’d also become a special consultant to the FBI, in charge of studying brain patterns in children prone to violence. And did I mention she was drop-dead gorgeous? How could I blame Nick for still wanting to date her? I wanted to date her.

  “It’s Michelle?” I said, less like a question than a statement.

  “No! I’ve told you that you have nothing to worry about in terms of her.”

  Nick forgot his sadness for just long enough to look pleased about this, like it proved something that he wasn’t leaving me for the person I’d been insecure about—but for someone else entirely.

  “Does she work on The Unbowed? ”

  The Unbowed was the title of Nick’s movie. He’d taken it from a William Ernest Henley poem that we loved—one of several poems that we’d framed and lined up by the refrigerator in our kitchen. The lines read, “Under the bludgeoning of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed.” In more generous moments, I had loved that he was using it for the title. This wasn’t a generous moment.

  “It’s nothing like that . . .” he mumbled under his breath. Then, in case I missed it, he shook his head for emphasis: nothing at all. “She’s just a friend . . .” he said.

  “Just a friend?”

  He nodded. “A friend from home,” he said. “I swear to you, nothing’s happened yet.”

  He looked relieved about this part too. But I couldn’t help but wonder why he thought that the fact he was leaving me for someone he hadn’t slept with yet was going to make me feel better. I couldn’t help but wonder why he thought I’d hear anything but the words he offered up accidentally. She’s from home. Meaning, home was somewhere else. Meaning, not here. With me.

  “I’m so sorry, Annie,” he said. “But the truth is . . .”

  Then he stopped himself. He stopped himself, like he didn’t know whether to say it. Which was when he did.

  “The truth is, you’re away so much, Adams. You’re always away.”

  “You’re saying, she’s only here because I’m . . . not?” I finished for him.

  “I’m saying, I may be the one who’s leaving. But if we’re being honest, you’re never here anyway. I’m not sure you even want to be.”

  That’s when it happened. When my heart broke open, right in my chest.

  Five years. We’d been together five years. We had a life together. Wasn’t I supposed to be allowed to count on it? He had promised me I could—that I should—in the breath right after the breath where he explained that he wasn’t sure how he felt about marriage. But we, he and I, were going to be more than married. Post-married, he’d called it. What’s a piece of paper? Right then, it was something I could have held up like proof that he couldn’t just decide this. Out of nowhere.

  Was this the right moment to make my other point, that he traveled almost as much as I did? It didn’t seem like it. It didn’t seem like he would be open to hearing that—to hearing anything from me. He was too busy looking down, picking at his fingernails. He was picking at the dirt caught there, not in a way that he was avoiding me, but in a way that he was actually focused on it. Focused and exhausted.

  When he looked back up at me, it was with a look that said, Are we done? I knew that look, of course. I knew all of his looks. It had been five years.

  I gave him a look back. Not yet, please. I need to understand this.

  Hadn’t we been sitting here, right here, yesterday? We had. I had come home from the airport, exhausted, but stayed up so I could have a few minutes with Nick before he left for work. He’d made us peach French toast and I’d helped him rework the last scene of his movie. The very last shot. He had looked so happy when he figured it out, so happy with me that I had helped. He gave a huge smile and then leaned in toward me. He leaned in toward me, just yesterday, and said, You’re priceless . . . You know that?

  It was a moment, less than twenty-four lousy hours before, which seemed directly antithetical to this moment. I didn’t know yet that you can always find that perfect moment right before everything shatters—which was why I said it out loud, like evidence for my side of things. The side, as I saw it at the time, of love.

  “But yesterday . . .” I said, “you said I was priceless.”

  He leaned in and touched my face, and I thought he was going to say, You are, it’s me. You are, and I love you, and my friend is just messing with my head. You are and I just need a break to know for sure. To remember for sure. That we belong. Only he didn’t say any of that. And, while I do believe, even now, he couldn’t hear himself clearly—couldn’t possibly hear just how bad it sounded coming out—he did say it.

  He reached over and touched my face.

  “You were,” he said.

  2

  The allure of “Checking Out”—the reason the column met, from the start, with a certain level of success—was that it gave people a sense of control. They’d learn about a list of things they needed to experience in a certain place: an extraordinary sight (“Take in the view of the Taj Mahal from the Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra”), an extraordinary taste (“Try the special stewed bamboo rolls at the famed T’ang Court in Hong Kong’s Central District”), discovering the one thing that couldn’t be found anywhere else (“Don’t forget to buy a hundred sheets of freshly made paper from the only operating paper factory in Amalfi—it’s been going since 1592!”). They did these things, enjoyed them, took photographs of themselves enjoying them—and then they got to feel like they’d not only experienced that place, but had truly broken away from their real lives. Next!

  Only, as my editor, Peter W. Shepherd, said to me not too long ago, “If I may quote Steinbeck”—Peter was British and about a hundred years old and one of my very favorite humans, but since he began working on his novel (which he described as “Tortilla Flat, only British”), he would use any excuse to start a sentence by quoting Steinbeck—Peter said, “ ‘A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.’ ”

  Of course, whether I liked it or not, he was on to something. There was a faultiness governing “Checking Out.” That sense of control was an illusion. The magic of Big Sur, as an example, came from spending a whole day propped up on the rocks by the post office, listening to the ocean behind you. Except that most people didn’
t have the time or inclination to sit by the post office all day doing nothing. But they could find fifty glorious minutes to head to Bixby Canyon Bridge and the most beautiful intersection of mountain rock and ocean you could ever hope to see. Feel like they had a perfect hegira, check it off their list.

  In each of my categories in “Checking Out,” I tried to give readers that sense of escaping—of breaking free of their everyday boundaries, of leaving their comfort zone. I labeled the categories with this in mind (I called the sightseeing part of the column “Open Your Eyes” and another part, in which readers were to venture off the beaten path, “Take the Wrong Exit”). And I was very careful not to pick anything too obvious as the thing to see (no Statue of Liberty) or too common as the thing to taste (no sampling the everything pie from Ray’s Pizza in the West Village). Finally, I put the most pressure of all on the last category on the list (“Discover the One Thing You Can’t Find Elsewhere”)—which, in addition to always having to be captivating, had the most important job of all: to make people feel that, after they finished this last one, they were ready to go home again.

  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 step
mother. 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.”