The First Husband Page 9

  “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.”

  I did know that—could feel it, actually—which was when a bit of the confusion and jealousy subsided, and I heard the first part of what he said. And I began to process it.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “But she knew, right? She knew from you? That you’re married now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  He shook his head. “I tried a hundred times to talk to her. But she wouldn’t take my calls. She didn’t respond to my e-mails that I had news for her and we needed to talk. And it felt cruel to spell it out over e-mail. I thought it would be kinder to wait until I was back, to bite the bullet and tell her in person.”

  “So you’re telling me that I’m the one who informed your girlfriend of thirteen years that you married someone else less than a year after the two of you broke up?”

  I shook my head and looked down. Then I saw it, what I was still wearing around my neck. “And I stole her scarf!”

  “Annie, come on . . .”

  I headed out to the street, Griffin following close behind. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, maybe just somewhere that this conversation could start over again. But then I turned back to look at him. He looked so upset. He looked so upset that it stopped me.

  I looked at him. “I’m a terrible person,” I said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  I didn’t know exactly how to answer him. I didn’t know how to explain that as disorienting as his revelations were, something was bothering me even more. It almost killed me. It almost killed me that Nick had maybe found someone else so quickly. It almost killed me wondering why he was drawn to someone who seemed so different than me—that seemed so able to fill the holes for him that I couldn’t. And now, without even knowing it, I’d become this other woman to someone else. I had become this other woman to her, and moved right into her hometown without any warning. Not to mention that, on top of the rest of it, I was being kept warm by her homemade orange scarf.

  Then it occurred to me. “How could that not be the worst thing?” I asked.

  He looked at me, confused.

  “That you were with her for thirteen years? How could that not be the worst thing?” I said. “Or the best?”

  He nodded.

  “It was close,” he said.

  14

  I got back to the house after dark. I’d left Griffin at the restaurant to finish up for the day, took the car, and went to find myself a coat. I felt like I was in no position to wrap my head around all the new information that seemed to be insistently coming at me—from Jesse, from Griffin, from Gia—but a new, warmer coat: that I could handle. But as I drove though Williamsburg’s quiet streets—incredibly quiet, it seemed, only a handful of people outside—the only clothing store I could find was a small vintage shop, the lights already dimmed, looking mostly closed.

  The saleswoman—sales teenager, more accurately—gave me a crazy look when I even walked inside. Or I thought she was giving me a crazy look, at least, but it was a little hard to make out her expression beneath her enormous, purple hat. Matching purple glasses.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “It’s sleepy out there today, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Well, it’s after five,” she said.

  “Right, of course . . .” I said. Then I shook my head, confused. “Wait, what do you mean that it’s after five?”

  She shrugged. “It’s the rule of five.”

  For a minute I thought she too knew there was a new person in town (me) and was making a joke at the new girl’s expense. But then, when I started to giggle—trying to be a good sport—she didn’t join in.

  “Why’s that so funny? It’s just the rule.”

  She rolled her eyes, as if in complete disbelief that this didn’t clear up the entire situation for me.

  “After five P.M., from November through March, you rarely see more than five people on the streets around here.”

  “That’s a little like people walking around in Los Angeles, any time of the year,” I said.


  I started to laugh. She, on the other hand, wasn’t at all amused. “Can I help you with something?” she said.

  “Would you mind just pointing me in the direction of the winter coats?”

  She nodded toward the back of the small store, and the only two coats she had left: a floor-length black wool coat with red and green sequined rhinestone hearts plastered all over it. In a small. And the same coat in an extra large.

  When I walked into the house a little while later—in the cruel and enormous extra large version—I found Jesse at the kitchen table, still dressed in his suit. He was making his way through two six-packs of beer, and eating Chinese food straight from the array of take-out containers littering the table.

  “Nice coat, lady!” he said.

  I sat down across from him. “Not a good moment to start with me about it,” I said.

  “Who’s starting with you? It’s badass.” It took me only half a second to see that he was serious. “Completely badass.”

  Then he held a container in my direction. “Shrimp lo mein?”

  I shook my head. “No thanks, I’m not hungry.”

  “You sure?”

  I looked in the container, the shiny, colorful noodles staring back at me.

  “You’re right, I am.” I sighed. “I’m always hungry, apparently, even when I’m totally depressed. Which is why between the small coat and the extra-large one there wasn’t much of a contest.”

  Jesse gave me a confused look. “I’m just going to pretend I followed that,” he said.

  “Probably for the best,” I said.

  Then he handed over the lo mein, plus a packet of hot mustard sauce to go with it. As I poured the sauce over the noodles, he started in on a container marked PEKING BEEF AND BROCCOLI, taking an impressively large bite.

  “So why are you depressed?” he asked, his mouth full.

  I paused before answering. “I met Gia.”

  His eyes got wide. “Gia Henry?”

  “Is there more than one?” I asked.

  Then his eyes got wider as I could see him making the connections: kids to school, school to Gia, Gia to heart-sequined coat.

  “Man,” he said. “That’s kind of my fault, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Griffin was the one who dated someone else for thirteen years and didn’t find it necessary to give me a heads-up about the fact that it just ended. Or that she still lives around the corner.”

  “Don’t be mad at him about that. Everyone still lives around the corner. That’s the thing about Williamsburg. No one leaves. Or they don’t get too far. We’re all one dysfunctional family.”

  “That’s so not comforting.”

  He smiled. “Well, take comfort in the fact that she’s more like three corners away, actually.”

  I looked up at him.

  “You have to walk over to North Farms Road. Then Mountain Street . . .” He was motioning with his fingers, marking the direction you needed to go. To get to her. “Then over the bridge to High!”

  The noodles were still in my mouth—greasy-hot, slippery—and it was all I could do to keep chewing.

  “She used to live here? In this house?” I said.

  “Maybe?” he said.

  How could that surprise me? Thirteen years, where else would they be, but under the same roof? My roof. Hers first.

  Jesse pushed a beer in my direction. I reached for it, opening the top.

  “This is turning into a great day,” I said.

  “Ah, what are you so freaked about, anyway?” he shook his head. “You guys are completely different.”

  “That’s what I’m so freaked-out about,” I said. “I know I just met her, but, on the surface at least, she seems more Griffin’s match than me.”

  He waved his hand away. “What does the surface tell you?” he said. “Besides, that was a loyalty thing. Not a love thing.”

  I picked up the beer, and took a long swig. Then I took another. “Meaning what, exactly?” I said.

  “Meaning, there are different reasons that people stay with someone. Over time, there are different reasons.” He picked the noodles back up. “You can tell when you’re in the presence of true love and when you’re in the presence of something closer to friendship.”

  “And with them it was closer to friendship?” I said.

  “Well, not at first. At first they were crazy about each other. . . .”

  He started laughing, recalling an apparently hilarious memory involving how crazy my husband was for his ex-girlfriend. I must have given him some look because he stopped laughing, his eyes getting wide, nervous, as he tried to change the direction we were going.

  “The point is that yes, sure, they loved each other when they were young, but something shifted,” he said. “They had become each other’s family, but they didn’t have that initial draw anymore. That draw that, you know, makes you feel certain about someone.”

  “Who gets to have that all the time? Who in the history of the world has ever gotten to have that forever?”

  He held the noodles to his mouth, thinking about it. “Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman . . . and probably someone else.”

  I shook my head, unable to stop myself from laughing. But even if it could have made me feel better (because he clearly wouldn’t have said the whole thing about love and loyalty if he didn’t think his brother and I fell on the love side of the boat), it actually made me feel something else more acutely. It made me feel defensive. Defensive for a girl with beautiful blond hair whom I’d just met for the first time. Defensive for myself too. And for all of us who gave years of ourselves—who gave the best pieces of ourselves—to someone who ultimately decided they weren’t certain enough to fight for us.

  “I think it’s more complicated than that,” I said.

  Jesse shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I think, or I used to think at least, that real love comes over time, once that initial draw you’re talking about takes on a different form. When you get to understand there is something more concrete between you,” I said. “Something that is worth preserving . . .”

  He tilted his head, looking at me confused. “And how’s that different than what I just said?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m starting to doubt I have any idea about what makes love work.”

  “Comforting, coming from my brother’s wife.”

  I gave him a smile, trying to lighten the mood. But I was also thinking about what Jordan said, Jordan whom I’d been trying to avoid calling back, Jordan whom I’d been trying to avoid. Sending her short e-mails, ignoring her hostile ones. What had she said that day? If too much time goes by, men can forget what they have. How much they still want exactly what they have . . .

  Is the switch from love to something closer to loyalty really just another name for that very moment—that very challenge—and the inability to meet it? Was that just an excuse for Jesse to do what he did to his wife? How about Nick? How about my new husband?

  And what did that say about what I was doing here?

  I felt unready to address those questions, especially the last one, and the addendum to the last one, which had started circling around me: What exactly was I going to do here?

  I pulled my coat tighter around me, the inside of the rhinestone hearts scratching at my arms.

  “So how did it go today, anyway?” I asked, moving us into easier territory. “With your dissertation adviser?”

  “Not so good,” he said.

  “No extension granted?”

  He shook his head, picking up an egg roll. “Nope,” he said.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. I have eight weeks. Period. Eight weeks before I’m in front of a committee I couldn’t be ready for in thirty weeks. But what can I do? Jude doesn’t have much sympathy for my personal predicament.”

  “Jude knows?”

  He nodded. “Jude knows.”

  This surprised me and made me wonder if he had misundersto
od my question.

  “No, what I mean is . . . you’re saying that she knows what’s going on with you? In terms of your personal life?” I asked. “She knows that you got a woman pregnant? Someone who isn’t your wife?”

  “You would assume so,” he said, popping the entire egg roll into his mouth, starting to chew. “Considering it was Jude that I got pregnant.”

  I didn’t know what to say. In my imagination it had been a graduate student or even an undergraduate student that Jesse had impregnated—a twenty-two-year-old who made him feel young and admired. Who made him new. Who confused being careless with carefree, and got herself involved with a married father of two. But this was shaping up to be something else, something with its own set of complications. Something that might involve optical fields.

  I put my hand up to stop him from telling me anymore. “You know what? I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get an extension. I really am. But I can’t exactly deal with this right now,” I said.

  “Yeah . . .” He nodded. “That’s what she said too.”

  Then, Jesse looked back up at me, something occurring to him.

  “Your editor called, by the way, right when I was walking in the door. Some British dude. I think he said his name was Peter W. Shepherd?” Jesse offered up his name in a British accent.

  I nodded. “That would be him.”

  “He sounded a little uptight.”

  “He is a little uptight.”

  “He also wasn’t particularly happy,” he said. “He said something about giving up on trying your cell phone now that you live in the boondocks. I wanted to say, Dude, this is western Massachusetts, not the foothills of Tennessee. But he’d probably have been like, There’s a difference? So it’s probably good I kept quiet.”

  “Probably.”

  “Either way,” he said, “I hate to be the messenger on this one, but in case you aren’t in the mood for any other surprises today, he did say you have to call him back as soon as possible. Those were his exact words. Apparently he has some bad news to report.”

  I pulled my coat tighter around me, unable to feel the hearts anymore, unable to let myself feel another bad thing.

  “Of course he does,” I said.