When Love Goes Bad Page 17

  “Friends tell their friends when something is bothering them. Sometimes it helps to get it off your chest.”

  “You are too kind. . . .”

  “So tell me your problem. Maybe I can help. Is it the car again?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Well, what is it? It can’t be that bad.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said glumly.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s nothing for you to worry your pretty head about. Do you want to learn some new steps tonight?”

  “Yes—as soon as you tell me what’s bothering you.”

  He looked down at the floor. “This is very embarrassing.”

  “You don’t need to be embarrassed with me. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I owe some back rent, and according to my landlord, if I don’t come up with $375 by tomorrow, I’m to be—what’s the word?”

  “Evicted?”

  “Yes, evicted.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, can we? I’ll write you a check.”

  “I owe you so much already. . . .”

  “Then what’s a little more?”

  “I’m keeping a strict accounting of all the transactions,” Luis said. “As soon as I—how you say?—‘get on my feet’ again, I will pay you back every penny.”

  “I’m sure you will,” I said.

  He kissed my hand. “Elsa, how can I ever thank you?”

  “We’ll think of something,” I teased. I couldn’t believe my boldness. He made me feel so feminine and attractive.

  He laughed and pulled me close. “You naughty girl,” he whispered, his lips lightly brushing my cheek, and I am ashamed to admit it, but a tingle ran up my spine.

  I can’t tell you how much Luis’s phone calls meant to me. My daughter lived far away and I hated to run up the phone bill, so I didn’t get to talk to her very often. I talked to my friends, of course, but nothing matched the thrill of hearing a man’s voice on the phone. And Luis seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say—not like Lois, who seemed to be waiting for me to pause so that she could switch the conversation back to herself.

  I told Luis things I’d never told anyone else, not even Harold, bless his heart. I told him about my father, who was away on business all the time when I was little, and how he had always brought us presents when he came home. One time, I got a sock monkey that I named Squeaks, and when he came back from Japan I got a Japanese doll with a gold-and-green kimono. My brother got mad at me one day and broke it, and Mom docked his allowance for a whole month.

  There was always a lot of fun when my dad came home, like a big party, but it was only a matter of time before he’d leave again and we’d see him off at the airport, watching through the big, plate glass window as he boarded the plane. One night after his departure, I saw a plane crash on the news, and even though Mom kept insisting that it was a different plane, not the one Daddy was on, I would not believe it until she dialed the number of the motel he was staying at and I heard the familiar, comforting sound of his voice over the wire.

  I told Luis about my mother; how she was so pretty and smart, but she was tired all the time and she seemed very lonely. She kept busy with the PTA and Zonta Club and her civic causes, but there was a look in her eyes . . . was it hopelessness, or despair? It came into her eyes every time my father boarded that plane, and stayed through the endless days and nights till his return.

  I even confided to Luis my secret dream of being a ballerina, which was laughable, considering that I’d never had a ballet lesson in my life. He answered, in all seriousness, that if I’d taken ballet lessons when I was a kid, I might very easily have had a career in ballet—look how quickly I learned the complicated steps he taught me and how naturally talented I was, he said.

  I told him of my devastation when Harold had died. My husband’s death was quick, sudden. Merciful, I suppose, since it wasn’t a long and lingering illness. He dropped dead of a heart attack on the golf course. I know it sounds crazy, but it brought me some comfort knowing that Harold was doing something he loved when he died.

  Harold golfed with a group of friends every Wednesday morning. They took turns driving. We had breakfast around seven-thirty that fateful morning. He ate toast with strawberry jam, along with his usual bacon and eggs, even though the doctor was after him about his cholesterol. He drank a glass of orange juice and filled a thermos with coffee to take with him. He was in a jovial mood, joking about this and that. A car outside honked, and he was off. About ten that morning, a strange feeling came over me—an overwhelming feeling of dread that I can’t even really describe. It turned out that that was the time when he died: 10:03 A.M. When I saw ashen-faced Tom Mitchell at the door about a half an hour later, I knew.

  It was a nice service. His brother gave a moving eulogy. A lot of people came; his golfing buddies and all of his friends from the VFW were there. He was buried with full military honors; they played “Taps” at the burial.

  Harold had always been a good provider, and he still proved to be so after he was gone. He’d invested wisely. I’d heard horror stories of once-wealthy widows who had to return to work after their husband’s demise, fending off bill collectors as best they could and living off the charity of their children. Thanks to Harold’s prudence and his savvy business sense, I could stay in our home and continue to live in the style to which I was accustomed. For that I was grateful.

  I stayed with my daughter for a few weeks after the funeral, but I knew that, eventually, I would have to go home. Mandy offered to come back with me, but I knew she had her job and her family to attend to. She had been a great solace to me, but it was time to pick up the pieces of my life and go on. We marked out the route I would take back home on the map the night before, and I set out. I only got lost once—quite an accomplishment, since I was used to Harold doing most of the driving. In the blink of an eye, my life had changed dramatically.

  Back at home, I pulled into the familiar driveway. Strange, how nothing had changed—and yet, at the same time, everything had changed. I got out of the car and walked up to the house. Through the garage window, I could see Harold’s car, still parked where he had left it that fateful morning. I guessed I would have to sell it; there was no use having two cars now. . . .

  I paused, my hand on the doorknob. It’s now or never, I thought, taking a deep breath. I fitted the key into the lock and walked in.

  I stood in the den, overwhelmed by Harold’s presence. This was his room, filled with his things. The computer Mandy and her husband, Jake, had bought for him last Christmas sat expectantly on the desk, waiting for Harold, who would never return.

  “Welcome to the twentieth century,” Jake had teased when he’d brought in the huge box wrapped in Santa Claus paper. I could almost see Harold sitting at his desk, as he had done so many afternoons, poring over manuals and learning new things.

  “Come on, Elsie,” he would say. “Let me show you how to email. It’s easy.”

  But I’d steadfastly refused. “Forget this email stuff,” I’d say. “Anybody who wants to contact me can either call or write me a good, old-fashioned letter. Give me a pen and paper any day.” It became a good-natured running argument between us.

  I walked around the den slowly, looking at everything with new eyes: the bookcase he’d made, filled with fishing magazines and Popular Mechanic . . . I don’t think he ever threw any of those out. His Civil War books, his well-thumbed whodunits. . . .

  Plaques from the Elks Club and the VFW hung on the wall, along with an orange plastic-framed handprint that Mandy had made for Father’s Day when she was in kindergarten. A gold-framed photograph of Harold and me, taken by a professional photographer on our forty-sixth anniversary, smiled at me from the corner curio shelf. I picked it up, gently touching the image of my dead husband.

  Harold. . . .

  I moved on to the kitchen, so recently filled with the hubbub of friends and family after the funeral, so empty now . . . I smiled, remember
ing Mandy, at the age of ten, making her first batch of chocolate chip cookies all on her own, with me supervising. She went outside to play and promptly forgot all about them. They would have burned on the bottom if I hadn’t rescued them from the oven.

  Like most men of his generation, Harold wasn’t much of a cook, but he did like to eat. In fact, if he weren’t so active, I’m sure he would have been a major butterball. He liked the traditional favorites: big, juicy steaks, medium rare; mashed potatoes and gravy; corn on the cob slathered with butter. His favorite dessert: pecan pie with pistachio ice cream.

  How many breakfasts, lunches, and dinners had we shared? Now, the refrigerator was filled with casseroles and desserts from neighbors and friends. I decided to take some food over to my neighbors so that all of it would not go to waste.

  My footsteps echoed through the house as I went from room to room, pausing here and there to touch a cherished object or linger over a photograph. Everything was so familiar, yet so alien to me suddenly. There was a feeling hanging in the air, so strong it was almost palpable—as if the house were waiting with baited breath, as I was, to see Harold come walking through the front door.

  There was his overcoat hanging in the closet, his razor on the bathroom sink. Mundane objects were suddenly imbued with a significance they had never had before.

  I looked curiously at the crossword puzzle book on the coffee table by the brown recliner in the family room, open to page sixty-eight, and stared in fascination at the familiar block letters printed in a firm hand. He’d stopped, apparently stumped, at twenty-five across: A well-known mime.

  Come on, Harold, I thought, surely you know that one. I filled it in idly with a red pen: Marcel Marceau.

  When I reached the bedroom I stopped, startled by the sight of Harold’s slippers standing by the side of the bed. Apparently, he had left them there when he had stepped out of them to put on his golf shoes on the last morning of his life. I hadn’t been inside the room since he’d died; I’d slept in the guest room with Mandy until the funeral, and we’d left immediately afterward. When I saw his slippers, I fell down weeping onto the bedroom floor.

  How do you get through the days, the nights? I don’t know. You just do. It’s not like God gives you a choice. One morning my dear husband was sitting across the breakfast table from me, reading the sports section and polishing off his bacon and eggs, and the next thing I knew, Tom Mitchell was at the door and my life was never the same again.

  I never appreciated the truth of that old saying “Life goes on,” until Harold died. The most terrible thing you can imagine has just come to pass, yet the bills must still be paid and the insurance must be taken care of. You’ve still got to put gas in the car. It’s a blessing and a curse, all at the same time.

  I cleaned the house from top to bottom, and then cleaned it again. I thought about giving Harold’s suits to Tom and some of his other friends, but sometimes people feel funny about wearing dead people’s clothes, so I ended up boxing them up and taking them to the Salvation Army.

  Life is a million details, and they are what help get you through the days; but oh, how I missed him, every second of every minute of every hour. I missed the rattle of the newspaper in the morning; I missed the whine of his power saw when he was working in the shop out back. I can’t count the number of times when something would happen and I would think, Oh, I’ve got to tell Harold!—would say it aloud even—and then would realize with a start that he was gone; or the times I would look up at a sound at the door, half-expecting to see him come walking through. Of course, it was just the mailman delivering mail or the paper boy come to collect, but for just a second . . . oh, the racing of the pulse, the beating of the heart! What I wouldn’t have given to see his face just one more time, to hear his voice. . . .

  I got through the year somehow, that first terrible year without Harold. When something went wrong with the car, I took it to the shop myself. I hired a repair man to fix the washing machine when it went haywire. I even did the taxes, which Harold had always taken care of. On the first anniversary of his death, I lit a candle and said a prayer for Harold, and then I said a prayer for myself.

  I was getting along fine—outwardly. I was learning new life skills, coping with the loss, doing all the things that new widows should do. I even considered taking some classes at the local community college. But something was missing. It was obvious, of course—what was missing was Harold. He had been my rock, my companion for so many years. I felt like a doomed ship at sea—lost, buffeted, and desperately seeking a safe harbor.

  My friends were that harbor for a while. They were very sympathetic at first, and wonderfully supportive, but as the year drew to a close, I felt like they were subtly withdrawing. They were tired of my suffering. They thought that I should stop living in the past. They didn’t say it, of course, but there was a subtle shifting in the wind, and I adjusted my behavior accordingly.

  I was living a lie, of course, but it made them more comfortable. It made things easier for them. As long as I pretended that everything was okay, that I was coping with the loss just fine, they were happy. They didn’t have to bother with me. So I kept hidden the fact that my life was a shambles, the fact that I had descended into a living hell.

  The only person who truly understood what I was going through was Luis. I didn’t have to put on an act with him. He listened to me, really listened. It was surprising that a man of his tender years could be so mature. He understood my pain better than my peers did.

  Maybe that’s because he had gone through it himself. One night, over the phone, Luis confided his story haltingly, with a catch in his throat. He lost his mother when he was a young boy about seven, he told me. The family was living in unsanitary conditions in Havana—ten children and two adults crowded into a small hut, his father eking out a living as a day laborer, his mother tending to the children and washing laundry at the river, and doing odd jobs that came her way. It was the cholera that got her, Luis said, choking back sobs. There was nothing they could do. They had no money for medical care. Luis emotionally described watching helplessly as she got weaker and weaker, and finally died. He still had her red, flowered shawl that she wore on special occasions, he said, one of the few mementos he had of his mother.

  One night at the dance club, Luis showed me a brittle, faded photograph of a lovely, dark-haired woman he identified as his mother, and ceremoniously presented her beloved shawl to me, saying that he wanted me to have it. Of course, I couldn’t accept it, but the gesture touched me deeply.

  When Luis was twelve, he had a chance to come to the States, so he said goodbye to his family, packed his meager belongings, and headed for the “Home of the Brave, Land of the Free.” He sent money regularly to his brothers and sisters and father back in Havana. Thanks to his generosity, they were able to live like kings in their native land.

  I didn’t know much about Havana, but through Luis’s eyes, I could almost see the poverty and despair that he had narrowly escaped, and I rejoiced with him that he was able to help his family through their travails. I thought how noble and brave he was, to set out for foreign soil with little but the clothes on his back, leaving his family and everything he had known behind, in search of a better life.

  And a better life it was . . . I listened in amazement as Luis regaled me with the derring-do adventures of his early life in the States. He certainly had done a lot for such a young man, I marveled. At one time he was a cowboy, riding the range. Another time he was a magician in the style of Harry Houdini, whom he had read a book about and greatly admired. He even intimated that he was a secret agent once, although, of course, he was not at liberty to discuss the details.

  I know I was crazy for believing such nonsense. In retrospect, it does seem ridiculous that I was so naive. But in my defense, I must say that Luis could make you believe that the world really was made of green cheese. If he said it would snow in August, you got out your snow boots.

  I was madly, hopelessly in
love. It wasn’t the kind of love I’d had for Harold—the slow, steady kind of love that endures the passage of time. It was a fiery, kamikaze kind of love—you know you’re going to crash and burn, but what a ride!

  So I gave him money when he needed it—which was often, by the way. I wasn’t trying to buy his love, I insisted to myself. I knew how tough it was, just starting out, trying to make it in the big city. Besides, he had his family back in Havana to support. In Luis’s defense, I must admit that he never asked me for money. He just made me aware of the need. I’m the one who offered it. I didn’t even ask for repayment. He was the one who always insisted that he would pay me back.

  The Silver Belles was an exclusive group at the Starry Night Dance Studio. The members went on cruises and had private parties, that sort of thing. I couldn’t really afford it, but Luis told me that he could spend more time with me if I joined. Besides, as he pointed out, my arch rival, Gina, was a member. Next step up was the Golden Girls, but I couldn’t swing that financially yet.

  So I cashed in some of my stocks and joined the Silver Belles, just in time for the cruise to Bermuda. That was one of my main reasons for joining. Harold and I had talked about taking a cruise, but somehow we’d never managed to find the time, and of course it was too late now.

  Luis assured me that we would be together a lot on the cruise, dancing and swimming and playing shuffleboard. It promised to be very romantic, just like the Love Boat, one of my favorite TV shows.

  And of course, once we disembarked, we would be in Paradise itself—Bermuda! I spent many hours daydreaming about the sandy beaches, the secluded coves . . . I dreamily envisioned dancing with Luis under a canopy of stars, encircled by tiki torches, in my new coral-colored ball gown that I’d bought especially for the trip. . . .

  I decided to try on my bathing suit, to be sure it fit. I stood in front of the mirror, frowning at my conservative, yellow, polka dot suit that had a little, ruffled skirt attached to disguise my thighs. It certainly didn’t project the sexy image I was aiming for. It made me look too matronly. Besides, it was way too snug.