Widow Mingle
by Ben Powell
Seven
college boys move into the carriage house at the end of August. I watch from my
bay window as they punch the code to the door. They carry in televisions,
microwaves, and cases of beer.
My cell phone vibrates. It’s my
mother. She wishes me a happy birthday and says my gift is in the mail. I ask
about the humidity in Florida and her hip. She says, “How’s the plantation?” It’s
a bad joke. She never liked the size of my house, or my dead husband, or the
fact that we need landscapers and maids. Had the money been mine, her feelings
might have been different. Mom and I used to plot my escape from the confines
of our two-bedroom apartment. I was supposed to become a doctor.
I hang up and then call a pizza
place. I order seven large pizzas for the boys in the carriage house. I realize
that’s probably too much and call the pizza place back. The line’s now busy. So
I just wait in the bay window, anxious to see the food arrive, and fiddle with
the dating app on my phone.
The app is for widows. I enjoy the
messages I receive from the men, mostly. I respond to someone named Jeremy. His
interests are skiing, books, and politics. I say that, Yes, I’d like to get a drink sometime. And then I wait on a
response.
The food arrives at the carriage
house. The boys all come out and lounge in the grass, pizza boxes spread around
them. Napkins flutter away in the breeze. They drink cans of beer and arm
wrestle. It’s almost dark when two of them cross the expansive lawn and
approach my house.
I quickly assess myself in the
mirror. Athleisurely unkempt. A small impulse to apply eyeliner makes me laugh,
and I don’t.
They are so happy, standing in my
doorway, smelling of light beer. They thank me for the pizza and say their
names are Curtis and Steve. They promise me tickets to their next game. I don’t
have the heart to say that I get free admission because of my husband’s history
of donations to the school. (We went once, long ago, and it was fine.) There’s
an awkward lull in the conversation. I tell them that a new washer and dryer
will be arriving at the carriage house tomorrow. They say I’m the greatest
landlady of all time.
I take an Ambien and try to fall
asleep in the glow of a muted television. I can’t. Sleep was a casualty of my husband’s
passing. I try to use it as evidence of a love between us. We did sacrifice for
each other. I dropped out of medical school. He left his first wife. My mother
harbors deep suspicions of men with multiple marriages. She likes that my
father failed to find another woman to take him in.
About my marriage, my mother often
asked, “Why you?” I never had the heart to share my suspicions. I believe my
husband enjoyed the stories of my impoverished youth. The markings of my
poverty—bad teeth, alcoholic genes, Boston accent—they did something for him.
Distinct from the immaculate breeding of his first wife. Strange, I know, but
she hurt him, and so I was the follow-up.
I open WidowMingle on my phone and
respond to a man named Javier with interests in wine, wonder, and the Great
Outdoors. He looks beautiful in a familiar way. Tell me more about your vineyard, I write. I’m curious. He messages
right back to say he can tell me all about it: Tomorrow night, Scala’s at seven? I don’t respond.
In the morning, I find that I did
respond, confirming these plans with Javier. Embarrassing to not remember, but
I’ve sent far more embarrassing Ambien messages before.
A positive memory of my husband: We
used to garden together before lunch. This was in the months between his
retirement and passing. A habit nearly formed. Now I only have the landscapers
for company. They trim the hedges and groom the acres of grass. I garden. The
Ambien must be in my system still, because I make the mistake of watering first
and weeding second, which leaves me on my hands and knees in dirt that’s turned
to mud. I’m filthy in minutes. I slop up and down the rows. The landscapers
smile at me, and I tip the wide brim of my hat with a sopping glove.
Glenda, my maid, emerges from the
house. She tells me the delivery men abandoned the new washer and dryer at our
front door instead of the carriage house. One of the landscapers offers to help
me, but I wave him off.
When my husband retired, the
gardening was so good for us. He would look at me, incredulous, interested, and
say things like, “Who are you?” It
was a good question, and one I would have asked him every year prior, but now,
given the chance, I didn’t need to. He was the man purchasing trowels and rakes
and edgers. He was the man telling the landscapers to leave the garden to us.
He bought me a tractor for my birthday.
Seemed like we were just starting
something, and then: a heart attack at the dinner table. Horrible in its
particularities.
Chair upended.
Marinara sauce smeared on his elbow.
Wine trembling in his glass even as
he stopped moving on the floor.
I drive the tractor out from the
garage, pull it around the house, and leave it idling by the washer and dryer.
I arrange a tarp, and try to tip them onto it. I fail. A landscaper approaches
and I tell him, “No, thank you.” Then I put my back to each machine, brace my
feet, and push hard. They fall sideways onto the tarp. They don’t sound like
they break.
I rope the edges of the tarp to the
tractor and put it in gear. I leave a wake of flattened grass.
I’m triumphant as I cross the lawn
and near the carriage house. The Ambien has left my system. The boys are out
now, erecting a volleyball net, and they wave at me. I hold a muddy fist in the
air. They applaud. If my husband could see me now….
“Can we get you a drink?” one of the
boys says. I think it is Curtis, from the night before.
“Can we give you a tour?” another
boy says. His tone is seductive. The other boys laugh, and my skin flushes. I
feel attractive.
“We’re hitting the town tonight,”
says the boy who might be Curtis. “Maybe you’ll join us?”
I leave them with the two huge units
and drive away, the empty tarp a fluttering cape behind me.
I arrive late at Scala’s that night,
and when Javier stands to greet me, I recognize him: one of my landscapers.
We both take out our phones and
measure the WidowMingle profile pictures against the person sitting across from
us. Javier’s picture matches the man across from me perfectly. Mine, less so.
It’s an old picture.
I expect Javier to flee on the
grounds of professionalism, but he just turns to the waiter and orders a bottle
of wine. I like this. He is a beautiful man.
“Your wife?” I ask. This is how
WidowMingle dates usually start.
“Cancer,” he says. “Faster even than
the doctors thought it would be.”
“My husband died of a heart attack,”
I say.
“I know,” Javier says. And that’s
right, I know he knows, because I remember how the landscapers stopped lifting
their equipment into their trailer to watch as my husband was lifted into the
ambulance.
When the wine arrives, Javier says, “My
wife and I, we visited this winery in California on our honeymoon. It is very
good.”
The second bottle we order is even
better, and we stop talking about the dead, and begin talking about my flowers.
“You have the gift, you know? They
spring to life for you. It is so wonderful to see,” Javier says.
“But you,” I say. “With a vineyard.
What a waste to have you mowing my lawn.” He shrugs.
“My mother and father tend to the
grapes. Keeps them busy. I bring home the money,” he says. I want to ask him if
we pay him well, because I have no idea. I don’t, though, and instead try to
put my hand on his. I spill wine into my pasta.
Javier seems disappointed when I
insist on paying for the meal. His Uber arrives and he is hesitant to leave me.
I tell him my Uber is not far behind. He kisses me on the cheek and leaves. I
walk a block, find my car, and decide I’ll listen to the radio until I’m sober
enough to drive. For some reason, I wish I had told Javier about dropping out
of medical school. I want him to know me. I nod off, and when I wake up, it is
past midnight. I drive away from downtown with my foot heavy on the pedal.
I nearly hit the boys when I come
around a dark curve in the road. I stop just past them and count six
approaching in the red glow of my brake lights. There’s not an ounce of
suspicion or fear about them as they near my vehicle. Just merry waves and
boozy swagger. I lower my window and offer them a ride. Upon recognizing me, they
applaud for the second time that day.
Curtis sits on the lap of an even
larger boy in the passenger seat, and four more press shoulders in the back.
They want to tell me all about their night.
“And the bowling alley was BYOB–”
“So we brought in as much as we
could carry–”
“But then they tried to card Tommy
when he passed out in the bathroom–”
“So we had to try and finish the
beers before they walked him out–”
“But I wasn’t even passed out, it
was a diversion–”
“And so that’s how we all got
bowling shoes–”
“But I don’t think we can ever go
back–”
The boys pile out in front of the
carriage house, and Curtis reaches back to offer me his hand, and I take it,
and then he plants a sloppy kiss on my knuckles while the other boys hoot.
“Seriously. Thank you,” Curtis says.
“Bedtime, boys,” is all I can think
to respond with. They laugh and begin tossing cardboard into the fire pit.
I sit in my bay window and watch
them drink dozens more beers around the fire. One of them strums an acoustic
guitar and they all limp through Sweet Home Alabama.
I am still a bit drunk, I realize,
and also getting itchy from what might be poison ivy on my shins. There’s a set
of new gardening tools on the kitchen counter, and I select the forked tines. I
use it to scratch through the fabric of my tights, but then I remove them, and
it feels even better to draw the tool across my bare skin.
The boys continue singing far
outside my window, and tiger stripes of red scratched skin show on my shins,
and then my thighs. I sigh and remember trying to conceive. My husband admitted
to the vasectomy after we’d been married for five years. I press the handle
between my legs and think about Javier and his hands and red wine.
It is still dark when I wake to the
sound of my living room window squeaking. It lifts, and then so does the
screen, and a leg appears, followed by the rest of a drunk boy.
It is Curtis, and he is very sick
from drinking. He cries on my living room floor. He thinks he might be dying. I
help him into the bathroom, and he vomits into the toilet intermittently for an
hour. I sit on the edge of the tub, and he falls asleep with his head on the
toilet seat. His stomach appears to be empty, and I manage to walk him to the
living room couch. I cover him with a sheet, and then worry that he might
actually be dead, because he’s so pale and still. But the snoring starts, and
it’s loud enough for me to hear from my bedroom, where I collapse just as
daylight is appearing outside my window. No Ambien needed.
The next morning is strange. It’s
late. Curtis is gone, and he left no note of thank you or apology, which
disappoints me. There’s a lingering smell of bile in the living room, so I open
all of the windows. I apply hydrocortisone to the poison ivy on my shins.
Glenda arrives at noon and brings me the mail.
My birthday gift from my mother has
arrived. A large padded envelope containing a singing card (It’s Raining Men, Hallelujah) and a book
about finding God in widowhood. Ugh. This is a thing now, apparently: My mother
found God in Florida.
In addition to the gift, the first
fall edition of the college’s student newspaper has arrived.
The front-page spread shows a hulking
white house with beautiful flowers, and I admire them for a moment before
realizing that they are my flowers
and it is my house. Above the image, the headline: College Donor’s House Built By Slaves, and below: Ashby Learning Center’s Namesake, Laurence
Ashby, Lived in Slave-Built House. In the article, mention of my husband’s
multi-million dollar donations to the school, the subsequent construction of
the learning center that bears his name, and archival documents from the
college library tracing his lineage to slave owners. Student activists on
campus are calling for the learning center to be renamed.
Glenda informs me of the arrival of
a mound of mulch. I usually garden in the lingering coolness of morning, but my
slow start leaves me in brutal sunlight. The mulch is brown, heavy, and dank,
and I spread it in my flower beds. I fight dehydration until my vision begins
to waver, and I rise from my flowers to see the protestors standing at the edge
of my property.
It’s a small group, and I can’t make
out the exact words they’ve positioned in blocky fonts on their signs. I’m glad
it’s a Saturday, and that Javier and his crew will not be returning until
Monday. If he had seen this, I might have died of embarrassment.
When I drink water in the kitchen, I
find a message from Javier on my phone. He says that last night was lovely, and
that he will be bringing me a gift on Monday. My pulse increases, and I feel
dizzy and light.
On Sunday, I garden with a larger
audience of protestors. They are not so quiet this time, and chant about dirty
money. Their words lodge in my head, and I repeat them as I work. I manage to
spread the last of the mulch in my garden, all the way up to the edge of the
house. I water the flowers with the hose. A rainbow hangs in the mist before
me. Curtis and two other boys approach me.
“We can take care of them, you know,”
Curtis says.
“I don’t know who they think they’re
yelling at,” one of the others says.
I manage to get rid of the boys,
telling them to enjoy their weekend, to do their homework. I rather like them.
I figure things will die down on Monday when the students are in class and the
adults are at work.
But things do not die down. My
poison ivy is also spreading, and my Ambien may have reacted weirdly with some
steroids I took to fight the rash, because I sleep hard until noon, and wake to
find a massive crowd lining my property.
The boys must be skipping class,
because I can see them through the bay window, talking to reporters. I wonder
if they’ve turned on me. But no, they haven’t, because they are red-faced, and
standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the sea of protestors.
I decide I’ll garden anyways,
because what else can I do? I try, but it is incredibly hot. So much so that
patches of mulch are smoking. I suppose I’m trying to distract myself from
Javier, who is on my property and trimming the hedges.
He approaches me. I offer him a
glass of water up in the kitchen. We both tromp dirt through the foyer, and
this feels like the right thing to do. He doesn’t mention the protestors, but
instead proffers a bottle of wine.
“From my vineyard,” he explains. I
hold the bottle in my hands, and then I move to kiss him on the cheek, but he
leans in and kisses me on the lips. He is salty with sweat and so am I.
I pull away and reach for something,
anything, to say. “I think I’ll just talk to the reporters,” I let out. Javier
shrugs.
“I always thought your husband was a
good man,” he says. It’s my turn to shrug. We tromp more mud through the house,
exit, and approach the crowd.
Microphones in our faces. Cameras
trained.
“Will you continue to work for the
family in light of recent events?” Directed at Javier, but also at me. I’m
proud to be mistaken for a landscaper.
“Is the wife home? Will she comment?”
Again, directed at both of us.
“She is home, but says she will not
comment,” I say.
A reporter: “Is there a chance you
will go on strike?”
“We are figuring that out now,” I
say.
“She is a widow,” Javier says, not
looking at me. “The blood is not on her hands.”
“But, if that’s true, why won’t she
come out?” This is shouted by a protester, but not at us, at the house, so we
turn to face it. The flowers, the house, waver mirage-like in the heat. But it’s
not just the heat, there’s also the smoking mulch. The crowd chants. The heat
increases. Then there is cheering, because a flame shows among the flowers,
rising through the smoke. The mulch is on fire.
It’s a ludicrous vision to behold:
the bright white of my husband’s hulking house, embroidered by flowers and
flames.
I hold Javier’s hand to prevent him
from phoning the fire department. The crowd continues to chant, and maybe I
join them. The house might be catching now.
I imagine a widow, deep in Ambien slumber, whose dreams race to explain why
her body is turning to ash.
