The View From Penthouse B

14





Say Anything


AFTER A TEN-WEEK absence, I forced myself to attend my widows’ support group to work on what my sisters call my “stasis.” My visit was ill timed. Valentine’s Day was approaching, inspiring our group leader to pronounce—in the manner of a decorating-happy classroom teacher—that love and romance were this week’s theme. Her suggestion was that we go around the circle and answer the question, “What am I afraid of?”

We coughed into our elbows and attended to the vital work of silencing our phones. Katherine Glazer, MSW, tried, “Let’s start with one-word answers. Don’t overthink it. Say the first thing that comes to mind. For example . . .” She looked around, snapped her fingers as if she hadn’t chosen the noun the night before, and called out, “Intimacy!”

None of us, with our grocery bags and knapsacks at our sensibly shod feet, looked like we had anything to confess along those lines.

“I am afraid of . . . fill in the blank,” Katherine prompted.

“Does it have to be something personal?” I asked. “Or can it be a general fear, like death or heights or snakes?”

She reached over and squeezed my left hand. Was that dismay in her glance, at finding my rings still there? “Let me clarify,” she said. “I want us to discuss what fears keep us from pursuing—what will be our code word for love and romance today? How about just L and R?”

A hand went up. It was Joanna, one of our most bedraggled members, who wore her grungy orange parka throughout every meeting. “I worry about a prenup,” she told us.

We waited. Our leader, her features admirably composed, repeated, “A prenup?”

Joanna asked, “Am I the only one who thinks, What if I got involved with someone who wants to get married? He’d have to sign a prenuptial agreement. So when I picture that conversation and how angry he could get, it just makes me want to stay home and watch TV.”

“As opposed to what?” asked Hildy, mother of two grown sons who still lived at home. “I mean as opposed to what activity? Going out to parties? Clubbing?”

“Clubbing means going out to bars and, of course, clubs,” our leader explained.

Joanna said, “I have my volunteer jobs . . . my subscription to the Philharmonic. I meet people. Some are men. One invited me out for coffee, but I declined.”

“For the reason stated?” Katherine asked.

“I didn’t know him,” said Joanna. “And the person who gave him my e-mail address didn’t even know him that well.”

“It’s called a blind date,” said Katherine, glancing up at the wall clock.

Hildy said, “One more question for Joanna. Not that I’m into fashion, but my boys give me the once-over before I leave. Sometimes they say, ‘You’re not going out like that, are you?’ I trust them, so I change into something else.”

“Your question?” Katherine prompted.

“Right. My question is, let’s say you were going out. What coat would you wear?”

Before Joanna could answer or take offense, our one attorney-member said, “May I speak as someone who’s negotiated any number of prenups?”

“Please,” Katherine said.

“Cross that bridge when you come to it. I haven’t seen one engagement broken because of it.”

“Find yourself a rich guy with a prenup of his own!” said Rose, who at eighty-six was reliably nostalgic and pragmatic.

“Cross that bridge when you come to it is good advice for everything,” said our leader. “Who else? Let’s go around the circle.”

I was in the folding chair to her right. “Gwen? It’s been a while.”

“Pass.”

Several members booed. Wasn’t that unkind enough to earn a reprimand? But all Katherine said was “C’mon. Anything related to L and R.”

“If I have to, I’ll go with intimacy.”

“Already been used,” said Rose.

“That’s okay,” said Katherine. “Gwen is allowed to say she’s afraid of intimacy. She doesn’t have to come up with a synonym. But let’s ask her to elaborate.” She turned ninety full degrees in her chair. “Gwen?”

How to amplify without actually admitting anything? I decided on “I wasn’t very good at jumping into bed with men back in my single days . . .”

I thought that was enough, but Katherine the voyeur needed an autobiography.

I said, “So I guess I’d be even worse at it now.”

“Why?” asked Katherine.

Was she punishing me for my poor attendance record? For my failure to evolve under her tutelage?

I said, “Let’s give someone else a chance.”

Hildy said, “I know what Gwen is getting at. I’m wondering how I’d ever get into bed with someone who wasn’t my boys’ father.”

“Because of your sons?” asked Lisa, our youngest member, widowed while separated. “You need their approval? Or because of the sex?”

Hildy said, “I meant doing it with a whole other guy. I’m not a bathing beauty. I have veins where I never used to.”

I said, “You can always undress under the covers.”

When this produced baffled and unsatisfied looks, I added, “If it got to that, you could shut off the lights first and maybe undress down to your slip and then finish under the covers. For privacy.”

“What if you wanted to see him?” asked Lisa.

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I said, “It would depend. He might be modest, too. Not everybody likes to parade around naked. He might be just as nervous. Maybe he hasn’t done it in a long time.”

Katherine appeared to like this new direction. “How many of you feel like virgins?” she asked eagerly.

One by one our hands went up except for Lisa’s. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s actually had a sleepover?” she asked, looking left and right.

Katherine said, “Gwen? Your hand shot up first.”

“So?”

Lisa, suddenly deputized, asked me, “How long has it been?”

“Two years and two months.”

“Not since your husband died. I meant since you hooked up with someone.”

“Two years and two months,” I snapped. What was to be gained from this interrogation, and why had I returned? I surveyed the faces around the circle in search of the equally offended.

Hildy said, “You’ve been absent for months. We were hoping you met someone.”

“Well, I haven’t. When I get the urge to have sex outside my marriage, I’ll let you know.”

This was not the right answer. Katherine had my hand again, a pity squeeze. “Gwen? He’s gone. You’re a widow. Edwin would want you to meet someone.”

That old cliché. How did any of them know what Edwin would want? Or what I wanted, for that matter. Finally, to signal I was living not only in the present but in the moment, I said, “If you must know, the last time I had sex with Edwin was the night before he died”— a declaration I immediately regretted, lest anyone think I’d caused the fibrillation that killed him.

Rose said, “You’re so lucky. I wish I’d had sex with Morty the night before he died. I can’t even remember if we kissed good night . . .” Her chin wobbled. She managed a whispered postscript. “All those things we’d have done if only we’d known.”

Such moments tend to be contagious. The institutional box of tissues went around the circle. Did that stop Katherine? “Who wants to share what plans she has for Valentine’s Day?” she asked brightly.

I stood up and yanked my coat off the back of my chair. I don’t know whether it was the teeth of my metal zipper or one of my antler toggle buttons that hit Katherine’s lip, but something did, and she was bleeding. I said I was sorry. It was an accident. Here—have my tissue. I had a bus to catch.