A HUSBAND

by Michael Wright

I was a husband once. Then my wife left and once more I lived alone.

Never in my life have I been good at flirting. Innuendo puts me into the lion's cage, back against the bars. When I found a woman who was direct, without guile, who needed me, I married her. I loved being a husband, having a wife. I turned my wedding ring on my finger and said under my breath, "my wife."

For eight years I lived in a landscape larger than my own body. Within that larger country we embraced, and reached out to others. At Thanksgiving, at Christmas, we invited our single friends into our domestic world. When Kate left my life shrank to a set of half-empty boxes. I lived in the confines of my room, my car, my office.

For a long time after, I was unable to approach other women. I was too shy, too bruised. If a woman smiled at me in the supermarket aisle, I was petrified, I looked down at the box in my hand and stood rooted, forever reading the label, waiting while she slowly pushed her cart to the vanishing point. All I had to do was turn, smile, say a word, ask a question. But I could not.

When a marriage splits, on which side do the friends fall? I waited for friends to call me. A few of the married women did, expressing conventional wonder -- "you were such a perfect couple" -- but underneath the concern I detected fear, fear that the same thing might happen to her, and I understood that I am now a carrier of this modern plague.

Several months later, Mary called me. She's an old friend of Kate's, an unmarried woman who was often at our family gatherings. As she spoke her name, I had a moment of confusion: too much time had passed for this to be a sympathy call. A faint ripple of desire ran through my veins. I like Mary. She's smart and funny, with a soft, slightly humid, pale Irish beauty. In that instant I recalled my conversation with Kate when I asked why she was leaving. "I don’t need you anymore," was her answer.

"But I need you. What will I do without you?"

She evaded that question, said only "You'll be alright." Over my protests she added "There are lots of women out there who'd love to have a good man like you. You should date Diane, or Mary."

"Mary?" I was a little shocked at the idea that a woman could pass a man to one of her friends, quite casually it seemed.

"Of course. She likes you and I know you like her."

Now, with the phone in my hand, I acknowledge Kate’s perception. Sometimes when Mary and I washed dishes together, after a holiday meal, I was tempted to flirt with her. But of course I never would.

As I speak, I remember how Mary’s breasts sometimes brushed casually against my arm. "Oh, hi," I say, allowing surprise to lift my voice, "how are you?" I wonder if Kate knows about this call.

"Not good," she answers firmly, as if judging some uncouth behavior. All my fantasies vanish. "They found a lump in my breast." Her words are businesslike. The pretense is that she is calling only to give me information but I hear her constricted voice, like a dead stick about to break in her jaw.

I can't tell what she wants from me. Finally I say, slowly exhaling the words, "Oh, my God." I want to extend sympathy without being maudlin.

"They're going to do a biopsy on Thursday."

"Okay, alright, good. How do you feel?"

"Angry. And scared."

"Well, of course." I grimace at the phone, telling myself not to smooth things over. Kate always accused me of trying to fix things.

"It's just that things have been going well for me, it seemed like I finally had my life together. Now this."

"Well, you don't know the prognosis yet." My heart contracts, hearing my words, so irritatingly reasonable.

"Yes, I know," she replies, with some asperity, "I have to wait in suspended animation for someone to tell me whether I live or die."

"So when will you know the results? of the biopsy?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe Friday." Her voice quavers and for the first time I hear the hiss and crackle of her fear. It gives me sudden strength.

"Mary, this is terrible news." Now I am a lightning rod, eager to draw down her erratic energy. "Would you like me to come over?"

"Wait until I've got the results," she tells me, back in control again. "I won't be fit company until I know. And I still have my schedule at the college," she adds, with a touch of resentment.

Now that I know what she wants from me, my tongue is loose. I tell her to call me as soon as she knows anything. "And call me anytime," I insist, "if you need to talk, or want to talk. Really, no matter how awkward it feels to you, call me anytime."

On Friday I call her, afraid that she will not call me. She allows me to visit her after work. When she opens the door I wait for her to speak, but she stands without moving, her hand resting on the latch. Her face looks like it's been scraped. I fold my arms around her and she begins to cry, silently at first, then in quick sobs that catch in her throat and finally in long powerful lamentations that vibrate through her body. My shirt sticks to my shoulder where her tears soak through.

When she finally pulls away from me she doesn't smile or apologize. Politeness belongs to the past. Her condition dictates the terms of conversation, the hard clarity of our roles.

"Can we have some tea?" I ask. She nods. While I circle the kitchen, preparing things, she leans against the doorjamb and tells me details.

"They've scheduled a lumpectomy for Tuesday. After that they'll be able to tell more about the nature of the cancer."

"And that could mean?" I prompt.

"It depends how invasive it is, how fast it grows. The operation might be the end of it, or they may want to give me chemotherapy and radiation." She falls silent while my gestures congeal into a slowly turning film, the present repeating over and over, into the future. Again and again I make tea, in her small kitchen, day after day.

We sit at the table. I push the honey towards her. The jar is sticky.

"This doesn't bother you?"I pretend not to understand.

"Bother me?" I touch my fingers to the surface of the hot tea, then lick them.

"Most of my friends have turned away. It's like they're afraid I'm carrying something."

Suddenly I know the truth. She didn't single me out. She went through her address book, telephoning everyone, asking for sympathy and support. I am not offended at this discovery, in fact I'm impressed by her approach. By the time she got to me (my name begins with W) her story was well-rubbed and effective, her fear sharp and poised. I cannot imagine turning away from her.

We talk for an hour. She explains how she has already arranged for a colleague to take her classes, that she is not going to call her mother until after the operation. I ask, "Do you need – no, would you like me to take you to the hospital on Tuesday?"

Her look veers from thoughtful to triumphant as she feels her power to demand. "Yes, I would," she answers.

At the hospital admissions desk Mary gives her name and we wait for a few moments, sitting on hard plastic chairs. Then a nurse arrives, smiles at Mary, smiles at me also but more warily. I like this woman immediately. She is small but sturdy, her oval face a little owlish behind glasses with oversize lenses, her long hair braided and pinned up. Her movements are unhurried and economical. Under the blue scrubs her body glides in its own confident orbit.

She leads us to a small room and opens the door. "If you'd wait outside," she says to me, but there is not really a choice. She looks at me steadily, measuring me by how easily and pleasantly I accede.

I wait outside while Mary changes into a green paper gown and paper slippers. When I am called in, the nurse offers me Mary's street clothes in a plastic sack. As I take them from her hand I feel lingering body heat rising from the cotton slip folded on top, and I am roused with quick desire, a sudden wish to unfold this tiny intimacy, to reach the woman beneath the anonymous hospital uniform. "You'd better hang on to these," she tells me, in an offhand but slightly mothering way that binds me to Mary. She turns away before I can invent words of explanation and I confront the picture she has drawn, of Mary and myself.

She helps Mary onto the gurney then steps away to a neutral corner, giving us the chance for intimacy, while her eye watches. As she bends to her clipboard I see her rehearse the smile which she will give to her lover, perhaps tonight, when she recalls this touching scene. The light begins to shimmer in my eyes and splinters into colors, as if the room were hung with crystalline curtains, billowing, swaying, guiding me towards the bed. As in a trance, my steps are inevitable and willing.

I lean over and murmur, just loud enough for the nurse to overhear, "Everything will be fine, honey." Utterly a husband, I kiss Mary on the forehead. "I'll be here when you wake up." The face of the nurse grows round and bright.

Michael lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 40 years, followed various careers, raised three kids. Now lives in the Sierra foothills, raises apples and throws pots. He has been writing for ten years, finished two novels and many stories. A story of his entitled "Brother Roach" appears online in the summer 2006 issue of Cezannescarrot.org.  Contact Michael.