The Ex Read online

  “We were all younger then,” he said. “And I was serious when I told you she didn’t mean anything to me. She came on to me one day like she was crazy. It was something that happened and was meaningless, then it was over within a month.” He stared at his food. “I thought…Well, I thought you might have left me because I insisted on the abortion.” They hadn’t planned on having a child, had little money, and their marriage was clearly deteriorating at the time Deirdre told him she was pregnant. Abortion had seemed the only logical path to David then. He still wasn’t sure if he’d been right.

  “I didn’t want the abortion,” Deirdre said.

  David smiled sadly. “So you told me. Then, after you left me, you didn’t have to abort the pregnancy, but you chose to anyway.” He had always wondered why.

  Maybe she still wasn’t going to tell him. “Our marriage was about sex, wasn’t it? Honestly now, David.”

  “Not only about sex,” he said.

  “But mostly. You remember how we were. Rough with each other.”

  He did remember. They’d both been in some kind of dark sexual thrall, experimenting, trying anything, sadomasochism, bondage. He’d told himself the marriage was failing and he was trying to hold on to her that way, but on a certain level, he’d known better even then. She’d been the one who suggested many of their activities, but he’d enjoyed what they did, needed it.

  “The baby was injured, David. That was why I went ahead and had the abortion. It wouldn’t have been born normal.”

  What she was saying spread inside him like something black and heavy as he recalled the violence of their sex while she was pregnant. “Oh, Christ! Was it something we—something I did?”

  “No, not you, David,” she said. She touched his arm as if trying to lend comfort. “Someone else, after I left you. Can you forgive me?”

  “I’m the one who wanted the abortion,” he said. “Whatever happened wasn’t deliberate, and your life was your own then. There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “You’re a better man than I thought you were six years ago,” she said.

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Well, the past is buried and dead.” She bowed her head, then suddenly looked up and seemed to brighten. Her eyes were green, wide, luminous with possibility. “Listen, David, why don’t you phone me at my hotel? We could get together for a drink. The world has changed for both of us, so maybe we’d both feel better if we talked without emotion about the past and future. We can be friends, I think.”

  Despite her toned-down appearance, there was sensuality in her every gesture. As she pursed her lips and sipped at her drink through a straw, he couldn’t look away from her despite his confusion and discomfort. He wished they hadn’t met again, yet he was still sexually attracted to her.

  “I don’t know…” he said.

  “If we can be friends?”

  “If it’s a good idea.”

  She appeared injured, then smiled. Her wide, red lip slid up over her teeth, almost inverting. “Oh, I get it. The wife. Have you married again? Never mind, don’t answer. So what’s her name?”

  “Molly.” It felt almost like a sacrilege, using Molly’s name in Deirdre’s presence.

  “Hmm. I like that name,” Deirdre said. “Molly.”

  He didn’t like hearing her say it. Didn’t like the indecipherable emotion stirring in the corners of his mind where memory moldered. Memory he thought had been purged of emotion by time. But he’d been wrong. His chance meeting with Deirdre was dissipating the years as if they were mist, striking life into the past. Corpses were rising.

  “Molly’s young, I’ll bet.”

  “Twenty-seven. Only ten years younger than I am.”

  “Which would make her eleven years younger than me.”

  David smiled. “You robbed the cradle, Deirdre.”

  “Do you and Molly have any children?” she asked.

  “One. A boy. Michael. He’s three.”

  “That’s absolutely wonderful!” She did seem genuinely pleased.

  “We think it is.”

  “What does your Molly do?” Deirdre asked. “Other than wifely duties?”

  “She’s a freelance copy editor. Publishers farm out work to people like her, manuscripts that need help.”

  “Then you and she have your work in common.”

  “We have a lot of things in common.”

  “And Molly and I have something in common.” She made a face at her own faux pas. “I’m sorry, David. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I guess I’m the leopard that can’t change its skin.”

  David smiled. “There’s no real reason for you to change, Deirdre.”

  “Why, thank you! A compliment!” She seemed immensely pleased.

  “Maybe I should have given you more of them six years ago. God knows, I loved you enough.”

  “Nobody’s to blame for the past, David. Life teaches us all. Usually too late. Like I learned too late I shouldn’t have left you.”

  She’d finished her sandwich. Now she patted her mouth with her white paper napkin with exaggerated delicacy, then slid across the booth’s bench as if preparing to stand.

  “It’s been marvelous seeing you, David. Tell Molly I said hello, and that I wish both of you all the happiness in the world. She’s lucky, you’re lucky. And me…” She shrugged. “Well, I haven’t been unlucky. And I haven’t been unhappy the whole time after we parted.”

  “What about now?”

  “Now? Oh, I’m reasonably content these days. Good job, enough money even if I’m not rich. And right now contentment’s enough for me. I’ve learned it’s more than most people have.” She stood up from the booth, then leaned forward unexpectedly and pecked him on the cheek. It was a kiss like fire. “Bye, David. Take care, hey.”

  She edged through the crowd at the serving bar, moving toward the counter.

  Biting his lower lip, he watched her stride from the deli. Out of his life again.

  He suddenly felt much too warm, and the pungent scent of the food was making him nauseated.

  He got up and made his way outside, dropping his suit coat from where it was folded over his arm. It landed to form a puddle of cloth on the sidewalk.

  “Here, David.”

  Deirdre picked up the coat and brushed it off, folded it neatly as if she were going to lay it on a bed or chair, then handed it to him.

  “I thought—”

  “I was about to hail a cab,” she said.

  “They aren’t easy to get this time of day.”

  “So I’ve been told, but nothing ventured, nothing obtained.”

  She smiled and strode to the curb, raising her arm. As if to prove her point, a cab immediately swerved across Third Avenue and coasted to a stop next to her.

  She opened the cab’s rear door and turned toward him. “Make the rest of your life happy, David!” Then she lowered herself quickly inside and pulled the door closed.

  As the cab drove away, David stood staring at the back of her head framed in the arc of the rear window, this woman who was like a stranger but wasn’t a stranger. She faced straight ahead as rigidly as if her neck were in a brace. She might have been crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Maybe he was simply imagining her tears because he felt like crying.

  5

  Deirdre pushed aside the roiling emotions she’d experienced after seeing David. Their meeting had been less and so much more than she’d imagined in the instant their eyes met.

  On Broadway, she gazed through the cab windows at the crowded sidewalks and asked the driver to pull to the curb beyond the next intersection. She paid through the little rounded scoop set in the plastic dividing panel, leaving a suitable tip, and climbed out of the cab.

  It felt wonderful to be lost in the middle of all the people, all the energy that swirled noisily around her. It was as if she were protected by movement and blaring horns and masses of humanit
y. And it was true, she told herself, she was safe here in New York.

  A man with a raincoat slung over his arm almost ran into her, swerving at the last second and smiling at her. She smiled back, and he hesitated, then walked on. Deirdre held her head high, her shoulders back, and joined the flow of pedestrians. Workers hurrying back from lunch, shoppers, sightseers…she was one of them, and it felt glorious with the afternoon sun warming her shoulders and glancing brightly off the buildings and the contoured steel of the yellow cabs stuck in the impatient, laboring traffic. There was a strong exhaust smell, but she didn’t mind that. It was better than a lot of smells.

  A woman carrying a shopping bag emerged from a revolving door and bumped into her. “Oh, hey! Deirdre!”

  Deirdre looked at her and smiled. She’d literally bumped into the one other woman she knew in New York. “Darlene! You’ve been shopping.”

  “Charging up a storm. I’m happily addicted to plastic.” Darlene spoke in a clipped, cultured voice that sounded natural to her but probably wasn’t, like a long-ago affectation that had taken root. She was about Deirdre’s height but much slimmer, with a long, elegant neck, slender calves like a teenager’s, and practically no breasts. She wore her hair combed back severely and neatly braided above the nape of her neck. She had the kind of dark-eyed, delicate features that enabled her to get away with that kind of hair style, Deirdre thought with envy. Darlene looked successful, her own woman, rich. It had been one of the first things Deirdre noticed about her when they’d struck up a conversation at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That and her distinctive voice.

  “I just left an old friend,” Deirdre said. “David.”

  Darlene looked puzzled. A running man brushed Deirdre, knocking her toward the building. She moved out of the stream of pedestrians. Darlene followed.

  “I thought I told you about David,” Deirdre said. “At Port Authority.”

  Darlene’s soft brown eyes widened. “That’s true, you did. He’s your ex, am I right?”

  “Right,” Deirdre said. “He and I had lunch together, a nice visit.”

  Darlene grinned with tiny white teeth. “That’s not the way people usually talk about their ex. Any chance of it becoming more than a pleasant lunch?”

  “The bastard got married while I was gone,” Deirdre said.

  Darlene was still grinning. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Aren’t you naughty?” Deirdre laughed. Two women stared at her and had to walk around her. “Walk with me?” she invited Darlene.

  Darlene glanced at a silver watch that fit loosely on her thin wrist, then shrugged. “Sure. I’ve got some spare time before I have to meet some friends.”

  Deirdre started to walk, and Darlene fell in beside her. They entered the dark shade of a building, where it was noticeably cooler, then emerged into hot sunlight.

  “You still didn’t answer my question,” Darlene reminded her.

  “I don’t know the answer,” Deirdre said honestly. There would be some things they’d never talk about, at least for a while.

  Darlene smiled at her. “The way you look, Deirdre, you can make the answer whatever you want.”

  Deirdre smiled back. “You really think so? I mean, you’re the one with the young Audrey Hepburn looks. Men go for the delicate, breakable type. You’re built like a model or a ballerina, and I’m built like…well, sex.”

  “I’d trade anytime,” Darlene said. “The way the world is now, there aren’t many men looking for the kind of woman they’d take home to Mother.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Of course. They want to take you home, but believe me, Mother doesn’t figure into it.”

  “Except with some men,” Deirdre said. “Mothers can have a terrible influence on some men.”

  “David?”

  “No. Not him at all. David could always…”

  “What?”

  “He was always a good lover.”

  Darlene stopped walking, causing Deirdre to barely avoid bumping into her. She raised her elegant thin arm and glanced again at her expensive watch. “I’d better get going or I’ll be given up for lost,” she said.

  “I don’t want to make you late for your friends,” Deirdre said. She wondered for a moment if Darlene would invite her along.

  But Darlene was silent, glancing around. She had such a sweet, clean profile. They moved over and stood on a corner with a cluster of people waiting for the traffic light to change to Walk.

  “Are you going to be in town long?” Darlene asked.

  “Awhile.”

  “Me too, this visit.”

  “Her name’s Molly.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the name of David’s wife. The one who took my place. Molly.”

  Darlene stared at her oddly, maybe with disapproval.

  “They have a child,” Deirdre said. “A little boy named Michael.”

  Darlene was silent.

  “I thought you should know.”

  “I don’t understand why,” Darlene said.

  “You should know about Molly and Michael, as well as about David. But especially about Molly. It will help you understand what’s going to happen.”

  Darlene appeared confused for only a second, then shrugged, as if whatever happened, it would be fine with her. “You said at the bus station you were going to find a hotel. Where are you staying?”

  But the light changed and she was virtually swept away by the surging crowd before Deirdre could answer. She smiled helplessly at Deirdre and waved.

  Deirdre stood on the corner and watched her disappear in the streams of pedestrians that flowed along Broadway’s wide sidewalk like competing currents in a river. For an instant her entire fragile body was visible, striding along with rhythm if not strength. Then only her slender upper body could be seen, and after a while only her head and long, pale neck. And then she was gone.

  Darlene reminded Deirdre of a woman who was drowning.

  6

  “Most men probably feel that way when they unexpectedly see their ex-wife after years have passed,” Molly said.

  She and David were lying in bed in the sultry dimness of the summer night. It was cool enough that they didn’t have the window-unit air conditioner on. She liked it that way, so she could hear Michael if he woke up. Still, she could feel the sticky dampness of perspiration beneath her on the smooth sheet, slowly molding her form to the contours of the mattress.

  Beside her, David sighed. It was more a sound of frustration than of weariness.

  “I’m glad you told me about meeting her,” Molly said. She raised her upper body and strained her neck so she could kiss his cheek. It was damp and warm and he needed a shave. Traces of cologne or soap still lingered with the scent of his perspiration.

  She stayed propped up on her elbows for a few seconds, then let herself fall back, her head sinking into her pillow.

  “She surprised me, Mol.” David said softly.

  “Sure she did. It’s like your past sneaking up on you while you’re thinking about lunch.”

  “That’s exactly what it was.”

  Molly was suddenly and acutely curious about Deirdre. She’d never even seen a photograph of her, other than a blurred snapshot David had made a show of tearing up and throwing away. A tall woman—at least she’d appeared tall in the photo—with a lot of hair and a fiercely beautiful smile. “How did she look?”

  “Oh, the years have made her…kind of plain, I’d guess you’d say.”

  “There was no need for you to worry over telling me about it,” Molly said. “So you ran into Deirdre at the deli and talked to her for a while. What were you supposed to do, spit olives at her?”

  He laughed softly in the shadows. “I wish that had crossed my mind.”

  “You’re not the first man to see his former wife and experience discomfort. It doesn’t mean anything other than that you’re human.”

  “Being human can be a problem.”

 
; “You’re happy,” Molly said, “right?”

  She instantly regretted the doubt that had crept into her voice. Or maybe only she had heard it.

  “Hell, yes, I’m happy.”

  The bedsprings whined and she felt his hand brush her cheek, then gently caress her breast through the oversized white T-shirt she slept in. She was aware of a tightening deep inside her and her breathing quickened. The T-shirt was wound around her body so that much of its excess was pinned beneath her. Across its chest, distorted by the twisted fabric, it was lettered FOR SLEEP OR SEX. She’d received it at a bridal shower as a gag gift, but she found it practical and comfortable. The thin cotton strained and stretched, and David’s hand was beneath the shirt and sliding slowly toward her left breast. His breath was warm in her ear, then his tongue.

  “Wait a second, please!” she breathed.

  “What’s wrong, Mol?”

  “Nothing. Really.”

  He withdrew his hand and she swiveled on the mattress and stood up. The firm wood floor felt cool beneath her bare feet. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and tossed it in a twisted, pale heap on a chair. Then she slid her panties down to her ankles and stepped daintily out of them, as if relieving herself of shackles. Sounds from the street were filtering in through the screen, cars swishing past outside, faint voices shouting blocks away, the throbbing bass beat of a car radio that faded quickly, a distant siren making exuberant loops of sound. The sheer white curtains swayed slightly in the faint breeze as if in a slow, ghostly dance. She left the window open and switched on the air conditioner mounted in the window alongside it.

  When she was sixteen, her father had left her mother and her for another woman. Her mother died two years later, and Molly had never quite escaped the notion that the terrible stress of the desertion had triggered the cancer. Her father had left his new lover, and a few years ago had remarried, to a woman named Verna who owned an art gallery in Detroit. Molly wasn’t sure if she’d ever forgiven him, or if she fully understood what forces had moved him. Had there been something lacking in her mother? In herself?

  She tried to shake such thoughts from her mind and returned to David’s shadowed and patiently waiting form on the bed.