Wife and Ex-Wife

When Patrick repeated his suggestion to Nina that night, as they cuddled (and, to their frustration, did no more than that) in bed, she guffawed derisively.

"You want to do

what?

Are you out of your mind? She's been a professional widow for twenty years or more! What could possibly lead you to think that she'd welcome some man's embraces now?"

Patrick remained quiet for a time.

I guess I can't tell her what happened this afternoon.

"I just get the impression," he said at last, "that she's ready to move on to the next stage of her life—and that would include finding someone to be with."

Nina eyed Patrick sharply. "By 'be with,' you don't really mean what I think you mean?"

"Why not?" Patrick said uncomfortably. "She's not old—and she's quite attractive."

"You think so, do you?"

"Well, don't you?"

"I'm not sure I'm the best judge of that." Then, after a pause: "I just don't know how you came to this conclusion. What exactly did you talk about in my absence?"

"That's not important. The point is that we should encourage her to see who's out there, in terms of eligible guys of her age."

Nina shook her head in disbelief. "I think she'll laugh her head off at the idea—if she doesn't kick us out of the house. But I suppose we can bring it up tomorrow."

And they did. Soon after breakfast, as the three of them were lounging around the dining table, Nina said with faux offhandedness, "Here's something funny, Mom. Patrick's come up with the notion that you want a man in your life. Isn't that the most absurd thing you've ever heard?"

That wasn't exactly the way Patrick would have begun the discussion, and he was vindicated when, instead of joining Nina in ridiculing the plan, she sat in contemplative silence for a time and then said, "Maybe he's right. Maybe it's time."

Nina's mouth fell open. "Mom, you can't be serious!"

"Well, why not?" Linda said more emphatically. "You don't think anyone would want me?"

"I didn't say that, Mom," Nina said quickly. "It's just— I mean, you've been by yourself for so long."

"Yes—maybe too long."

Nina looked at her mother as if she were an alien that had just flown in from one of the satellites of Jupiter. "Are you really thinking . . .?"

"Would it bother you, dear?" Linda said gently to her daughter.

"No, of course not—it would be wonderful if you could find a companion. Might do you good," she added grudgingly.

"Of course," Linda said, looking at her hands, "I don't really know how to go about such a thing. I mean, I'm not going to go to singles' bars!"

"No, you're certainly not going to do that," Nina said forcefully. Looking a little desperately at Patrick, she said, "I guess there are online sites."

"There are," Patrick agreed.

"But you gotta be careful, Mom," Nina said. "There are a lot of weirdos out there—especially men." Glancing shyly at Patrick, "No offense to you, dear."

"None taken," he said blandly.

"Dear," Linda said, "I'm not exactly a babe in the woods. I've been around the block a few times."

Nina looked at her mother skeptically. "Mom, you've not dated a man for—what, thirty-six, thirty-seven years? That's a hell of a long time to be 'out of the market'! And lots of things have changed. There are all kinds of perverts and sickos and—and just people who want to take advantage of you!"

"Especially men," Patrick added.

Nina flung him an angry look. "You can laugh, dear, but it's true! Even people of your age, Mom. They're not all genial grandfathers!"

"I understand that, dear," Linda said quietly.

"Okay, so long as you do." Looking at the two of them, Nina went on: "Well, Patrick, shall we help her write an ad? I'm sure we could do it pretty well."

"Not sure why you need me," he muttered.

"We need a man's perspective: you can give us an idea of what would appeal to a man, even though you're a lot younger than the type of guys Mom's looking for."

Patrick said nothing to that.

"Let's get started right now," Nina said, suddenly energized. She leaped up from the table and headed toward her mother's study. "Is your computer on?"

"Not yet, dear," Linda said.

"Well, come on, turn it on. Might as well strike while the iron's hot."

All three of them bustled into the study, and after Linda turned the computer on, Nina evicted her mother from the desk chair and sat in it herself.

"The first thing to do," she said over her shoulder, "is to find the right kind of site. Obviously, you'll not want sites that cater mostly to young people. And some of the sites have so many people that it's hard to weed out the bad apples."

"I think you worry too much," Patrick said.

"No, I don't!" Nina spat back. "This is my

mother

we're talking about! I'm not going to have some scumbag do things to her!"

"Do what, exactly?" Patrick said calmly.

"Oh, never mind! You're being no help at all."

As Nina fished through various Internet searches, she came upon something that interested her—or, rather, interested Linda.

"What's that?" Linda said, pointing to a link that Nina had rushed past.

"What's what?" Nina said.

"Go up a little—a little more. There. How about that?"

It was a dating site for widows and widowers.

Nina looked crestfallen. "Oh, Mom, I don't think you want that. I can't imagine anything more depressing. All these people mooning over their lost spouses."

"That's not what we do, dear," Linda said, with an undercurrent of anger.

Nina put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, God, Mom, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it that way! But don't you see what I'm trying to say? I just don't know if you'll meet the right kind of guy there."

"Why don't you let me decide that?" Linda said.

"Okay," Nina said, defeated.

They began filling out the profile for Linda, although Linda insisted on writing the "personal statement" herself ("I'm not illiterate, dear—and you don't need to do this Cyrano act on me"). With Nina's help, she uploaded several appealing photographs she had on her computer. Then she paid the fee for a six months' subscription. In about twenty minutes the job was done.

"Well," Nina said, dusting her hands as if having completed a difficult task of manual labor, "that's that. All we can do is hope for the best."

In the two remaining days that Nina and Patrick were at Linda's house, she didn't get any responses to her ad—but that was understandable, given the time of year. As they were preparing to leave for home, they promised to keep in touch about the matter—at least, Nina did.

They had loaded up the car with some efficiency, and Nina had given her mother a warm hug. Then she looked at Patrick and said, "You say goodbye to Mom. I'll be in the car."

Patrick and Linda found themselves alone in the front hallway. Cold air was blowing in from the outside, so Linda closed the door.

She gazed up at her prospective son-in-law and touched his cheek with a gentle hand. "You've been very nice to me, Patrick."

"You're an easy person to be nice to," he said.

She turned her gaze away from him; and when he took a hand and made her look him in the face, he was surprised to see her eyes filled with tears.

"Linda—" he began.

"It's nothing," she said, shaking her head as if to dislodge the cobwebs from her mind. "I'm just being silly."

"You're anything but that."

And he took her firmly in his arms and kissed her on the mouth.

It was another kiss that lasted a long, long time, and Linda draped her arms around his neck and held her tightly to herself. Then, with their lips still fastened together, she reached with one hand behind her back and slid one of Patrick's hands down to her bottom.

He kept it there for a few moments, then took it away.

"I'll see you sometime—soon, I hope," he said.

And then he left the house to join his fiancée.

*

Nina was, at the outset, smugly satisfied at what she heard from her mother about her initial adventures in dating. As she relayed with relish to Patrick, Linda had gotten in touch with—and even met—several prospective gentlemen in their fifties and early sixties, but they had all proven variously unsatisfactory. Some of them had lied about their age; some had put obviously decades-old photographs of themselves on their profiles; and others simply proved to be either desperate for a caretaker or keen on finding a buffer between themselves and the grown-up children they had sired, and with whom they seemed to have relationships that verged between bad and terrible.

But then, one Sunday afternoon, Linda called up Nina on her cellphone.

"Hi, Mom, what's up?" Nina said brightly.

"Dear, can you come up here?" Linda said tentatively.

There was an undercurrent in her mother's voice that Nina didn't like at all. "Come up? What for?" Then, more sharply: "Is something wrong, Mom? Something happened to you?"

"No, not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly? Come on, Mom, tell me!"

"Dear, it would just be so much simpler to explain it to you in person."

"What, you mean right now?"

"Yes, I was hoping you could come now. Just for an hour or so. Did you have anything planned?"

"Well, no—but Mom, it's really a long drive up there and back."

"I know it is, dear. I wouldn't be asking you if it weren't important."

"Well, I guess we could make it. Not sure what Patrick had in mind for the day."

"No!" Linda said agitatedly. "Don't bring Patrick!"

"Why on earth not? I thought you liked him."

"I do like him. It's not that—it's just . . . oh, I'd be more comfortable talking to you alone."

"Mom," Nina said balefully, "something

is

the matter."

"No, not in the way you mean. It—it's a good thing, I think."

That answer didn't satisfy Nina very much, but she agreed to head up to Lake Stevens as soon as possible.

It took an hour and a half for her to get ready and then make the drive up to Linda's house. As she arrived, her mother ushered her urgently into the house.

"All right, Mom," Nina said firmly, "you gotta tell me what's going on."

There was a curious light shining in Linda's eyes, and she had trouble sitting still. Finally she plopped herself on the couch in the living room and looked up at her daughter.

"I—um, I met someone."

"

That's

what you dragged me all the way up here to say?" Nina said in outrage. "Mom, you've been meeting lots of people."

"Not lots."

"You know what I mean. I've heard of at least six or seven guys you've gone out with."

"I know, but this is different."

"Different how?" But Nina now had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I met this man," Linda said—and then a slow smile came over her face. "I . . . spent the night with him."

Nina, who had remained standing, staggered as if someone had punched her in the face. She stumbled into an easy chair across from the couch and said, "Omigod, Mom! You—you

slept

with someone?"

"It's been known to happen," Linda said.

"Wait, wait, Mom. You're telling me

you had sex with a man?"

"Nina," Linda said, as if speaking to a five-year-old, "wasn't that what this dating business was all about?"

"God, Mom! It wasn't about you jumping into bed with someone at the first opportunity! You were supposed to look for a companion."

"But having a companion means being intimate with him, isn't it?"

"Maybe, but—but this has happened so

fast!

Who is he? What do you know about him?"

"I know plenty about him. His name is Harold, and he's a widower."

"Well, I figured that much. Is that all?"

"No, of course not. He's a policeman—or, at least he was. He took early retirement and is living comfortably in Granite Falls. That's just a little northeast of here."

"I know where it is, Mom. A

policeman?

I didn't know you were attracted to people like that."

"Dear, I don't really care that he's a policeman. I like him for what he is—what kind of person he is."

"And what would that be?" Nina said skeptically.

"He's very nice and kind and—and affectionate," Linda said with a blush.

"Is that so?" Nina said nastily. "Didn't I tell you to be careful? What have you done, just letting this man into your bed?"

"Do you want to hear the story before you make up your mind? Right now you don't know anything about it—or him."

"Okay," Nina said, trying to get a hold of herself. "You just tell me what happened."

"Well, he answered my ad, and we exchanged messages for a while. Then we agreed to meet. I followed your advice, dear, about meeting at some public place, so we chose a Starbucks near here. Well, he turned out to be really nice. He's a big man, but kind of a teddy bear."

"How old is he?"

"He's fifty-five. A little younger than me."

"My mom, the cradle-robber," Nina said sarcastically.

Linda giggled like a schoolgirl. "He said I looked a lot younger than my age!"

"Yeah, they all say that," Nina said. But when she saw her mother's disappointed expression: "Oh, Mom, you know you look younger than you are. Everyone says that."

"Well, that's nice, dear. Anyway, we had a great discussion—he's really lively and intelligent, reads lots of books, and has lots of interests. So it got to be around dinnertime, and we just said, 'Let's have dinner somewhere.' So he asked me to follow him to Granite Falls where he knew of a really good Italian restaurant there."

"And you went."

"Well, of course I went! Nina, this really was the best date I've had so far. I mean, we just couldn't stop talking! He told me he'd been married for twenty-three years, but his wife got brain cancer and was dead six months after being diagnosed. It all happened so fast he hardly knew how to react. That was four years ago. There's obviously still a bit of sadness in him, but he's done a lot better at moving on with his life than I have."

"I daresay."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I just wonder how many other ladies . . ."

Linda eyed her daughter sharply. "I don't know, and I didn't ask. At the moment, I was the sole focus of his attention, and he was very—attentive."

"Did he . . . touch you?"

"Not much—not then, anyway. Sure, he took my elbow as we left the Starbucks. There's no harm in that, is there, dear?"

"No, of course not."

"So we had a really nice dinner, and then he invited me to go back to his house."

"Oh, Mom!" Nina cried in despair. "That's exactly what I told you not to do!"

"You never said any such thing!"

"I

did!

On the first date? Are you crazy?" Then Nina covered her mouth with her hands and whispered,

"You slept with him on the first date?

Good God, Mom, what were you thinking?"

Linda glared evilly at Nina. "Just let me tell the story, okay?"

Gathering her wits, she went on. "He had a pretty small house, quite a bit smaller than mine, but it was quite nice. I could see a woman's touch here and there: he'd obviously not changed a lot of things that his wife had done, in terms of decorations, knickknacks, and so on. He even showed me pictures of her. She looked quite sweet, and he was obviously devoted to her.

"Anyway, we had some liqueurs and just talked some more. Then . . ." Linda sent her daughter a slightly scared look. "You know, his chief hobby now is photography, and he seems really good at it. So"—she paused, then said in a rush: "So he asked if he could take some pictures of me."

"Omigod," Nina said in a hollow voice. "That's the oldest line in the book, Mom!"

"There was nothing wrong with it! He got out what looked like a pretty expensive digital camera, and he took all kinds of shots of me—sitting, standing, whatever. Then"—and again Linda looked abashed—"he asked me to try on some clothes."

"What clothes, exactly?"

"Well, if you must know, a nightgown—although I think it was more like a kimono."

Nina hid her face in her hands. "Mom, you're so . . ." She looked up in alarm. "Don't tell me you stripped in front of him!"

"Of course not, silly. After he gave me the kimono, I went to the bathroom to change."

"You—stripped naked?"

"Well, yes, of course. The kimono was really pretty—must have come directly from Japan. So he took shots of me as I was reclining on the couch, and things like that."

I can see where this is going,

Nina thought dismally to herself.

"I just felt so, um, so luxurious in that thing! I don't know if it actually belonged to his wife, but I didn't care. It fit me perfectly, and I just loved the way it felt on me."

Linda looked off into the distance. "And so he asked me to take it off so he could do some nude photos of me."

Now Nina had wrapped her arms around her stomach. "Oh, Mom, how could you? You behaved like a naïve schoolgirl! Jesus, how could you be so silly?"

"Nina," Linda said sharply, "I

wanted

to do it. It was fun—and more than fun. It made me—feel like a woman again. I just stood up and let the thing fall to the floor. I liked being naked in front of him. I felt proud and strong and beautiful. And the way he looked at me—"

"I can imagine."

"It wasn't like that. His look was—

reverential.

If I may say so, I think I'm better-looking than his wife, who was a bit on the plain side. I'm sure he loved her—but I'm also sure he liked seeing a lovely woman in front of him."

"Mom, don't you see what he's done?" Nina cried desperately.

"What has he done?"

"He—he took all these nude photos of you! And now he can blackmail you over them!"

"Nina, I wasn't born yesterday. I'll tell you what he did. After he showed me those photos, he downloaded them onto a little thingamajig—what do you call it, a flash drive?—and gave it to me.

And then he deleted the photos from his camera!"

"He did?" Nina said weakly.

"Yes," Linda said with authority. "So how's he going to blackmail me? Tell me that!"

"Well, I guess he won't."

"You bet he won't—because he's not that sort of person."

"So what happened then? That obviously wasn't the end."

"No, of course not." Linda had to pause a bit before she continued. "Well, he just gazed at me and said, 'You're so beautiful.' But he didn't touch me at all. So I led him down so that he was sitting on the couch, and I reclined at full length on the couch and put my head in his lap."

"Did you?"

"I did. And then—and then I unzipped his fly."

Nina just gaped at her mother.

"And I took out his thing, and I—I put it in my mouth."

Nina closed her eyes and said, "Omigod."

"Oh, Nina, do you know how long it's been? It just felt so—so

good

in my mouth! He was pretty big—but I made him bigger! It was a strange feeling, him getting big in my mouth. Anyway, I seemed to lose track of time, and I just kept sucking and sucking . . . And so he—"

"He came in your mouth?" Nina whispered.

"Yes," Linda said with some pride. "It was fun! I mean, it was kind of like foam or soap bubbles, although of course it's very salty."

"I know it's salty, Mom."

"You do?" Linda said, nonplussed. "Well, anyway, I wasn't even intending for that to happen, but I guess he couldn't control himself—or else I was really good at it!" She beamed at her daughter. "I swallowed every drop. And when I looked up at him, he had this incredible look of

gratitude

on his face!"

"Yeah, men like it when you swallow their come."

"

He

did, anyway!"

"So then what happened? Was that it?"

"Um, no." Linda paused again, then went on: "Then he slid down to his knees in front of me and, um, well, you know, he buried his face between my legs and just licked me until . . ."

"Until you came?" Nina said, aghast.

"Well, sure! I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, isn't it? I did him, so he did me."