The Widow

One week before meeting Ben, the man who would become my husband, everything I owned was lost in a fire. I came home that night to a scene on the front lawn: young women, all neighbors I’d seen previously only in passing, cried, while a group of firefighters hauled an enormous hose through the wreckage, their boots foundering in the wet soot. Through gaps in the collapsed exterior I could make out the remains of two bathtubs, a sink, a glass coffee table, one bed frame, and a gnarled, bloated mattress, all completely charred to black. Patches of ember glowed beneath the ash. The firefighters laid a small collection of salvaged objects in the grass before us. One of the girls stepped forward and tearfully picked up a little jewelry box. I recognized nothing of my own. All my possessions didn’t amount to much, but still the thought of being without them left me in a panic. I was new to town — I’d been renting the room in that house only for a couple of months and didn’t know anyone well. What little cash I’d saved was kept hidden under a false bottom in my dresser drawer, now scorched to dust. The only phone number I’d memorized was that of the old woman, the landlady, a former nun, who collected our rent every other week, but she was nowhere to be seen. I stood there for a while, smoke stinging my eyes, as the cinders hissed out, and the girls I didn’t know dispersed one by one into the arms of other strangers.

Ben was an investigator for the insurance company handling the case. He appeared at my work one day with a list of questions about the fire, the landlady, the condition of the house. He’d already spoken to the rest of the renters but said I’d been more difficult to track down; no forwarding address was filed under my name. I told him I didn’t have one. Since the fire, I’d been staying at work for as late as possible each day, quietly lingering in the break room after my shifts were done, washing up in the sink, and drinking instant coffee until the night janitors appeared with their floor polishers and I’d have to return to my car to sleep until the sun came up. I desperately wanted to submerge myself in a hot bath and then dry myself, properly, with real towels instead of the brown paper napkins I skimmed from the supply closet. I wanted to lay my head on pillows, to reach out and switch a light off when I was done with the day. Ben took me in shortly after our first meeting. He let me stay in his spare room. He replaced my favorite books and bought me new clothes. I was besieged with gratitude. Soon, I was sleeping in his bed every night. Then, to my fascination, I found myself fixing dinner at five o’clock, waiting for him to come through the door after work. I was always a little astonished to see him standing there, right on time, loosening the collar on one of his many identical white shirts. It all felt very exotic to me, this life made up of days so neatly wrapped. Our routine became a comfort. I was soothed by the order of it, the sounds — the oven cooling with a gentle click after dinner, Ben pouring scotch into a heavy glass, unclasping his watch, drawing the curtains shut.

We lived together like this for three months before getting married at a quick-service chapel in Niagara Falls. He’d told me several times since our first dinner together that he simply wanted a wife. The proposal was sweet, if somewhat impersonal. Saying no didn’t occur to me. I’d chanced upon refuge, a home, when I needed one so badly. Just the thought of unmooring myself from Ben’s life before I’d even gotten neck deep in it gave me pangs of exhaustion. It would mean a slow drift back toward all the uncertainty I’d taken shelter from, yet another strange apartment with strange people on the other side of the wall. My mother succumbed to lung cancer when I was seventeen, only three years after my father left, and I’d been on my own ever since, just managing to scrape by. Giving marriage a fair shot seemed like my most promising option, though on our wedding night I found myself sitting awake until dawn, gnawed at by all the gaps in my understanding of Ben. These things, which felt inconsequential just days earlier, had suddenly dilated in my mind and glared out at me like pinpricks of light in the roof of an old house — impossible to ignore. I realized I had no idea of his parents’ names, where they lived, or if they were deceased. I didn’t even know where he’d grown up or whom he voted for. Did he vote? What was his favorite movie? His earliest memory? I sat up beside my husband, long after he’d fallen asleep, watching his eyes flutter as he dreamed, and thought about how strange it felt to have been found by him, out of everyone. A man who’d lived an entire life before me, much of it before I’d even been born. The suit he wore earlier at the chapel was draped against a chair, its ghostly outline barely visible through the dark.

As the months progressed, it became clearer to me how little I knew him. It was not for lack of trying. I was persistent. I coaxed. Every night, after I’d poured him a drink, I asked gentle questions. What was the name of your first love? Would you like to spend this Christmas with your family? Maybe take a long weekend with them over the summer? Things like that. Just one or two at a time. I never could tell when the next would be one too many, causing him to bristle and suddenly switch the bedside light off, or disappear into the garage for several hours, his focus consumed with projects unknown to me. It seemed what he longed for most was a pleasant, depthless life with a girl at his side. In fact, he practically asked for it. I just want an easy marriage, he’d say, a pleading tone on the edge of his voice. By then I’d gotten into the habit of rifling through his papers and coat pockets while he was away at work. It’s not that I suspected him of anything but simply that I wanted a clue, some line into the shadowed parts of him, so that I wouldn’t fall asleep each night with the feeling of drifting out alone into open water.

Around the time Ben and I had known each other for a year and were nine months married, an older woman called. She gave no name, and I didn’t recognize her voice, though she seemed taken aback to hear mine, pausing before asking if Ben was home. He’s out picking something up from the hardware store, I told her. The woman quickly said she would try again later when he returned. Before I could ask her name, the line was dead. I sat by the phone for a few minutes, wondering, before deciding it must have been his mother. Who else? I felt incredibly stupid for not having introduced myself right away, worried she’d think I was just some fling when really, I was his wife.

“I believe your mother called earlier,” I mentioned over dinner. “She didn’t say anything, she just said she’d try you again later.” Ben’s face went still. He looked at me carefully, a puzzled expression in his eyes giving way to something more anxious. He put his fork down and wiped his mouth thoroughly before saying, “Couldn’t have been my mother.”