I’m a wife.
I stare at my exhausted but happy reflection in the bathroom mirror and try on the unfamiliar word: wife. I’m a wife! Ben and I got married yesterday, and now we are in Hawaii for our honeymoon.
I can hear him humming a song he wrote for the latest Marvel movie soundtrack while he unpacks our suitcase.
“Wifey?” he calls affectionately from the bedroom.
I flip off the light and step into the suite’s living room, nearly gasping once again at the startling oceanfront view. “Yes, husband?”
“Do we think a Speedo is appropriate for the beach?” He dangles a tiny strip of fabric that he wears for triathlons from his index finger.
“Oh, most definitely.”
He laughs as I enter the bedroom and sling my arms around his shoulders, feeling the heft of him. Though we’ve been together only two years, we’ve packed so much into our relationship, it feels like we’ve always been together. After seven adventure races, five triathlons, one ultramarathon, and visiting four countries, we’ve set a blistering pace for what we want, which is really just one wild, adventurous life. Somehow, getting married seems like the biggest adventure of all.
“Three things,” I say to him now.
“You, me, this,” he replies instantly. He stares deeply into my eyes, and I run my fingers through his thick hair.
It’s a game we play. At any given moment, we must name what we are grateful for in a world that sometimes leaves us grasping to find something good.
“Your turn.”
My entire being radiates with a happiness greater than my body can contain. I know it’s not a small thing—to start a life with someone—especially in this day and age. But with Ben it doesn’t feel like a risk. It feels like coming home. I think about what I’m grateful for: we both love our jobs, have a good friend group, are healthy and happy, just booked several upcoming trips, bought a new condo, and have our entire lives ahead of us. I’m not sure I can narrow it down to just three.
“Our wedding, this suite, and definitely that Speedo,” I say, eyeing the slime-green bathing suit balled in a tiny wad on the king bed. “Maybe not in that order.”
He kisses the joke right from my lips. I melt into him, wondering what it will be like to kiss Ben like this for the next fifty years. “I love you, Harper,” he whispers in my ear after he finally pulls back.
“I love you too.” I snuggle into a hug.
After a lingering moment, he slaps my butt and turns away. “I made dinner reservations,” he says. “Five o’clock. Hotel restaurant. Senior citizen hour, baby!”
“You know me so well.” I love eating dinner early. When I was growing up, dinner was always on the table by five, and the habit stuck. As a high school art teacher, I’m done with work well before dinner and I love to cook. Ben’s work as a film composer, on the other hand, often keeps him trapped in his studio late into the night. When he can, he eats early with me.
Before I can ask him to model that Speedo, all the color drains from his face as he places a hand on his stomach.
“Hey. You okay?”
He swallows and closes his eyes. “I just got really nauseous for some reason. Oh man.” He grips his stomach harder.
“Here, sit down.” I lead him to the bed and rub his back. I try to remember what we ate on the plane. Chicken, maybe? As I think about it.
though, I realize Ben has been complaining about his lower back and stomach for the last few weeks. I assumed he was overtraining.
Something like panic traverses my skin as I look at him, pale and suddenly sweating. Ben never gets sick.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” he says. The door shuts, and I can hear him retch into the toilet.
“I’ll call down and get you a ginger ale.” My fingers shake as I stab the button for room service.
“How can I help you, Mrs. Foster?”
My eyes well with tears at hearing Ben’s last name, which is now my last name. Harper Swanson Foster. My new identity. I tell the woman what we need and hang up. I sit on the edge of the bed and try to rationalize what’s happening. It’s probably nothing. Just something he ate. But there’s a deeper feeling, some sense of knowing, that I can’t shake. What if it’s not just something he ate? What if it’s serious?
Ben emerges a few minutes later, clutching his stomach. “Wow. I haven’t thrown up in years. I think I’m dehydrated.”
“Why don’t you rest for a little while? See if it passes?”
Before I can grab him water or a cool rag for his head, his knees buckle and his eyes roll back in his head. Everything slows like someone has pressed Pause on my life. I can’t move. I can’t speak. Instead, I only gasp as my strong, healthy husband crumples to the floor with a sickening thud. His head bounces violently against the carpet.
What is . . .
I’m going to be a widow.
That word—widow—still catches me off guard. It seems like a word reserved for someone who has lived a long life—someone with kids, grandkids, and decades of memories. Someone who is closer to the end of their journey, not the beginning.
Ben says something I don’t hear. His hair is growing back, highlighting green eyes laced with flecks of gold. I focus on his thick black lashes, the cleft in his chin, the way his eyes crinkle when he’s looking only at me. It seems like yesterday that we got married and had our whole lives ahead of us. What I wouldn’t give to go back.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I have a crazy idea.”
I fumble for a response. “Define crazy.” I nurse my beer and stab another tortilla chip into the guacamole before shoving a fat glob into my mouth. It’s Taco Tuesday, but Ben’s plate sits untouched, his once sturdy body hollowed out and sucked dry from doctors, chemo, endless treatments, and flimsy hope in sterile hospital rooms. Still, there’s a glimmer of mischief in his eyes that tells me he’s up to something.
Though we’re in pajamas, in our condo, in the middle of the city, with some terrible reality show blaring in the background, it feels like what he’s about to say is important and I should listen. I cross my legs and feel a little lightheaded from the beer.
Ben places his warm, large hands around mine, his skin pale where it had once been browned from the sun. The chemo made him sensitive to the sun (and a million other things), so even though he’s stopped treatment, he has to be careful. “I want you to just listen first. Listen to what I have to say before you say no.”
I laugh. “How do you know I’m going to say no?”
He drags his thumb back and forth over the skin of my hand until it burns. “Because this idea, while totally brilliant, is also really, really crazy.”
“Out with it, Foster.” I feel a giggle bubbling up my throat in anticipation. This is the most normal conversation we’ve had in weeks.
“Okay.” He takes a shaky breath and rubs a hand across his stubbly head. “I want you to find someone else . . . before I go.”
The giggle I’ve been suppressing bursts from my throat until I feel hysterical. He doesn’t respond, doesn’t laugh in return. “No,” I say, squinting at him. “What is it, really?”
He levels me with a look, and I swallow.
“You can’t be serious.” I glance at my watch, a present from Ben for my last birthday. He had it engraved to say, You’re the only woman who makes me forget about time. The hysteria turns to outrage, and I shift, spilling tortilla chips onto our comfy fort of pillows and quilts. “What is this really about?” I rack my brain. Has he met someone else? Is he tired of me? Is this some lame attempt at distracting me from what we both know is coming?
After our honeymoon, we took Ben to get tests, and then an oncologist delivered words you never want to hear. Ben has stage four advanced pancreatic cancer . . . the type of cancer that often doesn’t present symptoms until it’s far too late. The tumors were too big to remove and had already spread to his lymph nodes and liver. The chemo couldn’t shrink the masses enough to even attempt surgery. So, despite all the treatments that made him feel sicker than the cancer, here we are, facing the end.
“Harp.” He pats the stack of pillows on the floor, our lazy pallet for food because Ben gets too exhausted sitting upright at the table and is more comfortable on the ground. Sometimes he falls asleep mid-bite or curls up in my lap, and I stroke his short hair while he naps for hours. And then I cry, trying not
to drip tears and snot onto his cheeks.
I move closer to him and cross my arms. “Explain.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I know you are an independent, capable woman who most certainly does not need a man, but I want to do this for you.” He looks deeply into my eyes until I want to scream. “I want you to be okay when I’m gone.”
“Well, I’m not going to be okay,” I say. “You’re dying.”
That word is an affront. Ben is one of the most vibrant humans I know. The man you want beside you in a physical emergency. The friend you ask to help move furniture. The guy who goes for a thirty-mile bike ride and then plays a pickup basketball game with friends. How can he be dying?
“But you’re not, Harper. I want you to live your life.” He threads his fingers through mine and searches my eyes while tears fill his own. “I want you to find love again.”
My nostrils flare, and I rip my hand free, gathering my long, auburn hair into a bun and securing it with a rubber band from my wrist. “Have we met? I don’t want anyone else but you. I barely like people. That’s why I waited almost thirty-five years to get married in the first place. You know this.”
“This is precisely my point. We both know you won’t ever find someone if I don’t find him for you.” He produces a composition notebook he’s been hiding under one of the pillows and flips it open, stabbing the page. At the top, it says, “Master Plan: Find Harper Someone to Love Before I Go.”
Tears spring to my eyes as I see the numbered points beneath it.
- Get Harper to agree to my crazy idea.
- Once she is done telling me I’m an idiot, explain crazy idea.
- Come up with a time line for crazy idea.
- Find dates for Harper.
- Find dates for Harper who don’t make her want to gag.
- Find dates for Harper who aren’t sociopaths, psychopaths, or just lame.
- Find the one for Harper who can make her laugh and take care of her the way she has taken care of me.
- Remind her that I will be watching from beyond the grave . . . so she better not love him too much.
“Ben . . .” Tears stream down my face faster than I can flick them away.
“Look, if the situation were reversed, you’d do the same for me,” he says. “Right?”
I bark out a laugh. “Absolutely not. I’d want you to love me and only me and be
miserable for the rest of your long life.” I grin through my tears, because we both know that isn’t true.
“Just think about it, okay? That’s all I ask.” He reaches for my hand again, and I let his fingers entwine with mine, fingers that have held mine as our whole big, shiny plan for our lives has been decimated by the dreaded C word. These are the hands I held while saying vows, fingers I’ve kissed through chemo and doctors’ visits and making love.
I can’t tell him I’ll think about it, because there’s nothing to think about. I want to scream. I want to tell him this is not okay. I want to explain that our love story, in my mind, is still unfolding, so no, Ben, I am most definitely not open to finding someone else.
As my outrage gains momentum, just to spite him, I vow, right here and now, never to love another man as long as I live.
Sensing I don’t want to talk anymore, he turns back to his plate of food and tentatively takes a bite. My heart aches, as it so often does, in seeing his lack of appetite, not just for food but for life. That hunger used to define him, define us.
How can someone so excited by life suddenly be on the tail end of it? It doesn’t seem fair. I bite back my pain. No pity party today. Instead, I tuck back into my tacos, though my appetite is gone.
“Three things,” Ben says softly now.
I lower my plate and look at him. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Too bad.”
“Fine.” I adjust to look at him. “Tacos, tacos, and more tacos.”
He laughs. “Fair enough.”
“You?” I ask.
“Tacos, of course.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Being here with you. And meeting your new future boyfriend.” He nudges me with his shoulder.
In response, I smack him lightly on the arm.
“Careful,” he says. “I’m fragile.”
Though he’s joking, I feel like crying. “No, Ben,” I say, turning back to my food. “You’re not.”
It’s been two days since Ben issued the challenge of finding me someone else to love, and I hope by my pretending he didn’t say it, he will let it drop.
But Ben is someone who needs a project. As if losing his fight with cancer isn’t all-consuming enough, he wants to ensure I fall in love while he’s still here. I haven’t even tried to explain all the reasons that will never work, how it isn’t physically possible to fall in love with someone while you’re still madly in love with someone else. That it will probably be years before I feel even an iota of normal, and the last thing on my mind is finding a new husband.
I make coffee, leave Ben a note, and head out for work. Today is the last day of school before summer. While I wanted to take a leave of absence at the start of Ben’s diagnosis, he insisted I keep working so I could have some semblance of a normal routine.
“Kids put life into perspective,” he often says.
To which I always reply, “Have you ever met a teenager?”
Truthfully, I adore my students. They give me a sense of purpose and have kept me motivated this past year while Ben endured treatment.
I take the elevator to the main floor of our building, say good morning to our doorman, Randy, and step outside. It’s a perfect Chattanooga day, not a cloud in the sky. I lift my coffee to my lips and take a big gulp, indulging in a fleeting moment of joy. This happens sometimes. I can appreciate the smallest things—a chirping bird, the glistening water of the Tennessee River, the majesty of the Appalachian Mountains—and then I feel bad, as if I can’t be sad about Ben and happy about life. Ben insists these moments are the moments that matter most, because he finds beauty everywhere now too. Before cancer, we were both moving so fast, working hard and making future plans, and now that’s all been wiped away. It’s been one of the most surprising effects of his diagnosis, how we are both finding glimpses of beauty in the grief.
“Hey, hey.” Jenna falls into step beside me, and I realize I passed the front of her building without even slowing for her to join.
“Sorry.” I stop, turn, and give her a hug. She smells like flowers. “Lost in thought.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
We both laugh, because if I don’t laugh, I will cry. Jenna has been with us during the entire ordeal and is one of the few people who doesn’t treat Ben with pity. She still jokes around, busts Ben’s balls, and tells him to get it together when she stops by and he’s too sick to get out of bed.
“So did you know?” I ask. I don’t even say what I’m referring to, because if she does know, I’ll be able to tell.
“I know nothing.” Her cheeks redden as she tucks her wild, curly hair behind her ears. Jenna teaches French, knows five languages, has a gorgeous partner, Wren, and two hairless cats. She’s sharp as a tack, and her answer tells me everything I need to know.
“Wait,” I say. “When did he come up with this stupid plan?”
She shrugs. “You know Ben. He needs something else to focus on besides . . .” The truth hangs between us. “I told him it was ridiculous, but when has he ever listened to me?”
“Good point.” I laugh.
“Well, if you think this idea is insane, just wait until you talk to him and Wren.” Wren owns the Terrington art gallery downtown. For years, she’s encouraged me to take my craft more seriously, though I always claim I don’t have enough time. At first, it was because of work, then it was because of Ben.
I stop her.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not my place to say.”
“Really, Jenna? You’re just going to dangle that carrot?”
“Yep.”
At the high school’s entrance, I hold the door open for her as a crush of students barrel inside before the morning bell.
“Have a good day!”
I roll my eyes as she heads off to her classroom. What are Wren and Ben up to? I stand in the foyer and listen to the chatter around me as I make my way to my classroom.
My seniors stripped their work from the walls earlier this week. Before they flood in for first period, I stare at the husk of this room, which has contained so much creativity this year.
The walls are studded with putty and nothing more. The room seems cold and bland without their wild, colorful, abstract creations clogging up every available surface. Though I claim not to have favorites, my seniors are easily that, mainly because they remind me of what’s possible in the world.
They pile in now, excited about the last day of school. I let them grab their supplies and tell them we are doing one last project, which is free choice.
Once they settle down and find their rhythm, I close my eyes for a moment and hear the quick swish of brushes and graffiti pens being shaken and pressed to fresh canvases. There’s the tap, tap, tap of bristles in water, the long, smooth strokes of thick acrylic, mingled with a stray cough or sneeze. When the kids are locked in and focused, not distracted by their phones or each other, the energy swells. I absorb the vibration of it now, that strong creative force of being in the groove while time disappears.
Though I teach art, I pretty much gave up on my own dreams because my one big shot didn’t happen in New York. An image flashes through my mind that stops me cold: of me, the gallery, of him . . . but I promptly swipe it away, like always. That is the past. I know now, more than ever, that there is no point in playing the what-if game.
Classes whip by, one after another, and before I know it, it’s the end of the day. I gather my supplies and rush through the hallways, waving at kids, wishing them a good summer, and absorbing all the raucous sounds of young teenage life. Seniors whoop through the halls, excited to be free from this place for good, with its metal detectors, security guards, and active shooter drills. School, like so much of the world, has become such an unpredictable place.
At the teachers’ lounge door, I feel the familiar curl of excitement at the promise of summer. No matter how old I get, it’s still my favorite season. But the moment I think about it, I remember what could happen this summer. This might be the summer I lose Ben. This might be the summer my whole life changes. This might be the summer I become a widow.
Before I can let those thoughts go, Jenna yanks me inside the lounge and starts chatting my ear off. The emotions from the day leak out of me
slowly, like a gently pricked balloon. I am tired. I want to see Ben. Instead, I plaster on a smile and spend time with my colleagues.
But my brain keeps drifting away. When I leave here for the summer, I am stepping into an unfamiliar world in more ways than one.
Though I am excited for the break from work, I also know that what I’m facing with Ben will no longer be a hypothetical anymore. I won’t have work to scurry off to. I won’t be able to morph into Harper the teacher and bury my problems for seven hours every day.
Instead, ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
