My Husband's Sweethearts Read Online Free PDF

smile. Now I know why she was smiling. Just wait until he cheats on you and then dies on you. I turn to face Artie.
He's looking at the ceiling again.
    "Call them," he says. "Call them up."
    "Who?"
    "My sweethearts. Call them up," he says. "You
shouldn't have to be alone in this."
    "Your sweethearts ?" I hate this little euphemism. "Are
you joking?" I ask, incredulous.
    "No," he says. "I'm not joking. Maybe it'll be good for
everyone. Maybe one of them would actually be helpful."
He looks at me and smiles a little. "Maybe some of them
would hate me so you don't have to."
    "And what should I say? This is Artie Shoreman's
wife? He's dying? Please call to schedule your turn at his
deathbed?"
    "That's good. Say that. Maybe I can still go with my
old plan to win you back," he says.
    "The one with the rented white horse in the desert?"
    "I could still reform, do penance, make amends."
With some effort, he pushes himself up onto his elbow
and roots out an address book from a drawer in his side
table. He hands it to me. "This book is filled with people I
should make amends with." As I reach for it, he holds on
to it for a moment, tightly, the way people sometimes stall
for a bit just before handing over their shoddy accounting
records for an audit. He looks worn—maybe my presence
has weakened him. His face is completely serious now,
pained, the lines deeper than before I left, his hair maybe
a little grayer. I feel a deep ache in my chest. "I'd like to
see my son, too," he says.
    "You don't have a son," I remind him.
    He lets go of the book so that it slips into my hands.
"I've been meaning to tell you. I had him when I was just
a kid—twenty. His mother and I never got married. He's
grown now. His last name is Bessom. He's in the B's,"
he says.
    I'm suddenly aware of heat in the room. It's rising up
inside me. I know I couldn't murder Artie Shoreman on
his deathbed (though surely wives have killed husbands on
deathbeds before), but I wouldn't mind beating a couple
of weeks out of him after this delicious little bombshell.
Couldn't he have told me in flower bundle #34? I love you so much, you made me forget to tell you that I have a child with another woman. I pick up the picture of us on
Martha's Vineyard and, before I'm aware of the impulse, I
throw it across the room. A corner of the frame catches on
the wall and makes a solid dent. The glass shatters, littering
the floor. I look at my empty hands.
    I've never been the type to throw things. Artie gapes at
me, completely surprised.
    "I know that Bessom is in the B's, Artie. Jesus, you're
an ass. A son, you tell me now after all of this time? That's
lovely!"
    I storm out of the room and almost knock over Artie's
hot little nurse, who has been listening at the door. I can't
tell who's more stunned, me or her.
    "You're fired," I say. "And tell the agency only male
nurses from now on. Got it? Ugly male nurses. The
burlier and hairier the better."

Chapter Four
Your Mother Is a Woman You
Don't Have to Become
    Marie left quickly, apologetically, and in
a few hours a new nurse came to do
Artie's late-night last call. The nurse is
a man—though not as burly and hairy as I'd hoped. But
he is a nurse—older and quiet—with one of those modern
Toddish names that begins with the letter T.
    He walks by the kitchen doorway and looks at me. He
circles back the way he came. I eat a few crackers, then he
appears again. He stalls in the doorway. "There's a woman
in your yard. I think she's weeding. In the dark," he says,
sounding more surprised by the dark than by the weeding.
    I'm not surprised. I stand up and walk to the front
door. And there is, in fact, a nicely dressed older woman
pulling out some weeds at the base of our shrubbery. I
turn on the outdoor light.
    The woman stands up, holding the weeds, roots and
all. It is, of course, my mother, wearing one of her velour
sweat suits—royal blue, zippered only halfway up to show
off