Saturday Night Widows Read Online Free PDF

my husband died,” Denise said after some hesitation. I’d been worried that these cumulative tales of loss might be too much for a widow of only five months, but she spoke with presence. “He went into the shower in the morning, and he came out and collapsed. I was with him. The last thing he said was, ‘Help me.’ ”
    He died in her arms. Five months later, she was still awaiting results from the autopsy.
    “Mine was really … complicated,” said a muted voice. This time, Tara didn’t wait to go last. We leaned in toward her as she worked that silken instrument, slower and softer even than before, holding us captive as she curled her body forward in the chair, taking up as little space as possible. “Because … I lost my husband slowly … over stages.” She stopped, and I thought that might be all she planned to say, but she went on. “He was an alcoholic.” She gave a decisive nod, as if to confirm this to herself. “He was. So we watched him transform into something … entirely different from the man we knew.”
    “Is that what he actually died from?” asked Lesley.
    “No, he died of heart failure. But, you know … it pickles all the organs. He was fifty-six when he died.”
    Without taking a beat, Lesley straightened herself from her spot on the floor and plunged like a swimmer into a cold lake, not allowing herself time to think. “My husband committed suicide,” she said abruptly. Everyone registered the shock of it but managed to maintain a level gaze. “He was the most adventurous, hard-working … He loved life to the fullest, and he was only fifty. Andmuch like your husband, Tara, dying of a disease like alcoholism, I think Kevin probably suffered from depression.”
    “And you didn’t know?” Marcia asked.
    “No,” said Lesley. “Obviously, he had been thinking about it for a while, because he left all sorts of notes to help me through.” Her eyebrows went up again, her coquettish eyes grew rounder, and her voice recovered some of its chatty tone. “I was a little bit precious, you know. He did everything for me. He left us a three-page letter, a beautiful letter, the girls and me.”
    “You have children?” Dawn asked.
    “Yes. The youngest had just gone off to college two weeks before.”
    Next to me, I could feel Tara unfold as she realized that Lesley, so capable of cheer, had weathered such a trauma. It must have placed Tara’s own ordeal in sharp relief. She sat up taller and looked at Lesley with new respect. We were all tempted to say it: “Lesley, you’re so strong.”
    The stories were out at last, the rough outlines at least. They were almost too much to take in, let alone keep straight, the only common thread being in the telling, squarely, without embellishment, without self-pity. Perhaps that was why, rather than bringing everyone down, the disclosures seemed to open everyone up. Taut shoulders loosened, jaws relaxed. The rush of release that swept through the room was palpable. We couldn’t seem to wait to release our most closely held thoughts.
    Dawn told us with some embarrassment that she’d been unwilling to hear the details of her husband’s accident. “I still don’t even want to know,” she said, her musical voice grainier but still emphatic. “The guys who were there would try to tell me, ‘We triedto do this or that,’ and I didn’t even care, really. It was too painful for me. I’m like, it doesn’t matter! As long as he’s not lost or missing and I should
do
something about this, what the hell difference does it make? He’s
dead
.”
    This set off a wave of what-ifs from the others. Lesley revealed that she had found her husband in their home after what he’d done to himself—she didn’t say what. “I tried to save him, and for the longest time I thought, oh my gosh, he died because I didn’t do something right.”
    “Yes,” said Dawn. “I was in this crazy place for a while where I thought that if he died, it somehow