Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(4)

“You’re always doing this,” I told him.

Still clutching his hand, he took a step back. “What do you mean?”

I could feel the crazy coming on again. “Upstaging me!”

It was not entirely lost on me that his commandeering my big reveal was probably not the right dilemma to be dwelling on, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was as though the spirit of Jackie, she of the many long-winded outbursts, had slithered into my body. “Every time, Tom!” I screeched as he stared at me with horror. “Every time!”

In high school, Tom won rave reviews for his rousing performance of Curly in Oklahoma! while I was relegated to the understudy for Laurey, a role I did not once bring to fruition while pining for Tom from the chorus. His custom-tailored suit for our wedding was far nicer than my dress, and it was all anyone could talk about at our ceremony. If anyone could steal the thunder of my cancer diagnosis, it was Tom.

Now, I know, I know: Musicals? Designer suits? Surely, Libby, you must have been aware that your husband was perhaps not as hetero as he’d let on? But Paul had been out and proud from the minute he emerged from his amniotic sac. I knew from gay men. At least, I thought I did.

“I’m dying,” I said. “I. Am. Dying!”

“Libby, please don’t be dramatic,” he said. “I understand that you’re upset. I am, too. But we can’t move forward if you’re screaming at me.”

“Tom,” I said, eyeing the recently sharpened steak knives, which hung from a magnetic strip just above the sink, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you should leave before I do something we’ll both regret.”

He recoiled. “Libby, don’t you have any sympathy for me? Do you know how hard that was? I’ve been working on this for months now.”

How lovely. Even as my tumor grew from a pea to an olive to a lime just beneath my skin—not far from the very area where the baby I pined for should have been reaching similar milestones—Tom had been perfecting his I’m-breaking-up-our-marriage elevator speech.

“Tom, Tom, Tom,” I said, fingering the top of the knife bar, which was dusty; I’d take care of that later. “You lost the right to ask for sympathy about three minutes ago. Now get out of our home before I stab you again.”





THREE


Would I have gone off the deep end if the whole mess with Tom hadn’t unfolded as it did? Hard to say. Tom would have come out eventually, although I suspect that if I’d had the chance to tell him my Really Bad News before he told me his, he probably would have kept his secret under wraps until after I’d died. How convenient that would have been for him. I could just imagine him telling people, “I loved my wife so much that after her untimely passing, I just couldn’t feel that way about another woman again—ever. So now I date men.”

But as these things go, Tom couldn’t wait to open his trap, and the news that came flying out was so terrible I could barely breathe, let alone tell him about the grenade in my gut.

I can’t say for sure exactly what happened after Tom left, although I do remember lying on the floor in front of the apartment door, pressing my cheek against the cool wood, and wishing that I could disappear, perhaps permanently. Tom’s confession had hit me like a sonic boom delivering shock waves: My husband is gay? “I’m trying to figure out who I am.” Even if he sort of likes men, he loves me so much it doesn’t matter . . . right? “I’m not saying this is the end of our marriage.” Maybe I can pretend I didn’t hear him. “You knew for a long time now, didn’t you?” Perhaps we can just forget this all happened and carry on as usual, at least until I die. “What is wrong with you, Libby?”

At any rate, I was irrational enough to decide not to call Paul, telling myself he was probably on his way to the Yale Club or Barney Greengrass or who knows where to wine and dine some random investor for the hedge fund he managed. (Besides, I liked to play this little game in which I waited to see if he received the distress signals I was sending out over the telepathic twin transmitter system, whose existence I had always been rather skeptical about.) When I was finally able to pull myself off the floor, I located Tom’s sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, took one, then decided to take another, and except for some sobbing and the frenzied consumption of an entire sleeve of chocolate chip cookies, the rest is a bit of a blur.

I woke the next morning in a pool of drool. A bleating ring was coming from my cell phone, which I eventually located between the couch cushions.

“Morningpaul,” I mumbled. It was still dark out, but Paul was one of those psychotic types who didn’t require more than six hours of sleep; since he had discovered prescription amphetamines, that number was now closer to four or five.

“What is it?” he asked, as though I’d been the one calling him. (Perhaps there was something to the twin clairvoyance phenomenon, but don’t expect me to admit it out loud.)

I contemplated whether to ask him if he wanted to hear the bad or the ugly, but even with the sleeping-pill fog still hanging around my head, it occurred to me that I couldn’t tell him about the cancer, not yet. I could hear his twin sons, Toby and Max, playing in the background, and in his own Paul way, he sounded sort of chipper. And that a life-sapping tumor would reduce our nuclear family to just two—well, that was news that needed to be delivered in person.