Volume 45

Seven college boys move into the carriage house at the end of August. I watch from my bay window as they punch the code to the door. They carry in televisions, microwaves, and cases of beer.



My cell phone vibrates. It’s my mother. She wishes me a happy birthday and says my gift is in the mail. I ask about the humidity in Florida and her hip. She says, “How’s the plantation?” It’s a bad joke. She never liked the size of my house, or my dead husband, or the fact that we need landscapers and maids. Had the money been mine, her feelings might have been different. Mom and I used to plot my escape from the confines of our two-bedroom apartment. I was supposed to become a doctor.



I hang up and then call a pizza place. I order seven large pizzas for the boys in the carriage house. I realize that’s probably too much and call the pizza place back. The line’s now busy. So I just wait in the bay window, anxious to see the food arrive, and fiddle with the dating app on my phone.



The app is for widows. I enjoy the messages I receive from the men, mostly. I respond to someone named Jeremy. His interests are skiing, books, and politics. I say that, Yes, I’d like to get a drink sometime. And then I wait on a response.



The food arrives at the carriage house. The boys all come out and lounge in the grass, pizza boxes spread around them. Napkins flutter away in the breeze. They drink cans of beer and arm wrestle. It’s almost dark when two of them cross the expansive lawn and approach my house.



I quickly assess myself in the mirror. Athleisurely unkempt. A small impulse to apply eyeliner makes me laugh, and I don’t.



They are so happy, standing in my doorway, smelling of light beer. They thank me for the pizza and say their names are Curtis and Steve. They promise me tickets to their next game. I don’t have the heart to say that I get free admission because of my husband’s history of donations to the school. (We went once, long ago, and it was fine.) There’s an awkward lull in the conversation. I tell them that a new washer and dryer will be arriving at the carriage house tomorrow. They say I’m the greatest landlady of all time.



I take an Ambien and try to fall asleep in the glow of a muted television. I can’t. Sleep was a casualty of my husband’s passing. I try to use it as evidence of a love between us. We did sacrifice for each other. I dropped out of medical school. He left his first wife. My mother harbors deep suspicions of men with multiple marriages. She likes that my father failed to find another woman to take him in.



About my marriage, my mother often asked, “Why you?” I never had the heart to share my suspicions. I believe my husband enjoyed the stories of my impoverished youth. The markings of my poverty—bad teeth, alcoholic genes, Boston accent—they did something for him. Distinct from the immaculate breeding of his first wife. Strange, I know, but she hurt him, and so I was the follow-up.



I open WidowMingle on my phone and respond to a man named Javier with interests in wine, wonder, and the Great Outdoors. He looks beautiful in a familiar way. Tell me more about your vineyard, I write. I’m curious. He messages right back to say he can tell me all about it: Tomorrow night, Scala’s at seven? I don’t respond.

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