Later I would wonder—a thousand times wonder! how he had been so successful at hiding his secret life; but only after my pitiful spine-wracking sobs disrupted Reverend Goodell’s gloomy eulogy, after solemn sympathy cards with flowers or angels or praying hands began collecting dust in a basket in my foyer, and exactly two months after his death, when I sat in the lawyer’s office and learned that my husband William had another wife.
     The lawyer, Stanley Block, had grown up with William. Despite a hundred dinner parties at our house or at the ostentatious condo he shared with his wife Jeannette, I never liked him, thought he was rude, unfunny, and arrogant. For a couple of seconds I waited for him to glance at some paperwork, then gasp, “Oh, Claire, I’m sorry, that wasn’t William, that was someone else!” When that didn’t happen—when he continued to regard me with reluctant compassion, his first loyalties being toward my husband, of course—I asked if he was sure. He nodded. He was sure.
     I considered becoming hysterical, but just didn’t have the energy. Shock and grief, an unrelenting stomach ache, weeks of insomnia, and now this. “It’s not possible,” I said. “I would have known.”
     “It gets worse, Claire.” Stanley took a breath, and with shoulders sagging, let it out. “They have a son.”
     My mind started to buzz in a muffled way, like a bee under glass. “No. He was home every night. He got up and went to work every morning.”
     “That’s the other bad news, and it’s really bad. William got fired in April.”
     “He did not! He went to work every single morning!”
     “He pretended to go to work. But he wasn’t. He was babysitting.”
     “What are you talking about? Stop this!” But panic rose in me as one by one I recalled afternoons when I couldn’t reach him on his cell phone... an occasional Saturday that he needed to spend at the office... Mother’s day he couldn’t come to my parents’ house because he had to work. Inconsequential events now flapping in my face like a banner: Your Husband is Having An Affair!
     “He used the money he got when his father died for a down payment on a house for her, but had trouble meeting two mortgages, so he overcharged some clients. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking. He claimed it was a mistake.”
     “He bought her a house?”
     Stanley nodded.
     I felt my hands clench. “Who is she? How long were they together? How old is their son?”
     “Claire, don’t do this to yourself, don’t try to get details about them. It will just make it harder for you.”
     “What do you mean? You can’t expect me not to ask questions!” I felt a mad impulse to hit him, his corporate golf game-weathered skin would pinken and sting from my ferocious slap. “I want to know who she is!”
     “But knowing won’t change anything. The more you know, the more real they’ll be, and the more it’ll hurt. Let’s just stay focused on what you need to do to get through this.”
     “Tell me who she is!”
     “No, Claire, I’m sorry. I promised William I wouldn’t.”
     “So why tell me about her at all?”
     “Because when William lost his job, he took out a second mortgage on your house, and then a third. Now the payments are sky high and there’s no equity.”
     “What are you saying? That I might lose the house?”
     “The house is gone.”
     “I’m going to fight it! Their marriage obviously wasn’t legal. He was married to me first, right?”
     “Of course.”
     “Then why did you say she was his wife too? Did they have a ceremony?”
     “Claire.”
     “Did they?”
     “A small one.”
     “Didn’t she know he was already married?”
     “Yes. But when she got pregnant, she asked him to pretend to marry her because of her parents. Nothing about it was legal, it was just for show. So they got someone to act as a justice of the peace, and they exchanged vows and rings.”
     “Well I’m not going to give up my home!”
     “There’s no way you can keep it. Unless you have an account he didn’t know about?”
     I lowered my head, humiliated; a dim-witted housewife with no money of my own, always asking William for what I needed. No better than this other woman whose bills he was paying. But at least she had a job. And had given him a son. What had I been doing for the past seventeen years? I couldn’t come up with a single productive act that had offered any tangible contribution to my marriage. He was several years older than me and already established at Johnson & Stone, so I couldn’t even take credit for supporting him while he struggled. I’d done nothing. No wonder he needed a second wife; his first one was a big disappointment.
     I didn’t realize I was crying until I heard the shwip shwip shwip! of three tissues being plucked from the dispenser. Handing them to me, Stanley said, “One thing William did—it was my idea—was get you both on a new insurance policy. He paid for a year so the bills wouldn’t come to the house. Good thing he listened to me, or you would’ve gotten stuck with the hospital expenses! I tried to get him to take out a life insurance policy too. Imagine how different things would be now? I tried to tell him, I said—”
     “What does she do for work?”
     “Claire, come on.”
     “Just tell me that and I won’t ask any more questions.”
     “She’s a lawyer.”
     “Oh.” My image of her as sloppy, living in noisy low-income squalor accepting money from my husband shattered, replaced by visions of a trim, splendidly-competent woman wearing an expensive burgundy business suit trotting down her front walk, swinging a briefcase, kissing William hello and goodbye as he arrived to take care of their son. Nausea swept through me, made me dizzy.
     “We’ll figure something out,” Stanley said again. Rising with an air of finality, he escorted me to the lobby, his hand cupping my elbow like he was some gracious, solicitous gentleman. He even kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “William loved you, Claire. Please don’t lose sight of that. You’re the one he stayed with.”
     I yanked my arm away, hoped I would never have to see him again. Judy, his platinum-blond secretary, said, “Bye bye, Mrs. Barrett!” Was that a smirk in her voice? Did she know?
     Walking to my car, I lifted salty cheeks to the mid-summer sun. After William’s death, my consuming grief had been so uncomplicated. Now what? Were there support groups for this kind of situation? William and I had joined one years ago, for couples who were unable to conceive. There was constant talk of miscarriages, near deaths. One very young woman was recovering from cancer treatment; her dream of having children eradicated along with the malignant cells by chemo. Their stories made me feel worse, not better, so after six months, six purposeless menstrual cycles, we stopped going.
     And now William had managed to procreate without me; his noble, privileged Barrett genes passed on, carelessly, adeptly blending with this woman lawyer’s DNA. I got into my car, started the engine, and turned on the AC; checking the rear view as I backed out, exactly the way I would if I’d been shopping for blouses or groceries. I merged into traffic, then pulled to the side of the road, got out, and threw up, retching and sobbing and not caring who saw me.

     After a shaky ride home, I walked inside and looked around, wandering through each room, forlornly admiring the grace of the architecture; the crisp contrast of the white woodwork and butter-colored walls in the dining room, cinnamon in the den... William’s office, his piles of paperwork, undisturbed since his death and bearing his dear sloppy handwriting that only he and I could read... the small bedroom next to ours that was to have been decorated with grinning animal-adorned wallpaper and filled with all the kid-tested, mother-approved toys... the spacious sun-drenched kitchen that smelled each summer of honeysuckle or lilac or freshly-mowed grass... the greenhouse where I spent hours in quiet contemplation creating bonsai. Could I really lose it all?
     I returned to the living room, and against my better judgment, pulled out our wedding album to search his pictures for signs of what was to come. Did he look unsure? Regretful? What a beautiful ceremony it had been, with tender vows we’d written ourselves. His simple, romantic words, To celebrate our love every day with every kiss and every glance, surprised and touched me, and had been one of my all-time favorite memories. Now I couldn’t even bear to think about it. Crying again, I shut the album. Nothing could convince me he wasn’t happy with me then.

     Lauren came over as soon as I called her. My best friend since college where we both majored in philosophy, she didn’t say “I knew it!” or “That bastard!” She just held me and stroked my back while I cried. The shock on her face when I told her, the affirmation that someone else didn’t know made me feel better, and I nodded when she suggested tea. As she filled two floral mugs with water and put them in the microwave I knew she was trying to put herself in my place, experimenting with the emotions she’d feel if she found out that Allen had a second wife. Since William’s death she’d stopped complaining about married life—how hard it was to get Allen’s steaks grilled the way he liked them or how loud he snored—whether out of sensitivity to my loss or because she appreciated him more, I didn’t know. In a way it was nice. But knowing she was deliberately altering her behavior for me hurt too, the way so many things did now; stupid stuff like seeing commercials with couples getting a good deal on a washer and dryer.
     “I think you should get a new lawyer.”
     “I will.”
     “Allen plays racquetball with one, I forget his name. I’ll ask.”
     “Thanks.”
     “Go back tomorrow and get copies of everything. Every. Single. Thing.”
     “Okay.”
     Ding! went the microwave. She took a single tea bag from the cannister, dipped it briefly in my mug, then dropped it in hers to steep. Years ago, living in a crappy little apartment in Boston, we used to joke that my predilection for weak tea cut our tea bag bill in half. We even used that word, predilection. Watching her now filled me with unhappy nostalgia for the carefree days of our mid-twenties: effortlessly slender and pretty with flawless skin, pony tails bouncing as we jogged along the Charles River. Maybe we’d had it too good. Was that how it worked? The Universe busying Itself with other souls, then casting Its attention back on you, startled and irritated that you’ve been having such an easy time? And then smiting you?
     As Lauren handed me my mug, I caught a steamy whiff of blueberry passion tea. William’s choice at the overpriced market we liked to walk to on nights when it was too balmy to stay indoors. Hand in hand, strolling the aisles. “Blueberry passion,” he said; “bet that’s good!” I nodded. “Let’s get it, I heard blueberries prevent cancer.” One of the million little scenes of contentment which we’d shared.
     “We’ll handle this one step at a time,” Lauren said.
     “Okay.” I forced myself to sip. “This is my new favorite tea,” he declared, tapping his mug against mine. “I’m never going to drink another kind of tea as long as I live.” Laughing; earnest, silly.

     After Lauren left, I went to the greenhouse to work on an unruly Atlas blue cedar, plucking old needles, removing last season’s growth and eliminating dead wood. Next I cut off about half the branches and wrapped the rest in heavy aluminum wire, forcing them into position and creating foliage pads. A final pruning eliminated anything that spoiled the tree’s new lines. When bonsai is done well, truth, essence, and beauty conspire—“breathe together”—to create shin-zen-bi. Quite simply, good bonsai brings the viewer pleasure. And bad bonsai isn’t really bad; as with ill-behaved dogs or children, it’s just the result of a lack of discipline and proper form.
     For background music I favored baroque, although it wasn’t unusual for me to put on Dvorak’s peppy Slavonic Dances or a majestic symphony by Beethoven. I tended not to play his Ninth—not because I didn’t love it, but because I loved it too much and found it distracting, and I’m pretty sure my indefatigable vocal rendition of the 4th movement went unappreciated by my botanical audience.

     I returned to Stanley’s office the next day without an appointment, created a fuss in the elegant magenta-carpeted lobby, and got to see him. Resentfully, he invited me to sit, and repeated what he’d told me the day before: there was no way to keep the house, and the sale wouldn’t generate much money because of the third mortgage. No, there wasn’t anything he could do.
     “I just can’t believe this,” I said. “I mean, why would he—”
     “Web didn’t plan on dying, Claire. He kept telling me he was going to figure something out. He never wanted this to happen to you. He loved you.”
     His use of William’s childhood nickname, Web, culled from William Emerson Barrett, felt less scripted than yesterday’s conversation. Hoping to disarm him and get more details, I sighed and looked miserable. “Have you met her?”
     “Claire.”
     “Just tell me.”
     “Okay, yes.”
     “How long were they together before she got pregnant?”
     “Not long.”
     “When did they have that fake ceremony?”
     “Let’s see... about six years ago. Hardly worth the effort, if you ask me. Just her and Web, her parents, me, and the fellow pretending to be the Justice of the Peace. If I were her, I’d have been mortified. But not Allison, she was just happy as a clam.”
     Allison. I hoped he’d keep talking, but when he didn’t, I prompted, “She sounds horrible.”
     He shrugged, made a point of looking at his watch then back at me with an expression of impatience. I wondered if she was super gorgeous—like those lawyers you see on TV—but couldn’t bring myself to ask in case the answer was Yes. “Who is she?”
     He shook his head. “I told you yesterday, I’m not going to violate William’s trust.”
     “But William is dead! He would hate knowing I have to go through this! He’d want you to tell me who she is!”
     “Claire, don’t ask me again. I gave my word. That’s important to me.”
     “This isn’t about you!” I yanked some tissues out of my purse. “You’re so busy protecting her privacy, you don’t care about what this is doing to me!”
     “It’s not that. I just think it’s best if you let go of this. Move forward.”
     “I can’t move forward! I have to see her! Why don’t you get that?” I broke down; sobbing and wiping my eyes and blowing my nose, soaking tissue after tissue. Mostly out of anguish, but also for a bit of show, hoping right up until he walked me out that he’d relent and give me her address.
     I got back in my car, wondering if he was right. So what if I found her? So what if I saw her, saw their son, would it change anything?

     “Get all the paperwork?” Lauren asked when I called that evening.
     “Yes, his secretary made copies of everything.”
     “Great. And I spoke to Allen—his racquetball partner’s name is David. You know, the lawyer? Allen gave me his number and he said go ahead and call. Set up an appointment.”
     “Won’t that cost money?”
     “Oh. I’m not sure... maybe.”
     “I can’t afford it. I can’t afford anything,” I reminded her, hating my sullen, pathetic tone, and wiping tears with the ratty tie-dyed shirt I’d put on when I got home and then slept in for three hours; waking with a tight knot of dread in my stomach, ugly puffed-up eyes, throbbing head, and hair sticking out like a bad clown wig.
     “Maybe we can set it up to be less formal. Have you both over to dinner. Tomorrow?”
     “I’m going to my parents’ house.”
     “You’re going to tell them?”
     “I wish I didn’t have to, but what if they heard it from someone else? Or what if I slipped and said something? I can’t keep it from them, it’s too big. Plus they’d wonder why I’m selling the house.”
     “Oh, right. Ugh! Well, I’ll have Allen call David and set something up for later in the week.”
     “Thanks.”
     After we hung up I walked out to my greenhouse, taking pleasure as always in everyone’s reaction to my arrival: Hi, Mom! Hi, Mom They say never give a bonsai as a gift because they’re too much work, and while it’s true that most of them like to be watered every day, or more if the pot is exceptionally small or the day extra hot, caring for them always felt like an honor to me. Moving among them, greeting each one slowly—about twenty words a minute, because even the healthiest plants have trouble understanding our rapid-paced human speech—I hand pruned rogue needles or leaves as necessary, and made sure no one was thirsty.
     When I finished, I stepped outside. Years ago I’d spent a night on a Texas prairie, and nothing since had compared to the panoramic night sky; especially my yard, located a few towns north of light-polluted Boston. Before mosquitoes discovered me I located Mars and Saturn, then the Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Here and there briefly shone the mysterious and always unexpected flash of a lightning bug, and bullfrogs wassailed around our pond, their voices a vigorous, rumbling huruunk huruunk huruunk.. Holly Golightly had said that nothing really bad could ever happen in Tiffany’s, and that’s how I felt about my yard at night, isolated from the cruelty of the rest of the world, protected by some Mighty Hand. I decided everything was going to be fine.
     But tranquility is fleeting, and I awoke the next morning with the same dazed, dull headache. Everything took enormous effort: sitting, walking to the bathroom, facing myself in the mirror.

     “You look terrible,” my mother said. “Did something happen?”
     “Where’s Dad? I need to tell you something about William.”
     “Inside. Are you okay?”
     I nodded, shook my head, and shrugged. She led me into the house, shouting “Bla-ake! Claire is here!”
     My dad met us at the top of the stairs. “Hey,” he said. A quiet, undemonstrative man, since William’s death he’d been greeting me with a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “How are you?”
     “Something happened,” my mother told him.
     Apprehensively, they awaited my explanation. Knowing that even the worst thing they could come up with was not half as bad as what I had to say, my voice wobbled as I delivered a palatable version that excluded the bogus ceremony and how I might lose the house. They listened, uncomprehending at first, then with shock and the same indecisive anger I felt.
     “I don’t believe it,” my mother declared. “William would never do this!”
     “He did, Mom.”
     “He was such a nice man! Why would he do such a thing? Why?”
     “Hannah, stop asking so many questions!” my dad snapped. “Can’t you see it’s like a hole in her heart to have to talk about it?”
     “Of course she has to talk about it! You’d rather she keep it inside? Deal with it all on her own? For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter with you!”
     “She should talk about it, but don’t make her feel worse than she already feels!”
     I waited out the rage-a-thon, understanding that they were unable to deal with their emotion any other way. We loved William and missed him so much that being mad at him hurt and was hard work. Being mad at Allison, on the other hand, was easy, but it didn’t solve anything or make us feel better. My mother’s anger dissolved first, and she switched to hysteria, sobs shaking her shoulders as I held her. Thrust abruptly into the role of Courageous Widow, I told them in a reassuring voice that I had a new lawyer who would know what to do.

     My mother never got the knack of cooking, and was unapologetically comfortable heating up a frozen pepperoni pizza and serving it with canned cream corn, nutrition-free white bread with a tub of cold, impossible-to-spread margarine, and salad from a bag. To accommodate my 25-year vegetarian lifestyle there was macaroni sprinkled with bright orange cheese powder. Over supper she covered the most banal topics: Jerry, their neighbor to the left, thought he might be allergic to his new cat. The daughter of the owner of their favorite restaurant just graduated with a degree in pharmacology and already had a job. The lawnmower needed servicing. My father had a dental appointment at the same time as my mother’s eye doctor appointment, how she scheduled them both on the same day, she had no idea.
     After supper my father put on the Red Sox game. I tried to participate in his appraisal of their chance of winning the World Series, but the charade wore me out after only a few innings.
     “Well,” I said, “I think I’ll head home.”
     “Before you leave,” said my mother, “tell us again what Stan said.”
     “Mom...”
     “So your father and I can understand.”
     I sighed. “Instead of rehashing it, I’d like to move on.”
     “That’s what we want, too,” said my mother. “Just tell us again what he said.”
     I told them again, the same antiseptic version. Sick of it, sick of my worthless, directionless, broken-down self.
     “It sounds like you’ll have to sell your house,” my mother said.
     “Maybe not. I have this new lawyer, and maybe he can—”
     “You’ll move in with us! You can have the whole downstairs. Your father will put in a little fridge.”
     “Thanks, but—”
     “No Thanks, but. That house is too big for just you.”
     “It’s not just me, I have all my bonsai. They need to be in the greenhouse.”
     “We have plenty of room for your plants.”
     My plants. Like I was a kid with too many stuffed animals. I turned to my father for support. I was an only child and not the son he’d wanted, but I knew that he loved me and counted on me to absorb half of my mother’s personality. “I can’t move back home,” I told him.
     “Just until you get on your feet,” he said.
     They nodded together. The first time in almost 50 years they agreed on something, and it was this. “I have to go,” I said. “I’ll let you know what the lawyer says.”

     Dinner at Lauren's was a delicious spinach quiche and mandarin orange salad with walnuts, and for most of the meal her husband Allen kept conversation light with anecdotes about his job as acquisitions editor at a small publishing company. Pleasantly dizzy after two glasses of wine, I was able to bear the sweet affection in Lauren’s eyes as she explained to David that none of Allen’s co-workers would be able to recognize him without the beige cable knit sweater she swore to God he wore ever day. David laughed; seemed nice, must have known he’d been invited in order to give free legal advice.
     Without grace, Lauren brought up my situation the minute she’d removed dinner plates from the table: “You’ll have to put your house on the market right away.” To soften the blow, she filled my glass for the third time.
     I sipped and thought what a nuisance it all was. I’d been poor before, but at 25, not 47. What was I going to do? And yet at the same time I suddenly felt reckless and free. Anaïs Nin said there were two types of freedom, the freedom of the rich and powerful and the freedom of the artist and the monk. She forgot to mention the freedom of the inebriated. “I can go back to waitressing,” I heard myself say. When I met William I worked part time at an upscale Italian place, smartly attired in black mini skirt and white silk button down shirt and a red bow tie taking orders with smiling, sexy confidence, no need to write anything down; by far their biggest tip earner, but prone to spur of the moment trips across country upon the slightest provocation, such as a west coast appearance by my favorite progressive rock band Technicolor Xenith, or a magazine article describing Sedona, Arizona as “a strange, magical place.” The first time William came to the restaurant he was with three companions—martini-for-lunch businessmen types that the hostess had been told to assign to me, the only waitress not offended by sexist jokes or pats on the ass. Refined and polite, William didn’t participate in the flirting, and was, I noticed, the only one not wearing a wedding ring. I could feel his steady gaze as I bantered gamely with his friends.
     “Honey, you can’t do that,” Lauren said.
     “Why not?”
     “Because you won’t make enough money. Plus waitressing isn’t good at your age. You’re on your feet all day.”
     “I’m on my feet all day anyway, in my greenhouse.”
     “Yeah, but you’re doing something you love. Remember how much you used to complain about how obnoxious the customers were? Are you really willing to go back to that?”
     “Lauren is right,” Allen confirmed, “you can’t be a waitress. Hate to say it, Claire, but it’s time to get a real job.”
     A real job. Hari-kari, kamikaze, jump off a cliff. Another sip of wine and I turned to David. “It’s so unfair! Why doesn’t this woman have to sell her house?”
     “It’s a lousy deal,” he agreed unhappily.
     “Can you find out anything about her, is there like, a lawyer thing you can do?”
     “Maybe, if I had her last name.”
     I bit my lip, needed to think; needed a plan, a good plan. I could feel them waiting for my next comment, question, or irrational idea, but when nothing came to me, I stood abruptly, startling them. “Thanks for dinner, Lauren. David, it was really nice to meeting you. To meet you. It was really nice to meet you.”
     “You’re in no condition to drive,” Lauren announced. “Either stay here, or let Allen take you home.”
     “I’ll be glad to give her a ride,” David offered.
     “Perfect! Claire, Allen and I can drop your car off tomorrow morning before you even get up.”
     Reluctantly I inventoried my faculties: slightly spinning head, vision blurry, thoughts murky, limbs weak and shaky. I considered being embarrassed in front of David, but what was the point? Best for now just to focus on getting home without puking in his car.

     The warm night air streaming in the open window revived me, and by the time we reached my house I was reasonably sober. “Thanks, David.”
     “No problem. I just wish I could do more. I hate that you have to go through this.”
     I sniffed back tears, appreciated the pity. “I used to go to class barefoot,” I said. “In college. I started as an art major. Took one philosophy course and was hooked. That’s how I met Lauren.”
     “I know.”
     “What would you do, if you were in my position?”
     I couldn’t tell if he was silent for a long time or if it just felt like a long time, but finally he said, “I’d celebrate the accomplishment of making it through every day. You survived the worst of it: William’s death. Finding out about this other woman. Telling your parents. Asking for help. You’re doing great. Just keep moving forward.”
     “I still have to sell my house.”
     “Yeah, that’ll be hard. But then you get to decide what to do with the rest of your life. And that’ll be fun.” He put his hand on my arm. “Right now it’s hard to see because of everything you’re going through. But you had a good life before him, you had a good life with him, and trust me, you’ll have a good life when all this is taken care of.”
     For the first time I dared think about a future that wasn’t sad and empty and featuring me living in my parent’s house using a small fridge. “I hope so.” Opening my door, I stepped out; tested my legs and discovered they felt sturdier than I deserved.
     He got out too and walked me to the door. Handing me his business card, he said, “Call me if you want, okay? If you need to talk or whatever?”
     I took the card and said I would, but all I could think was that if I never talked about it again it would be too soon.