Sex For Widows

  A friend of mine recently asked me, “Do you ever have sex with Evan and imag­ine, just for a moment, that you’re hav­ing sex with Erik instead?” Nor­mal thing to won­der about a remar­ried widow, I suppose. Actu­ally, I love that she asked me this. But the answer is NO. Never have I imag­ined, in the heat of pas­sion, that Evan was Erik. I did, how­ever, imag­ine that other men I dated were Erik. Of course I wanted them to be Erik. When you watch your 29-year-old hus­band slide down the kitchen counter and die, there is a cer­tain amount of denial that comes along with the territory. Like star­ing at the door. Wait­ing for the knob to turn. Erik, you home? Nope. Not home. Or com­pletely vacat­ing your preg­nant body...

Erik folded his hands beneath his black sweater, his thumbs fid­get­ing with the wool. “I know we’ re sup­posed to go to din­ner,” he said, “But I don’t know if I can even eat right now.” I laughed. “What? Am I mak­ing you sick?” “No, no, not at all, it’s that … it’s just a lot, being with you.” Our break-up three years ago was the far­thest thing from civil, and I knew, after not see­ing eachother for all of that time, we were both uncer­tain of what we should do with the pal­pa­ble sex­ual ten­sion that now filled the two-foot gap between us on the couch. “I was just teas­ing. I know exactly what you mean. I didn’t think I would be so happy to be with you. Oh, wait, that came out wrong. It’s not that...

I folded our warm white tow­els while Tatiana, only twelve months old then, napped in her bed­room. Erik and I had been mar­ried just over two years and, already, I was four months preg­nant with our sec­ond daugh­ter, Keira. Erik and I both felt the same intense love for Tatiana and were excited to have another baby right away. But there was no excite­ment in the house that day. The house was quiet, except for the annoyed thoughts I could hear myself think­ing about Erik. Sick of his crap. We had not been speak­ing to each other for hours. I stacked the tow­els neatly into the closet, pass­ing Erik in the hall. I did not look at his brown eyes or admire his thick black hair. Instead, I grabbed a new set of sheets and I walked away...

I admired Erik in the shower that Easter Sun­day morn­ing. Salt and pep­per hair. Deep brown eyes. Broad mas­cu­line shoul­ders cov­ered by smooth olive skin. Steam had filled the bath­room, like the fog that fre­quently hov­ered over the Golden Gate Bridge. I could only see parts of his body through the hazy, glass shower doors. He sat against the cor­ner of the tub, as he always did, care­fully scrap­ing the skin off of his well-manicured feet. I pulled out an assort­ment of mater­nity clothes from the closet and set them on the bath­room counter. Know­ing we’d be tak­ing tons of fam­ily pho­tos dur­ing Tatiana’s first real Easter egg hunt, I wanted to look bet­ter than I felt at seven months pregnant. “Ugh!”...