Dead Wife Look Alike

By Lori Lamothe

She glanced around the café, checked her watch, tucked a loose strand of hair under her bandanna.  Was he hoping for a blonde? A redhead? Or maybe he liked brunettes? Whatever the answer to that question was, she doubted “dishwater brown” would make his Top Ten list. She checked her watch again, almost against her will, then took a sip of the overpriced, too-strong coffee she’d ordered and wondered why she had asked for the Italian equivalent of “large.” To impress him, she supposed. To seem urban and detached, the sort of person who gets texts and doesn’t respond, who has a facebook page but doesn’t bother to update it.

Of course, she did maintain her facebook page and to the best of her knowledge she had never gotten a text message she hadn’t answered. She was, it would appear, predictably insecure, breathtakingly average, the sort of woman people always thought they’d met but couldn’t remember where.  Which explained, in part, the allure of the ad. She couldn’t remember when she had first seen it nor could she understand – or even recall – when it had begun to exert its own strange power over her. After living with it for nearly a month she felt like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only instead of building a mashed potato mountain with a fork she had spent her time crafting a version of her self. When he had first emailed suggesting a meeting she had gone straight from work to the nearest Salvation Army store, scouring the racks for just the sort of “flowery summer dress” he had mentioned in his post. An hour later she had exited the store carrying not one but six such dresses, complete with the requisite matching rainbow of bandannas. Not that she had in all her life owned, nevermind worn, a bandanna but the ad had mentioned bandannas and if she was going to go through with the whole thing she might as well do it right. At some point the term “fighting chance” had inserted itself into her consciousness, and despite the fact that she had quickly dismissed it as a cliché she couldn’t seem to get it out of her head.

Because cliché or not, the phrase was entirely superfluous. She didn’t have a fighting chance. In fact, she didn’t have any chance. That much she was certain of.  One look at her and he would be on his way.  Maybe, just maybe, he might stay for a cup of coffee – but sheerly out of politeness, not because she was the one he was looking for.  She lifted her cup, set it down, scanned the tables in search of the man whose words had driven her to ditch her yoga class and pay for a choppy, expensive haircut that looked as if one of her fourth graders had gotten hold of a pair of scissors when she wasn’t looking.  

She had been searching the internet for a kitchen table for under fifty bucks, something small and white and metallic for her apartment. Not that she needed a table—she had a perfectly functional one—but she had gotten enamored with the idea of circularity. Somehow that had morphed into a half-hour session in the “missed connection” section of the site, skimming ads for something that sounded – however vaguely – as if it might be about her.  She had clicked through the usual mix of listings: the sex addicts, the guys in search of a woman “who doesn’t play games,” the chain postings promising abundant karmic returns…. nothing for her, not that she had expected there to be.  Then, just as an ominous red X had appeared across the battery icon on her laptop, she had clicked on the ad.  She had skimmed it at first, then stopped. And reread it. Once, twice, then again. After her battery had charged she rebooted and found herself staring again at the ad. Later that night she lay awake, his words flickering across her insomnia like constellations that refused to set. 

I keep seeing you everywhere. You're around 5'5", 95lbs, wearing a white flowery summer dress and a colorful bandanna around your head. Sometimes you're carrying a cane. You were looking for something in the baby products aisle but when I tried to get there you slipped farther away. Please respond. I have so many things I need to tell you.

The first line in particular kept coming back to her. The embarrassing desperation of it was so real she felt almost guilty with pleasure, as if she were a little girl dressing up in her mother’s black velvet dress. This ad wasn’t about sex and it wasn’t the usual infatuation with some anonymous swivel-hipped Paris Hilton clone. It was, cliché or not, about love. One person searching for what, once broken, could not be replaced. And it was meant for her.  The next evening her hands actually trembled as she responded. Nothing too elaborate, merely a terse “Knowing you remember is enough.”

But, for him, it wasn’t enough. She checked her email while her class was taking a spelling test (what difference could it make?) and felt a rush of something she could only identify as joy when she saw the new mail icon appear in her inbox.

He insisted on meeting. After a moment’s hesitation, she typed “Why not” and hit send. What difference could it possibly make?

It had seemed so easy at the time, for once in her life to live out a fantasy. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe he wouldn’t show at all? Or had already come and gone? She fiddled with a loose button on her raincoat, toying with the idea of leaving before the appointed time. She had nearly decided on doing so when the door swung open and a man rushed in, stopping abruptly to study the faces before him. Thirtysomething, unshaven, with a helpless, professorial air that for once seemed absolutely uncontrived. In other words: he looked exactly as she had known he would. 

His gaze skimmed the surface of the place, its polished hipness. Now and then it lingered a moment longer on this woman or that one, then moved on. Several of them, she knew, were prettier than she was. Most of them were thinner too, not to mention younger.  She averted her eyes in an attempt to ward off the inevitable for just a few more minutes.  She could feel him seeing the bright bandanna, the flowery summer dress. Beneath the bandanna, her newly cropped hair—the latest in hospital-ward chic—itched.  She fought the urge to touch it, counted silently to ten, hoped he would turn and go back to wherever he came from.

She waited for the chill rush of air, the swing of the door, the relief of street sounds.

“Excuse me—but are you— ”

She looked up.

His voice trailed off.

What could she possibly say? She could state the obvious: that she hadn’t ever been the sort of woman who wore summery dresses and that the last time she’d weighed 95 lbs was in seventh grade. She could try to explain: tell him that if he really knew her he would understand that the last, the absolute last, thing she would ever do was play a cruel joke on someone who was suffering? He wouldn’t believe her, the incredulous look on his face told her as much. She tried to speak, couldn’t.

“I’m—so—”

Sorry? What she wanted to tell him was that she was a vegetarian and a full member of the Sierra Club. That for years after seeing Babe she hadn’t eaten bacon. That she called her mother regularly, donated to canned food drives, contemplated adopting and had once even sent away for a brochure. That she had spent the entirety of her 34 years trying hard, really hard, not to be exactly what she was: a nice girl who had grown up, despite her best efforts, into a nice woman. The sort of woman people met and promptly forgot, the sort who had mumbled apologies when her prom date phoned to say he and his ex were “trying to make it work.”

One look at his face was enough to establish that any such explanations would be futile. In his eyes she was a monster, a plain woman who had nothing better to do than prey on other people’s grief. Granted, he had been grasping at nothing—after all, what could he reasonably have expected? Reasonably, she admitted, wasn’t exactly applicable, not in this case. She considered the posting title, “Dead Wife Look Alike.” Had he honestly expected to breeze into the local coffee conglomerate and find his deceased wife placidly sipping a latte? Even reincarnation didn’t produce those kind of results. 

She tried to work herself up to something resembling indignation, then gave up. She had acted badly, very badly. “I’m so sorry,” she blurted out. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Instead of yelling, or stalking off, or simply walking away in a virtual thundercloud of rage and sadness as she had thought he would, he hesitated. And stared. Not at her but through her, seeing what she couldn’t begin to guess. Or maybe she could. He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.

“The eyes,” he muttered, so quietly she had to lean forward to hear him, “that’s how I knew.”

She said nothing, nothing at all. He laid his hand over hers and smiled. She felt goosebumps rise all the way from her wrist to her shoulder.

“Do you remember the first time we met here?” he asked.

A thin line of sweat had broken out just above his upper lip. Before she could think how to respond he plunged on, “I spilled tea on you. You gave me your number, so I could reimburse you for dry cleaning your coat.” A fixed grin lit his face. “I never gave a damn about your coat—not that I wasn’t going to pay for it, it was a very nice coat—I just wanted to get your number—hell, if I’d thought of it I would’ve spilled tea on you on purpose, if I’d known how it would all turn out—”

She nodded, wondering how much time she should let pass before extricating her hand from his. Surely, he didn’t expect—

He gazed fell on her half empty cup of overpriced, Italian-sized coffee. “I can’t believe you’re drinking that,” he said in a tone of genuine disbelief. Then, inexplicably, he removed his hand from hers, sat back and looked under the table, at the empty space next to her neatly crossed ankles. “And where’s your cane?” 

A thousand no’s formed and dissolved. Dazzling him with a dead wife’s smile, she said, “I left it at the doctor’s.”

***

About the Author: Lori Lamothe