By the time the first Christmas is coming, my entire life has become upheaved from the summertime. I went back to work at a new job, I was a single mother and not much of my life made sense anymore. I knew though that if I just kept going that my kids would be okay and that in time life would feel okay again.
My mother has started her prodding of me. “Well, you know, Melanie, my hairdresser told me that when you’re ready you should go onto eharmony because people on that site tend to be looking for real relationships and not just hookups.”
“Mom, it’s only been three months. I can’t even think about that right now. Maybe I am just meant to be alone for the rest of my life now?”
“Oh Kath, please. You’re meant to find someone who is going to be a good husband to you and a father to those kids. I get it though, you’re not ready, but when you are…Melanie tells me it’s eharmony.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t you remember Todd?”
She laughs. “Cloth napkin Todd!”
“Yes, big Valentines Day dinner cloth napkin Todd who came off of eharmony and then dumped me because I wasn’t sleeping with him fast enough.”
“Well, he was named…Todd. But maybe you’ll meet another widower with kids and you will be like a modern-day Brady Bunch.”
“I have no desire.” I start to pace around my living room, stepping over kid’s toys.
“For what meeting someone or brady bunching?”
“Both, but if I met someone, I don’t want someone who was married, I don’t want someone with kids and I surely do not want another widower so we can both sit there and cry over our dead spouses. I want someone who likes what I like and wants to do things and likes my kids.”
“So, I am hearing that you have thought about this.”
I put my fist to my forehead and squint my eyes. “I guess somewhat, yes, I have thought about what kind of man I want to be with if there ever is another man.”
“Well, how far did you get? What kind of man is he then?”
I sigh, I should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t. “He’s a man like grandpa. He’s moral and believes is Jesus. He’s conservative and he works with his hands, likes the outdoors and taking hikes. He’s creative in his own way, it doesn’t have to be painting and writing like me, but something that he’s into maybe photography. He likes old houses and thrifting and gardening. He’s manly, but nerdy and likes watching old movies with me. He comes from a big family, loves his mother, but isn’t obsessed with her.” I clear my throat to stop from crying. “And he wants to be a husband. He just doesn’t want me to be a wife.”
“This is very detailed for something you haven’t thought about. And very you, you always did want a big family.”
“My thoughts are all I have once the kids go to bed.” I start to pick up the toy field that is my living room floor. I really should have stopped talking.
“I get it though, you’re note ready. When you are though, there’s eharmony!”
“Yes, I know, Melanie approved eharmony. Got it. Mom, I must go one of Phil’s friends is calling me.”
“Okay, bye. I love you, Kath. You’re doing good.”
I am not ready for a mom call and a Phil’s friend call all in the same hour, but it is what it is. I see Scott’s name coming across the screen and switch calls.
“Hey Scott, what’s up?” I continue picking up the toy field.
“Oh hey Katherine, not much just figured I would give you a call and check in and see how Christmas and stuff went with the kids.”
“That’s nice of you. It went well, just kind of trying to get the house in order. I started to go through Phil’s things. I was able to get into his phone.” I paused as I remembered what I wanted to ask Scott. “I got into his Discord. I saw some messages between him, and I think it’s your ex-girlfriend.”
There’s a weighted silence. “Oh well uh yeah, I guess if you’re ready to talk about that. We can.”
This was not a response I was expecting. Talk about what? “Yeah, there was some stuff that I thought was weird, like not fully inappropriate, but not things you should be saying to someone if you’re in a relationship let alone if you’re married.”
Scott clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say, but knowing all to well there was no backing away now. “Katherine…it was before we dated. I mean she is whacked out of her mind, we all know that, but you know how Phil always had a way with people.”
I feel the air catching in my lungs. The room is becoming unbearable. I drop all of the toys that I was holding.
“Look, she told me about it before we made it official. I knew about it before, I told Phil he needed to stop and if he didn’t that, I was going to go straight to you just like he did when I cheated on my ex-wife.”
There is no air in the room. It is like a vacuum chamber.
“I know she was the last one of us from the friend group to see him, I don’t know if they did anything that night he was at her apartment.”
“At her apartment,” I choke out. The last thing Phil did two nights before he died was help his friend Mike move, what would he have been doing at her apartment.
“Yeah, when he helped her move in. I just know it was a lot of online stuff for years.”
A heavy silence falls in between us. My mind racing back to when we were first married and I was pregnant with our eldest. His last girlfriend that he had had before we met had come back around and to me, he had said that she wanted closure. I later found out she had been trying to rekindle things and now I had wondered if they had? Then I thought back to Kaitlyn’s wedding and how he had disappeared with one of her friends and Kaitlyn took great pleasure in telling me that he cheated on me with her, though Phil and the family that he had been with swore up and down that Kaitlyn was exaggerating a drunk walk Phil took with her back to her hotel room to make sure she got into it okay.
“Katherine? Are you there?”
I’m suddenly sucked back into the airless room. “Yeah, Scott, I have to go the kids are getting into something. We’ll have to talk about this later.”
I hang up and walk upstairs to where my kids were playing in the boys’ room. I help them clean up their toys, give them their lavender baths and lay down with them until they are asleep. I get up after they are asleep and take one of the anxiety pills that my doctor told me to start taking to help with the panic attacks, I keep waking up into thinking that someone is dying again. It is just a high dose of Benadryl but it usually allows me to sleep, only it is not doing a thing to me that night.
I find myself on my computer googling eharmony. I start doing the much too long personality test that they make you do. I get about halfway through it when I see the $600 price tag. I close my computer and sit in the darkness of my bedroom.
“You truly are unbelievable, Phil, wherever you are.”
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 