ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part One, Chapter 52: Lies and Deception

I have to tell Ernie something — he heard me on the phone — so I tell him what I told Johnny’s wife. Then I say: “He didn’t remember me, Ernie. So that’s that.”

“I’m not so sure. Why did you call him in the first place?”

“I told you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The movie Joshua and Ernie were watching is still playing in the background.

“I don’t understand why you’d call an old boyfriend,” Joshua says. He’s standing next to Ernie in the middle of the living room, looking at me. They’re both looking at me.

“Maybe you’re going through your second childhood,” Ernie says.

He and Joshua go back to watching the movie. I disappear into the back bedroom — the bedroom Ernie and I share. But what are we really sharing these days?

Monday afternoon, Johnny calls me back. “I feel bad about our conversation. I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I have a terrible memory. I can go to the store for milk and come back with two bags of groceries but no milk. Why don’t you send me your photo?”

“A recent one?”

“No. One from when we knew each other.”

I send him Ernie’s favorite photo of me, taken three years before he and I met. I’m sitting on a desk in the personnel department of the ordnance plant — where I had a summer job as a clerk-typist — wearing the flowery dress I married in. I’m even wearing my glossy pink Mary Janes. I’m wearing my wedding outfit but, of course, I don’t know it.

I calculate that the photo will arrive at Johnny’s northern Virginia home that Friday, so I expect a phone call from him Friday night. That’s why I don’t go to that particular performance of The Dodge — I’m waiting for my newly beloved to call.

Suspicious now, Ernie stays home, too.

Johnny doesn’t call.