Praisesong For The Widow

Once they closed on the house of White Plains and were weeks away from moving in, Avey only thinks of the early days on Halsey Street—“[a]n act of betrayal” she calls it (122). She knows yearning for the days they struggled to escape for 12 years was duplicitous to the husband who had been nearly killing himself—and her own toil—but the move makes her realize how much things had changed between them. She thinks of the fun they had together, dancing in their living room and playfully teasing one another. She thinks of their sex life, once lively and passionate, and the ways Jerome would worship her body before making love to her. He would recite poetry after waking early to bring home the Sunday paper and coffee cake for them to share. Gradually, after the fatalistic Tuesday night fight, all those rituals fell away. One stark change is that Jerome no longer seemed present as they made love—his “touch increasingly became that of a man whose thoughts were elsewhere, and his body […] felt impatient to leave and join them” (129). Afterwards, Avey lies next to him, unsatisfied and filled with rage. 

On the recliner on her hotel balcony in Grenada, that rage still fills her but also because of “what she had become” (130).