When I think about my history with husbands, I have to think of my first. It’s been ten years now, and Hal was an unlikely choice for an inaugural boyfriend. I was twenty-four; he was in his fifties, married with three kids. The last time I saw him, in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, he told me that he’d had a heart attack.
It was a warm September afternoon, and we sat together on a bench, overlooking the rolling main field. He was dressed, as he so often was, in shorts, a short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt, and sandals like he’d just come from a bonfire. I remember he had nice feet, considering the subways.
At one point in our six-month relationship, Hal promised to leave his wife for me, for this young man he’d met at the YMCA on 63rd Street. I know, I know. Hal wrote children’s theatre and played
