The Ghosts of Our Exes

So we're wrapping up dinner with another couple at Chef Chang's House in Brookline. The fortune cookies arrive, and, as is our habit, we begin reading our fortunes out loud. Standard harmless Chinese-food fun. Then comes my wife's turn. "An old flame," says Lisa, "will return to steal your heart." Reaction around the table is predictable - a quick smile or two and a sarcastic "Uh-oh!" - but suddenly I'm quiet and moody. Just who is this so-called old flame? And what kind of stupid fortune is that, anyway? I actually say to myself: "You were supposed to be the one to get that cookie. Why didn't you grab it before she did?"

Because considering your own wife's romantic CV is never a pleasant exercise, I know only the vague-but-essential details of her pre-Ken love life. Fortunately, at 35, I've learned to keep most of my petty jealousies to myself. And Lisa tries to be a good sport. Say we're at a dinner party, and someone asks a question that requires her to bring up an old boyfriend. She'll squeeze my knee under the table.

Of course, all this punches up a question: What is it about our exes that makes it so hard to move completely past them, no matter how happy we are now?

It's easy to idealize our old relationships, which can seem to have been incredibly romantic yet blissfully uncomplicated (the truth, of course, is a different story). When I compare my wife's adventurous single life - she spent five years in England, unencumbered by the exhausting responsibilities of working, raising two kids, and living with a husband - with the suburban reality I've given her, I feel like the world's most unromantic schmuck. And I can't help wondering if the ghost of my own past girlfriend is what's haunting me.

Liz was a young woman whom I loved years ago. She got cancer, fought it for nine months, and died, at 24, in her mother's Maynard home. Liz's sad story dogged me for the better part of a decade, until I got involved with Lisa. So what caused Liz to rematerialize?

On January 1, I drove Lisa to Brigham and Women's Hospital to deliver our second child. It was, of course, wonderful and miraculous to see our little boy, Ari, slide into the world - all 7 pounds, 10 ounces of him.

But for one uncomfortable minute there, being in a hospital, seeing all manner of ill patients and their wretched loved ones in the lobby, reminded me of watching Liz deteriorate at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I remembered the plastic pink containers we used to catch her vomit. The blue chemo pumps. The morphine at the end. My great fear had crystallized: I was worried that something, some rival or disease or God knows what, would snatch Lisa away from me, the way cancer took Liz out of the world. A terrible thought, but I was still glad to have it. I was starting to understand.

Then I remembered how, for a very long time, I kept a picture of Liz on my desk. Liz, gorgeous, wearing a blue sweater and a slightly quizzical "Oh, come on, Ken" look on her face. Made me think of Bob Dylan singing, "I like the cool way you look at me" and of how many times we listened to Blood on the Tracks when we were both at the University of Sheffield. Makes me, even as I type this, sad.

For years, this picture was the muse to my misery. It sat there even when Lisa and I first got together. "How can I compete with a dead woman?" Lisa eventually worked up the nerve to ask me. She was, rightly, jealous of Liz, and after a bit of shouting, debating, and apologizing, I finally pulled the photo off the desk. That was when I realized that maybe I wasn't the only insecure one in this relationship. And now I'd learned to accept that maybe a fortune is only a stupid note spit out by a computer and stuffed into a cookie.

Ken Gordon is a freelance writer who lives in Newton. To respond to this column, send e-mails to coupling@globe.com.