by J. P. Smith
He laughed again, as did she. “No, seriously,” she went on. “Isn’t it good for you? Because it’s been good for me, Ben,” she said, and an impaled piece of chicken hovered in the air before her mouth. “I mean, twenty-five minutes ago you seemed to be enjoying yourself.”
“Where are you going with this, Amelie?”
“This is just too…temporary for me. You have a family, you have a wife, and I’m the one you see once a week.”
“You always said it was good for you. So why change it?” he said.
“It’s not changing it. It’s making it permanent.”
“But that would change it,” he said.
“Only that it would make it something normal. Something we could depend on. Something that would always be here for us. Aren’t you getting tired of all the sneaking around we do? I mean this is our routine, and it’s still exciting for me. Isn’t it good for you?”
“Of course it is.”
“Then why not make it our own?” she said.
“So you’re talking about…” he began and she nodded.
“I would like to be married to you,” she said.
It was as if she were trying out a line of dialogue in one of her books, just to see how it landed on the page, how it would skew the narrative, where things might take off from that point. It was the bottom line of their relationship, and it couldn’t go any lower.
She saw the expression on his face, one she had seen a hundred times before, a look of consternation and puzzlement, and she could only associate it with a child twisted by perplexity over the instructions for a new toy, and who, out of frustration, destroys the thing. “I know it’s not something that can just happen overnight. I know it involves other people,” and she reached out and put her hand over his. “I know it’s harder for you than for me, I know you’ll have to deal with Janet and Andrew and Rachel. But if you want something enough, you go out and do whatever you can to get it. I mean—” And she stopped dead before she could add, you’ve done it before, haven’t you?
He took a deep breath. He said nothing, though she knew that behind the silence, behind those eyes and closed lips, there were things she should know, words she should hear. She said, “It would be one thing if we just went to bed every time we got together. But we do more than that. We talk, we eat, we go for drives. We do everything but live together.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I sit alone in my house every day and then one day a week and possibly the odd twenty minutes or so on other days I get to see you. It’s just not sufficient for me. It’s not natural that you’re staying married to Janet. It’s not fair to her and it’s not fair to me and, really, it’s not fair to your kids.”
“So what’re you two now, best buddies all of a sudden?”
Amelie said nothing. She just enjoyed the silence of owning the moment. And perhaps even the hours and days to come.
“It’s not easy just ending a marriage, you know,” he said.
“It was easy for Richard. He stood in the living room and told me.”
“And you told me you wanted to kill him.”
“But I got over it. And at least you can start the process, you can begin talking to her, you can both consult lawyers. Because right now you have me. And you have Janet.”
He looked at her.
“And, now and then, I only have you,” she said.
He continued to stare vacuously at her, as though his mind had shut down. She remembered what Janet said, how sometimes he just didn’t seem to be in the same room with her. Because in those moments, his mind was with Amelie. Or so she thought.
“So it’s not fair,” he said.
“Now you’ve got it.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
She said nothing.
“What are you trying to say to me?” Ben opened his hands, weighed the air.
She composed herself. “Remember when you brought Janet to my reading at the bookshop?”
He looked at her.
“It was the first time I really had a good look at her, since you had the tact to seat her directly in front of me.”
“That was—” he began.
“Let me go on, Ben. She’s very pretty. In fact she looks a little like me. Like half the women in this town, she’s made from the same mold. But of course she’s different, she has to be different. So let’s see what you have. You have me. And you have Janet. You have it all.”
“Look.”
“You have both of us. And is it the fact that I write novels that allows me to understand that the contrast between her and me is all part of the sexual charge?”
“I,” he said.
“Or maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps there is no sex at home with Janet,” something she now well knew was the case. “Ah. Well, then, that’s all right, that makes it better. So he comes to me for his weekly dose of relief.”
He stared at her. “Look. The fact that I’m married should have nothing to do with any of this. I mean, this is the kind of thing you’re always writing about, for Christ’s sake. You’ve covered this in how many of your books?”
“That was then. This is now,” she said, being a little too cryptic for him. “Just tell me, Ben. Do you love Janet?”
“In a different way,” he said after a pause. “I’ve known her a long time. And she’s Rachel and Andrew’s mother.”
“So what am I, the architect’s whore?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“I don’t have to say it.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“More than you can imagine,” she said.
He reached across and tried to take her hand, and she slid it off the table onto her lap.
“Things between us, between Janet and me, are different,” he said. “We haven’t been as close as we were three or four years ago.”
“Maybe then she is having an affair.”
“That would make things a lot easier.”
“And if I told you that she is?”
He actually laughed in her face.
“And if I said that I know it for sure?” she went on in utter seriousness.
He took a moment. “Is it true?”
Now she smiled, just a little. And then said nothing.
“So basically you’re giving me an ultimatum. You or Janet.”
“You forgot the last possible option: or neither.”
He set down his fork. Now it was coming. He put down his knife, he pressed his lips together, here it comes, he raised his eyes to her, it was about to arrive, he sat back in his chair, it was here with them in the room, he opened his mouth, it was imminent and she waited, he smiled. He said, “I’m not marrying you. Not ever.”
45
Once Ben had left, walking briskly out to his car and driving away without even a wave goodbye, once she’d gotten over the shock of what had just happened, Amelie was surprised to feel nothing but a strange form of elation, as though she had shed an early version of herself and had been given the chance of a fresh start.
The dishes from lunch were still on the table, the iced tea he hadn’t finished, his half-consumed salad she had worked so diligently to prepare: artifacts of absence. She briskly cleared them away, hiding them from her sight in the dishwasher.
According to him things weren’t over, he wasn’t going to marry her, but it didn’t mean that they couldn’t keep seeing each other, and he spoke as though she were meant to be grateful to him for this, as though she was supposed to give him a coquettish little smile and nod her head and say, Okay, Ben, it’s fine this way. Because, once again, he had it all. He had Janet and he had Amelie.
Twenty minutes earlier, instead of dignifying with a response what he’d said to her, she had risen from the table and walked behind
him. She felt completely calm because she had learned something important about her lover.
She imagined the back of his head spraying blood and brain matter, fragments of memory—Ben as a child on his first Christmas, Ben at college, Ben at his mother’s funeral, Ben when he first met Amelie—all of it spattered on her face and her blouse, a pointillist version of the life of this man and of their time together.
“You are the most selfish man I know, Ben,” she said finally, and he didn’t bother to turn and look at her. She was tempted to call him Benjamin, to reduce him to something childish and ill-named, his face smeared with chocolate as he toddled about in his soiled play clothes.
“I’m trying to be fair,” he said.
“And what does that leave me with? Should I just sit around waiting for you to stop by for your weekly bounce on the Beautyrest?”
“You know I don’t feel that way about you.”
“But it’s the way you’re treating me, Ben. It’s the way I’m…” And she didn’t know what else to say. She felt the weight of something not on her body but in it, something heavy and airless that seemed to destroy everything that was light and crisp and buoyant in her life. It was no longer just about them; it was about her—her heart, her life, her future. Ben was rapidly becoming an unnecessary element in her life. Utterly expendable.
She said, “I’m growing older, Ben, Nina’s at college, I’m all alone. You have no idea what that’s like, do you, being by yourself?” And she lifted her arms from her body. “I have it all, right? I write, I create characters, I give them life, make them do things, make them say things, sometimes even kill them, but I’m always alone when I do it. I eat alone, I watch movies alone, I go for solitary walks, and when I have an opportunity to chat, it’s usually just with myself. Thankfully, Nina’s coming home in a few weeks, then I’ll at least be with someone I can love without having to negotiate one moment to the next.”
“I’m getting older, too,” he said.
She continued to address the back of his head. “But you’re doing it with Janet and Andrew. At least you have company, Ben. Just like you always have. One at home, one on the side. Like the burger-and-fries special at a restaurant.”
She knew he would say nothing. She’d gone too far, though she didn’t regret it. It had to come to this, and she looked up at the clock: high noon. She was amazed at her calmness and rationality. She wondered how long it would last before there was broken glass, blood, and tears.
“Maybe you should start seeing other men,” he suggested.
“I don’t want some stranger, someone else, someone…” and again she ran out of words, because he wasn’t understanding at all what she was saying. This wasn’t just about gratification, it wasn’t about him, it was about time, how it was being wasted, how she wasn’t getting any younger, how she’d—
Forget it, she thought.
“I’m forty, for god’s sake,” she said. “Two years kicked to the curb, and you’re asking me to start all over again with someone else?”
“Just tell me,” he said. “Is Janet really having an affair?”
“Yes, and his name is Brad.”
She had no idea where the name came from. Maybe the cover of Us Weekly she saw at the supermarket the day before. She’d intended Ben to think she and Janet had become fast friends, but the last person in the world she could trust was his wife. She knew something that Amelie didn’t know; or, rather, she knew something that Amelie knew perfectly well. But Amelie didn’t know how much the woman knew and what her future intentions might be.
Brad, lover of Janet. She remembered him sitting at the bar, reading her book. A good-looking man with a touch of class. Self-possessed. A man of discernment. And she remembered that smile he gave Janet when she walked into the Coach & Four. A smile of recognition? Perhaps. But a smile that lent itself to interpretation; and right now she rather liked the way she was construing it: it worked neatly into the narrative.
She went upstairs and pulled the duvet off the bed, swinging and twirling it onto the floor like a matador’s cape. She peeled off the pillowcases and stripped off the sheets that bore the scent of their bodies and dumped them in the washing machine, adding an overflowing amount of detergent, raising the water temperature to Hot. She took fresh sheets from the linen closet and remade the bed, slowly and meticulously, finding some small pleasure in the mechanics of the task. She neatened the corners and smoothed the wrinkles.
She heard nothing from downstairs. She wondered what he was doing. Was he quietly weeping into his hands, was he continuing to stare at his watch, was he thinking she might do something irrational? She glanced over at her nightstand, as if the only response were sitting within it, loaded and humming with anticipation.
The bed was made. The room was hers. The moment was hers. And now the pretty Tiffany blue thing tucked into the back of her waistband under her blouse was all hers.
She descended the stairs. He was standing by the window with his hands in his pockets.
“Go,” she said.
“It’s still early. I thought we’d…” and she said, “No. No more. Not today. Not ever.”
“Look, I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Good. You’re sorry. Now go home. You made yourself perfectly clear. You’re not marrying me. Now go to your wife. Like all the other times before.”
He stared at her. “Brad. Is that what you said?”
“Maybe it was Kevin.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Amelie,” and his look was fierce and fiery.
“It’s Brad,” she said calmly. “She’ll deny it, of course, just as you would, should anyone ask you about me. It’s been going on for a while, she told me. I don’t know, maybe you should just let it play out, Janet and Brad, and see where it all takes you.”
“You find this funny, don’t you,” he said.
“I find it utterly ironic. Now go. Scoot.” And she waved her hands in the air, as if he were the pet pooch needing a breath of air and a quick shit in the yard.
He looked at her. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Of course I am.”
“Are you sure?”
She smiled too brightly and bared her teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Do you want to get together on Friday?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to have a better life than this. I’m sick of being the object of all your lies.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“What do you think an affair with someone other than your spouse is, an open book? It’s one lie after another—to your wife, your children, your partner at the firm, even to yourself. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, but all along I’ve passionately believed that we had a future together.”
She knew that there were many lies, that woven into the world the two of them had together created were numberless lies knotted into the truths, like tiny invisible flaws in an elaborately woven Persian rug. Having an affair with a married person was a work of fiction filled with obscure imagery, powered by a byzantine plot, a kind of novel that other people couldn’t read for what it actually was.
“There’s more, Ben. To go on with you would mean I’ll lose a part of myself when it’s over, and you’ll be fine. Intact. Able to go back to your wife and kids and give them your undivided attention. And in the end you’ll lose, what, whatever pleasure I’ve given you? Is that what I am? A morsel to be forgotten? I’ve given you two years of my life. Yes, I know, I did it willingly, and if I were eighteen or nineteen or even twenty-five, I’d be able to land on my feet. But things are tough for women my age. For men? Maybe not so much,” and she remembered the silver-haired man in the restaurant, easily in his mid-fifties, who had eyed her. “And please, don’t tell me to go on some internet dating site. That’s not my style. But also don’t try to flatter me. I know e
xactly who I am. I know what I want, and I intend to go out and get it.”
She could see he didn’t know what to do. He took a step forward, and she turned and left the room. She was amazed to hear him actually leave the house. He hadn’t gone to her, touched her arm, whispered a goodbye, he hadn’t even allowed her to catch a glimpse of him as he departed—the back of his hand, the bow of his head. He started up the car and drove off. Only then did she burst into tears.
46
O.
It was the next day and it was over.
O fine. O good.
Fantastic. Fabulous.
Lying in bed, Amelie shrugged and made a face as if she had rejected not something significant in her life but an undercooked piece of fish or a defective item of clothing.
And to top it all she had let him off easy. I’m fine, she’d told him, and then he’d left. He’d walked out of her life as though he were checking out of a motel after a long night’s sleep, just another room in another town in another state. Have a nice day, y’hear?
Why had she gotten herself involved with him in the first place? She made a sputtering sound and shook her head. What the hell was so attractive about him? She lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling as images from the early days came to mind, from the time before they had even spoken to each other, when it was the Age of Glances and Smiles, and she knew what it was that was so attractive, she understood immediately what had brought them together, and yet she couldn’t define it, put it into words, find the nugget of drama that would bear elucidation. It was because it was all a trick, because at that early stage you can’t see the end, you can’t imagine a conclusion, life stretched out before you like a cloudless sky on a summer morning, the endless blue of promised bliss.
The fact that he was married? It never came into it at first, because it never does, as her most recent novel made clear. She could write it but not live it. It was a lesson for her characters, not for the woman sitting at her laptop tapping out the words.
And could it really have been only a physical attraction? Now that she thought about it she saw that intellectually he wasn’t one of the great minds of the century. In fact he was rather shallow. He disliked reading books, and when he did read, and she knew he only read her novels because he was obliged to, he read dopey techno-thrillers and courtroom yarns. He disliked intelligent films made by underfinanced directors. On the one occasion he went to the theater he spent a small fortune taking his entire family—Janet, Andrew, and Rachel—to Cats.