But that’s the ongoing imponderable question, isn’t it? What’s the damn point? How I envy so many people who have religious faith. I’ve never been able to make that leap—to accept the existence of a God and paradise eternal for those who accept Him. But even though I think it’s all nothing but a fairy tale that adults tell themselves to soften the nullity of death, it must be wonderful to proclaim: Yes, there is a point after all! Yes, I’m going to spend the rest of eternity with everyone I love . . .
But will you also run into those whom you don’t love . . . those who have done you wrong in temporal life . . . even though they call themselves Christian?
No wonder I’ll never be a believer: you can’t be sardonic about the Sweet Hereafter.
I couldn’t concentrate on Carol Shields’s deftly woven narrative. I couldn’t stand being cooped up in this room anymore. I wanted to shoot off in my car and head north and spend the afternoon walking Popham Beach. But I was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of tiredness. So I turned off my cell phone, stripped off my clothes, climbed in between the clean hotel sheets, and surrendered to the pleasure of the void.
The next thing I knew, the bedside phone was ringing. For a moment or two, I was completely dislocated, not knowing where I was or the hour of the day. Then my eyes focused on the bedside clock. Seven-thirteen p.m. Damn, damn, damn. I’d slept straight through the afternoon, and now night had arrived, and my brain was thick with stupor.
“Hi, it’s me,” Dan said, sounding tense and distant. “I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone.”
I explained how a short nap had turned into a five-hour sleep.
“We were going to have a drink now,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“The hotel lobby.”
“Well, come on up,” I said.
“I’ll wait for you down here.”
“That’s silly,” I said, suddenly awake. “You can wait for me up in the room.”
“I’ll be in the bar,” he said, and put down the phone.
I got dressed quickly and hurried into the bathroom to attempt a new round of damage control with foundation. If he wanted me to feel scared and vulnerable, he’d succeeded admirably. I’ll be in the bar. To which I wanted to shout: You’re my husband . . . why can’t you come upstairs? But he’d already hung up before I could pose that question . . . because why should he act pleasantly to a woman who had betrayed his trust?
I was downstairs in five minutes. Dan was in a corner booth in the bar, out of public view. He already had a drink in front of him and was abstractly tapping the side of the glass with the plastic swizzle stick. He looked up as I approached, but then looked down at his drink again.
“I’m sorry I was asleep when you called,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Do you want to order something?” he asked.
“A vodka on the rocks, please.”
He called over the waiter and gave him our order.
“I really shouldn’t be down here,” I said lightly. “Margy wants me to stay out of sight.”
“You mean, so you can’t disgrace yourself again, like you did this morning?”
“That wasn’t my best moment,” I said. “And I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
Another shrug.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly. He lifted and drained his scotch, then caught the eye of the barman and indicated he wanted another.
“It does matter. I feel terrible about—”
“I was at the house this afternoon,” he said, cutting me off.
“You were?” I said. “But I thought—”
“The camera crews have gone. They’ve obviously gotten what they want from you.”
“Yes, I suppose they have.”
The drinks arrived. Dan immediately slugged back half of his scotch.
“You’re hitting it hard tonight,” I said.
“So what?” he said.
“It was just an observation. Anyway, I’ve got the room for another night, so we might as well stay here.”
“I’m not staying here.”
“Dan—”
“I’m not staying here,” he said in a vehement whisper.
A pause.
“Okay,” I said, trying to stay calm. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. But please let me call you a cab when you head home.”
“I’m not going home.”
“I see.”
“I’ve been home. I’ve taken what I need to take. I’m not going back home.”
A long pause.
“I don’t understand . . .” I heard myself saying, even though I did understand.
He drained the scotch.
“I’m leaving you,” he said.
It took a moment or so before I could speak.
“Just like that?” I asked.
“No, not just like that. But . . .”
“Look, I know how angry you are right now. You’re right to be. If it was you who had been revealed to—”
“You said all this earlier. It means nothing. I’m leaving you. That’s it.”
“Dan, please. What happened happened in 1973. I know I betrayed you then, but I never betrayed you again.”
“Yeah, you’ve said that before too.”
“You have to believe me.”
“No, I don’t. Why should I believe someone who announces publicly that there’s ‘no way’ she’s going to apologize for what she did . . .”
“That was taken out of context . . .”
“Only you know that. Everyone else who knows us—all my colleagues, all our friends—saw your ‘I won’t apologize’ routine on the television this morning, and took that as completely in context. And while you’ve been asleep your little showstopper has been broadcast on every local news broadcast, not to mention hourly on Fox News. Two hours ago, I got a call from Tom Gucker. Do you know what he said to me? This is a direct quote: ‘I just want you to know from the chairman of the board that you have the complete support of the hospital. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a wife’s infidelity broadcast everywhere, and to have her defending such actions while looking so clearly unstable.’”
“Don’t you understand why I overreacted like that? Can’t you see that—”
“What? That you’re under pressure because of Lizzie’s disappearance? Do you know what? So am I. But I’m not out there, disgracing myself in front of the television cameras.”
“This will blow over, Dan. It will be forgotten in a couple of weeks . . .”
“Not in Portland it won’t.”
Silence.
“If you forgive me,” I said quietly. “If we hang on together and don’t let a thirty-year-old revelation undermine a very long, good marriage . . .”
“Do you really think it’s good?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Despite the fact that you consider me a bit of a dullard, not your equal when it comes to intellect, and someone who’s held you back over the past three decades . . .”
“Do you really believe the crap in that man’s book?”
“I don’t have to believe it. It’s there—and not just in his book. It’s been there from the start.”
“Dan, since 1969—”
“I know how long we’ve been together . . .”
“And, yes, of course, we have always been different people with different interests. But that doesn’t mean—”
“I knew your mom never really approved of me. The small-town doc. The steady-on-the-tiller bore who could never be as erudite as the great John Winthrop Latham or as New York street-smart as Dorothy.”
“Do you think I cared about what my mother thought?” I said. “I chose you because I loved you.”
“Yeah, maybe, once upon a time. But I knew long ago that I was never that satisfactory for you.”
“Then why the hell did I stay? Why? Do you really think I would have held on in a dead-end marriage?”
“I think you
stayed for the same reason you never went to Paris during your junior year. Fear and the inability to articulate what you really want.”
“Yes, that’s exactly why I stayed. I admit it. But my junior year was thirty-two years ago . . . and the other reason I stayed was because I didn’t want to lose you. Just like I don’t want to lose you now.”
“If you didn’t want to lose me, you shouldn’t have fucked that guy.”
“All right, all right, guilty as charged. But still, still, can’t you see that brief, stupid fling for what it was? A mistake made by a twenty-three-year-old who has lived with the knowledge and guilt of that betrayal ever since. But to say that I stayed with you just out of complacency . . .”
“Let me ask you something. Do you think I’ve just been the happy dullard, content in my nice little marriage to my nice little schoolteacher wife? You don’t think I’ve dreamed of another life beyond hip replacements, and the family vacation in Florida, and making occasional, less-than-passionate love with the same woman since . . .”
“Welcome to marriage,” I said.
“That’s just like you, the condescending comment at the wrong moment . . .”
“Oh, is that another of my great failings?”
“Yes, in fact, it is. When in doubt, go caustic.”
“Dan, I have never, never, felt the sort of rage toward you that you feel for me now.”
“Maybe that’s because you’ve never been publicly shamed the way I have been now.”
“But this stuff you’re throwing at me . . . it’s been there for—”
“That’s right, years. But I kept it nicely under wraps because I thought—”
“What? That I felt the same rage?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, goddamn you, though I might have felt sometimes that life could have panned out differently, I still came to understand that one of the great virtues of a long marriage—besides continuity and stability and all that stuff—is a shared history. And the sense that any feelings either of us may have about the other’s shortcomings is overridden by three-plus decades together. And, goddamn you again, it is not like we have fought our way through the past thirty-four years. On the contrary, we have—”
“Always kept things under wraps . . . always dodged the central issues, always—”
“Will you listen to yourself?” I said. “I have been under the impression that we’ve done pretty damn well together, that we were one of those couples who worked out how to deal with our disparate temperaments, who always cohabited well, who never had major disagreements about the kids, and generally had something to say to each other most nights. And now you tell me that, for you, it’s all been a sham . . . that you’ve lived with this quiet, accelerating rage that I didn’t really rate you, that I was feeling trapped so much of the time but was too cowardly to jump? Which just kind of leads me to believe you are using these current shitty events as a way of—”
“Don’t go trying to shift the blame onto me. You didn’t just betray me, you betrayed this entire family. And instead of doing the honorable thing and admitting—”
“I admitted it to you. I’ll admit it again: I was wrong. I am desperately sorry for the pain I have caused you and Jeff. And I wish I had handled the press better. But I didn’t—and now—”
“You expect me to forgive you and pretend like nothing happened?”
“I expect you to be angry and hurt and outraged and doubtful . . . but I expect you to still be in my corner nonetheless.”
“That’s asking a lot.”
“After thirty-four years together? What’s the betrayal here? I didn’t fall in love with someone else—despite what that liar says. I didn’t walk out on my husband and baby son. It was sex—two nights of sex back during the Nixon administration. And now, we have what Margy would call a ‘public relations problem’ and one which wouldn’t exist if our poor daughter . . .”
“You think this is just a PR problem?” he said angrily.
“I think if this hadn’t become public information, it would not be as big a deal as it is now.”
“Well, that’s just typical of you to attempt to sidestep responsibility.”
“I have never sidestepped responsibility . . .”
“Yeah, go on, find another excuse for yourself.”
I looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Dan,” I said, lowering my voice, “do you realize what you’re doing?”
“Yes, I’m leaving you.”
“But it’s more than that. You’re telling me that our entire marriage was a lie.”
“I should have jumped years ago—if I’d only ever owned up to what you really thought of me.”
“But, as I’ve said before, I chose to stay with you because I wanted to stay with you.”
“You chose to stay with me. Oh, thanks a lot. I’m flattered, honored, touched. I am so thrilled that, having fucked somebody else and helped him flee prosecution, you decided to stay with me. What a heartwarming finale to your little episode of betrayal. You can tell that to the court when the federal prosecutors are cross-examining you.”
“That might not come to pass.”
“You mean nobody’s told you?”
“I’ve been asleep all afternoon with the cell phone off.”
“Well, you should turn it on, because I’m sure there are plenty of messages waiting for you. It was all over the Maine news at five p.m.”
“What?”
“The Justice Department announced that their legal team have decided there is a case to be answered, and they are taking the first steps to have you prosecuted. I’d get a lawyer now if I were you.”
I drained my vodka, trying to take this in.
“Thanks for the advice,” I said.
“And you think this is just a PR issue. Christ, Hannah, do you have any sense of the professional damage this has caused me? And Jeff is devastated by it—he has his partners raising the issue with him, worried about the impact that his having a felon for a mother will have on the firm.”
I lowered my head. I said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“If you want to think that, fine. I’m going now. I’ve arranged for a moving company to come and pack up the rest of my clothes and possessions on Friday. I’ve also spoken with a lawyer who will be handling my side of the divorce. Her name is Carole Shipley of Shipley, Morgan, and Reilly.”
“Dan, please, don’t hit the detonate button just like that. Can’t we try to—”
“You were the one who hit the detonate button, not me. As I said, my lawyer will be in touch—and we can start working out division of shared assets as soon as you’ve retained counsel.”
“Where will you be living?” I asked.
He averted my gaze.
“I have a place.”
“What’s her name?”
“You would ask that.”
“Where did you sleep last night?”
“At the office.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He threw some money on the table and stood up.
“Don’t lecture me on fidelity, Hannah.”
I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.
“What’s her name?” I asked again.
“As I said: expect a call from my lawyer.”
“Dan . . .”
“Good-bye,” he said tonelessly.
“You can’t walk away from thirty years of marriage just like that.”
“Watch me,” he said.
And he turned and walked out of the bar.
EIGHTEEN
I WOKE UP the next morning to the sound of Ross Wallace taking me apart again.
Well, folks, some people just don’t know when to keep their big ol’ lip buttoned. Remember Hannah Buchan—adulterous mother of the missing Elizabeth Buchan? As anyone listening to the show yesterday will have heard, Hannah Buchan has just been outed in a book by Ch
icago talk jock Toby Judson as having an affair with him back when he was an unpatriotic radical on the run. She even helped him escape into Canada. What does the virtuous Hannah Buchan do yesterday when asked by a Fox News reporter whether she regrets her infidelity and her unpatriotic, felonious act? She says—wait for it, folks—“No way.” That’s a direct quote: “No way”! Memo to our great protectors in the Department of Justice: get this woman behind bars as fast as possible so we don’t have to hear her talk drivel anymore.
That certainly woke me up—not that I had been asleep for long. After Dan left, I sat in the bar and drank three more vodkas. Then, feeling just a little blotto, I walked back down to the port and found a park bench and sat and smoked five cigarettes in a row while staring out at the choppy waters of Casco Bay.
The tears that had dampened my face before were now dry. The initial shock had dulled into quiet, profound trauma. Part of me wanted to ring Dan’s cell phone and beg him to come back. But another corner of my head silenced all such supplicating pleas. This was the side that was so bludgeoned by what had just happened—and by everything Dan had said—that I still couldn’t take it all in. I wanted to believe that he too was suffering from the turmoil of everything that had hit us recently, that his outburst in the bar was some sort of delayed reaction, a rage that, now vented, would transform into a mature realization that exploding our marriage would be an appalling mistake.
But this hope was overlaid by another deeply unnerving speculation: everything that he articulated last night was the truth; stuff that he had kept concealed for years (maybe even hidden away from himself) and which had suddenly geysered to the surface. But no, the idea of everything suddenly bursting forth was trying to soften the blow; to convince myself again that it had all come out in anger . . . whereas the truth of the matter was it hadn’t emerged during a flare-up. He’d had over a day to think about all this. He’d packed up enough clothes to get him through the next week and had arranged for movers to come and clear the rest of his effects. And he’d either rented a place or . . .
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