by Julie Metz
She nodded weakly.
“You are a fucking cunt.” I had never used that word directly to another woman. My mouth felt ugly, polluted. I had reached into a dark pit inside me and pulled out a slimy swamp creature.
“My love for you was genuine—” she began.
“What do you mean, genuine? There is nothing genuine about you. How can you feel love for a woman in friendship and be fucking her husband? What kind of woman does that and thinks she is being a friend? A psycho case, that’s who. You disgust me. You’re like poison.”
She looked down at her feet. “You know, Henry never loved me, he never really cared about me at all. He loved you, he always loved you.”
“And what kind of love would that be?”
No wonder I was taking fucking medication for twelve years.
I wonder how many others there were.
There were definitely others. Maybe the woman who screamed was one of them.
“So.” I looked at her hard, daring myself to make eye contact. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You have a week to tell your husband or I am going to do it for you. You weren’t going to tell him—were you?”
“I’ll do it,” Cathy replied quietly, choosing not to answer my question. Her head slumped farther down. She looked at me with the look of a sorrowful child, chastened but still hoping to squirm out of trouble.
“Julie, I’m begging you, for the sake of our children, can they still—”
She doesn’t get it, not at all. A sword. Is what I need. Maybe death by one hundred cuts is too kind.
“I do not want my child to ever be in the same room with you or your child ever again if I can help it. Do not blame me for this. You and he did this. This is your fucking fault. Now, I’m going to get my kid.”
I turned around and walked back toward her house. She remained seated on the tree stump.
Henry, you are so lucky to be fucking dead.
He had been a clever man, blessed with a great sense of dramatic timing. Seven months earlier, Henry’s death had been a random medical catastrophe, a tragedy that had caused so much misery for Liza and me. Hundreds of sad people at his funeral. Now it looked more like the Great Escape.
The inside of Cathy’s house, as quaint as the outside, smelled familiar. Coffee, toast, that morning’s New York Times, the faint ammonia smell of a favored brand of kitchen cleaner.
I called for Liza, who appeared promptly with Amy on the second-floor landing as if she understood my urgency. Liza scurried down the stairs with unusual promptness. Her sleepover bag was neatly packed, slung over the banister post. I grabbed the bag, took Liza’s hand firmly, pulling her out the door onto the sidewalk, across the street to our car. Liza climbed in silently. I slammed the car door closed.
Cathy was still sitting on the stump in the empty parking lot across the street.
Insanity followed behind me in a beat-up red pickup. The driver, a beer guzzler, gut busting out of his stained wife beater, slumped behind the wheel of his truck with mismatched chop-shop doors, muffler burnt out, spewing exhaust. Beer Guzzler reached for the can in the cup holder, slugged the last of it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy hand, and tossed the empty can onto the road just to piss off my tree-hugger soul. The can clattered away, my brain jangled. Maybe I really am crazy.
My hands were shaking on the steering wheel, but the car kept going forward. We approached the town’s lone intersection with a traffic light. I registered the red light just in time to apply the brakes.
“Mama, why are you so sad?”
“Something terrible just happened between Cathy and me. Cathy did something horrible. I can’t ever trust her again. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we can have any more playdates with Amy.”
Liza started crying. She and Amy had been friends since they were two years old. I was crying too—crazy and furious. What was I doing to my child? But what else was there to do? The light turned green.
Drive us home, get us there in one piece, and then set up the barricades. Get us home, close the windows, push heavy furniture against the doors to keep out the crazy guy right behind me.
Was Henry laughing at me? He drove us both mad, Cathyfuckingbitch and me. Maybe he enjoyed it. He did enjoy it. It was a game.
“Mama, what did Cathy do?”
“I can’t tell you now, but one day I will. I just can’t tell you now.”
“If she said she was sorry, would that make it better?”
“No, because what she did is so terrible that I can’t ever trust her again. I can’t trust her to take care of you.”
“Did she take something from you?”
I paused, wondering if Liza knew something.
“Yes. Yes, she did.”
When we got inside the house, I could see that it was too late; the craziness had slipped in through the screen doors on the hot July air, and now it floated everywhere, permeating every room.
My marriage was a dead thing. Leaving Liza standing in the kitchen, I walked up the stairs to my bedroom dresser, took off my wedding ring, dropped it into my jewelry box. The world of my marriage seemed to be mostly illusion.
I remembered the many times in recent years when I hadn’t wanted to have sex with Henry. I had felt repelled by him, there had been something insincere, almost smarmy that I couldn’t place, as if he were a stranger inhabiting the body of the man I’d known for sixteen years. Even kissing him felt like a violation. I had retreated sexually—to preserve myself from the deception my body understood. Now I could be honest. I hated him. I loathed him. And I still loved him.
I phoned Cathy on four successive days. It was like talking to a dead line. She said nothing, though I tortured her for a response. I ranted.
“Isn’t adultery the big no-no at your church?”
“Isn’t it pretty much the big no-no everywhere?”
“So, Henry was some kind of hypnotist?”
“That’s your explanation for an affair of almost three years?”
“For two, three years you couldn’t say ‘No, this is wrong, we must stop’?”
“What is this, the death of free will?”
“A fucking fruit salad was supposed to fix things?”
It was unsatisfying and maddening. My anger was a creature, wounded and flailing. My anger wanted red meat. My anger wanted revenge. It couldn’t sink its teeth in anywhere.
I thought of all the times I hadn’t been able to say no to Henry. When he wanted to buy a new computer, a new bag for his computer, a new pair of biking shoes, a new bike, when he wanted to throw yet another expensive dinner party.
At last, on the fourth day, she hung up on me, in medias rant.
Good. This has to end. It would be so easy to destroy myself with my anger if she didn’t fight back. I need to retain some shred of self-respect.
Steve, Cathy’s husband, almost forgotten during the first days, phoned me. “Couldn’t we keep things private? For the children’s sake?”
This was my raw, weak spot—my child. I agreed. Yes, that made sense, why did everyone have to know? My own sense of shame longed to keep everything quiet.
But then, later, I imagined future scenes.
We lived in a very small town.
Our houses were barely half a mile apart.
There would be functions at school, concerts in town, encounters at the grocery store and the drugstore, the dry cleaner, the little gourmet shop where I bought cookies for Liza in the afternoons, the toy shop on Main Street, where we walked on Saturdays to be fussed over by the shopkeeper, grandma to all the town’s kids.
There would be dinner parties. If no one knew, they would continue to invite Cathy and Steve to these dinners, because they were part of our social group. I would find myself sitting at the same table with her, or sitting on lawn chairs at a barbecue, forced to look at her, forced to greet her and make pleasant conversation. How could I keep our girls apart in that scenario?
I will be worn down.
I will lose my mind.
I will have to live a completely false life.
I can’t pretend. I don’t have the stomach for it. I have always been a terrible liar. No more lying.
There was chaos among the members of the small group who had held the secret since January. This group turned out to be Matthew and his wife, Emily and her husband, Irena, Anna, Tomas and his former girlfriend, who had all come to the house on the morning of January 9 to help with Henry’s funeral arrangements. They had decided to remain quiet for a time, to let me recover from the shock of Henry’s death. Matthew had planned a funeral for his best friend while coping with his grief, shock, and profound disappointment. Matthew and his wife had been our friends for years. None of the group had counted on Tomas telling me when he did. But as in much of life, things don’t always go as planned.
Emily asked if she could now speak to our other friends. She told me that keeping the secret for these months had been emotionally exhausting. She had felt like a liar. I understood.
And of course there was the little matter of revenge.
Emily raged about the last months—remaining silent, forcing politeness when she saw Cathy in town.
Anna, in a fury as bright as her red hair, said it was time for the Scarlet Letter.
Gossip did the job swiftly. Cathy was now fully exposed in our small community. She stood alone at the school playground, she was shunned at the supermarket, but there was intense shame for me as well. The feeling of whiplash caught me unprepared. The pitying looks, the oblique apologies for my latest tragedy. I was humiliated, quite sure that everyone was talking about the scandal my life had become. In fact, my life felt like a complete ruin. Hell is indeed a small town.
Steve phoned me as news spread. “You lied to me. You told me you would keep things private. Do you really want our children to find out about this?”
“I changed my mind,” I snapped back. “I get to do that. And this really isn’t a private matter. Henry and your wife kept their secret by lying to everyone, to all our friends. I won’t lie anymore.”
“You’re a liar,” he repeated.
“Yeah, right. And the liar in your home, who lied to you for years?”
He had already circled the wagons. He was going to stay with Cathy—his marriage vows were sacred. I pointed out that Cathy had not thought much about her sacred vows.
“I’m going to try to forgive her, and I think you should too.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think I ought to do. I’ll forgive her when and if I decide to forgive her.”
Cathy sent e-mails. She was a writer after all, and a good one. She offered articulate apologies about the terrible thing she and Henry had done. She told me that she was determined to win back her husband’s love and trust, that she was committed to devoting herself again to her husband and child. She also accused me of ruining her reputation in town.
We were in our separate trenches.
I need to leave this place.
I called Leslie Burns, Henry’s psychiatrist. He had been seeing her during the last year and a half of his life. Anxiety, he had told me. He couldn’t work. He was having panic attacks and trouble sleeping. She had prescribed medication, different from mine. Our house was a regular drugstore.
Leslie Burns agreed to meet with me, but only because I was the executor of Henry’s estate. She would need to see that in writing.
I arrived midday in Grand Central Station. I had not been depriving myself much since January had brought its glad tidings, so I hailed a cab and made myself comfortable in the backseat.
Then I looked at my driver to give him directions. He was a very attractive man. Dark, glossy hair tossed to one side. Dark, wide-set, sleepy eyes. Olive skin, high cheekbones. His hack license suggested that he was a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe. His elegant hands rested on the steering wheel like two beautiful, bored fashion models. Tomas’s hands, but softer, unused to rough work. Our eyes met in the rearview mirror as I gave him the Upper East Side address.
Suddenly the air in the taxi felt superheated. I wanted to speak to him. I wanted him to pull over so we could make out in the backseat. He looked at me in the rearview mirror, an uncomfortably long look. I rummaged in my handbag for my wallet and, on second thought, lipstick. When I looked up, his eyes met mine again.
I had the feeling of elastic time, like the day Henry died and the last five minutes of his life stretched out. The trip was completely silent, just the rumbling of the car’s old chassis on the city streets, the traffic outside.
At last and too soon he pulled up in front of a brownstone on an elegant, tree-lined street in the East Seventies. I paid my fare, lingering as long as I could. I stepped out, and he looked at me and I looked at him. I just wanted an hour with this man in a hotel room somewhere. I didn’t want to speak to him or know his name. I wondered if Henry had felt like this when he pursued his women.
I stood outside a bit longer than necessary, arranging my bags. The driver lingered on as well, and I saw him looking again in the rearview mirror while the car idled. I turned away toward the door of the doctor’s office. When I turned back for a last look, he was driving off slowly.
Inside the office was the hush of the white noise machine, magazines to browse. I patted down my skirt, fiddled with my tank top and my hair as if I’d had that hour in a hotel room after all.
Leslie Burns leaned back in her comfortable black leather chair, resting her feet on an ottoman. She was a plump woman who wore overalls. “He loved you, you know,” she reassured me. “He did not want your marriage to end. He loved you and Liza and really valued that part of his life.”
I wondered if she might lie to me, just to make me feel better.
“But what about this other part of his life, with Cathy and other women?” I asked. “Was he ever going to tell me, or was this going to go on and on?”
“I believe he wanted to tell you about Cathy. You know, it took him six months to tell me about Cathy. At first when he told me, he made no apologies.” Leslie shifted her ample body in the chair. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her overalls. In all my many years of therapy, I had never seen a shrink in anything but a tasteful, businesslike outfit.
“As time went on it became clear that his relationship with Cathy was destroying his life. He wanted to end it, but he was afraid to tell you. He was afraid you’d leave him and take Liza away.”
You better believe I would’ve left him.
I looked around on the walls and found the reassuring diplomas from Ivy League universities. I would hear this woman out.
“I believe the other women—there were several—were ‘transitional,’ a way to end his relationship with Cathy and return to you. I was trying to help him do that.”
She told me that Henry showed signs of narcissistic personality disorder. For Cathy she suggested a possible diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Women with borderline personality are emotionally unstable and intensely needy, and often resort to dramatic gestures to win love and attention.
My mouth hung open. Holy fucking shit.
Leslie explained that both diagnoses refer to the behavior of people with low self-esteem, usually the result of particular childhood emotional traumas.
“Henry often spoke about his difficult relationship with his mother,” Leslie said. “She idolized him and expected him to take on a lot of responsibility for the happiness of the family. That’s a classic situation.”
Leslie described how, as adults, people with NPD are charismatic extroverts, but inside, in private moments, they are aware of the false social persona. In contrast to the confident personalities they project, they are filled with self-loathing. People like this can’t tolerate solitude because it forces them to see the true self, hidden below the surface. The false persona might, however, win them many friends, sexual partners, and career success.
“And, sadly, our culture often rewards such behavior,” Leslie said, sighing. “Deceptive behavior is
very common,” she continued. “I have another patient in this situation. Patients like this have affairs as a way of testing the people they really love, almost to prove that they are unworthy of love.”
I remembered how charming Henry had been when we met, how polite. I had been suspicious of it at first, but he had won me over. This same strategy had obviously worked with Cathy and other women.
Henry’s childhood experiences do not justify him being an amoral asshole as an adult. How much compassion am I supposed to have for him? I had an unhappy adolescence, but that doesn’t give me license to lie, cheat, and steal.
Leslie continued. “Borderline or NPD adults are both very needy, given to extreme emotional fluctuations and distortions of reality.”
“You don’t pay enough attention to me.” Henry’s frequent complaint. “You should spend more time paying attention to me and less time worrying about Liza.”
Two really messed-up people had found each other, fed off each other. In Cathy, Henry had found a ready worshiper, and in him she had found a love object with an endless need for attention.
Leslie leaned toward me. “Julie, do you mind if I ask you—what would you have done if Henry had told you about Cathy?”
“I would’ve divorced him so fast his head would’ve been spinning,” I snapped back. But those were just words. Really, I didn’t know what I would have done.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Leslie said. She lowered her gaze for a moment. I saw that she really was sorry. She had been rooting for him, hoping that he could repair his life.
I wondered if his death had been not a random medical event but rather the direct consequence of his choices. I left the office with a new feeling about Henry and Cathy. I was not ready to forgive them—my rage was not burned out yet. But to my surprise, I felt sorrow for Henry. He had died before he had a chance to undo the damage.
Matthew had called me every day since Henry’s death, always comforting, “just checking in.” After confronting Cathy, I’d called him to see what had survived from Henry’s computer hard drive. I had actually given him Henry’s computer, never imagining I’d need it again. Matthew had backed up everything and now gave me three CDs with Henry’s personal journal, umami book notes, and correspondence. A few times during the prior months, I’d asked Matthew if I could have copies of material on the hard drive, but he had always been vague, promising to get them to me, hoping I’d forget. Anticipating a good deal of material, I’d dropped the CDs off at the copy shop the day before rather than print it out at home. Further, my idea was to take the package and mail it to Helen, my therapist, without even opening it, so that she and I could look at the contents together in a safe space. I had the addressed envelope all ready in the car.