Perfection

by Julie Metz

  On Valentine’s Day, I opened the white envelope that had arrived in my mailbox eagerly, half-hoping it was from Roberto, whom I still missed with gut-wrenching misery. The card inside was crudely drawn in black ink, a black heart decorated with dead cockroaches, their antennae and legs perfectly preserved, carefully glued onto the white paper.

  It was from Annette. She called me a bitch and a cunt and a slut. These words still had the sting of high school days. I felt frightened, knowing that there was a woman a mere twenty city blocks away who hated me to the core of her being and might do me harm if she saw me. But I also thought that I deserved her anger.

  I wondered about her careful effort in the creation of the card. Were the roaches from her kitchen? Had she hoarded and then emptied a Roach Motel for this purpose?

  I quietly suffered over my lost love, still hoping that he might change his mind and return to me. With a lesson well learned, the pain of this loss gradually softened until I met Henry, a year and a half later. That brief affair was the most chastening experience of my early adulthood, and I kept that card for many years as a reminder of a path never to be taken again.

  Christine in California was in her late thirties or early forties, not an inexperienced twenty-five-year-old. And though she expressed genuine regret about what she had done, she was vague and evasive when I pressed for details. She seemed to understand that she owed me an explanation, but at a certain point I hit a wall.

  In our conversations she tried to minimize the sexual aspect of the relationship. Perhaps she wanted to spare me some pain. And it’s true that sometimes sex is just sex. Some people pay for it. It’s not always interesting or meaningful, though Henry’s e-mails made it clear that he was eager to continue their sexual connection. Christine suggested that she had really felt more drawn to Henry intellectually, that it was their conversations that had been important and meaningful to her, and that these conversations had even changed the course of her creative life.

  She apologized for these conversations. She told me that she understood how wrong it had been to engage so emotionally in conversation with Henry. She understood that this kind of intellectual engagement was as wrong as the sex they had, because it must have provided a huge distraction from his marriage.

  But the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. The emotional intimacy of their relationship over those few months had been significant enough to deeply affect my marriage that morning in the car on Route 9. With Cathy in and out of his life, Christine had temporarily satisfied Henry’s need to be the center of the world.

  My conversations with Christine never felt “done.” I felt like there was something more she had to tell me, but lacking Henry’s charms, I couldn’t pry it out of her. Nevertheless, I called Christine again one morning from my kitchen while taking a break from packing boxes of foodstuffs to take to our island rental house in Maine. I couldn’t wait to leave town again. Piles of sheets and towels were stacked on the table. There were more piles of clothing upstairs. Even in August, Maine can be unpredictable. I had taken out everything from fleece jackets to bathing suits. It was good to be busy.

  “I am so sorry that you are dealing with the results of Henry’s poor life choices and I am so sorry for my role in such a yucky mess,” Christine said.

  Yucky. A word children use to describe a bowl of pudding overturned on the kitchen floor or the foul-smelling contents of their diapers. I sensed her wish to be done with me, and this whole sordid tale, to move on to a happier life chapter.

  But I did not have such a luxury. For reasons I was just coming to understand, I needed to dig much deeper. It was not cathartic, the digging, it was horrible in every imaginable way. Yet I did have the sense, clearer with each passing day, that in order ever to have a new life, I would have to strip away the veneers of the one that was over. I knew that Christine had finished confiding and wanted to return to her life, and that whatever else I discovered would be elsewhere.

  I wondered how many other people, maybe even close friends, were not telling me what they knew, to spare my feelings.

  Who could I trust but myself? Though it felt like I was jabbing myself in the chest with a scalpel, by the following morning, Liza safely at day camp, I was ready to head back to my office to continue down the list of women.

  A pleasant woman’s voice answered the phone.

  “This is Julie. Henry’s wife.”

  Ellen—the wiry muscle girl who could do ten one-handed pull-ups—began crying.

  “I’ve thought about you so often,” she sobbed. “I heard that Henry died. But I didn’t go to the wake or the funeral.” I heard her sigh, and she paused for a moment. “I knew I didn’t belong there.”

  Weeping continuously, Ellen told me that, after they met at the gym, Henry had flirted with her and pursued her. Her mother had been very ill, living in her home, requiring constant care. Her daily trips to the gym were a welcome escape from the burdens of her home life. She and her husband had been going through a difficult time.

  Ellen said that she and Henry had sex twice. Consumed with guilt, she had then told her husband, started marriage therapy, and rearranged her gym schedule so that she and Henry would no longer meet.

  “Out of curiosity,” I asked, “what do you look like? No, don’t tell me. I bet you’re a little brunette.” She was.

  The day after that phone call, Ellen called me back. She cried some more and asked for forgiveness. I’d read through all her e-mail exchanges with Henry. Her letters suggested that she was gullible, but perhaps no more than I might have been in her situation. Henry had complained to Christine in California that Ellen wasn’t that intelligent, but she was no dimmer than I had been while married, and while he may not have seen her as his intellectual equal, in all other ways she was his superior. She had a working conscience, and she was capable of authentic emotion. She had come quickly to a clear understanding of right and wrong, a clear sense of her own culpability. She had made a mistake but had corrected herself. She did not run away from her responsibilities to her marriage or to me.

  I wished Ellen a good life. I told her that I hoped her marriage would improve. She said she was grateful. Now life could move on, for both of us.

  I was surprised at how quickly my anger passed after our conversations. Perhaps I was just worn down, desensitized. But I felt mostly pity for this woman who had stumbled briefly into the mud pit of my marriage and fallen for Henry’s charms. She never knew about Cathy, and even if she had lingered longer in his life, he probably would not have told her about Cathy or Christine or anyone else. She was a plaything for him. Ellen was, in my mind, a kind of innocent bystander, briefly tantalized by something Henry seemed to be offering at a time when she herself was exhausted with obligation. I noted that Henry had been good at finding vulnerable women. In matters of romance, illicit or otherwise, timing is everything.

  I sent an e-mail to Alicia, the Argentinean woman Henry had mentioned in his letter to Christine.

  I had only one e-mail, from December 3, 2002, from Alicia to Henry. My friend Sara had found a printout of it during her searches in Henry’s office when she had visited in the spring, folded at the bottom of one of his travel bags. Without understanding its full significance, she had saved it for me and mailed it back after I told her about Henry’s affairs. The subject header was telling enough: “Re: My North American Boyfriend.”

  In the e-mail, written in stilted English, Alicia told Henry that she would be happy to talk to him about “my sex matters.” She suggested a time to talk on the phone and included her phone numbers.

  I had met her twice, at parties, one at our own house during the prior summer. She was a friend of Tomas’s former girlfriend, Lindsay, who in this case had unwittingly acted as matchmaker.

  I sent Alicia an e-mail, and to my surprise, she responded promptly. Our correspondence was hampered by her poor English, but we muddled along for a few rounds. Her life seemed confused and sad. She was a university student.
She lived with a man, a relationship that was by her account troubled and unhappy.

  “Nothing really happened,” she said. Was this the truth? Were Henry’s fantasies of a future affair overblown? Clearly they’d talked about something and had made plans to continue talking. I understood from her description of her own relationships and culture that infidelity was more flexibly tolerated in Argentina. I guessed that Henry had counted on that. His ideal woman would come from somewhere outside the United States—we are known worldwide for being prudes, the sins of Bill Clinton et al. notwithstanding.

  In a peculiar twist that seemed to suggest the extent to which he had compartmentalized his life, I recalled with bitter amusement that Henry had come down quite hard on our former president, both for his adultery and for lying about his adultery.

  During this first terrible week after I found out about Henry’s affairs, Tomas and I corresponded daily, a welcome relief. I knew he was having his own hard time after having told me what he knew. Some of the same people who had viewed his involvement with me suspiciously judged him even more harshly now. But I felt liberated and grateful.

  Tomas invited Liza and me to a dance event in a large barnlike building on the grounds of a local summer camp. A band played, and we danced exuberantly, sort of a mock boxing match, which perfectly released the anger I’d felt all week. Tomas tossed and twirled Liza in the air. I knew many in the crowd and had the uneasy feeling that they were beginning to view Tomas and me as a couple. After a time, Liza tired and Tomas and I were sweaty. We walked outside to rest and get some air on the beautiful grounds. Liza enjoyed the last daylight and began playing with some other kids. The ten-year-old daughter of a friend recognized me. She looked at me and then at Tomas, then back at me.

  “Are you dating?” she asked, still looking back and forth between Tomas and me.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to her question, the bold and direct type that kids are famous for, the type I usually encouraged. I didn’t really know what Tomas and I were doing. We were trying to be in a relationship that couldn’t be classified in such traditional terms as “dating.” As the time of my trip to Maine drew closer, I sensed these might be some of our last times together in this way. The fall was bound to bring changes.

  But to my surprise and relief, Tomas salvaged the awkward moment. He stepped toward me, put his arm around me affectionately, and said, “Yes! She is!”

  There was one woman left. Her name was Eliana. She was not mentioned in Christine’s letter. Once the news was out in the open, Matthew had come over to talk with me about what he knew about Henry’s women. He remembered that it was Eliana who had called early on the morning after Henry’s death, and that it was this woman’s screaming voice I’d heard from my bedroom.

  After I found Eliana’s name in Henry’s address book, I waited a few days before trying to reach her. I had saved her for last. I needed time to work up courage.

  eight

  Late July 2003

  I had met Eliana once, just a few months before Henry’s death.

  The same November 2002 that found Henry and me driving up Route 9 to tour the private school for Liza provided a welcome night out. Lindsay, Tomas’s former girlfriend, invited us to her birthday celebration. I thought she had broken up with him rather shabbily the summer before, while he was living in our attic, and in the inevitable way that people choose one or the other party of a fractured couple, we had remained closer to Tomas.

  Our town provided little drama. Lindsay had a talent for making her own, however, and I was happy enough to be included. The event was to be a costume party. Our children were invited, and Liza happened to have a blue pinafore-style dress, so I volunteered the idea that we might go as characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  “I hate costume parties,” Henry responded dismissively. “What a pain in the neck.”

  “Yeah, okay, but it’s Lindsay’s birthday and she wants a costume party. Tomas is even going. Can’t we just humor her?”

  “Everyone always humors that girl.”

  “You might have a point there.”

  I fastened the row of buttons on the back of Liza’s blue ruffled dress. I put on a wine-colored velvet dress, one of my vintage favorites, and the crown I had sewn from pieces of scrap brocade and ribbon. I was quite proud of my eleventh-hour effort. Henry reluctantly agreed to say, if asked, that he was the Cheshire Cat after I suggested that his smile was enough of a costume. He grumbled on the drive over, but I had to admit that, in spite of my mixed feelings about the hostess, I looked forward to the evening. Gray autumnal melancholy was seeping into the house, a bit more each day, with its signs of quickly encroaching winter isolation. And every night out in company was a night when Henry and I didn’t fight or head off to our separate offices. A party might provide the stage for some family togetherness.

  As we entered the noisy, crowded space, I spotted an ebony-haired woman, slender, dressed in black, supervising the food and drink table. In New York City this attire would have been unremarkable, but in our town it was a noticeable dark mark. Her wrists were encircled with black leather studded bracelets. Her long hair shimmered blue-black under the overhead light. Her eyes were framed with dark liner and mascara. If this was a costume for one of Lord Voldemort’s followers, it was convincing, but she moved with such ease in it that I wondered if she dressed like that all the time. She smiled at me, but I felt chilled.

  Other distractions filled the room. One woman, reincarnated as a young Elvis, with hip swagger and blue suede shoes, sang a stirring version of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Jesus wandered through the crowd, dressed in white robes and leather strapped sandals. Tomas was frighteningly convincing as a Mafia goombah, a pillow stuffed under a stained wife beater, his hair greased back. As I forced a smile, he joked about exorcising his inner demons and angled his beer can in the direction of the hostess.

  Lindsay, the birthday girl, turning twenty-five, was as pretty as ever. Everyone had been at least a bit in love with this golden girl when she and Tomas had first moved to town. Tonight she did not disappoint. She wore a mandarin-collared dress that elegantly displayed her long-limbed body. She brandished a vintage cigarette holder in one hand, and with the other she smoothed her blond hair, twisted in an updo, with nervous excitement. She waited expectantly for Henry and me to respond to her costume. Anaïs Nin, the famously petite and dark-haired early-twentieth-century writer of erotica, she told us, her scarlet-glossed lips briefly pouting after neither of us guessed. Aha, we smiled.

  I sighed, suddenly wishing I had a long cigarette holder, with a cigarette burning in it. But, alas, I had finally quit years ago, in the interest of becoming a good mother. I was already experiencing an all too familiar urge to glue myself to the wall. I took Liza’s hand and directed us toward the corner where I had spotted Emily and her children.

  Emily’s costume also featured a long cigarette holder. She would have looked more convincing as Anaïs Nin, I thought, with her dark bobbed hair and red lipstick. Like the Parisian bohemians she admired, Emily flowered in the chatter, her cheeks flushed with the warmth of the animated room, the otherwise peaceful studio where Lindsay led our yoga classes. I wondered for a moment if Emily ever got bored living in our small town. Life for a nonworking mom must have been much more fun in Berkeley. Food co-ops, women’s circles, progressive schools, and genuine political activity. No one really did much about that around here, though everyone talked a lot about what we could do to save the world for our children. Here we were too busy re-decorating our houses.

  It was a good party: Lindsay was a welcoming hostess, there was plenty of food and drink, there was music, and the guests were feeling free enough to dance. I was the problem child in the room.

  I left Liza with her friends, walked over to the drink table, and accepted a glass of red wine from the woman in black. She smiled again. I returned her gesture weakly and retreated quickly to my corner. The wine soon softened the edges of the day and my irr
itation with the world. Henry, who had been cheerfully circulating (his grumpiness faded quickly with wine and company), appeared, then disappeared to mingle some more. I was happy to stand around the edge of the room with Emily and a few other friends, while our kids entertained themselves on top of a pile of coats.

  During a pause in conversation, I glanced over to check out the dark-haired woman again. She and Henry were talking and laughing. When our eyes met, his were shuttered into narrow slits against the overhead colored party lights, and he was grinning madly. The Cheshire Cat, to perfection.

  Liza’s voice distracted my gaze.

  “What did you say, sweetie?” I asked, turning away from Henry and the noise in the room.

  “Can we go home now, Mama?” My thoughts exactly.

  “What did you think of Eliana?” Henry asked me a few days later. He looked up from the clutter of papers on his desk as I handed him his mail. I couldn’t bear to set the stack of new envelopes on top of the already chaotic pile of unopened bills. It was one of the many times when I was relieved that we had separate checking accounts.

  “Who’s Eliana?”

  “The woman I was talking to at Lindsay’s party.”

  “The woman in black? I thought she was scary looking. Who is she anyway?”

  “Lindsay hired her to help at the party. And Tomas knows her too. I’m planning to have lunch with her next week. I was thinking of asking her to help me with my book, you know, as an assistant. What d’ya think of that idea?”