“Are you alone?” Shelly asked, as if she were about to divulge top secret FBI intelligence.
“I’m in the car with Jack, but you’re not on speaker. Is everything okay?”
“I was wrong about Max. I found a naked picture of her on his computer yesterday. I don’t know why I believed him. I mean with the baby coming, I think I couldn’t handle the idea of…” She faded out and our connection was lost.
I waited for her to call back, feeling guilty that what I felt was mostly relief. Deep down, I had known the truth. I had even been avoiding her because I couldn’t stand to hear about all the gifts he was buying for her and how affectionate he was being. The classic signs were all there.
I thought back to a conversation Rick told me about long before. He met a private investigator on the golf course. “Get a lot of business catching cheating husbands?” Rick asked him in a joking tone, but the man’s demeanor turned solemn.
“Never made a penny off it, actually,” he said. “I get calls from suspicious wives all the time. I tell ‘em I’m the only PI who won’t take their money, who’s gonna give it to ‘em straight. It comes down to this: If you feel in your gut that it’s happening, it most likely is. You don’t need me. When he’s not looking, check his phone, his computer, his credit card receipts. He’ll slip up. They all do.”
The phone pulled me back to the present.
“I’m sorry it took me a while to call back. I just, I can’t stop crying.”
“I’m so sorry, Shelly. Will Max go to Carly with you? You were the one who recommended her to me when I was on the other side of this whole mess and she’s helped so much.”
“I don’t know if he’d go. I haven’t even confronted him yet.”
“You haven’t?” I didn’t want to sound too surprised, but Shelly was the type to speak her mind when and how she wanted to, at least with me. Maybe it was different with Max.
“I know,” she said with a touch of shame. “I’m just afraid of how it could change everything. Right now, while he doesn’t know I know, I can at least pretend everything’s okay, for the girls, maybe until after I have the baby.”
“Shelly! Until after you have the baby? That’s what, like four months away?”
“Yeah, so. You don’t understand, Beth. You’ve never been in this position. I have to think about my girls first, all three of them.”
I let out a little gasp and tried to sound excited. “A little girl? Oh Shelly, that’s wonderful. You won’t have to buy any new clothes!”
“No, it’s not wonderful and you know it. Max didn’t want a third child. But since he had no choice, he thought he at least deserved a son. But screw him. Me and all my girls will be all right in the end, with or without him.”
“I didn’t mean to question your choice. I understand if you want to wait to do anything about this. I mean, was it just the one picture?”
“Yes, I need to find more evidence and buy time to think about what to do, you know?”
I understood, but I could never do it. I wouldn’t be able to pretend for that long.
“Crap, I have to get to a PTA meeting. Can I call you back later?” she asked.
“Of course. I want to know more and I want to help. I hope I didn’t sound unsupportive.”
“Just trust me to deal with this my own way, okay?”
“Yeah, definitely. Sorry.”
I didn’t know how I could back her decision not to say anything about the situation for four months. What if Max was having unprotected sex with this woman and gave Shelly a disease? What if that disease put the baby at risk? I wanted to find a way to ask these questions soon without hurting her feelings or making her angry.
As I pulled in the driveway, my melancholy mood worsened. Images of Lucy shriveling away in a hospital bed plagued me. Thoughts of Shelly staying in her marriage indefinitely with this other woman in the picture infuriated me. I needed something to distract me.
“Mama? We going inside?”
“Sorry, I’m so sorry, Jack, yes, of course. Mama was just thinking about… nothing. Let me get you unbuckled. Want to watch one of your shows while I call my friend, Jill?”
Jack was all set up with a show, various snacks, and an array of toys for when he got bored with the show, which could be anywhere from five to twenty minutes. I snuck off to the bedroom for the call.
“So what’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Well, I hadn’t run into her since that night in Vegas. I wanted to call but I didn’t know what to say. And I didn’t want to start lying to Connor again. So I did nothing. But I knew I’d run into her.”
“Uh huh.”
“It was yesterday afternoon when we picked the kids up from school.”
So this woman’s kids go to the private school, I noted.
“It was awful, Beth, there was a big group of moms and we were all talking about the kids and… she just blurted it out.”
“Oh my God!” I pictured the stupefied expressions on the women’s faces when they heard that two moms from their school had sexual relations with each other in front of their husbands. I envisioned one of them fainting as her Coach bag fell to the ground, the one next to her refusing to reach out and catch the woman lest she break an acrylic nail.
“How could she? She actually told them…”
“Not that, Beth! She didn’t say that! She just announced to everyone that we ran into each other in Vegas and had a blast together. Then she added, ‘and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right Jill?’ with an exaggerated wink, and it was clear that it all meant nothing to her.”
I wished what happened in Vegas could have stayed in Vegas for me too.
I didn’t know what to say to Jill. I really didn’t understand her. Not that I couldn’t understand a woman being in love with a woman. I couldn’t understand how easy it was for Jill to fall for someone, while at the same time, she could have casual, meaningless sex with other people.
“I’m sorry, Jill. I know you were really struggling with your feelings about her.” I disappointed myself, but it was the best I could do.
“Beth, if I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”
Shit, shit, shit, was all I could think.
“I can try.”
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me? I mean, you’ve been careful not to express any judgment about the things I’ve told you, but I want to know what you really think. I respect you. I look up to you. I know you mess up sometimes, but compared to me, you’ve got your act together.”
Everything really is relative, isn’t it, I thought.
“Um, well… sometimes I think… hmmm.”
“Just tell me the truth,” she demanded. “You’re too nice all the time. I’m asking you to tell me!”
“Okay, yes! I do think there’s something wrong with you. It’s not that it’s bad to do what you do, but it doesn’t seem healthy. It seems destructive—to yourself and to the other people involved.”
I waited for her response, wondering if that would be the end of our friendship again.
“Go on. I know you have more.” I did, but I didn’t want it to be hurtful.
“The whole swinging thing… I have to admit that hearing about it was a turn on. But I don’t see how it could be a sustainable lifestyle for a married couple with kids. I mean, it’s only natural for attachments to develop. Look at what happened with you and… Jane Doe.”
She was silent.
“And you know about oxytocin, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” She started to sound a bit like a child being scolded.
“Well, we’re talking science here, not morality. It truly is a bonding hormone and it’s released by physical intimacy—breastfeeding, sex, any kind of touch, even cuddling with a pet.”
This time I waited, I needed to know if I’d gone
too far.
“I get it. I get what you’re saying.” She seemed sincere. “I want to ask you something else. Will you please try to keep an open mind?”
Dread welled up in the back of my throat and I tried to swallow it down.
“Well, what is it?”
“I spent hours online last night trying to find something to help me understand why I’m the way I am.”
“And?”
“I stumbled on some information that well, it resonated with me.”
I had no idea what it could be. I almost didn’t want to know. It was never anything good in the past. It was always something that had a terrible influence on me, though I knew I had to take responsibility for my own choices.
“So what was it? And what do you want to ask me?”
“Okay. I want to know if you’ll go to a sex and love addiction meeting with me tonight. I need to go. But I can’t go myself. I just can’t.”
“Mama? Where you are, Mama?”
“Hold on, Jill.” I ran out to the living room, realizing I should have peeked in on him sooner. He was sitting with a pair of scissors that I thought I had left out of his reach, trying to cut through a placemat on the dining room table.
“No, Jack! Put those down! Where did you get them?” I set the phone down and ripped them out of his hands. He shrieked.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I just don’t want you to hurt yourself. Those scissors are sharp. I thought you were watching TV.” He hissed at me like an angry kitten.
“I don’t want TV! Why you no play with me till I has to go to school? Play with me, Mama!”
The guilt and shame unleashed a tidal wave just beneath my solar plexus.
“Okay, Jack, yes, of course. I want to play with you. I love you so much sweetie.” I kissed his head, his cheeks, his nose, and his mouth. “Just one second, ‘k?”
“Jill, you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I definitely want to go to that meeting with you.”
CHAPTER 17:
ADDICTIONS AND
AFFLICTIONS
THE DINGY CHURCH BASEMENT smelled like strong coffee and glue. Searching for the sources of these aromas, I spotted an extra-large percolating silver contraption and a small table in a corner, covered with arts and crafts supplies that seemed to be left behind by children.
“Let’s get some coffee,” I said, needing something to hold.
“In a minute. I think that’s Anita, the one I talked to earlier.”
I followed Jill over to a group of what seemed like perfectly normal men and women huddled together chatting.
“Are you Anita?” Jill asked a woman with a pale complexion, long, dark hair and full, bright red lips.
They all stopped talking and turned to both of us.
“You must be Jill. We’re all so glad you made it.”
She turned back to the crowd. “This is Jill, everyone.”
Now they were all looking at me. I wanted to run.
Jill touched my shoulder and announced, “This is my friend, Beth. She’s just here to support me.”
Anita fixed her warm brown eyes on me. “And that support will be very important as Jill begins recovery. Thanks for coming, Beth. You’re welcome to attend as many meetings as you like with Jill.”
Anita seemed certain that Jill was a sex and love addict. I knew they had a long phone call, but didn’t know if that was enough time for an official diagnosis. It did seem a plausible explanation for Jill’s troubles.
After coffee and small talk, people started to fill in the forty or so chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. Jill and I followed their lead and sat down.
I showed no reaction when I recognized the man sitting directly across from me, but I felt my heart rate soar from the shock of it. He was a famous sitcom star. Rick and I had watched his show many times. I wanted to keep looking at him and forced myself not to. During the car ride to the church, Jill told me that anonymity is paramount to twelve step programs like this one. Now I knew how true that was. I had never heard a negative thing about this celebrity. In fact, the media painted him as a loving husband, father and generous philanthropist. Maybe he still is, I reassured myself.
When the meeting leader announced the rules, I found myself impressed by the order and simplicity of it all. After opening business, the main speaker would share his or her story for twenty minutes. Then the floor would open up for people to speak for three minutes at a time. A smart phone alarm chime ensured that no one went over the limit. There would also be chips awarded to those who had achieved thirty days, ninety days, and so on, of sobriety.
I hadn’t thought to bring tissues, but others anticipated the need, so a small, square box of Kleenex was passed around the circle when my emotions finally got the better of me.
At first I was sucked in by how articulate Malcolm was. Then, this clean-cut man in the same kind of sporty, lightweight, blue-and-gray North Face jacket that Rick always wore, destroyed me with his narrative. He was a high school AP math and science teacher, an Eagle Scout, a marathon runner, a Magna Cum Laude college graduate. He was a leader in the Big Brothers program, working to match inner-city kids raised by single moms with upstanding business owners who could serve as mentors and role models. He had everything—a gorgeous wife dedicated to her family and to her career as a social worker, a daughter who was captain of her award-winning high school drill team, the University of Southern California’s most successful linebacker for a son.
Malcolm’s list of accomplishments and accolades put mine to shame. And then he talked about how he lost it all because of his addiction. Everything. Initially, his wife tried to forgive him each time she caught him masturbating to a live naked woman on his computer screen. His principal even gave him a second chance the first time he was caught with a female student’s underwear in his desk drawer, but not the next. I didn’t know an Eagle Scout badge could be revoked, but apparently it can, if the infraction is grave enough. A statutory rape conviction took care of that.
“She swore she was eighteen,” he said, imploring us not to brand him a pedophile in addition to everything else, “and it was completely consensual, but her parents didn’t believe us. They prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That’s when my daughter stopped speaking to me. The girl was a friend of hers.”
There was so much remorse in his eyes, in his voice. His heavy heart consumed the space and enveloped us all. I kept thinking I should despise him but all I felt for him was great sorrow. As he shared one catastrophic choice after another, it seemed as though a demon possessed his body and made him do things the real Malcolm would never do.
“With a criminal record, I can’t get a job. I’ve been sleeping on my brother’s couch for a few months now and his wife says I can stay as long as I keep bringing my chips. I have nothing left except this program.”
As he spoke, my mind kept going back to one of my worst food binges. It had been some time ago, so I couldn’t remember what triggered it, but I saw myself staring down a full tray of brownies, begging myself to stop. I had already eaten several packages of potato chips, crackers, and cookies. I was split in two, knowing that my ego, who wanted me to eat the tray of brownies, was more powerful in that moment than the real me, who wanted the toxic behavior to end. Though I already felt close to regurgitating what must have been thousands of excess calories, I could not stop myself. I ate the entire tray. I hated myself after. Malcolm screwed a seventeen-year-old who was friends with his daughter. He hated himself after.
When it was time for open sharing, I was captivated by everyone who spoke, and I wished they could all have more than three minutes. One woman was an alcoholic, overeater, and love addict. I could relate to her in many ways, though somehow I had always been able to stop myself before taking any of it as far as she had. I wondered if I too had the potential to be a love ad
dict, an alcoholic, a morbidly obese compulsive eater. Where were the lines drawn? Were there lines, or did we all fall somewhere on a mental health spectrum that determined how well we could hide our vices and pretend we were fully functional, free of addictions and afflictions?
My musings were interrupted when I saw Jill raise her hand. The leader approved her request, and despite my years of teaching public speaking, I was nervous for her. This was a kind of self-disclosure like nothing else I had ever witnessed.
Her bottom lip disappeared as she tried to compose herself before starting. It was a new side of her, this woman who had previously been such a foreign creature to me.
She turned to me and I offered a smile of encouragement. Her expression confused me. It seemed to be an apology.
“My father raped me when I was seven.”
It shook me to the core. But as I looked around at others’ responses, I saw no surprise.
She went on as I worked to wrap my mind around it. I felt awful for not recalling anything she had ever told me about her parents.
“I’m sure some of you have similar stories. And some of you might wonder how that could even happen. When you look at a seven-year-old girl, so small, you can’t imagine…” She had to stop and catch her breath.
I tried to hand her a tissue from the box in my lap, but she waved my hand away. She had no tears. I wondered if maybe she had already used up her lifetime allotment.
“Well, yes, I was very small, I always have been. So he had to start prepping me when I was five. A patient man he was, to wait two whole years, don’t you think?”
Waves of nausea rose up and swelled my insides.
“It took a lot of lubrication and hard work to open things up enough for me to be ready, and then we had to do it all over again when he was preparing to sodomize me. That didn’t happen until I was nine.”
I didn’t know if I could take any more.
“I told my mother when I was ten and she called me a filthy liar. The good thing about her thinking I was a delusional and evil child was that she sent me to live with my grandmother across the country. But my father visited as often as possible and snuck into my room late at night every time.”
Is This What I Want? Page 15