by Amanda Aksel
Later, Telly and a bottle of vodka came to keep me company.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” she asked, handing me a fresh martini.
“No. Do you wanna talk about Will?”
“No.” We sat quietly, sipping from our pretty martini glasses, neither of us caring to share our feelings on the most recent events of our lives.
“Do you think Holly will ever forgive me?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s not your fault David fucked up,” Telly said.
“I know, but she thinks it is,” I said, tears filling my eyes.
“Hey,” Telly said, halting the tear. “You can’t beat yourself up over this. Holly is upset because you were right, and it hurt her little sister. You went with your gut on this and proved the truth. You shouldn’t feel bad about that.”
Her words were encouraging, and I was thankful that she always had my back on the most controversial of issues, maintaining her honesty but never judging.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Then again, Rachel and David might be done. I’m not sure if the end justified the means.”
“That’s for you to decide. All I know is you’ve been obsessed with catching a cheater and by proxy you did. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
There it was, the same question that plagued my whole day. It was what I wanted, I just wasn’t sure if I still did.
The next day I returned to work as normal. Holly was still missing. Who knew if I would ever hear from her again? The notion killed me. I found myself marching into Katie’s office, looking into her sweet green eyes, and thinking she was too smart to put herself in a position like mine.
“I need your help. It’s personal,” I told her. She asked me to sit and tell her what was wrong. I divulged everything, all the details about James, my tricks, Rachel and David, Holly, and even Anderson. When I finished, her face was riddled with utter disbelief.
“Shit, you really did it this time,” she said. I bit my lip and awaited the rest of her advice, but she just stared me.
“So?” she asked.
“So, that’s it. What do I do now?” I asked. Hello?
“Oh, God, I don’t even know where to begin. You’re going to need a lot of therapy. You probably should’ve already been in therapy. You have four major problems: One, your friendship with Holly; Two, Rachel and David; Three, James; and Four, yourself and your feelings about this whole thing.”
“I just want everything to go back to normal,” I whined.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that. The damage is done, and now you have to pick up the pieces. You have a lot of work to do. I’m going to refer you to someone else.” She began typing away on her computer.
“No, please. I don’t like therapists.” She shot me an offended glare. “I mean I don’t like other therapists.”
“I know. Doctors make the worst patients, but it’s okay. I’m handing you over to one of our own.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Andy,” she said.
I sighed. As much as I’d started to warm up to Andy over my recent views of cynicism, he wasn’t really what I would call a good therapist.
“Did you call me?” Andy entered the room. Just in time.
“Yes, Andy,” Katie said, “I put Marin on your calendar for two o’clock today. She needs some guidance.”
“Great.” Andy looked at me like an animal about to devour his prey. “I’ve always wanted to psychoanalyze you.” He smirked, then left the room.
I turned back to Katie. “I think I’d rather see someone else.”
“Come on, Andy’s a great therapist. His methods are a little unconventional, but they work. I think it’s exactly what you need.”
At two o’clock, I opted to “forget” my appointment. By two-o-five, Andy was in my office.
“Hey, time’s running out. What’s taking so long?” Andy said.
“Sorry about that. I’m swamped,” I said appearing to be extremely busy in order to put him off. He sat down and cleared his throat.
“Bullshit.” He called me out, which should’ve been no surprise, but it startled me. “Katie brought me up to speed on your case, and I have to say Marin, I’m impressed.”
“Excuse me?”
“I had no idea you could be so ruthless. That Chad really messed with your head.”
“Fuck you, Andy.” He became infuriating all over again.
“See what I mean?” he said calmly, not fazed by my crude tone or insult. Damn jaded prick.
“I can’t talk to you about this!” I stood up, ready to throw something at his head.
“Good,” he said and motioned for me to take a seat. “Let me do the talking.”
I sat down fuming and he rose to a lecture stance. “First, you have to know what you did was about as immature and manipulative as a teenage prank.” I crossed my arms. “But I’ve seen worse from someone suffering traumatic stress.”
“Like Lorena Bobbit?” I said.
“Let me do the talking, please,” he said with a smug expression. “So let’s start at the beginning. You catch your fiancé cheating, which caused you to call off your wedding and sink into a depression. Instead of seeking professional help to deal with your loss, you have a stroke of genius and decide to fool some poor guy so you could rid yourself of any responsibility in your own relationship failure. Because after all, if every guy does it then it didn’t just happen to you, it happens to everyone.”
I couldn’t tell if his assessment made me feel better or worse.
“Now that your friend’s husband’s been caught red-handed,” he said continuing on without taking a breath. “You probably feel pretty justified. It satisfied your mission, right?” He paused just long enough for me to shrug. “The problem is your boyfriend, Jimmy—”
“James,” I said.
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “He was faithful. And I think deep down you knew that. I also think you hoped he would be faithful. The fact of the matter is you’re no different than any other woman out there. You pretend to be the essence of a modern woman with your career and self-sufficient attitude, but you really just want to fall in love, get married, and have a baby or two.” Andy was annoyingly presumptuous, but deep down I wasn’t sure I totally disagreed.
“Your pretend relationship with Jim—”
“James!” I yelled.
“Who cares? The point is that it was a way for you to take a look inside and protect yourself from getting hurt if it wasn’t right. You built up a wall.” He crouched down, leaning his elbows on my desk and held his hands up so I couldn’t see his face. Then he brought them down. “You’re the only one inside the wall and everything else is on the other side. No one can get in, but you can’t get out either. Do you see what I mean?”
“Where are you going with this?” Hopefully out of my office.
“It’s simple. You get your heart broken, and instead of accepting it for what it was, you turned it on the entire male species. It gives you no accountability in what happened, and if you think about it, it doesn’t hold Chad accountable either. You accepted the idea that ALL men cheat as truth so you wouldn’t have to deal with your own feelings about what happened.”
“No, I—”
He shushed me. “The bottom line is you’re not going to be able to make things right again until you realize that your generalization about men and fidelity is fallible.”
“Wait,” I interrupted and he finally let me. “I thought you agreed. You said all men would cheat.”
He cocked his head back with a sour look. “Please. Nothing fits perfectly. You have to make exceptions.”
I was quiet.
“You need to accept that what happened between you and Chad was just between you and Chad. Maybe it was your fault. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, you can’t make everyone suffer for your unresolved issues.”
“Are you done?” I asked.
“Yeah, that pretty much covers it.” He stood with his hands on his hips and smiled as if
he’d accomplished something great.
“How is it that you’re so arrogant?” I said staring at his self-satisfied face, which was also annoyingly kind of handsome. He was right, and I found myself in the position of being obtuse. In fact, most of the time he was right, which drove me crazy. He made everything sound so obvious, but until he spelled it out for me the answer hadn’t been so clear. It still wasn’t, and I wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat. But I had the feeling I’d soon have to.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Yes, I thought, but instead said, “Let me think about it.”
“Fine.” He turned to leave. “Same time next week?”
“Definitely not!” I yelled out, but I was sure he ignored me.
Over the next couple of days Andy’s words rang in my head like a bad tequila hangover. Holly and Rachel made no contact with me, and of course, I hadn’t heard anything from or about James. I couldn’t quiet my mind. I couldn’t sleep. I could barely eat, and I hadn’t heard a word of what my patients were saying during our sessions. My life had become a total mess, a mess I created. More and more, I began to realize the whole thing was my fault, and there were fewer and fewer reasons to justify my actions. How could I have let myself make such a huge, irreversible mistake?
Andy said I couldn’t make things right until I realized that not all men are unfaithful. I couldn’t let it go, haunted by the fact that I’d been so badly duped. How could I escape the idea that the men in my life were always trying to put one over on me? Then again, as far as I knew James and Michael had been faithful. While David, Chad, and Anderson were not. If I had been performing a real study and those men were my sample, then statistically sixty percent of men are unfaithful, which is exactly what the published studies had concluded. Maybe it was true. Maybe forty percent of men were faithful. It still wasn’t enough. Who was to say Michael and James wouldn’t make a bad choice eventually? There was a lifetime of opportunity and temptation.
I needed convincing, one more answer to push me to one side or the other. The next day, I left work early and drove down to San Jose to see my dad on the golf course where my mom told me he would be. By the time I got there, he was on the ninth hole.
“Dad,” I yelled. With the bright sun overhead, he squinted when he looked my way.
“Marin, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?” He approached concerned and since he was my daddy, I started to cry.
“No, Dad,” I sobbed. “I need your help. I really messed up.”
“What happened?” he asked. My tears went from a light mist to a humiliating down pour. It was the first time I had cried since the night everything went to shit. He rubbed my back while his golf buddies stared. I willed myself to stop, but I couldn’t control it.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I said through my tears. He called to his friends that he had to leave, then took me inside the clubhouse for a drink.
Finally, my tears ceased and he asked me again what was going on. I told him everything, the truth about Chad, the book Unspoken, the scheme I came up with, how I fooled James, how David fooled Rachel, and how I had made a fool of everyone, me being the biggest fool of all. He listened carefully and even though I knew he was appalled at most of the things I told him, he was kind enough to keep it hidden.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.” I stared into his hazel eyes that mirrored my own and started to tear up again. “Please, Dad, please tell me the truth. I will never say a word or bring this up ever again.” He took a deep breath and agreed.
“Have you ever been unfaithful to Mom?”
I had done it, asked one of the most intimate and personal questions ever asked, especially of your own father. He and my mom had been married for almost forty years. The two of them were madly in love. It was the kind of love that inspired me to fall in love, get married, and be a couples therapist. On the other hand, he surely had plenty of opportunities and temptations. He was a good-looking, successful doctor and my mother wasn’t always easy to deal with. His answer could easily have been ‘yes.’
He gave me a thoughtful look and took my hand.
“No,” he said. “I can honestly say I’ve never been unfaithful to your mother.” I gasped as if my lungs had been restored with fresh air and shed a tear of relief.
“But the book says men will lie to their grave about indiscretions.” It was a little snide of me to say, but this was too important to take at face value.
“Have I ever lied to you?” He asked, and I tried to think back. I couldn’t remember him ever lying about something important. Even when I questioned him about Santa at only six, he told me the truth.
“No.” I said, and so I believed him.
When I returned home, I was emotionally drained, but my mind was racing. There was only one remedy that could help clear my head—a run. The air had cooled since the early afternoon and it was slightly overcast. My temperature stayed even while I ran, which helped maintain my stamina. It was perfect and allowed plenty of time to sort my thoughts about how I could fix things with Rachel and David, Holly, and particularly James.
My guilt worsened over those last few days. I felt compelled to reach out and explain myself to him even though he probably never wanted to see or speak to me again. Why did I care so much about James when Holly and Rachel meant so much more? I thought about how we first met and how kind he was to such a clumsy girl. I thought about the fireworks on the Fourth of July and how much my family liked him. I thought about our camping trip, and how I felt when I realized he wasn’t a bad guy. He was actually a good guy, a really good guy, and I had messed it all up. I was a fool. Not just because I was careless with him, but because I had been blind to him. Did I really give him up on the notion that he might cheat on me one day? It was no way to live, and it was definitely no way to love.
There, running underneath the clouds in the park, I felt it, a shift in my thinking, the realization that Andy was talking about. I tossed the ideas about infidelity out of my head and onto the pavement, leaving room for all the beliefs I held before. For the first time, I accepted my feelings for James. Real feelings. Strong feelings. Feelings I wanted to feel, beliefs I wanted to believe for a man I wanted to love. I wanted happily ever after, and I wanted it with him.
Then, like an act of God, raindrops fell from the sky. I looked up at the clouds. The rain covered my face and cooled me from the run. It was like a fresh shower to wash away all the horrible things from the past six months and break new ground for the future. Walking home in the downpour left me exhilarated by the release of my once heavy burden. I recalled the affirmation from the meditation book Holly gave me, the one I so proudly threw away, and thought it over and over until I got home. It was my found-again truth—I am a strong woman and I deserve love.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Make It Right
My soaked sneakers sloshed as I walked into my building. All I wanted was to take a warm shower and head to bed so I could start fresh in the morning. Instead, I walked inside and found Holly on the couch. I stood still, waiting for her face to show some indication of what she was thinking, feeling, doing, but it didn’t.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi.” She was distant, like she didn’t want to be in my apartment.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly and stood.
“How’s Rachel?”
“Not great, but she’ll be okay.”
I nodded and glanced at the floor, watching the water drip off of me, leaving a puddle at my feet. Tears began to surface as I felt a sudden urge to bare my soul. I looked into the eyes of my best friend, wondering if our friendship would ever be the same. The urge became uncontrollable and my tears burst free, startling Holly.
“Holly, I’m so sorry. I made a huge mistake. I know that now. If I could go back I would undo everything, but I can’t. I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, but please know I am so, so sorry.” I sobbe
d my pitiful apology and continued to cry for the moments she stood there staring at me. Then, she put her arms around me.
“I know, Marin. It’s okay,” she said in her sweet, loving voice. Her sympathy didn’t absolve my crimes, but did increase my guilt.
“No, it’s not. I strained our friendship. I ruined Rachel and David’s marriage, and . . . and . . . I lost James. I was so stubborn that I couldn’t see the truth right in front of me. How can I ever fix this?”
She gave a familiar long face, one I had seen many times over the years when I had any sadness in my life. A look that meant she understood and even felt my pain.
“I don’t know,” she said.
After a hot shower and a change into warm, dry clothes, I sat in the living room snuggled in a blanket near Holly and sipping green tea.
“Where’ve you been the past few days?” I asked.
“At our parent’s condo on the bay. We stayed there until yesterday.”
“Where’s Rachel?”
“She went home to talk to David.”
“What’s she going to do?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“I don’t know. One minute she loves him and the next she wants him dead.”
“Well, she’s angry.”
“Yeah, but I think she wants it to work. It’s not like they’re dating. They’re married.”
I nodded in agreement. They should try to work it out. It’s not going to be easy, but it was possible. I had seen couples overcome extramarital affairs and regain trust.
“That’s what you should do, Marin.” Holly said with the emphasis of a great idea.
“What?”
“You can counsel David and Rachel.”
“No,” I said, “I’m sure they don’t want anything to do with me, let alone giving me access to their private marital life.”
“Why not? If anyone can help them patch things up it’s you. I’m sure they’ll go for it. Especially if it were . . . pro bono.” She carefully snuck in that last part. I looked at her like she was crazy, then she lifted her brow and pursed her lips as if to say, do this or else.