Infidelity

by Stacey May Fowles

  She decided to invite Tamara and Charlie to a dinner party at her home one Friday evening. There were other guests, various writers and professors picked at random, merely characters in the play she sought to direct, the one where Charlie slipped up and Sarah could publicly reveal his indiscretions.

  It was for this reason Charlie was reluctant to attend, but Tamara was excited to socialize with colleagues of his she hadn’t met. “I like being part of your work,” she said, smiling affectionately.

  Charlie cringed at this, feeling she was clinging to an act they were no longer any good at. “But these people are so boring.”

  “Please, Charlie. I never get to hang out with adults. I’m always with Noah.”

  Generally Charlie would have been terrified by a scenario like this, given Sarah’s accusatory phone call and her consistent penchant for meddling, but lately he felt a lack of concern as he openly sent emails and took phone calls from Ronnie at his end of the couch.

  As Tamara got dressed that evening, carefully doing her makeup and hair in the upstairs bathroom, Charlie was reminded of how beautiful she was, remembered how in those early days together she was the most stunning girl he had ever seen. How he had been amazed that for even one moment she had wanted him that night at the campus bar, that she had taken care of him, taken pride in being the writer’s understanding girlfriend.

  “I imagine I’ll write a whole book.”

  As he watched her run a brush through her hair he realized he had never written that book he promised her, wondered how things had so unravelled, how he had forgotten to look at her this way. The love he felt for her was deep in his bones, the kind that never goes away no matter how many hours are spent with someone else in a paid-for room.

  “You look lovely,” he said from the doorway.

  She half-smiled in a way reserved for insecure girls. “Thank you, Charlie.”

  They left Noah at home with Amanda and barely spoke on the cab ride over to Sarah’s apartment. Their weeks of bitter awkwardness and resentment had descended into silence, both of them deciding that it was simply better not to speak than to inevitably get into an argument.

  Regardless, when they arrived for dinner, Tamara fell easily into her old role of the comically patronizing writer’s wife, a routine the academics and their wives and husbands greeted with consistent wine-soaked laughter.

  “Charlie wouldn’t know how to drive a car let alone fix one,” Tamara said lightly as Sarah refilled her wineglass.

  “I imagine the poet mechanic could be a lucrative gig, Charlie,” one dinner companion offered. “You should really look into it if the old writing gambit doesn’t pay off.”

  He smiled at the painfully awful jab, realizing his writing was a gambit that didn’t pay much of anything.

  “So Tamara, what do you do with yourself while your husband is gallivanting around?” Sarah asked abruptly.

  “I keep busy. Although it has been hard with him doing all these events lately.”

  “Events? Really? Charlie, you hadn’t mentioned.”

  He shifted, uncomfortable for a moment. “Nothing special, just the usual,” he said, searching his mind for a lie.

  Tamara thankfully interjected. “Such is the life of a writer’s wife, I suppose. You know what you sign up for,” she said, giving her most sparkling smile. Another guest offered a toast to writer’s wives and husbands, and everyone but Sarah smilingly raised a glass.

  For the rest of the meal—largely jovial with light conversation and a few too many drinks—Sarah stared severely at Charlie from across the table, trying desperately and unsuccessfully to find a chink in his armour. To everyone else Tamara and Charlie were the perfect couple; him the bumbling genius and her his devoted caretaker.

  The evening wound down and Sarah called Charlie and Tamara a cab, lingering with them in the front hall as they put on their shoes and waited for it to arrive.

  “It was really nice to see you, Charlie,” Sarah said. “Considering we don’t see much of you at the university anymore. I know you’re really missed by the students.”

  Tamara looked genuinely confused. “But I thought you were spending a lot of time with them lately?”

  There was a moment of brief discomfort, and Sarah assumed she had finally found an opportunity to provoke a confession, but with Charlie the lies never ceased. “Indeed I am. Mostly off-site though. It gets a bit oppressive at the university. The students work better where they feel comfortable.”

  Tamara smiled. “See? I knew you’d be great at this, Charlie.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek, a gesture that warmed him and made him temporarily forget that he had fallen in love with anyone but her.

  The cab arrived and they sat quietly in the back as it drove them home. Tamara casually unclipped her long wavy hair from its shiny French twist and let it fall to her shoulders. She turned to Charlie slowly, staring at him in silent adoration for a few moments.

  “You know, Charlie, you’re a wonderful father. Please don’t ever forget that.”

  He was thankful she had said it, needing the reminder in the mess he had created.

  “It’s just that I miss this. I miss you,” she said, placing her hand on his knee.

  Charlie waited for the guilt but it never came.

  “Me too,” he said, squeezing her hand.

  ( CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE )

  Ronnie didn’t know what the word ennui meant before she met Charlie. More importantly, she didn’t know she was experiencing it before she met Charlie.

  One day at the salon a teenage boy in a Smiths T-shirt and a pair of scuffed Converse All-Stars came in for a cut. His hair was long and soft, the kind of hair that teenage boys have because they fail to wash it regularly and never style it. It was light and feathery and beautiful, a sort of non-colour, a uniform grey-brown. He collapsed heavily in her chair and she found herself running her fingers through it lovingly, carefully concealing this love from him as he stared severely at her in the mirror.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” was the first thing he said. The question shook her from wherever she was.

  “What do you mean?” she said, pulling her fingers quickly from his scalp.

  “You don’t look well. You look sick.”

  In trying to avert his gaze Ronnie noticed his face, naïve yet knowing. Perfect.

  “No. I’m fine. What are we doing today?”

  “Cut it all off,” he replied emphatically.

  Ronnie’s eyes widened. She couldn’t bear the thought of cutting off his hair. It was beautiful. There was a myth she couldn’t remember, maybe a Bible story, about hair and power, this beautiful boy with his beautiful, powerful hair she couldn’t bear to cut off.

  Cutting hair had become increasingly difficult while the doctors were cutting at her. She couldn’t suffer the loss of anything else. And his hair between her fingers was perfect and worthy of being saved.

  “Are you sure?” she said, lifting her scissors dramatically from her belt.

  “I need you to cut her out of it. I hate her.”

  Only teenagers can get away with saying things like that to strangers.

  He was heartbroken. Of course. She should have known. His misery and beauty, his suffering palpable. People who were heartbroken always had that same distinguishing glow, as if they were about to simultaneously hug and destroy everything around them.

  Ronnie uncharacteristically put her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t need to do that. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  “She kissed my best friend.”

  Ronnie almost laughed at this; the idea that a kiss could bring this boy so much despair, considering all of the perverse, secret things she’d done. She stifled the impulse, nodding seriously, empathetically.

  “Please. Just cut.”

  There was a pause, an acknowledgement, and withou
t further question Ronnie cut. The feel of his hair falling around her fingers was exquisite. His miserable, accusing stare exquisite.

  After many minutes of silence between them, while Ronnie was working, the boy finally spoke. “Why would someone do that to someone else? Betray them like that?”

  The question was actually one she’d had many hours to ponder, so she answered quickly. “Maybe because they need something else. Something different. Something more.”

  “But I gave her everything she could ever want.”

  “Nobody can give someone else everything they want,” Ronnie said coldly, focusing on cutting.

  “Then what’s the point? If you can’t give someone everything, then why bother trying to be in a relationship? Why bother trying to be in a relationship with anyone?”

  “I think you just need to find someone who is happy enough with ‘almost enough.’”

  “Someone who wants mediocre?”

  “Yeah, there’s tons of those people. They’re everywhere. Go ahead and let the people who aren’t satisfied destroy each other with their wanting.”

  She couldn’t believe she was saying all this to a seventeen-year-old boy. Regardless, he seemed pleased.

  “No one’s ever said that to me before. Everyone always says you’ll find someone who’s right for you eventually.”

  “Well, everyone is wrong. Or lying.”

  The hair fell from his head and floated around them like confetti. With each cut the boy’s face became exponentially more beautiful. He became lighter.

  “Thanks for not lying to me. You’re the only person who hasn’t lied to me. You’re the only person who hasn’t told me that everything is going to be okay.”

  “Because it’s not going to be okay. But it’s going to be beautiful anyway.”

  The boy’s hair was gone. She ran her palm across his soft, round head and sighed dramatically, watching his eyes fill with tears.

  “I really loved her, you know.”

  There was nothing she could say, though he didn’t really expect anything further. He tipped her five dollars and skulked off the chair, his scuffed sneakers stepping into the pile of hair that surrounded them.

  ( CHAPTER FORTY-SIX )

  “You understand what this means, Veronica?”

  “It means I’m dying?”

  “No, sweetheart, we’re far from that. We’re so far from that.”

  Ronnie’s doctor always called her sweetheart. Being called sweetheart by someone in rubber gloves was almost intolerable. Receiving sweetness from someone who only ever touched you with a thin film of latex between you and them was disingenuous.

  “I was kidding.”

  “What a strange sense of humour you have.”

  “Well, what does it mean, then?”

  It meant another day, another biopsy. It meant more tests. It meant cancer, that word that had been rattling around in her head for months, for years. It meant, inevitably, surgery. It meant hysterectomy.

  From the Greek, hystera, meaning “womb.”

  From the Greek, ektomia, meaning “a cutting out of.”

  The surgical removal of the uterus.

  May be total or partial.

  Removal renders the patient unable to bear children.

  A cutting out of.

  The parts that were discarded.

  At the age of thirty-five. It means telling Aaron they’ll never have a baby.

  It means being disappointing. Failing again.

  They had carved so much out of her cervix in the last year she was surprised there was anything left of it.

  “It could mean more treatment. Or it could mean surgery. Either way, we’re going to do our very best to ensure you get the best care.”

  Despite the reassurances, Ronnie was clear on the metaphor; a woman so unsure of her ability to be good at being a woman gets the part of her that makes her a woman removed.

  Can’t get pregnant, can’t bake a casserole, can’t have a uterus.

  The thing that surprised Ronnie was that regardless of how much they cut and craved and burned away, her lust never left her. Despite the fact that she had parted her thighs repeatedly for cold metal instruments beneath the flicker of fluorescents, that she had felt the scrape and cramp of every invasive test, she still longed for Charlie inside her. His fingers, his tongue. She felt as if he had a capacity to heal her, that he could blot out all the damage with fingertips and mouth, that he could swallow the cancer, will it away with his hot breath. Even when she was sore from procedures, even when they told her that sex was out of the question.

  When it came to the reality of what would certainly be surgery, Charlie was falling apart more than she was. He tried to hold it close, but his grief spilled out of him in bars, restaurants, and hotel rooms. Ronnie would hold him tight to her while he cried, their naked limbs tangled up, clinging in their desperation. There were great stretches where Charlie had the ability to pretend things would be okay. His anxiety had given way to despair and he had accepted it readily. Despair was so much easier to tolerate than anxiety. The depression was a welcome wave, flattening the edges of neurosis out so his relationship with the world became fuzzy at best.

  “Love grows in me like a tumour, Charlie.”

  “Stop that. Stop. Stop. Stop. What an awful thing to say,” he would cry, clasping his hand over his ears like a petulant child.

  “I was kidding.”

  “You need to stop kidding. And smoking. I hate watching you smoke. I just think about you dying. You need to eat better. No more steaks. No more martinis.”

  “How optimistic of you, Charlie. Way to be a trooper.”

  “Do you always have to make a fucking joke? This is serious.”

  “What else am I supposed to do? Lie down and die?” Ronnie lit another cigarette from the one she was smoking, just to spite him.

  Charlie couldn’t go to the hospital with Ronnie, and this fact alone destroyed him. He wanted to hold her hand while they took tiny pieces of her and put them in tiny vials with her name scrawled on them to be sent to be tested. He wanted to be there when they finally cut her open. But that was Aaron’s job, and Aaron was stoic. Aaron was good at that sort of thing. He was the kind of boy you took home to your mother when you wanted to prove to her that you hadn’t fucked up your life. Charlie was fucking up both of their lives and loving it. Charlie was too far gone and Ronnie knew it.

  “Charlie, do you ever think that we are home wreckers?”

  “There has to be a home to wreck for that, doesn’t there?”

  “You have a home. You have a home with Noah.”

  “Some days I’m not entirely convinced that Noah knows who I am.”

  ( CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN )

  Ronnie began lying about things she didn’t even need to lie about.

  She’d lie about what she had for lunch.

  She’d lie about the movie she watched.

  She’d lie about her clients at work.

  She became so skilled at it that each lie she uttered fell out easily, unquestioned.

  She pushed and pushed and pushed at Aaron, her deception everywhere, waiting for it to click in his brain. But it never did.

  And because Aaron never asked any questions, never rummaged through her things, never called to check up on her, Ronnie grew to loathe him. The fact that she was having an affair and Aaron had no suspicions made her feel like he didn’t care, and in turn his lack of care became a good way for her to justify the affair.

  “The fact that he doesn’t seem to notice just proves that he doesn’t really love you,” Charlie said during one of their weekday pints.

  “Has Tamara noticed?”

  “That’s different. Married people are different. Things become comfortable and you don’t worry anymore.” Charlie knew this was a lie, given that Tamara h
ad expressed that she missed him regardless of not actually knowing where he had gone.

  “So your reasoning is that Tamara loves you because she’s complacent?”

  “No. She trusts me. It’s almost twenty years of trust.”

  “That certainly doesn’t make me feel any better about what we’re doing, Charlie.”

  “What we’re doing is necessary. I’m happy when I’m with you. I’m alive when I’m with you. I need to be with you.”

  “God, you can be so dramatic.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “You just need attention. That’s why you surround yourself with pretty young things.”

  “Listen, Ronnie, you’re not some dewy-eyed undergrad who’s cooing at me that she loves my work. Have you even read my work?”

  “Will you be angry if I say no?”

  “Of course not. I love you because you haven’t. I find it refreshing. I find it real. You’re real.”

  Ronnie laughed.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “You,” she answered. “You’re . . . I don’t know.”

  “In love?”

  “Yes. That.”

  Charlie and Ronnie would send each other messages, inventing more and more ways to see each other. Events and dinners, everything clandestine, everything far enough off the grid that they wouldn’t get caught. His email account full, her phone messages deleted.

  For Ronnie, there were great, fleeting moments of clarity. She would see herself leaving Aaron—filmic moments that involved her running through a cool evening without a coat, running to Charlie’s front door, exclaiming, “I’ve left him.” And always Charlie would be pleased. He would pull her inside and kiss her hard on the mouth, pulling her clothes from her body right there in the front hall, groping at her like an impatient child.

  And caught in all this wanting, Ronnie made a list, written out on a steno pad in the early evening while Aaron was at the gym, while the dog lay at her feet, dreaming of chasing animals through the park.