Infidelity

by Stacey May Fowles

  Ronnie wasn’t speaking to him, but they hadn’t yet broken up. His wife could sense that something was wrong, but didn’t know anything for sure. It was a period of pause, and Charlie walked around numbly, helplessly, pouring the only energy he had into a novel of exceeding optimism, a manuscript that sketched out a nauseatingly happy ending that Charlie knew would never come to be.

  He would stay in his office chair until late became early, typing search terms like “divorce,” “infidelity,” “polyamory,” and “cervical cancer” into his browser. Communities of the betrayed popped up, with their sad, self-pitying digital consolations. Other searches revealed legal jargon, lavish tales of fulfilled lifestyles, and a mysterious world of impromptu vaginal bleeding. He read the numerous ways in which Ronnie could die, the endless statistics on how promising her chance was to live. How the surgery might save her. He wanted to call her and tell her to eat more kale, take vitamin C, and stop smoking after they had sex.

  He longed to tell his wife he needed to take care of Ronnie, that it didn’t matter to him that taking care of someone’s future wife, someone other than his own wife, was wrong.

  There were moments of clarity, usually caused by films or music or books, moments when he knew that he loved Ronnie, and that nothing should ever matter more than that love. But life wasn’t a song or a film or a movie. Life was Tamara and Noah and the very expensive proposition of a divorce and his inability to support himself and the ongoing disappointment that Charlie had become. Life was selling the house and splitting their things and splitting their friends. Life was the infidelity that would be the cause of him never seeing Noah again.

  He knew what people would say when they found out. They would claim Charlie was nothing more that the self-indulgent poet with a pretty little hairdresser on the side. The more sympathetic would believe that she was fine for a dalliance but certainly not good enough to marry, and that he should have learned to keep his secrets better. There was a part of Charlie that now believed this to be true.

  So in the office, deep into the night, Charlie sat in stasis. Waiting for a message that never came.

  Because love did not conquer all. Love just made it easier for all to conquer you.

  With Ronnie’s silence Charlie realized fully that he had gotten lazy. Staring into the evidence of his affair, reading and re-reading her messages over and over in the silence, he saw that he had collected a monolith of damning details that were nothing more than a password away. Where once he had purged his cellphone messages and emails daily and disposed of hotel and dinner receipts at the office, he’d become less concerned about getting caught and left markers of his infidelity in pants and coat pockets. This likely was a function of his recent willingness to get caught, the notion that perhaps things would be easier if he was simply ejected from his life rather than summoning the strength to leave it.

  And while his overall concern over being discovered by these paper reminders decreased, his ability to lie had improved. Each suspect artifact became easier and easier to explain away. He had booked a hotel in the afternoon to find some space to write. He had gone to dinner with a promising young writer to win favour with the faculty for future gigs. He’d bought flowers for a beleaguered colleague whose cat had just succumbed to feline leukemia. The lies got better and more complicated. They just came out of his mouth like fluid fiction, one after another, sometimes about things that weren’t even necessary to lie about. It became a game, and as time progressed he was more than sure he would never be caught.

  Charlie was raised to feel like philanderers always got busted at some point, that discovery was inevitable, but as months progressed and he shamelessly touched the small of Ronnie’s back in public, shamelessly kissed her fingertips over dinner, had her in innumerable hotel rooms and signed for their room service naked, he began to imagine that discovery was not only impossible, but that no one truly cared enough about his tiny little life to out him for indiscretion.

  The truth was that betrayal was only ever discovered when those involved wanted it to be revealed. People only tell lies that other people want to live in. In fact, he concluded, liars were generous because they created a comfortable space in which the deluded happily chose to live.

  “Honey, is there something wrong? You seem distant,” Tamara asked one night, her voice a mixture of concern and suspicion, as they sat in from of the television.

  “It’s nothing. I’m just struggling with the book,” Charlie lied.

  “Do I tell you enough that I’m proud of you?”

  Tamara was deluded. Comfortable and deluded, and he would construct a world of untruths around her to keep her safe. He would lie until she decided it was no longer comfortable for her to rely on that safety.

  ( CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE )

  Tamara came into the salon on a Wednesday afternoon. Ronnie had no idea who she was, nothing more than a new client as she sat down in Ronnie’s chair and asked for “not too much off.”

  It was the start of the Christmas shopping season, which made the streets pedestrian heavy and the salon endlessly busy. Ronnie was distracted and flustered and didn’t give the woman a second thought as she stared intensely at her in the mirror.

  Ronnie had never seen pictures of Tamara, even though she had scoured the Internet for an image to compare herself to. She had even asked Charlie for a photo and he had refused.

  “So what are we doing today?” Ronnie asked, her stock haircut question.

  “We’re going to talk about why you’re fucking my husband,” was Tamara’s reply.

  Sarah had finally called Tamara, one evening when she had had one Chardonnay too many, when she was bored, seated at her kitchen table in her lonely one-bedroom apartment with her cat named Mittens. She knew Charlie was out, doing a reading at the library, and the truth was she was tired of him having two when she couldn’t even have one.

  The declaration was direct and made with no attempt to soften the blow. Sarah was the kind of person who felt great joy in exposing people’s moral failings, and she was righteous about the delivery. She of course was met with denial, anger, shock, and then misery.

  Noah clung to Tamara’s waist and screamed nonsensical sentences up at her as the tears came, but Sarah didn’t relent.

  “I’ve even heard them. Do you understand what I mean? I’ve heard them.”

  “Yes, Sarah. Thank you. I understand.”

  Sarah cared little for how Tamara might feel about this piece of information, cared little about the fact that Tamara’s stomach dropped and she was consumed by a weakness that forced her to hang onto the doorframe next to the phone. She felt like she may vomit, but Sarah just kept talking, outlining her personal opinions on the sin of infidelity.

  “Yes, Sarah, I understand. I understand. Thank you for calling,” Tamara said numbly, hanging up the phone while Sarah was mid-sentence.

  She proceeded to wander around their home, attempting to find any evidence to back up Sarah’s claims. Sarah had provided only a name.

  Veronica.

  Ronnie.

  Every pocket was picked through, every closet, and drawer emptied in a frantic tour around their home. After rummaging through Charlie’s desk she found Veronica Kline’s business card.

  Where was Charlie?

  He said he was in a meeting.

  He said he was running errands.

  He said he was working with a student.

  He said he was on a roll with the new novel.

  He said. He said. He said.

  A fucking hairdresser.

  Noah, underfoot, knew something was wrong. He began shrieking, inconsolable, pounding his fists on his thighs. Tamara could do nothing, only stare at the card, reading it over and over again as if to confirm it was real.

  Veronica Kline. A simple girl. A hairdresser. Subject of a new novel. The novel he hadn’t let her read.

>   He had always let her read. She was his first reader. His fiercest critic. Why hadn’t she seen a single page of this one?

  She called the following morning to make an appointment for a cut and colour.

  Ronnie stood frozen, taking in the accusation with disbelief, despite the fact that she had prepared endlessly for this moment. That it was inevitable.

  “I’m sorry?” she asked, as if it had escaped her that she was indeed having an affair. Or had been having an affair. She wasn’t really sure at this point.

  “Let me be as clear as possible. You’re going to cut my hair and colour my hair and tell me all about your relationship with my husband. I’ll pay you and tip you and then I’ll go home and kick him out.”

  Amazingly, Ronnie began combing out Tamara’s hair. Before she replied she took the time to thoroughly survey the woman she had been so jealous of for so many months. Shaking slightly, her cheeks flushed, Ronnie parted Tamara’s damp hair down the centre and surveyed the grey. She took indirect glances at the crinkled folds around her eyes, the thickness around her waistline, the fading of the fabric of her clothes.

  A mother. Noah’s mother. A mother she could never be.

  Then she looked at her longingly in the mirror and tried to understand why this woman, as unremarkable as she seemed, had the capacity to make Charlie stay for so long. Why this woman had existed as a perceived barrier to her happiness.

  Ronnie knew she suddenly had the power to tell her everything, to have Tamara eject him into a life that could only lead to her. To unburden herself of all of it and move on if she wanted to. This thought terrified her, the power she suddenly wielded.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Please don’t be patronizing. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Tell me about your relationship with my husband.”

  Ronnie knew there was little point in lying. It was over.

  “I went to his office. I tried to sleep with him,” she said slowly, carefully combing, not making eye contact.

  Tamara, however, stared as Ronnie began to strategically part her hair. She noticed that Ronnie was shaking slightly as she reached for her scissors out of her belt.

  “Don’t worry. While I think it’s disgusting that you’d try to fuck a married man, that you’d fuck a married man, I’m not really all that interested in being angry at you. You have no responsibility toward my family. What the fuck would you care?”

  “I do care.”

  Tamara laughed loudly at this idea. “Please. Spare me. And do your job. I’m paying you.”

  Despite the rudeness of Tamara’s direction, Ronnie knew she would be fine if only she could get to the cutting. She had to get to the cutting. The cutting always made her feel better. It was the ability to control something so minor, yet something that people vainly valued so much.

  But this time she was confused by who had control.

  Tamara continued when it was evident Ronnie had no plans to reply. “Whether or not you care is completely irrelevant to me. But I am curious; what would possess you to go and try to fuck someone’s husband? Why would you think that was a good idea? I’m really interested to know, given that I’ve always wondered what kind of woman would do such a thing.”

  Tamara seemed oddly composed. It was this fact that most unnerved Ronnie, and she finally started cutting to steady herself.

  “I thought I loved him,” she finally said after a dozen excruciating snips.

  “Did you, now?”

  “But he told me he loved you. And Noah. And he couldn’t.”

  Tamara flinched at the sound of her son’s name, but then managed to regain her composure. “I don’t believe you. While it’s sweet that you’d try to cover for him, I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. That’s what happened.”

  The lies had always come so easily.

  “You know it doesn’t actually matter what you say at this point because no matter what he’s packing his bags tonight. He doesn’t know it yet but he is. So you might as well unburden yourself.”

  “There’s nothing to unburden.”

  “Oh dear god, please. Don’t waste my fucking time. You owe me at least that. If you owe me anything you owe me that.”

  “I wanted him. He wanted you. That’s it.”

  “Maybe I should get my hair cut and coloured just like yours,” Tamara said.

  It was then she started crying, her face strained from the effort to keep it in.

  “Maybe I should be twenty years younger. Just like you. What are you, twenty-three? Twenty-four?”

  “I’m thirty-five,” Ronnie responded weakly.

  “Oh god, he can’t even cheat on me with someone too young for him. For fuck’s sake.”

  Ronnie replaced the scissors on the ledge next to the mirror. For a moment she considered putting her hands on Tamara’s shoulders but resisted.

  “Are you married?”

  “Engaged.”

  “Does your fiancé know you tried to fuck my husband? Excuse me. That you fucked my husband? That you fucked my husband over and over and over again?”

  Tamara’s volume had increased and she was attracting Lisa’s attention, who was doing a cut a few chairs over. Lisa shot Ronnie an “are you okay” look in the mirror.

  Ronnie nodded feebly in Lisa’s direction.

  “No, he doesn’t. Know. That I tried to.”

  Lisa gave the look that acknowledged she knew what was going on. She took a step forward, hesitated, and then took a step back.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. You’re a coward just like my husband. Why aren’t you cutting?”

  “I’m sorry but I think you should go,” she said, putting her hands down firmly at her sides.

  “Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?”

  “I can get someone else here to cut your hair if you like. Lisa would be happy to help you.”

  Lisa looked up again at the sound of her own name.

  “Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?” Louder this time.

  “Please—”

  “Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?”

  Finally Lisa interjected. “Listen, lady. I think my friend here asked you to leave.”

  “I don’t think this concerns you, unless you’re having an affair with my husband as well. Which could totally be possible,” Tamara responded, still articulate enough that it seemed impossible. Lisa, with all her bravado, went suddenly pale, unable to properly respond.

  Suddenly Ronnie exploded. “Yes, yes. Yes, I fucked your husband. Please just go.”

  The other patrons turned to stare, without empathy, only with disdain.

  “Thank you. You should offer your fiancé the same courtesy you just offered me.” With her hair damp and partially cut, Tamara picked up her coat and bag and went home to kick Charlie out.

  ( CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR )

  A toothpaste-blue open-backed gown and a pasty white shower cap for her hair. Aaron in a paper face mask, clutching her limp hand apologetically.

  She had consoled him, told him it would be okay, she would be okay, but he had cried regardless, looking haggard under the unforgiving fluorescents.

  While he waited he ate from the vending machine and masochistically wandered through maternity.

  “Veronica. I’m going to need you to count backward from one hundred for me, okay?” the pretty blonde nurse with the IV said sweetly as the others prepared below.

  One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . .

  Everything was.

  Ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three . . .

  And then it wasn’t.

  Ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety . . .

  It was. Then it wasn’t.

  “Veronica?”

&nbs
p; It was. And then it was gone.

  ( CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE )

  People who commit infidelity all seem to end up in the same shitty hotel room. There’s no room service and the concierge charges you a “glass fee” when you bring your own wine in from the Wine Rack on Wellesley. You have to sign a form promising you’re not going to smoke, and when you’ve had enough of that bottle of wine, you contemplate paying the $300 cleaning fee just to take a few hauls off a Marlboro. You remember how you used to tell her not to smoke, but now you no longer care, because it feels like she no longer cares about you. You no longer care about yourself.

  The shitty hotel is always in a bad neighbourhood and it is always grossly overpriced. It is definitely across the street from a park where people deal drugs and fuck for money.

  The shitty hotel room is not like the grossly overpriced beautiful hotel rooms you made love to her in. There is no room service menu here and certainly no adjacent spa. No terry cloth bathrobes that slip from her shoulder as she raises her glass of champagne or sucks on a strawberry.

  Instead there are crack whores on the street outside and screaming white trash children in the fluorescent-lit “dining lounge.” There is a paper bag of bad takeout on the chipped coffee table. You watch the drug deals from the window. You have twenty-two channels and there is no pay-per-view. There is certainly no her. She is “giving you some time and space to think about things” because she knows that your wife has figured things out. The fact that your wife has figured things out has rendered you immediately unattractive.

  She knows that really you’re figuring out a way to get back to your wife. You’re ashamed of this, but it’s the truth. You wanted them both the way you wanted them, and you hate yourself for this.

  And your wife does not call you, nor does she care where you have gone. There are no emails, no text messages, no smoke signals. She came home and gave you twenty minutes to pack a meagre bag without any indication of when she will let you come back, if at all. She didn’t speak. She just hovered over you while you packed, made sure you didn’t take anything that wasn’t rightfully yours.