by Debra Kent
“Oh-ho! What have we here?” Diana moved into the room with the authority of a headmistress. A corrosive smile spread across her face. A key dangled from her hand. Eddie knelt by the window, pretending to be fussing with the ficus tree.
“You can tell lover boy he needn’t bother,” she said, gesturing toward Eddie. “I know what you’re up to and it sure ain’t gardening.” As her eyes scanned me, I felt as if I was undergoing an MRI. I’ve never felt more exposed. I could have responded with rage—this woman had no business breaking into my office—but I was too consumed by shame and panic to take the offensive. I managed a feeble, “What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?”
“Now, this is rich.” Diana moved closer, her eyes fixed on me. “Your hair’s a mess, your lipstick is smeared across your face, and you’re asking me what the hell I’m doing? You make me sick.”
“Screw you, Diana,” Eddie hissed.
“Be my guest,” she retorted, not missing a beat. “But alas, I can see you’re already taken.” She glanced at his wedding band. “Twice taken, in fact.” Diana walked to my desk and picked up a manila folder. “For your information, this is what I came for. Your monthly report. You know today’s the deadline.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I knocked and knocked but no one answered. I figured you were out and let myself in. I didn’t think you’d mind. I didn’t realize I’d be … interrupting.” She looked at Eddie, letting her eyes linger on his zipper. A tiny smile curled at the corners of her mouth. There was nothing to see. Any evidence of Eddy’s desire had faded the moment we heard her open the door.
Diana started toward the door, then stopped. “By the way, did Roger mention that I’m taking him to lunch next week?”
I felt my stomach flip-flop. I said nothing.
“I’m really looking forward to it. We have so much catching up to do.” She giggled. “Oh, baby, don’t look so worried. It gives you wrinkles, you know.” The door closed behind her. Eddie tried to put his arms around me but I stepped away from his embrace. I couldn’t touch him. I wanted to throw up. “Don’t let that bitch get to you.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Don’t you realize what’s happening here? She’s out to destroy my marriage!”
“And what if she does?” Eddie looked at me. Then, softly, “It could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you … to us.”
’Til next time,
April l0
This morning at breakfast Roger violated the tacit rules of our cold war and actually initiated a conversation. I was hopeful until I realized that the topic was Diana Pierce. I had just dipped my spoon into a bowl of corn flakes when he mentioned his upcoming lunch. “Diana says she has something important to tell me,” he said, eyes on the sports section. “Something about the office. Something big. Have any idea what she’s referring to?”
What could I possibly say? Sure, Roger. She wants to tell you all about the day she broke into my office and found me with the office gardener. Oh, and the fact that my lipstick was smeared all over my face.
“I’m not sure …” I began, my appetite quickly draining away. Incapable of swallowing even a spoonful of cereal, I began clearing the table. If there was ever a time to broach the subject, this was it. Petey was still asleep and my first appointment wasn’t until 1 P.M. I wasn’t ready to confess any wrongdoing, but if Roger was going to hear about Eddie, I wanted him to hear it from me first.
“I have a theory, though. There’s this guy in the office. I think he has the hots for me.” I moved quickly around the kitchen, keeping my back to Roger as I spoke. “Diana—who’s not my biggest fan, if you haven’t already figured that out, by the way—has it in her head that I’m having an affair with this guy. A gardener, for Christ’s sake. Can you believe that? You’d think Diana would have a better imagination than that!” I forced a laugh. I was talking too much, gesturing too wildly.
The more I talked, the more I began to believe my own story, and this belief enabled me to continue in earnest. It was a testament to the profound power of human denial. In that tiny pause between “I don’t know” and “I have a theory,” I managed to convince myself that Eddie was nothing more than a dumb lug with a schoolboy crush, a pest, a triviality. Denial allows teenagers to move through all nine months of pregnancy and never acknowledge that they are carrying a baby. It’s probably what keeps O.J. Simpson sane. Bolstered by denial, I continued: “He’s always coming around to water my plants. They’re practically dead from all the water they’re getting. The guy has an IQ of 40! Vinnie, Tony, whatever his name is.”
“Eddie.”
“What?” I was stunned.
“I believe his name is Eddie.” Roger was no longer reading the sports section. He pushed his plate away and folded his arms across his chest.
“How do you know his name?” I tried not to stammer but my face flushed with blood and heat.
Roger let out a humorless chuckle. “I know more than you realize.”
’Til next time,
April 17
Suddenly everything seemed to move in slow motion. How could Roger know about Eddie? Did I whisper his name in my sleep? Had Diana revealed her suspicions? Was my husband, a man who virtually sleepwalks through our marriage, more aware than I realized?
“Eddie’s the guy who called you a while back. About the plants.”
“Huh?” I tried to appear clueless. Of course I knew what Roger was referring to. Eddie had called me at home, at night, under the pretext of choosing plants for the office—a ridiculous ruse. Roger had picked up the phone first and seemed to suspect nothing. Now I checked his face for any hint of awareness. It was hard to tell.
“Sure. You remember. He called about plants. At night.”
“I guess. I really don’t remember.” I shrugged and reached for the last plate in the dishwasher. It clattered to the floor and broke into three neat pieces, like a preschooler’s puzzle. I bent to pick it up and cut myself on an edge.
“Nervous?”
Now I knew Roger suspected something. Damn him—he was playing with me. I pretended not to hear. Some therapist. The woman who urges communication can’t even talk honestly with her own husband. I couldn’t. I knew that speaking the truth now could lead to the rapid dissolution of my marriage, and as miserable as I may be, I’m not prepared to be single.
Neither is Roger. He could have pursued it but instead he let the subject drop. He picked up the newspaper and poured himself another cup of coffee. “I’ll be home late tonight,” he said. “Student conferences.” My mind leaped to the image of Roger and Alyssa outside the Learning Attic, her hands adjusting his scarf. And their stupid smiling faces.
Roger had one-upped me. He knew I was in no position to say a word about her. If Roger was the blackened kettle, I was most certainly the pot. “Should I keep dinner warm for you?” I asked, shamed and contrite. In context, the question made a mockery of a real marriage.
“Don’t bother. I’ll grab something on the way home.” That’s precisely what I was afraid of.
I feel like I’m in a kind of purgatory, a limbo land where I have neither the affections of my husband nor a full-fledged relationship with a lover. I have never felt more completely alone. Next week is Roger’s lunch with Diana. I’m scared.
’Til next time,
April 24
It has been forty-eight hours since Roger had lunch with Diana, and I have absolutely no idea what transpired. Based on Roger’s behavior, however, I fear that Diana has told him everything she knows about Eddie and me. Roger has been silent as a monk. When I walk into a room, he leaves. When I sit down at the table, he clears his plate. When I ask a question, he responds as minimally as possible; instead of speaking he nods or gestures or grunts. He wasn’t in bed when I went to sleep, nor was he there when I woke up. I found him in the study last night, whispering conspiratorially into the phone. I had to know who he was talking to. Later that night I hit the redial button on the cordless phone. A young woman picked up. I heard
myself say, “Is Alyssa there?”
“That’s me,” she answered perkily. “Who’s this?”
I felt my chest clench. I fumbled for a response then said, idiotically, “Sorry. Wrong number.” I pushed the flash button to disconnect the line, then stood there in the dark, phone in hand, shaking.
So why aren’t I rejoicing? Isn’t this exactly what I’d wanted, a reason to leave my cold-as-a-fish husband and leap into Eddie’s eager arms? If this were a soap opera, that’s exactly what I’d be doing now. I’d hop in my car, call Eddie from the highway on my cell phone, and arrange to meet him at a motel, where we’d screw our brains out. He leaves Patty, I leave Roger, and we live happily ever after. But this isn’t a soap opera. It’s my very real life. I’m too introspective, too guilt ridden to dispose of my marriage like a used coffee filter. To what extent am I responsible for whatever may be going on between Roger and Alyssa? Do I really want to start over with someone new? (It gives me a headache just imagining what it would be like to establish the kind of familiarity I have with Roger. Do I really want to pick up Eddie’s dirty underwear? Do I really want him to see my stretch marks?) What if the only thing attracting me to Eddie is the fact that he’s attracted to me at a time when I’m most vulnerable? Could I really spend the rest of my life (or even a year) with a man who would abandon a wife and three young daughters? Even more painful to contemplate: What if he has no intention of leaving them? And why can’t I forget the taste of Eddie’s mouth, the fleeting sensation of his body sinking into mine on the couch?
As I replayed that scene in my head this morning, my secretary buzzed me on the intercom. “There’s a Mrs. DeLuca here to see you. She says it’s important.” I opened the door to find a tiny, scowling woman in my waiting area. “Can I help you?” I asked.
“You don’t know me, but I know you,” she said, shaking a finger at me.
“Excuse me?” I was truly mystified. We get all sorts of borderline cases in our office, and I figured she was one of them.
I was wrong. This was no borderline. It was Eddie’s mother-in-law! She pointed an arthritic finger at me and spoke in a voice loud enough for everyone in the office to hear: “Leave my daughter’s husband alone!”
She was standing in the anteroom to my office, four feet of finger-wagging fury. Eddie’s mother-in-law.
“I’m telling you,” she growled, “you got no business bothering with a married man.” She clutched a black vinyl purse in one hand and pointed with the other. “And I ain’t leaving until you promise me, missy. Hands off.”
I felt a rapid flush rise from neck to scalp as I searched for an appropriate response.
“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping to appear confused yet kindly. “Do I know you?” The woman cocked her head, arched an eyebrow, and hissed: “No. But I know all about you. Oh-ho, I sure do. I know what you’re trying to do to a good man.” She glared at me disdainfully. “A married man. A man with three little girls and a wife who loves him.” Now she was yelling at me. “But you’ll do it over my dead body. You hear me? OVER MY DEAD BODY!”
At this point I noticed that the office has come to a standstill. The secretaries and several of the social workers are watching intently. Gail, my secretary, gestured toward the phone and mouthed the words: “Should I call security?” I nodded my head and she began punching in the number. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I told her. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I heard the chime of the elevator and I’m relieved to see Mark, the building security guard. He looks at the woman, then at me, clearly confused. He’s obviously thinking: You call this a security threat? “Please escort this woman from the building.” He puts a gentle hand on her elbow and begins leading her toward the elevator. “Come this way, please,” he says. She will not go quietly, though. “Listen here, you slut! Stay away from my son-in-law! I’m warning you! Stay away!” I can still hear as the elevator descends. As I turn toward my office I see a figure leaning against the water fountain. It’s Diana, and she’s staring straight at me. Laughing.
That cow! Who else but Diana would be venal enough to call Eddie’s mother-in-law? I phone Eddie at work and tell him everything, sobbing into the receiver. “Jeez,” he whispers, momentarily stunned. But he doesn’t appear particularly worried that Patty might know about us. Right now he seems to care only about me. “Awww, honey,” he coos softly. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that. I’m so sorry.” After a pause, he says, “Listen, I’ve been saving this for later but maybe now’s a good time to tell you.” I stopped crying. “What?”
“I think I’ve got something on Diana that will shut her up once and for all. But I don’t think we should discuss it on the phone. Meet me at Jim Dandy’s tomorrow at five.”
’Til next time,
April 25
“STAY AWAY FROM MY SON-IN-LAW!” Mrs. DeLuca’s furious warning is clanging in my head as I make my way uptown to Jim Dandy’s. I will never forget the look of pure contempt on her face, the disgust. Nor can I forget the sight of Diana, self-satisfied and laughing as I trembled. As comptroller, Diana has records on every employee, even the contracted service workers like Eddie. She knew his last name—Bennedetto—and could easily have found his number in the phone book.
I feel such despair. How is it that other people manage to have these torrid and clandestine affairs while I can’t even manage a kiss, let alone a relationship, without everyone knowing about it? Who will be next to drop in unannounced—my minister? My sister Teresa? The gods must be conspiring against me.
Eddie was waiting outside Jim Dandy’s. He started to kiss me but I pulled away. (With my luck, my mother was shopping next door. Can anyone blame me for being paranoid?) He led me to a booth in the back room, a place normally reserved for the restaurant’s owners and friends. The maitre d’ greeted him warmly and bowed elegantly toward me. A young waiter made a tentative approach but Eddie waved him away. “Give us a few minutes alone.” The waiter retreated. Eddie leaned toward me and whispered: “Diana’s a thief.”
“Huh?”
“Listen. A buddy of mine happened to be at a party where Diana had gotten herself stewed. I mean, flat-out drunk. She decided she wanted to take him home and was blabbering about all kinds of nonsense. The next thing he knows, Diana pulls out her wallet and flashes these bills. He never saw so many hundreds. So he says, ‘How’d you get so rich?’ And she says, ‘Creative accounting,’ and starts laughing.”
“What happened next?” I asked, stunned.
“She threw up on his jacket.” Eddie howled. “Anyway, I nosed around her desk after hours on Wednesday and came across this.” He pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and waved it at me. A deposit slip. I stared at it blankly. “So?”
“It’s a dummy account. She’s scamming the center.” A triumphant smile spread across Eddie’s face and he thumped a fist on the deposit slip. “She’s as good as gone.” He pulled out an envelope with photocopies of records he “borrowed” from Diana’s office.
For the next twenty minutes, Eddie reconstructed Diana’s scheme. Apparently she had applied for state and corporate grants to cover a program in which AIDS patients get free and confidential treatment for depression. Because patients remain anonymous, she can construct as many fictitious clients as she pleases, bill the granting agency, then pocket the cash in a dummy account. Eddie called his brother, a tax lawyer, to test his theory. It checks out. Diana may have embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars or more from the Center.
“So what do we do now?” I felt thrilled and terrified.
“What do you think we do? We bust her.” Eddie slid around to my side of the booth and put his face close to mine. He clinked his beer bottle against my water glass. “To us,” he said, his eyes locked on mine.
I whispered, “To us.”
’Til next time,
May 15
This is how my day begins. The phone rings. I pick up. Roger, in another room, picks up simultaneously. I let him
answer first while I listen.
“Hullo?” he says.
“It’s me.” It’s Alyssa.
“Yeah?”
“Uh. I think I left my diaphragm in your van.”
“You what?” Long silence. “Jesus God. What were you thinking?”
No answer. Then, a childish: “I’m sorry … Roger?”
“Yeah.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Okay. I’ll take care of it.”
“Roger? I love you.”
“Yeah.” Click.
I didn’t know whether to scream or cry. My husband was screwing this girl. I heard his racing steps down the stairs but I beat him to the door leading from the mud room to the garage. I told him: “I think I’ll take the van today. My Jeep’s out of gas.”
Roger looked as if he had swallowed a grenade. For once, he couldn’t seem to muster his usual smug retort. “No!” he practically shouted, stepping into my path toward the door. “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The brakes,” he blurted out. “I think they’re malfunctioning.”
“I know how concerned you are about my well-being, Roger, but I’ll be fine,” I told him, pulling the door open. “I’ll just drive to the mechanic’s and get it fixed. See ya.”
He stood there helplessly while I backed out of the garage. I drove with my hands clamped to the wheel, my skull literally buzzing. I pulled into a shopping center at an intersection and allowed myself finally to look. There it was on the passenger seat, the ultimate emblem of my marriage’s demise: a plastic case, violet and smooth, bearing an embossed daisy on the cover. I picked it up. It smelled of perfume and spermicide. I traced a finger along the daisy. I didn’t open it. I slipped it into my bag.
I finally have my proof but I’m hardly victorious. I feel sick. I always suspected that Roger and Alyssa had some sort of relationship but never believed he would actually make love to her. Yet… as I drive to the office, even in my dazed grief, I know I am not ready to abandon my marriage. It’s odd: when I was a teenager, I believed (with the kind of unwavering righteousness and certainty that comes with youth) that if my husband ever cheated, I’d boot him out the door.