by Debra Kent
Roger’s straight-arrow, fussy father an adulterer? Big surprise. The old goat once tried to play footsy with me before Roger and I were married. The Tisdales had taken us out to dinner to celebrate our engagement. The next thing I know, I feel his stocking feet crawling up my pants leg. I thought it was Roger being playful, until I noticed the wicked glint in my future father-in-law’s eye—and felt his hot dry hand on my thigh. I left the table and sequestered myself in the rest room, shaking and gagging. When I got back, he acted as if nothing had happened. I called him at work the next day and demanded that he never touch me again. He promised he wouldn’t, and except for the occasional hug, he has remained true to his word.
I really pity my mother-in-law, living all those years with a man whose heart belonged to another woman. I can’t imagine what that must feel like. What am I saying? Of course I can.
I haven’t heard from Alyssa at all this week and now I feel vaguely worried, wondering what she’s cooking up next. I thought I caught a glimpse of her in the parking garage under my office building, but when I looked again she was gone. Either I imagined it or the girl is stalking me. I had to resist the urge to check my car for explosives.
Roger has been on a retreat at an artist’s colony in the mountains, which is wonderful because I cannot stand to be in the same room with him. After Alyssa’s last phone message I asked him again, point-blank, “Did you have sex with this girl?” Again, he denied it.
’Til next time,
September 4
Roger phoned to say he was extending his stay at the artist’s colony. When I asked him for how long, he said something like, “A week, maybe more.” I wonder if he plans on coming back at all. This feels more and more like a separation, and I’m scared. Yes, I want to strangle him, but I’m not ready to lose him. I don’t like being alone.
Had quite a day yesterday. Started off with me not being able to find anything in my closet that fit, as I’ve become enormously quaggy. Spent so much time searching for something not totally horrible that I had no time to wash my hair and walked in late for a first appointment with a new client. Finally found those khaki stretch pants I got at the Gap, thinking: stretch has to fit, right? They stretched all right, all over my fat ass. By lunch I couldn’t bear it a minute longer and ran out to find something—anything—that fit. I was in the dressing room, struggling to pull up the zipper on a black skirt, when this girl asked me to button her. She had her back to me, holding her long, curly hair away from her neck, smelling of Estée Lauder’s Pleasures, my personal favorite. I was happy to help, but then she turned around to thank me and I saw who she was. Alyssa! I actually let out a little scream. I thought she recognized me, too, but apparently not. Looking concerned but also a little scared, she asked, “Are you okay?” in that voice, the voice that has tormented me for weeks. I wanted to confront her—claw her eyes out—but she was wearing a size four nothing of a dress and I felt like a giant upholstered couch. I couldn’t possibly reveal myself.
I left the store immediately, but instead of going back to the office, I waited in the car, then followed Alyssa back to her house. I expected her to live downtown in one of those singles condos near the health club, but it turns out she lives in the dowdy Windsor Acres subdivision, which can mean only one thing: she’s still living at home with her parents. I decided that I must return to her house (thinner) and nail her once and for all, in front of her parents. With enough Slim-Fast, maybe next week.
Now for the big news. I hadn’t talked to Eddie all week, though he’d e-mailed me several times and continues to leave little gifts on my desk. This morning he asked me to lunch, said he had something really important to tell me. As soon as we sat down at a table, he reached for my hand and dropped the bomb, “I’m leaving Patty. I want to make a life with you.” I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought it was some kind of joke. I started to laugh, then saw the tears in his eyes. I tried to talk him out of it, told him I was committed to keeping my marriage together for Petey’s sake. He said he told Patty all about me, about us, and she wanted him out by Monday! Now what?!?
’Til next time,
September 9
After five days of Slim-Fast I am down only three pounds. My thighs are still chafing. I spent an hour on makeup and hair, determined to look entirely different from the frazzled behemoth Alyssa encountered in the dressing room. I changed my side part from left to right, even tried a new deep purple lipstick—too bride-of-Frankensteiny, so I frantically wiped it off. I pulled on black jeans and a white tank top. My arms looked like twin dolphins, so I tore off the tank top and put on a T-shirt. I decided that if Alyssa recognized me from the dressing room I would insist it was my fat look-alike cousin.
I dropped Petey off at my mother’s and drove back to Windsor Acres, determined to finally confront Alyssa, ideally in the presence of her parents. In case her parents had any doubt about their daughter’s involvement, I’d brought along copies of her e-mail messages and a tape of the phone messages. I drove maniacally, almost rear-ended a cyclist. I rehearsed what I would say and narrowed my opening line down to three possibilities:
1. “Alyssa: Whatever is going on between you and my husband has got to stop.” (No. This assumes I’m sure there is something going on. Not sure.)
2. “Listen, you little bitch. Keep your filthy hooks out of my husband.” (Better not. It makes Roger look like innocent victim. Plus, I don’t want to appear vulgar in front of parents.)
3. “I’m Roger’s wife. I think we need to talk.” At this point I will gesture toward her parents and ask them to sit down. “I’d like you to stay, please. I believe you’ll want to know what your daughter’s been up to.” (Yes. I’ll say this. It sounds poised, in control.)
As I pull up to the curb across the street and begin walking toward Alyssa’s house, I see her parents on the porch and my heart sinks. Her mother is in a wheelchair and her father looks as if he could use one. They both appear old enough to be her grandparents, and I wonder if that’s the case until I hear Alyssa’s voice from the backyard, “Daddy, should I pick the rest of the tomatoes?” The old man calls back, “Sure, darling. We’ll have them with supper.”
What can I say? I simply lost my nerve. I just didn’t have the heart to plunge these two kindly, geriatric people into crisis. At least not today.
’Til next time,
September 11
Eddie e-mailed me his new address. Apparently he’s renting a place near the university, in the student housing area. He wrote: “Come check out my new crib.” I read this and immediately became nauseated. I did not e-mail back.
’Til next time,
September 14
Roger finally came home. He seemed serene, happy. He looked good (dare I say … sexy?). He offered me a small box, and I opened it to find a tiny silver armadillo (an inside joke: it was our pet name for each other when we were dating). He tumbled with Petey on the family room floor (Pete was overjoyed), and for a moment I thought, “We’re a family. This is how it should be.”
Then Roger opened his mail and everything changed.
He held a letter and his whole body trembled. He backed into a chair and stared at the piece of paper. “Jeez,” I heard him say softly. I’d never seen him look so unnerved.
“What is it?” I asked. “Please tell me.”
“Apparently,” he rasped, “I’m being charged with sexual harassment. One of my students.” He passed the paper across the table.
Alyssa had brought charges against him. “I guess you need a lawyer,” I told him, my mind scrambling to comprehend. I was scared but knew I had to ask: “Roger, did you harass that girl?”
He leaned toward me and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. “I think it’s time you knew exactly what’s been going on. You deserve to know the truth.”
I’ll fill in the rest later, when I have more time to write.
’Til next time,
September 25
What compels a man to tell the truth
, even when the truth will stain his name, shame his family, and threaten to shatter the foundation on which his life and career are built? Does the man confess because he has found his moral center? Or is he motivated by fear of protracted legal action and the loss of a job he holds dear?
After months of evasion and deceit, and faced with the terrifying reality of Alyssa’s sexual harassment suit, Roger finally admitted that he and Alyssa had been lovers. It began, he said, with playful flirtation. (Even this small and relatively benign point makes me ill. How could my sullen, brooding husband play and flirt with another woman?)
Alyssa had invited him for coffee after class and he agreed, under the tacit but mutually understood pretext of improving her dialogue-writing skills. Coffee at Starbucks led to wine at Bernardo’s, and wine led to a first kiss by the pay phone as he dialed home to tell me he would be late. “I knew it was wrong,” he told me, “but at some level I honestly believed that I was entitled to this. Our marriage … held nothing for me. I felt you had lost interest.” (Lost interest?! I thought of the times I’d paraded like a fool in that stupid teddy or reached for his zipper and was rebuffed. I wanted to strangle him.)
After several weeks of making out and petting (always at her initiation, he insisted), she asked for a ride home. They parked by the lake and had sex. Just to spite myself, I asked Roger if that was the night she left the diaphragm in the van. He looked away and I watched the color rise to the tips of his ears. He wasn’t sure. “Maybe. Maybe not. I can’t remember.”
They’d had sex five or six times over the following months, but once we began therapy, Roger insists he told Alyssa their relationship was over. Apparently Bonita had explained that she would not accept him as a client if he continued to play around. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “It wasn’t easy letting go. The affair was so …invigorating. I was like a god to her, and yes, she made me feel young.” He looked at me directly for the first time since he had started talking. “Can you understand how hard it was to give that up?” And, of course, I could.
Ultimately it was Roger’s concern for Petey that pushed him to end it with Alyssa. I wasn’t surprised. Roger may have been a negligent husband, but he would lay down his life for our little boy. Roger called Alyssa, made it clear that the relationship must end. But she wouldn’t hear of it. And that’s why we’ve got real trouble on our hands.
This moment was so profoundly serious, so dramatic, so horribly real, yet I found myself slipping in and out of a disembodied state. A small and distant voice whispered, “This is really happening. Pay attention!” But I wanted to go to sleep. And there were moments when I felt the total impact of Roger’s confession as though I were standing on the beach in winter, taking the ice-cold waves head on, feeling the force of every painful shard. I took the confession like a lashing, retribution for my affair with Eddie. Yes, I was hurt. But any impulse to play the aggrieved wife was quickly smothered by the memory of Eddie’s body heaving above mine in our bed at the Roundtree.
I found myself doing the math. I flirted, I kissed, I fondled. But I only had sex with Eddie once. In this contorted comparative analysis of infidelity, I ranked my transgressions against Roger’s. Is he the bigger sinner because he went between the sheets with his lover more often than I did with mine?
One thing I never felt, not even fleetingly, was compassion for Roger. Every detail he proffered stirred jealousy and antipathy. I felt capable of murdering them both. Yet I felt driven to know every detail. What did she wear that first night? How did her tongue feel in his mouth? Was she better than me?
Once Bonita laid down the ground rules, Roger says he dropped Alyssa cold. (On this point, he was more honorable than I was; I have yet to make a clean break with Eddie.) But Roger’s withdrawal only intensified Alyssa’s obsession. “She started with e-mails, then progressed to phone calls,” he said. “Then she started showing up here while you were at work.” I felt my whole body constrict as I imagined Alyssa rifling through my things, laughing. “I never let her in,” Roger said. “Not once.” By the time Alyssa started harassing me, Roger knew his scorned lover had completely lost it. “It killed me when she began involving you,” he said. “Involving?” I snapped back. “How about tormenting?”
Roger grabbed my hands. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.” He made a little choked noise in his throat, and I knew he was about to cry. “I need you now. I can’t get through this alone,” he said. I pulled my hands away.
’Til next time,
October 9
It’s been two weeks since Roger moved into the guest room. After his confession, I told him, “I can’t stand having you in bed next to me, knowing you had an affair.” He was relieved I didn’t kick him out of the house and was happy to oblige. “Separate rooms? Of course. I understand. Completely,” he said, nodding uncontrollably like one of those dashboard dogs. “Anything. Anything you want. Whatever you want.” Of course, I still haven’t told him about Eddie.
Roger has kept a respectful distance—I hardly see him—but he has also made all sorts of conciliatory gestures (cleaned the house, bought flowers for the table, had my Jeep detailed). Whenever I do see him he practically bows and scrapes at my feet. I was at first disoriented by his sudden obsequiousness. Smug is an affectation he mastered long ago; acquiescence is uncharted territory.
But, I have to tell him about Eddie. I sent Petey to his grandparents’ house for the weekend and now wait for Roger to come home from playing racquetball. There’s so much I want to say, and I am afraid I’ll forget—or start blubbering. So I decided to write it in a letter:
Roger,
I never thought it was possible to be both married and lonely, yet I’ve learned over the years that it is, indeed, possible. I have a husband, yet for most of my marriage I have felt entirely alone. I have sat on the edge of the bed, undressed, inches away from you, waiting for some sign that you wanted me. You rarely wanted me. Do you remember when the Realtor showed us the house and how she winked when we got to the Jacuzzi? “Plenty of room for two in there,” she said. Do you realize that we have never taken a bath together? First me, then you. It’s always like that. Even when Td invite you in, you’d say, “Td rather wait until you’re done.”
I suppose all this is my way of justifying what I’m about to tell you. I, too, had an affair. Unlike you and your student, we had sex only once. But I must be honest: my affair started long before that. It started the moment this man turned his attention toward me. I had such longing. He filled it. Was he my soul mate? No. Was the sex good? Absolutely. The sad truth is that I probably would have had sex with anyone who showed an interest in me, and perhaps that’s my problem, not yours. But I also believe with all my heart that if you had paid as much attention to me as you do that damned TV, I never would have done it.
We’ve both been entangled by our misdeeds. You have this lawsuit. And I am burdened by the knowledge that a family has been ripped apart because of my affair (he moved out last month and has tried to convince me to join him).
Roger, I don’t know where we go from here, but I’m willing to talk about it. I’ll be waiting upstairs.
—V.
I stood at the top of the stairs and listened as Roger walked toward the kitchen, opened the letter. I waited a few minutes, expecting him to come up the stairs. But the next sound I heard were his footsteps moving back toward the door. I called out to him, but he ignored me and slammed the door behind him. I ran to the window and watched him pull out of the driveway.
That bastard! After everything he’s done with Alyssa, how dare he walk out on me? I waited in the kitchen as long as I could, inhaling half a frozen mousse cake before finally collapsing on the couch, doped up from all the sugar. I heard a key in the door, checked the clock—4:30 A.M. Roger sat on the edge of the couch. I thought I was dreaming.
“I know I’ve got no right to feel this way,” he began. I propped myself up on my elbows. My head throbbed. Sugar hangover. “But I can’t help it.”
&nb
sp; “Can’t help what?” I asked.
“I cannot help the fact that I’m very angry with you.” He gripped his head in his hands. “How could you sleep with another man? How could you?”
Now I was certain I was dreaming and actually reached out to feel his sleeve to confirm it. No, Roger really was sitting there, and this was really happening. My cheating, lying husband had the gall to say that he was angry at me. I rolled off the couch. “Are you out of your mind? You sleep with this, this child for months, lie your ass off about having an affair, treat me like shit, drag our family into a sexual harassment lawsuit that our lawyers say you have little hope of winning, and now you have the balls to say you’re angry? Screw you! If I slept with Eddie it’s because you’ve behaved more like a roommate than a husband for years and the only thing you’ve wanted to hump in this house is the frigging TV set!”
All of a sudden I hear this low hissing sound and for a moment think it’s the teakettle even though I haven’t made tea since last winter. Then I realize it’s Roger, crying. I’m still angry. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Now he’s sobbing like a child.
“We’ve made such a mess of things.” He sniffles loudly and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He peers up at me. It’s now 5 AM. My alarm clock is set to go off in an hour. I’m in no shape to see clients. “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?”
Until he mentioned it, I hadn’t seriously considered leaving as an option. But once Roger had actually uttered the words, it was as if he’d broken some kind of spell, and suddenly the prospect of leaving didn’t seem quite so forbidding. For now I’ve decided to simply live with these feelings. I don’t have to make any decisions right away.