“You can drop me off and continue on your way,” she said as I was signing for the bill.
I started to say okay. Then we looked at each other, and knew that wasn’t going to happen.
She called her husband at his office. He wasn’t in, fortunately; she left a message with his secretary: the Jaguar had a mechanical problem, it would take a couple of days for the local garage to get the part from Austin and fix it, she was going to stay in the area until she could drive it home. She didn’t know where she’d be staying, she’d call and let him know. No mention where she’d been last night; if her husband ever asked her, which was unlikely, she’d make up a lie. He would believe her; she had never been unfaithful before, he had no reason to distrust her. And he was so busy, he’d barely notice she was missing.
Marnie Hamilton had been unfaithful to her husband of nine years for the first and only time, so she confessed, and had now lied to him about her infidelity without a second thought, after having spent one night and part of a day—eighteen hours—with me. But our one-night stand was going to go way beyond that. She was willing to throw it all away—money, prestige, security. Sail into uncharted waters, with no guarantee of a safe harbor at the end of the journey.
It scared the shit out of me, once I realized the enormous repercussions of our getting involved. But we were in the maelstrom of first love, where everything’s right and nothing can ever go wrong.
It’s nerve-wracking, carrying on an affair. Nothing’s in the open, everything you do is conducted in the dark. It’s a dirty feeling, it cheapens the experience, which should be joyful and liberating. You’ve finally found someone to be in love with—now go hide.
Marnie didn’t like sneaking around any more than I did—we talked about it, at my apartment, in the out-of-town hotel rooms where we went for clandestine weekend breaks, on the telephone. She wanted us to be able to show our love freely. But she was married, and as she explained to me, when I griped, adolescently, about our situation, she wasn’t ready to make the final break yet. Not because she didn’t love me—I was the only man she had ever loved, she knew that, now that she’d had a taste of the real thing—but she had to figure out how and when to tell her husband in a way that would cause him the least amount of pain. He was an important man, a man respected in his profession, a man of great pride. For his wife to leave him for another man, especially one who was hardly more than half his age, would be crushing and humiliating.
I understood the situation, but I didn’t like it. Still, I was patient. Marnie wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t the one who had the secret rival, it was her poor shlump of a husband who was going to look up one day to see the safe falling on his head. And it wasn’t as if I wanted to jump right into domestication with her. On the contrary—I had been carefree my entire life, being housebroken went against my grain. I wanted to be clean, that’s all. But these things take time, as I was discovering.
And it was great being with her, even if I was often looking over my shoulder, figuratively and literally. She was loving, smart, humorous. She wasn’t pretentious, either, despite her station in Texas society. She had been living in a golden cocoon for nine years, she wanted to break out and goof. We had a lot of fun together, even if we had to do it under the radar.
It went on like that for the entire first semester, until the week before the winter break. I was going home to spend Christmas with my mother. It would be the first time Marnie and I would be physically separated for more than a few days. We’d talked about her coming with me, but that would be too risky—she had to be home to prepare for Christmas, it was the most important holiday of the year for her husband, especially since he no longer shared it with his children. We had been very careful our entire time together. Not one person either of us knew had ever seen us together—we had taken great precautions.
“When you come back,” she declared a few days before I was scheduled to leave, “I’ll tell him. We can’t go on like this anymore. I can’t imagine ringing in the new year without you, Fritz. A new year, a new beginning.”
I felt a tremendous sense of relief upon hearing that, because the deception had been weighing heavily on my shoulders; although I must admit the idea of us going public made my sphincter pucker. Once Marnie made the break, she and I would be partners—for life, or a goodly portion thereof. Middle-aged women don’t leave affluent, albeit loveless, marriages without a safety net.
“Are you absolutely, totally positive?” she asked me for the umpteenth time. “This is enormous, for both of us. I don’t want you to commit to something you’ll regret later on. You’ll still be young when I’m old,” she reminded me without flinching.
“I won’t regret it,” I swore valiantly. I meant it. I had been touched, I felt, by the inexorable finger of fate. And you can’t escape your fate.
Did I wish she was younger, closer to me in age? Of course; we both did. There was no guilt in feeling that, we wanted our future to be as perfect as possible, particularly since it was beginning with a fundamental imperfection. But love isn’t a neat arrangement, all tied up in a pretty pink bow. You can only take it as it comes and rejoice that you’ve been given the chance.
It was the last day of fall classes before the beginning of reading period, final exams, and winter break. I was fifteen minutes from finishing my last session, a graduate seminar on Madison’s contributions to the Federalist Papers, when a harried-looking secretary came striding into the room—no knock, just flung the door open and marched up to me. Barely glancing at my students, who were regarding her with undisguised hostility—you don’t walk into a classroom, particularly a graduate seminar, the way she had—she said to me in a stage whisper, “Dean Marshall needs to see you.”
“I’m teaching,” I said brusquely, turning my back on her.
“He needs to see you right away.”
I turned to her. “I’ll come over to his office as soon as I’m finished here,” I said icily, managing to restrain my temper. She should have known better than to barge in on me like this. Some of my colleagues would have cut her to ribbons for such an indiscretion.
She held her ground. “He said now.”
“Get out.”
She glared at me for a moment; then she turned on her heel and left.
“Goddamn administration,” I heard from one of my students. A female voice. My students, particularly the women students, were very protective and supportive of me.
“Don’t sweat it,” I told them. “She didn’t know any better.”
That brought a laugh, based on elitism. Faculty and students on pedestals, secretaries, like janitors, in the muck. I don’t like that caste system; if she hadn’t been so rude, I wouldn’t have taken the cheap shot.
We finished our work and I bade them good luck on their exams. Then I put on my outer coat, wound my scarf around my neck, and went outside.
Paul Marshall, who had requested my presence through the rude secretary, was the dean of the college; still is. My boss. We weren’t close friends—he’s old enough to be my father—but I was one of his favorite faculty members of the younger bunch. He’d recruited me from Wisconsin, so he had a proprietary interest in my future.
I assumed this would be a short, casual meeting, a pre-holiday drink with a few others. I had no concerns regarding my performance—my classes were ranked among the most popular and sought-after in the school; they were always overenrolled. There had been speculation on the faculty grapevine regarding the impending retirement of some of the older professors in my department; maybe they were thinking of moving me up to full professorship, and Paul was going to tip me off—an early Christmas present. Considering my age and relative inexperience that would have been a big step upward, but when they’d hired me, that was the plan. I was a rising star, and the university wanted to foreclose the possibility of my bolting to greener pastures.
I walked through the campus from my classroom to Dean Marshall’s office. It was dark out, there was a chill in the
air. The tower where Charles Whitman had gunned down all those people decades ago loomed up to my left, while to my right, a few blocks away up Congress, the State Capitol glistened in the early evening moonlight.
“Close the door behind you, Fritz.”
Dean Marshall was leaning back casually in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, cordovan-shod feet propped up on his desk. He was tweedy as usual, the prototypical university don. His hair, cut Marine-short on his mottled balding head, gave him a monkish appearance. He was anything but monkish in real life, however; he had a martini-dry sense of humor and was very supportive of his people, especially the younger faculty. I enjoyed him more than any other authority figure at the school.
There was no one else in the office, just the two of us. “Going home for the holidays?” he inquired politely, a bland conversation opener. He motioned for me to make myself comfortable.
“Yes.” I took off my pea coat and scarf and hung them on the coatrack in the corner, then sat down across from him. “My mother throws a hell of a Christmas.”
“Being with family’s always the best way to spend the holidays,” he observed. He swung his feet down off the desk, leaned toward me. “We have a problem.”
“What kind?” I assumed he was talking about something pedagogical.
He reached into his center desk drawer and took out a legal-sized manila envelope. Almost formally squaring the corners, he set the envelope in front of me. “Take a look at these.”
Thinking back on the situation later, I don’t know how I could have been so blind, so naive. Love can do that to you, I certainly know that now. Still clueless as to what was going on, I picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside were several photographs.
“Take them out,” Dean Marshall instructed.
I pulled the pictures out of the envelope. And almost had a heart attack.
The entire affair was there, almost from the day Marnie and I returned to Austin. Pictures of us locked in hot, passionate embraces. Pictures of her entering and leaving my apartment. Pictures of her in my apartment, taken through the open window blinds. There was even a topless picture of Marnie sunbathing on my rooftop deck, with me applying suntan lotion to her breasts. The only details that weren’t there were pictures of us actually fucking.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold on to the photographs. I dropped the incendiary bundle onto his desk. “What sick fuck did this?” I could barely speak, my throat was so dry. I was scared, but I was enraged, too. “Who gave these to you?”
“A better question, Fritz, is why were you having an affair with this woman?”
“That’s none of your business, Dean Marshall,” I snapped at him. Now that the element of surprise was over, my anger was overtaking my fear.
“It’s very much my business,” he responded piercingly.
“Why? This woman is an adult and so am I. This is between us.”
“And her husband.”
“Is that who gave you these?”
Rather than answer, he picked up the incriminating photos and looked at a few, shaking his head sorrowfully. “You weren’t very discreet, were you?”
“We tried to be. Damn it, Paul, this is an invasion of my privacy! This is lower than low, it’s practically blackmail.” I forced myself to reduce my pitch. “Okay. We had an affair. I’m certainly not going to deny it, the evidence is sitting on your desk. I’m sorry we did it this way, but affairs happen. All the time, everywhere.”
He shook his head. “Not this way. Not with these people.”
I had no clue of what he was talking about. “What does that mean?”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about? Who your paramour is married to?”
“A doctor.” What a stupid, archaic word, paramour. Like she’s my concubine, an object.
“That’s all?”
“A rich doctor.”
Marshall cradled his head in his hands. “Oh, Fritz. You stupid, oblivious son of a bitch.” He leaned forward and gave me this incredibly pitying look. “Mark Hamilton is a distinguished transplant surgeon. He’s world-famous, he has pioneered some of the most important advances in medicine in the past thirty years. On top of that, he’s a power in the Texas Republican party. And—I hope you’re listening carefully, Fritz . . .”
I was listening. I didn’t want to hear any of this, but I was listening. And squirming. “Okay,” I gave him. “The man’s a certified big shot.”
“He has given millions of dollars to the university.”
There it was. “What’s he going to do, ask for a refund?”
My mentor shook his head. “No. He’s not like that. And for one time,” he grumbled in exasperation, “I wish you weren’t such a smart-assed kid.”
That stung. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to be properly humble, which, given the circumstances, was the posture I needed to be embracing, obviously. “I can see how serious and compromising this is to the university.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Marshall gathered up the photographs, holding them between his fingertips as if they were dog turds, and inserted them back in the envelope. “Mark Hamilton is the dean of our School of Medicine.”
Tenure or no tenure, my dismissal was a slam dunk. The arrangement was signed, sealed, and delivered in seventy-two hours. I would stay on until after exams were completed—to leave before then would be a red flag that something ugly had happened. The university didn’t want this tawdry information going out into the world. And my leaving before then would be an injustice to my students, who had been under my tutelage all semester.
The only question was how much the university was going to pay me to keep my mouth shut and not raise a stink. In the end, we settled on a year’s salary, maintenance of my health plan, and confidentiality regarding the particulars of my leaving, so that in the future I could apply for positions at other schools and this wouldn’t be on my record. For said record, I was taking an extended leave of absence to pursue “other interests.” What those “other interests” were, no one ever told me. In due time, I’d officially tender my resignation.
By the time we managed to get in touch with each other late that night, Marnie was hysterical. I was alone in my apartment. The lights were out, the shades drawn—I wasn’t going to give the peeper her husband had hired any fresh material. A fifth of Gentleman Jack, freshly bought after leaving Dean Marshall’s office, sat within arm’s distance. A generous portion had already been consumed.
The good doctor had already given her the news. Not only were there pictures, he’d also had her phone tapped. All of our intimate conversations that had emanated from her house were on tape. There was some very embarrassing material there, about the variety and intensity of our lovemaking, terrible comments she’d made about him, all kinds of rotten, incriminating shit.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, sobbing.
That question threw me—what could we do except slink out of town with our tails between our legs and start fresh somewhere else? Before I could answer, however, she told me she had to get off the phone—she was afraid Mark would hear her. We’d meet in the morning and discuss everything.
After she abruptly hung up on me I sat back and pondered what that meant—we’d discuss everything. What was there to discuss? And the fact that she’d called from her house really bothered me. Why was she there? Hadn’t he kicked her out? And if, for some perverse reason, he’d allowed her to remain, why had she? Why wasn’t she with me, sharing our sorrows with a bottle of Tennessee sour mash?
I got the answers when we met for coffee the following morning at an obscure working-class lunchroom way off the beaten track. Marnie was ultracautious. A woman who dressed with impeccable, rather conservative taste (we were the classic opposites-attract), she was clad in dark baggy sweats, sunglasses, a floppy hat that covered her face. She had ditched her car at a downtown hotel, walked through the lobby, exited via the back entrance, and grabbed a taxi. She was paranoid
, absolutely convinced that her husband was still having her tailed.
To me it didn’t matter anymore that her husband knew about us—the genie was out of the bottle. I didn’t press that point, though, she was too emotionally blitzed. She looked awful—no makeup, hair unwashed, bags under her eyes. Her age was clearly showing that morning, a preview of attractions to come. I didn’t care; her unadornedness made her even more beautiful to me. I couldn’t help but notice that the big rock was still on her ring finger; for some reason I’d thought she would have taken it off, a symbolic gesture of rejection of the old and embrace of the new.
We hugged; then we sat in a back booth, side by side. The breakfast crowd had departed. We were the only ones there, except for the bored waitress and the kitchen staff. Marnie was fidgety, nervous as hell. I couldn’t blame her; I was, too.
We had to talk, but neither of us wanted to go first. Finally, after the waitress brought us coffee, I plunged in. “Do you want to move in with me? Until we figure out where we’re going?”
She looked at me, then into her coffee cup. “I . . . I don’t think I can do that.”
“Yeah, I guess that would be throwing oil on the fire. Do you have a friend you can stay with—” I stopped. Something in her body language told me there were problems going on within her, more than the catastrophes I already knew about.
“I can’t move out right now,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.
“But how can you stay? Isn’t he going to kick you out?”
“No.” She paused. Then she swiveled around so that she was facing me. “Where are you going to go, Fritz?”
That was a good question. I hadn’t given the issue much thought. The immediate problems—losing my job, my career—had occupied whatever time I’d had to think when I hadn’t been thinking about her and me.
Bird's-Eye View Page 7