It was the first time Claudia had ever imagined Fred in a “family” situation, and at that moment she realized that she wanted more from their relationship than she had thought. But what—what did she want? Did she want to divorce Steve and marry Fred? Would Fred become a stepdad to Sandy and Janie? It all seemed so perfect, and Claudia was wary of such perfection. But maybe everything really could turn out right.
After the game, Claudia and Steve took the girls out for pizza. As Claudia sat there, trying to look present and involved, all she could think about was when Monday morning would finally arrive, when she would be able to see Fred again. As she stared blankly at Sandy, watching her mouth move and her eyes dance as she recounted a particularly thrilling play in the game, Claudia suddenly felt a wave of guilt. How could she neglect her children like this? She felt as if she was putting all of her love and attention and energy into her relationship with Fred, and she had nothing left for her daughters. It wasn’t right. Maybe the only answer was to break it off with Steve and bring Fred more fully into her life.
When Claudia arrived at work at eight-thirty on Monday and logged on to her computer, there was already an instant message from Fred waiting for her.
“Missed you,” it said.
“Me too,” she wrote back.
“What’s for lunch today?” he wrote.
Claudia thought for a moment. “What’s in your fridge?” She knew she wouldn’t be able to sit across from him at a restaurant, not being able to touch him, to hold his hand.
“Ah, I see. You want to get me in the sack.”
“No, no. There’ll be none of that,” wrote Claudia. “I just think you make an amazing omelet.”
Of course, Claudia knew there would be plenty of “that,” and it happened the minute they stepped into his place. Claudia’s desire for Fred was so achingly strong, sometimes she worried that was all there was to it. She remembered her college boyfriend Mike, how she overlooked everything about him because the sex was good. She knew how sex could make you think a guy was better than he really was.
But the more she considered such a concept, the more she knew that Fred was the real thing. Yes, she wanted to make love to him in a way she’d never felt before, but she also felt such a deep affection for him, respected him, liked him. She knew she would never have done this—cheated on Steve and lied to her family and friends—unless Fred was truly special.
“That was good,” said Fred as they lay on his bed.
“It’s always good,” said Claudia dreamily.
“We work well together,” he said. “Like a well-oiled machine.”
“Ooh. That’s kind of naughty.”
“What can I say?”
“We do work well together,” said Claudia. “Maybe we should start a business.”
“Like what? Porn?”
“No, dummy. A real business. I meant we’d make a good team.”
“We do make a good team,” he said, leaning over and giving her a long, passionate kiss.
When he pulled away and lay back down, Claudia thought: It might not be just sex for me, but could it be just sex for him?
“It was hard not seeing you this weekend,” she said.
“I know. Why didn’t we see each other again?”
“Soccer game.”
“Right.”
“It was actually kind of nice. Beautiful day. The girls were amazing.” Claudia hesitated. “I sort of wished you were there.” Once the words came out, she was glad she’d said it. She was tired of holding back.
“Well, that would have been kind of awkward, wouldn’t it?” said Fred.
Claudia was disappointed. She’d wanted him to say, “Me too.”
They sat for a couple of minutes in silence. Then Claudia turned to Fred and said, “Sometimes I think about doing stuff like that together.”
Fred remained silent, staring up at the ceiling.
Claudia didn’t want to let it go. “Do you ever think about that?”
Fred faced Claudia. “Honestly, I haven’t let myself think about that,” he said. “I mean, you’re married.”
“I know,” said Claudia, glancing away. “I guess I’m just fantasizing. Maybe I’m imagining it to see how it feels.” Then she turned back to Fred. “It feels good.”
Fred looked Claudia square in the eyes. He seemed to be thinking, working something out in his mind. She watched him closely, as if she could somehow decipher his thoughts from his expressions. She noticed his eyes becoming red and moist.
“I can’t,” he finally said.
“You can’t what?” Claudia said worriedly. Fred looked like he was about to cry.
“I can’t let myself imagine what it would be like to be with you,” he said, blinking away the oncoming tears.
“Fred,” said Claudia, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder. “You can. I … I’m seriously thinking about … leaving Steve. I know it’s scary and it’s a huge move, but I can’t pretend anymore that everything’s okay with him. And … I can’t ignore my feelings for you. I’ve never felt—”
“Claudia,” said Fred, trying to stop her from saying any more. “It’s not just that. It’s not just that you’re married.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it is that you’re married, but it’s also …”
“Also what?” Claudia said, her voice rising with impatience.
“The fact that you cheated,” Fred said, a little too loudly, a little too harshly. “You’re cheating on your husband, Claudia. You’re lying to him. Every day.”
This time, Claudia’s eyes began to well up. She looked at him silently, then said, “I thought … you understood.”
“I did understand. I do,” he said. “I understand what you’re going through.”
“Then why are you making me feel bad about it?” asked Claudia, the tears falling down her cheeks. “How can you even be with me if you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you. I … I love you.” At that, Fred reached out to Claudia and pulled her close.
They lay there quietly, their arms wrapped around each other. After a few minutes, Claudia said, “Then what’s wrong?”
Fred pulled himself away. “Claudia, when we first got together, I wasn’t thinking. Like you, probably. It just sort of happened. We were drunk. We fell into it. And then we kept going. It felt so good, I didn’t want to stop.”
“Me too,” said Claudia.
“So I kept pushing everything else out of my mind.”
“Me too.”
“But now that you’re talking about a future together … it makes me realize that I could never really be with you.”
“Why?” Claudia said.
“Because I could never trust you.”
“Oh, God,” she blurted out, the tears once again flowing.
“I never told you, Claudia, the reason my wife and I broke up. It’s because she cheated. She cheated on me.”
“Oh, God,” Claudia repeated, now sobbing uncontrollably.
“I know I should have told you, and then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. When we were starting to get close, I should have told you and I could have stopped it. I could have said, ‘Let’s wait. Let’s wait till you and Steve break up, because this could be something real.’ But I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t have the self-control,” he said. “And … well, maybe …”
“What?”
“Maybe there was a part of me that wanted to see … see if you would do it. See if you’d actually go through with it and cheat on Steve.”
“You were testing me?”
“Maybe I was,” said Fred. “I’m sorry, Claudia. But you don’t know what it’s like to be lied to by someone you love. It’s something I’ll never get over. I don’t know that I’ll ever really trust anyone again.”
Claudia had never had an easy time crying in front of others, particularly men. But at that moment she allowe
d herself to cry like she never had before. Maybe it was because she felt closer to Fred than she had with any other man. Or maybe it was because she knew she’d never see him again.
She cried out of sympathy for Fred, for all the hurt he’d endured and for all the hurt he was destined to endure. And she cried out of sympathy for herself, for losing the one thing she wanted, simply because she had wanted it too badly.
It was starting to get dark outside when Claudia woke up, Fred sleeping close beside her. She wondered if maybe she’d dreamed the whole thing. But then she got up and looked in the mirror at her puffy, tear-streaked face, and she knew it was real.
As she quickly put on her clothes, Fred woke up. “Claudia,” he said dreamily, his eyes still half closed. “Come here. We should talk.”
“I have to go,” she said, putting on her watch. “It’s late.”
“But—” Fred said weakly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, grabbing her purse and running out the door.
But if there was one thing Claudia knew for sure at that moment, it was that she would not be seeing Fred tomorrow. She would not go in to work. In fact, she might stay out the whole week. Maybe she’d never go back.
When she walked outside and saw Fred’s car sitting in the driveway, she remembered. She had driven with Fred and left her car at work. She started running the three blocks to a nearby coffee shop, where she would have a cab pick her up.
As she waited, her phone rang. It was Fred. He must have realized that she didn’t have a car and wanted to give her a ride home. She silenced her phone.
Claudia waited twenty minutes for the cab to arrive, and when she got inside she felt like she was in a foreign city. People who had to call cabs in their hometown—where they should have friends and family to transport them in times of need—were usually up to no good, she thought.
It was only now, at the end of her affair, that Claudia was able to fully grasp the extent of her treachery. Riding in the backseat—her shirt untucked, her hair disheveled—watching the sky turn from a blazing red to a soothing purple, she realized that this moment, more than any other that came before, would be the most significant moment of her life. Getting married, having babies, taking a job—these were all external things. Her affair with Fred was different. That was something that not only changed her life but changed who she was. There was no going back. She was now an adulterer. She was someone who could never be trusted. And the more she tried to keep her deception to herself, the more she would reinforce the portrait of herself as a liar.
When Claudia arrived home, Sandy was standing at the door to meet her. She asked her mother, “Why did you take a cab?” and Claudia responded, “My car broke down at work.” Another lie. “Why didn’t you call Daddy?” Sandy asked. “Work paid for the cab anyway, so I didn’t want to bother Daddy,” Claudia told her daughter. Another lie. “You look weird, Mom,” said Sandy. “I think I’m coming down with the flu,” said Claudia. Another lie.
Claudia went to her bedroom, took off her clothes, and climbed into bed. She was exhausted. And she couldn’t bear to hear one more lie coming out of her mouth.
When Steve came in to check on Claudia later that evening, she told him she wasn’t feeling well. True enough, she thought. She told him that she wasn’t going to work tomorrow and asked him if he would take the girls to school.
“Of course,” he said sympathetically. “And I’ll try to make myself scarce, so you can get some rest.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
Claudia woke up at eight the next morning. The house was silent. She couldn’t remember the last time she woke to an empty house. She shuffled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, hoping to get rid of some of the puffiness. But her eyes remained slits of brown sunk deep in her blotchy red face.
Steve had made coffee, so she took a cup and sat down at the kitchen table. She texted her boss, saying she needed a personal day. Then she sat for a moment staring at the front page of the paper—something about the city’s embattled mayor and his meddling wife, who wouldn’t leave his side, even when he went to the bathroom. She took a sip of her black coffee, then got up and went back to bed.
She awoke at noon. She went to the bathroom. Her face was still unrecognizable. She checked her phone. Fred had called five times since she left his house. Claudia began typing out a text to him. “Please don’t call. I’m OK.” No, she thought. I’m not okay. She deleted that part. “Going to take some time off,” she wrote, then hit “send.”
No more lies, she thought to herself. But is this how it would be? Vague statements that skirted the truth? She no longer had anything to lie about, now that her affair with Fred was over. But not owning up to what she had done, wasn’t that just another lie? She would have to tell Steve. The question was how, and when.
She would write him a letter. Claudia sat down at her computer and began to type: “Dear Steve, I had an affair with a coworker. Claudia.”
She sat and stared at the words. Yes, it was the truth, but it lacked contrition, sympathy, heart.
Procrastinating, Claudia opened her personal email account, which she hadn’t checked in weeks. Most people emailed her at work, so this account was filled with spam. She skimmed the list and noticed a Facebook friend request. She usually accepted these requests automatically, not even bothering to look at the profile of the person who was requesting to be her “friend.” But this one was different. It was Jocelyn, her best friend from junior high, whom she hadn’t seen for twenty years.
It almost never happened that Claudia received a friend request from someone she truly liked, truly cared about, truly wanted to reconnect with. She accepted and then clicked on Jocelyn’s name. As she perused her old friend’s photo albums, a message popped up.
“Hi, Claudia! So glad you responded! I’ve been thinking about searching for you for so long but never seemed to get around to it. Actually sort of surprised you are even on Facebook. Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing. Just to catch you up on my life, I moved to Denver 15 years ago with my husband and 3 boys. Don’t work anymore, stay home with the kids. Felt weird at first, but now I’m good with it. Getting back into pottery. Remember that throwing class we took? Loved that. Anyway, let me know what’s going on with you. Great pic, by the way! You look terrific!”
As miserable as Claudia was, she couldn’t help but smile, thinking about Jocelyn. She had been Claudia’s first real friend. During their three-year friendship, they were inseparable at school, talked on the phone every night, and spent almost every weekend together. But in ninth grade, Claudia went on to the public high school, while Jocelyn’s parents sent her to a private Catholic school. They tried their best to maintain the friendship, but after a few months, they simply didn’t have the strength to resist the pull of their two separate worlds. Claudia always felt it was a shame not to have kept up with Jocelyn, thinking they could have stayed friends into adulthood.
After reading Jocelyn’s message, Claudia wanted to reply. “You’re right, Joce, Facebook is not my thing. But hearing from someone like you makes it all worthwhile. So great to see your face after all these years, and your family is beautiful. How do you like Denver? Better than KC, I bet. Update on me? Where to begin … Still here, also with husband and kids. Twin girls. I work in PR.”
Claudia stopped. What was she doing? Why was she writing this bullshit? Yes, it was all true. So why did it seem like more lies?
“Remember our 7th grade history teacher, Mr. Roberts? How we tortured him?” she wrote. “He quit teaching after that year, and I always blamed myself. Sometimes I see him around town and I wonder if he recognizes me, if he hates me for what I did. I don’t know. I guess I’m feeling kind of guilt-ridden these days. Bad worker (playing hooky as we speak), bad mother, bad wife. Really bad wife. Just ended an affair and still haven’t told Steve. Can you believe that? Remember how we used to hate Mr. Seidel because we thought he was having an affair with the French teacher? Well, here
I am, pulling a Seidel. Do you hate me? I hate myself. Sorry. Love, Claudia.”
Without even reading it over, Claudia clicked on “Share.”
Then she sat and stared at the screen. Claudia knew Jocelyn was still online, because she could see her name in the corner of her screen. How would she respond? Or maybe she wouldn’t respond at all.
Claudia got up and made herself a cup of tea. Then she sat down in front of her computer and waited some more. Then she noticed Jocelyn’s name had disappeared. She wasn’t going to respond, at least not yet. Oh, well, thought Claudia. No harm done. Jocelyn was far away in Denver, wondering how she could have been friends with such a crazy lady.
Then a message popped up. But it wasn’t from Jocelyn. It was from Marjorie.
Marjorie? Steve’s little cheerleader? Claudia didn’t remember ever friending her.
“Uh, Claudia? I think you might have made a mistake. Did you mean to post that message as a status update? Seems kind of personal. You might want to delete. Just go to the right and click on ‘remove.’ Marj.”
“Oh, God,” said Claudia.
Chapter Fourteen
Annie had gone far in her career, and that achievement could be attributed to one thing: When she took on a project, she gave it everything she had, and she didn’t let up until she reached a successful conclusion.
So when it came to the project of finding Rick and getting a sample of his sperm, Annie would do the same thing. She set about it with her usual methodicalness: outlining a plan, drawing up lists, recording her every move.
The first thing to do was to figure out the best way to get Rick’s information. One option would be to steal it, either by physically breaking into the sperm bank or getting someone to hack its computer system. Annie did not want to run afoul of the law, so she quickly rejected those ideas.
That meant she would have to get one of the bank’s employees to give her the information—but who and how?
Point, Click, Love Page 16