The Mistress's Revenge: A Novel

by Tamar Cohen

  A couple of times, Daniel has tried to force me to explain. “What was it you kept trying to tell Susan? What the fuck was going through your head when you were throwing yourself at Liam?”

  He even managed to get really angry with me.

  “I want an explanation,” he has said, puffed up and purple with righteousness. “You owe it to me.”

  I think that’s a bit strong, don’t you? You don’t owe people things if you never promised them in the first place, surely? I never made Daniel any promises. Not one.

  So instead of explaining to him, I’ll try to sort it out in my own head. You know, so often when you do that, you realize things weren’t as bad as you’d imagined them to be, don’t you? What in my head might have become an excruciatingly embarrassing episode might well turn out not to have even registered with other people or, if it has, to be just a humorous footnote, something and nothing. I’m sure that’ll turn out to be the case here. Something and nothing.

  Not surprisingly I remember much more about the beginning of the night than the end. I remember arriving at your house, and seeing the swollen wisteria plant that grows around the front porch reaching all the way up to the wrought iron balcony, sagging with fairy lights, and thinking how beautiful it would be if I hadn’t just had a big argument with Daniel (about weekend parking restrictions, if I remember right), and if the lights weren’t jumping about in front of my eyes like fireflies.

  Then I remember walking through to the back of the house, and how Susan had created a sort of passageway, lined with tea lights and photos from your two and a half decades together, all reprinted the same size in dramatic black and white. There was one in particular I remember looking at for so long that Daniel hissed I was creating a logjam as other arriving guests queued impatiently behind. It was a photo of you and Susan with Liam and Emily when they were tiny. You had Liam on your shoulders and Susan was holding Emily on her hip, and you were both dressed in shorts and flip-flops as if you’d come straight off the beach. Susan was saying something to a very cross-looking Emily obviously trying to cheer her up, and her mouth was stretched into an enormous smile as she cajoled her pouting daughter. Meanwhile you were gazing directly at Susan and your own smile was just for her.

  You looked like the cat with the cream. It was jolt to remember that by the time that photo was taken, just a few years into your marriage, you’d already had two affairs, or maybe three. You once told me, with a certain amount of rueful regret, that you’d even taken a girl’s phone number while on your honeymoon and met up with her after you got back.

  “I’m not proud of myself,” you’d told me. “It was never about not loving Susan. There was just something in me that made me behave like that. I’m very damaged in many ways.”

  When we arrived at the back of the house, emerging through the glass-roofed kitchen, where the reflections of tea lights danced on the ceilings like stars, I almost cried when I saw what Susan had done with the garden. The colored lanterns hanging from the trees, the candles reflected in the mirrored mosaic along the back wall—it was so beautiful. It really was. Glancing up at the house, I saw that every window twinkled with fairy lights, even your study at the top. I gazed at it for a long time, thinking of all the times you’d emailed me from there. “I feel imprisoned up here,” you’d declared dramatically. “I don’t belong here. I belong with you.”

  Of course there wasn’t much of the garden on show because the marquee took up a lot of space. Inside, Susan had gone for a Japanese-style theme, with long tables and low seating and silk-covered cushions. Everywhere I looked were people gasping about how wonderful it looked, and what a special couple you were and how refreshing in this day and age to see such a long, solid marriage. The noise in my head kept getting worse and worse, as I struggled to hear what they were saying, and my restless fingers ceaselessly tap-tapped against my glass.

  I remember Daniel telling me I’d already had two glasses of champagne. And me replying “And? Who made you alcohol monitor?” I remember the smile fading on Susan’s face when she saw my dress, but how she recovered herself quickly. “I seem to have started a trend,” she joked, but Emily, standing next to her in a clingy sky-blue dress that made her suddenly enormous bump look like a giant Iced Gem, looked venomous. “I brought you those baby clothes,” I told her, my voice hesitant as if I was attempting a foreign tongue. But when I looked for the bag I thought I’d brought, it wasn’t there, like the baby that never was.

  And I remember you, Clive.

  I remember you were talking to a couple I didn’t know over by the bar in the marquee. Your hands were gesturing expansively as you told one of your witty anecdotes, and they were both listening raptly. All of a sudden you glanced up, probably trying to remember the punch line (isn’t it awful what age does to our powers of joke telling, how it robs us of that moment of effortless revelation?). I’ve never fully understood before that phrase about the blood draining from someone’s face. Well, not until Saturday night. Your expression was a picture, Clive, it really was. And I have a feeling you quite lost your track in the story you were telling because the smiles on your audience’s faces started to look at little bit strained as they turned around to see what you were looking at. You recovered yourself well though, I must say. Must be all those years of conference speaking, I imagine.

  All those things I remember perfectly. And I remember spotting Liam across the room and walking straight over to him, the drugs in my system propelling me forward. He was talking to a couple of young women, I recall, both of them wearing dresses that ended just below their bottoms and enormously high shoes with straps that looked like rib cages going up past their ankles. When I smiled at him, he smiled back, but immediately I realized he didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. I remember putting my hand out and saying something about meeting him at the brasserie and he said “of course,” in a very unconvincing way.

  Daniel was right behind me and I introduced him to Liam, explaining where we’d met. “He served me some lovely wine,” I said. How idiotic was that? The wine wasn’t even terribly nice!

  And all the time I was conscious of your eyes on me and it seemed impossible that everyone else in the room could be oblivious to the current running between us. I caught your gaze just once and there was a message in the hard shards of your eyes and the twitch at the corner of your mouth that was as clear as if you’d spoken it out loud. It didn’t require any interpretation. I knew you wanted to kill me.

  Does that sound fanciful? I can just see you making a disapproving face at me allowing myself to indulge in such flights of fantasy. “Real life isn’t like Midsomer Murders,” you’d say. Yet I know without any shadow of doubt that right there, right then, in that Japanese-themed marquee flanked by your wonderful family, celebrating your renewed marriage to your wonderful wife, surrounded by your wonderful friends, you wanted to kill me.

  In many ways I was flattered.

  After that my memories grow more disjointed. I remember my heart racing as if it wanted to gallop clear out of my chest and back through the fairy-tale garden and the candlelit passage and out through the front door and into the street where the air was fresh enough to breathe properly.

  I remember Daniel asking me if I was all right so many times I began to feel like I was trapped in a kind of endless Groundhog Day. I drank more champagne because he kept telling me not to and noticed there were fireworks shooting across my eyes.

  “I want you to leave. Now,” you hissed when you intercepted me coming back from the loo (such a hilarious idea to have yours and Susan’s faces printed on the loo paper. Liam’s work I imagine. How you must all have roared with laughter). Your face was closed like a trap.

  “Are you threatening me?” I said, in my voice that wasn’t my voice.

  You walked away, but I knew you were still watching as I crossed the floor and found Susan (how convenient the bright pink of her dress turned out to be—a beacon guiding me in).

  “Lovely party,
” I said, knowing you could see everything.

  Susan glanced across at you, that much I remember. It occurred to me then that you two must have had words about me before the evening started. Perhaps you’d have done your “Sally isn’t terribly stable” routine. That look that passed between you, complicit, exclusive, was what finally tipped me over, I think.

  “I need to speak to you privately, Susan,” I said.

  As soon as the words were out, I knew that I was going to tell her everything. I knew then beyond a doubt that you were never coming back (finally, that exercise Helen made me do was taking hold). What use was there then in holding on to the secret I’d hugged to me for so long like a wraparound cardigan? Susan deserved to know what kind of man she’d just remarried. But of course, that wasn’t my real motivation. Really, I wanted to see it all torn down, the colored lanterns ripped from the trees, the marquee poles wrenched out of position so the whole monstrous edifice collapsed around the heads of the shrieking guests. I wanted to see the quirky jacket with the fuchsia pink velvet collar (nice touch, that matching his ’n’ hers element) torn from your back. I wanted you exposed. I wanted them to see you for what you were—Liam, Susan, Emily. I wanted to leave a mark on your life that you would never be able to erase. I wanted you to know that I could do you harm.

  The lights were still dancing around the corners of my vision, but even so I saw how Susan glanced at you again and made a slight face.

  “Not tonight, dear. I’m terribly busy. Why don’t you call me next week?”

  Then things get hazier still.

  I know I tried again to talk to Susan, and I remember how she made her excuses and whispered in Emily’s ear.

  I know Daniel tried to get me to leave, and I know I wouldn’t.

  Then there was dancing and I was dancing with Liam. I had my arm round his neck, and one of the girls in the impossibly short dresses was standing right by us on her own, her glossy-lipped mouth slightly open in surprise as if I’d just snatched him away from her, as come to think of it, I probably had.

  There were speeches. Susan’s first. It was short and funny, and I remember laughing until my knees gave way.

  “Please let’s go,” Daniel said. But I wanted to hear your speech, even though each word sliced at my heart with a cheese grater.

  “Twenty-six years ago, I thought I’d married the best woman in the world,” you said. “Today I know I’ve married the best woman in the world. I want you to raise your glasses in a toast to my beautiful wife.”

  My beautiful wife.

  People were cheering and raising their glasses, urine-yellow champagne sloshing against the sides.

  “Liar, Liar, Liar,” I shouted, but the sound was muffled. Perhaps the guests heard “hear, hear, hear,” perhaps they heard nothing.

  Daniel did though. He turned to me while the rest of the guests were cheering and clapping and tapping their glasses with spoons, until my whole head felt as if it was about to explode, and he stared at me as if I was someone he’d never met before.

  That wasn’t the end, but my mind won’t let me remember more. I know I kept trying to talk to Susan and I know she kept avoiding me. I know I went back over to Liam (the shame the shame the shame) and I have a memory of sitting on his knee and him being stiff and unmoving and of the girl with the rib cage shoes shaking her head in amused disgust, her long glossy hair shimmering like brown velvet.

  Then Daniel was pulling me away and I didn’t want to go, but he said you had told him to get me home.

  “You’re ruining their party,” he shouted.

  “They’ve ruined my life,” I shouted back.

  Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just slumped defeated and allowed myself to be dragged off. I don’t remember going back through the fairy-tale garden. I don’t remember retracing our steps along the candlelit passageway, past the shorts and flip-flops photo. I don’t remember anyone saying good-bye at the wisteria-framed front door. I do remember being sick into a particularly splendid hydrangea, and again by the curb.

  I remember Daniel sitting in the driving seat of the car with his forehead pressing against the steering wheel.

  I don’t remember anything more.

  But that’s enough, don’t you think?

  That’s more than enough.

  Jamie came into the bedroom to see me a couple of hours ago and to talk about his birthday.

  To be quite honest, I’d forgotten he had a birthday coming up. I felt a stab of pure panic. Birthdays are when things are expected of you, only I’m having trouble remembering what those things are. There are things I should be doing. If only I could get out of bed.

  Daniel wants to call the doctor. I keep trying to imagine the young blonde doctor, with her matching shoes and tights, sitting on the edge of this bed, strewn with the fallout of the last three days.

  “Poor old you,” she might say, eyeing the tissues and the cups and this notebook. “You are having a rotten time.”

  I promised Daniel I’d get up; I told him I’m feeling better.

  “We have to talk about what happened,” he repeated. But I sensed a slight wavering, as if it was already losing urgency.

  Daniel thinks the doctor will be able to give me a neat pill and make me better. He doesn’t know that what’s wrong with me is you, and that there is no cure for that.

  So I’m about to get up and dressed for the first time since Saturday. I don’t want to, but I must.

  I’ve decided that I will turn getting up into a symbolic ritual. I will brush you off like old toast crumbs, I will leave you behind in the crumpled sheets, I will wash you on a boil wash until you are scrubbed raw and disinvested of all power. I will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the last five years and become the person I was meant to be, the one who inhabits that parallel universe in which I never met you but remained a good mother to my children and a dutiful lover to Daniel. I will make the last five years disappear. Pffffff! Like the baby that never was.

  I will not think about how you got off scot-free, or what you took from me, or how you lied.

  I will be free of you. I will not think of you. I will rebuild everything.

  Back in the cubbyhole while the sickly moonlight trickles under the door, and the house winces in its sleep.

  I am looking up information on Maui on Google. It looks incredible. Lucky you. You and Susan must be two days into your second honeymoon now, enough time to settle in and become acclimated. I’ve worked out if it’s 3:20 A.M. here, it must be 4:20 P.M. there. I imagine the two of you will have enjoyed an hour or two rest after a long lunch somewhere in the shade. I expect you had fresh fish. You always did love that, probably with a simple green salad (you’ll both be watching your weight a bit after the blowout of the vows party). Now you might be contemplating a stroll down to the beach. Maybe you’ll buy a bottle of chilled white wine to take with you, or else pick up a drink from a beach bar somewhere.

  You’ll both have your mobiles on you, of course. A busy, successful couple like you two never goes anywhere without being in constant contact with the outside world. And of course there’s always Emily to think of. I know she was frantic when she realized you’d be gone for a whole week when she was entering her last month of pregnancy.

  “You obviously care more about getting a suntan than about your new grandchild,” she’d told Susan, wounded.

  So I know you won’t want to risk missing a call from her.

  What if I was to send a message to Susan? Now, as you strolled hand in hand following your nap? Would it really hurt? I could apologize for the other night, but tell her I still need to talk to her urgently. “I think you deserve to know about Clive,” I’d say.

  Of course I won’t really do that. It would be cruel to do that to someone on their second honeymoon. I’ll wait until she comes back. I won’t bother her now.

  But, do you know what’s so silly? Despite what I’ve just written, I’ve known all along that I would. As soon as I’d finished that last se
ntence, I picked up my mobile and started tapping out a text. I want to stop her, you see. I want to stop her before you arrive at the beach and start laying out your towels. I want to halt her midstep, while the sun scalds down on her bent head, and the tie of her halter-neck bathing suit digs into the back of her neck. I want her to look up at you in that still-white heat and know finally who you are.

  Now it would be 6:15 Maui time. I’ve sent five texts to Susan and heard nothing.

  A few seconds ago my phone finally beeped, but it was a message from your phone. How I hate my treacherous heart for the way it still lurches at the sight of your name in my inbox.

  I picked up your message while Susan was sleeping. You are now blocked from both our phones and email accounts. Leave us alone and get some help.

  Get some help.

  I’m still trying to work out what kind of help I might need. Who do you think, Clive, might be able to help me divest myself of you? I’d really, really like to know. Is there a church body that can exorcise unwanted people from our lives? Is there some sort of salon where I could go to have you stripped off me with hot wax? Is there a doctor who can administer an enema to flush you out? Is there an architect who can rebuild the life you’ve left in the rubble?

  I wish you’d tell me, Clive. I really do. I’ll take all the help I can get. I’m not proud. I’ll take it all.

  Only there isn’t any help, when everyone I see is wearing your face, and every moment that passes is a moment further away from you, and when I look ahead all I can see is what isn’t there, and the life that’s in front of me is a taunting reminder of the life I should have had.

  Do you see my problem, Clive?

  Do you see?

  Just a little empathy and I’m sure you will.

  I was still fast asleep when Daniel woke me up trying to force a letter into my face. I’d taken a couple of Zopiclone, maybe more, and was having trouble surfacing. His face kept swimming in front of me, red and cross.