My response was an audible breath.
“Not medical,” she said. “It’s about us.”
She paused.
“What I’m going to say … what I’m going to do … when I tell you, you’ll take it like it’s something I’m doing against you. It’s not against you; it’s for me. And, I hope, for us.”
Another pause.
“I’m going to live with Jean until she leaves for Africa.”
“What!”
“It’s just six weeks,” she said in a nervous rush.
I couldn’t help sneering. “Just six weeks?”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t know it had an end.”
“Please listen to yourself.”
“I know,” Blair said. “It sounds insane.”
“It is insane. You don’t know this woman at all.”
“And I won’t know her when it’s over.”
“What if it’s not over when she leaves? You have no certainty there.”
“She’s leaving. It ends right there.”
“Ever heard of Skype?”
“I’m coming back, David. That’s a given. She leaves, and that’s it. Back to my marriage. Back to you.”
“You can’t be sure. Jean put her hand between your legs using some code known only to women, and you melted. It might not take forty-one nights for you to be in love with her.”
“I grant you, it sounds girlish.”
“Our daughter is ‘girlish.’ As in ‘charming.’ This is just plain naïve.”
“Then think of it as a growth experience.”
I could not believe this language.
“‘Growth experience’ is bullshit,” I said. “It’s a synonym for mistake.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I see only one truth—you’re going off to fuck Jean for six weeks.”
Blair was the picture of calm.
“Darling, there will be sex. I like to think there will also be talking. And … understanding. And … growth.”
“What next? Birkenstocks? Armpit hair?”
“David, please. Talk to me like I’m a finely tuned instrument.”
“Say that again. The last part.”
As if in an adult education English-as-a-second-language class: “I’m a finely tuned …”
“What the fuck, Blair? You don’t talk like that. Have you been going to a shrink?”
“I’m not seeing a shrink. I’m not reading self-help books. I didn’t join a cult.”
At last I understood. “Of course. This is all Jean.”
A shrug. The least possible confirmation.
“This took more than a phone call,” I said.
“We met.”
The narrowest possible admission.
“Sleep with her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There was a lot to talk about.”
Bitterness and bile. Unable to stop. “I’ll just bet.”
“I’m not doing this because of two nights and a few conversations. I’m doing it for the self-discovery.”
“Oh, please.”
“Why don’t you take some responsibility here?”
“Me?”
“A very large reason for this, dear David, is you. You started this. You sold it to me. For ten years, you sold it to me. Night after night, in bed, making the case. The softness of two women together, the emotional connection, the heat.” She whispered, imitating me, “‘Oh, another woman just came into the dressing room, Blair.’ ‘That woman at the table by the window—she’s looking at you, Blair.’ ‘We’re in a crowded elevator, Blair.’ Am I making this up?”
“It was … a game,” I said. “Just talking dirty. We played it together.”
“Okay, a game. But a game you loved. Only you left something out.”
Sigh. Bracing for the accusation.
“If I bought it, there was no reason to involve you. You talked about threesomes, but it usually came down to two women and you watching. And one more thing …”
Saving the worst for last? Without doubt.
“Say we’d done it with a man. If I decided to go off with him for a month, would that make you more jealous than my going off with Jean?”
No need to ponder that. “Of course.”
“Exactly. Now consider another outcome. We got together with a woman—let’s call her Jean Coin. What if it had happened that you made a connection with her? And you wanted to live with her for six weeks. Would you have gone?”
“Of course not.”
“Even if you wanted to? Even if you desperately wanted to?”
“No.”
“You know that if you didn’t, every one of those forty-one nights you’d feel … thwarted.”
“Sure. And for years to come. So what?”
“When you were fucking me, would you be thinking about Jean? Wishing I were Jean?”
“This isn’t fair,” I said. “You know I’m addicted to you.”
Blair didn’t respond. She had a case to make, and she wouldn’t be deflected.
“You say you wouldn’t go to Jean. I say yes, you would. Because I’d make you.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous?”
“Six weeks of jealous, for Christ’s sake. But I’d swallow that because I believe that when you came back, things would be better between us.”
“Well, forgive me—I was unaware anything was wrong.”
Blair, fighting off tears, pointed at her face. “Does this look right to you?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. Blair steadied herself and took my hand.
“David, if we’re lucky, we’re going to have forty, fifty more years together. Things will … happen. Maybe things that make this look like kindergarten. But if we get all rigid on each other … if we’re too scared to live our real lives … we won’t make it. That’s why I’d push you into Jean’s bed. Because what we avoid is what will destroy us.”
“What if you go to Jean and you find out that you like her better—or like women better? This is what terrifies me.”
“I’m coming back. I swear it. I’m coming back.”
I wanted to believe her. But I didn’t dare. So I cried. And I knew this would not be the last time.
Blair’s tears had passed. She believed. In whatever she was doing with Jean. In us.
“Will we … see each other?”
“I don’t know. Not at first, I don’t think.”
“Can we talk?”
“Let’s start with email—but don’t you write the first one.”
What astonishing strength! I had none.
“We will have Thanksgiving, David. Ann will be home, and we will give thanks at this table.”
Not a bet I would make. I shook my head.
“And decades from now,” Blair continued, “one of us will die in the other’s arms—I know that. I love that. And I love you.”
We sat in silence, holding hands. No point in arguing. No point in asking for reasons. No point in trying to understand.
This was happening.
Chapter 23
On his first day of a business trip to Berlin, Liam Neeson has a car accident in a taxi. Waking from a coma four days later, he’s confused about many things but mostly this: Where is his wife? She must be looking for him. She must be frantic. But she’s not. So he goes looking for her. When he finds her, she’s at a restaurant with another man. Who is, she says, her husband. And can prove it. She’s never seen Liam Neeson before. Could management kindly have him … removed?
How could a woman look into her husband’s eyes and insist she doesn’t know him?
It’s only a movie. A well-cast actress delivered her lines flawlessly. And we’re hurtled so quickly beyond this
plot device that we don’t ask why Neeson doesn’t just Google himself on his iPhone and show the search results to his wife.
But how could Blair not know me?
And how could Blair say I really don’t know her?
This had to be a prank, a mistake, or—why had I not thought of this?—some sort of hormonal imbalance, a sign of imminent menopause.
Those were my first-day reactions to Blair’s announcement.
Start again.
Spin the story of the last month the other way.
It’s Blair who meets someone. A man. Operating under the terms of our understanding, she wants to bring him home. Into our bed.
A man.
This may sound kinky, but Blair having sex with another man is a fantasy I can handle. It works for me because I’d like to watch. From a distance. Not from the same bed.
It’s a very specific voyeurism. Ideally, they’d be hidden from the neck down by a sheet. All I’m interested in is Blair’s face, how she reacts as she’s being pleasured—the straining, eyes closed tight, the release as he comes or she does, whatever.
Going to bed with Blair and another man is trickier.
I’m pretty sure I could handle it if we were both servicing her. Or if she took turns servicing us. Of less interest is kissing a man, touching him, rubbing against him, his mouth on me or mine on him.
Everything, in short, that thrilled me when Blair and Jean did it.
But fair’s fair. If that’s what Blair wanted from a threesome, how could I refuse to do for her what she had so graciously done for me?
Now spin the story the other way, all the other way.
If a man and I really connected, I could be the one saying I’d be back in six weeks. And I might be the one saying, as Blair said to me, “Darling, there will be sex. I like to think there will also be talking. And … understanding. And … growth.” Blair might have been the one wondering if I’d make good on my promise to return.
Possible. But really … not. Because I can’t get past the skin. Do I want to reach for a man’s face and rub his unshaven beard? Cleave to a nipple covered with fur?
When I spin the story the other way? It’s a nonstarter.
I can see why Blair might believe she had a grievance.
Chapter 24
Blair left while I was out. She took one suitcase and a hanging bag. I was so numb that her physical absence barely registered.
There’s a way to get through setbacks like this:
Don’t open your lover’s closet and bury your face in an old shirt.
Don’t make a mix tape for her.
Don’t wait on the steps of her new home “just to say hi.”
Don’t start drinking Jack Daniel’s.
Don’t stop shaving.
Don’t register with a website that promises to hook you up with women who want more sex than their husbands provide.
Don’t eat in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Or out of a can.
If you don’t worship, don’t start.
Keep your pants on. Once you start walking around the house in boxers, you’re on the slippery slope.
For that matter, keep your hands off yourself.
Honor the truths of Little Red Riding Hood: Don’t talk to strangers. Stay on the path.
And specifically—I’m talking to myself now—look on the bright side. Six weeks is not forever. Over the lifespan of a marriage, it’s not even a blip; it’s exactly as long as a summer enrichment program.
All those years of wanting to read Tolstoy? Do it now.
Or pick something you’re curious about—British rock, 1963 to 1967—and spend nights on the web pulling up links, making your own greatest hits playlist.
Buy teeth-whitening strips and faithfully apply them.
It’s easier to move steel than people; step up your exercise routine.
Feel the need for a social life? Volunteer at a soup kitchen.
What about your friends? Don’t see them. Exceptions: If they’re in the hospital, have just lost a job, or are imminently moving to a distant city—if they’re worse off than you.
Go to every movie in the Eisenstein retrospective at MOMA.
Slippage is natural. You will backslide. So cut yourself some slack. Think of it as going off your diet on Saturday night.
Do you have a sudden, unhealthy fascination you want to research? Here’s a card entitling you to one free night of wallowing.
I had one of those sick fascinations: whether three people can fit in one relationship. So I launched a research project. Didn’t wait for Saturday.
This was my question: Is a triangle a legitimate relationship for three strong, emotionally mature people?
I didn’t ask about threesomes or romantic triangles—I knew what I’d get. I just typed in triangles. Soon I learned how the triangle is the strongest shape in nature. And how, in the 1930s, Buckminster Fuller invented the geodesic dome, which is made of triangular panels fitted together.
Geodesic domes can be thrown up quickly and inexpensively. Which the government did, in weather stations in Alaska and the South Pole. Which hippies did, in the late sixties, in New Mexico and Colorado. Those regions have something in common: horrendous storms. But storms don’t wreck domes, even hippie farm domes made from chopped-up car roofs. Clearly, something about the strength of the triangle makes the geodesic dome resist gale-force winds.
Or consider the “triangle offense” that was so successful for Phil Jackson when he coached the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers. Critics dismissed it as rigid and archaic. Jackson saw it as a flexible structure that encouraged superstars to play as a team and be creative. “When the triangle is working right, it’s virtually impossible to stop it,” Jackson wrote, “because no one knows what’s going to happen next, not even the players themselves.” And what is “working right”? Every player engaged. All the players moving together.
Inevitably, the question became this: If the triangle is the strongest shape in nature and the most successful formation in sports, why isn’t it the strongest form of human relationships?
Because it just isn’t. As kids sent to multichild playdates know, three invariably splinters into two and one. And even if the idea had merit, it wouldn’t matter—Blair and Jean were not begging me to move in with them.
Or even sending the occasional “hope you’re okay” email.
Chapter 25
When an animal in the woods gets sick, it goes deeper into the woods, burrows in, and sleeps. It stays asleep, as much as possible, until healed. With Blair gone, I followed animal wisdom: Lay low, keep quiet.
So in October, all my nights were one night, the same night. The dining room was my default location. A goose-neck lamp cast a pool of light as I typed on a laptop. Mozart horn concertos suggested order. And there was order: no open Chinese restaurant takeout boxes, no pyramid of empty beer cans, no ashtray overflowing with cigar stubs.
In other circumstances, this might be a picture of a man in the throes of creative effort. Sadly, this is a picture of a man churning out emails that couldn’t be sent:
Blair—I know we said you’d contact me first …
Blair—Shouldn’t have looked through the photo albums, but …
Blair—So I went to the Met. And there did see a painting …
Blair—“If equal affection cannot be,” Auden wrote …
Oh, Blair, sweet Blair, I …
Unproductive then and embarrassing now. In my defense, when I wrote these blasts, I thought I’d print them out and bind them—a record of a sad season. To be shared with Blair or not, depending.
On the plus side, I ran in the morning and again at night. I took on a pro bono case—a mother of two married to such a monster that a protection order wasn’t sufficient and I had to move her to another city. I o
pened more doors for the infirm and elderly, was more generous in my thanks for services, noticed the city’s castoffs and peeled off dollar bill after dollar bill.
Along the way, I achieved a modest balance. I wasn’t a man who pimped his wife, a man unworthy of love. There had been more hands than just mine on the tiller. Blame was a luxury. A postmortem had no point. Survival was victory. I had twinges, but most of the time, I wasn’t beating myself up.
La Rochefoucauld: “No man can look long upon the sun or death.”
In late October, I labored to be his Exhibit A.
Chapter 26
But I regressed.
She called herself Madame Bovary. I hadn’t read the novel in decades, but I remembered the carriage ride, curtains down, Bovary and her lover scandalously having at it.
There were many other Manhattan women on the cheaters’ website. Their pseudonyms were more to the point: ChasteOne, 38Dee, CumHere. Madame Bovary was the only name that suggested this woman had read a book between trysts. That affinity sufficed.
Using the confidential messaging form on the cheaters’ site, I gave myself the name of a lawyer who became a bestselling author—John Grisham—and began a conversation:
JOHN GRISHAM: In the novel, she kills herself. When you chose the name, did you think of that?
MADAME BOVARY: Of course. She dies alone. No worries for you.
JOHN GRISHAM: I don’t wish to contribute to your demise.
MADAME BOVARY: Don’t flatter yourself. There were others before you. There will be more after.
JOHN GRISHAM: Who are you?
MADAME BOVARY: Your mirror. Married, not happily.
JOHN GRISHAM: I’m happily married.
MADAME BOVARY: Please.
JOHN GRISHAM: Happily married with a temporary bump.
MADAME BOVARY: Never done this before, I see.
JOHN GRISHAM: How can you tell?
MADAME BOVARY: The clichés. Repeaters are slicker. Funnier.
JOHN GRISHAM: So I’m green. School me.
MADAME BOVARY: Height. Weight. Age. Income.
JOHN GRISHAM: 5’9”. 175. 46. None of your business. Who are you?
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