MADAME BOVARY: A woman who’d respond to a guy who calls himself John Grisham. Whom I admire. He’s our Dickens.
JOHN GRISHAM: You write?
MADAME BOVARY: Between patients. I’m a psychiatrist.
JOHN GRISHAM: What brings you here?
MADAME BOVARY: I’m looking for a lover who knows enough to do one thing slowly. Know what I mean?
JOHN GRISHAM: Yes. If you do that, it feels like the energy … builds.
MADAME BOVARY: Exactly. So I like him to start with his hand between my legs. And just … hold it.
JOHN GRISHAM: I do that.
MADAME BOVARY: And then I like it when he puts his arm there.
JOHN GRISHAM: I can do that.
MADAME BOVARY: And then I like the tip of his tongue just touching me.
JOHN GRISHAM: Emma, what do you look like?
MADAME BOVARY: Under oath, Mr. Grisham? For 50, I’m hot.
JOHN GRISHAM: I’d like specifics.
MADAME BOVARY: Standard Hotel. Tomorrow. 5:30 p.m. Ask for Bovary.
JOHN GRISHAM: Isn’t that the hotel where couples leave the curtains open so people on the High Line can watch them?
MADAME BOVARY: It is. And if you’re willing to do it in the window, I’ll let you have my ass.
Those words stopped me. As a sentence—words in combination—and as an idea. A wall of windows. A woman, standing parallel to the window, leaning over. A man, lubricated, slipping inside. The woman, breathing into the pain. Or welcoming it. The warmth. The tightness.
Bovary knew exactly what the pause in my typing meant.
MADAME BOVARY: I’m talking about the thing your wife doesn’t let you do, am I right? Or she did before you got married but won’t now. The thing you most want …
JOHN GRISHAM: Emma, you’re out of my league. I’m sorry.
I left the cheaters’ site. Didn’t return. In this world, I’m an amateur, and glad about it.
Chapter 27
A key turned. The front door opened. I switched from my evening ritual—unsent email to Blair—to a law blog I kept open in hopeful anticipation of this very moment. I pretended to be absorbed. I rehearsed surprise.
“Daddy!”
I was instantly laid low. And, just as fast, revived. Ann is the daughter every parent dreams of and we got. Colic as an infant and no trouble after that. Really, none. Great grades, good at sports, author of alternately funny and outraged editorials in the school paper. She’s in the center of every class picture. She’s the one reaching out to the new scholarship kids from the Bronx. The food drive at Thanksgiving, the soup kitchen not just at Christmas, building a house in Haiti in the blast furnace of summer—that’s Ann.
Ann is beautiful but doesn’t grasp it, and if anyone insists that she is, she’s confused—she understands beauty to be about cosmetics, and she uses none. There’s her mother’s brightness and curiosity in the eyes, her mother’s skin, her mother’s effortless athleticism. Like her mother, Ann’s clothes—jeans, a sweater, J.Crew barn jacket—are cared for but not fussed over.
Her mother’s child.
A whirl of motion. I jumped up, she dropped her backpack, we hugged, I pulled away to look at her, she grabbed me again, and we stood that way for some time, two hearts beating fast.
“I had to come,” she whispered.
“Why?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“I talked to Mom.”
“What did she say?”
“That you’re taking a break until Thanksgiving.”
“We are.”
“That seemed strange.”
“What?”
“That she’d move out. What happened?”
“Something small and stupid and all my fault.”
“I can believe that,” Ann said.
I realized I’d been holding on to my daughter literally “for dear life.” I liberated her, weak with relief—Blair hadn’t told Ann about the threesome and what it had led to. And she wouldn’t. Whatever we’d done to each other, we wouldn’t spill the damage into Ann’s life.
I couldn’t say what, but there was something different about Ann now, something acquired at college in two short months. How could that have happened? You watch her change and chart her growth for eighteen years, and suddenly she’s left home, and you’re not sure you shouldn’t introduce yourself and start over.
“Hungry?” I asked.
“I had something on the train.”
“I’d love an omelet. You?”
She nodded, and we moved to the kitchen.
“You look … great,” I said, as I busied myself with eggs and cheese.
“You too,” she said, a little too quickly.
“One of us is lying.”
Before I made the omelets, I reached for the coffee grinder and beans.
“Could I have hot chocolate?” Ann asked.
A small surprise. Ann is, like me, a coffee snob.
“I haven’t seen you drink hot chocolate since that snowstorm,” I said, foraging in the cabinet. “How long ago was that?”
“I was fourteen. We walked in the park all the way to the Boathouse.”
“We sat at the bar. You thought you were so big.”
“What a joke,” Ann said. “The waitress wore a white blouse and a black bra, and I said she must be French. And you agreed.”
“She wasn’t?”
“Brooklyn.” She punched me. “As you remember.”
“I loved walking with you in that storm,” I said. “But really, what don’t I love about you?”
“The perks of an only child.”
We talked about Tufts and her courses and why she wasn’t running cross-country and how studying international relations and diplomacy was like splitting the difference between her father, who gets warring parties permanently separated, and her mother, who builds relationships. We talked about her high school friends and how they were adjusting to college. We kicked some politicians around, and she brought me up-to-date on new music.
Then it was late. One more thing to say. I’d been avoiding it.
“About Thanksgiving. If you want to bring someone home and are now thinking maybe that’s not a good idea … it’s a good idea.”
“Waifs and strays?” Ann asked.
“All your loser friends.”
In the movie version, Ann pretends to wince at my bad, old joke, punches me and hugs me, and goes to her room to play music too loud. And in the final shot of that scene, as good old dad starts to wash the dishes, he smiles, as if to say: I am halfway to okay.
In real life, Ann dropped the mask.
First, the setup. “If I bring my friends home, how do I know it won’t be Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?”
“Your mother and I are fine,” I said. “This is just a … moment.”
Now the knife: “Why was Mom choked-up on the phone?”
There was nothing I could say.
The first thrust: “If your dog was in that kind of pain, you’d put it down!”
“We’re not … in touch,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know you hurt her?”
“I do know that.”
“What did she ever do to you? What?”
If I could have said anything, it would have been something like … well, I don’t know. How do you tell your daughter you’re sorry for what you and her mother did in bed?
Chapter 28
And on the 22nd day … Blair sent me a midafternoon instant message. I had to smile; instant messaging is archaic. Who uses instant messages these days? Older people, when they need to communicate more than location and mood and when their kids aren’t around to mock them.
BLAIR: I hurt. I’m not blaming you. As they say: “No victims, only volunteers.” I did
n’t see that for so long. Now I do. Not that I’m “a finely tuned instrument”—forgive me for that. When I said it, I was in crazy pain. I’m better now. I acknowledge my complicity. Boy, do I have work to do. And so do you, because, over years, small, persistent wrongs have a cumulative effect: blunt force trauma. And I love you.
A first-draft, top-of-the-head blast? Not close. It had the force of weeks of thought. But it called for an immediate response.
ME: Pleased to hear from you. Can we talk?
BLAIR: Not today. Your voice would unnerve me.
ME: We could meet. Wear dark shades. Pass notes.
BLAIR: To what point?
ME: Broker a peace treaty. Discuss our child. Or make out under the bleachers. Whichever comes first.
BLAIR: You’ll be pleased to know I rapped Ann’s knuckles.
ME: She’s just a kid.
BLAIR: This isn’t her business. She’s being a moralizing little brat. And she’s rewriting family history—remember, in the Bahamas, when Kenny Klein was driving the boat, and he went faster and faster?
ME: Ann was scared. I asked him to slow down.
BLAIR: And Kenny said, “She’s got a life vest. Even if I flip the boat, she’ll be alright.” Ann sobbed and sobbed. You grabbed the wheel and stopped the boat.
ME: He never talked to me again.
BLAIR: Ann now tells it like she got hysterical and Kenny stopped only because she begged him.
ME: Weak, irresponsible dad.
BLAIR: Who never put her arm around her. Who never told her she was safe as long as you were in this world.
ME: Doesn’t matter.
BLAIR: It does. Whatever our differences, you’re a great dad.
ME: Thanks. Right now I only care about getting my wife’s chin off the table.
BLAIR (ignoring me): I’ve got to return to my regular scheduled programming.
ME: Will you think I’m “controlling” if I suggest a book?
BLAIR: Sigh.
ME: When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chödrön.
BLAIR: Can you just summarize his message?
ME: Her message.
BLAIR: A female writer. How like you.
ME: I’m ignoring that. Here’s a story she tells: A poor family had a son they loved beyond measure. He was thrown from a horse and crippled. Two weeks later, the army came to the village and took every able-bodied man to fight in the war. The young man was allowed to stay behind with his family.
BLAIR: So?
ME: For Pema Chödrön, that’s the moral: “Life is like that.We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.”
BLAIR (after ten seconds of silence): Well, that’s where I’m at. I don’t know.
ME: I’m there too.
Chapter 29
“Well, look at the bronze goddess!” I said, with a lightness that anyone else might have believed.
Victoria didn’t. And didn’t pretend to. So I didn’t try to divert her with questions about what she’d been reading as she spent her afternoons wrapped in a blanket on a chaise on her lawn at the beach.
“How are you, David?”
“Fine. What brings you to town, V?”
“When they harvest the pumpkins, it’s time.”
“Coffee?”
“I’ll get it later. May I sit?”
I stood, thinking we’d take the couch. But she sat across the desk, like a client, which told me everything. If a hole appeared in the floor before me, even a hole leading somewhere deep and dark and crawling with snakes at the bottom, I would have jumped in.
“I’m okay, V,” I said. “Really. You don’t have to worry about—”
“When someone is worried, David, it’s usually too late. I am … concerned.”
“Why?”
“I talked to Blair,” she said. And, anticipating my question, she quickly added, “I called her.”
“Why?”
“Intuition.”
“She may have exaggerated what happened. It’s not that heavy.”
There was kindness in V’s voice. “There’s nothing heavier than a broken heart.”
I knew then what it would be like to get a late-night phone call from the police.
V paused. She seemed to be fighting off an unruly idea, then gathered herself. “Let me speak first as a lawyer—as your lawyer. You and Blair had a verbal contract, binding for both of you: ‘If you’re going to stray, bring that person home.’”
I blushed. I cringed. For Victoria, having to utter a sentence like that …
“Blair broke that agreement by not consulting you on the question of her moving out and living with …”
“Jean Coin.”
“Thank you. Given the care you took, over several years, to craft your original agreement, what Blair did was casual and reckless. She damaged the agreement and—much worse—she damaged your relationship.”
“She had some help,” I said. “Agreeing to see Jean a second time—that was my fault.”
“I was getting to that. You, as a lawyer, should have seen that a second encounter would establish a budding relationship—the very situation the contract was created to avoid. But you’re lucky. Every day there are wives who leave their husbands for other women and never come back. Blair is coming home.”
V sat back and pressed a hand to her head. She looked her age and then some.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Water, please.”
I got a bottle from the side table and poured a glass. No ladylike sip for V—she gulped it down.
“Blair is coming home,” V said. “But not to the same marriage. She’s different. You’re different. You can’t start over. You have to be where you are—wherever you are.”
V stood and faced me. She gestured for me to stand and come to her, and when I did, she put her hands on my shoulders. Looking at us, you’d think we were about to dance. But the image I had was of a very wise elder, near the end of her life, passing on the core truths.
“There is one thing you must do to rescue your marriage,” V said, her eyes locked on mine. “And that is to pretend none of this ever happened. Don’t ask Blair any questions. Make no references to … that woman.”
“What if Blair—”
“Don’t pick up the rope.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“If Blair brings it up, you can’t respond with a smart remark. You can’t disagree with her about it. You cannot have thirty seconds of dialogue about this … episode. If you must, make a brief apology, but say nothing more. It’s this simple: Don’t … pick … up … the rope. Because there is always someone at the other end. And once you have the rope in your hand, you’re in a tug-of-war. And you’ll lose. Even if you win, you’ll lose.”
“Very difficult.”
“All but impossible,” V said. “But nothing else works.”
“I’ll do anything that makes the pain go away.”
“I remember when my marriage ended, it was horrible. I was in the throes of such pure emotion, it was so … raw.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”
“But I was also strangely happy. It was good to feel something so raw. I was completely alive. Any of that happening in you?”
I hadn’t considered the utility of pain, the glory of it.
“You’re completely alive right now, David. It’s rare and enviable. If you and Blair trade it for comfort, you’re damn fools.”
Chapter 30
On October 26, in the middle of the night, Blair sent her first email:
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Overnight Lows
D—
I read that book by your friend Pema Chödrön.
I very much liked a story about the Native American grandfather who was speaking to his grandson about violence and cruelty in the world and how it comes about. He said it was as if two wolves were fighting in his heart.
One wolf was vengeful and angry, and the other wolf was understanding and kind. The young man asked his grandfather which wolf would win the fight in his heart. And the grandfather answered, “The one that wins will be the one I choose to feed.”
I am choosing to feed our marriage.
I’m having a hard time.
Bear with me.
Chapter 31
As a child, I wasn’t ambitious; I was driven. The striving to do well in public school led to the scholarship to a private school. Once there, I moved faster. Always a hand raised in class, fast, like it was a quiz show and you won prizes for knowledge. I minored in after-school activities, piling up lines in the yearbook. The track team—sprinting events, of course. From fourteen on, summer jobs. And, always, clean shirts and neat hair and good manners.
At the same time, the little achiever was completely fixated on girls. Not good enough in sports for the beauty queens. Not musical, so no chance with the rebels in leotards. But I had a mouth, and I used it to debate, to edit the paper, to win small parts in the school plays. There are girls who like that boy, and if he is shrewd enough to ask them what they think and willing to spend the evening listening to them talk, his mouth will be rewarded.
What I learned in Shakespeare class: The hero is highly verbal and highly sexed.
Good deal. Happy to be that hero.
And now I’m not.
I can’t make it right.
I’ve been silenced.
So I read. Too much. The sentences blurred. But there was a Seamus Heaney poem—he said it was one of his favorites—that I read again and again.
The title of the poem is “The Underground.” That’s the London subway, of course. It’s also a reference to the Orpheus myth. A snake bites his wife, and she dies. Broken by grief, Orpheus goes to the Underworld to rescue her. Hard-hearted Hades hears his music and tells him: “You can have her, but if you look back before you’re in the upper world, you will lose her forever.” Just before they reach safety, Orpheus can’t resist—he looks back.
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