We made love for the second time. It lasted perhaps thirty seconds longer than the first time. I wondered about all the love stories I had read. For some reason I had thought it was real. I’d had dreams of making love to a tall, dark-haired man. Filled with passion, the dreams left me weak and wanting. Now I knew the dream was just that—a dream. Passion-filled lovemaking was a fantasy.
Our lives continued as we planned. Two years after we met, we finished school and got married. Larry went to law school and I went to work for a major pharmaceutical company. After a couple of years of blissful happiness as newlyweds I became pregnant. That was the moment I can look back on and know it was then when my fears began. Betrayal, pain and sorrow were my daily companion. My childhood dreams of a past lover, a son I’d not gotten a chance to raise came back with full force during my first pregnancy. I found myself grieving for my lost family yet pretending to Larry that everything was fine. I feared I was going insane and worked hard to control my dreams, my agony that was as real to me as Larry’s love. Despite my occasional longings to be reunited with my lost family I’d kept my promises to Larry.
There were times when I would dream of the dark-haired lover and awake feeling I had broken my promises to my husband. I blamed myself for not finding more pleasure in my husband’s touch. I thought I was crazy to feel that I was cheating on the lover in my dreams. I fought to get over loving a man that didn’t exist.
I learned self hypnosis and taught myself not to cringe, to be more receptive. I found that just a small sip of wine heightened my desire, so I would take a drink. It almost worked. He almost touched me in the way I was craving, but I was afraid to say anything.
He needed a simple direction or two, but I didn’t know how to tell him. I didn’t want to do anything that might make Larry feel bad. I didn’t want him to question where I’d learned about such things. How could I tell him that in my dreams I was loving another man?
I came to almost dread our lovemaking, my constantly being brought so near the edge, to be left there as he plunged toward bliss alone. I hid that knowledge deep within myself, afraid that it might be my inability to enjoy lovemaking to the fullest except in my fantasies.
I became adept at pretense. I learned what to do to give my husband satisfaction, what moves to make to make him think I, too, had reached the pinnacle of fulfillment.
How could I explain to Larry that somewhere in my memories there existed another man whose body I craved, whose touch set me on fire and whose very breath made me shiver with sexual desire? I didn’t have the words necessary to explain that a phantom had claims on my very soul.
This man lived only in my dreams. I knew that. Yet I wondered why I knew instinctually that it was a different touch I craved. I repeatedly shoved my longings away from me. Larry and I had a good life. We rarely fought, we went out, we made love regularly, we had fun together and we were friends.
Slowly I saw my husband blossom in the knowledge that I would always love him, always be there when he returned home. He was a confident, loving man that always saw qualities in me that I didn’t believe I possessed.
Chance was right. I needed Larry every bit as much as he needed me. Without him I would be forced to deal with the fact that I didn’t believe I was a nice person inside.
I was a good mother because it was expected of me. I was a good wife because I’d promised. And I’d been a good daughter because I had thought it would make my parents happy, keep them together.
None of it worked. My parents got divorced, my kids were angry with me most of the time now because I was no longer at their beck and call. And my husband was confused. I needed Larry to retain my sanity. Damn my dreams and damn Chance for turning out to be the man in them.
He thought I didn’t believe him. I had known from the moment he held me in the rain that he was the man in my dreams. My heart had lurched toward his. I’d called myself crazy when I felt it and him crazy when he spoke of it, but I had known. I couldn’t admit any of this to Chance. What would happen to my life if I did? What would happen to the promise I’d made to Larry?
My life was spiraling out of my control. In time I’m sure I would have been able to push Viola to the back of my mind as I’d done with so many things. Being with Chance had changed things. I could no longer pretend, or keep things shoved to the back of my mind. I now knew it would be impossible for me to keep pretending to be the virtuous wife and mother my husband thought me to be.
Somewhere deep within I heard the same voice I had heard many years before telling me to run. It was now telling me it was time for me to live again.
Chapter Eight
I opened the door of my home and walked through it as if for the first time. I thought of when we’d bought it. Larry had fallen in love with the layout, with the many bedrooms and the huge backyard.
At the time I’d had no idea that all of the rooms would be filled with children. I was thrilled to be buying a home, happy with my wonderful, handsome husband. I would have agreed to live on an ant farm if he had suggested it.
Now I walked through each room remembering the years we’d spent there. I waited to walk in my bedroom last. I lay on my bed fully clothed, not bothering to kick off my shoes. I had spent most of my life here in this bed with my husband. I couldn’t anymore. I knew that. But I also couldn’t leave Larry. We needed each other.
I went to the closet and began removing my clothes. I hadn’t known what I would do when I left Chance but I did now. It would be impossible for me to sleep in the bed with my husband after spending the past nine nights in Chance’s bed, in his arms.
As I moved to Erica’s old bedroom I felt a shudder of pain go through me. This was the second promise I’d broken in the past several months. It seemed since I’d broken the promise to Viola, everything else was happening in rapid succession.
I thought of the night Larry asked me to marry him, the promises I’d made to him. Well, those promises were now broken. I’d given my body and part of my heart to a man who claimed we were destined to love.
Larry would never understand that. If it had not happened to me, I wasn’t sure if I would believe it myself. But my soul stirred within Chance’s embrace, alerting me to the fact that he spoke the truth.
My dreams were confirmation that somewhere, sometime, this man and I had shared a life. We’d shared a love that apparently death did not and could not erase. Still, where did that leave me now? I didn’t want to leave my husband, but I couldn’t sleep in our bed and pretend that nothing had changed.
When all my personal possessions had been removed from my room, I calmly went to the store. I would make dinner for Larry’s return, steak, the same as it always was when he returned from visiting the kids.
The only thing that would be different on Larry’s return would be me. I would not be waiting in a flimsy gown.
Larry walked into his home, bone weary from the fear that had gripped him so tightly the past two weeks. Michelle wasn’t home. Panic began a slow beat in his temples, then proceeded to his belly, churning the bitter acid upward toward his now closing throat.
He walked throughout the house, something telling him not to go into the bedroom. The hairs on his arms pricked with static electricity whenever he turned in that direction. Whatever was waiting for him lay in that room.
Icy fingers gripped his heart and squeezed. Fear such as he’d never known invaded his entire being. He stood for a moment remembering when he was a child and afraid of the dark. But he was no longer a child. He was a man. He had no choice but to face his fears.
Larry turned toward his bedroom and began walking, slow even steps, counting slowly to himself the many years he’d spent with Mick. He didn’t want it to be over. Where the hell was she? She knew damn well what time he was coming home.
He was doing his best to direct the pain mounting in his chest to anger directed at his wife. He didn’t like being reduced to the five-year-old old hiding inside. He didn’t like the feeling of abandonment
that was stiffening his bones with each step.
Larry stood inside his bedroom door and breathed in, trying to still the rapid beating of his heart. His eyes surveyed the room. Nothing was out of place yet the air felt charged with sadness and impending doom.
He reached his hand out, now knowing why, and swept it through the air. The hairs on his arm stood at attention. Everything looked the same, but something was different. He’d stake his life on it.
The attorney in him came out as he searched the room for the obvious clues before moving on to the less obvious ones. He didn’t feel Mick’s energy in the room. He shivered.
Where the hell had that thought come from? Now he was sounding as mad as she was. She was infecting him with all that energy and past life crap.
Still, as he stood in the room fighting to analyze what was before him, he could no longer deny it. The room no longer held the essence of his wife. Her smell was missing, her warmth. Her energy.
Oh hell, he thought and headed for her closet door. The sight of the emptiness slammed into him, with the force of a three hundred pound prize fighter. He sank to the bed trying in vain to recover.
Mick had left him. He sat there immobile, not seeing, hearing, or feeling. He stayed there until he heard the front door opening and the rustling of bags. He stood, not knowing which he feared most, wondering if his wife was gone from his life or looking into her eyes and seeing the truth.
The pain that was long ago buried began to take root and live again. It grew inside him, doubling, tripling in size. The anger was valid. It was real. But the source was no longer his mother, it was Michelle.
“How long, Mick?”
I walked through the doors knowing Larry would be waiting for me. I’d not meant to spend so much time in the store.
“How long?”
I stared at my husband, wanting to pretend I didn’t know what he was asking, but over twenty-six years of being married made that impossible.
“Damn it. How long, Mick?”
“Are you asking me when was the first time?”
I headed for the kitchen. The pain in his eyes was masked only by his fury. He followed behind me as I had known he would. Anger and pain darkened Larry’s features. I saw what I had done to my husband. And that alone almost stopped me.
I felt tears welling in my eyes, tears that I couldn’t give in to. I’d known full well there would be consequences for my actions.
My throat was constricted. There were words I wanted to say to my husband, to make him understand why I’d done it. Why I’d chosen after a lifetime of loving him to destroy our marriage.
I needed to explain that I’d been dying inside, that I had needed something, anything to make the pain go away. Chance just happened to be more than I had bargained for.
I watched my husband advance toward me. For a moment in time the world stopped. My head filled with an incredible pressure and I felt a sudden rush of wind inside my kitchen. I turned toward the window. It was closed.
When I turned back toward Larry, I could swear he was covered with a fine silver mist. I heard a faraway tinkling of bells.
Then the mist surrounding Larry began to dissipate, carrying with it my own broken dreams. I could see now that the hope of my marriage to Larry lasting forever was gone. I stared into his eyes and saw my thoughts were mirrored there.
“It hasn’t been long,” I whispered to him, as though whispering would make up for the knife I’d just plunged into my husband’s heart.
I watched as he continued toward me. He appeared to stagger, his hand reaching out to hold the countertop. Instinctively I lunged forward to help him. “Don’t,” he growled at me. “Don’t touch me.”
“Larry, I didn’t plan this.”
“The hell you didn’t. Now I know why you were spouting off that crap about past lives and not wanting the children here. Tell me, Mick, did you fuck him in our bed?”
I closed my eyes tightly, reeling from his words as though they were a blow. My back was pressed against the sink. I needed to move. Larry was pressing his body next to mine. His hands moved roughly over my breasts. His left knee was shoved between my legs.
“Larry, stop,” I screamed at him, at this stranger who had invaded my husband’s body. I placed both my palms on his chest and pushed with all my might. He went back and in the same instant I moved.
“Someone else can touch you and I can’t?”
I walked toward the living room trying to focus, to get words that I needed. “You can’t touch me like that. You were hurting me. Why are you behaving like this? You’ve never touched me like that.”
I watched as Larry gripped his head in his hands. He was clawing at his hair, his reddened face turning purple. “Honey, calm down, you need to sit,” I said to him from a safe distance across the room. He glared at me, but sat. I moved to the sofa directly opposite Larry and sat down. I’d known this day was coming. I sighed, trying to decide how to start.
“I’m not going to see him anymore. It’s over.”
“Why? Because I’m home? It should have never begun, Mick.”
“I tried to avoid it.” I whispered
I looked away from him, then back. I was wrong for what I had done, but I found myself getting angry.
“I asked you to come home. I told you I needed you.”
He stood up and came to stand over me, glaring with righteous indignation. The veins in his neck appeared to have swollen to ten times their size. Despite what was happening I found myself more worried about Larry’s health than the unraveling of our marriage.
“If you can’t keep your legs closed unless I’m at home to watch you, that doesn’t say very much for either of us, does it?” he screamed at me.
He knelt before me on the floor. With his right hand he tilted my chin up so my eyes were looking into his.
“How many times have you done this?”
“This is the first time,” I answered him before my breath caught on a sob. “I mean…this is the only man, but I was with him once before.”
As I watched my husband’s eyes, panic replaced some of my own anger. A shudder passed from his body into mine. It was revulsion. I could feel it.
I attempted to shrink into the sofa pillows, but my husband’s fingers bit into my flesh, not allowing me to escape even an inch from his wrath.
“Larry, you’re hurting me,” I whispered to him, my eyes again pooling with unshed tears. I felt the immediate loosening of his grip.
“Tell me everything, Mick,” he demanded, his voice low and dangerous.
“I told you two months ago.” I watched his head as he dipped it lower, his mind a mental calculator trying to recall when I’d dropped such information in his lap.
“The stranger I met in the parking lot of the grocery store. Chance. I told you.”
Larry stood then. “Are you telling me that you actually met some man and went to a hotel with him?”
“Yes.”
I watched as he paced around the room throwing me looks of disbelief. I saw fear in his eyes, fear that I knew was for me before he constructed a mask and dropped it into place to hide his feelings.
He walked to the other side of the room and stood there looking at me, not speaking, just a puzzled little frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You could have been killed,” Larry whispered, his voice almost a moan.
His eyes closed. I watched his chest as it heaved up and down. He was trying to calm himself.
“What is wrong with you, Mick? You’ve been acting crazy ever since you…”
“Go ahead. Say it, Larry. Since I hit Viola.”
“Are you doing this to punish me?”
“I’m not trying to punish you.”
“It sure as hell feels like you are. I did what was best.”
“For whom, Larry?”
“For you. I did what was best for you, Mick.”
Larry ran his hand roughly over his face, his eyes red rimmed. He was no longer glaring
at me. Instead, his eyes were a mass of confusion.
“So, you’re fucking some guy, some stranger you met in a parking lot, because I was trying to protect you?”
I wanted to tell him he should be grateful to Chance, that if it had not been for him, I would probably be dead right now. I didn’t. I didn’t have a death wish and right then Larry looked as if he wanted to strangle me.
“It wasn’t like that. I needed someone to listen to me and he was there.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me? I’ve always been there when you needed me. I’ve always listened to you.”
“No, you haven’t. I talk, but you don’t hear anything I have to say. You always paint this picture in your mind of what you think I said, or what you think I want. You’ve never asked.”
I stopped at the look of pain that literally desecrated my husband’s face, leaving him looking old and beaten.
I gentled my voice. “Honey, you made me into what you wanted me to be. You wanted me to be this wonderful mother. You wanted me to want a house full of kids. When I said no, you didn’t hear me. That wasn’t your picture of me, so what I said didn’t count.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you felt this way?”
“I tried, Larry. For twenty- six years I’ve tried. But you were happy…and I made a promise to you.” My voice broke on a sob. “I couldn’t break my promise to you.”
I saw a look cross his face that was much worse than the pain I had already inflicted. I knew before he asked what he was thinking.
“Were you only with me all these years because of a promise, Mick? Did you ever love me?”
THE AFFAIR Page 12