Objects of Desire

by Roberta Latow

  ‘It’s not possible,’ Anoushka gasped.

  ‘Rosamond and I always knew that our love for each other, if ever discovered by you, would be a blow you might never recover from, so we turned ourselves into cheats. We, and especially Rosamond, suffered embarrassment at having to sneak around for stolen moments and hidden corners, strange hotel rooms, or empty offices after dark, so that we might be together. No humiliation was too much for our lust and love for each other.’

  ‘Oh, now you want me to feel sorry for the woman who stole my husband away, invaded my life as a friend and betrayed me? A double betrayal. You and Rosamond … The happy life and love I thought was mine, all a sham.’

  ‘Rosamond and I have had to live with the knowledge of that all these years. Protecting your feelings has not been easy for us. This marriage is breaking up because when I die I want to be able to say, as one of my patients said this morning: “I don’t mind dying. I don’t mind being dead.” Only someone who has lived their life to the fullest, someone who has fulfilled themselves, can die with such dignity. The way I live now, I am not a man who could utter those words. I would go in bitterness and regret, and I don’t intend to do that.’

  Robert’s words had been spoken with such passion that for several minutes afterwards they remained silent listening to their own thoughts, their own pain. Rosamond and Robert, out of their desperation to be together whenever possible, had eased Rosamond into Robert and Anoushka’s family life. Rosamond became their best friend, the person whom the twins loved and saw as a member of their family, a friend with whom Anoushka was happy to share her husband and children. All that flashed through Robert’s mind and made him more angry; so many hints over so many years that Anoushka had turned a blind eye to. The thought and the memory of all those years the three had shared together prompted Robert.

  ‘Making Rosamond a friend, sharing your husband and children, our life with her – a magnanimous gesture to a lonely woman. That’s been the role you have played with Rosamond all along, and not very subtly, I might add. Enduring that was very difficult. Consideration for your feelings, guilt for not loving my wife the way I should, love for Alexis and Mishka, a belief in the family, the home – so many excuses turned Rosamond and me into cheats, and me into an adulterer. We began to despise ourselves. The relief I feel now because that’s over for me and Rosamond is immeasurable. And now that you know the truth, it must be for you.’

  Anoushka regained her voice. ‘We went everywhere together, she was a part of our lives. She added joy, became as close to us as any family member could be. Surely not? It can’t be? How could you and Rosamond deceive me? The two people I loved the most aside from my sons. I gave her my home, my family, because she could find none for herself.’

  ‘All those years you were treating her with pity for her aloneness and sharing our life with her, she was wanting what you were so possessive of, and feeling the pain of what she was missing. Yet she stayed on for my sake, for our family’s sake, because she knew that she was my happiness and I would abandon you all if she left me. How cruel you’ve been to us both by not opening your eyes and seeing what was there between us. We gave you so many hints. Could you not understand that there had to be something wrong with our marriage when half of the time I insisted she be part of it? No, not you. You simply couldn’t see what was right there before your eyes, how Rosamond gathered the crumbs that you threw her and lived and loved off them.

  ‘How do you think she must have felt all these years, always waiting for that invitation to the house from you, for your suggestion that she travel on holiday with us, and then having to go to her room alone at night while you crawled over me lustily, insinuating how sexually compatible we were and showing it off publicly. Only my acknowledging that it was true, albeit as subtly as possible, would calm you down so as not to make your behaviour more embarrassing for Rosamond. For all our friends as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You pig, to speak to me like this now! You took her into my home and deceived me, both of you, right in front of me. And when she was not with us, what an actor! The good and generous husband and father and, I might add, the extraordinarily lustful lover. Love for Rosamond never stopped your hunger for sex with me, did it? What treachery, what disloyalty. Why didn’t you just leave me if as you say you didn’t love or want me?’

  ‘Pity. Rosamond pitied you. She said she would never break up the family, she loved us as a family.’

  ‘And kept silent, and made love to my husband behind my back. You were indeed discreet about that. How, when, where?’

  ‘Drop it, Anoushka.’

  ‘No, tell me, you deceitful bastard.’

  ‘Every chance we could get.’

  ‘My life has been a sham,’ she said barely above a whisper. She was beaten, pummelled by Robert’s revelations. She was feeling like a boxer whose opponent had him on the ropes and was clinging on not to go down for the count. It showed in her face, the manner in which she sat slumped in her chair, hands gripping the arms, knuckles white.

  ‘Yes. But it had to end.’

  ‘You were always going to leave me? You would have long ago but for the boys?’

  ‘Yes. Rosamond and I agreed not to make a move until Alexis and Mishka were of an age where they would not be damaged by divorce.’

  ‘You would fuck her and love her and make serious life decisions with Rosamond, and then come home to me? I think I’m going to be sick.’ Anoushka placed a hand over her mouth and retched, but nothing happened. They were both silent for a moment while she composed herself as best she could.

  ‘You never knew. It never harmed you, Anoushka. I never denied you sex, affection, respect, and never embarrassed you.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be thankful for that? Next you’ll be telling me sex with her enhanced our sex life?’

  ‘That’s true. Sex, love with Rosamond, the excitement of an illicit affair, they all added to my life. I did come home and was able to cope with you and family life. She makes me feel free and alive, not trapped and suffocated by love and duty.’

  The pain of what Anoushka was hearing was overwhelming but she could not help herself. She had to know more, every detail of Rosamond and Robert’s heinous exploitation of her loving good nature. She was baffled as to how she had never received a hint of what was going on. Once more she imagined that what was happening to her was not true. It was madness, but she kept wanting Robert to prove to her that it was. ‘Where? How? Does everyone know?’

  ‘You won’t be satisfied till you hear it all. Do you think if I have this in-depth confrontation with you, these revelations will somehow change things and what is happening will go away? You can shove it to the back of your mind, and we can pick up our old lives again? It’s not going to happen.’

  Anoushka knew what Robert wanted was for her to accept the inevitable, be a lady, and walk away giving him his freedom in a civilised fashion. Her interminable questions more than angered him now, she saw clearly that he was enraged because she would not let go as gracefully as he had lived out his unhappy years with her. Anoushka didn’t give a damn about this anger, or the rage she saw in his face. Her gaze was as hard and mean as his now.

  And it was that look in her eyes that prompted Robert to tell her now, somewhat sadistically, ‘How? In secret, discreetly. When? Stolen moments, frantic sex when you vanished for short periods of time to see to the dinner, here in this very room, Rosamond bending over the back of the very chair you are sitting in, on that sofa, that floor. Hard and full of passion for each other, desperate to be alone and intimate, we would couple. I would move in and out of Rosamond until she came, then hurriedly withdraw, zip up and caress her cheek with my hand, and thank her for being there for me. When you would go to pick up the boys from their friends’ houses, when you bathed or dressed, anytime you left us alone together and I felt we were relatively safe from your walking in on us, we had each other.

  ‘And at the hospital on those evenings when I was supposed to
be there on clinic business, we were having sex, glorious, thrilling lust on the floor of my office. Weekends when I went away on seminars, trips abroad on consultations with colleagues or to visit some of my more celebrated or seriously ill patients, were stolen days of bliss for us. On the grass, in a wood, in out of the way places where we were not known.

  ‘And when we were on holiday with you and the boys, I had it all, you and Rosamond. I revelled in the lust provided by two women who loved me. It became my way of life but the down side was that the arrangement turned Rosamond and me into fraudsters, fakes, hypocrites. For two people such as Rosamond and me who despise such venal behaviour to find ourselves dedicated to it was anathema, suicide to the soul. Self-inflicted poison, drop by drop. I hate you for that.’

  ‘Don’t lay this on me, Robert! You could have stopped at any time.’

  ‘You fool. Don’t you think we tried, many times?’

  ‘Not hard enough.’

  ‘I despise you for this, Anoushka, putting us through this confrontation now.’

  ‘Do you think I care any more about what you or Rosamond think about me? Rosamond! She’s worse than you. I opened my home to her, shared my life, my husband and my children with her. And don’t think there weren’t times over the years when I would rather not have done. And all the time she was stealing you and my children away from me! Oh, I did notice how much a part of our lives she was, I wasn’t altogether blind. But I never saw or imagined that she could steal you away from me, that she was crawling into my life to push me out. Despise? Don’t you use that word about me. If anyone should despise, it is me. I despise Rosamond for what she has done and think you both disgusting. No, I take that back about her being the worse of you. She’s bad in my eyes, about as bad as you can get, but you’re worse, much worse. Controlling me with love and lust all those years, your power and charisma dominating me and my life. I’ve spent my entire marriage doing everything possible to please you. I was so grateful for love and fidelity from such a handsome, clever, attractive man. A man who made other women’s husbands look grossly unattractive. A man the entire world of medicine admired for his humanity and genius, his devotion to his work.

  ‘What a joke on me! I always thought you were able to be all those things because first and foremost you had the security of home and hearth with me, your one and only true love, me and the boys. That we inspired you to greatness because we were your real and only true life. That your love for us made it possible to go out into the world a hero. You pig!’

  ‘And there is your insufferable vanity speaking.’ Robert raised his hand once more to her. Only this time he slapped Anoushka hard across the face. The act stunned them both. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  ‘I suppose you’ve wanted to do that for years,’ she said with incredible sadness in her voice.

  Robert opened his eyes and gazed into hers. The icy coldness with which he looked at her made Anoushka take a step back. She formed a fist and placed the knuckles of her hand in her mouth.

  ‘Yes, many, many times.’ With that he walked from the room and out of the house.

  ANOUSHKA RIVERS

  Chapter 3

  The sun was out, white-bright in a blue sky on a bitter cold day. It made things appear to be less frozen than they were, gave an illusion that soon this hard winter would be over. Everything looked sharp, crystal clean. All a lie. Nothing was either crystal clean or clear as far as Anoushka could see. Darkness, emptiness had taken over her life.

  She gave Robert everything he wanted: the house as it was with all its contents down to the last pot, pan and book; custody of their sons; a discreet and immediate exit from Lakeside for her in exchange for a promise of no lies to Alexis and Mishka. Instead she and Robert would see the boys together but she would be the one to explain the traumatic events changing all their lives.

  The boys’ best friends were the Holland children who lived next door, and Betsy Holland was the closest friend that Anoushka had. Close but not intimate, they were hardly women who confided their troubles to one another. There were reasons for this. Anoushka never had any troubles. She was a woman who’d never allowed anything to cloud her idyllic life with Robert. And Betsy? It was quite simple; she was more social, had other friends with less satisfactory lives who felt angst about things Anoushka never did. It was easier to share intimacies with them. And there was a second reason. As much as Betsy liked and got along with Anoushka, she, like most of the Riverses’ friends, had grown up with Robert and liked him more than his wife. There was always something a little remote, smug, not quite New England about Anoushka, she’d felt. Or was it a fiercely independent pride in who she was, what she had, that was offputting. It gave her, rightly or wrongly, a condescending attitude. Like others who knew Robert and Anoushka as a couple, Betsy could see what Anoushka never did: that Robert had not married the right woman. Betsy often felt sad for them, but mostly for Robert and the concessions he had made. She had always wished she could have liked Anoushka that little bit more. Others were not so scrupulous. Far from pitying Anoushka after they learned of Robert’s defection, some of her neighbours were keen to distance themselves from her. It was as if they saw divorce as a contagion – or perhaps Anoushka as his wife a threat to their own propped-up and patched-together marriages.

  It was to Betsy and David that Robert went after walking out on his wife. David was his childhood friend and attorney but until Robert rang their doorbell that night, he had never dreamed that Robert and Anoushka would not stay married for always. Robert had indeed buried his unhappiness deep. It was Betsy who let herself into the Rivers house to comfort Anoushka the best she could. And it was Betsy and David who were now driving her into New York where they were to join Robert and the Rivers and Holland children for lunch in the Oak Room of The Plaza before Anoushka sailed out of their lives on the QE2.

  This lunch was not easy for any of them, but designed for Alexis and Mishka’s sake, to make light of the devastation of a family. It was dressed up as a treat for the boys, having their best friends with them and going to see their mother off on the first lap of her travels round the world. Anoushka thought of Robert flying the four boys down from Groton for the day. They were probably at The Plaza by now.

  Traffic was building up, it had been since Riverdale but kept moving along. Panic set in as Anoushka was riding alongside the Hudson River. She seemed mesmerised by the water and a ship going upriver. Betsy turned in her seat to look at her.

  ‘Won’t be long now. Are you all right?’

  David shot a look at his wife that said, ‘What a stupid question.’

  ‘Sorry, Anoushka, that was a silly.’

  ‘If I can only get through this lunch and sail away without upsetting the boys, that’s all I care about. All right hardly comes into it. But I know what you mean, Betsy. Bearing up is more like it. And, yes, I am doing that, I think.’

  To herself she thought, Just about. She placed a hand to her temple and closed her eyes. She was trying to be rational about the boys’ reaction to the news of the divorce. What had she expected? That they would beg them to stay together? That they would choose to live with her in lesser circumstances, in another town, another country? That they would abuse their father for devastating their lives? Yes, she had wanted and had expected them to do all those things. They hadn’t.

  The very next day after Robert’s announcement that he was leaving her, he had called the headmaster of Groton and received permission to take the boys out of school for the day. Robert had arranged for a suite of rooms at a four-star country inn near the school and to have a sumptuous lunch served to them in its sitting room overlooking a lake. He knew that would be a plus for the boys because Alexis and Mishka were always ravenous, most especially during school term with nothing to fall back on but school food, and packages from home. The privacy would be a plus for them all. Under the circumstances, no public dining room would do.

  The boys had been full of news of themselves a
nd school and hardly said anything about being allowed to play truant for a day. But they were too, as Robert had suggested, mature for their years and not unaware that something was amiss. It was not long after they had entered the suite before Alexis asked, ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’

  Mishka added, ‘If it’s bad news, Dad, let’s have it.’

  ‘Nothing wrong, just different.’ That was how Robert had answered the boys. Those words, and the cold tone of his voice, stung Anoushka now just as they had then in that pretty sitting room overlooking the lake.

  Why, she wondered, didn’t they look to me for answers, ask me what was wrong? They had kissed her, cuddled her, been obviously happy to see her. But no more than a kiss and a hug and then it was to Robert that they gave their attention. Had it always been this way? Should she have handled it differently? No? Yes?

  For the hundredth time she ran through her mind how she had handled the task of breaking the news to the twins. No, she concluded. She may have been unhappy with their reaction, may not have heard what she wanted to hear from them, but what she had done had to have been right for the boys, or at least she had to believe it was.

  ‘The lying bastard,’ she mumbled.

  Thankfully neither Betsy nor David heard her, or at least they said nothing, and Betsy did not turn round to look at Anoushka. Again she agonised over what she had said to her sons. ‘There is no easy way to break this to you, boys. Your father doesn’t want to live with me any more. He wants a divorce from me but not from you. He has made it clear that a reconciliation is impossible. None of this is my doing. None of it is what I want.’