“Oh, don’t tell me you want him too?” Rose laughed. Rose King was fifteen years older than Kathy and looked five years older than that, with what looked like a frizzy burgundy perm that had gone out of fashion in the seventies, but which was her own hair. No matter what she did to it—whether she had it cut, colored, or straightened—within a matter of weeks it returned to its unruly mop. A short, stout woman, she had raised four boys and two girls, the youngest of whom had just left home. She’d recently told Kathy that this would be the first Christmas in more than twenty years that she and Tommy would be alone. She was dreading it, she added, without a trace of humor in her voice.
Rose and Kathy had formed the unlikeliest of friendships, starting twelve years ago when Brendan had been starting school. Kathy had walked past Rose’s slightly disheveled front lawn twice a day. A brief hello had turned into a few words as the weeks went by, which had gradually developed into longer chats. Soon Kathy was stopping for a cup of coffee, then Rose was dropping in. On the surface they had nothing in common, besides being neighbors, but they had no secrets from one another. Even when Kathy had moved from gritty South Boston to posh Brookline, the two women had kept in touch and remained friends.
“But how could you suspect your Tommy of having an affair . . . ?” The words trailed away. Even the thought of Tommy—fat, pompous, and, when he wasn’t wearing a ridiculous wig, as bald as an egg—having an affair, brought a smile to her lips.
Rose shrugged. Then she grinned and rasped, “My Tommy. My beer-bellied Tommy. But he wasn’t always fat and follically-challenged.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I know for certain that he’s had one relationship that lasted two years.”
Kathy stared at her blankly.
“Oh, and there’s definitely been two other briefer affairs. Six months each,” Rose added.
Kathy was shocked, but she wasn’t sure whether it was at the thought of Tommy’s having an affair or by the calm, almost conversational way that Rose announced the news. More to disguise her incredulity, she got up and grabbed the poinsettia plant that her kids had given to her a week earlier. Turning to the sink, she busied herself watering it. “I never knew. . . . You never said.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you drop into conversation, is it?” Rose’s mouth twisted in an ugly smile. “Love your new blouse. By the way, did you happen to know that Tommy’s dating the twenty-two-year-old bartender at the Purple Shamrock? And I don’t really mean dating either.”
Pain and anger soured the older woman’s voice, and Kathy turned to look at her. They had been friends for over a decade, and Kathy had never suspected the hurt Rose was hiding.
“Don’t look at me like that, Kathy. The fact is, it’s easier just to ignore. Make my solid contribution to the annual WASP handbook of don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“A two-year relationship . . . two six-month relationships. That’s three years of your life with him while he was with other women? Three years.”
“Honey, they were the best three years of my life!”
“Rose!”
“What? I got a lot done.” Rose drank her coffee and stared at Kathy.
“How long ago . . . I mean, when did you first suspect?” Kathy whirled around. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business.”
“Ten years ago was the first time,” Rose continued as if she hadn’t heard Kathy. “I don’t know her name; I never bothered to find out.” Rose hesitated for a second. “Okay, that’s a lie. Gladys Schwartz. I read the e-mails,” she admitted. “What? Just because I didn’t confront him about the affair, didn’t mean I didn’t want to know everything. I needed to know, and it sort of made it easier to manage.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“No. Yes, of course I did.” Her face tightened, then creased into a smile. “Gladys Schwartz was as big as a house. Made Tommy look practically anorexic.”
Kathy forced a smile. Rose had looked through Tommy’s e-mails. That was a complete violation of privacy. She would never consider going through Robert’s e-mails. That would be a violation of trust.... But she’d already scrolled through his phone. Still, that was different. And if he was having an affair . . . well, hadn’t he already violated that trust?
Rose interrupted Kathy’s thoughts as she nattered on. “Gladys was an old flame, I think, one of his many previous girlfriends. They’d kept in touch on and off; then they started seeing one another for a drink. The drinks turned to meals; the meals turned to . . . well, I don’t know what they turned to, but I suspect that they ended up in bed together.” Rose delivered the statement in a flat monotone. “Must have been a big bed,” she added.
Kathy shook her head. Through the kitchen window, she could see out into the grim-looking winter garden, the trees stripped of leaves, the ornamental pond, which she hated, covered in a scummy layer of brown. Reflected in the glass, she could see Rose’s face, staring at her.
She turned back from the sink and sat at the kitchen table again, not sure what to do or how to respond. She had waited until Robert had gone to work and the children had raced to catch the bus before inviting her friend over. She had thought she would tell Rose her story and get some advice; she certainly hadn’t expected to hear something like this.
Rose laughed shakily. “I know. It’s absurd. My Tommy. But, you know, he can be so charming, so kind. So deliciously self-deprecating. That’s what first attracted me to him. Trust me, he was no Brad Pitt, but by God, he made me laugh. I read somewhere that that’s what women go for. Forget the good looks; most women just want to laugh. That’s why liars get all the girls.”
Kathy got up to pour herself more coffee. “I read that too.”
“A couple of years after that,” Rose continued, “I suspected he was carrying on with the blonde from number fifteen.”
Kathy snorted, the sound unexpected. “The one with the big . . . ?”
Reflected in the kitchen glass, Rose nodded. “The very same. Tommy started doing the accounts for her husband’s store just before his business folded. Remember, her husband ran the little appliances store just off Broadway. He had the big closing-down sale, everything must go, all items dirt cheap. Well, he made a fortune that day, then took off with the takings, the contents of their bank account, and the scrawny redhead who worked the register.”
“I bought a vacuum cleaner there.”
“I got a deep-fat fryer. Well, my Tommy started popping over once a week. Then it was twice. Then . . . well, I don’t know. It finished when she moved out.”
Kathy brought the coffee pot back to the table. “You said there were three occasions . . .” she gently prompted Rose.
“About two years ago, I suspected something was going on. It’s when online dating became so popular. One day he left his computer on, and I saw instant message texts on his screen from a bunch of women. He’d joined Match.com. Set up his profile as GlassHalfFull33. Ha. More like GlassCompletelyEmpty63. Still, these women actually wrote to him . . . and he wrote back. Sexy messages. The fat bastard’s profile actually said he was divorced,” Rose added with a wry grin. “That’s when he started getting really conscious about the hair, and got the wig.”
“I remember.” The wig was absolutely ridiculous. It was a confection of hair that seemed to balance precariously atop Tommy’s head, and it never moved, not even in a hurricane.
“You know, he thinks no one has noticed the wig,” Rose said, “because no one ever asked about it. That’s another slightly difficult subject to slip into conversation. ‘Nice rug, Tommy.’ ‘Where’d you get the wig, Tommy?’ ‘You better check out your head, Tommy, a porcupine is humping your scalp.’ Seriously, Kathy, I know if I were to ever mention it, I’d burst out laughing in his face.”
Rose started to laugh. She had a deep, masculine chuckle, and suddenly Kathy was laughing with her, the two women giggling and chuckling together, and for an instant it was just like one of hundreds of other shared mornings, when all was right wi
th the world. Then Kathy abruptly sobered. Things had not been perfect those other mornings; Rose had been living with the belief that her husband was having an affair.
“Did you ever ask him?”
“About the wig?”
“About the affairs. About the lies. About the fake Internet dating profile.”
Rose concentrated on pouring coffee, then adding a tiny touch of low-fat milk. “I thought about it,” she said eventually. “I thought about it long and hard, and then I asked myself what I’d do if he copped to it.”
Kathy nodded. She’d been thinking about the same thing all through the night.
Rose sipped her coffee. “What was I going to do if he admitted to the affairs? I could ask him to leave, but we still had eight years to pay on the mortgage. What happened if he left? Who would pay that?” She shrugged awkwardly. “I know it sounds like an incredibly practical, maybe even cynical thing to think about, but that’s what crossed my mind. And then I wondered, what would happen if I asked him to leave and he said no? I couldn’t stay with him, could I? So I’d have to go, to leave my home and go . . . go where? I didn’t have any job skills other than running my home, and my nearest relative—an aunt—was in Providence, and she wasn’t going to take me in. Nor was I going to ask her. And then, of course, the big question: What would happen to the children? Christine was applying to colleges at the time, and little Beatrice was still in grade school. The boys were scattered in between, set in their schools, in their sports, in their lives. I had to think about them: How would this trauma affect them?”
Kathy took a deep breath. The same thoughts had been milling around in her head all night. She wondered if every woman, faced with the same situation, would have the same concerns. She reckoned they would.
“So what did you do in the end?”
Rose looked Kathy directly in the eye. “I feigned ignorance. I did nothing.”
“Nothing.” The word hung flat and uncompromising between them.
“Nothing. I decided he was having some sort of midlife crisis, and I let it go. I said nothing, did nothing. I stopped looking at his ridiculous profile riddled with exaggerations and untruths. I guess . . . I was just hoping he’d realize he had much more to lose if he left me. I was gambling that he would come to his senses. And he did. Eventually.”
“You did nothing.”
“Sometimes doing nothing is a decision too,” Rose said gently.
“Are you saying I should do nothing?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m telling you that’s what I did.”
“I don’t think I could do that.”
“Before you make any decision, you’ve got to be sure of your facts. At this moment, right now, you don’t know for sure.”
Kathy nodded. “But I’m almost sure.”
“Almost sure is not sure enough. And you were almost sure before.”
“But I was right then.”
“Were you?”
Kathy hesitated a bit too long before answering. “Yes. I know I was. I just . . . had no proof.”
“Then you need proof before you confront him,” Rose said simply. “And even then, even when you are one hundred percent sure, you’ve got to be prepared for the consequences.”
Kathy shook her head from side to side, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes, but, for the first time since the ugly suspicion had been planted in her mind, they were tears of anger. “If I knew he was having an affair, and I didn’t confront him, I couldn’t live with myself.”
Rose reached over and caught both of Kathy’s hands in hers. “That’s what I thought in the beginning. Then I realized that Tommy still came home to me every night. We had built something together that I didn’t want to throw away. He was still my best friend. These other women were just a distraction, nothing more. He’s a man, for God’s sake. Let’s face it, Kathy. Men stray. It’s in their nature, whether we like it or not. It goes back to the time of cavemen. . . . Men hunted and women nurtured. Tommy was just . . . hunting. If I’d confronted him, I would have destroyed our marriage, but I knew if I was patient I would win out. And I did.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I know you can’t. Not right now. It’s still too fresh. Too raw. But think about it. Have it at the back of your mind as an option.”
Rose released her hands and picked up her coffee cup. Not looking at Kathy, she asked, “Are you still having sex?”
Kathy opened her mouth to make a quick response, then stopped. Things in the bedroom . . . were different. When they had first started dating, they had made love every day. The sex had been magical.
Inspired.
Adventurous.
Fun.
Then, as the months and years passed, their lovemaking had waned, to perhaps twice a week. After the children came along, it slipped into an irregular Saturday morning routine when Brendan had guitar lessons and Theresa had soccer. Then even that pattern shifted and drifted away. They made love on special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day. In recent years it had died away to almost nothing. Kathy honestly couldn’t remember the last time they had made love. She was only forty-three. She still felt sexy. Despite being a bit overweight, she felt sensual . . . yet, Robert didn’t look at her that way anymore. She tried to remember the last time he had told her that she was beautiful. She couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at her with lust, with the passion of a man who wanted her. She started to get angry. Was Robert simply replacing her with a younger, fitter version of herself? Was he trying to recapture the lust they had felt in their first few years together when everything had been so new, when their senses had been so heightened, when the sex had been fantastic rather than . . . ordinary?
But no, a marriage wasn’t just about sex, a marriage was . . .
“What?” Rose asked, seeing the expression on the younger woman’s face.
“Something struck me. Something important, something I’ve never thought about before.” Kathy licked suddenly dry lips. “What is a marriage? What makes a marriage?” Rose opened her mouth to respond, but Kathy raised her hand. “Is it living together, is it the commitment, the sex, the shared experiences, the trust, the truth? Love? What is it?”
“When I was younger,” Rose said, very quietly, “I would have said all of those things. Now,” she shrugged, almost defeated, “now, I think it might just be habit.”
CHAPTER 6
Rose’s parting words had been, “Don’t make a decision until you have concrete evidence. And this time, Kathy, be sure. Be really, really sure. No marriage can survive those sorts of accusations—especially if they’re untrue. And if you are sure, then be prepared for the consequences. Not just the immediate ones, but the long-term ones also.”
Kathy stood at the front door and watched Rose make her way down the path. Her friend stopped at the white picket fence and raised her hand and smiled, then got into her used Volvo and headed back home. Kathy watched her drive off and raised a hand to wave good-bye. Then she turned back into the hallway, closed the door, and rested her back and head against the cool glass. It would be so easy to pretend that nothing had changed . . . and yet everything had changed.
She now saw Rose differently.
She hadn’t exactly lost respect for her friend, but . . . something was different, and she knew that things would never be the same between them again, though at that precise moment, she was unsure why.
She could hear her mother’s words again: Never ask a question unless you’re prepared for an answer you don’t like.
Isn’t that how most affairs started: because one partner never asked the questions? Where have you been, why are you late, who were you with? But you couldn’t do that. Even asking the questions would destroy a relationship. A relationship was built on trust; if you trusted someone, you didn’t have to ask the questions.
Folding her arms across her chest, she moved silently down the overlarge chill hallway. Abruptly she knew why things would never b
e the same between Rose and her again. When Rose had admitted that she’d known her husband had been having an affair—affairs—and had chosen to remain ignorant, to do nothing, Kathy had lost respect for her.
You were supposed to do something.
You had to do something.
She just didn’t know what you were supposed to do.
Kathy wandered around the house, moving from room to room, looking at them again, seeing them with new eyes. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was wondering what she would take with her if she chose to leave . . . or what Robert would take with him if he left. The painting they had bought together in Italy. The red leather couch they had gotten at forty percent off because it had been used in one of their commercials. The custom-made bookshelf filled with books she’d collected over the years. Kathy couldn’t imagine dividing the beloved book collection into his and hers piles. Rose had a point about the convenience of staying together. Not only for the kids, but also for the practicality. If Robert was having an affair, then he’d surely come back to her when it was over. Wouldn’t he? No. That wasn’t even an option. If he was having an affair, she couldn’t stay with him.
But would he leave?
Would she ask him to go?
And if he didn’t, then would she stay? Could she?
The Walkers lived in a large, four-bedroom Colonial in Brookline, one of Boston’s most prestigious suburbs. When they had first moved into South Boston, eighteen years ago, they had lived in a tiny apartment while they had grown the business. When the kids were born, there were few good public school options. Kathy had been to private school and wanted her kids to go to public school; however, she wanted them to get the best education possible. After researching school districts, Robert and Kathy set their sights on moving to Brookline, because the upmarket neighborhood was the best option. The price of their first home had pushed them to the very limit of what they could afford. There had been months when they had lived on ramen noodles just to make sure they had enough to pay the mortgage. But they had been happy times. They had laughed a lot then. More than they ever did now.
The Affair Page 3