Heart of the Matter (35 page)

She nods again, adding this to the growing list of things she doesn’t—and likely never will—understand.

“Mommy?” Charlie asks after a few beats of quiet.

“What’s that, Charlie?” she says, hoping that the next words from her little boy will be about
Star Wars,
not Nick.

“Are you sad?” he asks her.

She blinks and smiles and shakes her head. “No. No . . . Not at all,” she says as convincingly as she can. “It’s Christmas. And I’m with you. How can I be sad?”

He seems to accept this, adjusting the Nativity scene along the Christmas tree skirt, pushing Joseph’s and Mary’s heads together as if in a symbolic gesture before his next question. “Did you and Nick break up? Like Jason always does with his boyfriends?”

She looks at him, stunned, then flounders for the right words. “Honey, we weren’t together like that,” she says. “Nick is married.”

It is the first she’s discussed this basic truth with her son, a fact that fills her with even more guilt.

“We were just friends,” she finishes.

“But you’re not friends anymore?” he asks, his voice trembling.

She hesitates but dodges the question. “I will always care about him,” she says. “And he will always care about you.”

Charlie is not fooled, staring into her eyes and asking, “Did you get in a fight?”

Valerie knows she cannot evade his questions anymore, that she has no choice but to crush him. Two days before Christmas.

“Charlie. No. We didn’t get in a fight. . . We just decided that we shouldn’t be friends anymore,” she says, flustered and feeling certain that she chose the wrong words. Again.

He looks at her as if she just told him that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. Or that he’s real, but just won’t be coming around to their house this year.

“Why?” Charlie says.

“Because Nick is married and has two children of his own . . . and he’s not in our family.”

And he never will be,
she thinks. Then forces herself to say the words aloud.

“Is he still my doctor?” Charlie asks, his voice strained, panicked.

She shakes her head and says, as cheerfully as she can, that he has a new doctor now—a doctor who taught Nick everything he knows.

Hearing this, Charlie begins to choke up, his eyes growing huge, red, wet.

“So I can’t be friends with him, either?” Charlie asks.

Valerie shakes her head slowly, barely.

“Why not?” he says, now shouting and crying. “Why can’t I?”

“Charlie . . .” she says, knowing that there is no explanation she can give him to make sense of this. Knowing that all of this could have been avoided if she hadn’t been so selfish.

“I’m going to call him now!” Charlie says, pushing up to his knees and then feet. “He told me I could call him anytime!”

Her heart fills with guilt and sorrow as she reaches out for her son.

He angrily resists, swatting at her hand. “He gave me his number!” Charlie sobs, his scar now aglow in a new angle of light. “I have a present for him!”

She tries to hold him again, this time catching him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she can.

“Sweetie,” she says, holding him to her. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I want a daddy,” he says, sobbing as he goes limp in her arms.

“I know, sweetie,” she says, her heart breaking even more—something she didn’t think possible.

“Why don’t I have a daddy?” he continues to cry, his sobs gradually losing their edge, turning into soft whimpers. “Where
is
my daddy?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

“He left us,” Charlie says. “Everybody leaves us.”

“No,” she says, breathing into his hair, now crying herself. “He left me. Not you.”

She isn’t sure who she is talking about, but she says it again, more firmly. “Not you, Charlie. Never you.”

“I wish I had a daddy,” he whispers. “I wish you could find my daddy.”

She opens her mouth to tell him what she always tells him—that families are all different and that he has so many people who love him. But she knows that it will not be good enough. Not now, maybe not ever. So she just says his name, again and again, holding on to him under their perfectly lit tree.

39

Tessa

I
told him to go. I
wanted
him to go. But I still hate him for listening to me, for not staying and making me fight. I hate him for walking so calmly toward the door, and for the look on his face as he turned back toward me, his lips parted, as if he had one last thing to say. I waited for something profound, some indelible sentiment that I could replay in the hours, days, years to come. Something to help me make sense of what had just happened to me and our family. Yet he didn’t speak—perhaps because he changed his mind and thought better of it. More likely because he had nothing to say in the first place. Then he disappeared around the corner. Seconds later, I heard the door open and then shut again with a definite, final thud—the sound of someone leaving. A sound that has always made me fleetingly sad even when I know they’ll be coming right back, even when it’s a houseguest I am
ready
to see go. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that that moment and the eerie calm that followed were worse than the actual moment of Nick’s confession.

And there I stood, alone, dizzy and breathless, before turning to sit on the couch, waiting for the rage to overcome me, for the uncontrollable urge to go destroy something. Slash his favorite shirts or smash his framed Red Sox memorabilia or burn our wedding photos. React the way women are supposed to react in this situation. React the way my mother did when she smashed my father’s new car with a baseball bat. I could still hear the sound of glass exploding, see the carnage that remained in the driveway long after my father came to sweep and hose down the crime scene, how those stray shards glistened on sunny days as a reminder of our fractured family.

But I was way too exhausted for revenge, and more important, I wanted to believe that I was too good for it. Besides, I had children to feed, practical matters to attend to, and it took all my energy to head for the kitchen, set the table with the kids’ favorite Dr. Seuss place mats, prepare two plates of chicken nuggets and peas and mandarin oranges, then pour two glasses of milk, adding a dash of chocolate milk. When everything was ready, I turned toward the stairs, noticing the chicken breasts I had begun to thaw just before Nick came home. I put them both back in the freezer, then called the names of my children, listening to the sound of rapid footsteps. It was a rare, immediate response, especially for Ruby, and I wondered whether they detected the urgency and need in my voice. As their faces appeared in the stairwell, I realized how much I
did
need them—and the intensity of that need scared me and filled me with guilt. I remembered how much my mother needed Dex and me in the aftermath of her divorce, the burdensome weight of that responsibility, and said a quick prayer that I would be stronger. I reassured myself that my children were too young to understand the unfolding tragedy in their lives—which felt like a small consolation, until I realized that this was a tragedy in itself.

“Hi, Mommy,” Frankie said, blanket in tow, smiling at me in mid-flight down the stairs.

“Hi, Frankie,” I replied, my heart aching for him.

I watched Ruby bound down the stairs, past her brother, peering into the kitchen and asking me in an ironically accusatory tone, “Where’s Daddy?”

I swallowed hard and told her that Daddy had to go back to work, wondering, for the first time, where Nick had actually gone. Was he at work? Was he driving aimlessly around? Or had he gone back to her? Maybe this was the result he wanted all along. Maybe he wanted
me
to make the choice, to play my hand like this. Maybe he assumed I would be just like my mother.

“Was it an emergency?” Ruby pressed, furrowing her dark brow, exactly as her father does.

“Yes. It was,” I told her, nodding, then shifting my gaze back to Frankie, who looks
nothing
like his father—a fact that I suddenly found comforting. “Okay, then! Let’s wash hands,” I called out merrily, forging ahead with our evening, on some sort of bizarre autopilot, pretending that it was any other ordinary day. Pretending that my life—and theirs—hadn’t just been shattered and smashed like my father’s Mercedes, so long ago.

***

Later that night, I am curled up in a fetal position on the couch, wondering how I have managed to keep it together for so many hours, not shedding a single tear, even mustering a lighthearted bedtime story for the kids. I want to believe that it speaks volumes of my character, the core of who I am as a person and mother. I want to believe that it shows I am capable of being brave in a crisis, dignified in the face of disaster. That I am still in control of myself, even though I am no longer in control of my life. And maybe, in part, that is all true.

But more likely, I am simply in shock—a feeling that doesn’t begin to recede until now, as I pick up the phone to call Cate.

“Hey, girl,” she says, the sounds of Manhattan in the background—cars honking, buses grinding to a halt, a man shouting something in Spanish. “What’s going on?”

I hesitate, then listen to myself say the words aloud.

Nick cheated on me.

And it is in this instant that my new reality comes into sharp focus. The reality that Nick is, and forever will be, one of those men. And by virtue of
his
choice, I have become one of those women. Cheater and victim. That’s who we are now.

“Tessa. Oh, my God . . . Are you sure?” she asks.

I try to answer but can’t speak, the dam of tears finally breaking.

“Are you sure?” she says again.

“Yeah,” I sob, hugging a box of Kleenex to my chest. “He told me he did it . . . Yes.”

“Oh, Tessa. . .
Shit,”
she whispers. “I’m
so
sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

She listens to me cry for the longest time, murmuring her support, cursing Nick’s name, and finally asking me if I want to share any of the details. “It’s fine if you don’t. . . If you’re not ready . . .”

“There’s not much to tell,” I say, struggling to get my words out. “He came home this evening. Said he had just gone for a walk in the Common with her.”

“Her?” Cate presses gently.

“The one we suspected. The one Romy saw him with.” I am unable to say her name, vowing
never
to say her name again—suddenly understanding exactly how my mother has felt for all of these years.

“And he just told you . . . that he was having an affair?”

“He didn’t call it that. I don’t know
what
you would call it . . . He said it only happened once. He had sex with her once,” I say, the words a knife in my heart, my tears still coming in streams. “He said he ended things today. And that’s his story. As if his word means
anything”

“Okay. Okay!” She interrupts me with optimism I find confusing.

“Okay what?” I ask.

“So he’s not. . . leaving?”

“Oh, he left,” I scoff, anger resurfacing, temporarily halting my tears. “He’s gone. I told him to get out.”

“But I mean—he’s not leaving
you.
He doesn’t want to . . . be with her?”

“Well, clearly he wanted to
be
with her,” I say. “Pretty damn badly.”

“Once,”
she says. “And now he’s sorry. He regrets it. Right?”

“Cate,” I say. “Are you trying to tell me that this is no big deal?”

“No. Not at all . . . I’m just feeling somewhat hopeful that he confessed. As opposed to getting caught. . .”

“What difference does that make? He did it. He
did
it! He
screwed
another woman,” I say, becoming hysterical.

Cate must hear it, too, because she says, “I know. I know, Tess . . . I am not minimizing it—at all . . . But at least he told you. And at least he ended things with her.”

“Or so he says. He could be doing it again right now. This very
second,”
I say, the sickening images beginning to materialize in my head. I picture a blonde, then a brunette, then a redhead. I picture large, full breasts, then small, high ones, then perfect in-between ones. I don’t want to know what she looks like—and at the same time, I
desperately
want to know everything about her. I want her to be like me; I want her to be nothing like me. I no longer know what I want, apparently any more than I know the man I married.

“He’s not with her,” Cate says. “No way.”

“How do you know?” I ask, wanting her to reassure me despite how hard I am resisting her positive spin.

“Because he’s sorry. Because he loves you, Tessa.”

“Bullshit,” I say, blowing my nose. “He loves himself. He loves that damn hospital. He loves his patients and apparently their mothers.”

Cate sighs, her background noise suddenly disappearing as if she just stepped off the street or got in a cab. Then she says, “What are you going to do?”

For a few seconds, her question empowers me, in the same way that telling Nick to leave empowered me. But the feeling quickly vanishes, crystallizing in fear. “You mean am I leaving him?” I say.

It is the million-dollar, until-now-theoretical “what would you do if” question.

“Yeah,” Cate says softly.

“I don’t know,” I say, recognizing that I probably
might
have a choice. I could take him back, and live a sham of a life. Or I could do the thing I always
said
I would do—I could leave him. I could sit the kids down and give them the news that would change the face of their childhood, and color every major, important event of their adulthood. Graduations, weddings, the births of their children. I imagine Nick and me standing apart, either by ourselves or with someone new; either way, the distance between us creating unspoken tension during a time that should only be about joy.

“I don’t know,” I say, realizing with anger and grief and panic and fear that I have no good option left. That there is no possibility of happily ever after.