Love and Other Natural Disasters (2 page)

I forced a smile and looked at
Jonathon, who was obviously doing the same. The fact that Jon seemed off-kilter
was not comforting to me. If he really had been talking to a friend—a friend
his wife didn't know about, but just a friend nonetheless—would he seem shaken
afterward? Noticing my scrutiny, he steadied his rickety smile and reached for
his sparkling water. He never drank alcohol around me during my pregnancies in
a show of solidarity. Was that all we were? A show?

At that thought, I hoisted myself
to my feet. "Excuse me," I said. "Jon, could you come with me,
please?"

"And cut!" I could hear
Jacob exclaiming as I left the room. He loved directorial lingo.

Jon followed me to the bedroom and
closed the door behind us. I remained standing for two reasons: the first was
that I was hoping this would be fast, I wanted to get my reassurance and get
out; the second was that my pregnancy hemorrhoids had been acting up all damn
day. I refused to sit on my special pillow in front of company.

I squared my shoulders. "I'm
asking you, please don't lie to me," I said. "Please don't."

He nodded, eyes filled with
concern. Whether it was the concern of a cheater about to get caught or of a
man whose wife was cracking up was as yet unclear.

I took a deep breath. "Are you
cheating with that woman on the phone?"

"No," he said
immediately.

"Then who was that on the
phone?"

"I told you. A friend."

"A friend who knew she could
call you on Thanksgiving, and that you'd talk to her?"

"What was I supposed to do?
She was crying. She needed help." He raked a hand through his hair.
"I'm not cheating. I wouldn't cheat."

He looked so earnest. He looked so
Jonathon. But I'd heard the way he talked to her. It didn't add up. "So
who is this woman, exactly?"

"I told you. A friend."
There was something almost hypnotic in his repetition, and his tone was so
soothing.

Wait a minute! He was soothing me
like he'd soothed her. "I heard you earlier. The way you were telling her
it would be okay. You were talking to her like a lover."

"I'm not her lover." His
eye contact never wavered. "We talk on the phone sometimes, that's all.
I'm sorry I never told you about her. We met at the conference, we went to
lunch a few times, we exchanged e-mail addresses, and that was it. She's just a
friend."

There it was again, that
"just." I knew he was lying. It was so strong, this sense, strong
enough to override all that I'd known for the past ten years. Strong enough to
override what I wanted so desperately to believe. "So you met her over a
year ago, but she still calls you?" He said nothing, as if it had been a
rhetorical question. I suddenly felt like I was cross-examining a hostile
witness. "How often do you talk to her?"

That's when he broke eye contact.
"We don't talk all that often," he said.

"I can get phone bills."

"We've been talking more
lately," he amended.

Oh, God. "How often?"

"She gets depressed at the
holidays, I told you. She needed someone to tell her she'd be okay, and that's
what I did. That's all I did."

"How often?" I pressed,
my voice tight with anger. I had begged him not to lie, and here he was, lying
to my face.

"Lately it's been once a week.
Sometimes more."

"That's more than you talk to
Clayton!" Finally I had proof of something, but I didn't yet know what.

"She's been lonely lately. We
mostly just send e-mails."

"How often do you
e-mail?"

He looked immediately sorry he'd
opened up the e-mail line of inquiry. "Sometimes."

"I asked how often, and don't
lie. Because if I have to get your computer hacked myself, I'll find out."

"Pretty much every day,"
he said reluctantly.

"Every
day?"

"But there's nothing physical
between us. I wouldn't do that."

I actually believed that. But I was
thinking about how Jon used to write me long, hilarious e-mails filled with the
minutiae of his day, and how much I had loved them. I hadn't had a digest like
that in months. They were all going to her. "What's her name? The other
woman. What's her fucking name?"

"Laney."

"Are they long?" He
looked confused, so I added impatiently, "The e-mails."

"Sometimes."

"Like the ones you used to
send me."

He finally had the decency to look
fully abashed. "Yes."

"Is Laney pretty?"

He clearly didn't want to answer
that, which meant yes.

"Do you want to fuck
Laney?"

"I told you, I wouldn't—"

"But do you
want
to
fuck Laney?"

His silence answered again. Then he
pulled himself together enough to say, "I only want to be with you. With
you and Jacob. And with—" He reached for my belly, and I moved away
reflexively. I could tell that hurt him. Good.
Reach out again and I'll hurt
you some more.

"I just want to make sure I
understand," I said. "You e-mail this woman every day, you talk to
her at least once a week, you comfort her on holidays, and you wish you could
fuck her. But she lives in Chicago, so you can't." I paused. "Did I
leave anything out?"

During the staring contest that
ensued, I found myself wondering how we had landed here. Just the week before,
we had finished our birthing classes. With Jacob, I'd gone the epidural route,
but this time, we were going natural. We'd chosen the Bradley Method instead of
Lamaze because it focused more on the husband's coaching. Also, with Bradley,
you learned to go through the pain rather than simply distract yourself. I
pictured us in class, how Jon had doodled cartoons for me during the boring
parts. I remembered the first day, when we were asked to rate our commitment to
a drug-free birth—0 being no commitment and I0 being absolute commitment—and we
each wrote our number on a three-by-five card, and when instructed, we
presented it to the other like we were on
The Newlywed Game.
When we saw
that we had both written 4, we whooped and high-fived, and then laughed at the
uneasy smiles of the other couples, who had rated themselves 9s and I0s. How
could Jon do this to me? I couldn't handle this much pain. Didn't he remember I
was only a 4?

"I don't want any other
woman," Jonathon said. "I mean, if anything, you should feel sorry
for her. She's thirty-three and single and she would kill for what you
have."

"Oh, my God!"
I exploded. "Have you lost your mind, saying that to
me? You want me to feel sorry for her?"

"I want you to have some
perspective here. I didn't do anything with her."

So Jon had turned into Bill
Clinton. Or, at best, that other one... Which president was it who said he'd
been unfaithful only in his heart? My husband was unfaithful in his heart for
over a year. He deliberately hid Laney from me, and he gave her the things that
should have been mine, the things I had always assumed were mine. I thought of
all the moments of excitement we had shared during the pregnancy, and all the
while, he had Laney. Maybe the night we conceived our baby, he'd been thinking
of her.

Before I knew it was happening, I
vomited. All over my shoes, all over the carpet. I started crying wildly, with
shame, outrage, fury, sadness. I crumpled to the floor; I didn't have the
strength in my legs to keep standing.

Jonathon sank down beside me and
pushed my hair back. It was such a tender gesture—the kind I was used to—and I
needed it, even though accepting any ministration from him right then felt
tawdry. It felt weak. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
There were tears in his eyes.

"You can't stay here
tonight," I said.

He looked surprised. I guess he had
thought that the weeping and vomiting had reduced me to a state of pure
vulnerability. "We just need to talk more," he said. "I'm sorry
for what I did. I'll cut her off. It's done. Okay?"

"You're asking if it's
okay?" I drew myself up to my knees, willing myself to stand. Just a few
more seconds and I'd be able to stand.

"No, I'm not saying what I did
is okay. I'm saying—"

"I can't be around you right
now. So you can't stay." Finally I was on my feet, and feeling a strange
calm. An out-of-body calm.

CHAPTER TWO

There are two kinds of pain. I
don't mean physical and psychological. Those are just categories. I'm talking
about pain with a purpose, an end point, a reward (childbirth being the obvious
example), versus pain that only takes away. I know there are hundreds of
inspirational memoirs to tell me that the latter can turn into the former, that
losing a breast or a leg or a husband can ultimately make my life richer than I
ever dreamed it could be, but that night, I was in no mood to believe them. I mean,
isn't the lesson of those memoirs always to appreciate every moment we have
with the people we love? There I'd been, in
midgratitude
,
damned near in love with my life (without benefit of alcohol, I might add), and
then,
splat.
I'm convinced that's the kind of pain—cruel, purposeless,
ironic—that kills if you don't just check out for a while.

So that's what I did. This must
be
what's called shock. It must be what's called survival,
I thought, almost
marveling at my capacity not only to make it to the dining room, but to
announce with dry eyes and a steady voice that I'd gotten sick suddenly and I
was so sorry, but everyone would need to leave.

Because I was elsewhere, I have
trouble remembering what came next with any specificity. I know more must have
been said—Jon must have tried to make things seem normal; Sylvia would have
wanted to make sure my mysterious ailment wasn't going to affect the baby;
Tamara and my mother would want to look after me—but mostly I see faces. I have
reaction shots without transcripts, as if the projectionist inside my head
couldn't work under these conditions. It's like that trick they do in movies,
where they'll capture, say, a wedding day in still images as if we're viewing
the photo album later, with picture upon picture of the bride and groom
kissing, friends and family clapping and, later, dancing, the happy couple
laughing as they feed each other cake, and if the director's feeling especially
sappy, maybe the receding limo with "Just Married!" soaped on its back
windows. The whole thing is a wonderful confection, this distillation of images
tells us. It tells us all we need to know of their story, where it begins and.
where it ends.

Here's my photo album of that
night:

The red-walled dining room—I'd
always thought the red was so sophisticated, never before had it seemed garish,
like the scene of a crime—still full of holiday levity. I can see everyone
assembled around the table with forks halfway to smiling mouths in that split
second before they take in my reappearance.

Faces of fairly uniform concern and
surprise before I start to speak...

Then, afterward, their expressions
become more separate, distinct: my mother's frightened, like that of a child who
knows there's more than what's being told; Sylvia's eyes go to Jon, and
suspicion vies with worry; Clayton just hopes I'll feel better tomorrow;
Tamara's mouth drops open as she immediately, instinctively, grasps the
terrible import; Jacob looking to his left and then to his right, trying to
understand what it means through the others.

After I pull Tamara aside — after I
tell her that Jon's having an affair and I can't be a mother that night, I just
need to be a wife, no, just a woman, and could she please take Jacob
overnight?—her eyes are filled with tears.

Tamara hugging me, my body rigid.

Jacob's outstretched hand. He's
excited and wants us to go to his room and pack for Tamara and Clayton's.

Jon slouched in the doorway,
watching, speechless, motionless, not seeming to realize he's blocking us.

Jon backing away, letting us pass.

Jacob, hyper, jumping around,
bouncing up and down on his bed, singing songs as I fill his backpack with
senseless objects that I hope are the right ones. Pajamas. I know I gave him
pajamas. But I didn't ask if he wanted these or those, fire engines or Mickey
Mouse. There was no illusion of choice that night, not for any of us.

The dining room again: Jon sitting
in a chair now, looking up at me, saying nothing, begging. He didn't want to
leave, I couldn't let him stay.

Me hugging Jacob, fiercely enough
for him to protest.

Tamara and Clayton walking to their
car at the end of the drive, Jacob between them, chattering upward, Jon
trailing behind.

Jon leaning inside the car as he
buckles Jacob in, touching his forehead to Jacob's, lingering there for a long
minute.

That's when I turned away.

I sat down on the living-room
couch, just feet from the front door, suddenly dizzy. Sylvia and my mother were
still in the dining room. I couldn't imagine what they were saying to each
other. I didn't want to imagine. I closed my eyes and thought, This
actually
happened. Jon has another woman.