Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (22 page)

That Sunday, I wasn’t in the mood to slide. I checked his Yahoo! e-mail account with the password he’d kept the same, as if to say, “See, we have no secrets between us, sweetheart. See, I have nothing to hide, baby.” There was nothing suspect. Then I scoured the web history folder. It was clean of misgivings. He didn’t want to get caught. He knew to cherry pick through it and expunge evidence. Evidence of what? I didn’t know.

He didn’t kiss me any differently that day, wasn’t extra nice, or too aloof. He stuck to our habits, the embrace on good-bye, and the quick kiss. He looked me in the eyes when he said he loved me, just as always. They say only a small percentage of our communication is verbal—the rest is spoken in our stance, the way we shift our eyes or flick a finger. We use different muscles when it’s a genuine smile. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, the nesting instinct to protect things, which propelled me forward, hawk-like, in search of his little cookie trail. I combed the machine, searching through the cookies, electronic fingerprints of where he’d been. My life was a goddamn horror movie. You want to be scared, but you don’t. I wanted to find something, but my God, what if I found something? It was so lose-lose.

There was a file in the cookie folder indicating he’d been on his hospital’s website, yet in the history folder, there was no evidence he’d ever visited it. The site was a login screen for his hospital e-mail account. I’d need to figure out a way in. For the password, I’d only have three attempts before being locked out. I tried:

the name of his dead dog.

the alarm code for his parents’ house.

his social security number.

Holy shit. I was in. I held my breath as a loading bar appeared. My throat had a pulse. I could hear the liquid in my ears. Everything seemed to split apart around me.

An e-mail from [email protected] had a subject line reading, “On a more serious note.” In it, a woman described how Gabe flirted with her on the phone, in their e-mails and text messages. She inquired about moving the relationship further and questioned why he hadn’t.

You’d think I’d be relieved to read this. Shock, not relief, is what you feel when you discover another woman is e-mailing your husband, the father of your unborn child, about
their
issues. Someone else needed to have “a talk” about
them
. They had a
them
. It wasn’t about whether or not they were intimate. They had a relationship, a secretive
they
. Secretive e-mails. Secretive phone calls. Secretive dates. What was next? The next logical step was intimacy.

I began to shake. I was pregnant, in our home. He was at the groomer, picking up our dog, and he had
this
in his e-mail inbox. I wanted it to be some dream.

In the face of tragedy, some people clean voraciously, unsure of what to do with their nervous energy. Others laugh uncontrollably. I e-mailed.

Then I waited.

She replied a minute later, “Consider it done. Will you tell him or should I?” Then, instead of replying to her e-mail, I used the number from the e-mail and called her. I didn’t even know her name. When she answered, I didn’t know whom to ask for…Missy?

“This is Stephanie…Gabe’s wife—”

“I’m so sorry. I just can’t believe he’s married.” Her voice sounded older, sophisticated, yet panicked, as if she’d lost a child in a crowd.

“Well, he is.” My knees wouldn’t stop shaking, even when I pressed on them.

“First of all, nothing happened. I mean we went out many times, but he never even kissed me. Well, not yet.” Oh my God, did she just say that? Then, “Listen, I just don’t believe you. I don’t think he’s married.” Her not believing me revved me into the red zone.

“Really? Do you happen to have his phone number? You know, something other than his beeper or cell phone? Ever try, I don’t know, calling information for his HOME phone number? Why don’t you do yourself a favor, honey, and try calling him at home. Then we can finish talking.” I went there. The dynamic changes when someone plays the honey card. I was pissed, but I couldn’t hang up. I couldn’t move.

“Listen, nothing happened. We just go out a lot at night.”

“Where?” I said as if she had to answer me instantly. I was surprised when she did.

“Well, we’ve been planning on attending a black-tie affair together.”

“Affair” hung in the air like a thick cloud of dust after an explosion. It was an old-fashioned word in that context—
affair
—one used by grandparents on Sunday nights after speaking of the weekend weather. “Oh yes, it was a marvelous affair. Just marvelous.”
Affair
wasn’t a word uttered by the other woman.

He was going to functions with her, entering rooms with her on his arm, eating mini egg rolls, and shaking hands with strangers, pretending he had a different life. He’d phone me from the hospital—the number showed up on our caller ID—apologizing that he’d be stuck overnight on a case that hadn’t even started yet. “I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart. All I want to do is crawl into bed with you and Linus. Next week will be better. I love you so much.” I’d cover his dinner with aluminum foil. He’d cover his ass, then leave wearing a cummerbund, slipping his plain little band of gold right off.

I changed my mind. I didn’t want to hear anymore. Learning the details of their whats and wheres meant everything as I knew it would dissolve. With each detail she’d divulge, I’d be less proficient at pretending it all away. Knowing what was “theirs” would change my life forever. I wasn’t ready to commit to this fortuitous forever over the phone. I also couldn’t help myself.

“A black-tie affair?” I repeated.

“Well, yes, but mostly it’s been movie premieres…” He went to the opening of
Narc
with her. “…a Knicks game…” He’d said he’d gone with his friend Chip, came home that night, raving to me about their courtside seats. Told me he wished I were there with him. “…Oh, and The Bungalow a bunch of times,” she finally said about the “private” nightclub Bungalow 8 because she’d been there, and when you’ve been there, it’s “The Bungalow.” “That kind of thing. You know.” No, but I was beginning to. “But, like I said, nothing happened.”

“Um, I don’t care if nothing happened.” I enunciated “happened” as if I were speaking to a second grader. “What happ-end is he walked around letting people believe he didn’t have a pregnant wife at home.” I wanted to wake up. Instead, I hung up.

“He’s so fucking dead. Lea, I can’t even believe this. He has been lying to my face, without any signs of remorse. He’s a fucking sociopath!” She was reading the e-mails I’d already pilfered from his inbox and forwarded as evidence. His e-mails complained that he was sad when he didn’t receive a new correspondence from her. My God, there was even an e-mail in his “sent messages” folder, dated the evening he’d asked me to go to Barney’s with him. A week earlier he’d asked me to help him choose a tuxedo at Barney’s. His parents were buying him one for no particular reason, other than his asking. It wasn’t as though we had many occasions that called for formal attire, but it didn’t seem suspicious. It seemed like shopping.

He was buying it for her, with me. I helped him decide on lapels and buttons, spent an hour narrowing it down, pinching shoulders and watching sleeve lengths. It was all for her. His e-mail to her that night was signed with xxx. My heart hurt. I forwarded that message to my personal e-mail account. Even when I caught him cheating, I was taking precautions for an uncertain future. Now, I had proof.

DESPITE THE PROVISIONS I MADE, KNOWING HIS E-MAIL
password, and checking it twice, he still found a way to lick icing and eat out the cake. If someone wants to lead a double life, they will find a way to do it. And they can promise you things until your nerves unfold and you can finally put your feet up. But it can all be a lie. There are no guarantees, even when people mean what they say at the time. People change their minds. People die. And the hurt is as real as a baseball bat.

At the end of the day, you can take precautions every step of the way, play it safe, do it right, be as structured as DNA. We try to prevent bad from assaulting our lives. Keep your kids on a leash, keep your husband on a leash. It’s all control, and no amount of it will be real, none of it will give you safety. That little gold circle isn’t safety, it’s a promise to work on the relationship for the rest of your life or until the divorce goes through. Safety is something you have to find within yourself, like willpower. And I knew it.

Growing up, I was the fat girl. When the bottle landed on me during Spin the Bottle, the boys chanted, “Do over.” I didn’t get to choose boys. Gabe was the scholar and athlete of the year growing up, and he chose me. His wanting me made me feel special. His cheating on me was worse than being told you’d outlive your children.

After the divorce, I finally got to a place where it was my choice: what color to paint my new apartment walls, where to eat, and whom to date. And I chose safe. I found safety in Oliver, instead of finding it within myself. He’d fall over himself trying to make me happy, and whenever I thought of ending it with him, I’d remember Hallmark, those rows of sympathy cards. How horrible things can happen in our lives, and now that I’ve found someone worth something, shouldn’t I hold on? I’d think of the times I was in pain, curled in the fetal position, crying for my grandmother Beatrice, the one who died a long time ago, to please take the pain away, please protect me, watch over me, please give me strength to get through this, please. Then I’d swallow and let the tears go, thinking safe was better than that. Oliver was a rest and exhale, and I knew in my bones he’d never reject me or deceive me. So I’d hold on tight even though I knew Oliver was the wrong choice. Because he was safe. And safe was something I didn’t know how to give myself.

I needed to learn how to create safety from within, how to string a yellow reminder ribbon around transience. Knowing how to nurture myself, trust my instincts, and believing in my body were the keys to finding safe. These lies we tell ourselves, “Well, he did say he missed me,” “He got me a diamond the size of a walnut so he must love me,” “When I threatened to leave, he did, after all, come after me and ask me to move in with him,” are false security. Rationalizing our gut instincts away, we try to convince ourselves because we want what we want. But after you’ve been hurt enough times, you realize sometimes you have to just let it go. It’s the only precaution you can really take.

We all suffer, and we all want someone safe to catch us, wipe our tears, bring us the mint chip, and hold our hand. Oliver loved me to death. But that can’t be everything. You have to love yourself to death first.

I had to let him go. I cut the cord.

MY MOOD WITH OLIVER TOOK A TURN BEFORE OUR CAB
driver even signaled. We’d gone out for dinner, but I couldn’t work up the nerve to end things aloud. I thought maybe I could just distance myself, and in our cab ride back to the Upper West Side, a centrifugal force pushed me closer to the door, away from him, my shoulder a new weapon against intimacy. I grew silent and felt alone. I looked out the cab window, streaks of steam, beads of rain joined and pooled into tiny rivers. I felt closer to them, to the rectangles of light from sleepless apartments, to the short-order chef with his fold of a hat as he stubbed out his cigarette on a square of sparkling sidewalk, than I did to Oliver.

I’d felt that, against a cab window, so many times before him, in that thick heavy silence where I’d wonder what was next. My movements no longer felt casual. Everything was heavier. I waited for him to ask what was wrong. Instead, he reached his hand out toward me. I didn’t hold it back.

When we entered my apartment, he broke the silence. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Ugh, I don’t see why you put up with me. I’m all drama and difficult.” I put it on him. Maybe he’d end things. It would be easier that way, with less to regret. It was Projection, full on with a capital P.

“I like you difficult, and I’m here because I care about you.” He brushed his hand against the back of my head. “Stephanie, we’re great together.” He sensed it; he knew what I’d been thinking.

“Can I ask you something?” I looked up to make sure I had his attention. “Don’t you ever get tired of defending us to me? Isn’t it exhausting?” I knew what that was like. Cheerleading isn’t just tiresome—it’s embarrassing.

“I guess I don’t see it that way. I see us as ‘us,’ and sometimes my babylove just gets sad. So I’m here to listen and do what I can.” I hated how agreeable he was being. “Linus, do I need to remind Mommy how great we are together?” I hated when he asked Linus rhetorical questions. Anything he did was going to piss me off. I was pulling a Gabe on him.

Pulling a Gabe
involved assigning the role of “the heavy” to your significant other. It meant staying because it was easier than leaving. It made lazy acceptable. See, Gabe stayed in our marriage and agreed to start a family because he knew how much I wanted it. That had to be it. Maybe he thought I could want it for both of us, and seeing me happy would make him happy too.

After months of trying, and fainting at the gynecologist—fearing I’d hear the doctor say, “Sorry, you just can’t have children”—I had to take fertility drugs. Clomid. Gabe dutifully came home every fertile day to procreate the shit out of me. And then it happened: two pink lines. I had everything I wanted, everything on my love list. Then all the Betty Crocker products hit me on the head when I discovered the rogue e-mails.

Gabe wasn’t strong enough to be honest. I speculate he knew I was a good person and didn’t want to hurt me, so he concealed parts of his life from me. I force myself to speculate it. Otherwise, he’s venal. Otherwise, I married someone ruthless. It’s one thing saying you’ve fallen out of love. I can understand that. But to come home every day and try to impregnate me, spilling lies on my cervix, knowing the whole time he was running around pretending not to be married—that’s a snake. It’s someone without character, without virtue, someone who never had to account for his actions because Mommy and Daddy would always make it right.

The problem is,
he
shouldn’t have been okay with that. He should have felt remorse, not because of how I’d feel if I ever discovered his lies, but because he knew what he was doing was wrong. Yeah, it’s got a name. Try morals. Integrity. Go ahead, for shits, throw in strength of character. He stayed for the wrong reasons, with one foot in, because it was easier than leaving.

I was staying with Oliver for the same reasons. The difference was I didn’t need to do it for years to know Oliver deserved more, to know, really, at the end of the day, I deserved more, too.

“I’m sorry, Oliver. I
know
this isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s something I won’t change my mind about.” Deep breath. “We need to break up.” I exhaled and waited.

“I guess I knew this was coming,” he said more to himself than to me. “I just need to know why. Do you even know why?”

This would hurt. “When I go out at night, I find myself looking at other men.” I couldn’t look at him. “I guess that’d be fine by itself, but it’s more than looking. No, I mean, I haven’t done anything. I’ve just been feeling like I’ve wanted to, and that’s a sign. I mean, you deserve more than that.”

Truth: that was the symptom. The
real
problem was his personality. While he really was a gentle and very good man, he annoyed the shit out of me. I loved him, but I didn’t really
like
him. I didn’t want to hear about his work or friends, about the trees he liked in the park. You know that question, “If you were stuck on a deserted island, which three movies would you take with you?” Replace
movies
with
people
, and Oliver would not have been on the list. That was all I really needed to know.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I really was. “I know, believe me I know, this isn’t easy, but it’s better now than—”

“I get it. I’m going.” He lingered near the entrance of my apartment, just looking at me. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Then he closed the door behind him.

IT IS MY ESTIMATION THAT CENTRAL PARK SHOULD ONLY
be visited to photograph old people or to mourn. I’d be doing both, which called for my Nikon SLR and a pair of dark rectangular sunglasses, the ones old people wear that look like pimped up Volvos for your face. Perhaps I’d lift a pair from the first slow old man I encountered. Okay, I was having a mood. It’s called a breakup. Welcome to a too sunny and unseasonably warm November afternoon in my life.

When a relationship ends, you’re forced to deal with the equitable distribution of assets. You return CDs and faded T-shirts. Oliver left a box with my doorman, crammed it with printouts of every e-mail I’d ever sent, every card, every matchbook or business card from the restaurants at which we’d dined. It was a bit much, but it’s how he dealt. Still, there was more to divide. It came down to real estate.

That was really my restaurant because I went there before we were a we. Okay, he liked that bar more than I did, so he could have it. We parcel places in our minds before we plot our days. There was no mistake—Central Park was Oliver’s. He knew the names of statues, paths, and trees, could tell me the beginner rollerbladers practice near the azaleas at Cherry Hill, and that I’d get good photos of horseback riders as they passed beneath the Pine Bank Arch. I was about to violate his territory.

I grabbed my knapsack, journal, and camera and headed toward his park. I needed to stew in my sorrow, and since I knew the park and its inhabitants would make me miserable, it was the perfect destination.

I despise shiny, happy, REM-like days in Manhattan, especially near the park. Central Park serves as a reminder of what I don’t have. It’s filled with people doing things they should be doing indoors. Like holding hands and wearing their mop-headed children as necklaces. Worse. There’s running going on. Isn’t that what the frickin’ treadmill is for? I don’t want to be near runners or families or stick figures lying around in bikinis thinking they’ve got it good. You’re sharing an immense space with too many strangers, and you’re stripped down to underwear alternatives doing it. There are available rooms in this city beyond the Pierre Hotel. Note to you: get one.

Okay, so my hatred for the park isn’t really about the park. It holds my history in its canopy of trees and blanket of leaves. My mother tells me she spent my childhood crying in parks. “I felt like a single mother, always alone with you in the stroller, watching all the families, wondering why my husband wasn’t with me.” It didn’t matter if he was working. It’s not what she’d signed up for. I’d heard this for years, my mother’s unhappiness with the lack of time my father spent with her on weekends. It felt like a warning. I didn’t want to be alone on weekends, crying in parks feeling single, either. Of course, that’s exactly what happened with Gabe.

Once upon a
Oncewife
life, I frequented the park while Gabe was working long weekends. At first I didn’t mind it so much, knowing he’d have preferred to be with me than at work. He was sacrificing for us, or at least that’s what I told myself. However, it was all about his career, and not at all to do with “our.” Still, I sat in the park with a book and a blanket, alone, wishing my picnic for one could eclipse loneliness and envelop him. Do that enough times, see enough Maclaren strollers, and you learn to avoid the park altogether. That, or you revisit it when you want to feel sorry for yourself.

I was wearing lament like a shirt. Misery made me feel. I felt more alive. Like shit, but
alive
. My body liked highs and lows because of their intensity. When I felt something intensely, I experienced a more human condition. Everything was
er
. Sharp
er
. Bright
er
. Deep
er
.

Healthi
er
? Ah, no. I didn’t want healthy. I wanted passion and mess because that’s what I thought living was. It drips and oozes all sloppy and delicious because we’re here. Now. Alive. Living. In Latin,
passion
means “physical suffering, martyrdom, sinful desire, an undergoing.” Oh, that was so me.

Ahem.

I use the word
was
loosely. It’s still part of my wiring, but now I keep it in check and assure myself that the
ity
’s trump the
er
’s every day and twice on Sundays. Stabil
ity
and longev
ity
are more important than the slop. I’m beginning to realize life should be lived not just with passion, but also with compassion. It should be less about shouting and more about listening.

As I approached the Tavern on the Green entrance to the park, a woman who clearly got her fashion sense from a film noir crime scene asked, “Excuse me, please, where to find Green Tavern?” I smiled and pointed just over her beret. “Ah! Thank you.” Then she and her navy sailor pants hurried toward a bearded man with a baby strapped to his chest in a paisley scarf papoose. I kept smiling, watching her point to him and adjusting the knit hat of her infant. I wanted that, the baby and the man with whom to get lost. I wanted to ingest her life. I took their photograph while they were preoccupied with a blue and beige map.

Maybe my spirits would lift if I pretended I was abroad in a European city; I could ask for directions with an accent. “Eh, zee meadow de sheep? Here, no?” I could cross my legs at a nearby café, read my photography books, rig a twist of patterned silk around my neck, and sit in observation mode, stirring espresso, watching my breath disappear in the cold air. When I finished with espresso, I could move on to a Euro café full of racing leather, numbered shirts, and midriff, where I’d sling back Sancerre and gulp orange mussels, dipping crusty bread into a lake of Thai-spiced coconut milk. I could stab a tub of mayonnaise with salted fries, then indulge in dessert and the syrup they call wine to go with it. And the sad fact is, I still wouldn’t feel better. I’d only feel full. Fear and full.

I entered the park and headed toward Sheep Meadow looking for a subject to photograph. I was first drawn to photography when I was married. Rome had a collection of Nikon cameras stowed away in her basement “junk room.” Most people have a junk drawer. She had a room, and I couldn’t believe her Nikons were part of it. If they were mine, I’d display them against a wall interspersed with silvery black-and-white photos when they weren’t in use. One afternoon, while Gabe was off golfing with his parents, I borrowed a camera and photographed Linus, lounging poolside in their backyard. Through the lens, there was a moment of clarity where I just knew it was going to be a luminous shot with the right amount of gesture and story. It was. I loved the idea of documenting my moments, my memories, keeping them there, in tight modern crops, the kind I looked for in the art I chose for my advertising clients. So my buying the camera was as much for filling my spare time as it was for honing my art selection skills. I didn’t dream it could lead to a source of income. I just dreamed of finding something I loved to do for myself.

The camera accessory added to the whole tourist look I was sporting. Sneakers, knapsack, and mandatory camera. I entered the meadow thinking how in foreign cities I move without direction, in sneakers, inhaling architecture. I see fashionable men and question if their wives chose their ties, see nuns and wonder what their hair looks like, and who, if anyone, cuts it. I hear small girls, with small folded white socks, ask for small things: a scoop of ice cream, some change to toss into the fountain, a balloon.

A hotel doorman escaped to Sheep Meadow for what I imagined to be his break. His face tilted toward the sun, eyes closed. I wondered how many tourists asked him to suggest a place where the locals go. “Nothing touristy,” a woman in shorts and a fanny pack would ask him. It’s exactly what I’d ask when I traveled. But I’ve quit asking, and instead stroll without direction, hoping I’ll stumble upon a secret gem of a restaurant.

Not unlike a new love, there are few things more rewarding than believing you’ve found something amazing that no one else has gotten wind of yet. For that moment, it’s your secret delight, and it feels warm. Your wine tastes better there, and the spaghetti is unlike anything you’ve tasted. You’re certain this music you hear will follow you in life, and when you’re back in the U.S., you promise to go to the Tower Records international section. You’ll load up on this music and play it when you’re cooking. When you are back in America, though, you have new to-do lists involving film development and phone calls. When you meet with friends to speak of your trip, of the weeks you were gone, you do it in minutes, speaking of the beach you discovered and were on alone, of the fish you almost caught, of the guy with whom you danced until morning. You suddenly have less to share—it wasn’t for them. They won’t understand how you felt near that fountain, how you remember the face of the gypsy who blessed you more than the entire face of a city. They won’t comprehend the small moments you felt on the train, as you passed rolling farms, wondering about the hands that tended to them. They will compliment you on your new silk scarf, and you’ll thank them, wishing you could remember more.