The Adultery Club (39 page)

“I haven’t wanted—”

Kit brooks no argument. I can’t remember ever seeing him this serious.

“For the past month, your beautifully shod feet—
love
the Ginas, by the way, darling—have barely touched the ground. And let’s not even get into the extraordinary pink paint job you’ve given your bedroom; what on earth possessed you, Malinche, did you give Barbie carte blanche?”

He releases my shoulders and drops into the chair opposite me. “Look, darling, I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy yourself a little.” He sighs. “But for the best of motives, Trace deliberately isn’t giving you a moment’s peace to think. And think, my darling, is what you really need to do before you let this go any further.”

“I can’t,” I say, terrified. “I can’t, Kit. If I start to think, I’ll break apart, I’ll collapse, I’ll be no good to anyone—”

“Malinche, apart from anything else, this isn’t fair to Trace. If you two are going to make a go of it, it has to be honest. And sooner or later, you’re going to have to face Nicholas—”

“Tomorrow, actually, Kit,” I say faintly. “It’s Edward’s funeral.”

Kit is silent for a long moment. He lights a cigarette; now that Nicholas isn’t here, I’ve given in and allowed him to smoke in the kitchen. Exhaling slowly, he blows a stream of smoke across the table.

He pounces with the speed and accuracy of a rattlesnake.

“Trace or Nicholas?”

“Nicholas,” I say instantly: and then gasp and cover my mouth.

“It doesn’t count,” I whisper. “It’s just force of habit—”

“This,” says Kit, “is why you need to think.”

My chair scrapes hideously across the stone floor.

“There’s nothing to think about, is there?” I cry anguishedly. “Because I don’t actually have a choice! Nicholas has gone and he isn’t coming back! He hasn’t even called once to see how I’m doing, much less thrown himself at my feet and begged for forgiveness—”

“Do you still love him?”

“What does it matter, if
he
doesn’t love
me?
And Trace
does
. Trace makes me feel special and wanted and cherished! I’ve loved him for as long as I can remember; I can’t imagine ever not.”

“But you love
me
,” Kit says. “Not quite the same thing, though, is it?”

I start to shake. Kit stubs out his cigarette and pulls me into a hug, resting his chin on the top of my head.

“Why are you doing this?” I sob into his shirt. “You don’t even
like
Nicholas. You’ve pushed and pushed me to be with Trace. Why are you doing this?”

“Because somebody has to make you face the truth,” Kit says simply. “Whatever it is. You can’t keep burying your head—and your heart—in the sand forever. You have to allow yourself time to grieve for your marriage. You can’t just move on to Trace as if the two men are interchangeable. This isn’t real.”

But it’s not that simple, I think the next day, watching as Edward Lyon’s casket is lowered into a gaping dark wound sliced into the bright green grass, tears streaming unchecked down my face. I used to believe that every one of us had a soulmate—“A
bashert,”
I explained to Nicholas, not long after we first met. “That’s Yiddish for destined other,”—but perhaps that’s fanciful, too suggestive of order and purpose in a life that is really nothing but chaos and confusion. Thirteen years ago, I was convinced Trace was my soulmate; then I met Nicholas, and was suddenly certain that
he
was the man I was destined to be with. And now? Now I don’t know what I believe. I’m not sure I believe in anything anymore.

All I know is that Trace wants me. And Nicholas doesn’t.

After the service, I stop by Nicholas as he helps his mother into the waiting car. For several moments, I struggle for words. What do you say to a man who has shared your bed for more than ten years, and now looks straight through you, as if you’re not even there?

“This isn’t what I wanted,” I manage, finally. “I wanted to wait you out. I did
try.”

“How long have you known?” he says shortly.

“Since the Law Society dinner.”

“How did you—”

How can he be so cold, so
clinical?
I choke back a sob on his name.

He shifts uncomfortably. “Malinche, is there any chance I could come—”

I cut him off, not yet ready to have him at the house, emptying his wardrobe, clearing his bookshelves; not yet ready to put away the framed wedding photographs—currently flat on their glass faces, but still
there
. Misery makes my tone harsher than I intend. “No, Nicholas. I’m sorry.”

“I know how this must sound: but it didn’t mean anything. Please—”

“Of course it
meant
something, to me, if not to you! You aren’t the only one affected by this. It’s not up to you to decide if it meant something or not.”

“I realize you’re angry now, but—”

“Angry,” I breathe fiercely, “doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“You can’t mean to go through with this. Separation. A divorce. Surely?”

Divorce
. The word hits me like a hammer blow. Of course, I think bleakly. He’ll want to marry
her
now. I shrug dully. “What else did you expect, Nicholas?”

“Can’t we at least
talk?
What about the children, did you think about what this will—”

“Did
you?”

Two grave-diggers pass us, cigarettes and shovels in hand. The grief on my husband’s face as his eyes follow them is so naked, so raw, that despite myself, my anger dissolves. “Nicholas,” I say quietly, “now isn’t the time. I’ve told the children you’re looking after Grandma at the moment. When the time is right, we can tell them that you—that we—”

“Can I see them?” he says, his voice cracking slightly.

“Of course you can see them! I would have brought them to see you before, but you were always either working or at the hospital. It didn’t seem right to involve them in all of that.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Trace get out of the car—which I asked him to wait in; I don’t want Nicholas to see him, not now, not here, at his father’s funeral—and walk toward me. He stops twenty feet away, hovering on the edge of a knot of mourners. Waiting.

I turn back to Nicholas. A strange expression crosses his face; almost a look of yearning. Suddenly, dizzily, the years fall away, and I’m standing before him, at the altar, my hand in his, the gold of my wedding band shiny and new and foreign on my finger. And as we stand outside another church, ten years later, for a funeral, not a wedding, I understand, with startling clarity, that I still love him, that my love for him is stamped through me like a stick of rock, that even if I’m shattered into a thousand pieces by grief it will always be there, running through the center of my being, an absolute certainty; and that all he has to do is tell me he loves me now and nothing else will matter:
nothing at all
—

But, “I’d like to see them this weekend,” he says coolly, “if that’s all right.”

We arrange his painful, time-share access to the children—at his mother’s house; I can’t quite bear to think of
her
with them yet. A part of me wants to fight him, to make it as difficult as I know how, to hurt him in the only way left to me. But that would hurt our daughters too, and I can’t do that. They are suffering enough as it is. And however angry I am with Nicholas, however much I hate him in the small hours of the morning, when Trace has gone and I am left to sob into my pillow, I can’t do it to him either.

I say good-bye and walk away from him, toward Trace, who loves me, honestly and unreservedly, who will be the one I’m
with
, now, if not quite the one I
love;
and realize for the first time that I’ve lost my husband forever.

“But you said I
could have it!”

“No, I never! I said you could have it later.”

“It
is
later! You’ve been ages. Give it to me, Mummy said we had to share—”

“I haven’t finished with it yet! It’s
not fair.”

“But I want it now!”

“Give it back! Give it back, you’ll break it! You can’t do it anyway—
now
look what you’ve done! I’m telling on you!
Muu-uuu-mmmmy!
”

Louise marches into the sitting room. I hear her scary, Mary Poppins tones through a foot of thick cob wall. “Stop it, the pair of you!” she says sharply. “You’ll wake the baby. One more word out of either of you and neither of you will see that PlayStation again.”

“I don’t know
what
Nicholas was thinking,” she adds, coming back into the kitchen, “buying them expensive electronic toys at their age. Buying their approval, if you ask me.”

“Well, it seems to be working,” I say despondently.

“Children aren’t
stupid
, Malinche. They’ll see through it—”

“Chessington was a roaring success last weekend,” I despair. “The girls came back full of how
Sara
took them on all the big rides,
Sara
took them to have their faces painted,
Sara
didn’t mind at all when she got absolutely soaking wet on the flumes.” I pick fretfully at my nails. “She’s practically half my age, she doesn’t nag them to brush their teeth or do their
homework; of course she’s going to seem fun compared to their ancient dull mother, no wonder Nicholas upped and—”

Louise slams her palm on the kitchen table. I jump six feet; in the scullery, I hear the frantic scrabble of claws against wood as poor Don Juan nearly dies of fright.

“You can stop that nonsense right now,” she says fiercely. “Self-pity will get you nowhere. Your eldest daughter has a great deal more sense than you give her credit for. She’s pushing your buttons, that’s all. Testing you, to see how you feel about all of this.”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

Louise folds her arms. “Little Miss Drop-Her-Drawers is full of peace and love right now,” she says thoughtfully, “whisking your adorable little girls off to theme parks and playing dress-up and braiding their hair. Easy to play the fairy godmother when you can throw money at the problem for a couple of hours and then send them home. It’s all a little different when you have to live with them twenty-four/seven.”

I’ve never quite got used to my mother’s easy appropriation of teenage slang.

“Tell me about it,” I say crossly, going into the scullery to soothe Don Juan. “Metheny slept in my bed for two nights after they got back, and Sophie was an absolute swine for days. Wouldn’t do her homework, refused to clean out the rabbit’s cage, was beastly to her sisters—”

“Real life, in other words. Something Nicholas must be missing.”

I toss a carrot into the rabbit’s cage. “What are you getting at?”

Her mouth twitches. “I think perhaps it’s a little unfair to refuse to allow them to stay over at Madam’s flat after all.
Nicholas said his mother found it all a bit much, so soon after losing Edward. Maybe you should
let
them spend the weekends with the lovebirds at their bijou little nest after all. Their charming, one-bedroom, no-garden, white, minimalist London flat.”

I gasp delightedly.

“Louise, I can’t, they’ll run amok—”

“Well, come on, Malinche,” she says robustly. “It’s one thing to put the children first, but no one said you had to be a saint. The little trollop pinched your husband from right under your nose. It’s about time you rubbed hers in a little reality. And it won’t do any harm at all if you drag that ridiculously handsome new man of yours with you either. Nicholas could do with a taste of his own medicine. And before you start in about turning the other cheek and the rest of that nonsense,” she adds tartly, “
I’m
not the one who threw up all over her sofa.”

Trace and I sit
in darkness, the three girls asleep, finally, on the backseat behind us. He cuts the engine, but neither of us can summon the energy to get out of the car.

“Well. That was a big hit, wasn’t it?”

I start to laugh, end up in a half-sob. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I think unmitigated disaster just about covers it. Hey,” he says, as I dissolve into tears, “hey, relax. It’s OK. No one expects children to be angels all the time. The more it matters to you that they behave, the less likely it is to happen, you know that. Come on, Mal. I hate it when you cry.”

“But they were awful!” I wail. “The worst they’ve ever been! I don’t know
what
got into them, I bet they’re not like that for their father—”

He wraps his arms around me and I rest my head against his shoulder. I can feel his heart beating, strong and steady, beneath my cheek. “Look,” he murmurs into my hair, “it’s been a tough time for them. Perhaps it was too soon for us to all go away together to France. I know they’ll have to get used to it eventually, but maybe it was just too much, what with having to deal with Nicholas and Sara, too. Give them a little time, and it’ll sort itself out.”

I dash the back of my hand across my nose. Trace is right. The past few weekends have been dreadful; certainly for me. Watching my children—
my
children,
mine!
—walk into that woman’s arms. Well, not literally, Nicholas did at least have the decency to keep her out of sight: but it might just as well have been. I don’t know how I’d have borne it if it hadn’t been for Trace.

And I deserve an Oscar for my performances on the doorstep. Smiling, laughing like I haven’t a care in the world, refusing to let Nicholas see the pain splintering my heart. I do have my pride.

I dress more carefully to drop off my children than for anything since my wedding day.
I am not a victim. I am not
.

“You’ve cut your hair,” Nicholas said, shocked, one Saturday.

“Kit persuaded me to go to his stylist in London.” Without thinking, I added, “Do you like it?”

I could have kicked myself for sounding so needy. But, to my surprise, “I love it,” Nicholas said. “It’s very short, very gamine, but it really suits you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair short like this before.”

It’s funny how the pain catches you unaware, just when you think you are ready for it, have steeled yourself for the worst. In bed, Nicholas would often twine my hair around
his fingers, telling me how much he loved it long, making me promise never to cut it. He said he loved the way it fell across my face when I was on top of him, claimed it made me seem wild and abandoned.