The Affair (6 page)

At this point I didn’t know if I’d vomit or pass out. Was I really responsible for this girl’s suicide attempt? What if I’d
been sick? What if I had crashed my car on the way to work? Why should it matter how I spent that hour?

It matters.

’Til next time,

Like an alcoholic bargaining with God—get me through this hangover and I’ll never take a drink again—I’d promised to end my
“thing” with Eddie if He would let Alice live. Today she’s out of intensive care
and I’m already dreaming of my next rendezvous with Eddie.

I saw him this morning. I’d come in early to catch up on paperwork, but when I came across Alice’s file, I fell apart. He
found me sitting at my desk, and I’m sure he noticed I’d been crying. He locked the door behind him, pulled a chair close
to mine, and held my hands in his. After a long silence he said: “Talk to me.”

“My life is a complete disaster. I feel totally out of control.”

He wiped a tear from my cheek with a callused thumb. “This isn’t your fault. The girl was suicidal. It could have happened
anytime, anywhere.” He traced little circles across the top of my hand. The early-morning sunlight streamed through the blinds.
I’d never noticed the flecks of violet in his eyes.

We spent the next hour like that, talking about our lives, our expectations, our disappointments. His eyes never left mine.
We didn’t kiss or even embrace, but after he’d left I felt as if we’d spent that hour making love.

If it was his raw male sexuality that first attracted me to Eddie, it is his ability to truly
listen
that now keeps me captivated. It’s impossible not to contrast Eddie’s interest in me with my husband’s profound lassitude.
To wit: When I came home last Friday, convinced that Alice’s suicide attempt was a message from God, I was ready to start
anew with my husband. I put Petey to bed and walk into the family room. Roger is watching ESPN. “Can we talk?” I ask him.
He cranes his neck so he can see the TV. Apparently, I am blocking the view. “Can it wait?” he wants to know. For a split
second I see the two of us sprawled on the bed with cartons of
Chinese food and the Sunday papers. We used to read the paper aloud, then discuss the issues of the day with the earnest intensity
of a couple of graduate students. We didn’t even own a TV then. It seems like such a long, long time ago.

“Well, no, it really can’t wait.” I try to sound assertive. It’s what I teach my clients, yet it’s the thing I find most difficult
to do. I hate begging for attention. I mightily resist the urge to say: Fine. Watch your damn TV. Instead, I say, “I really
want to talk. Now.”

Roger snaps off the set and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re on.”

“Something terrible happened. One of my clients tried to kill herself. I had canceled out on her. I think that’s why she did
it.” I am not ready to offer all the details.

At this point Roger is tapping his fingertips on the table and jiggling his foot, signaling that he’s losing interest or patience
or both. I had interrupted the hockey game. The meter is ticking and I am just about out of time.

“So what do you want
me
to do about it?” he says.

“You? I don’t want you to do anything. I’m upset. I just wanted to talk.” By now I want to throttle him.

“Look. You work with a bunch of crazies, and crazy people do crazy things. She’s a sick kid and you’re taking this way too
personally.” I can see him looking past me at the dark TV screen. “Okay?”

“Yeah, Roger. Okay.” I grab the remote. “Here. Let me do this for you.” I switch on the set and fling the remote to the floor.
It cracks apart and the batteries roll out. “Hey!” Roger cries. “Whadja do that for?”

I find myself counting the years until Petey is old
enough to handle our divorce. I’ve got to get out of this marriage.

’Til next time,

Thanks to a flat tire, I now know exactly what Roger is doing with his young student. My Jeep wheeled over a broken beer bottle
in the parking lot as I pulled into my spot this morning. The tire was completely deflated by the end of the day. I hadn’t
fixed a flat since college and wasn’t sure I remembered how to do it. So I pulled out my cell phone and called Roger.

He didn’t answer—and it didn’t make sense. He’d always been home by 6
P.M.
I worried that Petey had been hurt—God’s revenge for Alice’s accident—and saw a fleeting but vivid picture of Roger in the
hospital emergency room, crumpled over the gurney as the nurses covered the small body. When my clients do this, I call it
catastrophizing. Yet the truth is, I do it all the time. Ever since I was a little girl, sitting on the window seat in our
living room, watching for the headlights of my father’s car, I’ve always conjured horrific possibilities.

I had to hurry. I managed to fix the flat myself, then sped home, taking streets instead of the highway to avoid rush-hour
traffic. As I rolled through a yellow light at Washington and Seventh, I saw them: Roger and a young woman lingering outside
the Learning Attic. She was a girl, really. I slowed as I passed them, knowing intuitively that they would never see me. They
were in the kind of glass bubble new lovers create for themselves, impervious to outside distractions. She
wasn’t the blond cover girl I’d imagined, but had a Stevie-Nicks-witchy-woman look: spiraling hair, almond eyes, red-painted
lips, long skirt, cowboy boots. Very different from the cool, Waspy, Talbots look Roger always said he favored. As I passed
them, I saw her lean toward him and adjust his scarf. An intimacy. I’m still in shock.

I picked Petey up from day care, knowing Roger would be momentarily panicked when he arrived and didn’t see his son among
the other kids. I wanted him to panic.

It’s now 7:36 and he still isn’t home. Is my marriage over? I allow myself to contemplate the possibility. I never thought
he’d have the courage to make the first move, but it looks like he fooled me, didn’t he? I’m scared. I am not ready to live
alone. I am not ready to end my marriage. And crass as it may sound, without Roger’s money I’ll be broke—almost as broke as
Alice’s mother, who went from caviar to food stamps almost overnight.

Roger is a trust-fund baby. The money his parents made in the stock market—buying Disney and McDonald’s and IBM when these
companies were young and green—has made it possible for Roger and all his siblings to live comfortably and pursue the careers
of their dreams. Hence, Roger the Playwright. My client load changes every month so my income fluctuates, and ever since the
managed care revolution, most of my clients leave treatment after the allotted six or eight sessions.

I couldn’t have a house, couldn’t afford a car, probably couldn’t afford health insurance. I’m not ready to live like a grad
student again, cinder-block-and-plank shelving, hot dogs for dinner. To know profoundly that I am alone, that I am not loved,
that my marriage may
be ending … it’s all so chilling. And suddenly, in light of these possibilities, there is nothing sexy about Eddie. The prospect
of poverty has the effect of a cold shower.

I’m aware that by focusing on my finances, I conveniently avoid the real issues. Forget about losing money—what about losing
my life’s companion, the father of my son? What about Petey? Do we really want to live with the burden of knowing we wrecked
this child’s life? If nothing else, isn’t Petey’s well-being worth fighting for? I resolve to confront Roger when he gets
home. I’ll be cool, controlled. I will not cry. I’ll tell him it’s time to work things out.

When I heard Roger’s key in the door, I was prepared to employ the interested-but-detached voice I use with my clients. (“I
got a flat today,” I’d tell him. “I tried to call you but you weren’t home. Leftover lasagna okay for dinner?”)

But the moment I saw my husband’s face, flushed and happy—and actually heard him
whistling
—I knew I’d never make it. “Where were you at six o’clock?” I said, already accusing. I felt my outrage roil, then surge.
“I saw you. With her.” I sounded like Elizabeth Taylor in
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

“I see we’re moving up in the world. First eavesdropping, now spying.” He sorted through the mail, chuckling derisively. He
had on one of his trademark expressions—a razor blade smile, grotesque in its insincerity. It made me want to pummel him.

“Damn you, Roger. What the hell is going on?” I could hear Petey humming in the other room as he rummaged through his crayons.
I didn’t want him to walk in on this. One of the kids in his Saturday play group told him his parents were getting a divorce
because they fight too much, and now every time Roger
and I argue, Petey asks pitifully, “Are you going to get a divorce now?”

“What do you think is going on?” Roger narrowed his eyes, waiting for my theory.

“Don’t play games with me. I saw the girl.” Already I was crying, my voice choked as phlegm clogged my throat. “I saw how
she touched you.”

“She wasn’t touching me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Was that Alyssa?”

He stopped flipping through the mail and stared at me. “How did you know her name?”

“Caller ID.”

“God. You and your Caller ID.” He wiggled his fingers in the air and made Twilight Zone noises: “Ooooh … I guess Big Brother
is watching me. I never wanted to get that thing in the first place.” He left the room to play with Petey, left me in the
kitchen, alone and trembling in my rage. I began banging pans and slamming cabinet doors. With a sweep of my arm I pushed
mail and papers off the counter and onto the tile floor.

It’s a blinding kind of turmoil, this anger. I imagine it’s how a two-year-old must feel in the throes of a temper tantrum.
I was out of control and terrified, knowing I must look like an ass, but simply incapable of regaining my calm. In retrospect,
I know what fueled the rage: it was the belief that this man who had deprived me—no, starved me—of physical affection in all
these months had somehow found the capacity to give the gift of his attention and touch to another woman.

This idea (and that’s really all it is—I have no proof of an affair) had captivated my imagination in the cruelest way and
catapulted me from a relatively sane wife to a raving shrew. And as I raved with red eyes and a
swollen red nose, I thought, “How could he love a woman this needy, this pathetic? How could any man?” I shoved the lasagna
into the microwave and heard Roger’s footsteps behind me.

“You’ve got no right to spy on me, you know,” he began. I refused to turn around.

“Look. She’s a flirt. And she’s cute. But there’s nothing going on. I swear.”

I turned now and searched his face for the truth. I didn’t believe him. Suddenly I thought of Eddie, his body against mine
in the video arcade, and I felt guilty and ashamed. A childish phrase sprang to mind, and it’s never been more appropriate:
It takes one to know one.

’Til next time,

Last night I felt a powerful need to talk, but there was no one to talk to. Betsy is always asleep by nine. I was too embarrassed
to tell either of my sisters about Eddie. Teresa is too critical, Julia too self-absorbed.