right now, that she needs to tell me something.
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not going Christmas shopping,’ she says, after casting her eyes right and left to make sure the children are out of earshot. ‘I’m going for lunch, and I don’t know, maybe more, with, you know. Zoltan.’
Zoltan. Probably not his real name, but who’s being particular? Marie’s latest attempt at an affair. This one’s a stranger, someone she met online for the explicit purpose of having a hook-up. These days, I think of each of her flirtations as her latest attempt to sabotage the marriage she wants to end. But maybe not. Next week, maybe staying married, whatever the cost, may be the most important thing.
I arrange my face to look – supportive. I listen as Marie lambasts JP. Segues into lambasting the self-righteousness of ‘those women’ – Nicola, Colleen, the Greek chorus. ‘Do they not have feelings? Hormones? Desires? Are they all in denial? They’re all our age! Where the fuck are their hormones?’
She looks at me expectantly. Expecting what? Acquiescence, confirmation, confession?
Hard.
—Some things never change.
Like your effect on me.
I could. I could tell her. But I am a bad friend. I do not betray her confidences, never. But I never reciprocate either.
It’s not a conscious choice, exactly. It’s just…not me. I don’t tell. Plus, what do I have to reciprocate with? Sure, Alex annoys me from time to time. He has no sense of time, and will text me at 8.15 p.m. to tell me he should be home before 7 p.m. His relationship with his mother is co-dependent, and his relationship with his father and stepmothers is fucked up. I’ve given up trying to get him to put his shoes on the boot mat, and his idea of helping clean the house is to suggest the cleaners come in more often. But. He’s a great dad. And he’s been known to load the dishwasher. Well, supervise the kids as they load the dishwasher. More importantly: he gets hard the second he sees me naked. Now. And always. When I had a belly swollen with six-months’-worth of baby in it. When it was flabby and stretchy six months after the fourth baby.
Yeah, he gets cranky. Annoying. Distant. So do I. But at our worst, I do not wish to leave our marriage – nor do I secretly hope, as Marie sometimes does, that he leaves, so that I would be…what? Free but blameless. I’m…what am I? Perhaps less deluded? Alex and I, we are what we are, and it’s usually good, and it has downs, but it’s all about the long play. It’s about forever: not fairy-tale forever, just…nuclear-family forever.
A child of parents who will celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary next year, I buy into that.
Marie calls us a fairy-tale marriage every once in a while, and pauses, and waits for me to say something. And I shrug. Five pregnancies, fourth births. Eleven, almost twelve years of solid monogamy. Of days too full of children and quotidian obligations to have much space for even audacious thought crime, much less real crime.
This thought intrudes: the last time I saw Matt, I had just found out I was pregnant with Cassandra.
And I did what I had to do, what had to be done.
This thought comes, too: a little more time and space for thought crime these days. My work ensures I get taken out to lunch and dinner by powerful and occasionally attractive men. Occasionally, after, I commit thought crime with them while fucking Alex.
But.
Why would I tell Marie that? To what end?
And – my fingers find the phone in my purse – she does not know anything about this part of me. This past part of me.
—See you…on the 14th.
I very much look forward to it.
‘What if he thinks I’m a skank?’ Marie asks me. ‘He knows I’m married. With children. And there I am…Do you think I’m a skank?’ She turns to me suddenly, sharply. I take a step back, creating space between us again.
‘Jesus, Marie, what do you think I am?’ I ask. ‘Your friend. Who’s looking after your kids so you can do whatever you need to do this afternoon. You don’t need to justify anything to me.’
‘I’d just feel better if you and Alex didn’t have this fairy-tale marriage,’ Marie says. There she goes again. ‘The prince and the princess. And I know JP’s more than ten years older than Alex. But Alex still looks so good, and young, and in shape – and the two of you together. You’re so…perfect.’
I love her and I do not want her to feel judged.
I could tell her.
‘I don’t want you to judge me,’ Marie says. ‘And I know you never say anything. But how can you not judge me when you’re so fucking happily married and faithful and…’
I could do this. I could. I could open the Facebook app on my phone, and go into messages. Hand the phone to Marie.
She would read. She would say, ‘Oh, my God,’ and I would I hear a thunk – me, falling off the pedestal.
‘Never think I’m judging you,’ I would say as she read.
‘Who is this?’ she would ask.
And this is where it ends. Where I know I won’t tell. I can’t tell. Because…because I don’t. Mine. Only mine to know and bear and carry.
So. I don’t show, I don’t share. Instead:
‘I never judge you,’ I say. ‘He won’t think you’re a skank. OK, well, he might. But he wants you to be a skank. Right? That’s what this whole thing is about.’
It’s almost the right thing to say. Marie smiles.
‘’K,’ she says. ‘’K. It will be OK. I’ll be fine. I look good, right?’ I nod. ‘See you in three or so hours.’
‘Be safe.’ I send her on her way. To her lunch. Or a parking-lot fuck.
I hope she’s packed a condom.
I spend a joyous but exhausting day with the kids. I don’t text. I don’t think about Matt. Really. I think about work – the bizarre financial case study I promised to review for a client for tomorrow morning, which clearly I’m not doing as I sled with the kids. Oh, fuck. What time will Alex be home? As Marie comes back – hair and makeup intact and overall mood light and neither angst-ridden nor post-coitally joyous, making me infer she only lunched and transgressed not much (we can’t talk with the kids around) – he texts to say he won’t be back until 8, maybe later – ‘fucking clients,’ he writes, the excuse for everything, always – and that won’t get him home in time to do bedtime…and, since I’ve been up since 5 a.m., I’ll be useless post-bedtime.
Marie’s kids and mine are starting to fight, tired of each other, so despite her half-hearted offer, I decline to send my brood home with her. Maybe I can sell them to my mom in the evening so I can work? I only need an hour, maybe two…
And that is why, a few hours later, I’m sitting in my parents’ kitchen eating
