hard, and reached his hand inside her pants and between her legs. He leaned her back until they were lying together on the sofa. She could feel his erect penis against her thigh. His finger went inside her. It felt good, like nothing she had ever experienced before. Charlotte had not yet kissed a boy.
You’re wet, he said, laughing. You’re wet, you little whore.
He seemed then to have the strength of two men and the arms of an octopus as he reached for her hair and slid off her pants, so quickly, like he had superhuman abilities. His knees were between hers. His erection on her stomach. And then, slowly, he teased her thighs apart and slid down, his erection running along the inside of her thigh. She remembered the “ahhhhh.” His hip bones pressed into hers as he penetrated her. And when it was over (apparently in a matter of seconds), he pulled out of her and positioned his body so she was up against the back of the couch. He kissed her neck and moaned. Then he manipulated her clitoris with his fingers until she had an orgasm, which happened even through the repulsion. The body is a machine. We forget that sometimes.
They became secret “lovers.” The need in Charlotte that was filled by these encounters eclipsed her conscience, her morality, her will. Greg bought her gifts and took her to the movies. They exchanged looks at dinner and “made love” on the sofa when Ruthanne was working the night shift. Charlotte knew it was wrong, and she was still, in many ways, disgusted by Greg. But, as she explains it, she could not stop herself.
I am ashamed of this. But it’s the truth. Feeling a human body that close to me. Feeling skin against my skin. Being kissed and hugged and held. And then there was the sexual pleasure, which I could not control. I don’t know. Maybe it was about the sex. Maybe I was a little whore. But at the time, it felt like love.
It took about six months for Ruthanne to admit to herself what she was seeing and feeling when she was in their company. By that time, Greg was fully unemployed and reliant on his wife. I imagine there was never any doubt about what would happen, though to Charlotte, it felt like her heart had been torn from her chest.
Ruthanne sent her daughter to live with Aunt Peg in Hartford. Peg was older than Ruthanne by six years and had managed to land a husband in the insurance business. They had three children, all away at boarding school, and they reluctantly agreed to do the same for their niece. Charlotte never went home again.
Tom did not know about her life with her mother and Greg.
You can understand now Charlotte’s need to repair her house. I imagine there are those of you thinking more of this, that perhaps Charlotte’s insistence on giving Jenny the treatment was because she had something in her past that was sexually perverse. But you would be wrong. Charlotte saw that night on the sofa as a seduction, an act of desire and the beginning of a love affair. Still, she understood that her relationship with her stepfather was “unconventional” and “morally questionable.” It is for those reasons that she did not share this story with anyone—not even her husband.
But this is not the secret that Charlotte feared her mother-in law could see.
Getting back to Jenny and the night she sat on her bed—
Tom’s employer was Bob Sullivan. Bob owned twelve car dealerships throughout the state of Connecticut and had a net worth of over twenty million dollars. His face could be seen on any number of billboards on I-95 from Stamford to Mystic, and throughout every town that still allowed them. You would remember seeing him up there, his full head of black hair, determined eyes, big white smile, and rounded nose. Bob Sullivan was a self-made man, the kind whom magazines liked to write about. The kind who was so bursting with himself, it seemed a miracle he didn’t explode like a struck piñata and litter confetti across the sky. Bob Sullivan lived in Fairview. He had a “plus-sized” wife and three sons who were being groomed to run the family business. He always drove the latest model of something, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche. He ate a paleo diet and drank red wine without constraint. He was generous but also ambitious, with his sights set upon a seat in the state legislature.
And he was having an affair with Charlotte Kramer.
We tend to think we know why people have affairs. Their marriage is bad, but they can’t leave because of the kids. They have sexual needs that aren’t being filled. They’re victims of seduction, their self-control overcome by human desires. None of these were true for Charlotte.
Charlotte Kramer was two people. She was the Smith graduate with a degree in literature. She was the former assistant editor of Connecticut magazine and now the stay-at-home mother to two lovely children, the wife of Tom Kramer, whose family were scholars and teachers. She was the member of the Fairview Country Club who was known for her impeccable manners and extensive vocabulary. She had built her house carefully, and it was a good, moral, and admired house.
No one knew the other Charlotte Kramer, the girl who’d slept with her mother’s husband and was forced to leave home. No one knew that her relatives were uneducated alcoholics who lived hard and died young. She was the girl who took off her clothes every night for a man nearly twice her age who smelled of cigarettes and poor hygiene. No one knew any of this—except for Bob Sullivan. Charlotte had put that girl in a cage. But over time, that girl had started to rattle the bars until she could no longer be ignored. Bob Sullivan was Charlotte’s way of recognizing her, of keeping her calm in her imprisonment. It was her way of being whole as she lived half a life as Charlotte Kramer of Fairview.
When I’m with Bob, I’m that girl again. That dirty girl who gets turned on by bad things. Bob is a good man, but we’re both married, so what we’re doing is bad. I don’t know how to explain it. I have worked very hard to live a “right” life. Do you know what I mean? To not think the bad thoughts and stop myself from having the bad behavior. But it’s always there, this craving. Like a closet smoker, you know? Someone who’s mostly quit and who would sooner die than have the world know she smokes, but then she sneaks one precious cigarette a day. Just one. And that’s enough to satisfy the craving. Bob is my one cigarette.
You may judge Charlotte Kramer for her one cigarette. For having secret cravings that she cannot control. For not telling the whole truth. For not letting her husband know his whole wife. And for your judging of Charlotte Kramer, I shall have to judge you a hypocrite.
No one, not one of us, shows the whole self to any one person. And if you think you have, then ask yourself these questions: Have you ever pretended to like something awful your wife cooked? Or told your daughter she looked pretty in an ugly dress? Have you made love to your husband and faked a sigh as your thoughts ran elsewhere—to your grocery list, perhaps? Or praised the mediocre work of a colleague? Have you ever told someone everything would be all right when it wouldn’t be? I know you have. White lies, black lies, a million lies a million times every day, everywhere, by every one of us. We are all hiding something from someone.
This may cause you to feel disheartened. Maybe it will make you pause when your wife tells you she believes you’ll get that promotion, or your husband assures you that you are well liked on the PTA. The truth is, you will never know the truth, and if you did know, you would probably be fighting to save your marriage. I may appear a renegade. A miscreant. But no relationship can survive the naked truth, the whole truth. No. Once a couple have confessed their true feelings to each other, whether in private or in couples therapy or even to friends with big mouths, the game is over. Don’t you see? Don’t you know this in your heart of hearts? We love people for who they are and how they make us feel. We can usually tolerate their faults and even keep them to ourselves. But once we see any reflection of ourselves in their eyes that is
