After the Fall (21 page)

LUKE
•

If I had wondered how I was going to break the news to Tim I needn’t have bothered.

“Hey, mate,” I began as I called him from a pay phone en route to his apartment. The recharger for my cell phone was one thing Cress had neglected to deposit in the shed. “I was wondering if I could stay with you for a week or so. Cress and I are going through a bit of a rough patch….”

“Yeah, sure,” Tim replied, cutting across my carefully thought out explanation. “I’ve been expecting your call. Cressida told me that she changed the locks.”

“She did?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“And that’s some rough patch. You had an affair!” He didn’t hide the accusation in his tone. I fell silent, stunned. A beetle crawled toward my foot, searching for food or a mate. On impulse I lifted my shoe and smeared it across the pitted concrete.

“Luke? Are you still there?”

I didn’t answer, still stung. Tim had never questioned me before. Our entire relationship was based on him being the straight guy and me the maverick, right from the moment I’d first taken pity on him at school. We’d moved on since then, but I guess I still thought of him as one would a younger brother: pride, tolerance and condescension mixed in equal quantities. And I certainly didn’t like him criticizing me.

“If it’s too much trouble I can go somewhere else.” I strove to keep my tone light, as if it didn’t much matter.

“Don’t be like that. Of course you can stay.” Tim spoke as one would to a child, and a sulky one at that. I was tempted to tell him to stick his tiny apartment, his morals and his outrage, but just then the coins ran out. I stood there furiously pondering other options, the receiver whining to be replaced. Fuck it. Tim already knew; it might as well be him.

I hadn’t gotten the first box in before he was asking me what happened. Well, not what happened exactly, but why.

“I just don’t understand. Cressida’s gorgeous, she’s smart and she adores you. What on earth would make you have an affair?”

He was lugging boxes up the stairs as he spoke, panting slightly. Tim had a spare room but he used it as a study, with a futon in one corner. “Nothing made me,” I tried to tell him, “it just happened.” Hadn’t he ever met someone he desired so greatly, wanted so much, he just had to have her, regardless of consequences? Tim looked skeptical. I doubt he’d ever done anything regardless of consequences. Nevertheless, I pressed on. What about when he met Joan? I probed. Couldn’t he remember that feeling, the tidal wave of lust and longing and eventually love that must have engulfed him? I could tell by his face that I was closer to the mark, though he wasn’t having any of it.

“Maybe, but I wasn’t married when I met Joan,” he replied, as straight as ever. “And isn’t that what you felt when you met Cressida?”

I thought about it. Yeah, possibly, but that was so long ago and this was now. I was suddenly sick of talking about it, sick of being interrogated. Sure, I’d screwed up, but I’d made the honorable decision in the end, and I didn’t seem to be getting any credit for that. All I really wanted to do was have a beer and watch football: anything to forget about it for a while.

Tim waited for an answer, then gave up, heading back down the stairs for another load.

“Anyway,” he called back, “she called while you were driving over here. Had a message for you.”

“She did? Who?”

“Cressida, of course,” he replied scornfully, waiting for me to catch up to him.

I was momentarily disappointed. “What did she say?”

Tim removed a piece of paper from his pocket and studied it carefully, as if he hadn’t already memorized the words.

“That if you ever want to move home again it’s contingent upon attending counseling with her and having some tests.”

I was confused. “Tests?”

He blushed. “HIV, gonorrhea, that sort of thing. She said she’d e-mail you a list.”

Tim refolded the note and returned it carefully to his pocket, glancing at me as if I were crawling with vermin before heaving another box from the trunk. Jesus—I’d never felt more at a loss. Counseling and an STD checkup? I couldn’t decide which would be worse.

CRESSIDA
•

On one of my wards, a young boy was dying. Just ten years old, his life barely dipped into, yet winding down with each labored breath. I wondered if his parents felt the way that I did: the grief, the injustice, the loss of control. Death, infidelity—it’s all the same, except one is more humiliating. Daily I suffered as if I were dying too.

I found myself thinking again of Emma, and more specifically her parents. I had been so angry with them for neglecting Shura while her sister’s life hung in the balance, but I’d had a change of heart. I understood now that when something you love dies, everything else is secondary. There is only room for so much emotion. Nothing mattered anymore; for a while everything I experienced was uniformly bland, equal in its ability to delight or repulse. I finalized details of my fellowship as if filling out a tax return; I closed the eyes of dead children and wondered what to get for lunch.

Eventually, though, I started caring again. It was inevitable, I suppose, though I’d rather I hadn’t. While it lasted, the first gray shroud of grief was easier to live with than its successor, anger. I could tranquilize grief, exhaust it into submission, subdue it with sleeping tablets and long shifts. Anger was trickier. It erupted in me at inopportune moments, while I was lecturing students or reassuring a mother. Suppressing it took all my self-control, left me shaken and sick. Gradually I learned to retreat to the park or a broom closet after each of these episodes, to find a space where I could scream out my fury in private. It helped for a short while, this bulimia of the psyche, but still the anger kept coming.

I craved details. I wanted to know why it happened, but not just that—the how and where as well. Perhaps that’s why I initiated the counseling, for it wasn’t as if I really wanted him back. How could I, after what he’d done? To be honest, though, I didn’t know exactly what that was. When Cary called he said Kate had admitted that they’d slept together, but that it was over. It was the last part that made me throw Luke out.
Over
implied longevity, a relationship. It told me that whatever went on between them hadn’t just happened the once, a drunken slipup or silly mistake.
Over
meant planning and deceit and some sort of commitment, the things I couldn’t forgive. Counseling wasn’t going to change that, but it would give me the facts: the extent of his deception, how thoroughly I had been betrayed. I needed to know those things precisely so I wouldn’t take him back. And for all that he had put me through I wanted to hear Luke say he was sorry, to look into his eyes and see if he really was.

CARY
•

A month after Kate had broken my heart it still felt unmended. Worse: the pain was as sharp as the first day, the anguish all-consuming. Sometimes, late at night, it hurt so much that I fancied the serrated edges of that organ were rubbing together, grinding away scar tissue and the first tentative healing clots.

I didn’t hate Kate. I suppose I should have, but I couldn’t. I was furious with her, though, enraged at the way she’d screwed up what I thought was a perfectly happy marriage. She was the one who wanted to take all those vows, not me. For what? To end up only three years later lying to me, hiding things from me, letting me naively go on dreaming my dreams when they in no way coincided with hers?

I did hate Luke, though. Kate I could make excuses for, but he had none. Maybe her head was turned by his good looks; maybe he got her drunk, then took advantage of the situation. Somehow I was sure he initiated it all: guys like that always do. I thought about threatening him, but what would it have achieved? Physically, I’m bigger, but I wouldn’t mind betting he’s been in similar situations and would know how to handle himself. And I didn’t ever want to see him again, didn’t want to publicize or even acknowledge the situation.

Something else I didn’t want was to be told all the details. That would only hurt, and believe it or not, it wasn’t the sex that bothered me the most. What is sex, after all, but a physical reflex? I made myself get over that sort of jealousy after I discovered how many lovers Kate had had. It’s not the doing that counts, but the feeling behind it. It still killed me that she slept with him, but I knew I could get through it by convincing myself that’s all it was. No, what kept me awake at night was the deception and how easily it was achieved. It takes two to tango—maybe I was as much at fault for never questioning her, or ignoring the signs. Sure, I knew something was up, but assumed she was worried about work or having a baby. I tried to be supportive, but it never occurred to me that the rot was of Kate’s own making. I thought she had integrity. Now I was disappointed not only in her, but in myself for getting it so wrong.

We didn’t speak for weeks. At first every time I opened my mouth to say something I tasted tears instead, so I quickly gave that up. Then I didn’t know how to get started again. Despite everything, I still wanted Kate. I kidded myself that it was because I had too much invested in her to let it all go, but the bottom line was that I loved her, even after all this. Why? I don’t know. After seven years together maybe that was a reflex as well. All I could hold on to was that she seemed to want to stay too. That is, she didn’t move out, though I’d heard through the hospital grapevine that Cressida and Luke had separated. Maybe Kate realized what a mistake she’d made; maybe it
was
only sex.

I lost her, but not completely. She never hummed anymore, never laughed or even drank, never walked in the door scattering shoes and papers, peeling off her clothes as she told me about her day. But still, she was there. Things could be worse. I just needed to work out how to make them better. Talking wouldn’t do it, not by itself. Sex was the farthest thing from my mind. I thought about counseling, but it seemed counterproductive. I wanted to move on, to block things out if necessary, not keep rehashing them. Forward was the only direction I was interested in, putting as much distance between ourselves and what happened as possible. My guess was that we needed space and time, a second courtship, a place where we could find our way back to each other. But where?

KATE
•

Cary booked a trip overseas. For both of us: six weeks in France and Italy, as if we were students again with time on our hands, or honeymooners starting a new life together. I found the tickets when I arrived home from work yesterday, over a month since I last saw Luke. At first I’d thought they were for some conference he was attending, but underneath was a carefully typed itinerary with both our names at the top. Mr. and Mrs. Hunter. Cary and Kate.
We sound like film stars
, I’d laughed to him the first time I heard us introduced together. I flipped through the pages, place names clamoring for attention. In truth it should have read Dr. and Mrs. Hunter. Cary has a PhD, but never uses his title. He wouldn’t have dreamed of correcting the travel agent, and for some reason that irritated me. What was the use of all those years of effort if you didn’t have something to show for them?

The funny thing was that we had never really had a honeymoon. I had been working only a short while at the time of our marriage and hadn’t accumulated any annual leave. The museum had grudgingly granted me a week’s break, which we spent in a rented cottage in the spa country. A funny choice, when neither of us was into spas or the myriad treatments that went with them. Cary’s scientific streak derided the whole idea of taking the waters; I couldn’t bear to lie still long enough for the mud packs to set or the masseuse to finish. Despite that, we’d had a wonderful time—going for walks along the lake, browsing in bookshops, eating too much and sleeping in. And making love, two or even three times a day, long afternoons spent in bed while the scent from a nearby lavender farm drifted through the open windows around us. We had lived together for over a year before we married and dated for three before that, so it wasn’t as if the sex were new. Yet somehow it felt it. Cary seemed more relaxed, more open to the possibility of simply having fun rather than focusing on his technique or pleasing me. We never talked about it, but I suspect that the gold band on my finger made him confident, banished those concerns about his seventeen predecessors. I hadn’t realized how much they bothered him, but to what else could I ascribe the change? Or maybe it was the water after all.

Three years ago a trip to Europe would have been a dream come true. Now it just seemed odd, or worse—a mistake. What was he hoping to achieve? To rekindle some flame? Get me as far away from Luke as possible? To push me off some cliff on the Riviera and then return, feigning grief and tales of holiday tragedy? The last didn’t seem as ridiculous as it sounds. Cary was a calm man, but he felt things deeply. On top of that, he hadn’t spoken a word to me in over a month; then suddenly here he was whisking us off to Paris. Is that normal behavior?

So I felt a sense of trepidation when I heard his key in the door later that evening. I had been wondering what I was meant to do. Leave him a note? Send him an e-mail? It looked as if we would finally have to talk.

“Hello,” I began cautiously as he came into the kitchen. He looked tired, older, and the guilt that was my near-constant companion winched up a notch.

“Hello,” he replied, meeting my eyes for the shortest of seconds before turning away to take off his coat. A pause hung between us.

“Have you eaten?” I asked eventually, cursing myself for my cowardice. The tickets lay on the counter between us like a summons.

“Yes, thanks. At the hospital.” His voice sounded croaky with disuse and unnaturally polite. Silence descended again while he unpacked his briefcase. This time it was Cary who spoke first.

“Look, Kate,” he said, without glancing up from his task, “I left some stuff there for you to see. I know you must have read it. I hope that’s okay, but really it’s too bad if it isn’t.”

“The tickets, you mean? You could have at least asked me.” I had no right to be angry, considering my own crimes, but for some reason I was. It wasn’t like Cary to order me around.

“Yeah, well, there were lots of things you never shared with me either.” His voice was weary, but with an edge of determination. And something else—almost hatred but not quite. Disgust. He finished sorting his papers and stood up.

“I guess it comes down to whether you want to stay in the marriage or not. I’m assuming you do, since you haven’t moved out. I’m prepared to give it a shot too, and I think this is the best way. Getting away from everything here, making the effort just to concentrate on each other.”

It sounded reasonable, but I felt compelled to argue.

“I don’t know if my passport’s valid.”

“I’ve checked, and it’s okay.”

“What about leave then, Mr. Organized? You might be owed that long, but I’m certainly not.”

For the first time he looked furious, and despite myself I took half a step back.

“Don’t be so bloody petty. Any other man would have thrown you out for what you did, but you’re quibbling about leave. If you really want to I’m sure you can arrange some time off. Take it without pay, or quit. For fuck’s sake, I’m offering you a second chance. Don’t you want it?”

To be honest I wasn’t sure. As Cary had said, I hadn’t moved out, but was that just inertia? I suppose if I’d had to I could have stayed with Sarah or gotten an apartment by myself. It wouldn’t have been impossible. Or was it because I hadn’t heard from Luke? What would I have done if he’d called sometime in the last few weeks, admitting he’d made a mistake, begging me to take him back? Then there was the remaining possibility: that I still felt something for my husband. Nothing was clear. I took refuge in more questions.

“How can we even afford it? Wouldn’t counseling be cheaper?”

Cary didn’t meet my eyes as he replied.

“I’ve been putting some money aside in case we had to do IVF. We’ll use those savings. It’s obvious we’re not going to need them now.”

His tone could have been bitter or accusing, but it was neither. Instead the words were just plain sad, laden with grief and longing. I felt so sorry for him that I didn’t argue any further. But I couldn’t comfort him either, couldn’t assure him that his plan would make any sort of difference.

“Okay then,” I muttered, giving in without grace. Then I left the room and went to bed.

I couldn’t sleep. Lying alone in the darkness, I thought the whole thing felt like a huge mistake, doomed to fail. But what was the alternative? Move out, which I lacked the energy to contemplate? Continue dragging myself to work, though they’d surely fire me soon, I was so unproductive? Hope Luke would call, or call him myself? I felt my teeth clench at the latter. Never. I’d given him the choice and then a chance, and he’d blown them both. I was never going to contact him again.

That left Europe. Still, I vowed, Cary couldn’t expect me to be thrilled about it. I was truly sorry I had hurt him. Maybe I even still loved him. But all that had happened was too raw, too fresh to be moving away from. I wanted time to regroup and lick my wounds, not be rushed off to Europe and a fantasy reconciliation. If he was determined that we go I owed him that, but I couldn’t pretend. There would be no poring over the atlas together, none of the anticipation that makes travel so sweet. I would leave it all up to him. Six weeks away, departing in less than a month. I should have been excited, but the world felt dulled, as if I were missing a sense.