From This Moment On (51 page)

For the first week after finding out about the affair, I was ready to die—to go to bed forever and never wake up. Or to hurt someone. I was ready to do
something
desperate, but in reality, there was nothing to do but to suffer through it. Fortunately, when you’re a mom, the responsibility of caring for your child can keep you going. You have the routine of preparing your child for school in the morning, dragging yourself out of bed on autopilot, and cheerfully keeping a brave face. And as soon as he’s off, at least in my case, I’d slip back into my pajamas and spend the day in bed, crying and sleeping fitfully. I wasn’t eating at all; in fact, I went a whole week without any solid food and just drank orange juice. This can be considered healthy during a cleansing fast, for example, but I wouldn’t recommend it while trying to cope with the grief of a deep emotional crisis.

I was freezing cold all the time, and my only relief came when I’d strip off my clothes and climb into a steaming-hot bath. Five times
a day. Yet I’d be shivering most of the time, shaking uncontrollably, my teeth chattering violently. Out of the bath, I’d wear a winter coat over my pajamas, plus wool socks and a scarf. It made no difference. I couldn’t get rid of the chills and at the same time, I was sweating profusely. It was as if my body were trying to purge itself of the emotional agony inside by forcing the pain out of my pores so that I didn’t drown in it. I hurt physically, too, aching as though someone had sandpapered all my nerve endings.

But when four o’clock arrived, and it was time to kick back into Mommy the Brave for the evening, I was there for my son with a hug and a smile. Believe me, it took all the courage I could muster to get through our morning and afternoon routines like everything was “okay.” However, the way I looked at it, this sudden, major change in our lives was going to be hard enough on him; I was not about to subject him to the pain that I was feeling on top of his own. All things considered, I think I did a pretty good job of managing this “double life,” as my son didn’t seem unusually stressed.

I resented Marie-Anne a great deal, knowing which end of the stick she was on. We were both new, single moms, going through our daily routines with our children, only I was drained of all my energy, as the façade I tried to keep up for my child’s sake took everything I had. She was going through her daily routine, however, while in a new and exciting romance with a man who decided to put her first, above his wife and his family. Love is energizing, and new love is especially blissful and makes you feel invincible. Boy, were she and I at opposite ends of the stick, all right. It must have felt so empowering to know that he risked it all for her. Is this the way a mistress feels? That she is more valuable and important to the man than his wife and family? Perhaps it’s the unfaithful husband convincing her that she’s important enough to stake such a claim. Or is it her own sense of self-entitlement? In any case, at the time my perception was that my husband’s mistress was the winner, the one defended by my own husband. And when he wasn’t looking, she had the confidence to parade her cockiness and fearlessness with snarly looks and hisses when by chance our paths
crossed in person, as they inevitably did, since we lived in the same small village. This was extremely painful for me and left me feeling weak and defeated. She had nothing left to fear, and I’d lost. Every time she kicked me when I was down, she made sure my husband wasn’t looking, and when I tried to explain to him what he couldn’t see, he refused to listen and didn’t want to know. I felt as if I were trapped in some kind of childish game with my sadistic opponent standing just far enough away that I couldn’t reach her, all the while sticking out her tongue at me. It was degrading. I hated her because I felt she was making a fool of my husband, someone I considered to be intelligent, mature, and anything but vulnerable to the cliché of the temptress secretary, as she shamelessly “displayed” an attitude that seemed to say, “Your husband will never see my other face, and I will never show it to him, because I have his compassion, his sympathy, and his credit card, and there is nothing you can do about it.” She was right, and I felt helpless for myself and for Mutt. I was disgusted that another woman’s lust for a lifestyle upgrade was worth the devastation of my family. She was pitiless, and I was a pitiful mess of “woe is me.”

There was one occasion in the initial days when I was too wrung out to keep up the masquerade in front of my son. I felt a big sob coming on, so I ducked into another room and tried to pull myself together. Nothing doing. I sat down at the computer and began tapping out my angst while listening to some music. That didn’t help either. I was crying all over my keyboard and going through tissues like crazy.

My son walked into the room. “Mom, you’re crying,” he said. “Why are you crying? I’ve never seen you cry before.” He was surprised more than anything else, because he really had never seen me cry in his life. (I told you, I’m working on it.) I’m sure it was awkward for him. I’d had sad moments, of course, but, as is my nature, I always felt strongly about never burdening my child with my own personal pain in life.

But I had no family around, my husband was gone, and I was simply alone. Alone with my grief, trying to be strong and hide it from
my son. For that moment, I just couldn’t do it. I was quick on my feet, though. “It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s important to know that mommies cry, too, sometimes.” I went on to explain that music is very powerful and can move us emotionally. It can make us happy, angry, or sad, and the song that was playing on my iTunes happened to make me feel sad, that’s all. “It is good to cry when something makes us sad.” He accepted this explanation, hugged me, and went back to playing. And I went back to sobbing.

I was gutted that I’d been such a fool, to have been tricked by a traitor, but as shocked as I was at the news of the affair, I was equally surprised that I didn’t suspect more earlier, that I had been such a blind idiot. But such is the talent of a crafty con. Although my husband’s distance—and what I realize now was the transparency of his conscience—created suspicion in me, Marie-Anne’s award-winning acting was what really threw me off. She kept reassuring me that everything was okay, that I was jumping to conclusions, and then distracting me with comfort, suggesting I should question my thinking, diverting me calmly and coolly from my concerns. Absolutely an Oscar performance that I could not see through. It gives me chills just thinking about how she was able to do this. I read something that struck a chord recently on the Internet from Roderick Anscombe’s “When the art of the question meets the art of the Lie”: I can’t say I find it healthy to live life being suspicious all the time, but you do need to pay attention and keep a reasonable sense of awareness to protect yourself against anyone trying to take advantage of you. In day-to-day life, it’s over-the-top to be distrustful of your spouse every time he or she comes home late from work or doesn’t seem comfortable with questioning. But I do think it’s wise to remain in close communication with your partner in every way your relationship has meaning to you: parenting, romance, friendship. Gaps allow devious outsiders to come in and take advantage of space between you, and they see it as an opportunity to fill in the missing parts. Address gaps with your partner and talk about them, acknowledge them. Don’t ignore areas you are having trouble connecting on, and talk about the
fact that you are aware the gap is there and that you are interested in finding a solution to fill it, even if you don’t have that solution. Show your interest in finding out what you can do and suggest that it be a mutual effort. Share the responsibility. If you blindly expect your partner to see all this on his or her own, then I believe you are taking the risk your partner won’t live up to your expectations. Be more proactive with weaknesses in any relationship you value, recognize your responsibility in keeping gaps and empty, vulnerable areas filled with communication, understanding, and awareness, and you will improve your chances of surviving unnecessary breaks. Stay in touch and you stay connected. Once you let go of communication, some bloodsucking standby will almost surely step in and grab your end. Good luck trying to get it back once you’ve lost hold.

They say that the lying and sneaking around—the “intrigue”—add to the excitement of an illicit affair. Even after the cat was out of the bag, the deceit continued. In the first days after my return from New Zealand, while I was still in the dark that my friend Marie-Anne was a traitor, she came to the hotel where I was staying while waiting to move into our renovated lakeside villa, to comfort me over my concerns about my marriage. I sensed a defensive attitude in her tone when I asked her some direct questions about my husband, and that set off an alert in me. Over dinner and drinks, with our kids playing next to us on the carpet, I eventually got up the nerve to ask her what was going on between her and my husband. I assumed that she knew something I didn’t and that she was helping him keep it from me as his loyal secretary, but I still wasn’t suspicious that she was actually a part of the secret.

Her response was unbelievably convincing. “I’m heartbroken that you would even think that I was hiding something from you,” she said innocently, her eyes tearing up. Although I was suspicious of something, I didn’t know what to think, as she successfully managed to confuse me with her act. “We’ve been friends for all these years,” she reminded me. “I can’t believe you are questioning my loyalty and honesty.” I wound up apologizing for having doubted her.

The morning after this dinner in my hotel room with Marie-Anne, Fred took on the painful chore of telling me about the affair, as he could no longer bear her lying to me so cruelly, even across from me at my own table. Although I do not want to minimize the pain Fred endured through the process of discovering the affair, as he had parallel suffering on the flip side of things, I have simplified this part of the story to broad strokes, to avoid getting bogged down in details. I considered chopping this section out of the book altogether, as it’s so uncomfortable to review, let alone write. But someone scammed her way into my trust, so completely under the radar, that my astonishment compelled me to share how these events unraveled, in case they help readers recognize this happening in their own lives, before it’s too late. Whether it be in business, family, friendship, or marriage, it’s so important to keep your eyes open for cons, liars, and cheats who will comfort you with one hand on your shoulder and rob you with the other. Marie-Anne made the old saw “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” a reality for me.

Fred explained that his wife had spent some time with my husband in luxury spas in the area over the last months. Of course, I demanded proof, and outside of what he’d witnessed personally, he had the classic evidence in the form of phone bills, hotel information, and receipts, and the memory of a garter belt and lingerie he saw packed in her luggage. She was meant to be going away for time “alone,” the same story she gave me through our email exchanges.

Bonjour,

Mutt tomorrow.

Bonjour,

Bonjour,

That one just kills me. “I really enjoy it!” she says. Oh, I’ll bet she did. How could any friend write something like that while in the company of the other’s husband? This was all happening with Fred’s awareness, and even though he tried to intervene, short of chaining his own wife to the house, how could he keep them apart when they were so intent on being together? He had a demanding, full-time job and a daughter to look after, and I was no help being on the other side of the globe and, worse, still oblivious to the situation.

Fred apologized profusely to me—both for not having told me as soon as he discovered the affair, weeks earlier, as well as for my pain at hearing what he had to say. He felt so guilty having to be the one to break my heart. Of course, there was no reason for him to feel sorry; it wasn’t his fault this was all happening. People who are not concerned
with trying to protect the ones they’ve hurt often protect themselves by avoiding unpleasant confrontations. I said, “Fred, we aren’t exactly at the top of our spouses’ lists of people they’re concerned about.” I had to reassure him that he did the right thing answering my questions honestly and not remaining a part of their lie.

I thanked Fred for coming clean and sparing me further humiliation by turning on the light. That’s one of the most painful aspects of being the spouse who remains in the dark. Not only do you hurt and grieve, but you feel like a fool, insulted that those you love don’t feel you’re worthy of the truth, that you have no right to know their truth, as if it has nothing to do with you. The chorus from a 1970s hit song, “How long has this been going on?” kept playing in my head, and my mind was racing with a zillion questions. But I wasn’t going to get any answers on that one. Once the door was closed, there were no more answers coming, no explanations, no consideration or compassion for my need to know, and that was how it remained.