Infidelity (16 page)

( CHAPTER FORTY-NINE )

“I'm leaving him. I left him.”

But how did you actually leave?

Did you pack a small bag and leave a small note? Or did he watch you pack every last item, right down to a box of condoms and your best pair of underwear?

Did you argue about that Stone Roses record? About whose copy of
Ulysses
that was, a copy of
Ulysses
that neither of you had ever read? Did you divide up the cutlery drawer evenly and fairly? A ladle for you and a spatula for him?

Did you open the conversation by saying “we have to talk”? And when you did, did his face drop and his smile fade?

Was there crying?

Did you hold him?

Did you fuck him a final time, in a rabid, hateful way that sealed your fate? Knowing that being alone was better than being crowded and smothered by pervasive apathy?

Or did you cut and run and start again in an empty room? How did you find that empty room? Did you covertly search the want ads for hours while he was sleeping? One bedrooms and studios all over the city, waiting for your small bag and semi-broken heart? Did you tell a trusted friend who loaned a couch, handed over a phone number for furnished rentals or recommended a sublet?

You've really planned this out, haven't you?

(You'll say your heart is broken, but it won't be true. But that will be the acceptable thing to say. That you are broken-hearted about the whole thing. If you were a poet, like Charlie, you would write a poem about how very sad you are. People will want to know you're in pain, not that you finally feel a happiness that he managed to steal from you for years. All you will really feel is relief. Not happiness, but relief.)

And while you were in that empty room, trying to find a single bowl and a single mug, did you actually think Charlie was going to leave his wife?

Did you actually believe that he would leave the warmth and affection of the mediocre?

Of dinner on the table at seven and sex at ten?

Did you actually think that winning that war for
Ulysses
would mean that you were free?

That you would be happy?

Nothing more than a sigh of relief.

( CHAPTER FIFTY )

“Noah.” Ronnie stared down at the child she'd never met, the one she'd heard Charlie talk about occasionally. The child Charlie had avoided talking about. “Noah.” It was as if she was naming him to make him real.

“Noah,” he repeated at her, rocking back and forth gently, his hand contorting and tapping an imaginary object in the air. “Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah. Pretty.”

The child pointed again. “Pretty.”

And in that moment at Charlie's door Ronnie realized she had made a monumental mistake. She heard Charlie call out for Noah from within the house and heard him make his way toward the front door. When he locked eyes with Ronnie the panic was palpable. The anxiety she had managed to assuage returned in a suffocating wave.

Wordless, Charlie stared at her angrily, an astonished fury filling his face.

“Who is it, Charles?” Tamara called from inside the house.

Ronnie looked down at Noah one last time and, soaking wet and smiling at him, began to speak. “I'm sorry, sir. I think I have the wrong house.”

“Yes, I'm quite sure you do,” Charlie replied. He pulled a squirming, protesting Noah back into the house and shut the door.

( CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE )

The afternoon the final test results were due back from the hospital, Ronnie went for a walk through the university campus. She was told on the phone to expect them in the late afternoon, and if necessary they would schedule the surgery immediately. The idea of spending that day at home, staring at the phone and the television and the phone and the wall was intolerable.

Ronnie put on her iPod and headed toward the Annex on her bike. She decided to leave her bike helmet behind, imagining the likelihood of a tragic bike accident and news of a hysterectomy on the same afternoon was slim.

By going to the university, Ronnie's aim was not really to be near Charlie, but rather to be in his world, a world that for a short time, less than a year ago, when they first met, was free of disease, a complete escape from the concerned looks and plans and procedures. Charlie was one of those people who constantly worried, yet nothing would ever go wrong for him. For some reason he was protected from harm, one of those blessed people that beauty somehow followed, that happiness hounded, and yet he never saw it. His wife, his child, his Annex home with its yard strewn with toys. He was protected from disaster because it failed to follow him, and yet here was Ronnie, on a slow walk through his world, waiting for disaster to be announced.

Ronnie hadn't seen or spoken to Charlie since she came to his front door that evening. He'd left a handful of messages on her voicemail, the first enraged and the last apologetic, but Ronnie had decided not to respond. The look of terror on his face when he came down that hallway had stuck with her. She wanted him to be relieved that they were finally free from their lies, but instead he was terrified, his hand on the door and on Noah in frantic, protective panic.

“Daddy, pretty,” Noah had said, pointing at Ronnie with fervour.

It occurred to her that she had never really expected Charlie would leave his wife. From the beginning it was apparent that Charlie was the kind of person who desperately needed to feel safe, and hotel rooms and clandestine steaks and cigarettes didn't qualify. He was an anxious man, and anxious men couldn't leave the realm of the familiar. They would pretend and talk and dream, but at the end of it all the face of failure was too much to bear.

Ronnie headed into a dive bar near campus and sat down on a stool to order whisky, neat. It was just after Labour Day and school had begun again. There were smiling, laughing girls everywhere, a disproportionate number really, too early in the afternoon for them to be drunk but late enough for them to be jovial. It was too soon for them to have term papers due and it was still warm enough for them to be dressed in summer clothes, their skin golden-brown and pink with the sun, surrounded by open books they were strategically ignoring. A small group of girls in horn-rimmed glasses and shaggy haircuts were knitting together in focused, blissful silence, while bleached blonde girls in painted-on U of T T-shirts gossiped about last night's conquests. Everyone seemed to be drinking cheap domestic beer.

The girls collectively made Ronnie feel so old. It was true that Charlie had an ability to make Ronnie feel suddenly young, but the reality was in the bar.

Beautiful young things did not border on the wrong side of thirty-five, nor did they wait to find out if they needed hysterectomies while drinking whisky neat.

Her cellphone rang.

( CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO )

Ronnie wasn't returning his messages.

Charlie no longer knew whose fault that was.

Charlie had been in breakups before. It had been decades ago, but he remembered how they worked.

His male writer friends would get together and discuss their innumerable conquests and breakups over pints and cigars, talking about disposed women with mocking laughter. Their bravado generally appalled him, small men destroying with words the women who had destroyed them, but it was all so transparent; they were wounded like teenagers, aging like relics.

Breakups meant that a woman you used to think you knew would come to your house in the middle of the night, while you were sleeping, and steal all of your patio furniture from your backyard.

Breakups meant that the charred remains of your belongings would be stuffed in a black plastic garbage bag and left on the front porch to greet you when you got home from work.

Breakups meant an excruciating conversation in the produce section of the supermarket. It meant long, awkward waits for a teller at the bank while the object of your burning affection was three people in front of you, and the whole time you were standing there you repeatedly prayed she wouldn't turn around and see you.

It meant dividing bank accounts, vinyl collections, and friends. It meant vitriol. It meant the vilest elements of the human condition condensed into a progression of failing to freedom.

Charlie didn't want that to happen with Tamara, and he certainly didn't want that to happen with Ronnie. Instead he preferred to suspend himself in stasis, inaction, paralysis—retreating to the quiet of his at-home office, locking the door behind him, and staying there deep into the night. Only Amanda would ever come to the door, usually before she left for the night, her exceedingly cheerful voice offering a cup of cocoa or a plate of warmed leftovers when her worry prompted her to do so. He would pour another whisky and call through the door that he was fine and she should go.

Ronnie wasn't speaking to him, but they hadn't yet broken up. His wife could sense that something was wrong, but didn't know anything for sure. It was a period of pause, and Charlie walked around numbly, helplessly, pouring the only energy he had into a novel of exceeding optimism, a manuscript that sketched out a nauseatingly happy ending that Charlie knew would never come to be.

He would stay in his office chair until late became early, typing search terms like “divorce,” “infidelity,” “polyamory,” and “cervical cancer” into his browser. Communities of the betrayed popped up, with their sad, self-pitying digital consolations. Other searches revealed legal jargon, lavish tales of fulfilled lifestyles, and a mysterious world of impromptu vaginal bleeding. He read the numerous ways in which Ronnie could die, the endless statistics on how promising her chance was to live. How the surgery might save her. He wanted to call her and tell her to eat more kale, take vitamin C, and stop smoking after they had sex.

He longed to tell his wife he needed to take care of Ronnie, that it didn't matter to him that taking care of someone's future wife, someone other than his own wife, was wrong.

There were moments of clarity, usually caused by films or music or books, moments when he knew that he loved Ronnie, and that nothing should ever matter more than that love. But life wasn't a song or a film or a movie. Life was Tamara and Noah and the very expensive proposition of a divorce and his inability to support himself and the ongoing disappointment that Charlie had become. Life was selling the house and splitting their things and splitting their friends. Life was the infidelity that would be the cause of him never seeing Noah again.

He knew what people would say when they found out. They would claim Charlie was nothing more that the self-indulgent poet with a pretty little hairdresser on the side. The more sympathetic would believe that she was fine for a dalliance but certainly not good enough to marry, and that he should have learned to keep his secrets better. There was a part of Charlie that now believed this to be true.

So in the office, deep into the night, Charlie sat in stasis. Waiting for a message that never came.

Because love did not conquer all. Love just made it easier for all to conquer you.

With Ronnie's silence Charlie realized fully that he had gotten lazy. Staring into the evidence of his affair, reading and re-reading her messages over and over in the silence, he saw that he had collected a monolith of damning details that were nothing more than a password away. Where once he had purged his cellphone messages and emails daily and disposed of hotel and dinner receipts at the office, he'd become less concerned about getting caught and left markers of his infidelity in pants and coat pockets. This likely was a function of his recent willingness to get caught, the notion that perhaps things would be easier if he was simply ejected from his life rather than summoning the strength to leave it.

And while his overall concern over being discovered by these paper reminders decreased, his ability to lie had improved. Each suspect artifact became easier and easier to explain away. He had booked a hotel in the afternoon to find some space to write. He had gone to dinner with a promising young writer to win favour with the faculty for future gigs. He'd bought flowers for a beleaguered colleague whose cat had just succumbed to feline leukemia. The lies got better and more complicated. They just came out of his mouth like fluid fiction, one after another, sometimes about things that weren't even necessary to lie about. It became a game, and as time progressed he was more than sure he would never be caught.

Charlie was raised to feel like philanderers always got busted at some point, that discovery was inevitable, but as months progressed and he shamelessly touched the small of Ronnie's back in public, shamelessly kissed her fingertips over dinner, had her in innumerable hotel rooms and signed for their room service naked, he began to imagine that discovery was not only impossible, but that no one truly cared enough about his tiny little life to out him for indiscretion.

The truth was that betrayal was only ever discovered when those involved wanted it to be revealed. People only tell lies that other people want to live in. In fact, he concluded, liars were generous because they created a comfortable space in which the deluded happily chose to live.

“Honey, is there something wrong? You seem distant,” Tamara asked one night, her voice a mixture of concern and suspicion, as they sat in from of the television.

“It's nothing. I'm just struggling with the book,” Charlie lied.

“Do I tell you enough that I'm proud of you?”

Tamara was deluded. Comfortable and deluded, and he would construct a world of untruths around her to keep her safe. He would lie until she decided it was no longer comfortable for her to rely on that safety.

( CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE )

Tamara came into the salon on a Wednesday afternoon. Ronnie had no idea who she was, nothing more than a new client as she sat down in Ronnie's chair and asked for “not too much off.”

It was the start of the Christmas shopping season, which made the streets pedestrian heavy and the salon endlessly busy. Ronnie was distracted and flustered and didn't give the woman a second thought as she stared intensely at her in the mirror.

Ronnie had never seen pictures of Tamara, even though she had scoured the Internet for an image to compare herself to. She had even asked Charlie for a photo and he had refused.

“So what are we doing today?” Ronnie asked, her stock haircut question.

“We're going to talk about why you're fucking my husband,” was Tamara's reply.

Sarah had finally called Tamara, one evening when she had had one Chardonnay too many, when she was bored, seated at her kitchen table in her lonely one-bedroom apartment with her cat named Mittens. She knew Charlie was out, doing a reading at the library, and the truth was she was tired of him having two when she couldn't even have one.

The declaration was direct and made with no attempt to soften the blow. Sarah was the kind of person who felt great joy in exposing people's moral failings, and she was righteous about the delivery. She of course was met with denial, anger, shock, and then misery.

Noah clung to Tamara's waist and screamed nonsensical sentences up at her as the tears came, but Sarah didn't relent.

“I've even
heard
them. Do you understand what I mean?
I've heard them
.”

“Yes, Sarah. Thank you. I understand.”

Sarah cared little for how Tamara might feel about this piece of information, cared little about the fact that Tamara's stomach dropped and she was consumed by a weakness that forced her to hang onto the doorframe next to the phone. She felt like she may vomit, but Sarah just kept talking, outlining her personal opinions on the sin of infidelity.

“Yes, Sarah, I understand. I understand. Thank you for calling,” Tamara said numbly, hanging up the phone while Sarah was mid-sentence.

She proceeded to wander around their home, attempting to find any evidence to back up Sarah's claims. Sarah had provided only a name.

Veronica
.

Ronnie
.

Every pocket was picked through, every closet, and drawer emptied in a frantic tour around their home. After rummaging through Charlie's desk she found
Veronica Kline
's business card.

Where was Charlie?

He said he was in a meeting.

He said he was running errands.

He said he was working with a student.

He said he was on a roll with the new novel.

He said. He said. He said.

A fucking hairdresser.

Noah, underfoot, knew something was wrong. He began shrieking, inconsolable, pounding his fists on his thighs. Tamara could do nothing, only stare at the card, reading it over and over again as if to confirm it was real.

Veronica Kline. A simple girl. A hairdresser. Subject of a new novel. The novel he hadn't let her read.

He had always let her read. She was his first reader. His fiercest critic. Why hadn't she seen a single page of this one?

She called the following morning to make an appointment for a cut and colour.

Ronnie stood frozen, taking in the accusation with disbelief, despite the fact that she had prepared endlessly for this moment. That it was inevitable.

“I'm sorry?” she asked, as if it had escaped her that she was indeed having an affair. Or had been having an affair. She wasn't really sure at this point.

“Let me be as clear as possible. You're going to cut my hair and colour my hair and tell me all about your relationship with my husband. I'll pay you and tip you and then I'll go home and kick him out.”

Amazingly, Ronnie began combing out Tamara's hair. Before she replied she took the time to thoroughly survey the woman she had been so jealous of for so many months. Shaking slightly, her cheeks flushed, Ronnie parted Tamara's damp hair down the centre and surveyed the grey. She took indirect glances at the crinkled folds around her eyes, the thickness around her waistline, the fading of the fabric of her clothes.

A mother. Noah's mother. A mother she could never be.

Then she looked at her longingly in the mirror and tried to understand why this woman, as unremarkable as she seemed, had the capacity to make Charlie stay for so long. Why this woman had existed as a perceived barrier to her happiness.

Ronnie knew she suddenly had the power to tell her everything, to have Tamara eject him into a life that could only lead to her. To unburden herself of all of it and move on if she wanted to. This thought terrified her, the power she suddenly wielded.

“I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Please don't be patronizing. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Tell me about your relationship with my husband.”

Ronnie knew there was little point in lying. It was over.

“I went to his office. I tried to sleep with him,” she said slowly, carefully combing, not making eye contact.

Tamara, however, stared as Ronnie began to strategically part her hair. She noticed that Ronnie was shaking slightly as she reached for her scissors out of her belt.

“Don't worry. While I think it's disgusting that you'd try to fuck a married man, that you'd fuck a married man, I'm not really all that interested in being angry at you. You have no responsibility toward my family. What the fuck would you care?”

“I do care.”

Tamara laughed loudly at this idea. “Please. Spare me. And do your job. I'm paying you.”

Despite the rudeness of Tamara's direction, Ronnie knew she would be fine if only she could get to the cutting. She had to get to the cutting. The cutting always made her feel better. It was the ability to control something so minor, yet something that people vainly valued so much.

But this time she was confused by who had control.

Tamara continued when it was evident Ronnie had no plans to reply. “Whether or not you care is completely irrelevant to me. But I am curious; what would possess you to go and try to fuck someone's husband? Why would you think that was a good idea? I'm really interested to know, given that I've always wondered what kind of woman would do such a thing.”

Tamara seemed oddly composed. It was this fact that most unnerved Ronnie, and she finally started cutting to steady herself.

“I thought I loved him,” she finally said after a dozen excruciating snips.

“Did you, now?”

“But he told me he loved you. And Noah. And he couldn't.”

Tamara flinched at the sound of her son's name, but then managed to regain her composure. “I don't believe you. While it's sweet that you'd try to cover for him, I don't believe you.”

“I don't care if you don't believe me. That's what happened.”

The lies had always come so easily.

“You know it doesn't actually matter what you say at this point because no matter what he's packing his bags tonight. He doesn't know it yet but he is. So you might as well unburden yourself.”

“There's nothing to unburden.”

“Oh dear god, please. Don't waste my fucking time. You owe me at least that. If you owe me anything you owe me that.”

“I wanted him. He wanted you. That's it.”

“Maybe I should get my hair cut and coloured just like yours,” Tamara said.

It was then she started crying, her face strained from the effort to keep it in.

“Maybe I should be twenty years younger. Just like you. What are you, twenty-three? Twenty-four?”

“I'm thirty-five,” Ronnie responded weakly.

“Oh god, he can't even cheat on me with someone too young for him. For fuck's sake.”

Ronnie replaced the scissors on the ledge next to the mirror. For a moment she considered putting her hands on Tamara's shoulders but resisted.

“Are you married?”

“Engaged.”

“Does your fiancé know you tried to fuck my husband? Excuse me. That you fucked my husband? That you fucked my husband over and over and over again?”

Tamara's volume had increased and she was attracting Lisa's attention, who was doing a cut a few chairs over. Lisa shot Ronnie an “are you okay” look in the mirror.

Ronnie nodded feebly in Lisa's direction.

“No, he doesn't. Know. That I tried to.”

Lisa gave the look that acknowledged she knew what was going on. She took a step forward, hesitated, and then took a step back.

“Yeah, I didn't think so. You're a coward just like my husband. Why aren't you cutting?”

“I'm sorry but I think you should go,” she said, putting her hands down firmly at her sides.

“Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?”

“I can get someone else here to cut your hair if you like. Lisa would be happy to help you.”

Lisa looked up again at the sound of her own name.

“Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?” Louder this time.

“Please—”

“Did you fuck my husband, Veronica?”

Finally Lisa interjected. “Listen, lady. I think my friend here asked you to leave.”

“I don't think this concerns you, unless you're having an affair with my husband as well. Which could totally be possible,” Tamara responded, still articulate enough that it seemed impossible. Lisa, with all her bravado, went suddenly pale, unable to properly respond.

Suddenly Ronnie exploded. “Yes, yes. Yes, I fucked your husband. Please just go.”

The other patrons turned to stare, without empathy, only with disdain.

“Thank you. You should offer your fiancé the same courtesy you just offered me.” With her hair damp and partially cut, Tamara picked up her coat and bag and went home to kick Charlie out.