The Affair (4 page)

Rose reached over and caught both of Kathy’s hands in hers. “That’s what I thought in the beginning. Then I realized that Tommy still came home to me every night. We had built something together that I didn’t want to throw away. He was still my best friend. These other women were just a distraction, nothing more. He’s a man, for God’s sake. Let’s face it, Kathy. Men stray. It’s in their nature, whether we like it or not. It goes back to the time of cavemen. . . . Men hunted and women nurtured. Tommy was just . . . hunting. If I’d confronted him, I would have destroyed our marriage, but I knew if I was patient I would win out. And I did.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I know you can’t. Not right now. It’s still too fresh. Too raw. But think about it. Have it at the back of your mind as an option.”

Rose released her hands and picked up her coffee cup. Not looking at Kathy, she asked, “Are you still having sex?”

Kathy opened her mouth to make a quick response, then stopped. Things in the bedroom . . . were different. When they had first started dating, they had made love every day. The sex had been magical.

Inspired.

Adventurous.

Fun.

Then, as the months and years passed, their lovemaking had waned, to perhaps twice a week. After the children came along, it slipped into an irregular Saturday morning routine when Brendan had guitar lessons and Theresa had soccer. Then even that pattern shifted and drifted away. They made love on special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day. In recent years it had died away to almost nothing. Kathy honestly couldn’t remember the last time they had made love. She was only forty-three. She still felt sexy. Despite being a bit overweight, she felt sensual . . . yet, Robert didn’t look at her that way anymore. She tried to remember the last time he had told her that she was beautiful. She couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at her with lust, with the passion of a man who wanted her. She started to get angry. Was Robert simply replacing her with a younger, fitter version of herself? Was he trying to recapture the lust they had felt in their first few years together when everything had been so new, when their senses had been so heightened, when the sex had been fantastic rather than . . . ordinary?

But no, a marriage wasn’t just about sex, a marriage was . . .

“What?” Rose asked, seeing the expression on the younger woman’s face.

“Something struck me. Something important, something I’ve never thought about before.” Kathy licked suddenly dry lips. “What is a marriage? What makes a marriage?” Rose opened her mouth to respond, but Kathy raised her hand. “Is it living together, is it the commitment, the sex, the shared experiences, the trust, the truth? Love? What is it?”

“When I was younger,” Rose said, very quietly, “I would have said all of those things. Now,” she shrugged, almost defeated, “now, I think it might just be habit.”

R
ose’s parting words had been, “Don’t make a decision until you have concrete evidence. And this time, Kathy, be sure. Be really, really sure. No marriage can survive those sorts of accusations—especially if they’re untrue. And if you are sure, then be prepared for the consequences. Not just the immediate ones, but the long-term ones also.”

Kathy stood at the front door and watched Rose make her way down the path. Her friend stopped at the white picket fence and raised her hand and smiled, then got into her used Volvo and headed back home. Kathy watched her drive off and raised a hand to wave good-bye. Then she turned back into the hallway, closed the door, and rested her back and head against the cool glass. It would be so easy to pretend that nothing had changed . . . and yet everything had changed.

She now saw Rose differently.

She hadn’t exactly lost respect for her friend, but . . . something was different, and she knew that things would never be the same between them again, though at that precise moment, she was unsure why.

She could hear her mother’s words again: Never ask a question unless you’re prepared for an answer you don’t like.

Isn’t that how most affairs started: because one partner never asked the questions? Where have you been, why are you late, who were you with? But you couldn’t do that. Even asking the questions would destroy a relationship. A relationship was built on trust; if you trusted someone, you didn’t have to ask the questions.

Folding her arms across her chest, she moved silently down the overlarge chill hallway. Abruptly she knew why things would never be the same between Rose and her again. When Rose had admitted that she’d known her husband had been having an affair—affairs—and had chosen to remain ignorant, to do nothing, Kathy had lost respect for her.

You were supposed to do something.

You had to do something.

She just didn’t know what you were supposed to do.

 

Kathy wandered around the house, moving from room to room, looking at them again, seeing them with new eyes. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was wondering what she would take with her if she chose to leave . . . or what Robert would take with him if he left. The painting they had bought together in Italy. The red leather couch they had gotten at forty percent off because it had been used in one of their commercials. The custom-made bookshelf filled with books she’d collected over the years. Kathy couldn’t imagine dividing the beloved book collection into his and hers piles. Rose had a point about the convenience of staying together. Not only for the kids, but also for the practicality. If Robert was having an affair, then he’d surely come back to her when it was over. Wouldn’t he? No. That wasn’t even an option. If he was having an affair, she couldn’t stay with him.

But would he leave?

Would she ask him to go?

And if he didn’t, then would she stay? Could she?

The Walkers lived in a large, four-bedroom Colonial in Brookline, one of Boston’s most prestigious suburbs. When they had first moved into South Boston, eighteen years ago, they had lived in a tiny apartment while they had grown the business. When the kids were born, there were few good public school options. Kathy had been to private school and wanted her kids to go to public school; however, she wanted them to get the best education possible. After researching school districts, Robert and Kathy set their sights on moving to Brookline, because the upmarket neighborhood was the best option. The price of their first home had pushed them to the very limit of what they could afford. There had been months when they had lived on ramen noodles just to make sure they had enough to pay the mortgage. But they had been happy times. They had laughed a lot then. More than they ever did now.

Six years ago, they had moved into this house. It was less than two miles from their first home, but it was larger and was near a park. They had bought the house for exactly half of what it was worth now. Robert had said it would be a fabulous investment; he had been right then. He was right most of the time.

She had once loved that about him, loved his absolute confidence and self-assurance. She didn’t think she had ever once heard him express any doubts about what he was doing and the direction he was taking their lives. But what she once had accepted as confidence, she now recognized as arrogance.

There was nothing of his in the living room. It was rarely used, a habit she’d picked up from her mother: a room kept aside as a “good room” for visitors, where the children never ventured. Kathy smiled at the irony. What was the point of a living room that wasn’t lived in? A chunky black leather suite dominated the room and made it seem smaller than it was. She’d never wanted the suite and would have preferred something lighter and brighter. But when they’d bought it, Robert was still entertaining at home, and he thought the dark leather sofa and love seat set gave the right impression, one of prosperity and success. The china cabinet against one wall had been her mother’s, and was filled with a mismatched assortment of Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china. She had never gotten around to completing any of the sets and doubted if she ever would now. The cabinet also housed a collection of Hummel Dolls, also inherited from her mother, which she kept meaning to sell on eBay. She doubted she’d ever do it, but it amused her to go online and see how much they were now worth. There was no television in the room—in fact, it was probably the only room in the house, with the exception of the bathrooms, which didn’t have a TV set in it.

The family room, which led directly into the kitchen, was where they spent the most time. To the left of the black marble fireplace, an enormous fifty-inch flat-screen television took up one corner, along with the Blu-ray player, Brendan’s Xbox, and Theresa’s Wii. Speakers connected to a surround-sound system trailed around the floor. Discs were scattered on the floor alongside the television. Robert would want some of those, though she was sure he hadn’t watched any of them, and probably never would. He was always buying DVDs for “a rainy day” or for when he got a few hours of free time. Lately he’d had no free time, or if he had, he was too busy, and she realized now just what he’d been doing....

She veered away from that thought. She didn’t want to go there just yet.

The couch here was older, the seats slightly bellied from years of wear, though she’d had it reupholstered recently. When it had been re-covered, it had looked brand new for about a week. She’d been promising she’d get rid of it for months now and had a vague idea about looking for a new couch in the February President’s Day sales.

On top of the fireplace was the hideous 1930s clock that Robert had inherited from his grandfather. Kathy hated it, with its yellow, nicotine-stained paper face and a mechanism that whirred and clicked just before it struck the hour, reminding her of an old man grinding his teeth. Robert would want that, and if he didn’t want it, he was going to take it away with him, because she wasn’t going to tolerate it in her house.

Her house.

Her home.

Hers.

She was the one who spent the time in it, day in and day out. She cleaned it, cared for it, turned an empty shell of a house into a loving home for Robert and her children. She knew every nook and cranny, every squeaky floorboard, every crack in the paint; she knew where the cobwebs gathered, the taps that dripped, and which windows stuck. This was her home. She had decorated it. She had cared for it. She had nurtured it. And she wasn’t going to give it up.

Hers, hers, hers!

She shivered suddenly, chill air trickling down the back of her neck; it frightened her that she was thinking like this. But as she began to examine the past and try to establish a future, she was forced to look at words like “separation” and “divorce.” And that meant looking at words like “his” and “hers,” words that she’d never considered before. It had always been “theirs,” even during those terrible days six years earlier when she’d accused him of having an affair with Stephanie. She’d never once thought of divorce then.

Kathy took a deep breath. Rose was right. Before she even started to journey down that road, she was going to need evidence. Strong, incontrovertible evidence.

She walked into the small dining room, which was filled with a large dining table and eight chairs. One of the chairs was mismatched, from the time one of Robert’s obese clients had broken the original and they’d been forced to replace it with the closest match. The family ate there on special occasions, but there had been few of those of late. It had last been used last Christmas and would be used again next Wednesday for Christmas Day dinner. Now it was covered with the remnants of Theresa’s handmade Christmas cards.

Kathy wandered back into the kitchen and automatically cleared the cups from the table. She stood by the sink and ran them under the tap, rather than popping them into the dishwasher. She wanted—needed—to be doing something with her hands.

She glanced at the clock and wondered what time Robert would get home tonight. Then she remembered that he was going to be late; he was meeting a client. A
client
. Or at least that’s what he had told her. She stopped, frowning. He had said he was taking . . . whom? Jimmy. He was taking Jimmy Moran to Top of the Hub.

Or was he?

“Information, what listing please?”

“Top of the Hub. It’s a restaurant. In the Prudential building.” Her voice surprised her; it sounded strong and confident, loud in the silence of the kitchen. She hadn’t realized she was going to make the call until she found the phone in her hand, her fingers tapping out the number for directory assistance. Isn’t this what suspicious wives around the world did, she thought bitterly: check up on their husbands?

“Please hold and I’ll connect you.”

Didn’t his lie spill out into everyone else’s lives? Friends would lie for him, colleagues would lie, and now here she was, about to add to the fabric of little white lies that surrounded his affair.

“Thank you for calling Top of the Hub. This is Elise. How may I help you?”

“Yes, hello. I’m just calling to confirm a reservation. Robert Walker for this evening, seven thirty. Party of two.” It was her best professional voice, efficient, slightly bored. She’d played the part often enough in the early days when Robert was setting up the production company, pretending to be his secretary in an effort to convince clients that it was more than a one-man, one-woman operation.

“I don’t have a reservation here under Walker.”

Her lips went dry, and her mouth was suddenly filled with cotton. At the corner of her right eye, a muscle began to twitch uncontrollably. “Try R&K Productions.” Once you discovered the first lie, she thought bitterly, the rest followed easily enough.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, nothing under that name either.”

Ma’am. Even over the phone they could tell she was no longer a “miss.” Kathy felt painfully old. “Well, thank you for trying. Let me get back to my boss. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”

There was no reservation at Top of the Hub. She wasn’t surprised with the discovery; she hadn’t expected that there would be. Of course, it could be a simple mistake on Robert’s part—but Robert rarely made mistakes. Maybe it was a different restaurant.

Or he’d lied to her. And he was meeting his mistress. As he had on every other red flag day.