A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 03

"Besides," she grimaced, "it's about time for me to go and tell my mother exactly what I've been up to all these months."

She walked over to me and reached out for a hug. I gave her a short one before stepping back.

"You didn't have to do that."

"The hell I didn't." But she looked like death warmed over as she turned to leave.

I watched her go, then turned back to find a sea of faces staring at me. I gave them a half smile and a shrug. "Isn't anyone in this place gonna offer to get me a drink?"

What else was I going to say?

There was some awkward laughter, but the rest of the night went alright.

Carl hadn't bothered to stick around.

-

"You could have warned me, you know," I told her. "Even giving me a chance to stop you, if I didn't wanted to happen." But there wasn't any venom my voice as I said this. If anything, I was amused. Even a little bit pleased, I suppose. She nodded agreement anyway.

"I was afraid something would go wrong. Maybe people would call and cancel, or...or I guess that I would chicken out at the last minute. And then it would just be one more way that you knew I had let you down. And I guess..." A little half smile appeared on her face, "...I also worried that you would try and talk me out of it, that you wouldn't want me to humiliate myself that way. It needed to be done."

I couldn't help chuckling. "You did kill a lot of birds with that one stone, didn't you?"

"I didn't kill any. I just stirred up the flock and turned them loose." She took a test scoop of her oatmeal, tasted it, and blew on the bowl. "They won't all turn their backs on him, you know. At least, some of them won't. It'll be a scandal, and then it'll blow over, and that'll be that. But they won't ever feel quite as easy around him as they used to, or be as comfortable with him roaming around their parties. Over time, they'll call him a little less often, without admitting to themselves that that's what's happening, and then they'll find reasons not to invite him along. They'll just...phase him out...and maybe never even realize that that's what they're doing." She tested the oatmeal again. "Or, that's what they would do if they had the chance. One thing I've learned is that Carl is a face-saver, and a great avoider of conflict. I don't think they'll ever get the chance to push him away."

I nodded. "I agree. He'll put a smile on his face and act like nothing is wrong for the next few weeks, but it won't take long for people to start noticing that he never seems to call them anymore, or answer when they ring him. He'll just...disappear. Deep down, he's a coward. He's a whiney shit, as well, by the way...and you cost him every friend he had last night. I'm surprised he hasn't been screaming down our answering machine all morning."

"He'd use my cell phone, to lessen the risk that you might answer. But he won't even do that, because it would just be admitting that I've hurt him. He'll be in total face-saving mode right now, and that means no contact whatsoever."

I nodded. "For now."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of us eating.

"Tell me," I said, "how did you know I wouldn't be mad? Or feel humiliated? I mean, you basically outed me as cuckold to everybody we know last night. For all you knew, I would've been furious with you about it."

That same small half-smile appeared on her face again, although this time it was matched with a sad twinkle in her eye. "There was never any doubt in my mind about how you would react to my little announcement. You're too big a man to worry about something as petty as how other people look at you. And you never HAVE to worry about that, because you always handle every situation with measured, calm, maturity. You consistently offer an adult response that comes from having real concern for the people around you. That's why I knew you wouldn't be mad, and that's why I knew that those people would react the way they did. They respect you. They like you. And because of that, I knew that they would want to be there for you."

Memories of last night's showings of support came flooding back, bringing a smile to my face. "They are some pretty great people."

"No. It's you, John." Her face tightened up with disgust. "I wish that I'd remembered that. I wish I'd kept seeing all the things that make you great, instead of seeing them as predictable or boring, or..." She shrugged. "I guess that's not right, either. I never started seeing you as less. I just started seeing myself as more. I thought I was better than. I thought I was special. Without ever actually saying it that way to myself, I thought I was smarter and more deserving than any of the people around me." She looked down at her oatmeal. "And I was such an ass."

We can agree on that. And now it's probably cost you your friends, as well. "Well, anyway, thanks for last night," I smiled, "ass. It felt good."

"Then it was worth it."

"Hmm," I sipped my coffee. "It's so nice when we can agree on something."

-

A week passed, and then I got my second surprise.

I pulled into the garage on Wednesday after work and there, in place of that practically new SUV, was a significantly older looking sedan.

I stared at it for a few minutes, taking in the obvious signs of age and peeking in through the windows. Some of Karen's things sat in the middle tray. I went inside.

"Did something happen to the car?" I asked, my curiosity peaked.

"Oh," she said, "I just thought I needed something different. Something more 'me,' you know?"

She busied herself doing the dishes. "It's funny, in a way...when I got that big SUV, I was so tickled by it. I thought it was exactly what I wanted. I thought it fit me perfectly. Come to find out I don't even LIKE the dumb thing very much. It's not comfortable, it feels like a damn boat when I'm out on the highway, and it sucks up gasoline like you wouldn't believe."

"People change their minds. It happens."

She dropped a pot cover into the dishwater, splashing it noisily. "I can't even figure out what I thought was so great about it in the first place. It just makes me miserable. So, I thought I'd get something different...something that WAS 'me.' Problem with that idea was that we're so damn broke. The money I was able to get for the SUV had to cover the car, the taxes, and who knows what else...so I had to drop my expectations down a few steps to make it work." She rinsed off the pot cover and began draining the water. "The hardest thing to deal with is, there's nothing I want more in the world right now than to have my old family van back." She dipped her hands into the water. "But that's okay, too. Whenever we go out as a family, now, we take your van...so there's not really any reason for me to have more than just something that'll get me around, right?"

I studied her for a moment. "I suppose that makes quite a bit of sense," I offered, opening my mouth to say more but not knowing what more I could say.

She turned around. She had lines under her eyes and no expectations. I went back into the bedroom to change clothes and find my book.

Sometimes, when you both know a thing, it's perfectly okay if neither of you says it out loud.

--==--
CHAPTER TEN
--==--

So, there we were.

We'd been getting along pretty good for a while, and ever since she'd ended it with Carl, Karen had become totally devoted to her family. She managed a perfect balance, maintaining a constant loving presence without ever quite crossing over into a hovering nuisance. It got to the point, some weeks following the party, where I didn't even feel the undercurrent of anger in my gut every time she entered the room.

I won't pretend I didn't get a little pleasure at bags that had formed under her eyes, or the lifeless stare she took on when she was thinking deep. But I didn't push to encourage those things, either.

And this cooperation may seem, to the uninitiated, like a good thing. Weren't we united, after all, in a common purpose? Weren't we interacting like friendly coworkers teamed up on an important project? And wasn't that everything I could have hoped for?

The obvious answer is 'no.' And the problem with all this was that Karen didn't want to just be friendly coworkers. She wanted quite a bit more, and wasn't going to give up on that for anything.

That 'more' came with urgent need, too, since she was now without her alternative emotional and sexual outlet. Oh, she was keeping to her strategy of remaining patient, but cracks were rapidly starting to show, and I was waiting for the day when they would dissolve the foundation out from underneath her whole facade.

Warning signs had appeared as early as the weekend after the party. She had initiated, without preamble, a subtle yet persistent campaign of minor physical contacts. She would touch my arm while asking the question, or give my shoulder a quick squeeze as she asked how I'd slept in the morning, or even give me a quick, chaste hug when the girls were watching and she knew I wouldn't pull away.

I was still working on maintaining that much-valued distance, and any time I saw her swinging in for a possible contact moment I would move away. But cumulatively, over time, these actions were starting to have their intended effect: they were starting to make all those little touches seem terribly, terrible "normal."

I should have been trying harder to avoid them, or simply told her out right to knock it off. But the larger problem underlying all of this was that, on some level, part of me did enjoy the contact. Oh, it still spiked my blood pressure and twisted my guts when it happened. But the flip side of that was that I was still so very, very lonely. Even that small, simple thing...her fingers and thumb squeezing my shoulder as she said good morning...was just about the most human that I'd felt in a very long time.

And no matter how much I wanted to separate myself from her, there was that small voice deep down inside me forever begging for just a single moment more where I could feel like a real person.

Maybe if I'd had an outlet of some kind...if I had accounted for that need in some way early on...I wouldn't have had any trouble avoiding her. But this whole experience has been a little bit like getting shot in the chest and then being given the opportunity to record a final message for your children before you bled out...here you were, in the fog of shock, having to commit all your rapidly-dwindling resources to the one task that you deemed worthy of completion. Everything else had to be second tier...no matter what.

Anyway, that's probably just my excusing it. But that IS how it felt at the time. I hadn't been taking care of the self at all, because the self had become a ghost to my eyes. An apparition. Now I was starting to surface back into the world, and I hadn't bothered to put anything in place to prepare for what would happen when I got there. Having that lone fingertip brush my arm while she asked if the girls enjoyed the movie was like rediscovering that I was human, rediscovering that life was more than just breathing in and out and wondering how long it would be before the breathing would stop.

And here's the real crux of what infidelity does to you: when I look at those words now, they feel like hyperbole, or dramatics. But when I remember how I felt at that time, they don't seem like nearly enough. They're like two-dimensional drawings of something that was profoundly textured and elaborate.

What I'm trying to say is I couldn't make myself say no to the touch.

This realization terrified me, because of the implications it had for my future. I certainly wasn't "falling back in love" with Karen...she had ceased to be somebody I COULD love...and I still wasn't feeling remotely sexual, either. But I could see that these actions, small as they were, were a very successful form of erosion that was acted upon my much-needed isolation and self-control.

I knew it would have to be dealt with. I knew it had to end. But then there was that fingernail, gently scratching at my neck, and couldn't I just wait a few days before telling her to stop?

I kept putting it off. It was weak of me. I am aware.

Then, two things happened which forewarned of a larger, coming confrontation: first, Karen started getting a little short tempered with me, and then she started dressing skimpier around the house.

There are some things that you simply cannot convey in a story. Things like a lifetime's worth of understanding that comes from having been around a person. Things like the tiniest implications that can be seen within their behaviors. To an outsider, that little increase in moodiness might have produced a thousand different questions. For me, it produced just one very simple, very clear answer, and it was the last thing I wanted to have to deal with right now:

My wife was horny.

As the days passed, she grew more and more persistent. Lone touches became repeat offenders. Quick retreats began to linger longer. When I pulled away, she would simply smile a knowing kind of smile and try again later.

Maybe she thought that if she could get enough physical contact in, eventually I would just break down and one-eighty. But the thing was, I wasn't remotely close to that point, and her own frustration was mounting far faster than my walls could crumble. So there was only one place that all this could lead, and yet when we got there it surprised us both.

It was evening. The kids were in bed. She had just reached for me in a way that was meant to appear casual, but was dressed in obvious intentions. Her? She wore a t-shirt and some nicely-fitting bikini briefs.

When I jerked away for the thousandth time, she finally grimaced and snapped, "God dammit, John, I'm really trying here! Can't you at least let me rub your shoulder a little?"

"Right," I shook my head. "What could possibly be more harmless than coming over to rub my shoulders in your underwear? Then, of course, you'll find that the knots in my shoulders are especially tense, right? And have to really lean your weight into them to make a difference, causing your hips to rub against my back while you work?" I snorted. "What was I thinking? It's all so innocent."

"You don't have to be sarcastic." She sat down in the chair opposite me, arms folded across her chest. "Yeah, okay, I'm trying to seduce you, and we both know it. What's so wrong with that? I want to make love to my husband! Gosh, what a monster that must make me!" Her face softened, and her eyes turned pleading. "I'm a human being, John. I do have needs. And you do, too...you shouldn't ignore them. I mean, it's been a goddamn eternity for you, so don't tell me you aren't the least bit frustrated. You've got to be tired of doing it by hand, all the..."

She trailed off.

Something in my expression had told her too much.

"Oh," she whispered into her hand. "You've got to be kidding me." She took a deep breath. "You're not doing it by hand, are you? You're not doing it at ALL. John, you have to see a counselor or something. It's not healthy for-"

"No!" I stood up. "No, goddamnit! I will not sit here, and be lectured to about sex by Carl's fucking whore! I will not be made to feel bad or guilty, because I don't want anything to do with a body that was built for that asshole, wearing a haircut designed to appeal to him, and loaded up with all sorts of new likes and tricks that he introduced! So you can just..."

I forced myself to stop and held up my hands.

"I appreciate everything you've done to try and make this easier for me," I said carefully. "I know you want to make everything better. I see that. But there comes a point where 'better' simply isn't a feasible goal anymore. Sometimes you cure the cancer, and all is well...but sometimes you just do what you can to make the person comfortable, because that's what's left to do. You've made me comfortable. I thank you for that. But now it's time to let it go."

She folded her arms defiantly, not willing to give up. "You know, sometimes people insist on staying in bed long after the cancer is gone and defeated. They get scared, John. Scared to get out of the bed. Scared to go on with their lives. Scared to go back to thinking about tomorrow like it might actually happen. And when that happens, you have to give them a bit of a kick in the ass, because it's the only thing that will push them into living again."

That pissed me off, and in a flash of heat I lashed out. "You're a very ugly person, Karen. Do you know that?" I looked her up and down. "You used to be a beautiful woman, with a beautiful family and a beautiful life, and you traded that in to become Carl's ugly, scrawny whore. Now why don't you just do us all a favor, and go to hell?"

I left before she could reply.

-

She was stone cold frosty towards me the next few days, and all those little touches evaporated like water in summertime. In fact, it got to the point where she barely spoke to me, and did her level best not to be in the room if I was in it. I couldn't tell if she was angry, or giving up, or what. Her expression was unreadable.

I surprised myself by feeling some amount of disappointment. All those weeks of peaceful teamwork, of feeling like we were working together, had been nice. Even the unwanted physical contact had carried a sense of safety and stability that I had enjoyed. After all, so long as we were working towards the same goal and as she was trying to get back into my good graces, I didn't really have to worry about tomorrow. I didn't have to consider that she might give up, or go back to Carl, or just go for the divorce out of exhaustion. I didn't have to worry that unforeseen problems might arise, or that stressful conflict might be on the horizon.

Mostly, I had enjoyed feeling like we were on the same side on something, even if it came with a complete lack of romantic undercurrent.

Now, I was shut out, and left wondering what might be going to her head. There was little to do about it aside from wait for the other foot to drop, and I found myself doing exactly that. I would run internal calculations in my head all through the workday in preparation...what would a divorce look like for us financially? How often would I be able to see the kids? Would she remarry sooner rather than later? Would he be a father figure for the girls? What kind of father figure?

A lot of old fears were reappearing.

That really ate at me...the girls growing up with a new dad. Me missing out on great swaths of their formative years, hearing about everything well after the fact (and certainly being late enough to the game to give any preparatory advice or support).

It was the last step into loneliness. The final breath of the life I'd once had.

I had trouble sitting down for longer than a few seconds at a time, and paced until I developed a bruise on the underside of my left food. I found myself gravitating towards whatever room the children happened to be in, or just looking for excuses to interject myself into their play or leisure time.

I didn't know how much longer I'd have that option, and I wanted to soak up as much as I could before it was too late.

Then came the morning that I shuffled into the kitchen to find breakfast already made. A great, massive heaping pile of a breakfast, laid out in stupidly enormous proportions. Karen was already seated at the table with a similarly sized meal placed in front of her. The great display of pancakes, egg, hash browns, and sausage looked especially ridiculous in front of this small framed, very fit woman.

"I think you overcooked a bit," I said dryly, sitting down.

Karen just shrugged. "I'll eat mine if you'll eat yours."

"You couldn't eat that if you had all day to do it in."