Visiting Richard Gronier

"We did just fine for eight years not talking about it, and I'm not going to talk about it now."

"But honey, we ... "

"What part of 'No' did you not understand, Liz? I have to get ready for work."

Without a look back, I stomped up the stairs to shave and dress.

****************

GETTING PAST RICHARD GRONIER?

The next three weeks were a misery. For me and Liz, and probably for the girls as well. They must have grown more and more mystified as their parents treated them lovingly but barely spoke to one another. And it was surely clear that Liz was sad and beseeching towards me, while I was cold and distant.

I simply couldn't help myself. When I was away from Liz, at work or at the gym, I could be rational. Her one and only affair had been years earlier—I'd suffered then, dealt with it then, managed to keep it together while waiting for her to come back to me. And she had—she loved me, and I knew it, and for years now we'd been happy again.

But when I saw her, and above all when she attempted any sort of intimacy or connection with me, rage just surged through me. In my mind's eye I saw all the horrible pictures I hadn't imagined in years: her with Gronier in bed, writhing in excitement and pleasure. Her arms wrapped around him, sharing deep kisses, his tongue buried in her mouth. Humping up at him in missionary position, panting out her excitement; or riding him, or kneeling before him sucking his cock, licking his balls, smiling up at him....

I couldn't talk civilly to her, unless it was some routine conversation about work or the house or the girls. Whenever she tried to discuss the affair, or her feelings or mine, I felt an explosion coming and I cut her off—or just left the room.

I was back to taking long showers again—not crying so much any more as fuming with anger, cursing her and under my breath, revisiting my elaborate fantasies of revenge. Packing up the girls and just disappearing, leaving her penniless, never letting her see any of us again—that sort of thing.

As for sex? Don't make me laugh. The very idea of touching Liz brought all my anger and jealousy to a boil; just thinking about it infuriated me.

She could tell I didn't want to talk to her—I made that amply clear. So on a couple of evenings as we got into bed, she gently reached for my arm and stroked it, a familiar kind of unspoken invitation whose meaning was very clear. During our happy years I had always been thrilled when she indicated an interest in sex; I was glad that it wasn't always me taking the lead, that she also felt desire for me.

But now I just said, "no, Liz," without even turning around. She withdrew her hand and lay down beside me without a word.

A couple of nights after one of these rejections she waited in bed for me, and when I came out of the bathroom she began speaking before I could climb into bed and turn out the light.

"Alan, I love you and miss you and I want to make love. Can we, please?"

I was caught by surprise. I sat down on the side of the bed and thought for a minute.

"No," I said finally, "I don't want to. I can't even think about sex with you without my mind being filled with images of you and him. It makes me furious—and I don't even want to touch you."

"But Alan," Liz said, starting to cry, "that was YEARS ago! We've been so happy together since then. Please! Won't you let me make it up to you?"

I just shook my head, not looking at her, and listened to her cry quietly. After a few minutes she got up, took her bathrobe from the closet and left the room. I climbed into bed; and to my amazement, fell quickly asleep.

****************

The following day at about 6:30 I walked into a quiet house, with Liz waiting for me at the kitchen table. She looked tired and sad, her face drawn, the bags under her eyes deeper than I remembered.

"Karlie and Kristina walked over to eat at Chinese Garden. I need to talk to you alone, Alan."

"Okay." I sat down across from her.

"I'm at my wit's end," she said quietly. "I love you, and I'm sorry, and I don't know how to make it right or even how to reach you.

"When I did that terrible thing, when I ... got involved with Gronier, you must have been so angry! And you never said a word. And now here we are eight years later and it's as though I've lost you. I just don't know what to do."

I didn't have an answer for her, so I just shrugged.

"Alan, can we see a counselor? I could get a recommendation from Sarah at the hospital, without telling her who it's for. She knows who all the good people are—she's been in her job for years now."

I had thought about this possibility as well. "All right. But it has to be a man, okay? I want to talk to somebody who can maybe understand how I feel, being in the position I'm in."

"That's fine with me, honey," she said, obviously relieved. "I'll talk to her tomorrow." She reached over and took my hand, and I let her hold it. "Thank you."

****************

Sebastian McElroney was cheerful, fiftyish, and fat. Not just chubby—the guy looked like a beachball. He had a ruddy complexion and big jowls that jiggled whenever he laughed or chuckled. But somehow I could tell within five minutes that he was smart and that he knew his business. Something about the watchfulness of his eyes and how carefully he listened. I knew that he was taking it all in.

After the usual welcoming chit-chat, he asked us why we were there, and Liz answered first.

"I ... had an affair. Eight years ago. I thought my husband never knew about it, and it ended and our marriage has been wonderful since then. I've been really happy—I think we both have. Then a couple of months ago he thought I was having another affair—which I wasn't—and he told me he knew about the first one—sorry, I mean the only one, the one from eight years ago.

"And since then Alan's been angry and distant. He won't talk to me about his feelings, doesn't want to let me apologize or explain or tell him how I'm feeling. And he won't ... be with me at all, sexually I mean.

"I love him and miss him, and I feel guilty as hell and I don't know what to do." She sat back, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

"Alan?" Sebastian said. "Is that about how you see it?"

"Pretty much. I ... I managed to handle my anger back then; I decided on a strategy to deal with Liz's affair and I stuck to it, and it worked out okay. But now... Ever since I told her I knew about her and Richard Gronier—that's the guy's name—all the old anger has come back. I just can't control it, and I'm mad at Liz all the time."

"Okay," he said after a minute. "Liz, could you tell me about the affair, how and why you think it happened? We don't need the uh, specific details. And Alan, I'll ask you not to comment until she's done, then you'll get your turn."

Liz gave the background: the terrible year of Karlie's leukemia, our exhaustion and desperation, then the unbelievable relief of her cure. How Liz and I had tried to get our work-lives back on track and had lost touch with one another a little. All this was familiar, and she told the story pretty much the way I would have.

But the seduction story was new to me, of course. Gronier had been very smooth. He'd taken it slow, become her friend, listened to her talk about Karlie's illness, the toll it had taken on our family, how she and I had drifted apart. He'd been subtle about insinuating himself between Liz and me: making her feel like he was the one she could confide in, he was the one who understood what she was going through, not her distant, emotionally unavailable husband.

"How long did it last?" Sebastian asked her gently.

"The ... physical part didn't start for a long time. But ... about six weeks or so, I guess. We first, ah, first touched ..." she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, Alan.

"He first touched me sometime in September. And then ... well, it ended near the end of October."

"What happened?" Sebastian prompted her.

"He broke it off. Just called me in the middle of a work-day and said hey, it's been great, you've been fun, but it's over. He was brutal. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. And then, over the next few days, like I'd been the biggest fool in the world."

She glanced at me.

"It took a few days before I started to come out of it, and realize exactly how big an idiot I'd been, and how lucky I was to still have a husband. It was like recovering from a bad fever—slowly, gradually feeling better, feeling more like yourself, you know?

"And then I started to come back to myself, and see that Alan and the girls had been there the whole time, kind of waiting for me—even though they didn't know anything about it, or so I thought."

She stopped speaking, suddenly, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Can you say a little more about how you were feeling? During the affair, and then after it ended?" Sebastian's words were gentle, his manner serious but welcoming.

"While it was going on, I was ... I was sort of hypnotized, almost. I was two different people, or in two different worlds or something.

"When I was with Richard, I.... Well, he was skillful. As a lover, I mean. And at first it was very exciting, the way sex is with someone new. So when we were together..."

She glanced at me, to see how I was taking it. I sat unmoving, looking at her blankly. I felt empty.

"When you were together..." Sebastian encouraged her.

"During the seduction—" she grimaced, then went on, "I was swept away, I guess. I mean, I thought about being with him all the time, I replayed the sex in my mind. He'd managed to make himself into my lover, somehow—as though he understood me, he was my confidant, my savior almost."

She turned to face me. "I would never have jumped into bed with him just for the sex, Alan—not with him or anyone. It wasn't about the sex for me, although I could see later that it was only about that for him.

"The first few times we ... had sex, he was gentle and attentive, the way a lover is. But after that it pretty quickly turned into something else—into pure fucking. I didn't realize it at the time; but when I thought about it afterwards, I saw that in his mind I was just some slut to fuck, like a whore he didn't have to pay."

She looked at the floor. "I was such a fool." We waited for her to continue.

"And when I was away from him I was numb. Unhappy and preoccupied. I couldn't figure out why I was cheating on Alan. I still loved him, and I knew what I was doing was terrible—but it was like there was a cloud between me and my feelings, like being under Novocain or something. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't feel anything.

"And when he ... when he asked me what was bothering me, or said he was worried that we were growing apart, I—I just didn't want to deal with it. So I made excuses about being tired, or busy at work. I just pushed everything away. I never allowed myself to really think about what I was doing with Richard, or what the consequences might be."

More silence. I realized I'd folded my arms tightly across my chest, and that I was trembling a little.

"And afterwards? Once the affair ended?" Sebastian prompted.

"Well, like I said, it was like coming out of a fever—like a fog lifting, and within a couple of weeks I could feel things again.

"What I felt most of all was shame. I loved Alan! And I wasn't the kind of woman who cheated on her husband, who risked her happy marriage and the welfare of her kids for some sleazy love-affair.

"But along with that, as time went on I just felt lucky. I'd done this horrendous thing and somehow NOT ruined my marriage and my life. With each day that passed I felt more and more thankful, and more determined to make it up to Alan. I just wanted to love him, and ... make love with him, and be the wife that he deserved. He'd been so patient and kind with me!

"So I..." she looked at me again, "I came back to myself, I guess. I made more time for me and Alan, we made love more, I looked for ways to show him how much he meant to me...

"We were happy, I thought. I still think that—we've been happy. For eight years now. And I've felt happy, and lucky as hell. Until...until a couple of months ago."

****************

We went and sat in Sebastian's office twice a week, always in the same chairs, me on the left, and told our stories. When it was my turn I didn't have to talk about Karlie's illness or its aftermath, but I told him about Liz's increasingly distant and abstracted manner, and her occasional evasiveness.

Then I told him about the day she pretended not to know who Richard Gronier was, and how much that had frightened me.

"So I hired a Private Investigator—and he got me what I asked for. Photos and audio."

Liz gasped, and I turned to her. Her face was horrified, staring.

"I never listened to the tapes," I said, "and I never looked at the photos. I knew I couldn't—somehow I knew I'd never be able to get past it if I did."

I turned back to Sebastian. "Just imagining was bad enough. The anger was...

"It was like nothing I'd ever experienced in my life. I took extra-long showers, just to have some time alone. I cried, leaning against the wall. Or I fantasized: about killing them both, maybe stabbing or strangling them; or about catching them in the hotel room and dragging them naked out into the parking lot. About confronting Liz and making her confess, right in front of the children—or at Thanksgiving dinner in front of her parents."

Next to me Liz was as white as a sheet.

Quietly Sebastian said, "it must have been an awful time for you. But you didn't confront her, didn't ask for a divorce. Did you think about it?"

I laughed. "Of course! I even thought about packing up the kids and just disappearing, moving to another state. But I lived through a divorce—my parents split up when I was ten, and it was awful. Frightening. They were both so angry, they couldn't manage to be parents to me and my brother and sister any more. They behaved like two children, and we three were caught in the middle.

"And some years ago my brother and his wife divorced, and I watched their children go through the same thing. I just didn't want to do that to Karlie and Kristina. How could I? And after Karlie being so sick....

"So I decided I'd try as hard as I could to save the marriage."

"But you could have gone to Liz and told her you knew—insisted she end the affair," he said.

"I ... I just didn't think that would work. I wasn't sure I could control my anger. I imagined weeks, months of her being all guilty, trying to make it up to me, and me being so furious I couldn't even speak to her."

I smiled ironically. "Sort of like where we are now.

"Plus," I continued, "I knew I wouldn't be able to believe a word she said. If she told me she loved me, or pulled me into bed, how I could I trust her? How could I know she really wanted me, as opposed to just hoping I wouldn't throw her out on her ass?

"I knew that I'd have to see what she did—after the affair, I mean. I'd have to see if, all on her own, she still loved me and wanted me.

"So I faked it. I played the loving husband and kept my anger and despair inside me. Except in the shower. I went to work, came home and cooked dinner, took care of the kids—even had sex with Liz from time to time, though I wouldn't call it making love."

Next to me Liz sat quietly, looking pale and devastated.

"And your plan was to wait it out, just put up with it, until Liz's affair ended?"

Honesty time. Was I going to tell the truth?

"No," I said. "I went to see Gronier, showed him one of the photos, and threatened him. I made him call Liz and end it. I was in the room when he did it."

"Oh my God," Liz said quietly, and started to cry.

****************

"Here are a few things I think," Sebastian said. We'd been seeing him for three weeks.

"First, there's no doubt that Richard Gronier was an experienced and skillful seducer. He knew what he was doing, and he'd undoubtedly done it a number of times before. He was patient and subtle and he got behind Liz's defenses. I didn't hear a word in her story to suggest that she was out there looking to cheat on her husband."

I started to interrupt and he put up a hand to me. "That doesn't mean, Alan, that Liz is off the hook—not at all. Adultery is adultery. But if you two are going to move forward, you're both best off seeing things in their full context and understanding them as completely as possible.

"He wanted sex with her—and he became her friend and confidant first, to lure her into the sexual relationship.

"Now—on your side. You did something really heroic, Alan. You managed to see past your own pain to consider what your children needed and put them first. I'm not sure your strategy was the best, but it was what felt right to you at the time.

"And from the sound of things, it really worked. You've both said that the last few years of the marriage have been very good.

"However, Alan, your plan restored the balance of power to you, in a way you may not have been aware of.

"Part of the pain of the situation you were in, being cheated on, is learning that someone you love and trust has kept a hugely important secret from you. Doing what you did allowed you to one-up Liz: you took the power of her secret away and established one of your own. Now SHE was in the dark, since you knew about the affair and she didn't know you knew."

I nodded. I had sort of known that, though never quite as clearly as Sebastian had just outlined it.

He said, "my guess is that, during the incredibly painful time of her affair and its aftermath, part of what sustained you was the power you felt you had over her, your own secret knowledge."

He leaned forward a little. "Again, there's nothing wrong with that. Instead of the affair tearing your family apart, you found a way to keep your marriage alive. It was brave, and kind of shrewd, actually.

"But neither of you has told me about what happened two months ago. What changed, Alan—why did you reveal your secret to Liz after so many years?"

I told him about the situation with Tom K. Bernardo, the weeks of Liz being distant and pre-occupied, and how worried I'd become that she was cheating on me again.

"I still wouldn't have said anything, though," I told him. "But I complained to her one morning about all her so-called late meetings and we got into an argument. And she said something and I just snapped—in an instant."

I shook my head. "Eight years of self-restraint, and it all vanished in a single moment."

Sebastian said quietly, "what did she say?"

" 'When have I ever given you reason not to trust me?' "

There was a long silence in the room. I could hear the air conditioning whirring quietly through the ducts.

Then Liz said, "I remember that now. I'd forgotten the words. But when I said them, in the split second before you replied, I realized what I'd said and I felt ashamed."

"I couldn't stop myself," I said. "I hit her with it, with Gronier—and told her that if she was doing it again, with Bernardo, our marriage was over. Then I just got the hell out of there."

I shrugged. "That's pretty much the whole story."

****************

At 4:08 on a Tuesday afternoon I raised my head as my office door opened and was shocked to see Karlie and Kristina coming into the room, carrying their bookbags.

"Hey dad—got a minute for a couple of relatives?"

"Of course, sweetie! Come and sit down!" I kissed them both, and they flopped into my office chairs.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" I said happily. They almost never bothered to come down to my office—my work was not of much interest to them.

They exchanged a look—then Kristina got back up and closed the door. Karlie said quietly, "what's going on with you and mom?"

"Going on?"

Karlie rolled her eyes at me. "Get real, dad. We're not nine years old anymore. It's been almost two months now. You're both fine with us, but you hardly talk to each other. You seem angry and mom is just sad. A couple of times at night we've heard her crying downstairs in the living room. I mean, duh!"