After the Future is Gone Pt. 02

I stepped into the void left by her trailing voice. "Abandon me?"

She winced. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, they were just following your lead, I suppose." Idiot. So much for being diplomatic.

Her eyes flashed with anger for just a moment, then calmed. "Why am I here, Mike? If you just want to beat me up, fine. I suppose I owe you that, at least. But I was hoping we could be civil. That we could talk. I'm so sorry for what I did. I regret how things happened every day."

I thought for a moment. "Yeah, okay. That was a cheap shot. Even if, I think you have to admit, it was kind of accurate. Let's talk. You said that you're sorry. Are you sorry you split with me, sorry you cheated, sorry you got caught...?"

Lisa was contemplative. "It's... more complicated than that. I'm so very, very sorry that you found us like that. I still have nightmares about you learning about us that way. It was so thoughtlessly cruel to take that kind of chance. I was terrified afterwards, when we didn't hear from you, that you had... that you might have..." She looked away, eyes starting to moisten. "No matter what kinds of problems we had, you absolutely did not deserve that, and I can't apologize enough for doing that to you."

I swallowed my initial response of 'No, you can't,' as it wouldn't be useful. I was here today to put all this to rest, not to fan the flames.

I barely bit back my irritation. "Okay, so it's more complicated. Fine. I have some idea of how things went wrong. I think I've pieced together a timeline of what you and Pete... did. But I want to hear it from you."

Lisa nodded in assent. She took a drink of her mocha, squared her shoulders, and started talking. She sounded rehearsed, but not as if she was telling a practiced lie. Instead, it was like she'd rehearsed it to make sure she could get it all out without falling apart.

"First, I need you to know that I loved you. I still do. I always will. Not like I did when we were married, but there will always be a part of you in my heart, and it kills me to know how much I hurt you. There were days, a lot of them, that I couldn't get out of bed after... after..."

She shook her head. "I never set out to end up there. I won't say it was an accident, or a mistake. That's just a way of saying it wasn't my fault. It was. I made a series of bad choices. I failed to communicate with you. I didn't give you the chance to be the good man that I know you are. Maybe we couldn't have saved our marriage, because by then, things had already gone off the rails. But I didn't give us that chance. I deeply regret that, and I always will."

I started to speak, and Lisa quickly said, "Please, don't. This is so hard. It's going to get harder for both of us."

I could see that she was having trouble holding it together already. Part of me did still love her, even if it was only a small part now. I didn't want her to feel embarrassed if she broke down. "Do you want to go somewhere more private?"

Her mouth opened then closed then opened again, uncertainty making her hesitate. "Where?"

"We could go to a park. There's one just down the road. Maybe drive somewhere, a parking lot or something? Or my apartment is just around the corner, if you feel comfortable with that."

She nodded rapidly. "Yeah. Yes. Your apartment. That sounds good."

We took our drinks and walked in silence. I figured she needed to get her head together, and if I was being honest, I did too. I had been spoiling for a fight, even though I'd promised myself I'd stay calm. I centered myself as we walked to my apartment, climbed the stairs, and opened the door.

I sat down on a chair, and she the couch. After taking a deep breath, she gave me a look that was equal parts serious, sad, and grateful. "Thank you, Mike. I... you're being much kinder than I deserve. Much kinder than I'd be in your place, I think."

I waved my hand dismissively. "Are you ready to continue?"

She nodded a few times, then looked towards me without really looking at me. Both hands were gripping her cup, like she was trying to find warmth wherever she could. "Things hadn't been right with us for a while, I think. No, that's not quite correct. Things hadn't been right with me, and I didn't let you know. You were still the man I married, still the smart, analytical man who wanted to solve all of the problems. I think... I'm not blaming you here, Mike. But I think that's why I didn't tell you. I didn't want to be your problem to be solved."

Lisa smiled a melancholy little smile. "We were so young when we got married. I had only had two real boyfriends before you, and then we met in college and fell in love. You asked me to marry you before we even finished school, and... and I loved you. I said yes. Please don't doubt that I loved you. I was so deeply in love with you then and so excited for our future together. The day we were married is still one of the happiest of my life, even with everything that came later."

Her face fell, the faint smile sliding into a frown. She was quiet for a time, looking down at her cup as if she'd find the next part of her tale there. "I was happy at first. No. No, I was happy for a long time. It wasn't until the last few years that I began to doubt us. Or began to doubt myself, really. I started to think that maybe I had gotten married too young. It wasn't that you weren't wonderful. You were. You loved me. I always felt like I was the center of your universe. But I hadn't really had any adventures, not ones that were just mine. I loved sharing our life together, but I felt like that's what it was. A life shared. There was no space in it for me, only us.

"I should have said something then. I should have told you I needed to..." She laughed, a hollow sound. "I don't know, actually. I wanted to be your wife. But I wanted to not be anyone's wife. I wanted to be Lisa, her own woman." She shook her head. "So childish. I could have been me with you, me inside of us, if I'd just..."

The woman I'd loved turned her head to look out the window. "I didn't realize a lot of this at the time. Not in a way I could articulate. There was a sense there that things were wrong, but I let them fester, like I said, because I didn't want you to try to solve it. Because I wanted... because I thought that I needed to be 'just Lisa.' My own strong, independent woman. I lost sight of the fact that being with a partner can be a source of strength, if I would have only talked about what I needed and just... asked you to not solve the problem. Just to support me while I figured myself out."

She looked at me, already so tired. "I've been in therapy since the week we split. Trying to figure out how I could have fucked my life so badly. How I could have made the series of bad choices that led to me standing next to my soiled marital bed embracing a man I shouldn't have fallen in love with while my husband looked on in horror. My therapist has told me to not 'overly label my behaviors in negative ways,' but that's bullshit. The truth is that I was a coward, and I was selfish, and I was a bad wife. You deserved better from me. You deserved better than me."

Lisa took in a deep breath, as if to fortify herself for what came next. "So that was the stage set. A year, maybe two years before we had the talk about how we would secure our future, I was already feeling hemmed in, but I didn't say anything. That was where the cracks first started to appear. I hid them from you, because I thought I'd figure out the problem, or maybe that it was just what all young couples go through. I thought maybe if I just pushed through and stayed loyal to you, I'd go back to wanting to be us, instead of just me and you.

"When you came to me and told me about your plan to push hard for a promotion, I thought this was the perfect opportunity. We weren't going to be just casting about as a couple, we'd be a real team. We'd work hard, you at your promotion, and me at supporting you, and I'd find the connection with you again. I convinced myself that the problem was not that I was freaking out at having given up my independence, but that we'd simply spent too long at our current stage of life. I decided that this new adventure would be what brought me close to you again. It would forge you and me back together into us."

Tears started to form in her eyes. "I was so delusional, like one of those women that tries to have a child to keep their marriage together. Except I was the only one that knew there was a problem. Because I was the problem."

Lisa furiously swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, fighting the urge to cry. "At first, I thought it was working. I was supporting your aims for us, and I did feel a renewed bond with you. We were going to get this promotion for you, then the house, then the kids. We even reconnected physically for a little while; I remember our sex got better for a couple of months, even if we had less of it because you were so busy. I felt really loved and really happy in our marriage. I thought we'd turned a corner.

"But then the longer hours came. We drifted apart, just a little. I knew that this was something we'd planned for. Something you'd planned for. But I hadn't really readied myself for it. We started to really fall away from each other. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to let on to anyone that there was something wrong, because I didn't want it to get back to you. I thought that if I hid it from you, we'd push through, get your promotion, and then we could fix it afterwards.

"But Pete..." She saw my face cloud. "I'm sorry. I know this is going to be hard. The worst part is coming. Do you want me to stop? Or take a break?" I shook my head emphatically 'no.' She nodded. Steeled herself. "Okay. Okay."

Lisa began to speak very carefully, very deliberately. "When I started going out by myself to hang out with our friends, I fell in with Pete. He missed you. He knew what was going on, about our plan. He was so supportive of it. He really talked you up." I snorted. "Please, Mike. I won't lie to you, either to make you or myself feel better. I promise. But I need... Please, just let me try to get through this."

"... Alright."

She took another deep, fortifying breath. "After a few weeks hanging out with the group, he could see something was wrong. He pulled me to one side, and I tried to play it off. I told him that I was just tired, that I was stressed from work, anything but the truth. But you know Pete." I winced and she looked down, unable to hold my gaze. "He's always been insightful. That famous bullshit detector of his. He knew I was lying.

"He took me to a corner table, and I laid out how the plan was going. How... how it wasn't going the way I thought it would. I had been drinking a little, so I began to talk about how afraid I was that we weren't going to make it. I told him a softer version of what I just told you, how I felt like I had lost myself in our marriage.

"He told me I should talk to you. That he knew you loved me and would do anything to fix this. I lashed out at him, told him that was exactly the problem, that you'd 'fix' me, like I was one of your broken systems." She was angry now, as though this had only happened a few minutes before, not over a year ago. "I walked out and came home, seething. That was the first night I slept on the couch instead of coming to bed with you.

"The next day, he came to my work. Asked me to go to lunch with him. I was still angry, but he was our friend. He was the only person who knew the whole story, and I... I needed someone I could talk to. Over the next few months, we went out to lunch often. He'd talk with me about our problems. He'd take your side more often than not, and push for me to talk with you. I was stubborn, though." I laughed unexpectedly, and she looked at me with a wry, tired grin. "Yeah. Shocker."

Her mood quickly became gloomy again. "He began to offer solutions. Not solutions like you would, with a fully thought out plan. More like spitballing with me. Talk with you? Endangers the plan. Marriage counseling? No time. Solo therapy? I didn't believe it would help, because the current problem was an 'us' problem; I just needed to figure out how to tough it out. I hadn't really connected with the idea that our 'collaboration' on your promotion wasn't making things better, because the first couple of months I felt like it had. I was so arrogant, so sure that I knew what would get us back to being a couple again. And you remember what Pete was like back then; he was only just then in his first relationship that lasted more than a year. He had no fucking clue what made long term relationships tick. It was the blind leading the blind."

I remembered Jen, Pete's then-girlfriend. We really thought she would be the one that made an honest man out of him.

"Finally, he suggested I try to do some things for myself. He convinced me that you were putting time and energy into your job, so maybe I should take some time to pursue things I had neglected over the years. I got back into painting then, you may remember?"

I did. Vaguely. I was so focused on my work. I knew she had started painting again, but I couldn't tell you a single thing she painted during that time. I knew from my time with Jim that I had really leaned into my father's tendency to over-focus on things. I'd been working on it, and Emily had been helping me, but fixing myself now didn't undo the mistakes I made back then.

I nodded. "I do. I don't remember much about them, but..."

Her lips were a thin line. "Yeah. I know." Then her expression softened. "I'm sorry. I know that you were so busy then. It's not-- "

"No." She looked up. "Yeah, you were a bad wife. But I could have been a better husband. You were struggling, and I barely noticed. You had a new passion, and I didn't even bother to find out about it. Fuck, you were about to..." I started to tear up. "I'm sorry. I said I wouldn't interrupt. Go on."

Lisa looked lighter somehow. She whispered, "Thank you, Mike."

"Painting made me happy. It felt like it was mine, especially when... especially when you didn't take notice of it. I wanted to try other things. Pete suggested pottery; there was a class starting soon at the rec center. So I did that. I was happy. Well, happier at least. It didn't bridge the divide between you and me, but I thought I could use it as a band-aid until we could fix things.

"Pete and I got closer. He took an interest in my art." She chuckled. "'My art.' Like I was making masterpieces." A shake of her head, as if dismissing her own foolishness. I thought she was being unfair to herself; even back in college, she was a good artist. But I stayed quiet; I wasn't here for her today. I probably never would be again.

"He asked after you. I knew he missed you. It had been a long time since you had hung out. He was starting to have problems with Jen, and I knew he'd always gone to you for counsel. But he didn't want to make things harder on either you or our marriage, so he stayed away. I acted as his sounding board, instead. He had been mine, so it was a natural fit.

"But their problems... they had been together for a long time by Pete's standards, but not really by anyone else's. She was getting restless. Really restless. She had finally decided she wanted out, and she left. Pete was inconsolable. He really thought she was the one."

I remembered that Pete had broken up with Jen, but I barely knew more than that. I thought it was just another case of Pete being Pete. I called him to touch base when Lisa told me it had happened, but... Fuck. I wasn't just a bad husband, I was a shitty friend, too.

"We spent more time together. He had more nights free, so we were at the bar more often. Sometimes I'd go over to his place and watch movies, so he wouldn't feel alone. I comforted him. He comforted me." My jaw clenched, anger building. "Not like that. Not... not yet."

I looked away. "It was the two week trip, wasn't it? Was it during that or just after?"

"... During." I nodded. I had a big trip about four months before I found them together. We had been fighting before I left. Hadn't had sex in weeks, hadn't made love in even longer. She gave me the cold shoulder when I walked out to get on the plane. When I got home two weeks later, she almost attacked me. We fucked every night that week like we had back in college. She constantly told me she loved me. Never left the apartment except to go to work. She had seemed desperate to have me, even at the time. I thought it was because she was sorry for how we had left things before the trip. I figured out later that it was because she was guilty, either for something she had done or was about to do.

Lisa started to cry, not simply tear up. "Do... do you want to know the details?"

I sighed. There was a time when I would have wanted to know everything. For a while after it happened, the curiosity ate me alive. Was he better than me? Bigger? Did he fuck her multiple times that night or just once? Did she suck his cock? Did he fuck her ass, something she'd denied me?

But I just didn't care anymore. It was in the past. I only cared about how we had failed as a couple, so I could finish healing. So I could be the man that Emily needed me to be. So I could be the man I needed to be.

I quietly said, "Let me guess. Don't fill in anything unless I get it wrong, okay? There are some things I don't care to know."

She nodded silently.

"We fought. I left on my trip. You were still angry. You went to him to vent. He was lonely because of his breakup. You both got drunk? High?"

Lisa's voice was barely above a whisper, but I could hear that it was full of self-loathing. "Drunk. Two bottles of wine."

I nodded. "You fell into bed together." She opened her mouth, and I cut her off. "I don't want to know about what it was like, how he made you feel, any of that. Just the timeline." She nodded.

I continued. "You felt guilty?" Nod. "Just that one time while I was gone, then you tried to refocus on us? That week after I got back." Nod. "But you couldn't make it happen. Couldn't bring us back to life." Pause. Nod.

She began to sob. "I'm so sorry, Mike, I--"

I shook my head. I wasn't done yet. "When did you decide that you were going to be with him instead of me?"

She buried her face in her hands, and I knew before she spoke. "The next week. We got back together to talk at lunch. Said it could never happen again. I told him I'd tell you about what had happened when you were done with your work. You'd been pushing so hard for your promotion, and it felt selfish to sabotage that because I couldn't live with my guilt. He agreed. He held my hands and apologized. I looked in his eyes and felt..." Her shoulders sagged under the weight of the word she knew would cause me pain. "...Loved. Like someone was in love with me, really wanted to be with me. Not some idea of what... what we could..." She stopped, unable to continue.

"What we could be in the future." I finished for her, tears falling from my eyes. My voice broke a little. "Why did you stay with me?"

Lisa looked up as she heard the hurt in my voice, regret etched across her tear-stained face. "I was tunnel visioned. It was your promotion. I didn't want to... you had worked so hard for it. Sacrificed so much. I had... If you didn't finish it, it felt like there was no point. Like I had ruined our marriage for no reason. I know now that I was just deluding myself. I was kicking the can down the road for as long as I could, trying to avoid responsibility for my actions."

She returned to the story of how we ended, her voice determined, as though there was a deep need to finish the telling now that she was so close to the end. She needed to be free of her secrets; an exorcism of sorts, to be done with the spirits of our past. "We met regularly from then on. Usually at his place, sometimes at lunch, sometimes when I said I was going to the bar. We fell in love. I was desperate. Foolish. I had jumped from one relationship straight into another, because I felt trapped in the first one. As though I'd be less trapped in the second. I've worked on that with my therapist since, but..." She just shook her head.