Another Love, Not

The story came out slowly and reluctantly. I made her a second cup of tea and got myself a second beer. I also grabbed a box of Kleenex because we were both crying. Avril's husband, Philippe Du Monte, an art restoration expert, had been hired in 1989 to restore six paintings vandalized on the South Mall in Albany.

Shortly after Philippe arrived to begin work, the affair started. He met Karen in the South Mall when he was working in the museum building. She worked in the Tower building. They were virtually on top of each other. Avril and Philippe had an open marriage, at her insistence.

"We were young and did not wish to miss anything, but mature enough to understand each other's needs," she said through her tears.

Avril was happy that Phillippe found someone when he was away. He traveled back and forth to Montreal, but spent most of his days and nights in Albany for three years. Then, there was the period that began in the summer of 1990 when he moved into my house and stayed. Avril visited on a number of occasions. She knew I was away and still married to Karen, but the reason was never explained to her. She assumed that I knew of the relationship and approved.

"I just assumed. She spoke of you lovingly and praised you as a husband and father. I understood that Philippe moved in because you could not be with her, and there were such small children. Two boys who needed a man's influence and a lonely woman. We had two girls in their teens, away at boarding school. Philippe spent their holidays with us. Karen spent Christmas 1990 at our house. My daughters loved her and the boys as I did. How could you not know?"

"You wouldn't understand what it means to completely trust your spouse to live up to the terms of your vows," I said quietly. "I trusted my wife without reservation. And then when I went overseas, I was a little tied up trying to keep as many of my crewmates as safe as possible. Never in my wildest dreams would I believe Karen would have betrayed me like this.

"When I was overseas, thinking of returning to my family was what kept me going. I never gave a thought that she would replace me with another man, and that my sons would go along with it and continue to do it. I was fighting in a war, for fuck's sake, and she was playing sex toy with your asshole husband."

"No, Robert, you don't understand," Avril responded sadly. "Phillippe was her second man; you were always her first. She loves you with all of her heart. He was her older experienced lover. Apparently, she did not have much experience, and Phillippe was an excellent teacher, as I know. But they were as much friends as lovers.

"When she came to the funeral without you, everyone asked for you, and she said you were well and the two of you were still very much in love. Even in my grief, I was happy for her. I brought the painting because Phillippe always said he thought she should have it.

"It is magnifique, non?"

"It is magnifique, mais oui," I answered using the little bit of French I knew back at her. "It completely captures the moment. She is a beautiful whore."

Avril knew it was time to leave. I knew she was hesitant to leave the painting.

"I will make sure she sees it exactly as it is now," I vowed.

"Please don't do anything foolish until you talk with Karen," she said.

"I haven't yet," I responded.

I knew Avril would be on the phone to Karen as soon as she was out of my sight.

Karen cut her trip in half and walked in the house the next afternoon. Although it was Sunday, I was at work, and since I hadn't answered any of Karen's phone calls since talking with Avril, I was unaware she was in the house when I walked in. I realized she was home when I noticed the painting was gone from the front parlor. Instead, I found Karen there, with her arms tightly wrapped around herself and looking like she'd been crying for hours.

"I am so sorry you had to see that before we could talk about it," she practically whispered. "I am sorry you had to find out about Phillippe this way."

"I've actually known about this for several weeks now," I responded just as quietly. "I just didn't have the visual..."

She ran up to our room and I heard the door lock.

Years before, Karen and I had turned our fourth floor into an apartment with its own separate outside stairs and entrance, and we rented it out for extra income for several years. Oscar took it for his own for his last two years of high school and then while he attended university. I had moved a lot of my stuff up there yesterday, so Karen locking me out was no big deal.

I did look around the house and found that Karen hid the painting in the back hall closet, under a quilt.

I basically lived on the fourth floor for the next two weeks, coming and going from the fourth-floor entrance. On day 15, there was a soft knock on the door.

"Rob, you know we need to talk," she said. "I've got supper waiting in the kitchen."

To her credit, Karen's story basically lined up with what Avril said and what the feds told me. She told me repeatedly she was sorry for hurting me, but at no point did she say she was sorry for what she did, or sorry that she made our children co-conspirators. Nor did she seem ashamed of her actions. In fact, she started off by calling her tale "a love story."

"A love story for you, maybe," I said quietly.

I found an attorney and had her draw up divorce papers. I would tell her when to serve them.

A week later, Avril was back to stay with us for several days. Karen had agreed to help her on Phillippe's exhibition. I wasn't happy for several reasons, perhaps the biggest one being that I knew Avril was an accomplice in the affair.

Two nights later, I get another knock on the door to my Fortress of Solitude. I knew who was on the other side of the door before I answered it.

"You are a foolish, foolish man if you don't realize that she loves you more than life itself and you are hurting her terribly," Avril said as she brushed by me and entered my abode.

As usual, she was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that looked to be a size too small, yet looked good on her tight frame. She was fully made up and not a hair was out of place. On the other hand, I was sitting around in my boxers and looked like a slob. I excused myself to get dressed, but she stopped me with a soft command.

"Don't. I am a woman who likes to look at a well put-together man, and you perfectly fill that bill."

I know I flushed bright red, but I went and sat down back down in my La-Z-Boy without getting dressed. I was uncomfortable, however, with the thought of being somebody's eye candy.

Avril spent the next 30 minutes explaining her feelings about the situation in great detail. She gave me her history about being the fourth child of a Japanese war bride mother and a French-Canadian father. She met Phillippe on the campus of McGill University, where Phillippe was a part-time instructor, a budding successful artist and practically a prince on campus. She was a first-year undergraduate when their romance began. He was 26 and she was 19.

Seven years later and the parents of two girls, Avril began to notice that her husband had a wandering eye. She realized then that she had two options: hold on tight and possibly lose him, or give him a longer leash and keep the marriage alive.

"I realized that I had to hold him with open hands. I suggested we both see others. I picked shallow boys more physical and less experienced so he would not feel threatened. I hoped he would do the same, and he did until he met your Karen. She was my worst fear: beautiful, tall, strawberry blonde hair, with those magical brown eyes. A combination of sex and innocence.

"It seemed after about a year the affair was ending. She had a husband and two small children, and I think she was getting nervous her husband would find out. But then the husband left, and Phillippe could not leave that woman stranded. Our two kids were in boarding school, so he moved in with her, and instead of him visiting me on weekends, I began visiting him. And I grew to love her, too. I slept with Phillippe when I visited, and Karen slept with him the rest of the time. I was so happy they had each other.

"Theirs was a pure love, each wanting the best for the other."

She looked me directly in the eyes.

"He could have abandoned her, but didn't. He stayed with her and her boys until the day before her husband came home. I was never so proud as then to be the wife of Phillippe Du Monte. He didn't run away when it became inconvenient. Phillippe didn't fail her. Her husband did."

I openly bristled at her last statement.

"I didn't fail her," I practically shouted. "I got called up to serve in the navy. I was on an aircraft carrier for most of a year, while your husband and my wife were playing hide the salami!"

She lowered her eyes to the floor. This apparently was new information to her.

"We both married passionate people," she said. "But it's over. I have lost my partner, but yours is right downstairs. We cannot undo what is in the past. Just love her and move forward."

"She also can't unfuck Phillippe. I know you were okay with an open marriage, but I am not. It was never something we discussed. She made the decision by herself. I was never in the loop."

Avril stood up as I sat back down. She then told me about Christmas 1990 when my family went up to Montreal to celebrate with the extended Du Monte clan. My boys bonded with Avril's girls like they were older sisters. Karen effectively became Aunt Karen to the Du Monte girls, Simone and Suzan.

"Don't you see?" I said to her. "I am her husband, but she abused my love for her, abused my trust, because she loved your husband. He was her first love all these years. I came in a distant second."

Avril practically collapsed in tears. I picked up her tiny body and carried her back downstairs. Karen gave me a strange look when I set Avril down at the kitchen table, then walked back upstairs.

About two hours later, I got another knock on the door. This time it was Karen, who looked like she had been crying again. She came again to apologize for hurting me, but once again, not for her actions. She also tried again to tell me that what was past, was past, and couldn't be undone.

"No matter what you think, Rob, I've never stopped loving you. I've never taken anything of yours and given that to him. I have the capacity in my heart to love more than one man. You never got any less of my love."

"You can say that, and you may actually believe that, Karen, but that's not true. You can't love two men equally, and you didn't. You lied to me, if only by omission, and you disrespected me by willfully breaking our vows. You used my trust against me, and turned my sons against me by making them part of your scheme.

"I wasn't able to stop you from putting him first when he was alive, and now that he's dead he'll always be first.

"Time for you to go, Karen. I've been working a lot of hours on this project and I'm beat. But you're right. We do need to hash this out. You need to answer questions."

"Can't we at least hold off until the beginning of next year, Rob?" she answered. "We'll be hosting Canadian Thanksgiving next week, and then Avril and I will need to get Phillippe's showing ironed out. I committed myself to doing that, and I will follow through."

"If it's for Phillippe, of course you will follow through," I said with more than a little disgust.

Her eyes flashed anger, but surprisingly, her tongue stayed still.

I didn't know anything about this Canadian Thanksgiving thing, but I didn't think I would be affected by it too much. I was beginning to work a lot of hours because the engine just wasn't performing. She wasn't talking to me. Like my marriage, this engine had its problems.

A few days later, people started showing up at the house, and I was wrong, it did affect me. When I came home after work the next night, there was a young woman sitting in my favorite La-Z-Boy breastfeeding a baby. I was surprised when I walked in, but she never even made a move to cover up. She introduced herself as Simone, Avril's older daughter. Seems she, her husband, Georges and their three children were bunking in the apartment for the next few days. I was supposed to find Aunt Karen and get my room assignment. I harrumphed, and she looked apologetic. I should have realized that my wife would give Phillippe's family more consideration than me. The pattern was established, and my wife was just adding to my ire, not that she apparently noticed or cared.

"I should have expected something like this. Guess I'll go find my wife," I grumbled, as much to myself as anyone.

I went downstairs to find the house abuzz with people: my older son, Kevin, and a girlfriend, my younger son, Oscar, and his boyfriend, Mark; Avril, Avril's younger daughter and family, two grandmothers, two uncles and several cousins. Many of the Du Monte family were engaged in conversations and barely looked my way; several others came up, introduced themselves and told me what a great woman Karen was. I assumed all of them knew Karen was having sex with Phillippe Du Monte.

After interacting with many from the Du Monte family, I was finally able to find my wife and was told we were sharing one of the back bedrooms. I hadn't slept in the same bed as my wife since she left for her trip, but I figured I could do this until the relatives cleared out. What I didn't know was that Avril would be joining us, as well. When I found out, I figured this was a set-up. Having sex with Avril, maybe even both women, would be part of the plan to get me to forgive and forget, or at least get me to forgive.

I knew Karen thought I was totally gullible and clueless, but this was beyond insulting: give the poor cuckold a couple of mercy fucks and everything would be okay.

I went to bed before the two women came to the room. I was just starting to drift off when I felt a naked body crawl in bed on each side of me. A hand started rubbing my chest and nipples and another started rubbing my cock. I'm human. It had been a couple of months since Karen and I last had sex. I got rock hard in seconds. I turned my head to the left and I felt Karen's lips on mine, then her tongue exploring inside my mouth. One of us moaned; I couldn't tell which of us.

Just as I was being overwhelmed by the physical feelings, a dark thought came to me: the image of Phillippe Du Monte between my wife's legs. My hard-on deflated like a balloon spiked by a pin. I extracted myself from the bed, got dressed and headed back up the hill. I would sleep in my office. I heard both women softly crying as I left the room.

The sofa in my office wasn't the worst place I'd ever spent a night, but even then, I didn't spend much time asleep. Maybe it was the proximity to the engine; I don't know, but sometime during the night I heard her whisper to me. I found the answer, but it wasn't going to be easy: we needed a complete redesign. I got up off the sofa and made a big pot of coffee. It was 4 AM.

The university had stuck the project in our school's old fieldhouse. The sports teams had long ago vacated it for our modern arena. Our monstrous machine sat where athletes once performed. Now the building was the home of 16—17 including me—individuals who barely had an athletic bone among them. One of the group named the engine Persephone after the goddess of the underworld, but after I found out about Karen's infidelity, I started calling her Karen after the goddess of my own underworld. The rest of the group slowly found out about my problems and before long, everyone called her Karen. Yes, we were a strange kind of family by then.

The news of the new design took the group like a wildfire, with wild new growth sprouting up from the burn of the old. The enthusiasm was more than infectious; it was almost life affirming. The place suddenly had the ambiance of a successful beehive.

Lisa, my personal assistant, finally tugged at my sleeve at 11:30. She pointed to her watch.

"Shit, I should order out for lunch. I guess we got carried away," I said.

"Rob, that's 11:30 PM, not AM," she said awkwardly.

I looked around me. Everybody was moving slower, but the place was still buzzing. I had to shut it down before I burned everybody out.

"All right, guys. Time to stop," I shouted. "We'll hit it again tomorrow, but not before noon. Noon—you hear me?"

I heard a lot of tired affirmations.

"Yes, boss."

After locking up the facility, I was suddenly bone-tired. Karen the engine finally spilled her secrets to me. As I headed down the hill, however, I knew the other Karen wasn't going to be as forthcoming.

The yard was dark as I entered the back gate.

"Karen gave up on waiting for you. She did not think you would return. What is it going to take for you to forgive her?" Avril's voice came to me from the porch.

"Believe it or not, I was actually working. We got caught up in the work. Kar... the engine started talking to me finally," I replied.

"None of you have any idea of what I am even working on," I added. "Not even my wife, the person who I'm supposed to be closest with in the entire world. I can't talk to her because she's too busy mourning for her lover. Her Goddamn lover, for Christ's sake. Once again your dead husband interferes in my life."

I knew I hurt her because I heard her sniff, but she didn't respond. At this point I didn't care.

Avril followed me into the bedroom. I undressed and got in on one side of Karen. Avril undressed and got in on the other side. I guessed this wasn't the first time she had done this. The women kept their hands to themselves this time.

I was up early the next day and made my way down to the kitchen, where the two grandmothers were busy cooking breakfast. After getting a cup of coffee, I sat at the table. A plate of food magically appeared in front of me. Not to be rude, I ate. As I did so, the grands joined me at the table.

"I would say I'm surprised to see you up this early, but I didn't hear any noise coming from your room," said Sara Du Monte. "You have two beautiful women in your bed; can't you put aside your fragile male ego long enough to make all three of you happy?"

Sara Du Monte was 95 years old and the family's grand dame. She was still sharp as a tack, and I could see she didn't believe in mincing words.

"Of course, my son took your woman; made her his lover and you a cuckold. Your pain is clear and justified. But I know you love your wife with all your heart, and she and Avril can lessen your pain, if you let them. My son is gone. What is in the past needs to stay in the past. It is time for you to move into the future and claim your women.

"Karen has paid for her sin of love and need many times over in guilt. She would do anything to take away the pain she has caused you. But we all know that is not possible. Now it is your turn to avoid the next sin: the sin of pride."

"With all due respect, Karen hasn't paid for her sin and never will, because she is not guilty over what she did," I responded. "Her guilt over hurting me is minimal, or she couldn't have done what she did to be for 20 years. Twenty freakin' years. Any guilt about me is long gone. The only thing she feels guilt for is me finding out. They'd still be sleeping together if I hadn't found out."

"And Phillippe hadn't died," Mme. Du Monte said.

"Yeah, that too," I said quietly.

It was Saturday morning. I climbed the hill and got to the fieldhouse about 11, an hour earlier than I told my people to show up. Lisa and about seven others were waiting for me to open up. The other eight were in the door within another five minutes. We worked until 9 PM, then I threw everyone out and told them the door wouldn't be open again until Monday morning at 6.

"Six doesn't mean 5," I shouted to them. "It doesn't mean 5:30 either or 5:55. Six means 6."