Error Correction Ch. 03

The Caller ID displayed the number of my daughter Zoe.

"Dad!" She sounded annoyed and scared at the same time. "Mom just showed up here with her bags and everything and won't tell us what's going on. What is going on?"

"She'll have to give you the details," I said. "I won't speak for her. But... she's pregnant."

"What? But she's too--. Why is she here alone? Where the hell are you?"

"Can you put her up for a while? She didn't want to be down here." My daughter and her husband lived in Brunswick, Maine. Becky knew they had at least two large spare rooms.

"Dad!"

"It's not my baby."

Zoe inhaled sharply. "What? How is that--"

"She will tell you when she's ready. In the meantime, can you take care of her? I will transfer funds to you to cover her expenses. Can you help her find an OB/GYN?"

Zoe swore and hung up on me. She was a mother now, a grown adult with two kids of her own. I can't recall her ever swearing and hanging up on me.

All that Becky had said to me the day she left was: "Please water my plants." Her eyes turned down, she didn't offer even a kiss. And then she drove off. I didn't try to stop her. It was the lowest point of my life.

She was embarrassed to be pregnant, and humiliated that the child would be blindingly and obviously not mine. Since her unprotected sex with Andre, we had fucked only with protection. She was also and perhaps more mortified for me -- that our community, our business contacts, everyone, would know I had been cuckolded.

So she went to live in Maine. I did not try to stop her. Probably because at core I am a cautious stodgy coward. I hate myself every time I think about what I had done to her. I hate myself that I had allowed her to leave to a place where her growing belly will not be a source of gossip. I hate myself that I was so morally weak I put the public shame of an illegitimate baby above the love of my faithful wife.

Yes, after all that I still considered her faithful. The extramarital sex was my creation. I had orchestrated it like a Pops concert.

Okay, this is where the montage would be placed if this were a movie:

There's me, working 14 hour days to keep my brain from dwelling on Becky. I don't know how the movie would portray the fact that the harder I work the more money pours into the business. Maybe a calendar turning and dollar bills flying. Yeah, that would be lame but accurate. My agents get sick of seeing so much of me. They do not get sick of the bonuses.

There's me, talking to Becky once a week. Every Sunday at 4 pm. I ask her how she is and she tells me she is fine. I tell her that I love her and she replies in kind. I no longer know which of us is lying. Maybe both. I feel my love for her powerfully, but a huge part of me is terrified that I am lying to myself and that I actually never loved her -- because this is not how one treats their love. I don't ask any questions about her health or her unborn child. I don't beg her to return. I don't bed her forgiveness. I am an abject coward, a fraud, and a cad.

There are my daughters. Zoe, of course, and Leah, the younger one by three years. Leah lives in Arizona and flies in just to talk to her mother face to face. The two drive home and double team me. They grill me like two detectives, but I do not crack. I tell them the abbreviated and sanitized version of the past year. I tell them that I cannot tell them their mother's side of the story. They leave frustrated and angry. It is the first time I have intentionally held the truth from either of them.

There's me at a garden party attended by some of my major clients. I have gone to so many of these over the years that it is automatic. People ask about Becky and I tell them she is staying with a daughter. True. They ask how I am. I tell them I am great. False. Some of the women, longtime friends, sense something is not right. A few of them suggest that they could make it better. I am not shocked. I knew these things happened all around me. But anyone who knew us knew that the bond between Becky and I was not to be messed with. Once. Now that bond is floating in midair like a severed safety rope and I am free falling.

There is the midnight I am woken by my phone. It is Zoe, excited, "Dad! Dad! Mom had her baby! It's a girl! Amelia!" I feel my soul wrenched from my body. I cannot breathe. The thing I prized most in all the world is gone, and I threw it out. Zoe calls my name but I am paralyzed. I put the phone down. I do not have the strength to turn it off and so must endure listening to my daughter calling my name frantically.

Immediately after that scene, a daze. A fog of grey. Quicksand everywhere. I sit and read a book, staring at the same page for an hour without any words sinking into my brain.

Did I mention that I minored in psychology at Harvard University, a fine institution where you learn things? I am not 100% stupid. 99% maybe, but at least I knew I needed professional help. I dug into the internet, researching therapists, reading articles in professional journals. One day I hit yatzee, bingo, cherry clusters in a row. I had been going back and forth whether I should consult a male therapist because he would understand me, or a female therapist because she would understand Becky. Turned out I did not have to choose. In Rhode Island, conveniently close by and yet far enough away for me not to run into anyone I knew, was a couple who practiced together. And they specialized in the sexual health of families. I booked an appointment. I felt like there was at last someone I could confide in. Even if I had to pay for the hearing of my problems, it was far better than what I was doing now, which was telling nobody anything. All my married life I used to talk out problems with Becky. Business, family, whatever. She had valuable insights and opinions, and I treasured her advice. She was the most perceptive person I had ever known. Which is why it is an infuriating mystery why she could never talk about her sexual hangups and limitations. It is hard to see your own faults, I guess.

The day arrived and I walked into the offices of the Drs. Lewis, closed the door behind me, and sat down. Dr. Ms. Lewis was a pretty woman not quite my age with full lips and a mass of curly black hair. Dr. Mr. Lewis was a little younger, I judged, a lean guy I bet ran ten miles every day. He wore wire rim glasses and was slowly losing his hair. They both looked at the door, obviously expecting my partner to be coming through it.

They regained their balance and introduced themselves. I introduced myself. We talked for a few minutes about where they had come from and trained and where I lived and had grown up. It was the kind of conversation that was designed to put the patient at ease so they could then reveal their most corrupt secrets. Like exchanging pleasantries with your general practitioner just before he digitally investigates your prostate health. After that, I began my story. I told them the whole history of me and Becky, starting with the afternoon we met listening to Ben fuck Emma upstairs. Yes, I used the word fuck. In fact, I planned to use some other colorful words in my narrative. I wanted to see their reaction to extremely graphic description of our sex life, because if they flinched, I was going to try another therapist and another until I found someone who could deal with reality.

They, to their credit, did not bat one eye between them. So I continued with the tale. Our wedding, her amazing hymen, years of vanilla sex (and not even a good vanilla but more a generic store brand), two daughters, the actions and positions that my wife would not allow into our bed (but which she allowed Ben that night, where the footage showed that she gave him attentive and loving oral for a half hour and later went crazy moaning and throwing her head around as he hammered her doggy style), her short romp with Andre that left her pregnant, her flight to Maine. I gave details and included sounds, sights -- hell, I would have included smell if I could. I finished by telling them that I loved my wife with all my heart and wanted nothing more than to make her happy.

The hour was up. They looked interested but not overwhelmed or shocked. They thanked me for coming and said they looked forward to continuing our sessions next week.

I should have felt some relief. I had unburdened myself of the secrets that were eating at me and that I did not fully know how to process in a healthy way. I knew that the good Doctors were not there to heal me. I was supposed to heal myself with their direction. I really hoped their reputation was deserved.

The next three meetings we spent going over details in my life history. The Doctors asked some frank and probing questions, which encouraged me that I was getting my money's worth with them. They asked about Becky's childhood, and I told them as much as I knew. Her father had passed away ten years after we were wed and her mother was at present suffering from dementia. Neither had ever dropped any clue to me about their daughter's sexuality, big surprise. The Lewis's reiterated their caveat that they could not fully treat a couple if one of the couple was absent from the therapy. I agreed.

Toward the end of our sixth session, Dr. Ms. Lewis put her pen down and looked at me even more seriously than usual.

"Michael," she said. "My husband and I are in agreement that further talk therapy will gain us little."

Dr. Mr. Lewis nodded. This was it, then. I was terminal, unsalvagable. I would be off the rolls and on my own. Kicked to the curb.

"However," Dr. Mr. Lewis said, "we are starting to employ in our practice a new tool that may help in cases such as yours, where the patient has constructed an image of themselves which is blocking progress."

Dr. Ms. Lewis continued for the team. "We would like you to consider letting us treat you with a microdose of a new synthetic hallucinogen. The effects last for only a few minutes, so we could fit it in our next session. It is perfectly safe."

"We have had some remarkable results," Dr. Mr. Lewis said. He handed me a folder containing information about the drug and consent forms. Lots of consent forms.

I spent the next week debating whether I needed an acid trip in addition to the other fuckery in my life, but when I read up on the therapy it sounded sensible. And clinically tested for safety. I wondered how my doctors would react if I drove up to the session in a VW bus decorated with flowers. Knowing them as I did now, it wouldn't be worth the effort. They would just nod seriously and make a note.

The day arrived. I dressed comfortably, as specified in the preprocedure directions. No solid food for four hours prior, initial here, no liquids for two hours, initial here. Etcetera and etcetera. Cover your ass boilerplate that was so prevalent in the insurance world I initialed here there and everywhere without trepidation.

They sat quietly behind their long double desk. On the desk was a tray holding an oblong blue-and white pill and a small plastic tumbler of water.

"Remember, Michael. One of the objects of this exercise is to see yourself as the world sees you. You have said that Becky cannot analyze herself. That is true of us all. This drug will give you the chance to flip the perception, look at yourself from outside yourself. Keep that in your mind."

I nodded and swallowed the pill.

Nothing happened for a few minutes. I looked back and forth from doctor to doctor. I could hear their clock ticking. Who even has a ticking clock anymore? I had never noticed their clock before. Becky had bought a wall clock for our first house that ticked like that. The damn thing was louder than you would have thought, loud in the dead of night when the house was quiet and dark except for that ticking of the big round white hospital clock over the bed. Becky was in the bed, not looking at the clock. She looked at me helplessly, grimacing in pain. I held her hand, gripping it tight, not too tight, cannot cause my love any more pain. She is young, just a girl who has delivered a shiny mucus white squirming being. It is a girl. Crying, wailing, we will name her Zoe, Greek for life. The baby is at my wife's breast now, sucking, and I am sobbing, my arms around them both, Becky whispering so the nurses cannot hear that she loves me, thanks me for giving this to her, this baby girl we will name Leah, the Lioness, who is asleep on Becky's beautiful tit. The tit that hangs over her swelling belly, it shakes when Becky cries, I put my arms around her to comfort her, my arms are invisible, I cannot lift them to her, her huge belly is in the way, the belly is under the clock, the nurse hears Becky this time, does not hear me, there are wires on her belly, there is a ticking clock and a beeping somewhere like a truck backing up, the nurse talks on the other side of the curtain in hushed but urgent tones, she is worried, Becky is worried, Becky is crying, not happy crying but fear crying, there is no one in the room, just my wife, she is alone, I try to call for a nurse, for help, I wake up in the night, the damn clock is ticking up the whole house, I reach across the bed to her side and it is empty, and I am alone, the sense of loss permeates me like a fever, the sense of regret is in my gut, my throat waters, I am going to puke it up, the terror of loss paralyzes me, my wife is not a girl anymore, the belly has marks and lines, the ticking is a count down, the ticking is a cry for help, the ticking is over the bed again, on the bed is the eternal love of my existence, her huge belly bare, alone, alone, alone, no arms about it, tears on her cheeks, no way to turn that damn clock off, alone, that clock that is not even in this room, it was in the front room of our first house, the doctors don't know about that house, didn't I tell them? I look back and forth at them as the contents of my brain settle back down into place, a snow globe shaken and put down. I start to cry.

Not just any old cry. I sobbed primeval sobs. I rocked back and forth like a piece of playground equipment. I could not form words so I just wailed. Without shame, without a shit for my manly pride.

"I did. Not. See. Myself." I managed to force out at last. "Just her. Just her. She was afraid. She needed me. I left her." Another unstoppable set of retching sobs overtook me. I gathered my strength. "I abandoned her. I made her play a game. I abandoned my love. I let my dearest friend risk her life. To carry a baby." I gulped. "Alone. In fear. Terrified for her baby. Because it made me feel uncomfortable!"

I took a deep breath and then -- cried as hard as my body could cry.

"I am a heartless bastard. HOW COULD I DO THAT?"

From the therapist's office in Rhode Island to Brunswick is maybe 200 miles. I do not remember driving a single one of them that day. I raced into the driveway of Zoe's house. My tires skidding on the gravel. My son-in-law was mowing the lawn. He waved at me, but I ran straight into the house. Zoe was putting dishes away.

"Where's your mother?" I tried not to yell.

"Dad? What is it? Why didn't you let us know--"

"Where is your mother?" I looked around, starting to panic. I could see into the front room and the dining room. There was no sign of my wife. Nothing at all that looked like it belonged to Becky. There was no baby furniture, no crib, nothing. No support system for a young baby.

Zoe came over and hugged me hard. "Daddy, sit down."

I obeyed, and she sat across from me at the kitchen table.

"Dad," she said slowly. "Mom is living with someone."

I felt like the drug I had taken earlier kicked in again. My vision blurred and tilted. I felt myself about to fall off the chair. I felt vomit rolling up my throat.

"Who - who -" I choked.

Leah reached over and held my hand. "Mom is living with a woman. Her name is Cynthia. Mom is... happy." She nodded to the refrigerator, where a magnetic photograph holder on the door held a picture of three -- Becky looking radiant in a blue dress, holding a tiny baby in frilly white. Standing next to a taller woman, a blonde who looked equally beatific.

I woke up in my bed. Alone. Still dressed in the shirt and pants I had donned for my drug trip. No memory of how I got home. Laid in the dark. Put out an arm to Becky's side. It was empty. Listened to the noises of the house in the night. Trying to make out ticking. No tears left in the reservoir.