House of Cards Ch. 06

Marianne looked at me sadly. "Tom, I never compared you to ... to Eddie. That was never what this was all about."

I responded quickly, and sharply. "Can you tell me that you never once thought about him while you were in bed with me? Can you look me in the eye and say that you never once, while I was stroking your breasts or licking your pussy or fucking you, thought about Eddie doing those things? When we finished making love, and lay together happily in each other's arms, can you swear that you never thought about how it felt to be lying in Eddie's arms after sex?"

She had looked away during these questions—it was obvious what the answer was. "No, Tom. I admit ... sometimes I thought those things."

"Well, how nice for you," I said angrily. "You had a secret—you knew something I didn't know. I opened myself up to you totally, let myself be completely vulnerable to you, thinking that I was your only lover as you were mine. I never dreamed, if I gasped in pleasure or made a strange face as I came inside you, that what I did would become fuel for your comparisons."

She didn't speak for a minute or so. "That was never the point of it for me, Tom. But I see what you are saying. This is just one of many ways I guess my thoughtlessness has hurt you."

"Let me continue," I pressed on in an angry voice, but taking care not to shout at her. "I'm sure that part of the excitement each time you ... fucked that guy was the fact that it was cheating, that he was not your same old husband of many years, whose every move you could predict. I don't like that one bit, but I can understand it. What is far worse for me is the excitement having sex with me must have brought you, knowing that you also had an illicit lover who did the same things with you."

"I keep thinking of the Tuesday I recorded you with Eddie. You fucked him for two hours in a motel room, then came home that night smiling. You looked fantastic —your skin glowed, your eyes sparkled, you were full of joy and full of life. And after dinner you tried to drag me upstairs to bed to make love, knowing all the while that you'd fucked your lover earlier the same day!"

"Don't you see? Whenever you and I made love, there were three people in our bed. You brought your lover there with us, inside your head, AND I NEVER KNEW A DAMN THING ABOUT IT!"

She remained silent, her head lowered. "You played me for a fool, Marianne!" She raised her head suddenly and began to speak, then thought better of it. We both sat in silence for several minutes, and then I went on.

"Maybe we should talk about the lying now. I can certainly understand how carefully you hid your affair, and why. You are a smart lady—that's a big part of why I married you!" I managed a small smile.

"But when I found those thong panties, and I asked you about them the next day —that was hard to take. I even began by telling you how much I loved you, and how our relationship was the most important thing in our life, except for the children. I assured you that if I had ever done anything to jeopardize our life together, I'd tell you, and try to make it up to you. I went on and on. And then you looked me in the eye, and gave me a bunch of BULLSHIT about how it was my cum in the panties—how we'd had sex the night before I went to Chicago, which was just total crap."

She started to reply but I cut her off. "Let me go on a minute. Then later, when I played you the recording of you talking to Eddie on your cell phone, you still managed an exquisite fairy-tale about how he was your celebrity client, and you had to meet him in secret in motels. You should write fiction, Marianne!" I laughed bitterly.

"So tell me, please," I concluded. "Why did you lie and lie and lie? Why did you lie shamelessly to my face? Was it just so you could continue your affair? Or did you enjoy the thought that I was still a dumb-shit husband, still totally in the dark about what was going on behind my back?"

Marianne waited until she was sure I was finished speaking, then began to reply. There was pain in her face, but she was calm and dry-eyed.

"Sweetheart—one thing I hope you'll be able to believe. I hated lying to you. HATED it. But I couldn't cheat on you without doing it, could I? Especially when you asked me questions like that. Please believe what I'm about to say. The one thing I swore to myself, from the beginning when I realized I was going to keep seeing Eddie, was that you would never know. I didn't let myself think of how much it would hurt you. I should have, of course, but I didn't."

"Instead, I just kept telling myself, 'no matter what happens, Tom will never know about my affair. I won't let him be hurt by what I'm doing.' That was always my plan. I see now what a stupid plan it was..."

"Anyway, Tom, when you confronted me with those panties I just froze. It was a complete surprise, I didn't know they were lying around like that. All I knew is that I couldn't possibly confess the truth, and let you be so badly hurt. So I lied as plausibly as I could, and I was so relieved when you seemed to believe it! I said a little prayer, 'Thank you thank you thank you!' I was just so glad that my secret was safe, because it meant you weren't hurt."

"The very next morning I called Eddie and told him we had to cool it, and be extra careful. I cancelled a ... meeting we had scheduled, and I didn't see him again for more than a week, on the Tuesday when you must have tape-recorded us somehow. I had managed to convince myself that, though you were still suspicious, you had calmed down. I didn't suspect you were checking on me so carefully. I guess I forgot how smart YOU are!"

"Anyway, on the Wednesday when you played the tape of my phone call to Eddie the same thing happened. I froze, in a total panic! Then it occurred to me that I could possibly explain it away—I instantly came up with that crazy story about his being a celebrity client and needing privacy. For just a moment I thought you had believed that too, and I was relieved. And then you played more of your tape, the one of him and me ... together, in the motel ...."

"Then I realized what a total fool I had been. All I wanted then was a chance to explain it all to you, but you walked out on me. Not that I didn't deserve it! I don't know what I expected.... I just had convinced myself all along that you would never, never find out."

"So my lying was for you, Tom—I didn't want you to be hurt. That must sound absolutely pathetic now, self-serving and horrible. But it gave me no pleasure to lie to you—I didn't feel any sense of triumph when I thought you believed me. I just wanted so desperately for you not to know ... I guess so you wouldn't feel the way you're feeling now."

"OK, Marianne. I guess I understand what you're saying. But, please, be honest with me. After I first asked you about an affair, when I found the panties, did you ever think of just ending it with Eddie? Instead of just being more cautious, and hiding your affair more carefully, did you consider breaking it off?"

Her silence, and a sudden burst of tears, gave me my answer. Finally she said, "no, honey," in a tiny voice. "I have been such a total idiot! I was so caught up in my own stupidity that even then, I didn't see the danger I was in! I am so sorry!"

"Is it over now, Marianne?"

"Of course, Tom!" She cried more loudly. "I called him the morning after you ... left the house, and I told him it was over. He argued a little, but I didn't give him any choice about it. I swear, Tom, it's over with Eddie forever!" Because of the last recording I had heard of Marianne in the car, I knew what she was telling me the truth.

I let her cry for a minute or two. Then, quietly, I asked, "Marianne, if I hadn't found out about your affair, how long do you think it would have gone on?"

She looked up at me in surprise. "I don't know," she said. "I know that it wouldn't have been a long long time. After all that time it wasn't as ... it wasn't as exciting and crazy as it had been at the beginning." I grimaced at her words, thinking of the fondness she and Eddie had shown in the motel room, and she cried out, "I'm sorry, Tom!"

"No," I said, "go ahead."

"Well, it was becoming more of a settled thing, and I think it would have just continued cooling off in ... I don't know, a few more months. I think we would finally have just ... looked at each other and said, that's it. We're done."

For no other reason than because I was in pain, I said, "Maybe that's where we are, Marianne. Maybe after 16 years we've cooled off, and it's time to say 'We're done'." I didn't believe my own words. It was pretty clear to me I was trying to hurt her—but I also wanted to see what she would say.

"No Tom!" Marianne nearly jumped up from the sofa. "That's not how I feel at all! My love for you is deeper now than it was when we were married. You are more important to me than you've ever been! The only thing that has been getting me through each day, these past two weeks, is the hope that we'll be able to get past this and be a loving, happy husband and wife again. I will NEVER stop loving you, and I will never be out of your life unless you push me out once and for all."

I wasn't ready to let her off the hook yet. "Well, you've come damn close to doing that already, Marianne.'

She just nodded unhappily. "I know I have."

We sat for another minute or two, and then I said, "There's one more thing I want to bring up tonight. Obviously we'll need to have many more conversations, but tonight's talk has probably been painful enough for both of us already. I want you to tell me about our anniversary, and about the 'honeymoons'."

"Marianne," and I looked right into her eyes, "how could you have ... slept with him on our anniversary? How COULD you?"

She flushed, and looked down at her hands. She must have known I'd bring this up, because I'd mentioned it in one of our earlier conversations.

"I didn't ... see Eddie on our anniversary, Tom. It was the day before. We hadn't been together for nearly two weeks, because he was away on vacation, and ... I guess we were extra horny. Eddie had wanted to meet the next day, which would have been our anniversary, and I told him absolutely not. But I think there was something about ... doing it with me just before our anniversary that was a special turn-on for him. He kept mentioning it while we were together, and ... oh, Tom, I'm so sorry!"

She started to cry again, but I just looked at her quietly. I wasn't about to let her off the hook.

"Well," she finally continued, "he made love to me over and over. He was just wild for it that day. I think we did it four times that afternoon, and a couple of times he was extra forceful and a bit rough. I was sore for the next couple of days. I had been looking forward to you and me making love the night of our anniversary, and at first I didn't know what I was going to do. But I had that lovely new nightie I knew you would like, and I thought that if I just gave you some extra loving with my mouth ... it would still be okay."

I just sat there, thinking. Obviously the turn-on for Eddie had been lording it over me—getting every last ounce of sex out of his lover, my wife, the day before our anniversary. He figured I'd never know what he had over me, but HE would know. I couldn't even be that angry with him about it. I obviously didn't think much of a guy who would screw a married woman, but that competitive feeling was not hard for me to identify with. He wasn't worth my worrying about—if it weren't for Marianne agreeing to it, they never would have had an affair.

My wife was an extremely attractive woman. She wasn't just physically beautiful, she was also full of life, interesting to talk to, intelligent, and lots of fun. What man wouldn't want to have her, given half a chance? It just didn't seem worth the energy to hate Eddie. My anger was for Marianne. She was the one who had stolen something from me—Eddie had pretty much just taken what she had offered him.

"Well, Marianne, I want to make sure you know how I feel about that. It's obvious that Eddie loved the chance to fuck you from here to Borneo the day before our anniversary, to stake his claim on you the day before I would have had the chance to do it. I don't know if he knew that he left you with the 'honeymoons', and I don't want to know."

"But you must see that your actions those two days were another sort of betrayal of me. Eddie came first—pardon the Goddam pun!" I laughed bitterly for a moment. "He got what he wanted, because you let him have it. And the net result is that my wife was unavailable to me, on our anniversary no less. Whatever you may have been thinking as you gave me that blow-job, you can surely see how it feels to me now. That was my cheating wife, doing what she had to do to keep me in the dark. Doing what was necessary to prevent me touching her pussy, and realizing what she had been doing to make it so sore."

Marianne hadn't raised her head in several minutes. Now, without looking at me, she said, "yes, Tom. I understand what you're saying. I am SO sorry. I know I keep saying that, but that doesn't mean it's not true. I was selfish and stupid. I am so very sorry for all of this."

We sat for several minutes without speaking or looking at one another. I had thought about how I wanted to bring the evening to an end, and now I went ahead with my plan.

"I think we should stop for tonight, Marianne. Would that be all right with you?" She smiled at me sadly, her eyes red and swollen, and nodded.

I continued. "But I'd like to suggest that each of us try something. How about if we plan to talk again in two days, on Sunday? I'll come by the house in the afternoon. And between now and then, each of us should try to write down what we think the other one is feeling about this ... whole situation. So I'll try to think like you, Marianne, and write down what your feelings are, and you do the same for me. Then we'll share those when we get together again."

She looked at me, thinking about it. It wasn't an unreasonable request, and I knew that she would agree, especially after having said she would do absolutely anything to make the situation better.

"OK, Tom. I don't immediately see the point, but I will try. And I guess I've spent a lot of time thinking about my own feelings—perhaps I owe it to you to try to consider yours as fully as I can."

"Thank you, Marianne. I'm hoping this will be a helpful step."

I walked her downstairs and held the door as she got into her car. Just before she started the engine I said, "oh, Marianne, one more thing. We're trying to be completely honest with each other, so there's something I need to tell you about."

She looked up at me, waiting. "I've been seeing someone else. Well, sleeping with her, actually. It's a woman at one of the firms we do business with. We had a drink a couple of weeks ago after work—it was two nights after I left the house—and wound up in bed together. And I've seen her a few times since then. I thought you should know."

Marianne's lip quivered, and she looked absolutely shocked. I'm sure she was wondering if I was telling the truth.

"Is this for real, Tom? Or are you just trying to get even a little by telling me this story? Not that I would have the right to blame you .... Are you really ... sleeping with someone else?"

"Yes, but I don't think I should say anymore about it right now, Marianne. We'll talk again in a couple of days."

And without giving her a chance to say anything else, I walked several steps back to the doorway of my apartment building, ready to wave to her as she left. She obviously didn't want to leave without asking more questions, but after a minute she realized I was finished talking to her, and she drove away.

Smiling a little to myself, I hurried back up to my apartment. I wanted to phone Steve and Andrea before Marianne could reach them.

When I called, Steve answered. "Hi, Tom, I'm so glad you called! How are things going? Can you come have a barbecue with the two of us tomorrow, about 5pm?"

"I'd love to, Steve—thanks. But I could I speak to both you and Andrea on the phone tonight for just a moment?" He called to his wife, and after a minute she picked up on another extension.

"I'm going to ask your help on something," I said to both of them. "I've just told Marianne a white lie, and I want you to back me up. I told her that I've started seeing, and sleeping with, someone I met through work. I said that it began a couple of nights after I left the house."

"So you're not actually seeing someone, Tom?" Andrea asked.

"No—I still don't feel the least bit interested in any other women at the moment," I replied. "But I was thinking about what you said to me today at lunch: that Marianne doesn't really understand how it feels to be in my shoes right now. I thought this might be a way for her to experience it for herself. And I will confess that it also feels like a tiny bit of revenge—ultimately harmless revenge—for what she has done."

"It makes sense to me, Tom," Steve said. "What can we do to help?"

"Well, I'm guessing that Marianne will call to speak to you, perhaps even tonight. She can't really tell if my story is true, or whether I made it up just to hurt her. So I'd like you to string her along a little. You can act reluctant, hem and haw a little, and finally admit that you got the impression from me that I was seeing someone, but you don't know any of the details."

They both laughed, and Andrea said, "no problem! We'll take care of it, Tom. When she's done speaking to us, she'll be more worried than ever!"

"Thanks to both of you. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, and if Marianne has called you can tell me all about it."

As I went to bed that night I felt a bit more hopeful than I had since the beginning of this painful business. In a small way I'd taken a few forward steps: I had taken the initiative and been more active, rather than simply letting my pain paralyze me.

I had no idea what the result of my tale to Marianne would be. But if nothing else, it would give her some uncomfortable hours of thought. I still loved my wife, after all that had happened. But I was also still deeply hurt and absolutely furious at her, and I didn't mind the idea that I wouldn't be the only one in the marriage who was suffering.