Last Man: Brian's Tale

"You believe that I chose Simon over you, and that I somehow had to love you less to do what I did. You couldn't be more wrong. I do love Simon, but he's nowhere near the man you are, and I love you far more, and more deeply. I shared myself intimately with him and Ellie, for a specific purpose, and for a limited time. You know me; I couldn't do that without loving him. I know I'm carrying his son, so the purpose of that sharing is finished. If you could only have held out until three months from now, you would have seen my feelings for Simon change, as the reason for our being intimate no longer existed. That is why the love I share with him and Ellie could never have threatened you, or our marriage.

"You think that when we made our plans, when I went off birth control and stopped making love with you, I was trying to shut you out of the decision. That isn't true. It was because I was so sure you would say yes. After all, you've always listened to me and everything always worked out, hasn't it? Besides, this time we knew the little things we did that made it harder for you, like Simon rubbing my tummy, and we made plans to avoid them this time. I believe and I always will, that our marriage could have survived this. And you never said no.

"On the other hand, I don't think I'll ever know how much I hurt you. After I came home from Annapolis you said you felt like I'd ripped your heart out and stomped on it, and I never asked how you felt again because I was afraid of the answer. Maybe if I'd spent the year after Kathleen was born helping you express those feelings and helping you deal with them, helping you see how much I love you, you'd have been better prepared for the second time, and it wouldn't have hurt so badly. I'll say again, your hurt and jealousy are completely understandable. I just never made the time and space for us to work through them together. I guess I never made sure you understood that while I shared myself with Simon for a limited time, I gave myself, all of myself, to you for my whole life.

"After that last discussion a couple of days before Kathleen's birthday, Ellie asked me if we should reconsider. 'Even the best of men can be pushed too far,' she said. I told her no, that I knew you well, and how much you loved me. This would hurt you for a little while, but then it would be over, and we would be fine. She was right, and I was wrong.

"I've always said you're a man in a million. Maybe I got too used to thinking you were Superman, you could handle anything, and I pushed you too far. You finally broke, and our beautiful marriage broke, too. I am so very sorry, Brian. I will always treasure the memories and the two wonderful children we made together, and I'll always say that you're the best man I've ever known.

"God bless you, my dear husband; may you be happy.

"Love whilst yet I live,

"Mairi."

One of those old Greek guys who bored us to tears in school said it: "Nothing is easier than self-deception." I knew Mairi believed what she'd written to the bottom of her soul. I also knew that she was wrong. I never heard from her again.

Ellie dropped me a line now and then, assuring me my kids were doing fine, and telling me how happy they all were. She always said how grateful she was to me, and how she wished I could have stayed with Mairi and been a part of their happiness. The truth was that I was never going to be part of their happiness, not even from the beginning, but I wasn't going to ruin Ellie's happy life by saying so.

Mairi gave Simon a son, and then another for good measure. For some reason Jessica, the woman Simon picked up in a bar the night of Ellie's disastrous news, joined the harem at some point. I never heard whether or not she was married. That wouldn't have mattered to a MacTavish anyway.

What if I had said no at the very beginning? Looking back, I probably could have. We'd had a couple of friends we could call on in emergencies; I could have asked one of them to pick up Ben and Gillian and keep them until evening. I could have called Simon's work and found out where he was staying in Annapolis. I'd have had plenty of time to get there before Mairi and Ellie.

Then what, though? Demand that Mairi come home with me? Try to talk her out of it? Threaten her with divorce? Would anything have changed her mind, or even made her reconsider? I doubt it. When she got home, she as good as admitted that my feelings and thoughts didn't mean shit to her. She was going to fuck Simon and have his babies, and that was that.

Should I have stayed with her anyway? I've asked myself that probably a thousand times by now. The answer is always the same. Simon and Mairi fell in love while they conceived Kathleen. They fell more in love as they looked forward to making a son together. Even if I'd stayed with Mairi, the bond between her and Simon and Ellie would have gotten stronger and stronger, and I would have been more and more left out, until she finally left me for him. Despite what she said in her letter, our marriage would have ended anyway. I just saved her the trouble of discussion, and gave her what she really wanted. Just like Mairi had always done for me, back when she loved me.

Did I blame Mairi? Yes, at first, but after a while, I came to see it was all sort of inevitable. When Mairi loved, she loved with her whole heart, and there was nothing she wouldn't do for those she loved. I should know; I benefited enough from that. She never, ever, thought things through. She just did them and dealt with any consequences later. I'd had experience with that, too. She really did believe that our marriage was so strong that nothing could break it; it would always be there for her. Which was exactly what I wanted her to feel, come to think of it. So when she saw Ellie's desperation, and saw a way she could fix it, she jumped all over it. She could never just be sex buddies with someone, it wasn't who she was, so her falling in love with Simon was probably predictable, too.

So really, it wasn't anyone's fault. Mairi didn't create the situation, she just reacted to it in her typical Mairi way. I couldn't fault her for being herself. After all, that's how I loved her.

Ben tells me that Ellie died a day or so before Simon. Her, I grieve for. She was a sweetheart, a genuinely nice person, and you can't have too many of those in your world. It's true she cared more about her husband than she did about me or my marriage, but so what? That's what a loving wife is supposed to do.

Ben also sent me a link to where Simon wrote up his story for some internet site. The thing reads like a fucking Hallmark movie. Everyone got what they wanted and lived happily ever after. Except for me, that is, which is probably why they didn't even mention my name in the damn story.

Still, it hasn't been a bad life. Jilly and I have everything we need, and most of the things we want, and we have each other. Ben and I are in touch pretty often. Gillian not so much, a couple of times a year, but she was pretty much Mama's girl anyway, and it's not like we're estranged or anything. It's all turned out a lot better than it could have, and far better than I thought it would way back when I was lying in that hospital bed all wrapped up in plaster and stuff. Even accounting turned out to be not bad at all, and some of my best friends are what you might call pencil-necked dweebs. Though of course I don't think of them that way any more. That "mighty with a sausage" thing my uncle told me way back when is still a little scary.

Jilly thinks I've spent way too long on this. She can always tell when I'm thinking about the family I used to have, it's about the only time I feel down. It's also time for her walk.

A few months after the divorce, a drunk in a bar gave me the best advice I ever got for moving on. "If you want drama and heartache," he slurred, "get yourself a wife. If you want faithfulness and friendship and someone you can always count on, get yourself a dog." I did. I've had three pound dogs now; got them as pups and raised them myself. Mary, then Bennie, and now Jilly. The only pain they ever caused me was when Mary and Bennie died, and the poor creatures couldn't help that.

Now if I could only stop my stupid eyes from watering every time I hear "Eileen Aroon."