Making an Honest Woman Ch. 01

I flicked the overhead light to get her attention, and she looked up and pushed the headphones up. "Lights out in fifteen minutes," I said, softly. She nodded at me, pulled the headphones back in place, and went back to looking at whatever it was that had her mesmerized. God, she was a good girl; I knew I had to do whatever it would take to make sure that both she and Sophie would be all right. And then, for the first time, I started to feel myself tearing up. I shut her door, and shuffled back to what used to be Ellen's and my bedroom.

I didn't expect to get a lot of sleep, and it turned out I was right about that.

I came down early the next morning in my boxers and a t-shirt, and started a pot of coffee; Ellen came into the kitchen while I was finishing pouring water into the machine, and we sat down together at the kitchen table to wait.

"Did you sleep?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "You?"

"No. Dan, I know I fucked up. I know how bad it is. I have no illusions; I'm pretty sure you're still planning to leave me, in spite of the counseling; I know that beautiful mind of yours is plotting my doom, and we both know I'm no match for it. I've always been in awe of your intelligence, but you never, ever used it against me, until now, and I'm scared." She paused for a moment. "What I'm asking is, don't close the door all the way against me, not yet. Leave me a little opening, somewhere, that I can make it through, if I can find it. Will you do that for me?"

What could I say to that? "Ellen, I promise that if there is a way to believe that we can get past this and stay together, then I will choose that over any argument that we should split. But you're right: I don't have any faith right now that such a way exists. Is that fair?"

"That's all I ask," she said. "Thank you."

We didn't talk anymore after that. When the coffee was ready, I took a cup into my office (what had been the spare bedroom) and drank it, reading the morning's news. Not much was really new; the president was still an unhinged assclown, and his party was still blithely providing political cover for his indiscretions, while figuring out ever more astonishing ways to further enrich the .01%.

Soon enough I heard Ellen going upstairs to rouse the girls for school, and I went up to take a quick shower. I had no classes or office hours this morning, but I was planning to leave for school as soon as Alyssa and Sophie left for the bus stop.

They were digging into bowls of cereal when I came back down, while Ellen bagged their lunches. I'm going to miss this, I thought, which made me angry again. What had I done that was so awful I'd have to give this up? I gained a few pounds, sure. Yes, I failed to put the full weight of my creativity and energy into our sex life. But if she was unhappy, she could have talked to me about it, dammit. And she never said a word. Just let me think that everything was fine, while she let herself be seduced by some dickhead with a wife and a family and a job too boring to keep his mind fully occupied. Which reminded me: dickhead was due for some retribution. I'd have to give that some thought. On that note, I kissed the girls and went in to work.

I was in no mood to work on the book I had in progress, so I graded papers for a while, which actually helped me think about problems that were not my own. When I finished with that, I was at loose ends for a while, until I thought, why not go ahead and talk to an attorney? At least I could find out what to expect from a divorce, although I thought I knew the worst. She'd get the kids, the house, child support, and alimony. But maybe not. It was time to find out.

Like everyone these days, I knew a few people who'd been divorced, and I started by emailing them. I didn't mention why, but asked them if they'd give me a call when they got a chance.

Dave, an associate professor in the biology department who I occasionally played racquetball with, called first.

"Dan, got your email. What can I do for you?"

"I need a recommendation," I replied, "but I need it to be confidential. Can you promise me you won't tell anyone I asked?"

"Well, now you've got my attention," he laughed. "But yes, unless you're asking me how to hire a hitman, I'll keep your secret."

"I may need a divorce attorney," I said.

"Oh, shit," he sighed. "I'm sorry, man. Well, my guy was all right, I guess, but Denise's lawyer was a fucking roboshark. If you're really looking to do some damage, I'd have to recommend her, although it galls me to send any business her way, after what she did to me."

"What's her name?"

"Hmm," he mused a bit while he recalled. "Oh, yeah, Dahl; Arlene Dahl. Fucking bitch. Still. Hey, do you want to talk about it? Been there, got the t-shirt, et cetera."

"I would love to cry in my beer while you reassure me with hackneyed phrases. But I need to set things in order at home, first. Call you next week?"

"Look forward to hearing from you then. Hang in there, buddy." He ended the call.

I looked up Arlene Dahl and called her office. After a brief interview with her administrative assistant, I had an appointment for Tuesday of next week. Progress.

After a few more similar calls, I had appointments with four more lawyers, all next week, and a couple more "moral support" drinking sessions planned. I'd have to watch myself.

At last I called up the "extended stay" hotel in our area. It wasn't cheap, but I could afford a couple of weeks: long enough to find a decent apartment to rent. It would be hard, moving out, and it would mean telling the girls, but I knew that Ellen couldn't keep sleeping on the sofa, and there was no way we were going to sleep together, the way things were. I hated to do it, but it was the only way. So I reserved a room with the other sad, divorced men, and the other poor bastards who had no better option.

I made it home at my usual time. Ellen was there, which was not surprising; it was fall, and not an especially busy time for her business. So as not to upset the girls, I did my normal, "hi, how was your day," routine, and she responded. Of course, she'd had a lot of practice lying; I was still getting used to it.

Dinner, with Ellen cooking tonight, was roast chicken with root vegetables; good, filling, and not terribly messy to make; the girls and I cleaned up quickly afterward.

After dinner, Ellen suggested watching a movie, and the girls were into it; after some discussion Alyssa and Ellen settled on Anna Karenina. It has an R rating, but seemed fine for Alyssa, although we knew it would be too much for Sophie, so she and I went into the dining room and took turns reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (arguably more violent, but no sex). Since I'd read Tolstoy's novel many years ago, I wasn't in much of a mood to watch the movie, but I joined Ellen and Alyssa after Sophie went to bed. As I'd expected, the parallels between myself and Karenin were impossible for me to miss, and I kept thinking, as I watched, about his indecisiveness and repeated humiliation: did I deserve what Tolstoy clearly thought his character had deserved? Anna herself seemed little more than a plot device; there was no character development in the film, apart from her insatiable desire for Vronsky. It did make me decide to reread the novel, at least.

After the movie, we sent Alyssa up to bed, and sat down to talk.

"I didn't know," said Ellen. "I just heard it was a love story. I swear I had no idea."

"You think a movie could make me feel worse than I already feel?" I asked. I laughed a bit to take the sting out of it.

"No, I just didn't want you to think . . . I don't know, that I was Anna. If I was Anna, and you were Karenin, it would be the most boring novel ever. I would never . . . you are my . . . oh, Dan, you are the man I love. You are the man who I would kill myself for if I couldn't have you. I'm serious, Dan!" she said, as I smiled at that last part.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," I said.

"I have fucked up my life so badly," she said, to herself, I think.

"It was just a movie," I said.

"Will you sleep with me?" she asked. "I promise to behave myself. I just want to fall asleep next to you. Please?"

"Um," I began. "I don't think I'm ready for that. Do you want me to sleep on the sofa tonight? Tomorrow is Saturday, so we can all sleep in."

"No, I said I'd take the sofa, and you're too tall to fit on it, anyway. I want you to know, Dan, that I never took it for granted, sleeping with you. I never slept with anyone else, not in my whole life, and I never wanted to. I was bad, Dan, but I never thought it would mean that I'd have to give you up. I never wanted that."

"What am I supposed to say to that, Ellen?" I asked. "I was good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to fuck? Thanks, I guess. I wish I could say it felt like a compliment, but it sure feels like second prize."

"For a smart guy, you sure can be stupid. It's first prize. There is no second place in that race. It's you, or nobody. I wish there were some way to make you see how little he mattered to me. The man was nothing; he was just attached to-"

"Unless you want to make me angry, you'll stop talking about this right now," I said, cutting her off. "Did you get anywhere looking for marriage counselors?" I asked, to change the subject.

"I got three recommendations," she replied. "Of course, I had to explain why I needed them, which was humiliating. I'm not embarrassed to ask for help, but I do mind other people knowing, or thinking they know, our business."

"Meg knew you were having an affair." I looked at her to see how she would take this.

She was surprised, I saw. "Is that how you found out?" she asked.

"No," I told her, "but she confirmed it when I confronted her. I told her that if she kept your secret from me, it was only fair that she kept my secret from you; but I also told her that I was giving you a chance yesterday to come clean. Didn't you see her today?"

"No, she told me yesterday that she was taking today off. I guess now I know why." She paused.

"Anyway," she began again, "about the list: two are Ph.D.s in psychology, one is an MSW. All are women, but the people who recommended them were all women. I didn't think you'd mind about that."

"I don't," I said. "As long as one of them can help us, it's fine with me. If you'll give me the list of names this weekend, I'll call them on Monday."

"I'll leave it on the desk in your office."

"There's something else," I said. "I think I should find a place, just to sleep-"

"Please don't!" she interrupted me.

"Just to sleep," I repeated. "I'll still come here after work, and have dinner with you all. But you can't keep sleeping on the sofa indefinitely, and I'm not ready to share a bedroom with you. I'll keep my clothes and things here, of course. But we'll still have to tell the girls."

She put her head in her hands, face down. Through her fingers I heard her say, "I can't believe this is happening. I know it's my fault, but I never wanted this. Oh, my god, I would give anything to have my life back."

"That life is gone, I think," I said, not unkindly. "We have to make new lives from this point forward. I think that's what we should focus on in our counseling sessions. I know we'll have to dig up and sift through the past in order to do that, and I know that I will have to accept responsibility for taking you for granted, and for being a lousy lay-"

"You were never a lousy lay!" she insisted. "Yes, our sex life did get a bit boring, but I don't blame you for that. I should have talked to you about it. I didn't really even think about it much, until Rob started . . . expressing an interest in me."

"You know what? Let's save that for the therapist's office," I said. "I know you need to tell me about it, and I have to listen, and I will. But now's not the time, and the fact that every time we talk we keep coming back to it is one of the reasons I think we need some distance between us, at least for now. I don't think you can really realize just how hurt, how insanely angry I am at what you've done, and I don't want to say anything in anger that may make it harder for us to settle things between us."

She looked frightened at that, but simply said, "I understand," and added, "I don't know about you, but having laid awake all night last night, I'm so tired I can hardly think."

I agreed. "All right, let's both get some sleep. You go first; I'll wait until you're finished upstairs." She looked for a moment like she wanted to say something else, but then thought better of it, and went up to our room.

We got through the weekend by making it all about the girls. The three of us cheered at Sophie's soccer game Saturday morning, and Ellen took them both shopping that afternoon. That night we had "make your own pizzas" for dinner, and had a game night; I've been collecting board games since Alyssa was little, and we had quite a few to choose from. Sunday morning we went out to breakfast, where I proposed spending the day at an amusement park about an hour's drive away. They seemed to have a good time, and the activity made it easier for me to be with Ellen.

While Sophie and Alyssa were enjoying one last roller coaster ride, I told Ellen that I wanted to tell the girls about my plan to spend nights at a nearby hotel. "We can have a family meeting after dinner."

"Isn't there some way we can not do this?" she asked.

"I'm not looking forward to it, either," I replied. "I know it's going to upset them, and I hate to do that. I also hate sleeping apart from you." She looked surprised and hopeful at that, but I continued, "But it's what I need to do right now. If we just go back to sleeping together, I'm afraid we'll be tempted to ignore what's gone wrong with our marriage, and that anger and hurt that I warned you about will just fester and manifest itself in evil ways. We need to talk it all through with the therapist, and if, after we have, she recommends that I come back home and we sleep together, I'll do that."

"You promise?"

"I do."

And I wasn't being dishonest. Sleeping without Ellen just felt wrong, and I was determined to give therapy every chance to work, even though I seriously doubted that there was anything to be done to repair the damage. But if there was a way to trust her again, and get my marriage and family back, I knew I'd be a fool not to accept it. What I did know was that there was absolutely no way I'd live with her again if I couldn't feel 100% secure-as I truly had, before I began to suspect-that she would never lie to me again about anything that really mattered.

We collected the girls, left the park, and stopped at an Outback Steakhouse on the way home. From an anthropological point of view, the concept is pretty interesting: a restaurant based not on Australian culture, but rather on a few-very few, in fact-deliberately misinterpreted catchphrases derived from what poorly educated Americans somehow believe is Australian culture. But the girls liked the Bloomin' Onion, and I don't mind a decent steak, cooked medium-rare (although I was already planning to quietly reduce my caloric intake, and maybe start spending a few mornings a week at the gym on campus; one way or another, the dad bod was going to have to go).

When we got to the house, I announced that I wanted to hold a family meeting in 30 minutes, in the kitchen. I tried not to look or sound grave as I said it; no point in anyone worrying before they had to.

As I looked at my family seated around the kitchen table, I had the thought that after this was over, truly nothing would be the same ever again. Then I had the thought that one way of its not being the same, as unlikely as it seemed that we would get there, was that what we were all about to go through might somehow bring us all closer together.

"Your mother and I have decided that it would be best for me to move out of the house for a while," I said.

Sophie and Alyssa were, as expected, horrified. "No, Dad!" "Why?" "Are you getting a divorce?" "Where will you go?" "When will we see you?" "I can't believe this!"

I held my hands up for quiet. "You will still see me every afternoon and evening; I will come here after work, I will stay and eat dinner, and then I will leave, after you have gone to bed. I won't be here in the mornings. For the time being I have a room at a hotel, with a two-week reservation; if it looks like I'll need to be gone longer, I'll find a short-term lease on an apartment, probably near the university. Your mother and I are not getting divorced, but, like many married couples, we've hit a rough patch." I looked at Ellen: do you want to say anything? It meant.

She nodded, and began, "I love your father, and he loves me." I nodded back. "And we love you both, and what we want most of all is to remain a family." I nodded again. "But you should know that I did something very stupid, and it hurt your father very badly-"

"I don't think-" I tried to interrupt her; I hadn't wanted or expected her to take blame, but I guess she was trying to make it up to me in any way she could.

She continued, "and I am so very sorry, and he has said that he forgives me" (I noticed that she didn't say "he has forgiven me"), "and I am going to move heaven and earth to make it up to him and to you, and to be the best wife and mother I can be."

Sophie asked, "Mommy, what did you do?"

There was a pause. I sure didn't know how to tell a 10-year-old that her mother had had an affair, even though I was sure that she understood the concept, and might even have some friends whose parents had divorced because of infidelity. But what answer could either of us give that would be honest, but that wouldn't prejudice the girls against her?

"She's having an affair." That was Alyssa. She looked at Ellen with a perfectly expressionless face, with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "I know. I saw a text on her phone, a couple of days ago; she had left it on the kitchen counter, and she went out for a minute to get something, and the phone chirped. I wasn't snooping!" here her poker face broke, and her voice got thick. "It was right there. It said, 'Can't wait to get you away from hubby and the kids tomorrow. I need some of that sweet pussy of yours.' It was so crude; it made me sick."

Ellen reached for her, but Alyssa drew back. "Alyssa, sweetie, I'm so sorry!"

Alyssa looked at me. "I'm sorry, Dad! I didn't know how to tell you! It's been killing me inside. I know I should have told you; you must think I was siding with her against you, but I swear, I wasn't; I just didn't know how to say anything. And what if you didn't believe me?"

"Alyssa, I'm sorry you had to see that, and I want you to know, in no uncertain terms, that I do not blame or resent you for not telling me. It wasn't your responsibility, and you have nothing to feel sorry for. You are a victim of this, even more than I am. Both of you girls should know that I am not blameless; your mother had reasons for what she did, which we are NOT going to go into, and I insist that you not hold this against her."

Ellen looked like she was going to throw up; Sophie was wailing. Alyssa got up and came and sat in my lap; it had been years since I had held her like this. She put her head under my chin and buried her nose in my neck; I pulled her tightly to me. Ellen reached for Sophie and pulled her into her lap, as well, and we sat there, like that, for a few moments.

Alyssa broke the silence; she was softly hiccuping as her crying jag passed away. "Daddy . . . if you get divorced . . . I'm coming to live with you," she finally said.

"Hush" I said firmly, crushing Alyssa in my arms, and looking at Sophie. "I told you, we're not talking about divorce. But, whatever happens, we are going to work through this. Your Mom and I going to see a marriage counselor, and we'll probably going to arrange for the both of you to see someone, as well. We'll probably all have homework assignments, and maybe we can all do them together, before dinner."