Room with a View

Monday morning Barry swung by my office. "Have a good weekend?"

"Surprisingly, yes," I told him.

"Good, maybe you can find a way to speed up production on the KZ1500. I've sold two more than we currently have in stock."

I told him I would see what I could do. By the end of the day I stuck my head in his door and informed him that those two units would be done by the end of the following week. He smiled through lips clenching that dirty old pipe in his mouth, which he never lit.

"It's nice to have the old Steve back."

At eleven fifteen I got a call on my cell.

"Steve, Dr. Cohen." I'd recognized that dry monotone voice without him saying who he was. "I was wondering if you could come in at about three thirty today to see me."

"I'm not scheduled until Thursday, is there a problem?"

"Your wife asked me to call you, to see if you would be available for the session she has scheduled for this afternoon."

"Why didn't she call me?"

"She said she has, but you haven't returned any of her calls." He was right about that.

"Did Mandy say what she wanted to talk about?" I asked, knowing fully well what it was.

"No, just that she'd like you to be here, if possible."

I didn't have anything scheduled. "Sure, why not, tell her I'll be there."

"Thank you, Steve, I think this is a step in the right direction." I wasn't so sure. My stomach immediately started to tighten up.

I drove slowly over to Dr. Cohen's office. When I arrived I looked down at my watch and saw I had ten more minutes until the appointment. So I sat in my car, looking out the window going over and over what I had rehearsed over the last two months.

I watched Mandy pull up and walk briskly into the building. Looking down at my watch I had five minutes left. At three twenty-eight I got out of my car and headed in. I thought about coming in, you know, fashionably late, but that only works for social events, and this certainly wasn't going to be one of those. His secretary told me to go right in, they were expecting me.

"Dr. Cohen, Mandy," I said greeting the both of them while I silently debated where exactly to sit because there weren't a lot of options in his office. I picked the chair directly across from Mandy.

"Nice of you to join us, Steve," he said. Mandy continued to stare at me. "Why don't we begin? Mandy, you asked Steve to be here, why don't you tell him why?"

"I think Steve knows what I want to talk about. How could you?"

"How could I what?" was my immediate reply, playing dumb.

"Write what you did? Everyone I know and work with has read it. Why in the hell did you do it, for Christ's sakes?"

"Wasn't it well written? If not, they sure as hell wouldn't have put it in their magazine," I said, now staring back at her.

"Now everyone knows my personal business."

"Our personal business." I corrected her.

Dr. Cohen intervened at this point. "Mandy, was it accurate?"

"Not totally. I was not having a damn affair. I had started a friendship with one of my adult students that went a little further that it should have."

"Jesus Christ, Mandy, the way you're describing it, it's like you asked him to be a friend on your Facebook page. Let's tell Dr. Cohen about the hand holding, the kissing, and everything else, shall we?" The anger was rushing back like it had that night. I began talking more rapidly and a lot louder.

Mandy leaned in towards me and shouted back, "What everything else are you talking about? There was no everything else, why can't you believe that?

Dr. Cohen immediately stepped in. "Please take it down a notch. We all understand there was a problem."

"Is a problem," I added.

"All right, is a problem," Dr. Cohen amended. "But not talking about it isn't going to get us anywhere."

"I've tried to talk to Steve, but he won't open up, he ignores me."

"Is that true, Steve?"

"I see her lips moving but nothing new comes out, only the same bullshit I heard from the first night. It seems it's everyone else's fault but hers. I'm tired of all the lies and excuses. For once why don't you tell me the fucking truth or as God is my witness, I'm out of here for good." There, I'd finally said what I was there to say. There was about twenty seconds of sheer silence as we all waited. Dr. Cohen started to say something, but Mandy interrupted him.

"I said it was inappropriate, I'm not denying that, but it never went as far as you are imagining it did. There was dancing, some kissing, and when his hands went too far I stopped it. I never gave him a damn blowjob or let him take me to bed no matter what you think. Steve, I wasn't looking to replace you, it's just that he was—well—interesting."

"And good looking?" I added, not even knowing what he looked like.

"And good looking," she agreed, looking at me. "To me, what was more important, as a teacher, was that although he was getting good grades he wanted to do better."

"So, he thought sleeping with the teacher would get him that?" I snidely added. Anger flashed across Mandy's face.

Dr. Cohen, again, took back control. "Steve, please let Mandy finish. You can have your input when she's done." He looked at Mandy "Please continue."

"As I said, Rick wanted to do better, so after class we would go over his work, in detail. I would show him his weak areas and discuss what he could do to improve them. It started with just a couple of minutes but kept getting longer and longer. Pretty soon we found they were locking up, so we went to the student union and had a bite to eat while we continued our discussions. I didn't see any harm in it, and I sure as hell wasn't trolling, as you so eloquently described it in your story. After a couple of months we became friends of a sort." That comment brought forth a sinister snicker from me.

"Steve!" Was all Dr. Cohen had to say.

"I'm sorry, but it's starting to get a little deep in here."

"Steve, nothing inappropriate happened. When he got an "A" on his next two papers, he took me to Murries on campus to celebrate. There were a million other people there. We had at the most two drinks and danced a couple of times, that's all."

"Then Mandy, when in the hell did all these loving feelings for him start to develop?" I was getting impatient and tired of waiting while her story was being laid out for me.

"Steve, I never said love, I said feelings."

"Mandy, you're splitting hairs."

"Steve, we sort of became close. Then we started talking beyond what was happening in the classroom. We talked about our lives outside of the classroom, and it kind of mushroomed after that. But please, hear me. I will say once again, I swear, I never had a sexual relationship with him."

"When was that going to happen? A week, a month, or after our conversation that night?"

"Steve, I wanted to be upfront with you. Maybe I shouldn't have been. I was feeling things about Rick I shouldn't have been feeling, and I was torn. Steve, you were the only man, in the last twenty-eight years, I ever had those types of feeling for. I was confused, and for the first time, scared. I needed your help."

"Help, what kind of help? I still don't have a clue what you wanted from me then or even now. The only advice I would have given you would have been to end it, before it even got that far."

"Look, it was something new and exciting. It was something like a high school crush. It was all talk, but when I found Rick wanted to take it to the next level I got scared. And as I told you, I did end it."

"Mandy, nothing just happens. Even when you tried to explain it to me twice you said the same thing. He was intelligent and good-looking. Were you insinuating that I am not?"

"Steve, I never said you weren't smart or good looking."

"Not in so many words, but I've felt it for the last couple of years. Your high and mighty friends always implied it, and they finally swayed you into believing it. It must have shocked the shit out of them to see I'm not a total idiot, after all. I'm enjoying that part of it more than you can possibly imagine."

"But at what price, Steve? Everyone now knows our business."

"So? What's your point? My friends are never going to read it, and yours, well I couldn't care less, if you must know." It crossed my mind that this session may not have been going like Mandy hoped it would.

"Mandy, do you want to say anything to Steve?"

"Steve, I thought I'd said this to you before but I guess I wasn't clear about it. I am so sorry. I'm sorry for what I started, for how it effected you, and I'm asking you for forgiveness." She sat there quietly waiting for my response.

"Steve, do you have something to say to Mandy?"

"Sure do Doc. Mandy, why are you sorry? What was missing in our marriage that you had to look outside of it to fill that void? I don't think I can move forward until I find out why."

Mandy tried to say again that she wasn't looking and hadn't done anything. I stood up.

"When you can truthfully answer those questions, I'll talk to you again but not before. I'm sick to death of hearing that nothing happened. For Christ's sakes, if nothing happened we'd still be living with one another. When are you going to get it through your fucking head that you were unfaithful to me? You may not have been physically, which is still open to debate, but you put him in a place where only I was supposed to be. Until you admit that to yourself we have nothing to say."

At this point Dr. Cohen reminded me to think back to what I had discovered from my lists and journal writings about the actual state of our marriage.

"Mandy, it seems we just stopped paying attention to each other. I don't know why, but I am unable to get past that night to even begin to address how to put this marriage back together. I don't know what I want anymore. I just know right now I need to get out of here this minute before I explode. Dr. Cohen, I'll see you Thursday." I could sense the insurmountable frustration in that room from all three of us. We were so stuck and I knew it was because of me, I just didn't know what to do about it. I just knew that at that moment I had to leave.

Before anyone could say anything I was out of there. I would loved to have heard what was said after I left, but it still wouldn't have changed anything at the time. I had said my piece but succeeded again in accomplishing nothing.

Thursday Dr. Cohen wouldn't discuss what he and Mandy talked about after I had left.

"Steve, that's doctor patient privileged information. If you want to know, you can always call Mandy and ask her." I wasn't about to do that. Dr. Cohen went on. "After hearing what you both had to say it seems to me that you have a lot of insecurities about yourself and your relationship with Mandy. Add that to the fact you also seem to be threatened by what you think she saw in Rick and we have a lose lose situation here."

I thought about what he said for a few seconds and then put it somewhere in the back of my mind out of reach. I told Dr. Cohen what I was going to do. "Let's just say I'm moving on with my life and let it go at that. I'm comfortable with what I've done so far. I need to start looking out for myself."

"Are you saying you're giving up on your marriage?"

"I'm not, but it looks like Mandy has. Until she realizes she did something wrong and why, we can't move on. If anyone was ever a soul mate, she was mine, but not anymore. We've become two different people, and I'm sorry to say what we had no longer exists." I didn't believe that totally, but in my mind I wanted my pound of flesh with a little groveling thrown in.

"I'm sorry to hear that. You know, Steve, every relationship changes throughout the years. Marriages have cycles, and sometimes take on a life of their own. You're not the same person you were in your twenties or thirties, that doesn't make you any better of worse. What I'm trying to say is that even though your relationship with Mandy isn't the same as it once was, it doesn't mean it has to end. I seem to recall Mandy telling you she was sorry, she tried to explain how it all happened, and I believe you know the reasons why. You have boxed her into a corner and whichever way she turns she can't get out."

"That may be true, yet I can't seem to move forward. Every time I close my eyes I imagine the two of them together. It makes me angry and sad, and it makes me sick inside. I don't know how to stop being angry. What I do know is that I have to do something to take care of myself."

Haven't you learned anything from your writings and from our time together?"

"I thought I had. I guess I am not ready to let go and forgive. I just need more time to figure this out to move forward. I don't know what I want from Mandy or even from myself, I just know I am not getting it from either of us."

Dr. Cohen cleared this throat and addressed me again. "Well, only you can make that decision." We used up the rest of the time discussing what I had decided to do, and although he wasn't in agreement he understood. You see, I finally decided what I was going to do. I was going to do nothing. If she wanted a divorce she could initiate it because I wasn't going to. The one thing I was going to do was start separating our lives.

I canceled all our joint credit cards and split our finances down the center. I wasn't sure what to do with the house, but that conversation was bound to come up eventually. I kept the same cell phone number but opened up my own plan. In a matter of four to five hours it was all done, two lives spent as one had become separate and distinct.

"Dear Mandy," is how I started my e-mail to her, explaining in detail what I'd done and why. "We're on two different planes right now. I don't see us getting back to what we used to have." I rewrote it a number of times, but in the end, it always said the same thing only a little differently. I told her I am trying to find a way to forgive her and I wished her well, but in my heart I wasn't the same man I was eight months ago when this all started. When I finally hit enter I started the grieving process.

No meds or alcohol for me this time—I was going cold turkey. My two children called me two days later and told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I told them I didn't disagree with them, only it was my mistake to make, and yes, they had finally read my story.

Everyone was sorry, but gave me the breathing room I requested. Mandy however. wasn't taking it lying down. For such a smart woman she still didn't have a clue. It didn't matter, I was moving on with my life, if not emotionally where I was still stuck, then for sure physically. And, although I said I forgave her, who was I kidding, I really didn't—I couldn't.

Eventually Mandy and I stopped having any contact—no calls, e-mails or text messages. It was as though we both stepped off the face of the earth. My wife, soul mate, and best friend was gone. I guess she finally gave up trying. The emptiness hurt more than I could possible have imagined. But day by day it got better, and even though I had relapses now and then, they became further and further apart until one day, four months later, they all but stopped.

My first blind date was a frigging disaster. I wasn't ready to date. I had been pushed into it by a couple of my close buddies who wanted to see me get out of the house.

They sold me a bill of goods. "Steve, she's cute and you have a lot in common."

Let's see, we were both members of the human race, ate food, breathed air, and that was about it. Abby was a chain smoker, a heavy drinker, and let it be know within the first five minutes of our meeting that I would be getting lucky at the end of the night. I didn't partake of her highly rated professional talents, which, in the end, pissed her off. Dropping her off at her apartment I answered, "No, I wasn't gay." She slammed the door in my face. But eventually even dating got easier.

By the seventh month my weight stabilized, and I was making it to work everyday. I found myself frequently hanging with a group of casual friends I met one weekend. It was just a group of single people who got together once during the week and on Saturdays, when they could schedule some event. There were no real girlfriends or boyfriends, but a couple of them dated outside our weekly get-togethers. I was becoming comfortable being around single people again.

No matter how uneasy I was with it, I forced myself to do things outside of my comfort zone. When someone suggested skydiving I about shit, and thought I'd done just that on my way down during a tandem jump. When everyone wanted to watch all the idiots' bungee jumping off a bridge over a local river, I found myself strapped in a harness and going over the top of the bridge on a dare. That only happened once.

"What crazy things are you planning on doing this weekend?" my buddy Joel asked after work on Friday.

"Just having a barbeque at my place tomorrow."

"Boring! I thought you would at least be taking flying lessons, or picking yourself out a motorcycle by now."

"I don't have that kind of money, and besides I've gotten most of that shit out of my system. Trying it once, and surviving, is as far as I'm going to push it. I think steaks on the grill with a few glasses of wine is more my speed right now." And it was. It was fun and exciting to try a few new things but I wasn't young and foolish anymore, even though I might have liked to think I was.

I was starting to lament, kind of wish, that Mandy had dumped me earlier in my life. I was forty-eight and a half years old, living by myself, and trying my best to relive my youth, or should I say my wild twenties again. Hell, the first time I had sex with another woman she about killed me.

It wasn't a budding romance, or tender lovemaking, more like a friend with bentifits. Dinner, a couple of drinks, and before I knew it, I was stripped naked, being asked to fuck her harder. I don't even remember kissing her or having much, if any, foreplay.

"I needed that," is how our post coupling chat started. "You know," she said. "You're not half bad. I think with a little direction you could be better than average."

Be still my heart, better than average? I hadn't been graded that low since I was a junior in high school, and even then I chalked it up to nerves. I guess being with only one woman all this time kind of stunted my creative juices. But hell, I was willing to learn, and there were enough eligible women out there who were more than happy to teach me what they liked.

I was driving home from what was another bad date when my mind kicked back to a more pleasant time in my life. I'd taken Mandy to the same restaurant years earlier and had one of the greatest evenings of my life. It was her fortieth birthday, and we did it all that night. Dinner, old people dancing, and tender lovemaking until almost two in the morning, is how the evening started and ended. The next morning I served her breakfast in bed, and then joined her for a couple's shower before returning to our bed for another hour or two. Those were the days. I felt a rush of sadness come over me and maybe a tear or two dropped from my eyes. We really did have some great times. I sent Mandy an e-mail that night. "Just thinking about you," was all it said.

I still saw Dr. Cohen once a month. We would talk about where I was at, but mostly he would just listen and take notes.

"You still seeing Mandy?" I asked, prior to starting one of our sessions.

"Not any longer," was his quick reply. "She worked out her issues, and felt she no longer needed to see me."

"I guess she got over me a lot faster than I'm getting over her." I bemoaned.

"Steve, are you perfect?" Dr. Cohen asked, putting his note pad on his lap.

"What? I don't understand the question."

"It's a simple question. I just want to know if you think you are perfect and incapable of making a mistake?"