Strange Car in the Driveway

"What if I did that to you?"

She let out a deep sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank God!" she said with feeling. "I was worried there for a second. I'm glad you said that, because you have every right to ask me the same thing as I'm asking you. And I have my answer for you, because as you can tell, I've been thinking about this.

"The answer is that I would forgive you. I'm a hundred per cent sure. I don't think I'd be angry for long, but even if I'm wrong about that and I'm angry for a day or a week or even longer, I know I would eventually forgive you. Do you want to know how I can be so certain?"

"Yes," I said.

"Because I know that you would never do anything to me that I couldn't forgive," she said. "You're not like the guys in those plays. You're my husband and the father of my children, and I know you, and I know what you would never do -- you'd never hurt me so bad that I couldn't forgive you."

"Do you want me to hurt you, so you can forgive me?" I asked. "I am confused. Are you telling me this is something we need to experience so our lives can be complete? What do you want?"

"No," she said quickly. "The only thing I want is the answer to my question. Is your answer the same as mine? I don't care if it is or if it's a different answer. I just want to know the truth, even if it hurts."

My head was starting to spin.

"What was the question again?" I asked.

"Let me ask it a different way," she said. "Maybe that will make it easier to answer. If I did something that hurt you for a time, would you forgive me?"

"Let me think for a moment, OK?"

"Sure," she said.

She was looking me right in the eyes. I closed my eyes and tried to stay calm. I tried to not think about what I thought she was talking about.

I carefully composed my answer, and then I changed it half a dozen times. Each time I opened my eyes, she was looking at me. What did she want me to say? I didn't know. Finally, I did what she had asked me to do in the first place. I told her the truth.

"I love you," I said. "So I should forgive anything for love. But there are some things that I'm not sure I would forgive. No, that makes it sound like there's some doubt. There are some things I definitely wouldn't forgive. Does that answer satisfy you?" "Yes!" she said. "It totally satisfies me. I am so relieved."

"Why?" I said. "I'm not saying the same thing as you said at all."

"Yes you are," she said, "because now I know that whatever I do, you'll forgive me."

"Except for some things that I won't forgive," I said. "Were you listening?"

"Yes, yes, but those things don't count."

"Why not?"

"Because, silly, I would never do those things," she said. "You don't have to spell them out. I know what they are, and I would never do them. And since you'd forgive everything else, just like I would, I'm relieved. Let's go to bed."

She stood up quickly. I got up more slowly. She looked at me and smiled.

"Your face tells me you're worried about this conversation, but I'm so glad we had it," she said. "If you still feel this way in a couple of days, I'm going to ask your forgiveness. And then we'll finally get to experience the feeling of being the forgiven and the forgiver."

She laughed her sweet laugh but stopped when she saw I wasn't amused.

All this came back to me as I held onto the dirty wreck to keep from collapsing on the ground. I breathed in deeply and slowly and gathered my wits. As I looked at the strange car in the driveway again, it struck me that I was looking at the first proof of how Vera had been deceiving me -- her first big lie. Reg was no successful stockbroker. This was the car of an actor living on welfare, and the way he took care of it probably showed the kind of person he was.

I walked to the front door and stood in front of it for a few minutes. I hesitated because I never wanted anything more than I wanted to not know what I was going to know in a few moments.

I took out my key, turned it slowly and carefully opened the door trying to make as little noise as I could. I stepped inside and silently closed the door.

As I put down my briefcase and took off my shoes, I could already hear their voices. In my stockinged feet, I slowly walked to our bedroom, where the voices were coming from. Though the door was closed I could hear them clearly.

"How do you know he won't come home early?" I heard a man's voice say.

"Don't be silly," Vera said. "After work, he has to pick up the kids from soccer. We've got at least three hours. Do you think you can last that long?"

"How long can he last?

"I don't want to talk about him. Just get your clothes off and get into bed."

"I can't see the bed."

"Then feel for it."

"Tell me again why the lights have to be off," he said.

"Because I don't want to see you, and I don't want you to see me."

"How am I going to get aroused if I can't see you naked?"

"You'll have to use your imagination," she said. "I think you'll find a way."

"Do you think that if we can't see each other that we're not cheating?" he asked.

"No."

"Why are you doing this anyway?"

"I think I know," she said, "but that doesn't mean I understand it. There are a lot of things I don't understand, and this is one of them."

"Are you sure he hasn't cheated on you?"

"I told you this is not for revenge." she said. "He would never do this in a million years."

"That's what a lot of wives think."

"Is that what Penny thinks?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you feel guilty?"

"Yes, I feel terrible," he said. "I've never done this before either, and she doesn't deserve to be deceived. I don't know why I'm here."

"I just told you."

"What did you just tell me?"

"Why we're here?" she said. "It's because of the guilt. I did a lot of terrible things in college, but I never felt guilty because I was clueless. But now I have a perfect husband, perfect children, a perfect life. And having sex with you is risking all of that. The guilt and fear are tremendous."

"All you're telling me is why we shouldn't do this," he said. "You still haven't told me why we should."

"Yes, I did. It's the guilt and fear. When you finally come over here and get into bed with me, we're going to have the kind of sex neither of us have ever had in our life -- guilty sex. This will be one day we will always remember. It's going to be exciting and powerful and horrible and tragic. We won't do anything much different than you do with Penny and I do with Gary, but every touch will be heightened by overwhelming guilt and fear. It's so strong in this dark room that I can smell it."

"You've certainly built this up for yourself," he said. "I'm not sure if I feel the same way."

"Come over here, and I'll make you feel it."

"I'm still worried about your husband."

"Don't worry," she said. "I hid his gun."

"His gun?" said the man. His voice went up an octave. "You didn't tell me he has a gun."

"He's never shot anyone, it's just for self-defense. But I told you, it's not where he usually keeps it, and even if he did come home early, he'd never find it before you got out of here."

"How big is Gary?"

"Maybe a little bigger than you," she said. "Not big enough to overpower you. I've seen him get angry, but I've never seen him hit anyone. Besides, the bedroom door is pretty solid, and I don't think he could smash through it. If we heard him try, you'd be dressed and out the window long before he could do anything. Stop being so nervous. Are you naked yet?

"Yes."

"Then get over here."

"OK."

I didn't hear anything after that except my body slamming against the door. It took three tries before I broke through.

The room was completely dark, except for the light coming in the door. Something had been put over the windows to shut out the light. I blinked until my eyes adjusted to the dark and then looked around. I didn't see them, although I could hear their voices. I was panting hard, so I didn't hear what they were saying. I switched on the light.

All I saw were two stereo speakers on stands, one on each side of the bed. I heard their voices coming from the speakers. I looked at the bed. In the middle was Vera's tablet with a cable coming out of it. I grabbed it and saw that it went to a device on the floor that had cables leading to the speakers.

I turned off the recording. Then I saw a large Manila envelope next to the tablet. On it, Vera had written: "Dear Gary, Before you look for your gun, please read this."

I looked at the thick envelope a long time. Is this how it ends, I thought, with a disgusting recording of her affair? Is there a video of them in the envelope? What did I ever do to her that she would rub my face in her filth like this? How could she be a completely different woman than the one I thought she was? I was crying and found that I couldn't stand up anymore. I sat down on the bed.

After staring at the Manila envelope for a few minutes, I opened it. There were a lot of typed pages inside. I started reading the first one. It was a letter:

Dear Gary,

I love you and only you, and I am not having an affair. I want to tell you that first because I know you are really upset right now. It's the same way I would feel if I were in your place. But there is nothing to worry about.

This package is an explanation of what just happened, but before I explain, I want to tell you how sorry I am for doing this to you. I hope the whole thing didn't last more than fifteen minutes. Also, this is not a prank. Also, I don't think it's amusing. Now for the explanation.

What you've been listening to is my play, as performed by Reg and me. It got an A+ from the instructor. I told her it's fiction, but I could tell she thinks I'm really having an affair with Reg and that put the icing on the cake for me. Remember, the assignment was to write something from real life or good enough to make her think it's real life.

She loved my idea of two people performing the play on a dark stage, and that's the way Reg and I read it in front of the class. You'll hear the reaction if you listen to the end. We got a standing ovation. Afterward, I told her it was the first and last performance and that no one else would be permitted to hear the recording or see the script except her, and I was counting on her confidentiality because I knew she would never violate the university's code of ethics. It was a threat, and she understood.

The first time I met with Reg, he already knew what his play was going to be about, but I had no idea what to do. I started telling him about our life and asked him to stop me if he heard anything dramatic I could make a play about. He never stopped me.

Before we left the coffeehouse, he told me a little about himself and Penny and their kids. I joked that I felt safe knowing he wasn't an actor. He asked me what I meant, and I told him about Kara's opinions of actors and her warning.

His eyes lit up, and he asked me, what if it wasn't a joke? What if he and I had an affair while we were working on our plays?

I asked him whether he had lost his mind, and he said something like that could easily happen, and it would make for great drama. I said I didn't think I could write that kind of play, but he said to try.

With a lot of pushing by Reg, I managed to do it. It was my idea to do it in the dark, because I was so ashamed of what I was imagining that I was doing to you. He thought that made it even better. I couldn't think of any motivation for me to betray you until he came up with the idea of turning guilt and fear into exciting sex. That was totally sick, but the teacher and class went for it.

I told him about how you liked everything I wrote, whether it was crap or not, and I wished I could get your honest response to my play. I don't know which of us came up with the idea of the car in the driveway. He provided the speakers and the electronics and security detectors that turned the recording on as soon as you opened the door.

I went back and forth a lot of times in the last couple of days. I really wanted to see how you'd respond to the play. Would it sound realistic enough to fool you for a few minutes? I guess I'm just like those insecure, neurotic playwrights that we've been studying. I knew that if I got my wish and you really believed it, it would also make me selfish and cruel, because it would hurt you deeply. Maybe the most disgusting thing I did was last night when I manipulated our conversation. You didn't know it but when you told me you'd forgive me, you were giving me permission to do this to you.

I was afraid you'd destroy Reg's car, so I rented a junk car from a salvage yard. It will be towed back tomorrow. I rented a sledgehammer for you, too. It's in the garage, so if you feel like it, you can pound the car to pieces. I also moved everything valuable out of our bedroom, so you can destroy that, too. You told me a couple of months ago that it was time to get a new bed anyway.

If you are in a rage, I hope you do anything you feel like to work it out. The only thing I want to prevent is you hurting yourself -- or hurting someone else and going to prison. That's why your gun is in a safe place, not in the house.

Reg wanted to mount cameras to record your reaction, but I said no. So we've only been listening to you through the tablet. Right now we're listening to silence while you're reading this. Reg thought you might be curious and listen to the whole play. I bet him that once he said he was naked, the door would be history. We've heard who won the bet. I'm hoping Reg and Penny owe us a couple of steak dinners.

If you didn't wait to hear the whole thing, you don't know the ending, so I'll tell you. I never do sleep with Reg. We end up talking each other out of it. It had to be at least a little realistic for me even though I don't think the teacher liked the ending. If you want, you can read the script. It's in the envelope with this letter.

If you are up to it, you could join Penny, Reg and me at the Denny's near our house, but I don't blame you if you'd rather not. Now that I know you're reading this, I'll wait for you about 15 minutes and then head home. If you feel like yelling at me and throwing things or giving me the silent treatment, I'll completely understand. No matter what you do, I deserve it.

Is there anything else you should know since we always tell each other everything? Yes, I know you held back on your suspicions, but that doesn't count because of how I manipulated you to set you up for today.

Larry and Kara have no idea they helped me. Kara really did see me at the coffeehouse with Reg, and what she told you was completely true. She called me after she spoke to you and screamed at me. I explained to her that the first time she saw me, I was unhappy because I couldn't think of what to write, and the second time I was excited because the play was nearly finished. I told her not to say anything to you because I was under a lot of pressure to get the play done, and I didn't want to have any conversations with you about Reg until later.

The only person you know whom I took into my confidence was your boss. You won't believe how hard she tried hard to talk me out of doing this. Before she finally she gave in and agreed to send you home early, she said that if I ever did anything this cruel to you again she'd come after me herself. I swore on her Bible that I wouldn't. She felt so bad that when she apologizes to you tomorrow morning and asks you to forgive her, she'll tell you about your promotion and raise that wasn't going to be announced until next month. Please act surprised.

Let's take the kids out for pizza after we pick them up later, if that's OK with you.

And last but not least, I love you love you love you and beg you to forgive me.

Love,

Vera