Unfaithful: A Romance

Sure. Be "Miss Congeniality." That's the "B" prize.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. But what can I do? Sarah already chose George. He gives her something I can't offer. Something I haven't got.

* * * * *

(4) Purgatory

Michael saw Sarah once. She came to his office the second day as he was busy trying to keep from thinking about it. Not very successfully. He'd been by the house when she was gone, like he said, and had left a note on some practical matters. He'd added a postscript, asking her not to come see him, but there she was in the doorway.

She was dressed smartly and had used make-up. He could tell she was scared and it reminded him how much he loved her. Everything became jumbled for him again so that nothing was going to be easy. He wanted to crush her to him and tell her he couldn't live without her. He wanted to beg her to take him back. He wanted to shout at her and tell her to stop fucking with his heart, to leave him alone so he could shrivel up without having to deal with her. Instead he managed to say, "Hello," and make his voice normal, but right off she made a big mistake.

"Mike, I know what I did was terrible, but it's just something that happened one time, and it'll never happen again. I promise it won't!"

Little things can change your world, things much smaller than finding your wife with another man. In the realm of all that could be, this was a very small thing indeed, finding your wife trying to lie her way back in. Such a little thing.

Outwardly Michael merely winced. Inside he was outraged. Bitch! Bitch! Fucking, lying bitch! Somehow that made it easier to talk, so he really did shout out loud at her, and everyone must have heard.

"Jesus Christ, Sarah! Do you think I was born yesterday? You can't even be honest about what went on? The very first thing you tell me? God damn! There's nothing to say. How could I ever believe anything you said?"

He watched her shrink down inside herself. Oh shit. I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to do it. I didn't have to pound her.

"Mike, no..." Sarah looked around, and put her hands up in a supplicating gesture, but Michael was too wound up. At least he lowered his voice.

"Go away. Please, Sarah. Just go away. Think about what you really want. Go back to your wonderful fuck. Don't come around to lie to me. It's bad enough you've got another man, but you couldn't even respect me enough to tell me the truth."

So she left. She gulped twice and seemed about to cry, but then she set her mouth and, looking neither left nor right, walked back down the hall.

* * * * *

One day led to the next.

He lectured days, because he had to. He tried to write. He sat in his crummy little efficiency night after night and wondered what Sarah was doing to George. He went to a movie but left in the middle and didn't go to any others.

There were practical issues of living apart, so he called several times to leave messages on the answering machine. One day the message in his voice was replaced by one in hers. Another time he called and Sarah picked up the phone and he hung up. He started shaking. After that he didn't call anymore, but left written messages on her door. He didn't tell her his address and he didn't list his new phone number. Sarah didn't come to the office again and she didn't call there either.

* * * * *

One week led to the next.

There was this singles club Michael found his third weekend, when he was crazy with loneliness. He met a woman and they talked and he could tell in five minutes where it was going. They went to her apartment where they sexed. During it he stood, half-leaning back against her desk and she knelt in front of him and sucked him off. It was wonderful. It felt marvelous and the thought of her swallowing his sperm gave him a stupendous orgasm that left him reeling. She seemed to like the whole thing, too. Afterwards, of course, he realized he had just copied George and Sarah. Really he'd known it all along, but he'd been too caught up in it to care. That came a little later.

He went to another singles club the next weekend, where he met another woman. He could tell pretty quickly that he was going to score with her, too. He'd never dreamed there was such a pool of available women. He'd known but he hadn't.

When she found he was a professor and she didn't have to play dumb, she told him her hobby was collecting English antiques. She said she identified with Elizabeth I, because that was her name, too, and because her hair was red.

Michael said, "Not a virgin queen, I hope."

He went to Elizabeth's house and they fucked. She gave him a blow job, too, and it was nearly as good. He wondered if all women at singles clubs sucked cock, and resolved to find out. Elizabeth was different from the first woman, though. She was interesting and funny, and her house was packed with prints and old objects, and books. She liked antique furniture. She wasn't just a sex toy to Michael. Not just.

They were sitting on Elizabeth's couch, naked, with the lights off, watching "Antiques Road Show" while they kept each other bothered. When Elizabeth was distracted by an 18th century Chippendale dresser, Michael pushed two fingers up inside her. It was almost better for him than fucking her. She lay her head back and closed her eyes and had just enough presence of mind to moan, "You bastard." He masturbated her for a few minutes, enough to get her most of the way there, then they watched the show some more while he smelled his fingers. When an appraiser asked the owner of a frontier doctor's case if she knew its dollar value, Elizabeth leaned down and took Michael's penis in her mouth. A few minutes later she asked him if he had noticed the value.

"Who cares?" He answered. "You're worth far more than it."

He liked her, enough to call her during the week, and a few weeks later they flew to DC for the weekend, to an exhibit at the Smithsonian and "The Taming of the Shrew" at the Shakespeare Theatre.

Elizabeth brought sex toys along. One was a cord with seven balls attached in sequence. Michael got a hard-on the moment she pulled it from her suitcase. Sarah would never do something like that, he thought. Maybe for George.

The sex toys gave Michael an idea. He told Elizabeth, "This weekend, I'm Petruchio and you're my sweet Kate, and you have to do everything I tell you."

She looked blankly at him for a second, then smiled and pulled out her ancient copy of the play. "Wait a minute." She looked up the lines she wanted. Then, "I am bound to serve, love and obey."

* * * * *

Elizabeth is kneeling, her head on a pillow, her ass high in the air, waiting for the enema to act.

"Petruchio, my Lord, it is time."

"Then be quick, Katherina."

Shortly, Elizabeth is kneeling again and Michael is playing with her vagina and her ass. He takes the cord and a tube of lubricant and begins pushing the balls into her rectum, one, another, another. She gasps with each one. When all that remains outside is a short length of cord, he rises.

"Get dressed. It's time to go to dinner."

"My Lord! No!"

"Come."

She gasps again several hours later, after dinner, after the play, when he finally pulls the balls out, one by one by one. She gasps and moans again when he fucks her ass while using a vibrating dildo in her vagina. Afterward they lie together with Michael on top, and the room seems to rise and dip. He doesn't think of Sarah at all, not even that he hasn't done sodomy in years, not since Sarah told him she didn't want to do that anymore. No, not Sarah. Not Sarah. Not her.

* * * * *

When they slept together afterward, he found Elizabeth liked to touch. Like Sarah, she would be touching him when he awoke during the night, her forehead or her feet or a hand. Once he woke from a dream, disoriented, and found himself on the edge of the bed, and she was pushed up against him.

"Sarah, honey, you need to give me a little more room."

Oh shit!

"Huh? Did you say something, Michael?" asked Elizabeth. She yawned.

"Yeah, Lizbeth. We need to move back to the middle of the bed."

"Oh, okay." They moved back and she fell asleep again, with a hand on his chest.

She slept like Sarah.

Michael stared at the alarm clock for awhile. He put a hand atop Elizabeth's. It felt like Sarah's hand.

* * * * *

They would have seen each other again, and something might have come of it, except for a coincidence. It was almost Sarah's birthday. He'd thought of it now and then, and it hit him when be brought Elizabeth home from Washington, because she had an area by her front door planted in Calla Lilies.

It might have been different if they'd been any other sort of flower, but Calla Lilies were Sarah's favorites. After she and Michael had seen an exhibit of Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings, she'd torn up a good part of the garden to plant them. O'Keeffe had claimed her flowers weren't sexual, but Sarah wasn't fooled. She knew they were abstract visions of vaginas, and that knowledge made her love them more, so Michael had surprised her with a book of O'Keefe flowers for her birthday. She'd gone through the entire book at one sitting, and then had attacked him. That's why they'd gotten a large print of a Calla Lily for the bedroom, and why he'd taken to calling Sarah's vagina "Lily." It became part of their love play, a term of sexual affection.

* * * * *

Michael is sitting on the rocker in the den, reading a book on the role of disease in history, when Sarah walks past behind him, pauses, and bends over. She's just going to give him a peck atop his head, but no, she lets her hair cascade so that it flows on both sides of his face, tickling his ears and his cheeks, spilling all the way down to his chest. She's the only woman in her office to still grow her hair long. She runs her hands down her hair, across his shoulders, to his chest, leaving them right over his nipples. Her hair lets them move smoothly, as though over silk, to where she makes gooseflesh on his chest, and Michael is aware of all these things about Sarah, her hands, her mouth on his hair, her murmur, "Sweetheart, Lily needs to be fed," and he's hard before the book is down.

* * * * *

The memory flooded through the car as he drove home from Elizabeth's. He replayed it over and again, all the way home. At a stoplight the car behind him honked because he didn't notice the light change. It wasn't a distant memory. It had happened just before he'd left for that last meeting.

He remembered all through the night. He wasn't going to sleep, so he thought of Sarah. Sarah was distant, Sarah was gone. Sarah crowded out Elizabeth. She wouldn't let him go. He finally made up his mind to do something he had resolved before not to do, get Sarah a present.

Isn't it unforgivably cold to ignore a birthday? It's necessary, Michael argued. She'd see it as a sign of desperation. It would just make things harder before she decided to make that official break that was bound to come. Doubtless George would give her something. Oh yes, George would give her something. Toward morning, though, it seemed that Michael should do it, give her something special.

He bought Calla Lilies, of course. He never thought of anything else. Would this somehow mess up what was beginning to happen with Elizabeth? When the time came he almost didn't leave them. Idiot! Idiot! Drop it. Don't cling! He left them on her doorstep, the doorstep of the house filled with the memories the two had made, that was alien now. George's fuck house. He left it with a note:

~~~* * * * *~~~

Dear Sarah:

Please have a happy birthday. Though it may be time for our lives to part, I'm grateful for the days we had together.

Yours with affection,

Mike

~~~* * * * *~~~

He'd worked hard to get the words right. It must have been over an hour, with several cards ruined, before he had given up.

* * * * *

(5) Face to face

Sarah should have been a detective. Twenty minutes after she got home she took the arrangement to the florist and demanded to know the address of the man who had bought it. She said he'd been stalking her and she'd go to the police if they didn't tell her.

Shouldn't Michael have expected Sarah to do something? He had, after all, given her a loaded present. But he did and he didn't. Sure, he fantasized this and that, but he didn't consider the real possibilities. He shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when she knocked at his door. He truly didn't expect her, hadn't a clue. For a moment, looking through the peephole, he even thought of playing possum. You'd think he would be more self- assured, now that he knew women found him desirable.

What did she want from him? She had no special make-up this time, no special clothes. Her face was pink around her eyes. She looked different somehow. She looked drawn. He had to open the door to her, and when he did it was like no time had passed at all. Was she gathering courage to tell him goodbye?

Sarah did gather her courage again, the way she had that first morning, and had again at his office. She began talking, rushing the words out before he sent her away again. She was naked emotionally, eyes wet, voice quavering, and even Michael could tell.

"Mike, let me say what I have to say before you slam the door on me. Please come home. Please. I'm miserable without you. I hate myself and I'm lonely for you."

Michael should have fallen at her feet. Part of him wanted to, but he didn't trust her. He didn't understand. He thought she couldn't be serious, not really. What should he say? Was there a line inside him somewhere? A phrase from a punishment fantasy jumped out. "Well it can't be for lack of good sex...oh shit!" Michael grimaced and shook his head. Bite my damn tongue! "Damn! Damn! God damn me, Sarah, I'm sorry. I'm not very good at this."

She'd flinched. Yes she had. But she responded to the hidden question. "The truth is, I haven't had any sex at all since you left."

With everything swirling in his head, he couldn't resist upping the ante. "That's ironic, Sarah, because I have."

Stop it you asshole! Stop hurting her! She's defenseless. Call it a win and move on. Sarah would have been impressed by the battle going on inside her husband. She wasn't finished. When she continued, Michael came to realize she was much braver than him.

"There's no one at all. I don't want anyone else. I keep waiting for you to call or come back. Now you've sent this card saying you want to leave me forever. Please Mike." Her voice dropped, became soft, weak. "I'm begging you for another chance."

Then she looked him in the face, wide eyed, wet, and defenseless. He could have smashed her if he wanted to. What did that birthday card say? Why did she want him? He still didn't understand, not completely. He subdued himself and recovered his soul, but he had to ask something that could be ugly. Don't be vicious, but ask. He made his voice as soft as hers,

"Sarah, I don't know. I just don't know. Are you sure you know what you want? What of George?"

Sarah sniffed and wiped her eyes, then her nose. "I told him I can't see him anymore. That I won't see him anymore. That I want my husband back. I want you back. I want my marriage back." Her voice broke during the last sentence, but she regained her control and finished. "I quit my job, because I couldn't work around him. I interviewed for a new job, and I think I'll get it."

Oh God. Is this real?

So of course Michael opened the door and let Sarah in, but he was careful they didn't touch. He brought her a tissue and offered her a seat at one end of the couch and asked if he could get her anything, while he tried to remember what he had vowed to say if this ever happened. He was polite and formal as he sat on the other end, and he tried to keep his voice from shaking. How easy it had once been to talk to her.

"Sarah, I need to say something first. This is hard, so let me try to say it right. The thing is, I don't know if we should try to get back together. Whenever I think about it I go round and round. I'm not sure...I don't know..."

Try again.

"The truth is, I don't know that I can give you what George could. That you'd be happy with me. So I have to know the truth about it. The whole truth. Whatever happens I can't stand any dishonesty. I just can't."

"Mike..."

"Let me finish. Please. Please." He waved his hand spastically in front of his face. "I don't need to know about any other men, but I need to know..."

"Mike, there weren't any other men. Please believe me about that. This was..."

"Sarah, I don't need to know...okay. Okay. Look. Okay. Oh Jesus. Before we go any further." He took a deep breath. It was time. "Sarah, I was unfaithful to you."

"I know. You just said..."

"No. Before that. I slept with other women before that."

She didn't say anything at all for a minute. She was completely still. Finally she asked, "Why are you telling me this? Do you want to punish me more? Believe me, Mike, you can't hurt me more than I'm hurting myself."

"No. No Sarah. I really don't want to hurt you. Part of me did, but not anymore. But I don't want anything false between us. I'm confessing...because I'm not pure...and I love you too much..." His eyes were watering and he was breathless. No, not that! That was all he did for Sarah. No wonder she'd left him. "I love you too much...I don't know...to hold anything over you." He screwed his eyes and mouth shut, pulled his head down into his shoulders, and made a fist at his side. He didn't move for several seconds.

"Mike?"

He held his other hand up, his fingers spread wide. Give me a minute, he thought. I can do it. He was so deep within himself, trying to keep control of himself, that he didn't hear her ask, "You still love me?" Finally he took another deep, deep breath, looked at her, and continued. "I thought about this a lot, Sarah. I can't judge your doing something when I did things. Maybe we can't work things out, but I'm not going to try to do it with a lie. If I held something over you when I'd done the same thing...well...you can see. It wouldn't ever be right. It couldn't. So....So...I can't lord it over you. Everything has to be a clean slate."

He didn't want her to see him like this. Damn me! He closed his eyes again when he finished and turned away from her, which kept him from seeing her lean to him. The first he knew was when Sarah took his hand.

It's a good sign for togetherness when you can cry together. It wouldn't seem to be true, would it?.

* * * * *

(6) Confession

"Are you ready for me to tell you about what happened?"

"I think so." Kissing Sarah's temple, smelling her hair, running his hands all over her, holding her close. It was enough to have her. What would he do if he could tell she lied now? Would he keep her, even if? Even if he knew not to trust her again?

"Well, I did lie to you about how often I'd been with, you know."

"Uh huh."

Sarah picked his hand off her hip and pressed it to her mouth. Then she continued, but she didn't let go of his hand. "We were together five times. Four that we...this is hard, Mikey. Four times that we went all the way."

"It's okay, babe. It's okay." He kissed her forehead. She smelled like lilacs.

"Okay. Well. Well, the first time he just masturbated me. We'd been flirting on and off for a while. It was almost innocent. Then one afternoon we were alone in the supply room and the flirting got out of hand and he just kissed me. No. That's not true. I don't want to admit it to you. I kissed him. I'm sorry, Mike, but I did. It was an impulse. When I did it he grabbed me and I got excited. Then he reached up under my skirt and.. you know ... played with me."

She stopped for a moment to kiss Michael's hand again, as though it were a good- luck charm. He kept one arm around her, holding her close so she'd know it was okay.