The Affair (5 page)

The sky is white, the air is wet and cold. I have such a hunger to be held. I imagine Eddie’s thick arms wrapped around me,
imagine burying my face in his broad chest. I try to picture myself in Roger’s embrace and just can’t do it. The desire isn’t
there. I lost it when he stopped wanting me. Are there women out there who can lust after a husband who clearly has no interest
in them? I can’t.

I remember when he would fix his gaze on me as I undressed. He’d say, “You look good,” and I knew he wanted me and his wanting
stirred my own lust. Now I undress and his eyes are fixed on the hockey game and I’m just another piece of furniture. Granted,
I don’t have the body I did before Pete was born, but that shouldn’t matter, should it? I’ve known all kinds of women—my own
clients—fleshy, jiggly, round women who have sex with their husbands. It can’t be about my body, can it?

So I don’t imagine Roger holding me now. I imagine Eddie. I see the wisps of black hair trailing from his belly to beneath
his pants and wish I could run a finger along that trail. I smell the soap on his skin. I can almost feel the softness of
his lips on mine. It feels so good to know that somewhere in this city is a man who wants me. Why am I torturing myself like
this?!?

Last night I was determined to talk to Roger about our marriage. I had the name of a therapist I respected (we both worked
at the hospital after I got my degree), and I wanted to make an appointment. So what do I do instead? Like a crazy woman I
ask—in the middle of
NYPD Blue
—“Are you having an affair?” He mutes the
TV (he would never actually turn it off) and says, “What in the world are you talking about?”

“Well, I mean, you never want to make love anymore. Is there someone else?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is it that time of the month, perchance?”

I knew what was happening. Obviously, I was projecting. But I couldn’t stop myself. “No, it’s not that friggin’ time of the
month, Roger. Just tell me, are you screwing around?”

He laughed and clicked the sound back on. “If you want to have a conversation about why we’re not having sex, that’s fine.
But if you’re going to make up some crazy story about me and another woman, forget it.”

I rolled over and switched off my lamp.

’Til next time,

Now this is interesting.

Just after I got Petey into bed I heard the phone ring. Roger picked up. I listened for a moment, trying to discern if the
call was for me. Apparently not. He was talking in a familiar tone. Who could it be? His mother? His sister? I walked by the
bedroom and saw him stretched out on the bed. He looked comfortable, as if he was settling in for a long conversation.

I went downstairs to check out the Caller ID. A. R. Elkins. Then I did something I haven’t done since high school. I picked
up the extension in the kitchen and listened in. It was a woman. A very young woman. I heard her say, “I hate this weather.”
I heard her say, “My dog threw up all over the living room rug.”

Then Roger said, “Wait. Someone just picked up the phone.”

Busted.

“Petey, is that you?”

I disconnected the phone from the wall. I listened as Roger’s footsteps moved across the hall to his office. I went upstairs.
I tried to sound casual. “Who called?”

“Was that you who picked up the phone?”

I suppose I could have lied. I could have told him I’d scheduled a fax and it was just the computer breaking in. But something
impelled me to be truthful.

“Yeah, it was me. I was just curious to know who you were talking to.”

Roger swiveled around in his chair and stared at me. “I can’t believe you. You actually eavesdropped on my phone call?” He
shook his head in disgust. “You’re crazy, you know that?” His voice got louder. “You don’t trust me, do you? Well, do you?”
He was yelling now. I was afraid he’d wake Petey. “I trust you fine, Roger. I just wanted to know who was on the phone.”

Turned out it was someone named Alyssa, one of the students in the playwriting class he teaches at the Learning Attic. I told
him I thought she sounded rather chummy. “
All
my students like me. I can’t help that, can I? I don’t see why you have a problem with that.” He is practically screaming
now. His face was red and a thick vein bulged along his forehead. “It so happens that Alyssa needs a little fatherly attention.
Her parents are splitting up. I can’t believe you have a problem with that!”

“Gee, Roger,” I told him. “The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. And do me a favor: Stop screaming!” I slammed the
door as I left his office. I headed back to the kitchen, looking for something
sweet, chocolate specifically. Just for the hell of it I went back to the Caller ID.

Jesus. A. R. Elkins had called every day since last Wednesday, sometimes three and four times a day! Here I was, tormenting
myself over a chaste kiss at an office party, while my husband is messing around with his student? What the hell is going
on?

’Til next time,

It is 3
A.M.
I haven’t had the guts to ask Roger about the girl. She hasn’t called again unless she’s figured out how to disable Caller
ID. I picture her: leggy, busty, blond, full lips, and so damn young. I am torturing myself.

We did the family thing today: made pancakes for breakfast (Petey helped), spent an exhausting day at the children’s museum,
went to Applebee’s for dinner. What a farce: the two of us, trying to be civil for the kid’s sake, interacting with a minimum
of words, gritted teeth, and zero eye contact. In the restaurant I watched an older man stroke his wife’s hair. It was clearly
a familiar gesture; she leaned into him and tucked a hand in his back pocket. Like a teenager, I thought. Such tenderness.
Such affection. How I have wanted that.

My parents had it. I’d find them making out in the kitchen or in the car at the end of an evening out when they thought I
was asleep in the backseat. Or I’d catch Daddy playfully grabbing for my mother’s ass. She’d
shoo him away—only halfheartedly—then he’d pull her close and nuzzle her neck. My sisters and I would shriek: Yuck! But the
truth is, I liked it. It made me feel safer, somehow more secure, knowing that my parents were truly
together.
And they still are.

I always assumed my marriage would be like that. I’d had four intimate relationships from my freshman year in college—when
I lost my virginity—to the month I’d met Roger. Great sex in every case, natural and routine, like brushing your teeth (but
a lot more fun). But it wasn’t just the sex. It was the sense of being profoundly desired.

And it was like that with Roger for the first year or two. Things began to deteriorate the year he left his job at the ad
agency to devote himself to writing plays. Emboldened by the success of his first show, he chucked everything, bought a new
Mac, and holed up in his office. But the second try was a flop and I remember how it cast a gloom on our lives, as if he’d
been diagnosed with some terminal disease.

For a moment there, in the children’s museum, I almost reached out to Roger, almost squeezed his shoulder. Would it have changed
things? Could it have been the beginning of a reconciliation? Why didn’t I do it? Pride? Fear? An unwillingness to relinquish
the fantasy of Eddie?

’Til next time,

I can barely breathe, let alone write. I have made such a mess of things. Eddie came by my office at one o’clock,
slipped a note under my door while I was in session. The note read: “Play hooky with me. Movies and a beer? Meet me at 2 on
the corner.”

The prospect of cutting out for the day felt deliciously wicked. I’d never cut a class, never missed a homework assignment,
never failed to send a thank-you note. Skip out on two clients? I glanced out the window, noticed a pigeon on the ledge, the
sun glinting off its iridescent feathers. Suddenly, impulsively, I grabbed my coat and headed out the door.

“Call my four o’clock and reschedule,” I told Gail. I knew it was too late to reach my three o’clock. She came straight from
school. She was probably already in the cab heading for my office. “And when Alice gets here, tell her I had an emergency
and set up another time this week.”

Right then I could feel the guilt swelling in my throat like a black balloon. I should have paid attention.

Alice is fourteen and clinically depressed. Last summer she found her father in bed with the au pair. He begged her not to
tell, even bribed her with a new puppy, but Alice spilled it. The parents divorced, plunging the mother into near poverty.
Alice blames herself. Last month she started cutting herself, first with paper clips, now with a pocketknife. But she never
missed a session. She told me I made her feel safe.

I thought about the mysterious Alyssa Elkins. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d eavesdropped on that phone conversation.
I didn’t have the nerve to ask Roger if he’s having an affair with his student. I fleetingly imagined her straddling my husband
on the desk in his office at the Learning Attic. It had been six months since Roger and I had had sex, even longer since we
had a real conversation. I
needed
to be with
Eddie. This would be
my
therapy, or so I had myself convinced.

We spent the afternoon like a couple of kids, giddy and free. We caught a matinee, then headed to Pony’s for a beer, and then
on to Space Cave to play video games. There was a kind of underworld element in that dark and noisy room. Who were all those
grown men huddled against these arcades, and why weren’t they at work? Eddie stepped behind me, presumably to help me aim
the rifle. I felt his breath against my neck, his groin against me. “You smell so good,” he whispered. I’d never felt more
aroused. “Let’s leave,” I heard myself say. By now it was 5
P.M.

Then my pager beeped. I found a pay phone and called the office. “It’s about Alice,” my secretary said grimly. “She stepped
in front of a bus. I mean, right here, outside the building. There were witnesses. They say it was no accident. She’s at Memorial.
She’s critical.”