Four Friends

* * *

Gerri ordered a pizza for the kids. Once that was devoured, they headed for their evening pastimes—family-room TV, computers, phones, homework, usually in that order.

Gerri fixed herself a drink instead of dinner, wondering briefly if Sonja had a herb for homicidal tendencies. She was going to confront Phil, of course. She’d been with the man a long time. She thought there was nothing she didn’t know about him. I’ve been getting fart marks out of his underwear for almost twenty-five years for God’s sake.

Though it was still biting cold in the March night, she bundled up and went out onto the deck, under the starlight. At least she wasn’t hot. She’d been trying to size up her emotions all day long and still didn’t have a handle on whether she was enraged, confused, hurt or completely off base. She went over every day of their marriage—the births of the children, the fights, the really hard times. There was the year she lost both her parents, one after the other, to cancer—it was a blur. She’d been vacant, wandering around in a complete daze, but Phil had picked up the slack; he was completely there for her. No one could have comforted her better. Could he have done that and still had someone else in his life? Someone he went to and said, “You can’t believe how bad things are at home....”

She saw Phil enter through the kitchen, toss his briefcase and laptop on the breakfast bar and wander through the house, looking for her. It was the first thing he did every night unless she was standing in the kitchen.

Eventually he found his way to the deck just as she was exhaling a long stream of cigarette smoke. Her first cigarette in twelve years. He stood in the doorway, noted the drink and cigarette and said, “Jesus Christ, did someone die?”

“You had an affair,” she said evenly.

He took a panicked step toward her, his face in a frozen state of shock, and after making a partial recovery said, “I’d better get a drink and a jacket.” He turned to go back into the house.

So. He had. If he hadn’t he would have said, “What? What the hell are you talking about?” And all she could think was that the son of a bitch was still good-looking, maybe better looking than he had been at twenty-eight. Fifty-three now, still sporting a full head of that thick rich brown hair, now delicately threaded with gray at the temples. His face was just mildly lined but not so much from age as from the sun on the golf course. Then there were those teeth, beautiful and strong. He was not yet seeing the periodontist but she was. Up till today, she’d been happy for him about that. And he’d managed to stay fit, maybe the slightest paunch, graying chest hair, but he was tall and solid. Strong. She hated him so much.

He came back outside with his own drink, wearing his weekend jacket over his shirt and loosened tie. “Lay it on me, Gerri. What’s going on?”

“You had an affair. I just found out.”

“And where’d you hear that?”

“Never mind. Just tell me. And start with the truth because you don’t know how much I know.”

He took a deep breath and a drink from his glass. Then he said, “I had an affair. Years ago. I’m sorry. It’s been completely in the past for a long, long time. I’m sorry,” he said again. “It wasn’t your fault—it was my fault. My failing, my inadequacy. You can’t imagine how much I regret it.”

“You had an affair,” she said again, blown away by his admission. “I need you to tell me about it. The truth about it. When it started, who it was, when it ended. And most important, why!”

He leaned back in his chair. “The why might be impossible—I’ve asked myself a hundred times. Years ago, years ago, there was an attractive woman in the office. We worked together briefly and hit it off right away—she was very personable, funny. I did the one thing I thought I’d never do— Not only was it straying from my marriage, which I’d never even been tempted to do, but also it was a coworker, the potential for major-league sexual harassment. Defying all common sense, I made a pass. She responded to me. We had a couple of lunches, met for a drink a few times. She was single, lived alone and I made the mistake of going to her place one late afternoon and got carried away, knowing it was wrong, feeling like shit with guilt, but it got started. It ended almost six years ago. Nothing like that ever happened before, and it will never happen again.”

Gerri did a quick mental calculation. Six years ago, while he was having an affair, the kids had been seven, ten and thirteen. She remembered that year and the preceding year—soccer, band, one starting middle school. Her mother had died of uterine cancer nine years ago, her father quickly following of prostate cancer. That had been a horrible time, but by six years ago things had leveled out emotionally. As far as she could remember, there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy going on. They hadn’t had a standoff about him buying a sailboat; none of the kids were sick or in trouble; she hadn’t yet been having the menopausal symptoms that rocked her stable world.

“When did it start?” she demanded.

He hung his head briefly. “Seven years ago. It was on and off for a couple of years. Not steady, but on and off.”

“A couple of years?” she asked, horrified.

“On and off, Gerri,” he said. “I’d see her, then tell her I just couldn’t do that and wouldn’t see her again for months, then slip back, break it off, slip back. And so on.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Slipped? Can’t you come up with anything more intelligent than slipped?”

“No,” he said. “I honestly can’t. I never drank too much, my job was secure, my case load wasn’t any worse or high pressure than usual, we weren’t in any kind of huge crisis that I can remember, you and I were getting along just fine....”

She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and it made her furious. “Then why?” Her voice cracked.

“I don’t know. She wanted me. Someone desirable actually wanted me. You and I were fine, but there were always so many complications keeping us from... I guess I was thinking like an eighteen-year-old. But really, there should be a statute of limitations on shit like this— I screwed up, I haven’t screwed up since and you can be damn sure it won’t happen again. And it was a long, long time ago.”

“Who is she?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “She’s gone. It’s over. We haven’t had any contact in over five years and there’s nothing to be gained.”

“I might have to see her,” Gerri said.

“No,” he answered again. “I don’t know where she is, what her life is like, but I’ve messed up my life enough. There’s no point in messing up hers, as well. Gerri, I realize what happened is unforgivable in your eyes, but I’m here because I want to be your husband and want to be with my family. That’s the bottom line. That’s all I want. Whether it’s perfect or at times difficult, that’s my choice, not something I have to rely on willpower for. There was never any question about loving you.”

“God, you can’t really have done this,” she said. “You had an affair for two years, and I never knew. Never even smelled it in the wind....”

“I wasn’t with her often. I’m busy—you know that. And I never once missed a family thing to be with another woman, I swear to God. I never let it interfere with my family, my marriage or my job,” he said.

“Well.” She laughed humorlessly. “What magnificent control. Tell me, was the sex at least fantastic?”

“Irrelevant,” he said, bolstering himself with a deep drink.

“Not to me, it’s not!”

“Gerri, the worst sex I ever had was fantastic. Men and women probably look at that differently.”

“You know they know in the prosecutor’s office.”

He sipped again. Maybe nervously. “I realize there was some gossip, but I only leveled with one person—my boss. When it was over, I told the D.A. I’d been involved with someone in the office. I find it hard to believe he shared that with the troops. He has a lot of faults, but he learned how to keep confidences years ago.”

“Why’d you tell him, then?”

“I told myself it was because we serve at the discretion of the people—because if there was ever an accusation of any kind, I couldn’t let him be blindsided. But in the years since I realized that it helped to end it for good—confessing. Because I knew what I’d done was wrong and I was consumed by guilt. I think it was like standing up at a meeting and saying ‘Hi, my name is Phil and I cheated on my wife.’ He told me that behavior could not be tolerated and if I valued my job, it had to stop.” Phil chuckled. “Imagine that from him, huh? Son of a bitch has a revolving door for a zipper.” He took another drink. “I could have done the same thing here, with you—confessed, let you hit me over the head with a baseball bat until you were convinced I could be a better husband, but I couldn’t risk losing you.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she stamped out the cigarette. “My God, Phil. I think my insides are festering. I’ll be peeing blood by morning.”

He leaned toward her. He reached for her hands, but she wouldn’t let him connect. “Listen, I did the wrong thing, not you. I hoped you’d never be hurt by it, I hoped I’d make it right over time by being a good partner, a good father. None of it was your fault and I’ll pay the price—but don’t let it eat you up. No reason both of us should carry the load.”

And yet in her mind there were so many things she couldn’t quite place in the context of the affair. She remembered that during sex one night he said, “Didn’t you used to move your hips?” and she had laughed, thinking he was so funny. Was that when he realized he needed a woman with some passion? He’d remarked that he loved her coming to bed naked these days and she’d firmly told him not to get any ideas. They were too tired at night, too rushed in the mornings, had too many kids around the house on the weekends and never, absolutely never got away alone. And then there was the fact that she was hot-flashing her brains out and her vagina felt like sandpaper. The things people don’t tell you about menopause... But five years ago, seven years ago, she hadn’t had any of those symptoms. She had been so content.

He had asked her if she wanted to get away for a weekend, if only to the city. Just the two of them. When was that? He hadn’t asked in a long time and she had never suggested it. They hadn’t escaped—there were always too many family and work obligations. She asked herself if she had driven him to her by being so unlike a mistress, and that made her want to kill him on the spot.

“I never had an affair,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“No! You don’t know! You don’t know any more than I knew about yours, but I’m telling you, I had just as many kids, just as little sex, just as much pressure and I never had an affair!”

“Gerri—”

“Phil, I don’t think I can live with you now, knowing.”

“Let’s not do that,” he said calmly. “Let’s work through it if we can, go to counseling if you want to, do whatever it takes. But let’s not throw in the towel now, after almost twenty-five years and one terrible mistake that I’ll do anything I can to make amends for.”

She shook her head and wiped the moisture off her cheeks. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said with a hiccup of emotion.