Charlie strode up the stairs ahead of Angelina. It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, but he seemed to have an unlimited capacity to forgive. Had it always been that way or only since he had needed Angelina to reciprocate?
I made it to my room before the familiar emptiness hit me: the feeling I’d had in the morning when I realized it wasn’t going to happen; the way I’d felt as I walked to the plane in 1989; the phone call earlier that year—“You’re Alfred Sharp’s son?” No tears, no feelings, just emptiness. Drained. Hollowed out. Gutted.
It was late, I’d been drinking for hours and had hardly slept the night before, but sleep was not going to come. If I didn’t do something my mind would start churning over the decision I’d taken—we’d taken—reviewing it in the light of what I had just learned, reassessing it in the face of Angelina’s tears. We had come so close to waking up together every morning for the rest of our lives. Only a day ago, I had held it, believed in it. And now: nothing.
I put my earphones in but could not think of anything I wanted to listen to. I hit the Random button and an unfamiliar song began, probably from one of Stuart’s CDs. Piano chords, slow, melancholy lyrics about having nowhere to go. Not what I needed. I was about to skip to the next track when the drums came in.
I lay back, volume up, listening to anthemic rock, cherry-picking the lyrics that connected—hold on if you can—giving myself up to the music the way Claire used to. The three-minute rush that is a great rock song did its magic, and the emptiness began to give way to love and pain and even a little optimism, the energy to go on. Whatever I had lost, there was still music. I was a mess, but it was better than nothingness.
Back in the day, safecrackers used to sandpaper their fingertips to make them more sensitive. That’s how I felt when the song ended: raw, exposed, and vulnerable. Alive. If I walked outside I would feel the grass and the rain with new skin. I wanted to hold on to this, to take it home with me.
And I was ready to go home.
I logged on to the SNCF railway Web site and booked an early-morning ticket to London.
* * *
I woke to the alarm, called the local taxi company, and padded upstairs for a shower and a sober review of the previous evening.
Charlie’s motivation—or his primary motivation—was now clear. “Okay, I bonked the intern or the housekeeper or your best friend; now you can have one in return and we’ll be even. And you won’t be able to take the high moral ground anymore.”
Of all the men in the world that Angelina could have a free pass with, she chose me. I would have chosen her.
The factor none of us had considered was that Angelina and I would fall in love again—or, at least, fall back into the love we once had.
Showered and dressed, I knocked lightly on their bedroom door, and pushed it open. I could hardly leave without saying good-bye to Angelina.
Charlie was out to it, snoring. Angelina’s side of the bed was empty.
There were two other bedrooms upstairs, and I found her in the one that doubled as her wardrobe, sprawled on top of the covers in her blue nightdress. I touched her shoulder and she stirred, but it took a cupped hand to the side of her face to wake her.
“Adam?”
“Are you okay?” She looked wrecked.
“What time is it?”
“Six forty-five. I’m on the eight-thirty train.”
“Oh shit. I’ve hardly slept.”
“The Douglas thing?”
“We had a fight. Another fight.” She lay back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m so over it.” She reached up and pulled me down toward her. “I don’t want you to go.”
I didn’t want to go either, at that moment, with no thought of the consequences. But we had done the hard yards the previous day and I did not want to walk them again. This was hurting us both for no good purpose.
“You’re going to sort it out. We talked about this. I’ve got a taxi booked.”
“Cancel it. I’ll take you to the station.”
She got to her feet, grabbed underwear, jeans, and a sweater from a chest of drawers, then pulled the blue nightdress over her head, looking right at me.
“You’ve got time for a shower, if you want,” I said. “I’ll make you a coffee.”
I went downstairs and turned on the espresso machine.
What we needed right now was a psychologist. Or maybe we only needed Mandy and her Kübler-Ross grief model. Angelina had got stuck in Denial with Richard, but this time she seemed to have moved on to Bargaining. Or would it be: Angelina’s psychological type is compelling her to make a decision—an emotional decision—and you guys keep changing the parameters.
My mother would have had none of this mumbo jumbo. I could see her looking down at Angelina on the bed. For goodness’ sake, how old are you? Go back to your husband and sort it out before he throws you out on the street where you belong.
Angelina joined me in the kitchen, looking more composed but fragile.
“I’m sorry. I was upset. I know we talked about it. But there are things I couldn’t tell you that make a difference. You need to know—”
“Charlie had an affair?”
That stopped her.
“Did I talk in my sleep? He told you? My God, he told you.”
“When did it happen? Before or after the heart attack?”
“After. With one of the women at work.”
Right on both counts. Men are pathetic.
“An affair or just a bonk?”
She managed a laugh at the word from the past. “Charlie would say just a bonk, but I don’t think she would have. It wasn’t only once. She was twenty-nine. Twenty-nine.”
“How did you find out?”
“I know him. I asked and he fessed up.”
If Charlie had listened to that Lenny Bruce performance, he would have known: never confess. So much for the world-class negotiator. Didn’t he remember what Richard had done to her?
“So…”
“I was pretty hurt. I wanted to leave him, and I told myself that he was right: we shouldn’t throw away all the good things et cetera, et cetera, et-fucking-cetera. But I wasn’t nice about it. I made it difficult for him. I made him fire the little bitch.”
“I’d have thought that would be pretty hard to do. You can’t fire people for screwing a colleague.”
“Really? I must tell the guys at work. I’m a fucking equal opportunity commissioner. I told you I made it difficult for him. But I didn’t want her around. She didn’t get fired, technically. She got a fat check and a new job. For almost wrecking a marriage.”
“And you haven’t forgiven him?” Because you can give up your career for your wife, buy her a ring every birthday, adopt her sister’s child, but screw one sheep …
“I know if he could take it back, he would. It was half my fault. After the heart attack, I didn’t want to have sex. I was afraid he’d die.”
“You ever cheat on him? Ever?”
“Never,” said the woman to her lover. “But I guess we’re even now.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I said.
“It’s part of it. Not all. It could only have been you. I wanted to tell you about it, but he made me swear not to tell anyone. Otherwise, he’d leave me. He’d leave me. He’s been screwing some kid and I’m trying to hold it together for the sake of our marriage and he’s the one giving me ultimatums.”
“You’re still angry.”
“Not so angry I can’t think. I kept my promise, my promise to you yesterday, but if he’s told you … I can’t believe he told you … then you understand. Yesterday I told him I forgave him. And I meant it. I had to make myself mean it. That’s what I had to do for our marriage to survive.”
Of course. Charlie had not been hanging out for Angelina to renounce me, but to forgive him. Had saying the words convinced her that she could never really do so?
“I don’t believe you want to lose Charlie.” I would not have believed Mandy wanted to lose Randall, either. Plenty of men think that other men should be forgiven the occasional slip-up.
I looked at my watch.
“You really want to go?” she said.
“I have to.”
Did she realize how close I was to giving in to my emotions and Bob from Idaho, both screaming at me: Take her, take the chance?
Charlie had extracted a promise of silence on the infidelity; he had got forgiveness; now he apparently wanted an apology for the Douglas fiasco of twenty years ago. Why should I have to play God and decide that their wounded marriage was worth more than a chance of us being together? Why should I override Angelina’s adult decision?
Because I knew Angelina. I knew that instinct would drive her to the dramatic decision, to singing “I Will Survive” and walking away. Even against her own best interests. Which made her no different from Mandy or a million other betrayed spouses. What would her best friend say? Probably tell her to walk. But she had known all this yesterday and had made a choice.
* * *
We hardly spoke in the car.
On the platform, she put her arms around me as the train pulled in.
“I asked you something yesterday,” she said. “Do you remember?”
“We said a lot of things yesterday,” I said. “It was a big day.”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing else we can say, is there?”
“No.”
We’d had our chance. I hoped no song would ever re-create what I was feeling at that moment.