CHAPTER 46

A Call from Elle

It wasn’t late at night when Leda got the call. Eleven thirty really isn’t late. But it felt late to see “Elle” blazed across her phone. It could have easily been three a.m., given the context of their friendship, which had rarely been a phone-call friendship, let alone one late like this. She figured that maybe it was a pocket dial or some other such mistake, but even so she answered. John was trying to fall asleep beside her and she was up with a book. The light on her nightstand was the only beacon in the room besides, now, her phone.

“Hello.”

“Scott is cheating on me.” Leda could hear Elle’s voice shaking.

“What?!” It was all so surreal, Elle’s voice, what she was saying. Leda looked around her bedroom quickly to orient herself. She touched the corner of her book, sharp, familiar, paper present in her hand.

“He’s having an affair.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m freaking out, Leda. How could he do this to me?”

Leda really didn’t know Scott. In fact, until this moment she’d entirely forgotten his name was Scott. Elle didn’t have her relationship status up on Facebook, and apart from two family pictures she’d posted, there was little evidence Scott existed in her life at all, at least to Leda, who knew Elle these days exclusively through selfie smiles and the longing melancholy of food pics.

“I don’t know what to do. I just found out,” Elle said.

“Are you sure it’s true?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Oh my god, Elle. I’m so sorry.”

“I am in total shock. I didn’t think Scott could do this. I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me. I swear to god I wouldn’t.”

From the two pictures Leda had seen of Scott, he looked too handsome for real life, like every leading man in a Lifetime movie or Bradley Cooper. He seemed like someone who wasn’t born out of a vagina but rather just sprang up fully grown from a snowdrift in Aspen, already wearing Patagonia as he smiled and said things like: “We’re headed to Cabo for the weekend” or “We’re going wine tasting in Napa.”

“How did you find out?”

“I went through his phone. I don’t usually snoop, I’m not that kind of wife, but he left it out, and I just had this weird feeling that I should look at it.”

Leda wondered what “kind of wife” Elle thought would do something like that. She imagined a woman who was pushy and nosy wearing some kind of apron and looking the very opposite of chic as she folded sheets and angrily fluffed pillows. Someone who would yell at a man to straighten up and fly right. Someone who just didn’t give a damn about the mirage of trust foisted upon love. Maybe it’s actually those kinds of women who are actually secure with themselves, Leda thought. Maybe they’re the ones we should all be.

“I found all these text messages of him being like, ‘I’ll meet you at seven,’ and ‘She’s home.’ Can you believe that I’m the she? That one really killed me.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yeah, and then there were all these sexual ones, so there’s no way he can tell me it’s anything but an affair.” Elle paused. “Her name is Chelsea. What kind of a slut name is that?” Elle hung on the word slut for so long it was like she was spelling it. The s, the l, the t all rang out over the phone as if semen were just pumping through her veins.

“I am so sorry,” Leda said.

“She has fake tits too. He always told me he liked small breasts, but that was clearly a lie, ’cause she has Big. Fake. Tits.”

“How do you know this?”

“I found her on Instagram. She has like twenty-three thousand followers. Can you believe that? It’s probably the number of dicks she’s sucked. Here, I’m sending you a link to her account.”

Leda clicked the link and looked through the pictures. The woman was stunning in a slutty kind of way. Her tits were definitely fake, as Elle had said. They were round and alienating like all fake breasts were, existentially existing on a plane higher than anyone could reach, certainly higher than either Leda or Elle ever could. Among the pictures there were thousands of selfies. There was Chelsea in a bikini, Chelsea standing near a cactus, Chelsea wearing overalls with no shirt on, Chelsea eating some kind of sexually suggestive fruit. Scrolling through them, it was hard not to feel that her friend was in trouble. It seemed that this round-breasted woman buoyed far above the currency that was paper Elle. On the surface it would be assumed that Elle would be favorable in her husband’s esteem, given the time, and the love, and the children, but staring at this perky, perfect, slutilicious figure it was clear that Elle was falling, Elle was flailing, Elle was likely worth less.

“She’s ugly,” Leda lied.

“You think so?”

“Yeah, she’s gross and so trashy. Don’t even think about it for a second.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes, she’s a total whore.”

“I think her lips are fake too.”

“I’m sure they are. They’re, like, way too big.”

“I bet she doesn’t even look like this in real life.”

“There’s no way. I guarantee every single picture is Photoshopped.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

Leda knew that at this moment in her life all Elle felt was a repudiation of everything she ever was funneled through these filtered Instagram pictures. To confirm to her that she was prettier than this woman who was having sex with her husband, touching him, lying beside him, filling a space that only she was meant to fill, was all Leda had to offer as a friend right now. The monumental confirmation of everything despicable and desperate that had ruined so much of both their lives was Elle’s only beacon. How cruel, how sick were thoughts that Leda wouldn’t think but certainly should have.

“I don’t know what to do,” Elle said.

“What did he say when you confronted him?”

“I haven’t yet. It’s not that easy with Scott. We don’t have the kind of relationship where I can just start crying to him about this.”

“What do you mean?”

“He and I, we just don’t have the kind of relationship where we share everything. It’s complicated, but I just can’t imagine myself sitting there and telling him this. Saying her name and talking about her big fake tits and the whole thing. I cannot even imagine it.”

“But you have to tell him,” Leda said.

Elle was silent for a moment and then said something jumbled that Leda couldn’t quite make out. She had a vision of her friend squatting in some corner with a cell phone pushed to her face. Where is she right now? A closet in her big, fancy house while he sleeps and she sits desperately next to purses?

“I like my life, though, Leda. He’s made a fool of me, but I do like my life.” Elle paused. “Do you think he goes down on her? He’d never go down on me our whole relationship. I asked him once, and he said it wasn’t his thing, but he said the same thing about big breasts, so who knows.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“I would die if he does. I would absolutely die. I’ve felt bad about this forever. You know, I’ve been with him so long now that I don’t even remember what it feels like to be without him. And what am I going to have to say, I’m divorced? Divorced.” Elle’s voice clicked heavily on the word. “That just isn’t me. It’s not who I am.” Elle paused again. “Do you think he’s told her he loves her? Do you think he loves me?”

“Of course he loves you!”

“You know how many blow jobs I’ve given him with absolutely nothing in return?”

Why are men so complacent about getting head and not giving it? Leda thought. She’s felt bad forever and he doesn’t give a damn, because he’s a man and men think their pleasure is your pleasure and your pleasure is nothing. Leda wanted to say something about this but wasn’t quite sure how to word it. “You deserve better” was the best she could do.

“And to think that I’m the ‘she’ to him. I’m the ‘she.’ The ‘she,’ Leda. The ‘she.’ ”

“He’s an asshole.” Leda needed to tread lightly here. There was a thin line between husband/father and dirty rotten cheater that was essential to the success of this conversation.

“He is an asshole,” Elle said, and she started to cry.

Did I push it too far with the “asshole” thing? Leda wondered.

“You know what, Leda? One of my biggest fears is that I’ll die and I’ll have made no difference in the world. Sure, my children will be sad, but that’s it. It’ll be like I never existed.”

“That’s crazy.” Leda briefly thought back to Annabelle’s tiny desk and chair. They’d long since been moved to the garage. They were upside down now, stacked, dusty.

“I don’t know. Maybe it is crazy. I’m just…I do love him. I do. Why did this have to happen? He wasn’t even acting weird, that’s the part that pushes me over the edge. Everything was the same. I was just living my life, and all along he had this whole thing going on. He was living this totally separate life that has nothing to do with me or our family. I feel so humiliated. Like I was sold a lie all these years. I’m not who I think I am because he isn’t who I thought he was.”

Leda tried to think of something comforting to say to her dear friend. They’d grown close in these last twenty minutes. It was as if the time they’d grown apart hadn’t existed at all. Trauma could do that in friendships among women. It wasn’t the time to feel superior or to put your happiness out on the table, as was often the bread and butter of female friendships. No, it was the time to band together and find emotional clarity off of each other’s estrogen. Leda figured that maybe the reason Elle had chosen to call her, out of all people, her friend from college whom she hadn’t talked to in years, was that she didn’t know Scott beyond those two pictures. He was no more to her than a fragment of Elle’s life. He didn’t define her in the way he surely defined her to herself. Maybe I’m her lifeline to the lady who sold the combs, she thought.

“Listen, Elle, you’re going to be fine. You were fine before this and you’re fine now. I know it doesn’t feel like that this second, but it is true. Don’t be scared. Be strong, be fearless. And most of all, you should be happy.”

Leda and Elle talked a few more minutes after that before Elle wanted to get off the phone. She thanked Leda over and over and made promises about getting together in the near future. Leda could hear Elle’s breathing stabilize and that she was no longer crying.

“I’m going to talk to him tomorrow” was the last definitive thing she said regarding the affair.

A few days later Elle changed her relationship status to “Married” and added a new picture of her and Scott on the beach together in a warm embrace. It got over a hundred likes and comments along the lines of: “You two are still the cutest couple I know” and “Perfect!” Leda wasn’t all that surprised. Partly she’d sensed Elle’s hesitation on the phone that night, and part of it was something she’d learned through many, many different women in her life: good women stay with bad men.

“I think it’s probably a ten-to-one ratio of decent women to decent men,” Anne had said not long after a bad breakup.

“Really? That seems a bit harsh,” Leda said.

“Oh, yeah? Name three guys you’d date right now.” Leda was already married to John at this point, but for the life of her she couldn’t. She ran through a mental Rolodex of men she knew, single, not single, and so many of them were selfish or gross or unemployed. On more occasions than she’d be willing to admit she’d met a girlfriend’s significant other and been wildly disappointed. Beautiful, strong, incredible women would date the most egregious of people.

At some point in her freshman year of college she’d gone dancing with a girl from her biology class named Erin in an effort to get over her ex.

“You’ll be over that loser in no time,” Erin said.

“Yeah, fuck him!” Leda continuously felt the need to denigrate her ex whenever she spoke to Erin, because Erin seemed to be very tried and true when it came to men. “Hey, he either steps it up or I get a new vibrator!” was Erin’s personal dating mantra, and Leda was quite impressed.

They planned to go out to a sports club in downtown Boston. Leda wasn’t much for clubs, but Erin had convinced her it was a great way to meet guys. After an incredibly demoralizing encounter with a guy who danced with her for 2.3 seconds, said “Let me know when it gets awkward,” and then half a second later whispered “You’re beautiful” and walked away, Leda became violently ill from bad Chinese takeout. She spent the majority of the night in a bathroom stall listening to women peeing and then clanking out of the bathroom over and over between stomach cramps and dry heaves. By midnight she’d managed to finally get herself in condition to head back out, where she found Erin dancing the night away with some guy wearing a bizarre T-shirt with dolphins all over it. He looked younger than he probably was and had a rat-tail down his back. When Leda tried to talk to him, he answered everything in Austin Powers quotes: “Yeah, baby!” and then “Oh, behave!” Erin laughed like it was funny, and Leda lost all respect for her tried-and-true friend. These are the standards of a woman who told me my ex was a loser? She took a cab home and typed out a text to her ex-boyfriend that she’d never send. “I miss you,” it said. She avoided Erin after that.

It seemed to Leda women would spout ideals that were in no way reflective of the men who stood by their sides. Another friend she’d known from school, Hanna, a wickedly intelligent woman who had four degrees, including a PhD in women’s studies, married a guy who regularly used the term fat chicks and posted all kinds of articles arguing that pay inequality was a myth. “Me and my hubby disagree about politics but we agree about snuggles,” she’d posted beside a picture of them. Snuggles? Leda thought. Et tu, Hanna?

And if it weren’t some conflict of ideals it was just a kind, loving, good woman matched up with a short-tempered asshole, or a cheater, or a bum. Women making excuses over and over and for what? The shallow sense of self it provided? Is it shallow when it feels like everything? Leda wondered.

She thought to text Elle after seeing her post. Maybe she’d frame it innocently, as “How are you?” or maybe she’d just go for it and say “You’re staying???” But really she felt that she shouldn’t judge her dear Elle floating and flailing in her rich relationship. Life was hard and short and happiness was complicated and dusty.

That night Leda cuddled up close to John. She felt grateful for his kindness and his warm body pressed up against her. As she drifted off to sleep, she thought about Grace, a girl she knew in middle school who gave an eighth-grade boy a blow job. It was the first blow job any of the girls had given, and the details of it circled the school three times over. “She swallowed” wafted up and down hallways as girls huddled close in disapproval and sheer awe. In the context of seventh grade the repercussions of the blow job meant many things, but mostly it meant a new tool on deck for scores of girls to feel simultaneously intimidated by and superior to Grace. With an eye roll or one giggly comment so much power could be dealt and wielded and ripped in and out of each other’s hands. How awful, Leda thought. She then thought of Elle and her smiling face on the beach, looking as perfect as always, and she was sad and angry and exhausted by it all.

Little did she know then that the phone conversation from days before would be the last time she’d ever speak to her friend. There would be no more desperate calls or texts, no more lunches, no more contemplative reasoning between the two of them. Off into the ether their friendship would go, and that night they both slept beside men who loved them.