Kylie
The room stinks. I stink.
Here’s the thing. I have been a better wife to both of them because I have two husbands.
Or is that just what I’ve always told myself?
When I was a child, it was always clear when my father was seeing other women. Unlike some sorry-assed adulterers he did not try to smother his culpability with compensatory acts of sorrow or regret; he did not buy my mother guilt flowers. He did not recognize his own fault and responsibility. Far from it. Instead he blamed my mother for not being enough for him. He punished her for making him stray. My father did not like to see himself as a bad person, an adulterer. He reasoned that she made him behave worse—be worse than he wanted to be—because he was somehow, on some level, forced into adultery because of her failings. Madness, I know. But his own particular brand of madness and we all have one.
Guilt and unacknowledged self-loathing meant he itched for opportunities to blame her, to find her lacking so that he didn’t have to blame himself. A poorly ironed shirt, a tea bag left in the kitchen sink, a differing opinion on a TV show could lead to a humdinger, knockout, nasty knuckleduster of a row. A fight. He never physically hurt her—he didn’t have to—his words wounded. Mortally. He would accuse my mother of being cloying and beneath him. This confused me later, after he told me there are women you marry and women you fuck. My paraphrasing. He said there are women who are something, others who are nothing. But in that case, what was my mother after he stopped being married to her? An ex-something? Was Ellie really the only something?
It didn’t matter what he said to Mum, how much he insulted her, blamed her, ignored her, he couldn’t make himself feel better—he could only make her feel worse, which was what he was running from in the first place; hurt feelings.
My mother was strongly disinclined to fight back. She often said, “Hush now, Hugh, you don’t mean that. Stop saying things you’ll regret.” But he would rail anyway, yell, blister, bark, squall for hours. Eventually, she learned not to fuel his fire with platitudes which he thought were cowardly, and over time she resorted to silence or tears. It was cruel. Hard to watch.
I would not be like him. I refused to be. That much I have always been sure of. I know what the universal opinion is of people who have affairs. They are unilaterally dismissed as bad, undisciplined, selfish. I love both men and I have always been good to both men. I married them to be something better than a common adulterer. People who have affairs always think they are so special, so groundbreaking and different, but they are not. They are ordinary, predictable, boring.
At least I am not that.
I would not have a constant seesaw of affection. Favoring one man because he was the first, the next because he was a novelty. There was no hierarchy. No other man. Not that such a concept exists for their gender. We hear of the other woman, not the other man. No one thinks a man can be anything other than center stage. He is never just a bit on the side. He is never called a homewrecker. But there are names, humiliating tags that I would not permit. I would not have a cuckold and a lover, both labels marred with preconceptions. One pitiful, the other unstable. And I would not blame Mark for not being enough, Daan for being too much.
It is not much of a defense, I know, but I did at least take onus. I owned the guilt and grief; I absorbed it all. I rarely row with either man. In fact, things that Mark and I might have usually argued about, had indeed previously and reasonably bickered about—like whose turn was it to go to the supermarket or where we were going to go on holiday—I have let go since I married Daan. I smile. I brush it aside. I let him have his way. I always go to the supermarket. He always chooses our holiday destinations.
The stench of my waste lingers in the air. I can’t get used to it. I can’t ignore it. I’m so hungry again.
“Please, this is enough now,” I wail out loud.
I am a better wife to Mark because I am married to Daan.
I am a better mother too. More patient, more fun, more alive. I am better because there was an excess of energy, garnered from my other life. I never mummy slump. When out for a family walk, I don’t leave them to trail, heavy-footed behind Mark and me, heads bent over phones or earbuds in, trapping them in a world I can’t access. Instead I walk alongside them, sometimes I hop or jump, behave childishly. Which they enjoy. It diminishes the difference between us, moves me closer to them. I set challenges. “Race you to that tree.” “Race you up that tree.” I build camps in the woods with them. At home I play FIFA on Xbox with Seb and Warzone with Oli, I talk to them about more than schoolwork. Our conversations flit from rappers to YouTubers to haircuts, friendships, girls, travel, sport. My absences from my boys are inexcusable. I know it. Possibly inexplicable. But when I am with them, I am at least 100 percent with them. I do not spend my time nose buried in my phone or out on long, private runs. All parents have outlets. Everyone needs an escape.
I have never confided the particulars of my situation to anyone. How could I? But if I had, they would have asked, “Why not just leave Mark? Why not just divorce?” There are myriad answers to those questions. I still love Mark. I thought that would change but it didn’t. I trust Mark. I have a life and a home with Mark. The boys. I don’t always trust Daan. I can’t have children with Daan. Or anyone. I owe Mark. I am indebted to him for giving me his sons, children I’d never have any other way. I couldn’t bear to hurt Mark. Daan doesn’t need me as much as Mark does. Mark doesn’t want me as much as Daan does. The reasons collide, mesh, mash. They never stop flooding my brain. There is one reason.
The boys.
I’ve loved them with every fiber of my soul since the moment I clapped eyes on them. They fill me up with so much love and meaning that there are times when I’ve thought I might explode with the joy of being their mother. And I fill them too. They need my love—they need me. I know that it was part of my appeal to Mark that I loved them so entirely. He wanted a lover, maybe even a wife, but he needed a mother for the boys. Someone to unfurl his boys. I put my cool hand on the heat of their grief and drew it away, soothed. What you need and what you want being perfectly aligned is a rare and wonderful thing. Mark grabbed it with both hands. The boys blossomed under my care. When I married Mark, I officially adopted them.
I reach for the water bottle; the label is smeared with my diarrhea. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. I carefully tear off the label and then take some sips, regardless.
The worst days are the ones when Mark thinks I am away with work and really, I’m just sitting in Daan’s flat. Sometimes, when I’m certain Mark isn’t going to be working from home, I do sneak back to the house to put on a load of washing so that the chores don’t add up at the weekend. On Wednesday afternoons the boys often play sports. I’d like to go to those games, but I can’t because how would I explain being away on a Wednesday night and how can I justify to Daan living away from him for more than four days a week? He is patient enough giving up every weekend of his life because he thinks I am nursing my sick mother. I have to be strict. Disciplined. I have a lot to lose. Twice as much as the next woman. I see the boys play football at the weekends. That’s enough. It has to be.
The boys were aged eight and eleven when I met Daan. They had just started to break away from my tight and constant maternal clench. I realize now that as all boys turn into tweens, teens and ultimately young men, they have to push their mothers away. It’s natural. It is still hurtful, though. I couldn’t help but feel saddened when they quickly turned their heads away from me and a kiss might land on their ear or simply die in the space between us. The boys had started to edge into the stage when all they needed me for was to locate a stray trainer or charger cable, cook a meal. I still needed them.
My arms felt empty.
It was around that time I suggested to Mark that we consider fostering or even adoption. “Maybe a girl,” I said hopefully. “A toddler, someone who needs a loving home.” Someone who would accept my kisses without question. He instantly dismissed my idea, not giving me or my needs even the dignity of a debate. “I don’t want to go back to nappies and broken sleep, Leigh. Besides, adoption’s such a risk. If you are not genetically related, you don’t know what you are getting. How can you be sure you’ll bond?”
“I’m not genetically related to Oli and Seb,” I pointed out.
For a moment Mark froze, he looked caught out, afraid. Then he pulled me into a hug. “God, I forgot. Isn’t that wonderful?”
And it should have been wonderful. If maybe, momentarily, Frances wasn’t sitting in the shadows of our relationship and Mark had thought of me as the boys’ mother—simply that, not the stepmother, the stand-in or make-do. But I didn’t really think that was what was being said. When he’d said that if a parent wasn’t genetically related to the child, you couldn’t be sure you’d bond, Mark was not talking about my relationship with a future child or indeed the children we had, Mark was referring to his own feelings on the matter of nature versus nurture. So, in fact, it was far from a compliment. Really, he was revealing that he didn’t believe my bond with the boys could ever be quite as strong as his. It was as though he’d stabbed me. Then left me to bleed out.
Two or three weeks later my father died. It was a very intense time.
My reflections are punishing. Stopping, examining, recalling is something I’ve studiously avoided over the past four years. I change track. Pull to mind the thoughts that I’ve always used to console myself.
I never got behind on the washing; no one ever opened the fridge and despaired that there was no milk for their cereal. When I went to Daan’s to become Kai, my last act before I walked out of the door was to check in the freezer, count the Tupperware tubs of Bolognese and shepherd’s pie. Checking there were always organic meals made from scratch by me, enough to last until I returned.
No one was neglected.
I close my eyes. Let the darkness of the room take me. Sleep isn’t restful, but it’s better than the nightmare I’m living.