I was frantic with arousal.
My face was flushed, my heart was pounding, and I was tense with anticipation when David came through the door and went directly to work on our remodeling project. I tried to appear calm when he broke for his morning coffee. Sauntering toward him, I asked if he would come upstairs to check on a room that his construction crew had completed the day before.
When we entered it, I faced him, put my arms around his neck, and kissed his lips. He was taken aback, but didn’t pull back, and within seconds we were on the floor, pulling at each other’s clothes.
David quickly entered me, and during that brief moment, we looked into each other’s eyes and I realized that his body was a stranger to me, and that made me even more excited. I was the aggressor. I had forced myself on him, and for a split second I thought about Brad and how he had forced himself on me. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I’m married. I have children.
Within minutes, it was over, and we got up from the floor and faced the awkwardness of our situation. I told him that I had to go fetch Sander from Connie’s house but wanted to take a shower first. David kissed me tenderly and walked downstairs without saying a word. What have I done? There is no way to undo it, is there?
The next morning arrived, but rather than stopping we repeated our infidelity. Every morning after that when Sander was gone, we would have sex. After a while it began to feel normal, as if we were making love, not two animals in heat. But I hated myself. I knew I was jeopardizing my marriage with Tom, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Why? What is driving me into another man’s arms?
David and I began using the love word, and it soon became terribly difficult for me to be in the same room with both David and Tom. I hated deceiving Tom but had no choice. Did I?
David had called Bozeman a small town, and word of our illicit rendezvous made it through our circle of friends and reached David’s wife. Furious, she told Tom. He was caught completely off guard.
“Are you having an affair with David?” he asked. “I need to know!”
My mouth was a dark, locked space that wouldn’t open.
He asked again. “Are you having an affair?”
My body began to shake. Tom wasn’t supposed to ask direct questions like that. He was supposed to leave me alone, as he always did. I suddenly felt cold, and vomit tried to rise up my throat. I’d been caught.
“Are you?” Tom asked, raising his voice.
I had to force out some kind of answer from my constricted throat. I lied.
“No,” I said, trying to sound a bit indignant.
Tom searched my eyes for a sign. “Is that the truth?”
I felt myself sinking into a black hole.
“Yes.”
“Do you know I love you?” he said. “Do you know that even if you’re having an affair, I’ll still love you? So don’t lie to me. Please, tell me the truth.”
The truth. It was under my tongue, under my fingernails, under my crazy, pounding heart. If the vomit came, Tom would stop asking questions. But why would I vomit if I were innocent? I desperately wanted it to be night, the boys asleep in bed, the pony safe in the barn, the dog on her bed in the kitchen. I wanted to be in Tom’s arms, safe from what I had done. I wanted it to be the way that it should have been but was no longer.
I couldn’t tell him. The truth wouldn’t come out of my mouth. Instead, I snapped: “There’s only one answer you’ll accept!” It was as if he were the one at fault for daring to question me.
I hoped my anger would make him go away and prevent him from seeing through me and knowing what I had done.
“That’s not true,” he replied. “You’re just not willing to tell me the answer that is the truth!” He turned to leave the room.
I stared at his back. Don’t walk away! Save me! Please make all this just go away; make everything right again, make our family right again, make me love you again.
He knew.
I started to say something but couldn’t. Instead, I hurried into the kitchen, where I opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of vodka, and took a long swig, the liquid burning as it went down.
I was looking for liquid courage, and I kept drinking until I found it.
Tom was in the living room, glancing at a magazine. How could he just be sitting there as if nothing had happened? I knew I was drunk, and I wanted it to be that way.
“Tom,” I said. “I am going to tell you the truth, all of it.”
I did. I apologized. I cried. I begged him to take me back and forgive me. We talked for hours about our marriage and about what I had done and why. Incredibly, he told me that he loved me and that we would get through this. He didn’t want a divorce. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and relieved. Forgiveness is possible in a marriage!
David’s wife was not so forgiving. David telephoned and said she had filed for a divorce. He asked if we could talk about what had happened between us. He was losing his marriage over me. It seemed the least I could do.
We met in an out-of-the-way bar. It started with conversation and drinks and ended with our having sex. Why am I doing this? Especially after Tom forgave me. Am I really in love with David? Why else would I be doing this to Tom? Can I be in love with both of them?
As before, I began making a mental list of all of wrongs that Tom had committed to justify my double betrayal.
Tom’s mother happened to arrive in Bozeman for a visit. After dinner, I excused myself, saying that I needed to go out on an errand. Instead, I met David, got blindly drunk, and fell asleep in his arms. I didn’t make it home that night. Tom was humiliated. My risky behavior was ruining my life, and even I didn’t understand why I was letting it. It was as if there were a demon inside me.
I knew Tom still loved me, but I seemed determined to make it impossible for him to keep loving me.
After Tom’s mother left, I told him that I had been meeting with David and having sex with him. Tom was dumbfounded and asked me if I really loved David or if I was doing this because I hated being married to him.
“I do love you,” I said.
But I also loved David, although I wasn’t sure whether it really was love or simply that I wanted that intense feeling of being in love, the romance and passion of an illicit affair.
Tom was as confused as I was. He didn’t want to break up our family, but I’d destroyed all trust between us. How could he not suspect me of cheating each time I went out? I couldn’t blame him.
While we were talking, I felt as if I were having another out-of-body experience in which I was floating above myself, watching quietly, knowing that I was participating in a conversation yet having little control of my words.
Our gut-wrenching conversation ended with Tom deciding that we were done as a married couple. He wasn’t going to live with someone whom he couldn’t trust. I didn’t believe him at first. Then I realized he wasn’t kidding. Our marriage was over, and it was my fault.
When Tom told our boys that Daddy and Mommy were getting a divorce, Calen screamed and bolted through the farmhouse door toward a hill near the barn. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and it was winter.
Screaming “No!” Calen collapsed in the snow, spread-eagle, like a face-down snow angel.
I thought, What am I going to tell his teacher? I thought, Calen must be cold lying in that snow. He should have a coat on.
I felt invisible and had no idea what to do.
Sander didn’t run away. He crawled into my lap and began to cry. He wrapped his tiny arms around my neck and asked, “Where is Daddy going? What will Daddy do?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
Tom went to fetch Calen, picking him up from the snow. He brought him into the kitchen. My older son was clinging to Tom and refused to look at me.
All I could think about was how I had betrayed all three of them. I should have remained in my marriage even if Tom never asked me a single question about my book. It would have been better than the numbness I was feeling now. There could be no pain like the pain of breaking your children’s hearts. My choices had done this. Why? And for what?
I wanted to die.
I moved out of the bedroom that night into a tiny room off the kitchen. The deadline for my book was approaching, and I couldn’t miss it. Tom stayed in the bedroom. A few days later, we tried to mend the damage. We decided that we needed a new interest—something that would bring us together—so we went out and each bought Harley-Davidson motorcycles so we could go on rides. When I crashed mine and couldn’t walk for a while, Tom put a chaise longue next to my desk so I could keep on working. He was being sweet, and it looked as if he was willing to forgive me yet again.
I wanted his forgiveness, but part of me seemed blocked, and I found myself unable to return his love.
When I finished my book, I thanked my boys in the acknowledgments, writing, “To Calen and Sander, my favorite human beings, who have given me the privilege of being a mother.” I did not mention Tom.
By the time my book was published in 1990, I knew there was no turning back. A divorce was inevitable. What of David? He was nothing more than a sad memory.
Because the characters in my novel were based loosely on my own family, I was not surprised when my siblings, parents, and readers who knew us began speculating about who was who. Mom and Dad were the easiest to recognize, although I suspected that both of them dismissed my less-than-flattering portraits of them. It was easy to identify Glenn as a character, because she was the daughter who was most cherished by her father. As the only boy in the novel, everyone assumed Sandy was Al. Much to my irritation, the character whom I’d patterned after Tina had been cut from the book by Charlotte Zolotow. That left two daughters for readers to choose from when it came to identifying me.
When writing the novel, I’d always pictured myself as Flavia, the depressed daughter who avoided her father by hiding in her room. I thought it was painfully obvious to anyone who knew my father and me.
Who, then, was E—Ethel—the feisty daughter who fought with her absentee father? In my book, I described E as a child who couldn’t “talk about anything without getting all worked up about it. I mean, she’s one of those people who seem to think that every thought should be paraded around until there aren’t any sides of it left to look at. Talking to E is kind of like trying to peer into an unlit tunnel: You’re never quite sure what’s coming at you.”
I’d pictured E this way: “Her hair’s shiny brown and straight but looks reddish when she’s out in the sunshine. She gets very tan during the summer; a lot of freckles pop out all over her face, like they were there all the time but appear only under heat, like lemon juice invisible ink. Her eyes are such a dark blue that sometimes they look like they’re all pupil. I’d use crimson red and midnight blue to paint E, if I were going to paint her…”
One of my girlfriends took me aside and said, “I figured out everyone but E. Who is she supposed to be?”
“No one,” I replied. “I made her up. She’s not a thinly veiled character of anyone in the Close family.”
Years later, I gave a therapist a copy of my book, and after she’d finished it, we talked about how I had modeled my fictional characters after Dad, Mom, Glenn, Sandy, and myself. Was that really so odd? Many first novels are autobiographical. Curious, the therapist asked me to identify each family member, and when I explained that I was Flavia and that E was a made-up character, she stopped me.
“Don’t you see what you did?” my therapist asked.
“What are you talking about?” I replied.
“Flavia, the depressed and afraid character, is definitely you,” she replied. “But so is E. You are Ethel, too. Flavia is your depressed side, and E is your manic side.”
I had never made the connection. Without realizing it, I had created two characters in my book that both represented me. The therapist was seeing what I had missed and what Tom had been forced to live with during our twelve years together. With my highs and lows, I really was two different personalities—the frightened, insecure Flavia and E, the confident, ballbusting spitfire who recklessly raced through life angry at the world, destroying relationships.
I had unknowingly described my still-emerging bipolar self.