11
“I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage.
They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.”
—Rita Rudner
The next day, I awoke dreading the confrontation. In anticipation of Tim’s arrival home, I got my hair done and looked like a million bucks. Okay, maybe a thousand. Pesos. But in my fractured and weary state, it was the best I could do, and I needed to feel put together to face off with the man who I thought was my partner but was in fact a complete and total stranger.
I had been distracted all day, running errands in zoned-out autopilot mode, grocery shopping and making dinner with Miles, and after tuck-in and bedtime, I waited. He was probably jamming in one more shag pre-return home. Via the Brooklyn Bridge, not LaGuardia. As I sat there, flipping through the daily pile of catalogs, I felt newly distant from the shiny smiling families who wore matching pajamas, each page marked at the bottom with a 1-800 number you could call to order up their synchronized sleepwear and a slice of their familial bliss. For some reason, even if the stuff was not my taste, or was even outwardly hideous, I loved getting in bed at the end of the day with catalogs.
Once in a while I’d order something, but usually it was the bedtime equivalent of the morning’s snooze button—a way to wind down slowly and zone out in front of monogrammed towels or key fobs or knapsacks, toted by perfect all-American children and their carpooling parents. I wondered if as a single mom I’d find the same brainless bliss in those colorful pages, or if I’d chuck the catalog into the trash. I turned the page and found a picture with the dad kissing the mom’s head while she cuddled with the two kids, all four swathed in matchy-matchy huggable fleece.
Tim hadn’t cuddled me like that in a while, I supposed, but when did that stop? Here you are, a team, and then you just have completely separate lives? I know fatigue and travel and busy schedules all accelerate the slow drifting apart, but when I looked back it seemed like a blink-of-an-eye mutation. This is the man who fathered my child, kissed my belly as it grew swollen with a flesh union of our marriage, and watched our son come out of my vagina. I know it sounds gross and graphic, but that’s what marriage is: the real deal. Unedited. The stuff after the sunset: the screaming baby at 3:00 a.m. It’s bonding through not just the rush of cheek-flushing romance but the viscerally human times, the ugly, the sick—the things beyond the white wedding—the stuff that starts Monday morning. The sharp betrayal gutted me so thoroughly that I threw up a little in my mouth when I heard the jingle of Tim’s keys outside the front door.
He walked in, complete with rolling T. Anthony suitcase, and found me on the couch.
“Hiiiii, honey!”
Normally, I would have leaped up and hugged him, his cute floppy hair a welcome sight after a few lonely nights. I always marveled over how gorgeous he was, especially when he returned home from a trip and I had missed him.
A meek “hi” was all I could muster, shakily.
He unzipped his bag and pulled out a teddy bear wearing a Chicago Cubs jersey for Miles. Such genius planning, I thought. He always came back with various city-emblazoned souvenirs.
“Milesie asleep?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” I answered.
“What’s wrong?”
Where to begin? I couldn’t look at Tim, so I looked at the huge brown eyes of the teddy bear.
“So, what, do you have your assistant order the local teddy bear online and ship it so that you have a gift to bring home?”
“Holly, what are you talking about?”
“Come on, Tim. That’s what all the culprits on Murder She Wrote and Law & Order say when they are first confronted. Don’t say, ‘What are you talking about?’ Don’t insult me. I may have been an idiot for however long, but I’ve caught on now.”
His faux-incredulous smile suddenly flattened. Aha! He knew I knew. And now he’d beg for mercy. He’d think of not coming home to Miles and a real home with food in the fridge and hand towels in the powder room and catalogs!
“Listen, Holly . . . we have to talk.” Nota bene: any sentence that begins with “listen” or “look” equals chiming death knell for your relationship.
“About how you’re cheating on me?” My heart rate spiked, waiting for him to greet my accusation with a laugh, proclaiming its falsity. It was all my imagination! Or It meant nothing! Or It was the first and only time and it was a huge mistake and I totally regret it!
I was met not with these protestations but rather a long exhale. Another bad sign.
“How did you know?” was all he could ask, soberly.
So there it was. No denials, no sweeping it under the rug. That weirdly pissed me off even more.
“How did I know? I FUCKING SAW YOU, that’s how! You were making out! On the STREET, no less! With that trashy whore, after EVERYTHING I have done for you, given you! How the hell could you betray me like this?” I screamed. I stood up and looked at him, channeling my rage into a laser beam shined into his eyes as I squinted my own. “You HUMILIATED ME with that tart. I am THE MOTHER OF YOUR CHILD! How could you do this?” I stunned even myself that there were no tears accompanying my diatribe; the only moisture was anger-infused perspiration and possible burst blood vessels in my face.
Tim was breathing heavier but maintained control.
“Holly. Calm down.”
“DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN! You faked a business trip? How many times did you do that? There are twenty major league baseball bears in Miles’s room. Is each one a different slut you nailed?”
“AVERY IS NOT A SLUT!” he yelled back, forcefully.
Wow.
Avery?
Somehow, even though Kiki had guessed Tim had a mistress, I still felt like anyone outside the marriage was some disposable pair of legs. But she wasn’t. She was Avery.
“Oh, gee, I’m so sorry to insult your HOME-WRECKING WHORE!”
“Holly, stop it.”
“You come in here and DEFEND that SLUT YOU PERSONALLY GAVE A STREP THROAT CULTURE TO ON THE STREET?!”
“I know you can’t understand, Holly, but I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I love her.”
Hiroshima.
I never. Ever. Expected to hear those words.
At that point, quite simply, I crumbled. Burning, lava-like thick tears cascaded out, flooding my face as I wailed like a child. Tim tried to comfort me, but I slapped his arm away “GET OUT!” I screamed, shaking.
Tim looked at me sadly. Part of me did want him out that nanosecond, but the other half wanted him to run to me on bended knee and beg forgiveness. To sob and fight for his family. But his mouth simply turned down into an apologetic frown.
“Sorry, Holl,” he said simply, and obeyed my instructions to turn and leave.
I cried myself to sleep that night. And many, many, many nights afterward.