She tells Chad at Artisanal, a busy bistro just off Madison. She chooses the restaurant deliberately, as it is one of his places near midtown, which he considers his domain, and the type of noisy venue where he likes to take a group of clients who will eat perfectly executed steak frites while Chad keeps the thousand-dollar bottles of Pomerol flowing and orders rare cheeses from the restaurant’s own fromagerie cave for the table.
It has been three days since Henry dropped her off at the park and ride in Stamford and helped her retrieve her bags and then turned his back on her. She has texted him three times and left him a voice mail and he hasn’t responded to any of them. This makes Margot afraid, but she made a commitment to herself that night at the lake to live honestly from now on, regardless of the consequences.
And so it is with steely purpose that as soon as the drinks come, she tells Chad everything. She braces herself when she begins, saying, “I need a divorce.” The words are chosen as carefully as the restaurant. She doesn’t say “I want a divorce,” but that she needs one. Then slowly and methodically, she tells him the entire story.
Chad knows about Henry, of course—the young Henry, that is—but not that he has stumbled back into her life. While she talks, telling him about the chance meeting at Columbus Circle, her seeking him out later, the dinner at Marea, the trip to Vermont, Chad looks at her blankly, though she can see his mind racing, his hand now and again running through his thin hair, a tic he has when he is stressed.
What kind of man, Margot thinks, listens to his wife telling him about her love for another man, telling him that she had sex with him at a small lake cabin in the Vermont mountains, and acts no different from how he would have if he had been summoned upstairs to be told he was being relieved of his job?
It is a test of sorts. She almost wishes he would strike her. A flash of anger he cannot control and feels terrible about afterward, out of character but understandable, given what he has learned.
“It’s the right thing for both of us,” Margot says. “I don’t believe you love me anymore, either.”
Chad cracks a thin smile. “I don’t even know what love is at our age,” he says.
“It’s no different than it ever was,” says Margot.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Chad says.
“You have had affairs, yes?”
Chad shakes his head. “No. Never.”
“I’m shocked. I always assumed. All those nights you stayed over in the city. Your trips. I thought I was just being French about it all,” she says, though she doesn’t really mean this, either, and as soon as she says it, she realizes that candor will take practice, that it’s one thing to do it on the large scale, but a lifetime of cultivation that values small lies and half-truths will be hard to overcome.
“I haven’t,” he says. “I always knew there was an imbalance between us, you see? I always loved you more than you loved me. That was clear to me. I wasn’t your first choice and I knew that.”
“Why did you marry me, then?”
“Because you were pregnant. I thought it was mine.”
This takes Margot’s breath away. “You know? About Alex?”
Chad sits back in his chair, takes a long pull off his martini. “Of course. I’m not stupid, Margot. I didn’t know right away. But after a while, it was pretty clear to me.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything? All these years?”
Chad shrugged. “What could I say?”
“I don’t deserve you,” Margot says.
“You’re right,” Chad says. “You don’t.”