Monday, December 24
The children sleep in, and so do we, which means we’re in a mad rush to get out to Okotoks for Christmas Eve brunch with Alex’s mom. Alex’s sister lives in Texas, and they ‘share’ their mother for Christmas: one year in Calgary, one year in Houston. This year, it’s Houston. But we always get together on Christmas Eve, even on Calgary years. My mother won’t let go of Christmas Day at her house, ever. On Houston years, after brunch, we drive Nana into town, to the airport.
Alex is driving like a maniac.
‘Baby, we’re never going to get there if we’re dead,’ I choke out at one point as he charges across three lanes of traffic on Deerfoot.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘It’s just – you know.’
I know. He doesn’t want to be late. Saturday’s game face notwithstanding, he thinks it might be a tough Christmas for her. He’s a good son. Father. Husband.
His phone rings. And then rings again. And again.
‘Jesus,’ he says. Digs it out of his pocket.
‘No fucking way,’ I say. Take it out of his hand, as it rings again. ‘You are not talking on Deerfoot. Not in this mood.’
I click it open.
‘Oh, Alex, thank God I got you,’ comes the voice, and I know it’s Susan-Shelley-Melanie. ‘I just got the papers back from…’
‘It’s Jane, Alex’s wife, here, Susan,’ I say. ‘He can’t talk right now. Driving. Is it appropriate for me to take a message, or is it confidential and do you want to text him or leave a voicemail so he can get back to you in about thirty minutes?’
I don’t look at Alex’s face but I see his knuckles tighten a little on the steering wheel.
There is no sound on the other end.
‘Susan? Or was it Shelley?’ I ask. I fucking know it’s Melanie. ‘Are you there? Is this a real emergency that justifies interrupting his Christmas Eve with his family, or can it wait until, you know, Boxing Day?’
Her voice, when it finally comes, is frosty, stiff.
‘It may be Christmas Eve, but New York is still working,’ she says. ‘I’m still working. As his senior associate on a critical file, it’s my…my…responsibility to keep Alex in the loop on all the…’
‘Fine,’ I say. I’m not sure why I’m smiling. I guess I’m small and petty; I goaded her and I’m enjoying the reaction. ‘It’s a real emergency. He will call you back as soon as he stops driving. Have a Merry Christmas. Susan.’
I turn off the phone. Alex changes lanes for no reason at all.
‘Her name’s Melanie,’ he says finally.
‘I know,’ I say. Think for a minute. ‘That was my impersonation of a somewhat possessive, bitchy wife. Ticked off to be called by her husband’s newest –’ I pause, because I’m about to say fuck buddy, and I have four children in the back seat ‘– office wife on Christmas Eve.’
‘I rather liked it,’ he says. Reaches for my hand.
I wonder how he would have reacted if I had said fuck buddy.
I read the texts from Marie while the kids start building their Christmas Lego from Nana, and can’t decide whether to be pleased or appalled. The thing – affair – sexting – with Craig is going…well. He’s attentive. Sensual. Romantic. Oh, wait. More than sexting – he’s a quick mover, and I think I approve. They’re meeting for coffee. Oh, fuck, already met for coffee: ‘JP’s taking the kids Christmas shopping for me, and I’m meeting him for coffee. OMG, skank, skank,’ gloats an early text.
And later: ‘FAN-TAS-TIC. I will tell you about it tonight.’
Tonight?
And I remember that, weeks ago, we had both agreed to do a Mom’s Night In type of thing on Christmas Eve at Nicola’s house. Her kids would be with Paul. She was planning to be hysterical and suicidal. Colleen promised we would all be loving and supportive.
I text Marie, ‘You’re planning to go?’
Marie: ‘Sure. I think it’s OK, now that I’m not, you know, doing anything with Paul.’
Sure.
And she adds: ‘Carpool? In your wheels? I want to drink.’
Fuck. I so don’t want to go.
‘Fuck,’ I say out loud, and Alex and his mother both fall silent – they’re talking, not about Alex’s father and Claire, of course not, they’re talking about books, movies and global weather trends – and look at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologise. ‘But fuck. Sorry,’ I apologise again. ‘Baby –’ I turn to Alex ‘– Marie’s reminded me. I had promised to go to this Mom’s Night In party at Nicola’s. On Christmas Eve. Why did I do that?’
‘Because you’re a good friend,’ Alex says. Leaves his mother’s side. Comes and sits on the arm of the chair I’m in. Pulls me close to him. ‘You told me when you planned it, I remember. First Christmas Eve without her kids. Super-stressed. It’s a good idea, Jane. Go.’
I tilt my head to look at him.
‘Go,’ he says. ‘You’ve been pretty much single-parenting all this month. How many nights, days away from the kids have you had? Go. We’ve had our big Christmas Eve celebration this morning. It’s fine. We’ll do movie night – that’s all we’d do if you stayed home, right? Or maybe I’ll let them play Minecraft all night. Do all the things Mom doesn’t let them do.’ He grins. ‘Go.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I say. But I mean it a little less. Press my face against his belly. Smell him. Love him.
Alex’s mother smiles at us. Then gets up and disappears into the kitchen.
‘Go,’ Alex says again. ‘And come back…’ He pauses. Holds me a little tighter. ‘Come back lusty,’ he whispers. ‘They’ll all be asleep. I’ll be waiting.’
I press against him harder. Fuck. I love him. I love him so very, very much.
I also love Marie, I remind myself sternly as I pick her up, and see, from the way she opens the car door, that she has things to tell me, and wants to burden me with them all before we get to Nicola’s.
I love her.
I will listen.
‘Tell me,’ I say as soon as she closes the car door.
‘Alex OK with you skipping out on Christmas Eve?’ she says instead. I nod. ‘JP’s a bit grumpy,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have done the coffee and the evening out. He doesn’t usually take the kids for this long.’
‘It’s past eight – aren’t they effectively in pyjamas, and probably watching TV?’ I ask. ‘Not exactly a hardship.’
‘Yes, well, you know,’ Marie says. I know. It’s JP and he’s a jerk. I brace myself for a recital of his shortcomings as a father, and wonder if Marie will once again tell me that he managed to go through two babies without changing a single diaper, ever. Instead: ‘He gets a little jealous of me. You know. Possessive.’
This is new.
‘Does he?’ I say. Marie nods.
‘Sometimes, he can be very intuitive,’ she says. And while I keep my eyes on the road, I feel my eyebrows retreat into my hairline. She’s used a lot of words to describe JP to me over the years. Intuitive? Never.
‘I think he can pick up on this thing,’ she continues. And now I turn my head and look at her.
She’s glowing.
Total post-coital, had-the-fucking-of-my-life glow.
This thought jumps into my head: the look on the face of every girl who’s ever walked out of Matt’s bedroom – or hand-in-hand with him from a public washroom in a bar.
I quash it.
Look at Marie again.
‘The coffee went well?’ I ask.
She colours. Smiles. Keeps on smiling.
‘So well,’ she whispers. ‘Oh, so well, Jane. He was…he was amazing.’
Her lips part, her tongue curls and I flinch. Brace myself for details I don’t want to hear.
‘He brought me flowers,’ she says. ‘Flowers! And when I said, ‘Oh, I can’t take these home,’ he said I didn’t have to – he just wanted to give them to me. For me to enjoy getting them.’
‘Jane? Are you listening?’
I pull my attention back to the moment, to Marie. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m listening. Did you like that?’
But of course she did. She liked everything. He played her – perfectly, beautifully. Caressed her ego. Said all the right things. Put himself on the line: suggested the time and place for their next meeting. ‘Lunch at Charcut,’ Marie says. ‘You know?’ I know. And before she says it, I know what’s coming. ‘And do you know why Charcut? He said it’s because Hotel Le Germain is right on top.’
I should be glad that she’s pleased. But suddenly I’m terrified, and appalled at what I’ve done. And she seems to me so fragile and so vulnerable. And he…fuck. He’s going to give her everything she wants – everything she thinks she wants – and he’s still going to hurt her. Because, well, she’s Marie.
‘He said, “Just so we have the option,”’ she’s telling me. ‘“When the chemistry’s there, there’s no point in waiting, wooing,” he said. “One has to seize opportunity. More, one has to create it,” he said.’
I’ve never seen anyone swoon before, but this is what it must look like. Marie, as she sits in the passenger seat beside me, is swooning.
I push back my fear and terror and try to be happy for her.
‘And will you?’ I ask. ‘Seize the opportunity? Create it?’
Marie looks at me. Glowing. Pre-coital glow, I guess.
‘Yes,’ she says.
She’s still glowing when we arrive at Nicola’s.
I still feel bad about how I acted towards Nicola on the day I wouldn’t share Jesse, and our hellos are awkward. I expect things to get even more awkward after she opens my Christmas present, which is a gift certificate for twenty private sessions with any trainer at the gym. But Nicola is, again, grimly determined to be happy. She hugs me as if we are bosom friends from a nineteenth-century novel, and kisses my cheeks when she opens the card.
‘Oh, Jane,’ she says. ‘And I just got everyone bath salts.’
‘Life is cyclical,’ I say, stupidly, but she nods as if I had said something very profound. And then, another hug.
‘Thank you so very, very much,’ she whispers. ‘I’m just so much happier when I see him.’ She holds me a little too long, and I want to extricate myself. ‘And not just because he’s so gorgeous and delicious,’ she adds.
I pull away abruptly.
‘Exercise helps,’ I say, wilfully blind. And navigate my way to the snack table.
We let Colleen bring the food today, and it was a mistake. There’s steamed broccoli and kale chips and sprouted-almond hummus.
‘I thought we’d eat clean because of the gorge-fest tomorrow,’ she says, slightly defensive when she sees me eyeing the table. ‘Life’s all about balance, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ I say. I expect it is possible to eat and enjoy kale chips. But as part of a ‘this is my first Christmas alone and my first Christmas Eve without the kids’ kinda night for Nicola…I would have brought cake. Ice-cream. Chocolate. Nicola comes to the table. ‘Mmmm, delicious,’ she says, spearing a broccoli. Colleen looks at me in triumph.
There is only one bottle of wine too, mine, but fortunately Marie brought the ingredients for Caesars. And while Colleen abstains on principle, and I limit myself as the designated driver, Nicola and Marie are soon fully lubricated. Sign: Nicola starts whispering to me how hot Jesse’s ass is. I shudder.
‘Jane! You are such a prude,’ she says to me, thrilled with her audacity. And…what? For the first time, maybe, since this thing with Paul has come down, aware of her…availability? Freedom? She was so caught off-guard by the affair and the resulting ‘I want an open marriage!’ conversation that this may be the first time she is going there.
Interesting.
Probably, I think, good for her.
But the truly prudish Colleen – four years post-divorce and not just still single, but still so scarred she refuses to even think or talk about pursuing either a relationship or a lover – does not like this. She does not want to talk about Jesse’s ass – ‘And all the rest of him – and I do mean all,’ Nicola’s saying. She wants to talk about the rat-fuck bastard, Nicola’s, and so by extension hers, and pain and suffering. And she’ll succeed, because this aspect of Nicola is new and just emerging, and most of her is used to railing and complaining.
And soon, too soon, we are back on well-trod ground.
Tossing back another Caesar, and now teary-eyed from it, Nicola’s recounting the beginning of the betrayal. Colleen is filling the role of Greek chorus adequately by herself. Marie is mixing more drinks. And thinking what? I turn to look at her as she takes out her phone, reads something, smiles. Our eyes meet. She sticks out her tongue at me and then winks.
I listen to the play-by-play, ‘And he did this, and then I said this, and then I found out this, and then…’
Then the mandatory ‘That is not polyamory!’ rant, because Nicola is now an expert.
‘What he is,’ Colleen interjects, as she always does, ‘is a cheater. A cheater who got caught and latched onto an interesting-sounding excuse.’
Marie chokes on her Caesar.
‘Rat-fuck bastard,’ she says, and for a terrible moment I’m afraid she’s going to burst out laughing. Instead, she takes a bite of a celery stalk. Carefully does not meet my eyes.
This habit of talking with him in my head is not healthy and I should really control it. I focus back on the conversation. Nicola is now verging on weepy. Well done, Colleen.
‘And you know, I think I could have forgiven infidelity, I really could have,’ Nicola is saying.
‘Of course you could have.’ Colleen has her arms around her. ‘It’s the lying…’
‘Yes!’ Nicola shouts. ‘It’s the lying – lying…and then lying about the lying…and then by the time he told me the truth, I had no trust that it was the truth…and it really wasn’t…’
‘It’s not about the affair as much as it is about the lying,’ Colleen pronounces, as if she is delivering the Sermon from the Mount. Marie, phone in one hand, drink in the other, flushes, and as Colleen opens her mouth – it looks grotesque, her tongue thrusting out as if she is about to lisp an ‘s’ – I interrupt her.
‘Bull-fucking-shit,’ I call. ‘Bull-fucking-shit,’ I repeat. ‘Of course it’s about the affair. It’s not about the lying. If it was about the lying, then you would have said, “Baby, fuck whoever you want, just be honest with me about it in the future.” Maybe not embraced polyamory or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing, but…Anyway. It’s not about the lying. It’s clearly about the fucking.’
My perfectly sober and rational self remembers that only a few days ago I drove a woman away by telling her, ‘It wasn’t the affair that broke them up, it was the confession,’ and is amused by this self’s outburst. But I’m not contradicting myself. If it really was about the lying, then once the lying was confessed, disclosed, the fucking would be forgiven. But how often does that happen?
Nicola and Colleen stare at me. First shocked. Then angry. Colleen sends me a dirty look that says I have violated the code of the sisterhood of outraged, righteous and wronged wives and their supportive friends. It’s an evocative look: she manages to imply that it’s just a matter of time before I’m where she and Nicola are right now, and then I’ll be sorry.
The conversation I had yesterday with Alex flashes through my brain and I wonder if it’s worth repeating. But no. Why bother. This is not what they want to hear.
I should stop talking now.
Marie, phone now out of sight, gives me a look too. Ambiguous. She does not want to commit herself to my side. No, not at all. Does it matter to her if it’s about the affair or if it’s about the lying? Perhaps it does.
‘He lied because he thought you couldn’t handle the truth,’ I say. ‘And he was right. Wasn’t he? What did you do when you found out? You freaked and railed and felt betrayed and wronged – and you ran.’
‘He was a cheating, lying rat-fuck bastard!’ Colleen shouts.
I really need to stop talking. Just one more thing:
‘And a bad liar,’ I say.
Marie thrusts a drink into my hand. ‘Shut up,’ she hisses.
‘So you would rather – if Alex was cheating, you’d rather he was just really good at lying about it?’ Colleen demands. ‘You’d rather just not know?’
‘If his priority was staying with me – keeping the marriage intact?’ I ask. ‘Yes. I don’t need to know. I don’t want him to tell me.’
My choice of tense surprises me, and I remember the call from Melanie. If she is more than an office wife, do I care?
Yes. I care. But there is a world of difference between caring and…
Colleen is red with anger, and she’s calling me a liar again. Nicola’s just silent, eyes glassy, staring at us.
‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t care,’ I say. ‘Fuck, of course I’d care. And I’d suspect, probably. Worry a little bit, yes. But – see, if his priority was us, if we were the most important thing, and if his goal was preserving us…Fuck. No, I wouldn’t want him to tell me. I wouldn’t want him to engage in an emotional striptease to either ease his conscience or burden mine.
‘If I couldn’t handle it – if I couldn’t take knowing it all…I’d rather not know,’ I repeat.
And Nicola bursts into tears, horrible, horrible tears.
‘I’m not saying Paul isn’t a rat-fuck bastard,’ I say. Lamely. ‘It’s just…’
‘You’re worse than the polyamorist skank,’ Nicola sobs out. ‘What’s wrong with you, Jane?’
Ever so much.
I shut up. Watch Colleen comfort Nicola, Marie mix another drink.
We will.