A hand touches my shoulder.
I swim up through a fitful sleep and sense a presence in the bedroom with me. When I open my eyes, I know I’m dreaming because Michael, bathed in silver moonlight, sits on the edge of my bed. His hair is uncombed and disheveled, his shirt rumpled, his beard sparkling with gray flecks. He looks so much like an apparition that I gasp at an unexpected conclusion: Michael’s dead and his spirit has come to say good-bye.
Then the ghost speaks in a broken whisper: “Why wouldn’t you take my calls?”
I blink, wondering if my dead husband has decided to haunt me, and the illusion shatters when my visitor stands to turn on the bedside lamp. Michael is here, obviously alive and well, though the relationship between us is dead. And of all the things he could say to me, he wants to know why I don’t want to talk to him?
The crazy thing is I do want to talk. Some demented part of me wants to know how, and when, and why, and how often. How he touched her, where they made love. My marriage has been invaded, and I want to hear every grisly detail so I can learn how I was fooled into believing everything was fine.
But not now. I’m not ready to hear specifics now. Right now I could happily claw out his eyes.
Striving to free myself from the lingering tendrils of sleep, I struggle to sit up. “I didn’t answer”—I cross my legs beneath the quilt—“because I didn’t want to talk to you.”
I grab the pillow and bury my fists in it as he sits again, this time on the edge of the matching twin bed. I peer across the distance between us and see that his eyes are puffy and his face haggard. “Good grief, what time is it?”
“Nearly two.”
“In the morning?” I blow a clump of hair out of my eyes, then focus on him again. “Why on earth did you drive all the way down here in the middle of the night?”
“We have to talk. You didn’t let me explain anything this afternoon.”
He thinks he can explain this? His answer fans the resentment smoldering inside my chest. “I’m not interested in explanations, Michael, because I’ve had time to think and I’ve already reached the appropriate conclusions. Let me see—this afternoon you were with a woman instead of being at a conference in Atlanta. When confronted, you didn’t deny having an affair, which leads me to believe this thing has been going on for at least several months. Furthermore, the woman felt confident enough to speak to me when I called. She wouldn’t be so self-assured unless you’d made promises to her; so apparently you’ve not only made promises, but you’ve also given her two thousand dollars of our family money, maybe to buy her silence or something. Did I get any of that wrong?”
I lean against the headboard and study my husband, who seems to be contemplating the pattern in Grandmother’s chenille bedspread. “I wanted to explain … how it happened.”
I shake my head, warning him off. “What makes you think I want to hear that now? What matters at this point is how we explain things to our children, how we help the boys cope with what they’ll hear from our friends and neighbors.”
He grimaces as if I’d slapped him. “I’m sorry, Ginger. I didn’t mean for it to start, and I certainly didn’t intend for things to go this far—”
He stands and turns toward the window, his shoulders slumping. “Past the point of no return, I’m afraid. Theresa’s pregnant. She showed me the report from her doctor’s office this afternoon, just before you called. She’s … going to have my baby.”
I confess—until that instant I had enjoyed Michael’s suffering. Hurling the accusations, watching him cower and confess and apologize brought me extreme satisfaction. Because despite everything, I still believed Michael loved me. He cared deeply for our sons. He might have a fling, but he would never end our marriage or destroy our family.
But a pregnancy would change everything.
I close my eyes and when I open them I see him again at the window, his posture softening as he tells me about the pregnancy. He may have adopted that defeated pose with me, but I wonder if he slumped when he first heard the news. Michael has always loved children. He might have smiled when he heard about the baby—oh, privately he would have felt guilty and he would have worried about the repercussions, but he wouldn’t have slumped in defeat. News of the baby actually might have made him happy.
But that child is a rock dropped into the pool of my heart, sending ripples of panic in all directions. My eyes sting and tears spill onto my cheeks, an overflow of dread. The other woman has dealt my marriage a fatal blow. I have no defense, no weapon to use against her. Michael is responsible; Michael will want to do the right thing. If he wants to keep his job, his identity, he will quietly divorce me and marry this pregnant professor. The university officials will barely bat an eye if he handles the situation discreetly. And Michael is a man of utmost discretion.
My stomach drops like a hanged prisoner.
“That’s why I gave her the money,” Michael says, his attempt at objectivity marred by a catch in his voice. “She needed a bigger apartment, something with two bedrooms. She needed money for the move.”
“So … you’ve known about this baby for a couple of weeks.”
“We—I—suspected. I didn’t know for sure until today.”
How could he have kept this news to himself for so long? How could he have kept up appearances, pretending everything was fine and normal—
“You brought me roses,” I remind him, my voice a mere whisper. “Red, the color of love. You said you loved me. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie, Ginger. I do love you. And … I know you love red roses.”
“A man who loves his wife doesn’t sleep with other women. He doesn’t betray her.”
“I do love you,” he repeats, his voice breaking with huskiness. “But I never said I was perfect.”
I lift my left hand and stare at my wedding band, feeling as if sections of my body have been torn away. My husband, my lover, the father of my children, and the man I have trusted with my heart and my life—that man has vanished. My soul mate. My other half.
I bite my lip until it throbs, then I crumple and begin to sob. Michael moves to take me in his arms, a gesture probably more reflexive than heartfelt, yet I can’t bring myself to turn away. I ball my fists and pound his chest, but he’s holding me so closely I have no room to strike with real force, no way to hurt him the way he’s hurt me.
My only weapons are these scalding tears, so I open the floodgates and let them flow. Michael bears the touch of my tears, my pounding on his chest, my racking sobs, and my anguished protests. Finally he relaxes his grip so I’m able to pull away. Immediately, I slide back to the security of the headboard.
He, being a man, will never know the blow he’s dealt me. He should grow old along with me, he should glory in our nearly adult sons, we should face retirement together. Instead, he has fulfilled every tawdry stereotype, surrendered to a base hormonal urge, and abandoned his premenopausal, dried-up, increasingly unfruitful wife for someone younger and more fertile, someone who can give him a new lease on life.
Why does he get to start over when I’ve finally reached the homestretch? I look at him, trembling with unasked questions and unmet needs. His handsome face and dark eyes, which would attract most women even from a distance, are full of frustrated sadness and his voice is hoarse. “I made a mistake, Ginger. And I’m sorry. If I could rewind the clock and make different choices, I would. Believe me, I never meant to betray you or hurt our family.”
I command my hand not to tremble as I reach for the box of tissues on the nightstand. “Too late.”
“But it’s not too late to talk things out. Can we—can I stay here tonight, so we can go out for breakfast in the morning? Things will look better after we’ve had a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be thinking more clearly, so we can decide … what we need to do next.”
Our marriage is barely dead. Is he already hinting that he’s ready to divide up the spoils? I shake my head, repulsed by the idea. “I don’t want you here. I need to be alone.”
A frown line settles between his brows. “But you’re not exactly alone here. I know your sisters, and I know what they’ll tell you to do. But they wouldn’t know a good marriage if it hit them between the eyes.”
I rub a finger over my lips, quelling an inexplicable urge to laugh. “That’s another reason you should go—my sisters are liable to eat you alive if they find you here.”
He winces and rubs his forearm. “That’s not exactly true. I survived talking to Penny.”
“Only because Penny adores anything with a Y chromosome. Go home, Michael, see your girlfriend, take a long walk down a short pier, stick your head in a gas oven. I don’t care what you do, just don’t be here in the morning.”
He stands, a look of inexpressible distance in his eyes. “You sure?”
The obvious exasperation in my voice drives him a step closer to the door. “One more question,” he says, his jaw wobbling. “When you get home … should I not be there?”
Is he asking if he should move out? I am tempted to shout yes, but once he leaves he may never come back.
I have to slow down. My answer will affect not only Michael as my husband but also as the father of my sons, a professor at the university, and my partner in life and business. There’s something dreadfully public about the act of moving out.
“I don’t know,” I answer, and in my voice I hear a note halfway between disbelief; and pleading. “I don’t know what I want you to do. Go home; wait for me. When I can think clearly, I’ll come home and we’ll talk.”
A brief smile flits across his face, a smile that says he’s glad to see I’m thinking rationally. “Good.”
“Go,” I repeat, hugging my pillow closer. “We’ll talk … when I get home.”