19 Myths About Cheating: A Novella

  19 Myths About Cheating

  A Novella

  Randy Susan Meyers

  Copyright © 2018 Randy Susan Meyers

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Brooklyn Girl Books

  ISBN-13: 978-1732093607

  Cover design by Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

  For bookclubs everywhere:

  The smartest people in the world, who always have each other’s backs.

  And for my own club

  Diane Bourbeau, Ginny DeLuca, and Susan Knight:

  We’ve held each other’s secrets since forever.

  Don’t you tell me to deny it / I’ve done wrong and I want to suffer for my sins.

  —Fiona Apple, “Criminal”

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Randy Susan Meyers Novels

  20. The Widow Of Wall Street

  21. Accidents of Marriage

  22. The Comfort Of Lies

  23. The Murderer’s Daughters

  About the Author

  For Book Clubs!

  1

  Myth: Men cheat more than women.

  Truth: As it turns out, the numbers are roughly equal.

  Of course, it began with a man. Aren’t troubles with men a woman’s daily bread? Worse yet, I was sleeping with the trouble and he wasn’t my husband—a transgression as undeserved as it was cruel. Adam’s marriage crimes were cold but not savage, and certainly not worthy of infidelity. I drank guilt for breakfast, but in the beginning, I believed my connection to Guy Peretta was bashert, though I doubted my forefathers thought the definition—destined—included screwing around on your husband.

  The truth of my situation sharpened each day: I wasn’t cut out for cheating. Shame raced past exhilaration by the fourth week of my illicit behavior—not that penitence meant a damn after ransacking Bloomingdale’s lingerie department for black lace intended for another man’s eyes.

  Being wanted was a hard habit to break. For the past week, I combed the web, hoping to understand what propelled me from sixteen years of faithfulness to stabbing my husband in the back. Some answers made sense, most hit me hard—none offered absolution.

  Tonight, the affair ended.

  Molly and Henry raced to the dining room, ready to eat the dinner drying out in the oven as I held off serving the meal, waiting for Guy’s half-hour late call. I couldn’t delay any longer. Hungry children trumped lovers.

  “I hate Rachel.” My daughter landed in her chair with a thud. “She went after Julian all day at school. God, life is revolting.”

  “Really?” I picked up the tongs and placed a chicken breast on Molly’s plate, reaching for the perfect tone to illustrate how much I stood in solidarity with her romance dilemma.

  Molly speared a sweet potato wedge. “Yes. It’s truly revolting.” At fifteen, she became fixated on a different phrase each month, until Adam and I wanted to scrape every syllable off her tongue.

  Henry furrowed his brow. “Is it?”

  At eight, my son still expected fairness and happy endings. I smoothed back hair falling over his anxious face. He needed a haircut. Adam’s hand-me-down Celtics sweatshirt reeked. “Don’t worry, baby. Life is only revolting during the temporary condition called adolescence.”

  Molly groaned. “Do you even hear yourself, Mom? Where’s Daddy? Is he working late again?”

  I raised my wine glass, holding back from finishing the Riesling in one long swallow. Now I missed Adam. Not because he understood Molly better, but with him here there’d be two of us to absorb our daughter’s disdain.

  “Daddy’s stuck with an emergency.” Adam’s dentistry practice guaranteed at least one patient disaster per week.

  “Beth’s family always eats together.” Molly reached across Henry for the water pitcher. Table manners barely registered in my parenting triage these days. “What’s wrong with us?”

  “Face it. We’re pathetic,” I said.

  Henry’s face fell till his chin almost hit the table.

  “I’m kidding!” I somehow failed my son on a regular basis. “Someone’s tooth cracked. Daddy’s being a hero by staying late to help him. Should we wait before we eat dessert? We’re having ice cream and brownies!”

  Three minutes into dinner and already I walked motherhood’s lowest roads: bribery to skirt sadness with a side of exclamation points to cover up my lack of maternal aptitude. Not smoking in the house constituted the sole conduct in my plus column, putting my children’s lungs before my need to suck in great soothing gulps of nicotine. For them, I tried not to smoke. In honor of Adam’s readiness to kill me if he found out, I kept my smoking secret.

  “We’ll wait,” Molly crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s revolting to think of us shoveling in ice cream while Daddy has his hands stuck in somebody’s mouth.”

  My cell buzzed. I held the phone as far from Molly as possible when answering.

  “Hey, you.” Guy spoke in a cautious low tone. “Are you alone?”

  “Can I call you back?” I mouthed Grandma to the kids.

  “How soon?”

  “Two minutes. I’m taking the phone outside.”

  “Put on a jacket,” he said. “The temperature feels more January than November.”

  Guy worrying about my heat index registered as foreplay. Adam assumed monitoring the weather fell under my purview, which included preventing my own frostbite, as well as his, Molly’s, and Henry’s.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” I told the kids.

  “Aren’t you eating with us?” Henry’s wounded tone was close to perfect. I feared he got that from me.

  “After I call Grandma.”

  “Why are you going outside?”

  “To smoke, right, Mom?”

  Ignoring Molly’s faux-question seemed the smartest path.

  “Grandma will hear you blowing out smoke, you know. And she’ll tell Daddy.” The little priss was becoming a miniature Adam. “Of course, he’ll know anyway, because you’ll reek of tobacco.”

  Molly’s pride in the word reek rolled from her wrapped in hubris. I gave my once-lovable child a big phony smile. “I’ll be right back.”

  Once we crafted shoebox doll beds and sewed tiny blankets as I basked in her luminescence. Now, at fifteen, surly edged exquisite. Her skin, like Adam’s, tanned through ten layers of sunscreen. Her hair, like his, almost touched black, but his was curly, almost kinky, though he kept it so short you’d never know. Molly’s fell through my fingers with the slip of cream. I didn’t know where it came from, her lustrous hair. Probably some hidden Greek on our family tree brought in by an illicit love affair.

  My side of the gene pool.

  Smolderingly beautiful had always been my goal, but the best rating I’d get was wholesome, and with enough make-up, pretty. Despite my piled-up Sephora points, mi
rrors terrified me as I waited for gravity’s final toll. Forty-four drummed in my head as I held on to pretty by my teeth.

  I grabbed my cell phone and an old barn jacket hanging by the back door, patting the pockets where I tucked cigarettes and matches in a frayed pair of mittens, hideous brown ones in which Molly wouldn’t be caught dead.

  Outside, rotting leaves that we’d piled but never tossed nagged from the lawn as I settled on the steps. Half-completed projects and unmet good intentions surrounded me. Determination to avoid Guy-lust competed with newly hatched plans to bag the leaves.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” I said. “Thought you’d call earlier.”

  “Sorry. Bad timing?”

  “Sort of.”

  Sticky silence hung between us. We were only wired for romance.

  “Did I mess you up?”

  Code for, is he home?

  Pebbles scattered as I kicked the ground. “I can’t talk. We’re about to eat.”

  “Can I see you tomorrow night?”

  No matter how hidden the relationship, decency required a face-to-face break-up.

  Adam worked late on Wednesdays, which meant calling my mother-in-law. Even with Molly more than old enough to watch Henry, how could I let the kids eat alone by the light of the flickering television, while I met Guy. Reckless passion dampened when you imagined your kids hunched over devices as they ate floppy microwaved pizza—not that I planned a motel visit for tomorrow night. But still, I needed my mother-in-law.

  “Okay,” I agreed to the plan despite my misgivings.

  “Meet at the bar?”

  No need to ask which one. Married people, not married to each other, couldn’t share much, but they could have a bar.

  “Sure. Six?” Rush hour traffic would require leaving early.

  “Can’t wait. You’re the highlight of my week.”

  No matter the banality of his flattery, the shading in his voice flowed like moonshine. Blood rushed to what my mother referred to as down below—not from a prudish nature, but blemished things bothered her, including unattractive words.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  We didn’t end sentences saying honey, sweetheart, or any other endearment unless you counted oh, baby in bed—an acceptable unmarried thing to say.

  I ground the cigarette out on the cement step and set the butt next to me. After dialing Charlotte, I covered my icy hands with the ancient mittens. As I waited for her to pick up, I brushed cigarette ash off the cement.

  “Why are you using your cell?” Semi-rude questions were Charlotte’s version of hello. “Where are the children?”

  Snorting cocaine while they watch porn.

  “Right inside. I’m in the backyard.”

  “Are you smoking?”

  “Of course not. I just needed a break.”

  “From the life of a princess?” She chuckled at her witty banter. Whatever. Fair was fair. She deserved a hundred potshots while I made her an unwitting affair enabler.

  “Can you watch the kids tomorrow night? Give them supper? I’ll order pizza.”

  “Pizza.” She sniffed. “Trayf. You let the family eat that garbage?”

  While you, Isabelle, can dine on chopped rats.

  “Sorry. I’m on deadline. Take-out it will be.”

  “Never mind. I’ll make dinner.” Which meant my mother-in-law visiting Star Market by 8:00 a.m. and roasting a chicken by nine. Too bad about Charlotte’s health kick. The kids would eat brown rice instead of the luscious noodle kugel she’d once have made. “Where are you going?”

  To fuck my brains out with a goy named Guy.

  No.

  To break up with a goy named Guy.

  “Book club. We’re reading the classics this year. This month is Crime and Punishment.” Jesus, why did I say that? “Dostoevsky.”

  “I know who wrote Crime and Punishment,” Charlotte said. “Why must you run to that club?”

  I’m lonely. I need to laugh. I need a reason to shave my legs with joy.

  “Intellectual exercise is vital.” Bullshit choked me.

  “Work isn’t enough?”

  “I love my work.” Mostly truth, but working at home means coffee breaks spent scrubbing toilets. “But I crave the company of adults who aren’t virtual.”

  “The reward is knowing what you do for Henry and Molly. You work. You make pin money. What’s wrong?”

  If Charlotte prevailed, I would be a stay-at-home mom until Henry graduated medical school. Though Adam nodded in sympathy when I talked about loneliness, he agreed with Charlotte, throwing 401k statements like missiles as proof of his point.

  Even I lost patience with myself, questioning my desire to rejoin the anxiety-ridden world of publishing—where big shots showered pink slips upon senior editors as they hired younger, hipper, cheaper versions. I preferred scheming agents, angry authors, and greedy publishers to the company of my children?

  Yes. I missed that world so desperately that I daydreamed of Molly and Henry begging to attend boarding school.

  “Don’t worry, I understand,” my mother-in-law assured me. “You need some release. You girls today need some fun. So, darling, what time do you want me?”

  “Can you get here at five? I need to be there at six.”

  “Six?” The word sounded bitter off her tongue. You would think I said sex. “Why so early? Don’t these women have children?”

  “Mothers need breaks same as everyone else.” Unearned indignation rose as I defended my pretend book club.

  After hanging up, I debated calling Greta, the only person aware of Guy’s existence. She didn’t approve, but she’d listen. Best friends get to carry their sins to each other. Such is the contract.

  Gravel crunched as Adam steered into the driveway. No conversation with Greta would take place. I raced into the cramped downstairs bathroom, stripped off my sweatshirt, washed with over-scented Chanel soap and smeared on Chanel lotion. Charlotte, perhaps having seen some random black and white bottle in my house years ago, considered Chanel my favored perfume and kept me stocked. The overpowering fragrance covered clinging cigarette odors better than Febreze. A pink tee shirt hung on a hook behind the door, ready for moments like this. Finally, I rinsed with mouthwash.

  I walked back to the dining room, bearing Adam’s plate. His crisp blue shirt from 7:00 a.m. was now crumpled. His square shoulders sagged as he leafed through the mail. He was exhausted. I was a whore.

  “Daddy, eat fast,” Henry urged as I carried the hot food into the room. “We waited for you for dessert.”

  “Oh?” Adam glanced at Henry’s chubby middle. “What did Mommy make for dessert?”

  I rushed to rescue our boy. “Brownies. Ice cream. And cut fruit for anyone crazy enough to want it.”

  Adam iced up. Frostbite hit my chest. Henry’s boyish pudginess, which I found endearing, my husband deemed alarming and my fault. He monitored Henry for signs of a childhood stroke; I considered canceling my husband’s subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine, which only allowed him to gorge on his family-wide hypochondria.

  “The brownies are the low-calorie mix they sell at Trader Joe’s.” My placating tone nauseated me. “And the ice cream is nonfat frozen yogurt.” Sellout. Henry looked torn, wanting Adam’s approval, wanting sweet creaminess.

  “I’ll have the fruit.” Molly pressed her lips into a prim line.

  Adam nodded approval. “As will I. Pass the pepper, Henry.”

  “Brownies and ice cream for me.” I wasn’t even hungry

  2

  Myth: Regular sex will prevent

  your partner from cheating.

  Truth: A good sex life with your partner is important,

  but it doesn’t guarantee fidelity.

  “The outfit’s a real turn-on, Isabelle.” Adam peered at me over reading glasses from his side of the bed.

  I considered my oversized Walk for Hunger tee shirt. “To be hon
est, I’m not trying.”

  I picked up People. If Adam wanted to see me in negligees, perhaps he should think about putting on a tapestry robe instead of boxers with a frayed waistband.

  “Want to put that away?” He turned on the Bose and tipped down my magazine.

  Hands holding sixteen years of marriage stroked me. Despite my tee shirt, Adam managed to get aroused. I dropped People on the floor and tried to hold back the puff of negativity building in my chest. Self-reproach and sadness formed a skin on my body, but Adam always touched the right buttons and worked the sweet spots. Need opened my legs. He entered. As always, I crossed to the moment where sensation overcame all else.

  When Adam’s rapid rhythm portended his orgasm, I pressed the ridge of his spine, sending him over the edge. He held me for a few seconds, kissed my forehead, and rolled off.

  After blotting the wet spot with a tissue, I turned over. Adam spooned me, placing a heavy hand on my hip. Minutes later, he exhaled satisfied sleep. I tossed and fidgeted to the rhythm of his steady breath, afraid to get up.

  Before Guy, I drifted into slumber as though gliding into heaven. Now I needed Nyquil. How could Adam not notice the Costco-sized bottles of cold medicine?

  When Adam and I married, he provided a haven from chaos. Adam shaped the world to fit him, confidence having been poured into him like cement. Unlike Adam’s cosseted childhood, I grew up ragtag.

  Men were a novelty in my fatherless home. A treat. My mother, named Eve, but self-christened Babs, brought plenty of man-treats home. Beautiful enough that men fought to help her, she lit up any room shared with them. They left, and her lamp clicked off. Without men, the house turned still, and my mother became an anonymous ocean pulling me in, thoughtlessly, blindly sucking what she needed off my bones and then pushing me out to sea.