19 Myths About Cheating: A Novella Read online

  She married her richest admirer when my brother and I were in college. She left us without a hiccup of hesitation—inviting us to her new home in Texas for spring break.

  After, we communicated via Kodak. Photographs were a family tradition. My father was a Vietnam Kodak. Handsome, young, and forever enshrined in his uniform, framed in silver and glass. Removed from her roots by choice—considering herself Jewish only by accident of origin—my mother forgave my father his Jewishness, enticed by his cowboy-ways, and when she got pregnant, married him. I arrived before she turned nineteen. My brother, ten months my junior, was conceived before my father left for—and died in—Vietnam.

  My mother still lived in Houston, and, in her last batch of photos, a diamond-encrusted-cross sat right between her shapely Jewish breasts. Through marriage to Ken-the-oil-magnate, Babs drifted into Christianity as though born to the crucifix.

  Charlotte’s cab delivered her exactly on time, complete with a bulging shopping bag.

  “You didn’t need to cook.” I pecked her on the cheek.

  “I said I would. You didn’t order any trayf, did you?”

  I loved hearing Charlotte speak Yiddish. The guttural language thrilled me. Adam could electrify me in bed by whispering schmatte or gonif. Even the words for rags or thieves made me happy if spoken in the Jewish tongue, as I reacted against my mother. Babs found Yiddish, bagels, bargains, the Star of David and anything else Judaic unsavory. She raised my brother and me in the Beacon Hill, a Boston neighborhood favoring gloomy gaslights, historic brick sidewalks and women in boiled wool jackets.

  Charlotte walked to the kitchen with determined footsteps. After becoming a youngish widow via her husband’s heart attack, she dedicated herself to Adam’s arteries. Small armies of Tupperware of goodness prepared in the sterility of her spotless kitchen lined the counter.

  “There’s also frozen pizza if the kids want.”

  “Pizza? They love my chicken.”

  I sacrificed my children on the altar of my own need.

  “Thanks for coming.” I put on my coat. “Henry will be dropped off from practice soon.”

  “I know, I know.” She appeared impatient for me to leave, ready to inspect my house and shake her head at the evidence of my messiness. For a moment I stood, regretful, wanting to stay with Charlotte, pure and decent, eating roast chicken.

  We met at Romano’s, our place, a bar-restaurant nudging sleazy. The tavern provided easy access, but enough distance, in miles and class, to deliver the illusion of safety.

  I parked a few spaces from Guy’s Jeep. His early arrival seemed chivalrous. After checking my hair and lipstick, I undid a button on my ivory silk blouse. Break-up plans or not, I was greedy as ever for approbation.

  Our first meeting had been at an open school night, sharing a cafeteria table while learning the school’s no-tolerance list (bullying, racism, sexism, and soda—diet and otherwise). Despite the spouses at our sides, our pheromones circled like biochemical fire. Free will vanished.

  Guy soon called with the excuse of being interested in writing a book, having learned my profession as we shared cafeteria oatmeal cookies. Dinner plans followed; his so-called writing vanished.

  We had tussled like teenagers in his Jeep, that first time. Rock-hard want partnered with jolts of desire. We melded as though ending a famine. Sin outstrips all aphrodisiacs—revulsion comes after. Our routine never wavered: We’d meet. Dense lust choked off rational thought. Sticky gratification smoothed guilty nerves. Love-making finished, brittle self-loathing settled as I slid down my adulterous parabola.

  Tonight, the sequence ended.

  Guy sat at our usual corner booth, hair trimmed too short. I missed the shaggy hair from two weeks before. What did I expect? He couldn’t address the court looking like an Irish surfer, and anyway, freshly shorn, he still excited me. He was the athletic, glib guy grown up, the popular kid who cut school, smoked pot with the rebels, and still made straight A’s.

  His Irish aura came right at you, but only half his background was Celtic—the other side Italian—he carried a sanitized bad-boy thing, lending an aphrodisiacal counterpoint to his starched white shirt.

  I breathed a deep Guy breath as we kissed. His caramel scent drew me like an opiate. I didn’t dare identify his cologne for fear of buying it to sniff at odd moments during the day. Our usual waitress approached carrying amber glasses filled with ice and water, menus tucked under her arm. Older and likely wiser than I, with luck she thought us married folk who liked to paw each other at restaurants. We wore wedding rings, though they were contrary in their design ideology. Guy’s plain chunk of matte gold, an ultramodern arty ring, appeared wife-chosen, while my upgraded diamond wedding band and multi-carat engagement ring came from the Tiffany Legacy collection.

  “Hey, folks. Drinks?” The waitress laid menus between us.

  “Vodka and tonic.” Sneaky acts accumulated: drinking vodka vis-à-vis the odor-free myth, toting slivers of my usual soap, and never hugging Guy after showering off our lovemaking.

  “Michelob,” Guy said. “Lite.”

  The waitress left. He kissed the tip of my thumb and pressed his knee against mine. I sat up straight, finding it difficult to speak through the curling smoke of craving.

  “Something wrong?” Guy’s smile became a bit too knowing.

  I pulled away. Breakups precluded carnal shocks. “We’re enjoying this too much.”

  “Any amount is too much, right?” The husky edge of sex in his voice thinned out. Guy didn’t enjoy rolling in self-reproach. “I don’t care. Our time is the best part of my life.”

  Neither of us should be the best of anything. Images of Adam, tired and hungry, filling teeth late into the evening entered my consciousness.

  Did Guy compare his compact athletic build to Adam’s tall huskiness, as I placed my body in competition with Kate’s? If I hadn’t met her, my invented image would be a voluptuous Salma Hayek, with knowing brown eyes, and long dark hair flicking around her smooth olive face. Real Kate was a lank-haired blonde made for wearing shades of fawn and taupe, a sculptor whose Yale prettiness would delight my mother. Her sophistication eclipsed my cuteness.

  Kate had a skittish needy nature, according to Guy’s account, information given out in measured doses. My interpretation. Guy called her intense.

  “We’re gonna be time-crunched soon,” Guy said. “Thanksgiving and then the rest of the damn holidays.”

  Thoughts of ‘tis the season sliced through my break-up dread. Kate Peretta doubtless went all-out in December. Handcrafted ornaments and perfect teacher presents; tins from Ten Thousand Villages filled with spiced nuts from a secret recipe.

  “But holidays or not, I’ll see you.” Guy squeezed my shoulder.

  My subtlety had failed. “We need to end this.”

  “No.” He ran a hand down my thigh.

  I held his wrist, needing him to stop before I dissolved into his touch like sugar in water. “What are we doing?”

  “I think you know.” Guy’s smarmy expression iced my desire. When did I become a target for men with smooth talk and hot cologne? I drew back.

  “Hey.” He stopped leering and leaned forward, returning to good-grades Guy. “I understand. You’re asking the ‘Should we be doing this?’ question, right? Or do you mean what are we doing, as in ‘Are we leaving them?’”

  His words left me dull-witted. I didn’t want to leave Adam. Alone? The kids and me? Me with Guy? Our kids all jumbled together? I pictured negotiating time with our resentful ditched spouses—Guy and I trying to match our childfree weekends as Adam and Kate rightfully thwarted every attempt.

  A blended family: Molly and Henry with Guy’s four daughters. Just the hell we deserved.

  Guy made circles on my palm. “Sometimes I think about us that way.” He tapped my nose. “Don’t panic. I meant think, as in total fantasy. Not as in planning.”

  Eating shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce bought me a time-out from conversation,
time spent remembering Adam before he mistook me for an employee: the times he brought me hot water bottles as cramps bent me in half, sunrises when he drove Molly to the rink during her ice-skating obsession—so I could regain the sleep lost to Henry’s night terrors—and early-marriage weekends devoted to exploring every bookshop in New England.

  “Don’t you feel guilty?” I finally said.

  “Of course.” He sighed, sounding not unlike Adam. The difference? After lovers finish sighing, they continue talking. They don’t shake their heads and turn back to Jimmy Fallon. “But, truth?”

  His question perplexed me. When people asked if you wanted them to be truthful were they admitting their speaking with veracity was up for grabs? “Yes. Truth.”

  “I work at not caring—you can’t deny yourself pain for even a moment, right?”

  “I try to convince myself that if I feel remorseful enough, I’m not a horrible person.” I transferred the saltshaker from hand to hand. “What’s the difference? We’ll always be the bad guys.”

  “True.” He removed the saltshaker and held my right hand in both of his. “But losing you feels intolerable.”

  3

  Myth: Infidelity is planned.

  Truth: Many are surprised they’re capable of cheating.

  It’s often an unexpected urge driven by circumstance and emotions.

  I blamed chemicals for pitching me off plan. Forget cologne and screw compliments; biological scent captures us. Science gets it: the more dissimilar a man’s odor, the fiercer the attraction.

  Or perhaps I’d prefer making chemicals the enemy and push away that I fell for bullshit words.

  Guy walked from the bathroom wearing only a thin white towel tucked around his middle. He came to the bed without a word. I cradled my head in my arms as he worked the muscles up and down my back and pressed his thumb into each dimple of my spine. Only after soothing me into stillness did he place his lips on my body.

  Adam’s ghost lay beside me, the same one who followed me from the restaurant to the car, to the bed. He stayed with me as I dug my fingers into Guy’s back. I’d become a woman who fantasized about her husband while she made love with another man. In a quest to find my original Adam, I unearthed a pallid imitation. Panic raged as I wrapped myself in the wrinkled sheet. “This was an awful mistake.”

  His face closed. “No. You rocked my universe.”

  I grabbed my purse, ready to wash up with my sliver of soap and spritz on Chanel.

  Two men to soothe. Double moods to monitor. God must be a man who appreciated irony, a man who knew the perfect punishment for women who strayed.

  Molly kept her eyes fixed upon her computer, jerking away with distinct anger when I kissed her, using a minimum of words to say Adam was driving Grandma home. Henry slept covered only by a sheet. The pleasure I took in pulling his blanket up reeked of cheap afterthought after failing Break-up 101.

  I pulled on a virginal Lanz nightgown. As I drew the flannel over my head, I smelled motel-shower soapy sweetness and wondered if I should justify my fresh cleanliness by claiming a night time shower—unusual for me. Headlights flashed in the front yard. The shower walls would be dry. Should I jump in? Warring worries fought for control.

  My head was down, my body wrapped in a dark purple bath sheet as I toweled my dripping hair with a bright yellow towel. His keys dropped on the dresser.

  “How was work?” Terry cloth muffled my words.

  “Okay.” Was is fatigue or suspicion I heard in his voice? “Hal is going to lose his tooth. I sent him for a root planing, but he’ll need an implant or a bridge.”

  “What do you think he’ll do?” I peeked out from the towel. Adam’s patients were a cast in a mundane sitcom I followed.

  “He’s angry. As though I should take some blame or responsibility.” He shook his head at the thought of Hal Bergman’s stupidity. “Maybe I should go to his house every night and floss his teeth. Or steal his cigarettes. At any rate, he has money for full implants, but I doubt he has the patience. He’ll have dentures.”

  I nodded knowingly. “How was your mother?”

  “She was my mother. Good chicken though. You should get the recipe.”

  Right. Charlotte’s recipes never worked. She added or subtracted random ingredients each time she wrote one for me. I knew it.

  “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “How was your club? The meeting. Your thing.” His unaccustomed chattiness startled me. The TV remote should have already been in his hand, ready to snap the ten o’clock news to life.

  “It was okay,” I used my words with caution.

  “What did you do?”

  I tried sounding cute. “We talked about books. That’s why we call it a book club.”

  “Which book are you reading?”

  What had I told him? Told Charlotte?

  “We’re doing the classics.”

  He cocked his head. Waiting. “Jane Eyre.”

  “Jane Eyre?”

  I remembered what I had told Charlotte.

  “We just started discussing Jane Eyre tonight. After finishing Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky.”

  “I know who wrote Crime and Punishment.” His words, twins of Charlotte’s, proved the primacy of genetics. “Two books in one night? Classics, no less. You gals have a genius of a book club.”

  He looked at the books piled up by my side of the bed, stacks of crisp new novels from Newtonville Books. Most of them hardcovers. No classics.

  “I left them in the trunk. Library books.”

  He sat beside me. As he rubbed the back of my neck, he bent and sniffed my shoulder. “Mmm. Good enough to eat.”

  I stayed silent, my hands still resting on the terry cloth covering my head.

  Adam polished circles on my damp back. Stiff under his caress, each muscle tightened. He removed the towel from my head, and pushed my wet hair back.

  “My hair’s knotted.”

  He grinned, looking very un-Adam of the recent-years-Adam, and reached for the wide-toothed comb on the bed. Deft dentist hands painlessly combed out the tangles. After smoothing my damp waves, he pushed me down until I lay on my back. Wrapped loosely in the limp purple towel, I stayed where he placed me.

  Without a kiss or a caress, he pushed up the terry cloth in which I was wrapped. Mute in voice, dead in body, I let out my breath in small puffs. The lights were bright. Molly’s keyboard taps slipped through the walls.

  His finger came inside me without romantic warning or erotic teasing. The poking felt more like an assault than carnal craving. I sat up, trapping his finger inside me, his nail hitting skin that should only be touched with tenderness or a speculum.

  “I’m too dry.” Thankfully, Guy and I used condoms.

  He patted my thigh. “We should wait, anyhow. It sounds as though Molly is still up.” He got up and went into the bathroom.

  I sat stupidly, watching the door close behind him. I reminded myself to breathe. Seeing me in a towel after sixteen years together had him crazed with lust, right? After turning on the TV, I again put on my nightgown. The room filled with the welcome sound of news as I left to say goodnight to Molly.

  I tapped at her door and then inched it open.

  “What?” Molly jumped off her bed and rushed over. She stood with her arms on either side of the doorjamb, blocking the entrance as though heading off a stubborn and particularly unwelcome intruder.

  Should I toss her room for drugs? Probably not. In sad truth, she just plain hated me. Because she was fifteen and I was her mother. At least I prayed that was the reason.

  “I wanted to say goodnight, honey.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “How was your rehearsal?”

  “We didn’t have rehearsal.”

  “Where were you?”

  “The. Science. Fair.”

  Shit, shit, shit. “Did I know that?”

  She crossed her arms. “I gave you the paper.”

  “Oh, God, w
as I supposed to be there? Were parents invited?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Why didn’t you remind me? Daddy will be so upset we weren’t there.”

  “I won’t tell.” She pursed her lips and exhaled through her nose. “You won’t get in trouble.”

  “I meant that Daddy would be disappointed. Not angry.”

  “Right.” She stood, impassive, waiting for me to leave, her body language so obvious she might as well build a slingshot to fling me away from her door.

  “Were your friends’ parents there?”

  “Don’t sweat it, Mom.” She spun around, leaving me to close the door and retreat to my bedroom where Adam watched the news.

  “How’s Molly?” he asked when I entered.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Not that she’d tell me,” I said. I climbed in next to him and picked up my book from the nightstand.

  Adam touched my hip. “Ready to finish?”

  “Sure.” Two nights in a row? That was off-kilter like everything else. How had I missed seeing Molly make her project? Two years ago, we sat cross-legged building a solar system from Styrofoam balls. I painted the base a dull black and gave Molly the fun jobs like making rings for Saturn. Now she could have built an entire wing on the house and I might not have noticed.

  4

  Myth: Affairs happen because something

  is wrong with the marriage.

  Truth: Cheaters tell themselves this

  as a justification for cheating.

  I sprayed organic orange cleanser on the counter and then sponged it off with warm water. After, I stripped off rubber gloves impregnated with rare anti-aging substances—perhaps the skin of an almost extinct frog species—a present sent by my mother. You can always tell a woman’s age by her hands. I rubbed lotion into my now-bare hands, wiped off the excess and lifted my phone.