19 Myths About Cheating: A Novella Read online

  “I want to live in a country where women are allowed to eat,” Greta greeted me. Caller ID stripped away our niceties.

  “You weigh about three pounds. Eat whatever you want. Be grateful you can afford to give up food.”

  “Don’t start on the whole liberal guilt thing. Anytime you’re uncomfortable, you go to your high school days when you worked at that Y, or whatever.”

  “Spend a day providing day care, ESL, and senior aerobics and then be sarcastic. You know you skirt anorexia, right?”

  “My body is the expected size for a single woman. You’re married. You can weigh two-hundred pounds. Wait! I forgot about what’s his name. He’d probably object, right?”

  “Don’t be cute. You know his name.”

  “You already have problems with one man, and now you’ve taken on another. Great plan. Blessing or curse now that the effervescence has settled?”

  “Huge curse.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I cradled the phone and bent to gather stray socks. “I think Adam suspects something.”

  “Adam wouldn’t notice if you were blowing this Guy guy in front of him.” Greta wasn’t a big Adam fan. She found him tedious and sanctimonious, actually using those words one drunken night as I complained of matrimonial suffocation.

  “He wanted sex two nights straight,” I said. “Asked about the book club—”

  “Wanting sex and talking about books pass as suspicion in your marriage?” Greta put on her Arkansas twang. “Count your blessings.”

  “Don’t go all Loretta Lynn. Can you picture Adam quizzing me about my book club?”

  “Maybe he’s sensing something and wants reassurance.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Adam. I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.

  “How about giving up lover-boy?”

  “Exactly what I tried to do last night.” I carried the socks to the laundry room.

  “Tried?”

  “I screwed up. Can you meet me for lunch? My treat.”

  “You have that right.”

  Faneuil Books, where Greta worked, and I sort of worked, was located in Copley Square, near Newbury Street—Boston’s version of Fifth Avenue where you could pay a thousand dollars for a set of sheets and drink grey-mud coffee, comfortable in the sorority of your aggressively thin sisters. The nearby White Star Tavern didn’t fit the definition of a tavern, what with twinkling lights and blue neon tubing as art, but it was damn white. Greta waved from a back booth. My mouth watered seeing her tissue-thin chocolate sweater. My black merino looked understated and classic until I saw it next to Greta’s. Now it screamed Macy’s house brand.

  “Sorry for being late.” I slid into the low seat, wishing they had normal tables. I hated eating with my food at breast height. “I had to stop at the cleaners, Adam—”

  “No problem. Single women have nothing to do but wait for their married sisters.”

  Greta’s nonstop jokes about marriage would lead one to imagine she was desperate for male company, when in fact her face is so stunning it’s almost a disability. Her hair corkscrewed over her delicate shoulders as though painted by Raphael, while her lips were pure Vogue. Greta was beauty-impacted. Maybe she thought talking as though she panted for married bliss like my own leveled us, though a wedding ring was the last thing she wanted.

  Face of an angel, soul of pure mean, Adam summed her up. Maybe his snide remarks covered lust, but I didn’t worry. Greta never slept with married men.

  Greta suffered from being chased too much. She also distrusted men—a trait drummed in by her mother, who’d been left by her husband for their mechanic. Male mechanic. Greta kept men at a distance, love being more avocation than vocation for Greta. Honey-tipped beauty covered her true voracity: work.

  We met at Faneuil Books, before I was married, both of us then editorial assistants reading our way through slush piles and taking phone calls from hysterical authors who were being avoided by their editors. Greta—who could taste a best seller from the first three pages—became an editor well before me. While I chose a wedding dress capable of hiding my pregnancy, she hit senior editor status and interviewed an assistant for herself.

  Now she had her own imprint—Greta Perkins Books. If I let myself go there, paroxysms of jealousy would lead to me despising her. Instead, I took on the grunt work for one or two of her clients each season, including listening to authors tell me how wrong my vision was, how brilliantly untouchable theirs were, and the ways Greta, the imprint, and Faneuil screwed them.

  Manuscripts gripped me. Hours flew as I solved the mystery of improving my current project and then presenting the solutions to authors, who simultaneously possessed the most fragile and enormous of egos.

  “I don’t have long.” Greta took a roll from the breadbasket, ripped out its doughy guts, and tore off a quarter of the remaining crust on which she could nibble for ten minutes. “My meeting at two is with someone important enough to make you hate me.”

  “I already have pages of reasons to hate you.” I opened the menu.

  She reached over and closed it. “Never mind, I ordered for us.”

  “What did I get?”

  “Turkey. On whole-wheat. Side salad. No dressing. I’m having a dry spinach salad.”

  “I guess that makes me the lucky one,” I said.

  So much for the hamburger that haunted my thoughts the entire drive.

  “Come on, don’t you want to know I’m meeting Dennis Rafferty?” She grinned with the delight of naming the famous actor in relation to herself. “I landed his book. Probably the Boston connection. It makes him seem loyal to his hometown.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And maybe he liked you?”

  She raised her brows back, though they didn’t go as high as mine. She claimed Botox was a work necessity, as though injecting poison into her face helped in the competition with the fresh girls rolling into the business every minute. Perhaps publishing had always been this cutthroat, but that was hard to imagine. Every day, a twenty-something’s lesser salary replaced an older woman’s larger, well-earned one. Greta’s happiness at landing Dennis wasn’t about the bragging rights alone. She needed to keep her balance of beauty and brains to attract the movie stars and athletes.

  “He’s even more handsome in person. I think he’s expecting more than book meetings.”

  “Do you want more than a meeting?”

  “Not at all. I can’t imagine enjoying the after-glow. I’ve been with actors before. Mirrors are their top priority.”

  The waiter brought a shallow bowl quarter-filled with clam chowder for Greta.

  “Thanks, darling.” She shot her voice with sugar.

  He looked ready to genuflect. For being allowed to serve her? For sharing her oxygen?

  Greta batted her eyes at waiters and got quarter-sized portions and quarter-bills. Gay or straight, man or woman, they all complied. She’s that pretty.

  “I’m so damn messed up,” I said. “Soon I’ll be my mother, right? Forgetting Molly’s science fair? I don’t even remember her telling me about it.”

  “Maybe she’s just pretending she told you? She is in that creepy stage.”

  I glared at her.

  “Okay, toss that theory. Just listen. I’m not mincing words on—”

  “As if you mince anything.”

  She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Whatever. I told you this before. Don’t plan to end this Guy thing. End it. Unless you’re planning to leave Adam and raise those kids yourself.” She shuddered. “Don’t even consider it. You’re not built for single motherhood.”

  Even as I agreed with her, my feelings were hurt. “Why not?”

  Greta tilted her head as though measuring my willingness to take her advice. “You’re damaged. That insane mother of yours messed up your ability to access inner strength.”

  “Did you read that in astrology.com?”

  “I don’t care if it sounds like mind-Reiki. Compare our mothers. Mine taught me
to distrust men, but she never doubted that I should trust myself. If anything, she made me over-proud of every little thing I did. You need propping up. I’m not sure what would happen with the kids leaning on you without Adam behind you.”

  “You make me sound terrific.”

  “You are. The problem is you don’t believe it. You look for other people to fill that huge void inside you. Which is fine, I suppose, if that person can be Adam. But if he can’t, having a damn affair won’t solve that problem.” She tore off one more corner of her roll. “The answer to your troubles doesn’t lie between your legs.”

  5

  Myth: Cheating doesn't count if no one finds out about it.

  Truth: The cheater knows about it.

  My mood worsened as I walked towards the Copley train station. Having Greta play the ghost of Christmas future, showing me alone with the kids, had been no help. Plus, spending a few minutes at the Faneuil offices with Greta was akin to a glutton being allowed to press her nose up to the bakery window, while being permitted only one dry biscotti.

  Publishing churned with icy rumors, hot jealousy, and knives of fear. How well did his/her new author do? Whose book will rise to bestseller status? Which hated agent of today will be shopping tomorrow’s “it” book—thus, who do you have to make kiss-kiss with through gritted teeth?

  I envied them all.

  People imagined publishing as studious editors hunched over wooden desks, red pens in hand, imagination and wisdom flying. In reality, haphazard stacks of books were piled everywhere, including stacks on the floor. Computers doubled work, forcing you to track real and virtual information until streams of words choked you.

  Faneuil Books didn’t carry the same cachet as during its heyday, but it still wore a cloak of intellectual potency. Specialized Faneuil Choice imprints represented the kiss of venerated brilliance. Their covers, red titled, black backgrounds, signified highbrow status for the intelligentsia. Faneuil rode this history. Choice titles brought book prizes. Luminary memoirs, the company’s new specialty, paid many more of the staff salaries than did the those which won literary prizes.

  Unless the prize was Oprah’s kiss, of course.

  Greta’s eponymous imprint came from her eye for what caught the public’s interest: celebrities with an unbridled desire for exposure and details about sex with famous partners—hopefully, six-feet-under partners who wouldn’t complain about being splayed on the page.

  I had wanted two things from Greta: to invite me, no, beg me, to play on Faneuil’s senior team and tell me my dalliance was no big deal. Hey, you made a little hay—no harm done!

  A block from the train, I wandered into a shoe store for the rich and glamorous—and not for me. The whippet-thin man showing me shoes looked at me in a manner that spoke his silent thoughts: You’re not buying a thing. You know it, I know it, but we’ll play this game.

  I admired my foot, turning the leg-shaving-worthy teal suede pumps side to side.

  The slippery slope from an affair to shopaholic seemed greased with bad intentions and self-indulgence. Greta’s words echoed. The answer didn’t lie between my legs. Nor did it cover my feet.

  “Thanks, but these aren’t right,” I told the store clerk. He gave me a final supercilious smile for the road and turned away.

  Time pressed. With any luck, I’d get a foothold in chapter nine of the ballerina book and uncover the memoir’s core before Henry got home. Her prose smothered me in a blanket of sorrow. She pirouetted for the world while riding circles of hell offstage. By the third page, she considered suicide and checking into Betty Ford. I could hear Greta: shoehorn in the joy of the dance and add more sex.

  I reminded myself of my blessings—being neither an addict nor tempted by razors—and dropped a dollar in every beggar’s cup. I rode the train to Newton Centre and picked up my car from the lot in a depressed daze. Driving past Rose and Sidney Stein’s house, the sweet elderly couple living next door to us, the sheer number of trees and shrubs weighed me down. Repetitive green, brown, green, brown deadened me. Newbury Street may have been brittle, overpriced, and pretentious, but at least it held my interest.

  The newest issue of Allure waited in the mail slot. Eight minutes into an article on plastic surgery for sagging eyelids, I fell into a drool-heavy nap on the couch.

  Shreds of disturbing dreams clung as I struggled awake and trudged to the bathroom. I bent over the sink, splashed and splashed, but no soap would wash away my self-involved ailments and sins. No man would see me as sexy when I gave up Guy. Once again my role as the invisible woman of Chestnut Hill, tapping at my computer, with the UPS man as my only colleague, would return.

  Gorging on bagels would be my only release. Post-affair weight would smother me like my marriage.

  I stared at my make-up-free face. I looked younger without make-up, but only in a chunky, adolescent way. Young and slow-witted.

  The bathroom clock read 3:30. Adam’s neurosis—we lived with clocks every ten feet or so. One of Molly’s stray barrettes sat on the glass shelf above the sink. I gathered my sleep-bent hair and twisted it into a shapeless bun.

  I tried to work, but every other page I Googled things that required erasing my browsing history: Fifteen Steps to Ending Your Affair. Perhaps the author should consider that one needed more than 10 steps to address such low-behavior. How to End Your Affair Without Getting Caught—that was more like it. Then there was An Affair Handbook, which led to Six Different Kinds of Affairs.

  “Mom?

  “Hi, pumpkin.” I slammed the computer shut. “How was school?”

  “What are you doing?” He pointed his chin at the computer.

  “Working. Are you hungry?”

  Of course, he was. Hunger showed that my boy was manufacturing an adult. Adam worried it meant incipient obesity, insecurity, or neurosis. All this he laid at my feet. This was our way of parenting. He found problems, then stacked them up for me to solve.

  The phone rang as I sliced an apple for Henry. Charlotte. Henry was home, and she knew it. My mother-in-law loved having me captive.

  “Hello, Charlotte.” She hated when I identified her before she said hello.

  “I find that Caller ID thing troubling. An invasion.” She ignored the fact that she loved it when I was the one calling her, and thus we began repetitive conversation number twenty-two.

  “Adam needs mental preparation for when the service calls about a patient.” I grabbed the Oreos box from the cabinet, pried out two, and then sealed the carton with a slap of finality.

  She huffed out a cloud of impatience.

  “Plus, I can screen out salesmen,” I continued, “but always pick up—”

  “I’m calling about Thanksgiving. How many are you having, besides Judith, Marty and the kids? I need to know how many to shop for.”

  “It’ll be about the same as always. Maybe a few less than usual.” My mother-in-law resented guests to whom she shared no blood or blood by marriage.

  Henry appeared at my side. My neck stiffened as I balanced the phone between ear and shoulder and spread peanut butter on whole-wheat crackers. His pleading eyes sent my hand up for the stash of cookies. I circled apples and the grainy dry crackers with Oreos, took three more for myself, gave him the plate, and handed him back to the TV.

  “For goodness sake, darling, you can’t expect me to remember every orphaned friend you have joining the family during the holidays,” Charlotte said.

  I split an Oreo in two, scraped off the white. . .What was the white stuff? Sugar lard? I ate whatever it was, ate the naked half, and then began again.

  “What are you eating?” Charlotte managed to overwhelm us with food and monitor our intake at the same time.

  “Nothing.” I crammed the last cookie in my mouth whole before sprinkling Ajax on the sink. Orphans meant Greta, occasionally a holiday-worthy boyfriend of hers, and our neighbors, the kind, plump, childless Wedgewood-collecting Steins.

  “So, three pies?” Charlotte’s tone spoke
sad reams about wanting to come over at six in the morning and cook the entire dinner.

  Since Adam’s father died, we hosted Thanksgiving. Charlotte considered Adam head of the family, as though we were the Corleone family of Newton.

  I rinsed the scouring pad. “Greta is coming, but no date. And the Steins will be here.”

  “Don’t they have any family of their own?”

  “They don’t have children,” I reminded her. “Sad. They’re such sweet, warm people.”

  “They’re lucky there are families like ours willing to take them in for the day.”

  “They’re not dogs. We’re not kenneling them.”

  “So, three is right for the pies?” My mother-in-law had topic-changing down to a head-spinning science. “Any chance of Thomas and Diana coming?”

  “No. They’re going to Texas, to my mother and Ken’s.”

  “Just as well,” she said.

  “Just as well, why?”

  “Sweetheart, stop. You’re so sensitive. A few less simply lowers the chaos, dear.”

  My mother-in-law dipped her “dears” in vinegar. Who cared if the “few less” were my brother and his wife? Charlotte didn’t want dilution from her biological material.

  Thomas and Diana lived in Connecticut with their Great Dane, their housekeeper, Thomas’s golf clubs, Diana’s money, and Thomas’s incredibly good looks.

  “So what are you making for dinner tonight?” Charlotte asked.

  Three hours later, stirring chicken simmering in wine made me itchy and weak, tempting me toward a just-one-more-won’t-hurt state of mind. Perhaps it was the zucchini waiting on the counter bringing on the trite lust.

  One more time will hurt. I repeated this new mantra with the addition of vivid images illustrating the myriad ways it would damage my family and me.

  I went for broke: