Infidelity Read online

  It was the violence in me that Charlie desired the most.

  ( CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE )

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, beautiful.” Aaron held up a small box, wrapped in heart-printed paper and tied with an obnoxiously large, shiny red bow.

  “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to give each other anything? With saving for the baby and all that.”

  Despite their recent lack of sex and her general lack of fertility, Ronnie had made an appointment with her doctor and gone back on the pill earlier that week. They expressed vague concern over her precarious health but she insisted.

  “Weren’t you and Aaron planning—” her doctor asked.

  “Things change,” she said and her doctor, of course, didn’t persist.

  The last thing she wanted was to get pregnant and then have to figure out whether it was Aaron’s or Charlie’s.

  She kept the pills in a cigar box at the bottom of a ten-gallon plastic Rubbermaid container full of moth-eaten clothes in her closet so Aaron would never find them. She refused to admit to herself that Charlie was the reason for that. All she knew was the moment she had drunk that shot of peach schnapps, any interest in reproducing had left her completely.

  “Yeah, but this is kind of for the baby,” he said, beaming.

  The baby. The baby. The baby. Sometimes Charlie called her baby. After she came on his desk he had stroked her forehead, called her “good girl” over and over while she panted and squirmed.

  Ronnie ripped at the paper to find, much to her horror, a black velvet ring box. Aaron suddenly descended from his seat at their tiny kitchen table to one knee on the linoleum floor. She resisted a sudden urge to vomit, swallowing hard, and clicked the box open to reveal a small diamond ring.

  To cope, she made a joke. “I don’t think a baby will be able to wear this, Aaron.”

  “No, silly. I mean that the baby gets married parents. A baby needs married parents, don’t you think? And stop making jokes.”

  “No, actually, I don’t think that a baby needs married parents.” Ronnie was surprised it came out. Aaron’s face sank.

  “Aaron, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I just thought we decided—”

  Ronnie had always been convinced that a marriage, or any commitment, that was a reaction to illness, tragedy, threat, or strife was always suspect.

  “Please don’t speak, Ronnie. Let me do this.” His tone was slightly harsh despite his smiling.

  Her only thought was that Aaron was proposing because he knew Ronnie was having an affair. That was the only explanation. He had never been interested in marriage before, so he must have somehow discovered that she had gone to Charlie’s office in the middle of the afternoon and removed her pink cotton underwear on his desk, that she had let Charlie touch her until she came, that Charlie had firmly clasped his hand over her mouth while she had done so to prevent any of the professors or students in nearby offices from hearing.

  He must have proposed because he knew that she had loved it, that the guilt she had read about and been told about that came over people after they had cheated never came over her. That she had not regretted it and would likely do it again, and again, and again, if only because having a secret of that magnitude made her feel like she had an identity severed from the life she shared with him. A life that, if she was honest with herself, she could never get comfortable in.

  Of course Aaron did not know what she was really doing with her afternoons and evenings, but he had felt her distance, the way she occasionally flinched when he touched her, ever so slightly, and had opted to solve it by giving her what he assumed every woman would want.

  “You’ve just seemed off lately, with our not being able to have a baby and all. But, honey, I’m sure it’ll happen for us. I promise it’ll happen for us.”

  Aaron removed the ring from the box and took Ronnie by her left hand. She resisted the urge to pull away. She stared at a space on his forehead simply because it was much too difficult to look him in the eye.

  “Veronica Suzanne Kline, will you be my wife?”

  She said yes because it was the quickest way to get him to stand up.

  ( CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX )

  The next morning, Ronnie woke up to a pile of wedding magazines arranged carefully on the kitchen table. They were purchased from the convenience store on the corner and Aaron had left them there, a less-than-subtle hint to start planning that suggested Aaron recognized her disinterest.

  Ronnie stood in the kitchen in her blue striped bathrobe, and stared at them for a full three minutes before she managed to put the kettle on the stove. The smiling models in their gleaming white dresses and gleaming white smiles mocked her, staring accusingly, and she managed to burn a slice of whole grain toast while transfixed by what was obviously a fourteen-year-old girl holding a bunch of red balloons while running through a field in a dress that resembled a overly iced cake.

  The smiling. Ronnie couldn’t take all the smiling.

  The idea of having the nuptial pornography in the house was intolerable, so instead she brought them with her to the salon, disposing of them among the endless celebrity gossip rags and fashion tomes women read while they were waiting for their highlights to set.

  Lisa immediately eyed the magazines suspiciously. “Hey, Rons, you got something to tell me?” She smiled slyly, fussing over her fuchsia-dyed hair in a mirror and raising a penciled-in eyebrow. Ronnie focused on sweeping a hair into a neat pile, busying herself to avoid Lisa’s suspicious looks in the mirror.

  “Oh that? God no. I just thought all the brides that come in here would appreciate some guidance. If I have to do an up-do with baby’s breath one more time I’ll puke. Giving them other options is an investment in my sanity.”

  “You’re fucking lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, thank god for that. I thought you were joining the sheep.”

  Ronnie swallowed, leaning the broom against the wall. “No. Of course not. Just work research.”

  Lisa remained unconvinced. “Hey, you and Aaron ever think of getting married?” she asked, removing an eyebrow pencil from her purse and going to work on her left brow.

  “Why would we bother? We practically are anyway.”

  “I didn’t ask you that.” Lisa had this uncanny ability to know exactly what was going on. When Ronnie had launched into her affair with Charlie it was Lisa who had noticed and commented that she had “a glow about her.” “You getting laid more?” she had asked.

  The thing Ronnie appreciated most about Lisa was that she was incapable of judgment. As someone who didn’t believe in “too much information,” and who often subjected her clients to stories about her various sexual experiments and implements, nothing had the ability to shock.

  “Okay. Aaron asked me to marry him last night.”

  “And there you go. The truth comes out.” Lisa didn’t even look up from her makeup application.

  “Sorry. I just haven’t really processed it. I spent a chunk of my morning looking at pictures of preteen faux Stepford wives-to-be,” Ronnie said, gesturing to the magazine pile.

  “They’re better off here. I’ve seen many a good woman get sucked in by that crap.” Lisa decided she was done her primping and collapsed heavily into the chair behind her. She spun the chair in Ronnie’s direction dramatically. “So he, like, asked you, asked you? Like down on one knee with a ring asked you?” Lisa was containing her natural inclination to jump up and scream over this news.

  “Yes. He proposed. Like they do in the movies, I guess. All very traditional.”

  “God. Finally.”

  “Yes. Finally. I guess.”

  “Sorry. I take it from the fact you’re not wearing said ring that you’re not exactly pleased?”

  Ronnie looked down at her naked ring finger and self-

  consciously made a fist. She had
removed it and put it in the coin pouch of her wallet before she had left for work that morning.

  “It’s not that. I just—”

  “It is just that. It’s all over your face. Girl, you are not happy about this development.”

  Lisa’s client, an elderly lady whose short lavender hair was set in foamy pink rollers under the hair dryer, was clearly enthralled with Ronnie’s apparent distaste with her partner’s proposal. She lifted the dryer ever so slightly so she could survey Ronnie’s expression.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just don’t see the point.”

  “The point is that you are in love. Unless of course you’re not in love. Which is fine, but another conversation entirely.”

  “I’m in love. Of course I’m in love. We’re in love. Whole lotta love.”

  “Convincing. So I suppose a congratulatory hug is out of the question?” Lisa raised her tattooed arms mockingly.

  “No, really. I’m happy. Of course. I’m very happy with Aaron.”

  “Well, I better be a fucking bridesmaid or you’re dead to me.”

  Lisa lunged forward and wrapped Ronnie in a large hug. Ronnie collapsed into her, holding on for just a bit too long.

  “I’ve got you,” Lisa said quietly and knowingly, holding her tight.

  “You know, dear,” the woman in the foam rollers offered, “a proposal is what every girl dreams of. You should count yourself among the lucky ones.”

  After her late morning shift was over Ronnie went straight to Charlie’s office, locked the door behind her, and straddled him in his desk chair. She placed her palm over his mouth and stared at him for a few moments.

  He pulled her palm from his mouth. “Ronnie. I missed you,” he said.

  “Shhh.”

  A few students came to the door and knocked while the two of them kissed clumsily, frantically, wordlessly. Ronnie never mentioned Aaron’s proposal, never mentioned much of anything, and did not wear the engagement ring.

  She thought of it momentarily while she removed her dress over her head and then unhooked her bra in the soft light of Charlie’s office.

  “Charlie, don’t ever leave me, okay?” she said as her bra dropped to the floor.

  “Never.”

  ( CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN )

  After the next batch of tests came back as abnormal Ronnie was asked to the hospital for further tests. As predicted, a biopsy. For cervical cancer. Ronnie said the words to herself over and over again until they sounded normal, comfortable, no problem at all.

  Biopsy for cervical cancer. Biopsy for cervical cancer. Biopsy for cervical cancer.

  “Isn’t this common? Doesn’t this happen all the time?” Aaron had asked. The familiar refrain. There was a tiny expression or fear, maybe panic, that flashed across his face while she reassured him that yes, it was routine. At least that what the doctor had said.

  “Lisa tells me lots of women go through it,” she said, despite the fact that she’d never met any women who had.

  “Well, that’s good that you’re dealing with it then. Before we start a family. That everything is healthy.”

  Ronnie found it strange that Aaron had said “everything” instead of “you.”

  Aaron drove her to the appointment at the hospital on University Avenue and dutifully read the pamphlets in the waiting room. Ronnie could not help but notice the terrified expressions of the other women who sat stiffly around her, waiting for their names to be called.

  Aaron held her hand until she was ushered into a tiny, fluorescent lit examination room and greeted by a male med student who looked no older than nineteen. He asked her detailed and at times insensitive questions, making sporadic notes on his clipboard and occasionally grunting incomprehensible responses to her answers.

  “How many sexual partners have you had in the past year?”

  She was afraid to answer the question honestly, but when she did the boy with the clipboard seemed unfazed.

  “When was the last time you had sexual intercourse?”

  It had taken her many weeks to even think about washing the lemon-yellow dress. She hadn’t had the time, nor the strength, to take it to the laundromat, and when she finally did she couldn’t bear to rinse it clean. When she finally sorted the laundry to take it down she removed the dress from the pile and hid it next to the birth control pills in her closet where it had remained ever since.

  “All right, Miss Kline. I’m going to need you to remove your pants and underwear for me.”

  Her paper gown crinkled as she lay down on the table and waited for a doctor she’d never seen before to return with a new collection of med students, all of whom spoke in hushed tones with weak smiles and never made eye contact.

  “Are you ready, Veronica?”

  She nodded.

  ( CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT )

  There was something truly intoxicating about their clandestine meetings, the way they drank together in financial district bars, surrounded by people they assumed were lawyers and bankers, a sea of suits to save them from being caught by colleagues and friends. They were invisible, safe among the blues and greys of the mundane power struggles and lecherous socializing. There was something irrelevant about the two of them in that environment, their awkwardness and lack of sleek costuming. They didn’t belong and were therefore largely ignored.

  That day, in that particular bar, running her foot lightly along the inside of Charlie’s calf, gave Ronnie a secret thrill. The act, dangerous and partially visible to people who couldn’t care less, reminded her of the way things used to be between her and Aaron before they became so predictable.

  Ronnie reconsidered. “I think it’s important we don’t touch in public,” she said suddenly, putting down her glass and folding her hands on the table in front of her. The statement was more of a question: she was unsure of the rules.

  “We can do it accidentally?” Charlie asked, smiling.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “We can do it covertly?”

  “Of course.” She returned the toe of her shoe to the inside of his calf.

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “I just don’t want to be reckless.”

  “Yes. Discretion. Discretion is key,” he laughed.

  “It’s not really funny, Charlie. I just don’t want to be unkind.”

  Her pointed toe continued up to his knee, where he reached for it, slipped his hand into the cuff of her jeans, and held her tiny ankle in his hand. “Of course. We should always be respectful. Adult.”

  “Grown-ups.”

  They both nodded furiously, comically, despite the fact that neither of them had ever been capable of being grown-up or adult about anything else in their lives. Cheating was of course unacceptable, but their ability to hide it, their kindness in not shaming their partners with their actions, somehow made it justifiable. The covenant of their secret made them grown-up. Made them respectful, empathetic.

  “I want you,” Charlie said quietly when the server had cleared their glasses.

  “Not today, Charlie.”

  “Ronnie, please,” he gripped her calf under the table, pulling her toward him with such force that she had to brace herself against the table.

  “Charlie, you know I can’t today. Aaron’s expecting me.”

  He pouted like a child.

  “Soon.” Ronnie bit her lip, feeling the burn of his fingertips on her skin.

  “Tell me when.”

  “I’m not sure. It’ll depend when I can get away.”

  “When you can get away from Aaron?”

  Ronnie pulled her foot from Charlie’s grasp and adjusted herself at the table. “Don’t do that. You know what I mean.”

  “I want you to get away from Aaron forever.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that yet,” Ronnie replied so
lemnly.

  Ronnie could admit that she despised Aaron for his tender way, the way he rubbed her back or held her hand. Charlie did not hurt her, but his need for her exceeded his need to be gentle. She was grateful for this. Aaron had always coddled her as though she was a child, and he worried and doted and took care of everything as if she were incapable of doing so.

  Once she and Charlie had slept together on his desk in the middle of the afternoon, what she could not admit was that she would never leave Aaron. That she could not leave Aaron. That she had to marry Aaron. That despite all her love and desire for Charlie, real life dictated that all they would ever have was clandestine meetings and concealed touching beneath barroom tables. Two children could never be together. What Ronnie could not admit was that despite Charlie’s combative pleading, she was probably okay with that.

  “I should probably go,” Ronnie said, looking at her watch and pulling out her purse to pay the bill.

  Together Charlie and Ronnie left the Bay Street bar and rabidly kissed goodbye in an alley adjacent to a parking garage.

  Hungry and elated, Charlie arrived at his quiet home in the Annex to find his wife in the living room, reading a novel. She was without makeup, her hair wet from a bath, wearing nothing but a light cotton robe.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, not looking up from her book. “You missed dinner.”

  “Where’s Noah?” he asked, ignoring her question. He stood above her, his face expressionless.

  Tamara removed her glasses and placed them on the arm of the couch. “Out with Amanda for a few hours. I needed a break. He was acting out again. We really need to talk about the way he’s been lately. If there’s something we should do. If there’s something we can do.”

  Charlie said nothing, just stared down at her blankly.

  “Charlie? What’s with you? Where have you been?”

  Buoyed by afternoon drinks, Charlie kneeled before her and gently pulled the cord on her robe until it fell open, revealing her nakedness beneath. She sat motionless, exposed, a look of both concern and breathless anticipation on her face. She resisted the urge to pull the robe to her chest, confused by his intensity.