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A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 01

By: TheUnoriginalist



A few important points:

1. This is where I justify my name. 

I have always leaned towards the "capable" end of the spectrum when it came to writing ability, and the "absent" end for inventing original or creative storylines. I just sit and sit and sit, and nothing much ever happens. So I'm hoping that, by just getting into the act of writing regardless, I'll start to unclog that inventive nozzle a little bit. 

This story's initial premise has been done several times before. I realize that. A few lines may even be pulled verbatim from other sources. But I'm hoping that by injecting some bits and pieces from other authors, and trying to follow the characters through what feels like their natural decision-making process, I can give it enough to make it enjoyable. And, in the long run, I'm hoping that exercises like this one will help me develop the ability to do something unique.

2. THIS IS NOT A BTB STORY...but I'll tell you how you can change that. 

I'm not remotely interested in storytelling as a method for creating an archetypal hero character that readers can put themselves in, so that they can fly around in their awesomepants for a while. Comic books do that kind of thing well. So do movies and, I imagine, video games. Stories exist to explore characters, or ideas, or emotional journeys. The purpose of these journeys isn't to give you the ending you would want for yourself, but to examine on a very human level what personal experience is like in any number of situations, to any number of people. 

Okay, so that's my feeling. It's not yours? Good. I purposely left this first chapter on its own because it's a little ambiguous in terms of what is being planned and how that will happen. So any number of authors could follow this exact start to any number of different conclusions. All it takes is for someone else to...I dunno...finish the damn story? While the base idea at the start of this story has been done before, it's certainly less explored than any number of other LW archetypes. I specifically grabbed it because I, as a reader, wish it WERE more explored. If you want to create your own alternative ending, go nuts. 

The rest of the story...all 23,000 words of it...is also finished and will arrive in the form of two lengthier submissions in the next few days. 

I just wanted to make sure I was offering the above opportunity, at the start.

--==--

CHAPTER ONE

--==--

She barely looked in my direction as she came bustling into the kitchen. Even a simple "hello," or familiar kind of smile would have been welcome. But she just smoothed her dress, glanced anxiously over her shoulder, and said, "Remember, I'm out with the girls tonight. I've got my cell if you need anything, but don't call unless it's an emergency."

I took a moment to look her over before responding. I wondered how she could possibly expect me to believe that the tight, small black dress she had on was meant for "the girls." Or the make-up. Or the perfume. Did she expect me to believe that "the girls" liked seeing "the girls," as it were, as pushed up and on display as they were right now? 

I should have been offended that she could think so little of me. I should have been livid that she would just assume that level of cluelessness.

But I wasn't, because I knew that I had earned it. 

She had, after all, managed to keep me in the dark about her other relationship for far longer than she ought to have been able to. I'd been the worst kind of fool: the kind that trusts someone. The kind that lets someone in. The kind that bets their life on them. 

Mistake made, mistake recognized, and now...mistake corrected.

"Before you go," I finally said, "I need you to sit down for a minute so we can talk about something."

She didn't even turn around...just made an impatient little 'harrumph' noise as she rummaged through her purse and said, "I'm sorry, honey, but I really have to get going. I'm running late as it is."

I grabbed ahold of my temper in anticipation of the upsurge of anger, steadying my grip on my beer bottle, but nothing came. No anger, no rage, no hurt. This uninterested dismissiveness was far too typical behaviour for her, of late. She'd dismissed me. She'd dismissed the children. She'd dismissed herself. And now...we'd all gotten used to it.

But not any more. It was time to act. I tossed the keys she was hunting for onto the table.

"I understand your urgency," I snapped, "God knows that I do. But if you go out and spend another evening fucking Carl Jensen without talking to me, then I recommend never coming back here again."

She froze, standing there for the longest time with her hand still in her purse, and didn't say anything. "What?" She finally managed, her voice small and disbelieving. "What did you say?"

"This won't take more than a minute," I said. "Come, have a seat at the table with me, and let's talk."

She lingered a minute longer, not turning around or responding to my suggestion. She was gripping that purse like it might save her life. It wouldn't. 

Finally, her shoulders sagged, her hands went down, and she turned around. She looked guilty everywhere except in her eyes. They were darting around like an animal in a trap, wounded and without hope. Shuffling over, she half-sat half-collapsed into the chair across from me. There were a lot of quick glances thrown in my direction, a lot of silent searches for information, but nothing that met my eyes. 

"John," she said at last, "I'm...I'm so sorry." Her voice was almost a whisper. Christ. Was she hoping to pull out a win on something as insignificant as contriteness? How lazy can you get?

"Sorry for what?" I asked in mock surprise. "I can't wait to hear what it is you've done that you think 'sorry' is going to make all better."

She bit her lip. Looking down at the table, she ran a finger over a section of grain, tracing the patterns in the wood. "I don't think it makes it all better. I...know what a mess I've made of things, even if you don't believe that. But regardless, I AM sorry for the affair."

There it was. I smiled. Be magnanimous, be calm. The first step is already behind you. 

"Thank you for having enough respect not to lie to my face about it," I said honestly. "Not that it would matter. No amount of lying could have saved you from the truth of what I know. But it does make me think that maybe I've made the right choice in not leaving."

She paled a little bit. "You're not leaving? I...I don't want you to leave," she whispered. "I don't love him, John. I honestly don't. I just-"

I held up my hand for silence. Seeing it there, ready to act, temptation swelled within my chest. 

Don't hit her, whatever you do. 

It would be so easy, so immediate.

But if you start, you might never stop. 

"I know you don't," I made a face to tell her exactly how much that knowledge was worth to me. "Or, at least, I know you think that you don't. Either way, I've already heard all your little justifications."

"Heard them?" she frowned. "What do you mean?"

Well, you stupid bi-

No. So far, everything has gone according to plan. Ignore that tenseness in your guts, remember what's at stake. You're doing so very well. Don't ruin it now. "It's simple," I shrugged. "I heard them when you said them to him."

If possible she lost even more color, and grew even smaller in her chair. "You...you heard us?" 

I just stared at her, keeping my expression blank, and she looked away. Her eyes were wet. Glistening, I suppose, is the word. 

She took a deep breath. "What are you going to do? I know it probably doesn't feel like I love you right now, but I really do. And I don't want to lose what we have. It would kill me if you left."

I nodded. "I know. Like I said, I heard you explain all of this to him. I don't need a repeat." 

I could have killed you, you know. Any one of a thousand times, I could have reached out and ended your story for you. I didn't. Think about that...about what that means.

Leaning over, I reached down and picked up a heavy envelope. Watching her reaction, I placed it on the table. It was a swollen thing, ready to burst. I ran my hand across the top and patted it for emphasis. "This envelope contains everything I know about your affair." 

She breathed in noisily and re-examined the thickness of it, eyes growing wide. I let the ramifications sink in for one long cold threat of a minute. "You can look through it at a later time. I'm not going to hide anything from you, and I'm going to try to be as direct about this as possible." 

I paused to rub my eyes with my forefinger and thumb. Okay. Deep breath. You've set it all up. Now for the hard part.


She was staring at the envelope like it was a live cobra. "It's so thick," she whispered. 

I nodded and patted it again, enjoying the sound that the impact of my hand evoked from the massive collection. "Once I got suspicious enough to investigate you, it was alarmingly easy to gather information. You really weren't trying very hard to hide it anymore, were you?"

"I thought you trusted me. I thought that would keep me safe."

"I did. And it did. That will never, ever happen again."

She nodded quickly. "It won't have to. I'm sorry, John. Please give me a chance to make this up to you. If you agree to stay, I-"

"I already told you," I grunted, "I'm going to stay. And I'm not going to go through the process of futilely trying to throw you out, either. I'm well aware of how far that will get me. No...if anybody ends up applying for a divorce, here, it'll have to be you." I ignored the surprised look on her face, choosing my words carefully and trying to separate the message from the reality. 

The truth was, it had taken a single billable hour with a lawyer, a day's worth of internet searches, and weeks of subsequent soul searching for me to understand what I felt, what I had left to protect in my life, and what I would need to do in order to survive. 

Tonight was only phase one.

I swallowed and continued. "My staying is, however, contingent on one thing." I was using my manager voice, now. Direct. Clipped. Determined. "I've been thinking about this a lot, and while it's obvious to me that you probably do have some degree of love left for me, and I can't excise the love I have for you simply because it has become inconvenient...the possibility of us being a couple is now completely non-existent." 

She frowned, and opened her mouth to respond, but I held up my hand. 

"Your actions, both in falling into this...affair...and in the way you conduct yourself within it, make it very clear to me that I am incapable of doing for you what my former friend is currently doing. You said it yourself. You told him that you had the best of both worlds...with me, you have love, care, and family. With him, you have someone who...'turns you inside out,' is how I believe you said it," I made a face. "With both of us, you get affection and attention. So, good for fucking you."

She flinched at hearing her own words. "I'm so sorry I said those things. But they aren't true! It was just..." she trailed off, possibly considering how impossible it would be to convince me of what she was saying, or perhaps running through the laundry list of other things I must have heard. "I'm sorry for everything," she admitted after a moment. "But I don't understand what you're telling me."

Another deep breath. This wasn't turning out to be as emotionless as I'd hoped it would be. I guess nothing really ever is. 

"Look," I continued, "we are living with three basic realities here. First, you and I do have a form of love for each other. Whether we want to have it or not, and whether we have the same TYPE of love for one another, is irrelevant. There is a love there, in one form or another, on both sides. On top of that we have a family, we have history. Maybe, we even have a future." She brightened slightly at that. "But the other two realities are that you have a lover, and I no longer have any sexual feelings towards you whatsoever." 

Or anybody. You were brutally efficient in seeing to that. But I'll never admit it. Not to you...not to anybody. 

Anyway, it's no longer your business. 

Whatever brightening of her face had begun at the start of my speech fell away. "John-" she began.

"I admit, I don't want to lose you if I can avoid it," I pushed forward, sticking to the script. "But I don't want you to be unhappy, either...and I certainly don't want you coming to me and trying to re-establish a physical connection that I'm no longer capable of or willing to maintain. There's only pain for both of us down that road. So," I straightened my shoulders and prepared for the worst, "my staying in this marriage...my staying in this relationship...is dependent upon you continuing your affair."

She started to respond, suddenly stiffened, and then her eyes went incredulously wide as what I'd said sunk in. "That's not funny, John."

"Good," I grunted, "because I've never been more serious in all my life. I would ask that, if your feelings towards him or me start to change in some way, that you come and talk to me so we can shield the children from the worst of our divorce. Other than that, you do your thing and I'll do mine. It can, in effect, be business as usual. If you want, you can even see him more often. That is what you wished for, isn't it? That you could be together more often?" 

We nearly died, the both of us, on the night that I heard that. You never even knew how close you came. 

I had stumbled up the stairs after listening to the recording and looking over the pictures. It was the first and final confirmation of what had previously been little more than dark suspicion. I was furious. I was crushed. I honestly thought that I was dead already. 

And you were there, sleeping so peacefully...so content. So happy with the way things were in your life.

It made me sick. 

So I stood over you, writing our final chapter in my mind with clinical precision...and then you rolled over and woke up. 

You blinked, squinted, looked up at me. I saw concern there. Honest concern.

Then you touched my hand, oh so gently, and asked if I was okay. You sat up as you asked it, all that contentedness gone. 

And you sounded like you really cared.

I shook my head, shaking away the memory of it.

She frowned, either thinking about all the things I was saying, or wondering about the things I wasn't. "Jim," she said, "some of the things I said, when we were-"

"Don't," I warned her. "Just don't."

Silly woman. The best thing you've done is be honest. Surely you must realize that. So why on earth would you give that up now?

Anyway, I couldn't stand to see the pity that would fill your eyes if you started lying to me, now. 

"I'd like you to start keeping me up-to-date on where you are and what your plans are, but I don't want to know any details or talk about ANY of...that. The only reason I even want to know about when you're with him is because it's safer for all of us that way."

She squished up her nose. "I am NOT going to be seeing him, John. You're not actually serious about all this..." her eyes flicked across my face, "...are you?"

"As a heart attack." As serious a man's hand on a woman's throat. "It's not the best situation, but the 'best situation' is no longer an option, so this is the one I've chosen instead. You can accept it now, as is, or we can start talking about divorce. But unless you want the marriage to end, and all of your relatives to find out what you've been up to, this is the way it has to be."

"I'm scared. What you're doing...It's not making any sense to me."

I smiled bitterly. "Then I guess you know a little bit about how I've felt, the last few weeks."

"But why don't you want me to stop?"

I do. Maybe the only things I want more are to never touch you again, and to be there for my children.

But I understood what she was really saying. "You're the cheater here, Karen, not me. There's no trickery involved. I'm not gaming you, or setting you up, or engaging some elaborate scheme. Frankly, I don't seem to have that kind of energy, anymore." I made a show of checking my watch. "Now, you'd better get going, 'dear,' or he's going to worry."

She flinched again, and I could see that she was suddenly very aware of just how blatantly she had dressed herself up tonight. 

Oh, feel like a fool, do you? Good. Come on in and join the club. 

"John," she pleaded, "can I please just...stay home? At least for tonight? I'm not feeling very-"

"Absolutely not," I snapped a little too loudly, causing her to shrink back. "To be honest, I don't care what the two of you do. Go and talk about what a monster I am, or what a wimp move this is. Or screw each other senseless. I. Don't. Care. Sit and watch a movie and eat ice cream, if that's what you want to do. But you have a date tonight, and you are going to see it through." 

At some point, I have the right to indulge in a little honest-to-goodness self-pity. And you can't be here for that. No way.

"I...I don't..." She was stunned by my insistence. "You really ARE serious about this, aren't you?"

"I absolutely am."

"And you're...not going to divorce me? You still love me?"

"I won't divorce you, I won't leave you. Unfortunately, I do still love you."

She studied me for a moment, looked down at the table, and then gave a little nod. "I won't pretend that I understand," she admitted slowly, "but I guess I'd be a fool not to take you up on it, wouldn't I?"

"I imagine most people would think so."

She stood up slowly, her all too feminine figure accentuated by the dress. I looked away. I've never been much for oogling strangers.

In the three months since she started her affair, Karen had gotten into shape. She was like most women, I suppose, in that she'd kept her gloriously feminine shape but had acquired a little plush around the middle in college that had never gone away. Well, it was gone now, and I'd never seen her look this fit and good before. She'd also changed her haircut to a style that was both playful and sexy, in a sort of pixyish way. She'd spent a small fortune on new clothes, and even traded her old mommy minivan in on a sleek white SUV. 

In effect, she had become someone else. 

Apparently, Carl was an impetus for her to try on a whole other life. Maybe that's what he really gave her, at the end of the day: a chance to not be a wife and mother for a while. I didn't really know or care.

What I did know was it was all those changes that gave her away. Actually, it was the SUV and the way that she fawned over it that finally clued me in. See, she'd wanted it because it was the mirror image of her affair partner's vehicle. The two lovers thought it was cute that they matched. 

I had never been in her new SUV, nor had I ever run fingers through her sexy new haircut or had the good luck to be inside her sleek new body. I sort of appreciated that, now. It kept this new person separate from me, a distant insignificant who had little in common with the woman who had been my wife.

She bit her lip. "What time should I...be home?" She asked tentatively.

"Well," I thought about it. "You always came home from your "girls nights out" around ten, but that was mostly to help maintain the lie, wasn't it?" She looked down and nodded. "Then I guess you come home when you're ready to come home." Something about saying that sentence aloud betrayed me. For a brief moment, I couldn't keep the welling sadness I'd been working so hard to control for weeks out of my voice, and I saw the flicker of guilt on her face as she registered awareness.

She shifted her weight. "Really, John...I don't have to go. I don't even want to."


A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 01



"You're going." I don't need your fucking pity, you bitch.

"What will you do while I am gone?" 

Ha. Am I going to hurt myself, you mean? Or look for a way out? Give up and end it all? 

Don't flatter yourself.

"Oh," I looked around the room. "If the girls aren't busy, maybe we'll go out to eat and rent a movie. Otherwise, I've gotten pretty good about finding ways to keep myself busy while you're out having your fun."

She nodded sadly, then gave me a look like she was scared she might never see me again. "I..."

"It's okay," I said. "Just go. And if you're going to be out past midnight, make sure you send me a text so I don't worry."

She nodded, coming over and bending down to kiss me. I turned and gave her my cheek, which she dutifully kissed. Then she stood up, straightened out her outfit, and gave tired, joyless smile. "I almost feel like a teenager going out on a date my father doesn't approve of."

Fuck you. "Just don't forget to send that text." And tell old Carl that he should be very, very afraid for his future.

She made a show of rolling her eyes in an exaggerated fashion, trying to inject some levity. Even she seemed to realize that it didn't work, but she pushed on anyways. "I'll remember, Dad," she turned away. I didn't laugh. I don't think she noticed.

After she'd gone, I put my head in my hands and just focused on breathing for a very, very long time. I felt a grim sort of elation...the same way you might feel first waking up after a surgery that was both life-threatening and permanently scarring. It hadn't been easy, but it was done. I was sure that the journey ahead would contain other moments that were as hard or harder, but for right now I allowed myself the small victory of knowing that at least one of them was forever behind me.

Then, when I was ready, I stood up and washed my face in the kitchen sink. And I went off to see if my daughters were interested in getting some pizza.

Thank the good gods above, they were.



A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 02



--==--

CHAPTER TWO

--==--

Karen was up earlier than usual Saturday morning.

I wasn't all that surprised. Usually, on her "girls' nights out," she would stagger in around ten and have a glass of wine in the hot tub before coming to bed. This was a relatively new routine, one that I had initially viewed as an unspoken request for an extension of "me" time at the end of the day.

Now, I saw it in a very different and much uglier light.

A hot tub dip did, after all, seem like the best way to indulge in the relaxing afterglow of an evening of uninhibited sex. It helped to clean you off before bed, as well.

On this particular Friday, however, she had gotten home just after 9:30 and taken only the quickest of showers before staggering wearily into bed. She'd looked exhausted, stressed out, and more than a little ashamed of herself.

Still, even in the shade of this sudden change, I couldn't stop myself from studying her clothes, her hair, even the way she came in through the door. My eyes were hunting for evidence I didn't remotely want to find, or care about.

And this was MY newest habit...a horrible match to her own. It came on as a series of questions that were so small, and so unconsciously placed, that it sometimes felt like drowning in an inch of water. Was the fabric at the front of her outfit a little wrinkled? Was that stray hair frizzing up behind her right ear actually a rogue that had escaped her efforts to straighten up on the way home? Was she walking funny?

The urge to assess the unassessable was overwhelming. It was also unwelcome, and it made me sick to my stomach that I couldn't control it any more than I did. I didn't want to know the answers to the questions, of course. I didn't even want to know what the questions WERE.

But just try stopping, and see how you do.

She shuffled into the kitchen that particular Saturday morning in a robe and slippers, her face fixed with a baggy-eyed kind of determination. She got into it as soon as she had her breakfast in hand.

Just as I had been expecting her to.

"You caught me off guard last night," she husked. She punctuated this declaration by throwing me an accusatory look, and dropping her breakfast noisily on the table. "If you'd given me any time to think about it...any time at all...I would have refused. I would have stayed home in spite of your stupid little threats, and we would have talked about it. Talked. Like adults." The shake of her head was a nice touch. "You do realize that, don't you?"

Of course I do, you idiot. But why would you think that I would ever want to talk to you about anything, ever again? "I considered the possibility that you might do something like that...that you might miss the chance to save yourself in some fit of egotistical defiance." I hadn't yet looked up from my paper. "That's exactly why I chose NOT to give you time to think. I was doing you a favour."

I could feel her exasperated stare. I rather enjoyed it.

"Goddamn it, John," she snapped, waving her arms. "LOOK at me! For one goddamn minute, set the fucking paper down and look at me!"

I calmly set the paper down and gave her my attention.

"I don't want THIS to be our marriage! I don't want to live my life apart from you, but with you making demands about how I spend my time! And," she leaned forward, lowering her voice, "more than any of that, I don't want to keep doing this to you. I can't keep doing this to you. It isn't right."

Well, that just beat all. "DOING this to me?" I gave a derisive snort. "Oh, I really don't think you understand, Karen. This isn't something that you're DOING to me. Not anymore. This is something that you've already DONE. It's been. It's acted upon. The bullet has left the chamber, sailed through air, and is lodged well and deep within the meat and bone." I leaned forward, "It CAN. NOT. BE. REVOKED. Do you get that? Am I getting through to you at all? We can stop hashing it over, because nothing we say can ever change what's been done. YOU, my dear wife, betrayed me. You lied and you cheated. On our family. On our life together. That will never, never not be a part of your story, or our marriage's story...it will never not be a part of who you are. And while it's certainly not something that I wanted, YOU made the decision without any input from me whatsoever. So now you don't like having to live with the consequences, but you don't get to undo it, hey presto, just because you've discovered that your little adventure has ugly ramifications for your life moving forward."

"Stop it, John! Just stop it!" There were tears in her eyes. I guess they seemed real enough. "Doesn't our marriage mean anything to you? Don't you care at all? It's not fucking fair that-"

"DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT FAIR!"

My fist had smashed down onto the table, knocking my juice over and spilling it across the floor. I hadn't even realized that I was moving.

Shit.

Closing my eyes, I took a long, deep breath and thought of cool mountain streams. Then, with my self-control a little regenerated, I went on. "If you look at your situation clinically...if you really step back and think about the alternatives...then I think you'll start to realize where these doubts you're feeling now come from. They aren't love, or hope, or worry over your marriage. They are guilt, and they are fear. Do you understand? They aren't made from rational thought, they aren't birthed by any kind of desire...and they certainly aren't indicators of what you really want." I sipped my coffee. "The current situation is THE situation that is best for you. And it's the only one left that works for me. So while I appreciate the fact that you're...concerned...you don't need to be. Not about me, not anymore. It doesn't do anybody any good."

You haven't cared about me for a long time, now. So why change?

I leaned down and wiped up the spilled juice. "I meant what I said last night, Karen...right now, I don't have any sexual feelings towards you whatsoever, and I don't know that that situation isn't going to be permanent. The thought of touching you makes me sick. So in that one very important regard you and I are done." I also doubt that I could be that close to you and keep from wrapping my hands around your throat. I'm not prepared to risk finding out. "But I also meant it when I said that I love you, and that I have no intentions of leaving. Obviously my feelings could change in the future, just as your feelings about me could change...but the only way I can see right now that I might leave is if you start using your affair to humiliate me publicly, start to show signs that you're falling in love, or break it off and try to make me be with you in a way that I'm unwilling to do."

"John-"

"I want you to be happy," I insisted loudly. "Can we at least both admit that this is the best, perhaps only, way for that to happen?"

"No."

"I'm afraid it is."

She swallowed. "I don't want to believe that."

"I don't care what you want to believe." I held up my hands, breathed out through my nose, and changed tactics. "Do you realize, Karen, how happy you have been the last few months?"

Silence.

"Oh, yes," I waved a hand. "Smiling, relaxed, laughing at bad jokes and listening as the girls told you about their day. You've been more upbeat and attentive than I've ever seen you before."

I'm almost not lying about it, either. When you get to feeling guilty about just what a good time you're having away from us, you show remarkable flashes of deep caring and concern. Maybe, if you see that as your way through this, it'll become true all the time. The girls would certainly benefit from that, and it would keep you out of my hair.

Come on. Do something for someone else, for a change, Karen.

"John," she stammered, "I...I didn't realize..."

"Of course you didn't. Why would you? Your attention was elsewhere."

She ducked her head. "I wasn't trying to throw it in your face, you know. I swear that I wasn't. I just...when I was...with him...I would miss you. All of you, I mean. My family. It made me realize..." She had her hand over her mouth, and was trying not to cry.

"I know." I took a bite of my food. "But then...was it three weeks ago? When his mom was sick? He flew out to see her, and you couldn't see each other for four or five days." I shook my head and chuckled mirthlessly. "You really turned into a monster, didn't you? I haven't seen you that pissy since you had all those pains during your second pregnancy." I paused to stab at my food a little more with my fork. I didn't bother to take a bite, though. "And I don't think I've ever seen you that downright mean. Not ever. We took the brunt of your anger at being denied something we couldn't even give you. So how fair was that?"

Now she was in full blown crying mode. "I...I didn't mean to-"

Good. Break her down, and then help her see the way back. And don't you dare give her a chance to reconsider her options.

"The point is, in general you've been happier than I can ever remember, and that has impacted the way you behave around the house. It impacted me and the kids, as well. Your happiness has made everybody's life a little bit easier. So why would either of us want that to go away?"

"I want to be happy with YOU," she insisted wetly.

We don't get to choose, though, do we bitch? "You are happy with me. It's just that what you do with him supports that."

"I'm so scared," she wiped at her nose with the sleeve of her robe. "I'm scared that you're going to leave me."

"You know I won't do that."

She shook her head. "But why aren't YOU scared? If we were reversed...if you were doing this to me, I'd...I'd...God!"

I decided she was owed a bit of honesty...on just this one subject, anyway. She'd been so patient and accepting of all my little lies, so far. One little truth could be granted.

"I AM scared, Karen. In fact, I'm terrified. Do you want to know why?" She nodded. "I'm scared because it turns out that I'm all alone. Do you have any idea what that's like? No. Of course you don't." I set the fork down. "I felt like I had a lot going for me, for a very long time. I was privileged, you know? Victorious." I looked away. "I find, now, that I have very little left to lose, and I'm very scared that I won't be able to protect and keep it." And it just so happens that the list doesn't include you.

But maybe she already knew that, because she ran from the room in tears.

I simply stood up, another mission completed, and put my dishes in the sink. Then I went outside to work in the lawn.

---

When I came in a few hours later, wiping the sweat from my face with my sleeve and looking forward to a cool shower, the contents of the envelope (as in "THE envelope") were spread out all over our bed. I'd been waiting for that to happen. I'd even left it out for her, knowing her curiosity would eventually force her to see how complete my understanding of her affair really was.

The transcripts, the pictures, the CDs and DVDs...they were all out. So now she knew.

She was in the bathroom, with the shower running. The girls had gone over to a friend's, so there wasn't any worry about them finding the tawdry stuff currently on display on my bedspread. I went to make myself some more coffee, leaving it there.

She finally emerged twenty-five minutes later wearing sweatpants, a tank top, and a contritely insecure look that was refreshingly new for her. She'd taken on a level of self-confidence since stepping out on our marriage that might have been laudable under other circumstances, but just sickened me for knowing the source. Anyway, it bordered on arrogance sometimes, and when that happened it made her hard to be around.

Still, not for the first time recently, I did note how great she looked. I observed it with the kind of unfeeling distance a normal person might feel when walking through a museum. I could see a remarkable display of aesthetic beauty and not feel anything about it, not have it mean anything other than that I knew it was there.

Christ, she'd taken ten years off her age in the last few months. Those years, gained as a result of her infidelity, had all been stolen mercilessly from my own face. I wasn't so blind that I couldn't see that I'd had aged significantly in the very same time frame. I just couldn't bring myself to care, anymore.

"Hi," she offered sheepishly now, looking miserable and not meeting my gaze. Her eyes were rimmed red, and she ran a thumb under them as she came into the room.

"You looked over the report," I observed, handing her a cup of coffee and inviting her to sit down.

She nodded. "I didn't realize that...I mean, I know you said you knew everything, but..." She blew on her coffee.

"If it helps, the "knowing everything" bit is what made me decide to stay. If all I had was some grainy shots of you...sleeping with him...I believe I would have handled it very differently. And we'd both be worse off for it, by the way. Knowing everything is what helped me see that you were still invested in us. Even if the return was getting to be less and less for all the other investors."

"Well, it sure didn't make me feel like a good person to see it all laid out like that." She sipped her coffee. "It was even harder, realizing that everything I was looking at and hearing you had seen and heard, too. Realizing that you knew all the things we did together, the things I said to him." She glanced up. "You even knew about the car."

I nodded.

She shook her head in wonder. "And you didn't even try to stop me. You let me trade in our family van, with all its memories, and you knew exactly why I wanted that SUV all along."

Oh, no you don't. You don't get to put this on me. "I didn't know yet, at that point. In fact, you wanting that car...that EXACT car...was part of what got me asking questions. You think I didn't notice that it was an exact match for Carl's? You should have seen the look on your face when you spotted it on the lot." I clenched my jaw. "Like a goddamn child. At Christmas."

She made a face. "Like a child. That seems like a good description for me, lately."

"No. Happy. Happy is a good description for you lately. And maybe that's all that matters. The rest of this..." I flicked my wrist dismissively.

She looked at me sceptically. "You can't possibly expect me to believe that you aren't dying inside, John. Jesus, I can see it written all over your face!"

That's strange, Karen, because you sure missed it before. In fact, you barely saw me at all.

"Okay. So I'm hurting," I shrugged. "Would that be any less the case if I left? Or if you did? If you stopped seeing him and stopped being happy, and we had to go through the whole experience of trying and failing to restart our love life? With you uninterested and me unable to perform? Would that make me stop hurting?" I shook my head. "I have a wife, whom I do love, and I have two wonderful children who mean everything to me. Right now, they are all the happiest I've ever seen them. I can live with hurting, if that's the payoff."

You'll never take my children away from me. I promise you that. I'll say and do anything I have to, to make sure that doesn't happen.

"I don't like being the one who's hurting you."

Ha. That's rich. "You do a lot of things, Kay. Only the one actually hurts me." It hurts me more than anything has ever hurt. It hurts a little more with every passing second. I smiled. "Don't make it bigger than it has to be."

Sometimes I wish you'd just killed me instead. Isn't that pathetic? Sometimes I give in to the sadness just enough to let myself wish I was dead. 

She wasn't remotely mollified. "I don't understand it, though. How can you possibly be prepared to live this way?"

"Are you kidding me? I've BEEN living this way, Karen. For some time, by the way."

"But how can you just...leave it that way? How can you not want to fight for more?"

I leaned forward impatiently. The value of this conversation comparative to my plans was rapidly diminishing, and I needed to bring it to a close. "Do you still love me?" I asked quietly.

"Of course!" She insisted predictably.

"Then that's how." I shrugged. "That's how everything. Okay?"

She pushed away from the table and rushed over, wrapping her arms around me and burying her head in my chest. I held her like that, letting her cry into me for a few moments and fighting the urge to throw her to the ground, then stepped away and let her compose herself.

"So what do we do now?" She asked sorrowfully.

"We keep doing what we've been doing. That's what we do."

"It seems like the whole world's turned upside down."

"Then let it be upside down. As long as we're in the well of gravity, it won't matter to us."

"I suppose." She looked up at me. "What...what about today?"

"Today?

"What do we do today? I mean..." she shifted her weight, "...did you have...plans?"

I grimaced. There was something about her fidgeting that communicated a great deal more to me than she intended.

"Well," I said, choosing my words carefully, "I've got a new book. I'm kind of looking forward to just having a relaxing day sitting around the house, reading."

She looked pleased. "You didn't want to...I don't know, go out, or...or do anything in particular?"

Disgusting. If you're going to ask for permission, at least have the strength not to be such a coward about it. 

"Yeah," I lied through my teeth. "Just a quiet day, lost in my book." Then I turned to the window and forced a casualness into my words that took every bit of strength I had. "The kids won't be back before supper, so...a nice quiet day sounds just about perfect."

I heard motion behind me. She touched my arm. "Tell me you'll be here when I get back."

"You know that I will."

"That doesn't mean that I don't want to hear it," she whispered. I didn't respond, but just kept looking out the window at the calm, conformed world. After a few moments curiosity got the better of me, and I turned around into the silence. She was gone.

Well. Thank God for that.

She came out of the bedroom minutes later with stretch running pants and a sports bra top on, carrying her duffel bag. When she saw me watching it, she hefted it up and said, "Once I realized that you...knew...it seemed kind of silly to hide it in the car."

I shrugged indifference. I was well aware of her official affair tote bag, and what was in it.

For a moment we both looked at each other, me sitting in my chair with a book I had no intention of reading and her with a duffel bag and an eagerness that made me sick to my stomach. She seemed a little embarrassed, and temporarily uncertain about how to proceed, but then she smiled and timidly offered a play on her stupid little joke from the previous night.

"I won't be out too late, dad." She brushed a stray hair away from her face. Such a simple motion. So remarkably beautiful.

I looked away.

--==--

CHAPTER THREE

--==--

That Friday, the Baileys held one of their frequent neighborhood get-togethers. I say neighborhood, but it was really a hodgepodge of families from the area served by the nearby elementary school. You know how that goes. You can bet it didn't start with the husbands or the kids, but we all had a good time anyway.

We'd always attended these, but this one was different. I knew Carl would be there...he didn't quite fit with the couples-heavy crowd, but he was Tom Bailey's drinking buddy, and he never missed a social invitation if he had the choice. Now I wondered if he'd been using these parties as a way to saddle up to his married friends' wives.

I had done a good job of avoiding him since finding out (he'd made this fairly easy, I suppose, by avoiding me right back), but I also knew that being around other people would be nice for a change, and that the kids would have a good time. So while it was certainly tempting to back out...to claim flu or emergency and thus avoid having to see the son of a bitch...I decided I was going to just nut up and go anyway.




A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 02



Besides, I didn't want him to think that he could just scare me off that easy. In a way, showing up at the party felt like I was making a statement.

Karen was visibly excited to go...whether she saw this as an opportunity for us to bond as a couple, a way to reassure herself that she really could have her cake and eat it too, or simply a chance to spend a little sneaky time with her boyfriend, I couldn't say. I'm not sure to what degree I cared, anymore, either. But when we first arrived she stayed uncharacteristically close by, and I got the impression that she was trying to send either me or someone else a message.

I gave her a few questioning looks, but she ignored them. Right. Play innocent. But the way she kept her hands or eyes on me at all times, it had to be intentional.

The Baileys always made sure there was plenty of booze to be had at their get-togethers, and as the night wore on the combination of nerves and excitement seemed to get the better of Karen. She drank more than usual, faster than she ought to have, and it really showed. She was loose, playful, and noticeably less scared than when we arrived. By the time the sun started dipping low, she had broken boozily away from me to go and socialize.

Once that finally happened, I don't think she ever gave me a backwards glance. So I suppose the "reconnecting" theory was out the window.

It wasn't very long before I noticed that she and Carl just happened to be in the same conversational group. It wasn't super often, but it was often enough. And my insight told me that it was intended to look like the coincidence that it definitely wasn't. They never did anything to alert the unaware, but for someone already in the know it was hard to miss the way their eyes would light up when they looked at each other, or the way Karen would laugh too hard at Carl's jokes...especially when she thought no one else was paying attention.

The evening moved forward, and the drinks kept flowing. Several times, as conversations grew especially animated or laughter erupted, Carl would put his hand on Karen's shoulder or she would touch his chest. It was never quite enough to give them away, but it bruised my heart and put an unwelcome heat in my guts.

Jesus Christ, I thought. Was she kidding me? How could she be doing this right in front of everybody? What the hell was she thinking? Did she care about anything at all? Or anyone?

Somehow, I'd thought that I could hide the scope of my pain from her and still count on her reacting to it appropriately. I'd thought she would be human being enough to intuit a small measure of truth.

Clearly, I'd been wrong.

As I watched, the group they happened to be involved with dispersed and the two of them lingered together for a few moments. They talked quietly, Carl leaning in just a little too much and Karen giggling playfully...and then Karen did something that absolutely stunned me to my core.

She looked around the party, her eyes scanning the mass of her friends with a sort of arrogant mirth, and she laughed.

And that is when I finally realized what they were really up to.

They were playing a fucking game with us.

They must have talked about it beforehand...probably before I'd confronted her, although she obviously hadn't felt the need to cancel. I could just hear the scheming that must have gone on. "Let's see how far we can take pretending to be a couple in plain sight! Without anyone noticing what we're up to!" THAT'S why Karen had been careful to stay close to and stay in physical contact with me earlier...it was both a message to her partner-in-crime that it wasn't safe to start playing, yet, and a way to put me at ease so I wouldn't notice what mischief she got up to later on.

Being close to me was just a way for her to prep the game.

I sagged against the railing, suddenly very tired. My wife had used me as a prop, so that she could play a romantic game with her lover in front of our closest friends. She had used those friends like props, as well. OUR friends. We were all just toys to the two of them...just people they could get off on fooling.

I looked around the party. These were people who had been good to us over the years. Much better than Carl, I realized. Why would anyone want to treat them that way? Had Karen really changed so much in the last six months that she thought this was acceptable behavior? What had happened to her morals?

Ha. What a silly question to be asking now.

I turned back to where Karen and Carl had been standing. They were gone.

I frowned and scanned the party, hoping to find them. When that didn't work, I wandered a bit, expecting to locate them in the midst of some new conversational group. I saw nothing.

I went through again, trying not to look desperate as I hunted. Several times I had to politely decline attempts at conversation. I looked all around the backyard twice before entering the house on the excuse that I needed to use the restroom. Nothing there, either.

Then, as I walked past the living room on my way back outside, I saw them.

Through the large front-facing windows, I could see them partially obscured by the Bailey's decorative lawn foliage. Karen was leaned up against a tree, and Carl had one hand on the tree above her head as he leaned forward. They were talking, or rather he was talking and she was wrapped up in his every word. Then his expression changed, becoming more seductively charged, and he leaned in closer.

As I watched, they shared a long and tender kiss...a loving kiss. A gentle and horrifically intimate kiss. And before he could straighten himself back up, she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in for a deeper, more sensual follow-up. Their tongues probed each other's mouths as he reached up and stroked her cheek with his thumb. Finally, they parted, she said something to him, and he nodded.

In spite of everything else I had seen and heard...the words they shared when they were together, the intensity of their lovemaking and her obvious enjoyment of it...nothing had hurt me as much as what I had just seen.

It had been so totally intimate and affectionate. When people talk about lovers becoming one, they aren't talking about sex...they're talking about exactly the kind of tender and heartfelt connection that I knew I had just seen.

My stomach turned, I ran to the bathroom, and I threw up.

I was awash with agonizing emotions. How could they still manage to hurt me so bad, after all this time? After everything I had seen and heard? The obvious answer was that, on some level, I still loved Karen in spite of everything. Once upon a time that love had been a godsend. Now it was an unending punishment, brought upon me for wrongs unknown.

But even that didn't fully explain a reaction this intense. That kiss had hit me every bit as hard as it would have, had I been totally unprepared for it. It was like discovering the betrayal all over again. It was like losing her all over again. I didn't understand-

My thoughts were interrupted as I threw up violently again.

There was a knock at the door and Tom Bailey's concerned baritone called out, "Are you alright in there?"

I winced. Great. Just what I needed. Concerned friends.

"I'm fine," I lied. "I'm...almost done."

I could hear murmuring voices through the door.

"Is that John?" A woman asked.

"Does anybody know?"

"I think it's John," she insisted.

Brad Millens jumped in. "Did I hear someone getting sick in there?"

"Alice thinks it's John," Tom explained. "He sounds strange."

"Where's Karen at?" Alice asked nervously. "Someone go get Karen."

"He was sitting with us for most of the night." Christ. That had to be Albert Burke. "I didn't think he drank that much."

"Maybe it's the flu."

"It's not really the season for it." Alice.

"He definitely didn't drink that much," Albert repeated.

Then, like a schoolyard tease from fate itself, I heard Carl's easy humor-filled voice boom out. "Well, you know some people," he quipped, "just can't handle their liquor very well."

"I'm FINE!" I immediately shouted. "I'm FINE, and I'm COMING OUT!" Standing up and flushing the toilet, I went over and rinsed my face in the sink. The voices had faded into nothingness, and after a second I heard another knock at the door. A soft knock, as touched by hesitation as any such sound can be.

"John?" it was Karen's voice, sounding concerned. "John, are you okay in there?"

I took a deep breath, biting back the answer that swelled in my chest. Then I turned, opened the door into the hallway, and looked her in the eyes.

"The girls and I are leaving," I snapped. "Right now. If you don't want to go, then don't go. I don't care. You can get your goddamn boyfriend to give you a ride, for all I give a shit."

Karen's eyes widened ever so slightly, and a little of the color left her face. A lot had to be going through her mind at that moment, not the least was that I hadn't bothered looking around to make sure we were alone before snapping at her about her boyfriend. In my anger, I could very easily have exposed her despicable little secret.

Well, don't expect an apology, bitch. You could very easily have done the same thing with your stupid little game. Hell, for all you know someone DID see you, and the gossip mill is already gearing up. So I guess you get to wonder about that, now, don't you?

She also had to realize that something must have happened to make me this angry. She knew that I could handle my liquor, she'd seen firsthand that I wasn't drinking much tonight, and she knew me well enough to be able to tell when I was stone cold furious.

So I thought it was very telling that she didn't ask what was wrong, or pretend to get upset at me. I suppose she just didn't want to know the truth. "I...let me just...get my purse..." she stammered. "I'll be right back. Don't go without me!" Then she scurried off in the direction of the party.

For a moment after she left, the house was empty. I suppose everyone had cleared out in an attempt to give me some privacy as I recovered from my supposed over-drinking.

I fumbled in my pockets for the car keys, walking out into the main living area and trying to calm down. Looking out the patio door, I could see Karen grab her purse off the table where she'd left it and call a spattering of apologetic goodbyes to people she'd just been laughing at as she hurried past. Carl came up, trying to look nonchalant and for once failing miserably, and said something to her as she went by. A short conversation between the two lovers followed, with Carl looking slightly concerned and Karen betraying substantial agitation...a bitter agitation, which caused her to become more and more animated as she talked. Her face was red, her eyes wide, and she was making lots of motions with her hands. If I didn't know better, I would almost say I was watching a little lover's spat.

Finally, nerves drew Carl dangerously close to her and he said something under his breath. Her shoulders jerked upwards, almost to her ears, and she stole glances around the party, possibly checking the other guests for signs of awareness. None of them seemed to have noticed the obvious. She looked back at Carl, stepped back, and he said something else to her that made her shake her head. He kept talking. She shook her head again. He stepped close once more, this time giving her "hurt puppy dog" eyes, and spoke one last time. She paused, gave the tiniest of nods, and turned to go. I watched him watching her go, noting the cocky half-smile that appeared as soon as she turned her back, and did my best to hold my fury in check.

The drive home was silent. Karen was looking out the side window, almost completely expressionless. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she embarrassed by her own behavior? Scared that she might have taken things too far? Mad at me for having ruined all her fun? Mad at Carl for pushing her into a game that she now regretted? Maybe just glad that she'd gotten to have her fun, and to hell with the rest of it?

For all I knew, she wasn't thinking about me at all. And maybe that was fine by me.

When we got home, the kids ran downstairs to play video games and Karen yanked an already-opened bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge. She glanced at me as she went to the cupboard, probably wondering if she should get me a glass, but I went straight to the master bathroom and locked the door. I turned on the shower, let it warm up, then stepped in and just stood there.

I didn't think. I didn't feel. I didn't imagine or dream or wish or anything at all.

I just let the water roll over me, the same way that I hoped the rest of this would do someday.

I let roll over me and then down the drain, never to be worried over again.

--==--

CHAPTER FOUR

--==--

Karen did apologize to me the next day, although it was a brief and unspecific sort of "I'm sorry." It was obvious she didn't want to get into the details, even to find out exactly what I'd seen or figured out. Typical cheater mentality: she was glossing over and reducing the terribleness of her behaviour at the exact same moment that she was making herself feel better by acting apologetic.

After a few minutes of forced small talk, and a few awkward silences, she tentatively suggested that "maybe we'd all feel better after our zoo trip tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" I tilted my head, feigning surprise. "We're not going tomorrow."

"Of course we are. We-"

"You've got your days mixed up, Karen. It's Saturday. We're going today."

"No," she drew out patiently, looked at me sideways. "We're going Sunday. We talked about this."

I shook my head in mock exasperation. "Jesus Christ. What are you even talking about? We planned the zoo for Saturday, Karen! Today! We said it over and over again! Don't you remember?"

She blinked, eyes darting about as she calculated internally. She looked so nervously lost I almost broke into a smile.

What's the matter? Does it make it hard to juggle two lives when you can't control the one?

The truth was, she actually had it right. We had indeed chosen Sunday when we discussed the trip earlier that week. But the more I thought about her little stunt at the party, and especially that kiss, the less interest I had in being around her. So I had talked to the girls about it while I was getting them tucked into bed the night before, telling them that if they were good we could go to the zoo a day early.

Karen was looking determined, now. "You've got it wrong," she insisted. "I'm sure we said Sunday."

I studied her a moment, letting my irritation with her recent behaviours show nakedly on my face so they could be mistranslated as annoyance with this silly bit of forgetfulness. Then I turned and yelled into the living room. "Hey, girls! What are we doing today?"

"We're going to the zoo!!" They both shouted back in gleeful unison.

I turned back to Karen with a tired expression. "See?" I said. "Today. Even the girls know it. So give up the bullshit. Anyway, I don't see why it matters. It's just a one-day difference. It's no big deal, right?"

She looked embarrassed. "Actually," she drew the word out, "I sort of...have plans for today."

I somehow managed to look surprised. No shit, bitch. I watched you make them, right in front of everyone at a goddamn party thrown by our friends. Or do you still think you're so much smarter than the rest of us that nobody picks up on that stuff?

But I kept my eyebrows up in an imitation of disappointed surprise.

Needless to say, I was actually relieved. While that little exchange between her and Carl had been pretty obvious, and I'd been confident that they had made arrangements of some sort, there was always the risk of miscalculation. For all I knew, those plans could have been for Monday. Or for something they were doing next weekend. Or a goddamned month from now. All I'd had to go on was the certainty that they were, without question, making plans. I'd banked on the hope that they would be for sometime soon.

From what I'd seen through the window, I'd pictured it going something like this:

"Are we still on for tomorrow?"

"I don't know, Carl. He's pretty angry. Maybe I should-"

"Don't do that. This was his choice. He gave you permission."

Reluctance. Or maybe just guilt. "I shouldn't."

Puppy dog eyes. "You're hurting my feelings, baby."

"Okay." A pause. "Okay. I'll be there."

And then she'd left.

Maybe that wasn't the exact wording, but I knew what I'd seen: an arrangement, being confirmed and upheld. And frankly, I was counting on her seeing that arrangement through. The last thing I wanted to do was spend a day walking next to her, talking to her and sharing my life with her. I didn't want to be anywhere near where she might be...and if that meant she had to be with him, so be it.

She shifted her weight. She was still waiting for a response, and probably expecting anger. Better make it count.

It's not like I have to fake being angry at her, now, is it?

"'Plans?'" I growled with a shake of my head. "You've got to be fucking kidding me, Karen! Yesterday's disgusting games weren't enough for the two of you? You can't commit ONE day to your family before running off again to get yours?"

She reacted with irritation. "This was YOUR idea. I'm just playing by YOUR rules." Ahh. So he WAS pushing that on her. It wasn't the type of argument she would have come to on her own...but it sure did sound like something Carl would say. "Anyway," she sniffed irritably, "it's only one day. The girls will understand."

"They won't have to," I snapped. "Because WE are going to the zoo, with or without YOU."

"Don't you dare!" she gasped. "Those are my children, too! You're not going to start-"

"You're right!" I interrupted. "I'm NOT going to start! I'm not going to start changing plans! I'm not going to start reducing family time! I'm not going to start living my life around your fucking sins."

"MY WHAT?!" She glared at me. "Look, mister...if you didn't get your jollies off the idea of me-"

I leapt to my feet, and she retreated with a gasp. To be honest, I think she was already cutting off the sentence with a look of horror before I even began to move. So I'll give her credit for that, at least. She may have been far enough gone to be boiling over with disrespect for me...but she wasn't so far gone that that fact didn't shame her just a little bit.

For a second we both looked at each other, both angry, neither sure what is supposed to happen next in this kind of a confrontation. Then the arrogance won out, her mouth twisted, and she spat, "Fine. Have it your way. You want to spend a day playing mommy while I make an afternoon of fucking Carl's brains out, that's fine by me. The girls and I can just go do something fun when I pick them up from school tomorrow." She half turned away, throwing a darkly confident look at me over her shoulder. "With. Out. You." And then she stormed off.

I shook my head, trying not to feel hurt. This was what I wanted, right? To get her away from me? To give myself a little peace and quiet? Maybe even forget about my problems for a while, and enjoy some time with my children?

So why did victory feel every bit as empty and crushing as defeat?

I went in and told the girls that mom wasn't going to be able to make it to the zoo, but that we could go as soon as they got dressed and brushed their teeth. Since this didn't really affect their ability to claim the prize, it didn't earn much in the way of response. They just pretended to pout about Mommy for half a second, then ran off to get themselves ready. I had to smile a little bit. Such simple wants.

Then I sat down to read the paper while I waited. I didn't see or hear anything of Karen during any of this. For all I knew, she'd gathered up her things and slipped out of the house right after our fight. The thought that she might already be gone, and that I wouldn't have to actually watch her go, brought a weary kind of comfort. At least I wouldn't have to hear that fucking "Bye, Dad," joke again.




A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 02



The sound of water running in the bathroom flickered past my ears, a surefire sign that the girls were now in final "tooth brushing" stage. I got up and gathered together the supplies we would need for our zoo run. I was just finishing up when they came bounding into the kitchen, all youthful energy and joy.

I basked in the purity of that gloriously simple happiness for a few moments. "Are you two all set to go?" I asked.

"We are!" I was promised.

"And guess what?" Suzie interjected, flashing a gap-toothed grin. "Mommy's coming too!"

Before I could explain that no, in fact, Mommy wasn't going to be able to join us, Karen came shuffling meekly into the room. She wore a deeply apologetic look and what was undoubtedly a "Mommy at the zoo" outfit.

Oh.

I shook my head and looked away, feeling...what? Disappointed? Angry?

Relieved?

Did I even know how I felt anymore?

"Hey," she offered lamely.

"You decide to join us." It wasn't a question.

"Is that..." she leaned in and, glancing to see that the girls didn't hear, whispered "okay?"

I shrugged. "Not much I can do about it now. They've already decided."

She flinched. "I guess I can be kind of an asshole sometimes, can't I?"

More than you'll ever realize.

I shrugged, uncertain what to do. My plans had backfired, and now I was stuck with her for the entire day. There was no way to hit reset, with the kids bouncing excitedly around our feet. Karen had decided to stay, and I couldn't do a thing about it.

So why didn't that feel worse than it did?

Thanks a lot, Carl. You couldn't even come through for me just this one time, could you?

"Well," I said, as the girls started getting impatient, "there's no point in waiting around. Let's get going."

--

It turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant day. I fully expected the growing distance between Karen and me to be a heavy blanket over every ray of sunshine, but somehow the opposite was true: the joy of shared adventure seemed to momentarily shrug off the ever-encroaching darkness.

Whatever bond we'd once shared was lost, of course. But it had been a part of who we were for so many years, that it was easy to pretend it back into place. So for a few beautiful hours, my family was whole again.

The girls were a big part of that. They laughed, they ran, they enjoyed the casual comfort of knowing their parents were keeping an eye on them. They didn't realize that that idea...their parents, as a single entity...didn't exist anymore. They believed the world was still as it needed to be. And with the galloping energy of their lively fantastical assumptions, it almost seemed like they were right for a little while.

Between Karen and me, an even simpler route was run. It started, most obviously, with silence. For my part, I was determined to keep it there. But this, of course, proved to be an impossibility. You simply can't take children into a brushfire of freedom, choice, and widely open space without having to communicate with your spouse at least a little bit. So, grudgingly, I let the smallest of interactions pass.

And that ruined everything.

"Where should we go next," led to "We really liked the rain forest exhibit last year. Remember?" Which led to a small smile and a rush of pleasant memory. Which led to more talking.

Maybe you've been there. Maybe you know. When there's that much history between you, rebellion is as simple as a happy memory. Before you know it, you're talking about the safest, warmest subject on earth: times in the past when you've seen your children smile.

Strangely, I'd say we got along better during that trip than we had in years, even if the reasons were upsetting. I know it affected Karen, from the way her cheeks flushed and she couldn't stop smiling. For me, it was almost like having the fog of a new relationship wash over you. And that's strange...maybe unexplainable...but no less true for all that. Somehow, for that brief collection of hours, it all felt sparkly new.

By the time we were piling back into the van, with the sun going down, I was having such a wonderful time that it was the longest I'd gone without thinking about Karen's infidelity since the day I discovered the truth. Can you ask for a better gift than the one that makes you forget?

Well, they say the devil's in the details. I don't know about that, exactly. But he's definitely a master of the surgical strike.

We were about ten minutes out from the zoo, headed home on the interstate, when the most unremarkable of sounds woke me up from what was, in truth, the stupidest little fantasy of my life:

Karen's cell phone started vibrating in her purse.

It could have been just about anybody calling, I suppose, except for the fact that she didn't bother to check or to answer the call. She just folded her coat over her purse to muffle the sound, and looked out the window until it was done. That, by itself, told me everything I needed to know.

And just like that...as quickly as the throwing of a coat over a buzzing cell phone...the joy and ease was gone. The heart of the moment was lost. But it was more than that. I was suddenly sadder and more tired than I'd ever been in my whole life. Like a prisoner being told that he was being led to freedom, saying his goodbyes and dreaming of the future, only to find himself unceremoniously pushed into the room with the injection table.

I focused on the road, and tried not to think. I just wished that the whole day had never happened, so I could have avoided the way I felt now.

Karen and the children kept up the positive vibes, laughing and talking about everything that we'd done that day, and I gave a few responses to keep appearances up, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. When we got to the house and closed the garage door, I remained silently seated while everybody else piled out of the car.

"Aren't you coming?" Karen asked when I didn't move.

"I just need a minute," I responded quietly, still looking forward as though I was watching the road.

"Is...something wrong?" she frowned.

"No."

Silence. She didn't move. "Are you sure?"

"I'm just tired," I insisted. "Please."

She took a deep breath, and reached over to touch my arm.

"A minute," I insisted. "Can I just have my one little minute, before going in?"

She flinched back, opened her mouth as though she wanted to say more, then sighed and followed the girls into the house.

I don't really know what happened. Maybe it was the weight of feeling I'd been carrying around with me for so long. Maybe it was just that I'd been toeing a line and had accidentally gone past it. Or maybe I was just that sad. I can't say for sure. But no sooner had they shut the door to the house than I had my forehead against the steering wheel and was sobbing like a baby.

It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I've never been a crier, even when I WAS a baby. But now I cried the way that a grieving parent cries on absent birthdays. I cried like I was the last person left at the funeral.

And it kept coming and coming. I wanted nothing more than to stop...to catch my breath and to feel like I was in control of myself again...but it was like each fresh sob was ripped out of me by something deep within.

I was so relieved when it finally started to wane that I almost laughed. For a few moments there, I'm not sure I had believed that it was ever going to end.

Sitting up, I put my hand to my chest and focused on calm, deep breaths until I thought I was together enough to go inside. I figured I'd stop in the hallway bathroom and wash my face, and nobody need ever know that I-

Then I saw movement in the corner of my eye.

No.

I turned. Our eyes met.

She was standing just a few feet away, with her hand over her mouth and fat tears rolling down both cheeks. Guilt and pity and hurt all battled each other on her face, each of them making me sick.

And then she turned and ran back into the house.

Goddamn it. God DAMN it! I punched the steering wheel, searched for something else to hit, found nothing and just hit the wheel again.

Goddamn it goddamn it goddamn it!

Just one thing! That's all I asked. Just one little thing that I could have to myself. One little thing that was only for ME!

She didn't go out that night, but we didn't say much more to each other after that. I pretended to watch television for a while, and she pretended that I didn't know she was staring at me.

After the girls were in bed, she went out on the deck, took out her cell phone, and talked for over an hour...her face strained and her eyes downcast.

--==--

CHAPTER FIVE

--==--

"Hi," came the timid icebreaker Sunday morning. "Did you sleep well?"

Hardly at all. Hardly ever, anymore. "I slept fine."

She blew on her coffee. "Thank you for yesterday. I had a wonderful time." She watched me. "I'm sorry about the way it ended."

"Me, too."

There was a long, drawn out silence. "John?"

"Yes?"

"Why are you doing this to yourself?"

Be calm. "We've been over that."

"I know. I just...I can't help feeling that there has to be a better way. Some way for us to-"

I looked up sharply at her, and she fell silent. Then I got up, dumped the rest of my cereal, and left the room.

I spent the next few hours doing housework and digging around on the Internet. Karen didn't try to engage me in conversation again, and for a while I thought the message had been received. Then a little after lunch she drove the girls over to a friend's house, and when she returned she disappeared into the bedroom. I didn't think much about it...I heard the shower run, and I guess I figured she was just headed out to get laid.

It would get her out of my hair. And it's not like I wanted her. So why did it still bother me to think about? Why did my guts twist and tear, like they were caught between two great rotating gears? I pushed the question away, banished it from my mind, and looked for distraction.

Because that really works.

The situation was far worse than I'd thought, however, because about 30 minutes later the door to my study opened and she stood there, looking taut and sexy in a lacey bra and matching pair of tiny panties that dipped so low I cannot fathom how I didn't see the top of her cleft.

"The girls are gone," she cooed in a voice that could only come from someone who knows exactly how good they look and are confident in your reaction. "I thought you might like to spend some time together."

"Don't do this, Karen," I warned. "It's not going to help anything. It's going to make things worse."

She moved forward, her movement an exaggerated sashay. "I'm not trying to fix anything. I just wanted to show y-"

"Stop!" I interrupted as she began to saunter nearer. "Don't you dare come any closer. Not right now, and certainly not dressed like that."

Her face tightened at that, but she ignored me and pushed forward. "Come on, baby. You know I can make it worth your time."

I slammed my hands down on the desk, jumping to my feet. "I said STOP!!"

This time she did stop, and a little bit of her confidence seemed to drift away in the process. "Please, John," She begged, opting to let the vulnerable woman routine continue where the sultry seductress had failed. "I just want you close to me. I genuinely do. I've missed it more than you would probably believe."

I levelled a look at her that should have told her exactly what I thought of that statement. "Tell me something," I snapped. "Who got you wearing those kind of outfits? Because I sure don't remember you ever wearing them for me, before. Not once."

She flinched. "I...like them, though," she shifted her weight like a shy public speaker. "I thought you would, too."

"And who did you shave your pussy for?" I continued. "Because THAT wasn't me, either." I came around the desk, moving past her and headed towards the door. "What about that haircut? Do you think I don't know who helped you pick it out? And all the exercise you're getting that's making you look so fit...just what kind of exercise is it, anyway? Pilates? Yoga? No. I doubt that very much." I stood in the doorway, turned and looked at her, and shook my head. She was looking embarrassed, now...maybe even a little humiliated. Welcome to the club. There were unshed tears in her eyes. "I wouldn't touch you for anything," I spat on the floor for emphasis. "You see, I made a vow to stay faithful to my wife, to only share myself with her...and I insist on keeping myself to that vow. It MEANS something to me. And right now..." I looked her over with disgust, "...she's not here."

I slammed the door behind me.

The next time I saw Karen, she was wearing sweats and was curled up in an armchair, flipping through the channels. She didn't look up at me as I walked by. Her jaw clenched a little, but I don't think I was supposed to see that.

Works for me, baby.

--

She spent the next two weeks going back to the "part of the family" routine that had worked so well for her at the zoo. She still threw those little glances in my direction, making it obvious that she was checking to see if the ice showed any signs of thawing. She also didn't mention or request time with Carl, which I assumed was part of the strategy. I knew she had to be seeing him. No way was I prepared to think otherwise. I just wasn't sure how she was doing it.

On Thursday of the second week, I decided to investigate. A little after lunch I picked up the phone and called her office, asking for her by name.

"May I ask who's calling?" I didn't contact her through work channels very often, usually opting to text her if I needed to communicate.

"It's her husband," I explained.

There was a moment of silence on the other end.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"I am...sorry, sir, but Mrs. Sanders is out of town."

Ahh. Mrs. Sanders. So you don't believe that I'm her husband. Probably because she told you that's who she was going to be with.

Well, I wasn't about to cover for her. "Alright, thanks. I'll talk to her when she gets home from wherever the fuck she is." I hung up the phone with a humourless laugh.

I considered this new information. I had already known that she'd burned up a lot of her vacation time sneaking around behind my back, before I confronted her. Apparently, she was now back to using old tricks, seeing her lover in secret while still trying to repair things with her husband.

That's not how this works, though, dear. I decided that a little lesson was in order.

I made my arrangements quietly, and carefully. That weekend, I broke the news to the family. "Guess what, everyone?" I announced at dinner. "We are all going to Disneyland!"

The girls immediately went ape shit, squealing and asking the most hilarious of questions. I did my best to field them. But Karen just stared at me across the table with a look that somehow combined doubt, shock, anger, and horror.

"Disneyland?" She eventually murmured under her breath. Then, her eyebrows came together and she leaned forward. "We can't afford that, John. Our finances are rough enough as it is!" She said this last part a little too forcefully. I knew what she was really saying.

I just shrugged. "It did set us back quite a ways, but everything's already been bought and arranged for. We certainly won't be able to afford to go again, if that's what you mean. So we'll just have to make the most of this trip." I gave the girls a wink, then laid out all the details.

It was a big trip, taking us out of town for a full week and pretty much undoing all of the financial good we had managed over the last seven or eight years. It was the kind of "I deserve a reward" misstep that a financial planner would grimace at the thought of, multiplied several times over. I had even rented a condo, rather than a hotel room, so we'd have a base of operations that contained all the essentials of everyday living.

Karen was even more stunned by the time I was finished. "I...I can't believe you spent all our money without talking to me first," she wined.

"Oh? Are we suddenly in the habit of talking to one another before making decisions that affect the marriage?" I smiled. Then I forked some food into my mouth and shrugged. "I figure it's the last year before the girls become too old for something like this. It won't be magical anymore, soon, so it's now or never. And we clearly need some family time anyway, so..."

She paled at that last part. "But it's so much money!"

"We will be fine so long as we don't run up any unforeseen hospital bills, the cars keep working, and we don't have to take any leave without pay at work."

She turned even paler. "John? I am...ahh...I'm not sure I have enough vacation time saved up for something like this."

"Oh?" I feigned surprise.

She blushed and looked down at the table. "I've sort of been...using it. Quite a lot of it, actually."

I set my fork down. "You've been with the company a long time, Karen. Surely you earned enough vacation time during all those years."

Her blush deepened. "I've...I've used it all up, actually. Or enough to be a problem. And not only that, but I'm starting to get really behind on some big projects because I've been out of the office so much recently."

Read my expression for yourself, bitch. "Out of the office? Recently?"

She didn't look up, but just nodded slightly.

I pretended to consider that information for a moment, then stood up. "So much for being honest with me about when you see him, I guess" I spat. "You know, I really thought for a while there that you were trying to be a part of this family again, Karen. I guess we'll just never be enough, though, will we?" Then I stalked from the room. She didn't bother trying to follow.

As I sat down in the living room and picked up a book, I couldn't help smiling a little to myself. Mission accomplished. I would get to spend a whole week at Disneyland with my girls, and a whole week away from my whore of a wife.

And best of all, it was all her doing.

-

Karen's mom popped by for a visit a few days later. I'm not sure, but I don't think she noticed the distance between us. If she had, she'd probably have been happy about it.

Her mother had never really liked me. Actually, I think she probably hated me, and just had that womanly way of saying it without saying it. I'd love to tell you that I never understood why, but she was a church busybody and I was an honest atheist, so anything else I may say or do on this earth was entirely irrelevant. I'd never not be poison, to her mind.

I wondered what she'd think, if she knew her oh-so-perfect daughter was hanging the horns on me. Would she be tickled silly? Or would she be too scandalized to appreciate my suffering?

Frankly, I think it would depend on who was around to see her reaction.

She did comment, early on, that I looked thin. "Even men have to buy new clothes, if they're going to start dieting, John." She rolled her eyes when she said it. "Anyway, you should know that not everybody looks better when they're skinny."

"I'm not dieting," I told her. "I just haven't been hungry."

"Well, try to change that before you've dropped another belt size." She smiled sickly sweet at her daughter. "I'm not sure it's appreciated."

Karen very quietly went about making my favourite meal that night, and chewed on her lip all through supper as she watched me not eating it.

"John," she said gently at one point, glancing at the girls and trying to choose her words carefully, "it's hard enough to get them to eat without Daddy setting a bad example."

I levelled a long look at her, a thousand comebacks popping into my mind. But she was right. I sighed and tapped on my fork. "I'm not feeling well. I'm going to bed early."




A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 03



--==-- 
CHAPTER SIX 
--==-- 

Disney World was a blast. The girls loved every moment of it. 

One of the greatest and more admirable things about children is that, as long as there's more than one of them around, they can make waiting in line into an epic adventure. I did take lots of pictures, and I let the girls call home every night to tell mom all about their big vacation. Not in a gloating way, mind you. The fact that their squealing joy was compounding her misery was just a welcome bonus. 

Aside from taking those calls, I honestly don't know what Karen did with her time that week. What I do know is that she barely entered into my mind. And there aren't any words available, in any language ever made, to say quite what a relief that was for me. Suddenly I was able to sleep at night, and taste the food I was eating during the day. It was a lucid and powerful feeling...honestly, it was like being on powerful psychotropic drugs. 

The last collection of months had been a terrible journey, but I thought that I was finally over her to the point where she could no longer hurt me. 

There were some obvious flaws in this logic, not the least of which was that I still had no interest in sex. Or maybe that's not exactly the right way to say it. There were lots of beautiful women walking around in the sunshine, and I could recognize that they were attractive and even admire it from afar, but I couldn't see MYSELF as a sexual being. Whatever successes my actions have provided me with, they had done nothing to repair the shattered ego that came from learning of my wife's affair. I had met Karen in my prime. I'd been young, fit, with a full head of hair, and from the moment we met I gave her my all. That hadn't been enough for her. If my best...my absolute peak best...wasn't enough for someone who had already invested that much of themselves in me, then what could I possibly have to offer anybody else? 

It's a stupid kind of logic, but being betrayed by a spouse is like falling out of a tree. The more you love them to start with, the further you have to fall, and the more disoriented you are by the collision with ground. If you ever meet someone who tells you they were able to just get back up and dust off their pants and move along, then you know that someone didn't have all that far to fall in the first place. 

So no, I wasn't feeling sexual and I wasn't fully healed. But that was okay. I was happy with the progress that I had made, and the idea of sex was so wrapped up in anxiety and sadness now that I didn't particularly want my drive to come back. 

Long story short, we had a great week and then we went home. 

Karen seemed kind of sad and withdrawn when we got back, although she made a point of asking the girls all about their trip and smiling and laughing with them a lot. She did continue to see Carl, but she had a different and less outgoing quality to her now. She wasn't as energetic, or cheerful as she had been the last few months. As for me, I guess you could say that I noticed it, but that I didn't waste any of my time thinking about what it meant. I was glad that she understood at last where we stood, and seems to be trying to find a way to live with that rather than change the status quo. 

I did, however, feel a bit of tension climb the ladder of my spine three weeks after we got back, when Karen tentatively asked if I was interested in attending the Bailey's next cookout. 

"I didn't know they were having one," I responded slowly. 

"They called a couple of days ago to invite us," Karen explained. She threw me a nervous glance. "If you don't want to go..." 

I frowned, remembering what it happened the last time we went to one of these things, but then pushed that aside. "The girls like it," I told her, and we both understood that that in and of itself was an answer. 

"I won't go anywhere near him," she assured me. 

"Don't waste either of our time making those kinds of promises. They don't mean anything." 

But I wasn't above hoping that maybe she meant it, this time. 

- 

She tossed, scooted around a bit, and scrunched up her pillow. 

A minute later she turned, scratching her shoulder irritably. 

Then she sighed and tossed again. 

I just lay there in the dark, listening. 

This was a game I'd been playing for a long time, now. I even looked forward to the silent calm that night brought with it. 

It was brand new to her, and I don't doubt she hated it. 

- 

Tom Bailey must be doing alright at work. They had redone their kitchen and replaced all their deck furniture. 

The sun was just beginning to get low, I had just started to enjoy my alcohol buzz, and it had been a pretty good time all things considered when she leaned over and whispered in my ear. 

"Please stop looking at him." 

I grunted, turned my attention back to the couple we were sitting with, but didn't otherwise respond. And I couldn't help glancing in his direction several more times just to see if it was still happening. 

It was still happening. 

I suppose this constant distraction made for pretty poor conversation, because a few minutes later the other couple excused themselves and left. 

"Honestly, John," Karen begged. "You've got to stop looking at him. Forget that he's even here." 

"HE'S looking at ME," I snapped. "And it's pissing me off." 

In fact, he was more staring than looking, and had been through most of the night. His expression alternated between an icey grimace and a mocking sneer. Mostly, he looked like a petulant child. 

He'd also been drinking way too much, which I thought was a bad combination. It made him worth keeping an eye on. 

"He's just jealous," Karen pouted, glancing around to make sure nobody could hear us. "And if you ask me, he's being incredibly childish about it. But there's nothing we can do right now, so please just ignore him. It's the best way." 

"You try and ignore someone staring holes in the back of your head all night long. It's almost as hard as ignoring somebody who's stabbing you in the back." 

She folded her arms over her chest, jiggling her foot in an aggitated fashion. "Well, I wish he would just go home. He's making an ass of himself." 

"Maybe you should take him home, then. I'm sure that's what he wants." 

Her face turned red and she opened her mouth, then she shut it and looked away. "You know," she said wistfully, "for a little while I actually thought we were having a good time." 

"For a little while, I agreed with you. That was before someone's eyeballs started drilling into the back of my skull. How does he possibly think people aren't going to catch on, if he just sits there and glares at me for three hours?" 

She finished her drink a little too quickly. "He's being childish," she repeated, as if that were an answer in an of itself. 

So we sat there a while, both of our moods ruined, and I found myself growing oddly contemplative. 

"How did it start?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral. 

She just took a deep breath and continued to not look at me. 

"Honestly, Karen. That's one thing I never got out of the tapes and recordings, was how the whole thing got started in the first place." 

"I really don't want to talk about that. Certainly not here." 

"Did he...I mean, was there a seduction? Or..." 

"If you're trying to get me to say that I wish it had never happened," she snapped, "you don't have to fish for it. I wish it had never happened. I wish for it every goddamn day." 

"I'm not fishing for anything, and I'm not trying to start an argument. I just..." I shook my head. "I just don't understand how you could do that to me," I admitted. There wasn't any great amount of pain or anger in my voice. It was a stone cold fact. "I don't understand how you could do it to US, you know? To US, Karen. The girls. Do you know that I would've died for you? No exaggeration," I shook my head, "I would've died." I still have things in my life worth dying for. They're just nothing to do with you. 

"Goddamn you!" she put her hand to her mouth as she fought the urge to cry. "Don't you dare do this to me now." 

I shrugged. "Alright. I'm sorry." I examined the sunset. "It just hits me at weird times, you know?" 

"You shouldn't feel like you have to tell me you're sorry for that." 

"Maybe not. But I do." I looked around. "He's gone. Do you think he went home?" 

"I don't want to think about him right now." 

I examined my beer bottle. The strangest compulsion came over me. "Well...do you want to dance?" 

She didn't answer, probably thinking I was being sarcastic. 

"Come on," I goaded. "What do you say? I'm not any better than I was before, but I can't possibly be any worse." 

Now she was looking at me. "I have a hard time believing that you would ever want to dance with me." 

"Why?" 

A pause. "I wouldn't want to dance with me." 

Score one for you, then. "Look, you don't have to understand. I don't have to understand it, either. Let's just dance." 

A tentative smile crossed her face. "But there isn't even any music..." 

Two minutes later we were standing in the lawn near the corner of the deck, swaying to non-existent songs that played in our heads. We didn't hold each other close, or put our heads on each other's shoulders, or anything like that. We just sort of held hands and swayed. Some of the other couples glanced at us from time to time, probably assuming they were witnessing a moment of tender intimacy. It wasn't. It was more like the calling of a truce. 

"You know," she said to some point over my shoulder, "this is the most physical contact we've had since..." She dipped her head and didn't finish the thought. 

"I'm aware." 

Her lips moved a little bit, and I could almost see and internal conversation playing out in her head. I waited, knowing that once she had it figured out she'd invite me in. 

"I want to be on your side," she finally said, looking up at me with sad eyes. "I want to be on the side that's focused on making this easiest for the girls." 

"You are on that side. You have been all along." 

She scoffed. "Only when it suited me. Or when you tricked me into it." 

Fair enough. "There are some rules to being on this side that I don't think you'll like." 

"I don't have to like them. Tell me, and I'll do you proud." 

"It's just the one, really. And it's this: if you ever, EVER do anything to try to take them away from me, I'll kill you. No hesitation, no guilt, no more empathy than ending a dog. I will take your life for that." 

I kept dancing. I hadn't said it with menace, or with any effort to intimidate. 

It was just another stone cold fact. 

To her credit she didn't tense or flinch away, or anything like that. "That's how I know you're a good father," she said quietly. 

That night I was thirsty, and stepped out into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Her cell phone was vibrating on the counter, and the screen was lit up. I glanced at it. 

Seventeen missed calls, all from tonight. All from after the party. 

Huh. 

- 

Saturday morning is a lonely time to be at the grocery store. There was almost nobody there, and almost everyone who was there was a man past the age of 40. 

The old lady behind the counter noticed me glancing around, or perhaps she was just chatty. "We call it D-Day," she explained with a smile. "Saturday mornings, all the divorced dads come out to do their shopping." She leaned forward conspiratorially, her matronly figure pressing against the scanner. "I think it's because there aren't any happy couples around to make them feel lonely, Saturday mornings. The happy people are all at home, being a family." 

I just stared at her, not reacting. After a moment, she stood up straight, interpreting that as a sign that she'd misstepped. 

"I'm sorry," she stammered, hurrying to finish the bagging. "I saw the ring on your finger, and I just assumed..." 

- 

Karen must have meant what she said, because the next few weeks ran very smoothly. At home she was all smiles, and we actually worked pretty well as a family unit. For the most part, her time away was scheduled to minimize the impact on the girls. And maybe...just maybe...she was trying to lessen the impact on me, as well. 

Still, I found that I'd become tired of just sitting around the house all the time, so I started doing more "out and about" stuff with the girls during Karen's away time. Before the summer was out we had gone on two other short vacations and visited several fun attractions within sixty miles of the house. I'd also replaced my sedan with a newer, larger van...a family unit not totally dissimilar to the one Karen had been so quick to trade off...and bought a nice expanding camper. 

Karen weathered these motherless journeys stoically, although I could see that it was hurting her some to miss out on precious memories. She didn't complain, even as the bags started to show under her eyes and her smile started to look sadder and sadder. She had taken to taking things in order to help her sleep at night, although I didn't see that they made much difference. 

What she wasn't totally silent about was the impact that this adventuring was having on our finances. 

"I know you feel like it's justified, John," she insisted one night over a pile of bills and statements, "and I'm fully aware that I'm not in a spot to lecture you. But these are all nonessentials, and they're bleeding us dry. You've way outspent our income level, here, and we are up to our eyeballs in fresh debt. If you don't curb it, and fast, we are never going to be able to retire." 

 

Still with the 'we' statements, I see. "Who wants to retire?" I snorted. "Look, we have the trust funds from my parent's estate to cover college and to help the girls get started out in the world, and your retirement is a long ways away. I don't really intend to ever quit working. I'm not sure what I would do with myself if I had years and years to just sit around the house, with nothing to do." I chuckled drily. "I'd probably do something dumb, like take up drinking." 

She bit her lip, setting down the statements and bills. "There was a time when you talked about us selling the house and getting a mobile home, setting off across country," she noted. "Having an adventure that was just for us." I gave a short derisive laugh, and she looked away. "I suppose all of that is gone now, though, isn't it?" 

"You couldn't possibly have thought I would still want to do that with you." 

She gave me that same, sad smile. "I didn't do very much thinking it all for a very long time. I just acted, and never considered what my actions were doing to my life." 

Well, what was I going to say to that? "Oh." Then I decided to breach the inevitable. "You know, at some point we probably should sit down and figure out how old the girls have to be before it's safe for us to get the divorce." Her eyes shot wide and her face paled, but I ignored it. It's not like she hadn't known it was coming. This was never going to be a permanent arrangement. "I was thinking a little after they go to college might be safe. That way they'll be distract-" 

But she was gone, having fled the room. The chair she'd occupied lay on its back, and the papers were scattered wildly across the floor. 

I gathered them together and started trying to put them back in the appropriate piles. 

There were a few days of silence after that, and then it went back to normal. In fact, it stayed "normal" for some number of weeks after that, and I began to think that maybe we'd finally found a system that worked for us. There wasn't really any need to schedule the divorce, anyway. It was years away. 

--==-- 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
--==-- 

The winter was slow in coming. The shifting weather patterns left October with dewy humidity in place of the usual dry chill and dusting snow. 

I suppose I'd noticed that Karen had been around the house more and more often in the preceding weeks, and that she'd taken to leaving her cell phone on the charger when we went out as a family, but I hadn't really thought anything about what that might mean. I was basically just operating under the assumption that it was going to be business as usual from here on out, so I was completely unprepared when she sat down on the couch across from me one night, looking stressed and tired, and told me that it was over. 

"I just can't do it anymore, John," she explained. "It's too stressful, and I'm so ashamed of myself all the time. I can't live like this anymore." 

I held my breath, but waited. 

She folded her hands and looked down at them. "Do you know, sometimes when I'm all alone...or when I'm in the shower...I find myself just crying and crying for no reason? And I try to regain control, but I just can't. No matter what I do, I cry and I cry and I can't ever stop." She shook her head bitterly. "It's my own fault. I know that. But..." a sigh, and then her voice hardened. "You really had me going for a while, if that helps...thinking that I had to play along in order to save myself. Thinking that time would just somehow solve every problem I'd created, if I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Hell, for a little while I even thought I was lucky." She shook her head again, faster and in far shorter jerks. "Anyway, it's over now. You can do what you want, but I'm telling you here and now that it's over." 

I was rigid, motionless but for my eyes. I wasn't remotely prepared for this. "I told you what would happen if you tried to take them away from me," I warned. 

"Take them away? What are you tal-" she stopped, frowned. "No! No, not you and me! I don't mean US, John. I mean CARL. Or, me and Carl. It's...it's over. Forever. I told him three days ago, and it's just taken me this long to get the nerve up to tell you." 

"Unacceptable," I snapped. Even to me, it sounded neutered and useless. 

She noticed, too, and gave a tired sounding laugh. "Too bad, because it's really over. And I can't tell you how glad I am to say it." 

"Think about what you're doing here, Karen. Think about what is going to happen if you do this." 

She looked me over, unafraid. "You know," she said wistfully, "I really was scared of you for a very long time. You said those terrible things, and you knew everything...knew all those things I thought you couldn't possibly know. And you were stern about it, so...serious. So angry. You just pulled the wool right over my eyes. 

"I actually believed that every threat you delivered must really be the truth. That heeding your words was the only possible way for me to get through without loss." Her forehead wrinkled, and something like mild surprise entered into her voice. "Was I really that blind? Or were you just that good a magician? Because I swear I saw a snarling dog baring its teeth at me, and I heard the most sinister sounds I've ever heard in my life. I just...responded to those sounds. Reacted to them, like a mindless thing. I never even noticed that the beast in front of me was backed up into a corner. I never noticed that you were the one in danger the whole time." 

She wiped at her eyes. "I'm so sorry I did that to you. I'm sorry I cornered you, wounded and afraid, and left you with nothing but the sound of your own snarl to fight back with. You'll never know how sorry I am for that, because you would never be cruel enough to do that to someone else. You would never do the things that I've done." A bitter laugh escaped her lips. "To be honest, I don't even know what to feel about the last six months, or even the last year of my life. I know that there is a lot of shame. But beyond that, it's almost like I've been walking in a fog, and it's only just now starting to clear." 

She looked at me expectantly, but I didn't say anything. I was a prison guard, watching in horror as the inmate began to realize that she'd had the weapons all along, and I was afraid. 




A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 03



She continued. "Do you know what's funny? It just...ended. As simple as that. I looked over at him, and it was all gone. I felt nothing, I wanted nothing. I just wanted him to have never been there at all. He saw me watching him, mistook my expression for affection, and tried to hold my hand. The touch of it..." she rubbed her hands together, "...made me sick. Physically ill. HE made me physically sick. I made me sick." Another bitter laugh. "He...didn't take it very well, when I told him." She rolled up her sleeve to reveal a fading bruise that wrapped all the way around her upper arm. "Somehow, I don't expect you to be surprised. Somehow, I can't understand why I am. I threw my whole life away for a man who felt absolutely no shame in physically hurting me. 

"Hell, maybe you saw those things in him all along. Maybe that's why you pushed me to continue." She studied my face, but I offered nothing. "Anyway," she sighed, rolling the sleeve back down, "that's the kind of idiot that I've been. That's the kind of idiot I AM. So it's time to find out what kind of idiot you are. Are you the kind that gives up on the only thing he has left to fight for, because the fight just got a little harder? Or are you the kind of idiot who stays at the table, even after his last bluff has been called?" She swallowed hard, a single tear sliding down her cheek. "I have to be honest with you, John: I'm really hoping that you'll turn out to be the kind of idiot who stays. I just wish that I'd..." she shook her head again, a small sob escaping, and stood up. "I'll leave you alone for a while. I...I am sorry for what I've done. More sorry than I could ever say." 

But she stopped in the threshold, gathered herself together, and turned long enough to say, "And you really do need to eat more, John. For your own sake. You're skin and bone." 

I looked away, and she left. 

For a long time after I just sat there, the shadows slowly crawling across the room, not knowing what to think or what to do. 

Sometime past midnight, I stood up and rubbed my eyes. 

"I'm not hungry," I said to no one in particular. 

- 

November passed like an illness. It lingered too long, distorting the passage of time, and when it left us we were more exhausted and weaker than we'd ever been before. 

Karen was home all the time, now. She still claimed the affair was over. I might have hoped that it wasn't, except that I was so busy praying that it was. 

She was attentive and concerned, but also distant. I could see that there was a lot going on internally, and very little of it was being shared with the rest of us. She struck me as looking like a widow, or a person just now coming to terms with how little they like themselves. Either way, she was quiet. We both still managed to put on the show when the girls were around, but there wasn't much else to do. 

December wasn't any better, and soon even I was hoping she'd come out of it. I don't know why, exactly, except that I worried it might start to impact the girls. 

As it was, it wasn't until the week before Christmas that she asked me to stay up late and talk to her, a hint of anxiety in her eyes. And she must have shared, because I felt it creep into mine, as well. 

We sat down at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in front of each of us, and she took a long time frowning down at her glass before she looked up at me and said, "I don't know what to do, and I need your help." 

"With what?" 

"With us. With you. With me most of all, I suppose." She started to pick up her wine glass, but her hands were shaking and she set it back down. "I just...I keep trying to think of a way that I can help you heal, or undo some of the damage that I've done, and I can't find a thing. I know...I know that I've ruined everything, and I know that you owe me nothing for that. All I'm asking for is a chance to atone, somehow. To perhaps make whatever happens next a little bit easier for all of us." 

"I don't understand what you're asking me," I admitted slowly. 

"Yes you do," she insisted. "And I know you do. Just give me some understanding of where we are, John. Give me some understanding of WHO we are. You don't have to do any more, or make any promises...but just give me that little bit. Please." 

 

It's not so little as you think, dear. In fact, you're stepping into a very dark place. 

I leaned back, and poured the entire glass of wine down my throat. "You're not going to like it," I warned her quietly. 

"I didn't ask you to make me like it." 

Clever retort. Okay. Who am I to fight you on this? 

I studied her for a moment, measured the resolve in her eyes. Let's see how long it lasts. 

"You're nothing to me," I admitted flatly. "That's what you are. Nothing at all." 

The resolve remained. "Explain." 

"What needs explaining?" I held out my hands. "I don't even know who this person sitting across from me is, to be honest. She's a foreigner, an unfamiliar. Oh, I guess she has my wife's name, or the name that she used to go by. But if I can say anything for certain, it's that you are not her. 

"My wife had just a hint of weight around her middle, and she was comfortable with that. You don't have it. You aren't her. My wife had long beautiful hair that reached down past her shoulders, and framed her smile in a way that she knew I adored, and that was special to me. You don't have that. You aren't her. My wife drove a van, you have an SUV. My wife put her family first, you put yourself before all else. And I'll apologize for knowing this much about your personal life, but I've seen very clear evidence that you enjoy doing things in bed...or elsewhere...that my wife had never even tried, and was certainly unwilling to consider attempting. So you. Are. Not. Her." I leaned forward. "Do you understand what I'm saying? You are not my wife. You're not her! You ARE! NOT! MY! WIFE!!" 

I took a deep breath, calming myself down. "My wife was a wonderful person. I can't even begin to describe her in words that you'll understand. In a world full of women, she was THE woman. In a lifetime of questions, she was the answer. And I don't know if you will ever be capable of understanding just how much I miss her." My voice cracked at the end of that, and I looked away. 

She seemed to have shrunk a little bit in her chair, but the determination was still there on her face. I suppose she prepared herself for this to be a hard conversation. 

"I understand what you're saying, John. Or..." she looked away from my warning look, "...I understand what it means. But honestly, hair and fitness are just appearance. A car is a car. They're just...inconsequential changes. You can't honestly tell me that you'd rather have me be a little on the fat side than-" 

"She wasn't fat. Don't you dare." 

This got me a patient look. "A LITTLE on the FAT side," she repeated, "than like THIS. I'm in the best shape of my life. People...women...compliment me on it all the time. I've got a self-confidence that I've never gotten to experience before. I'm happier looking like this. Isn't that a good thing?" 

"Sure. Okay. So just don't change, and those women can have you. I don't mind. I mean, it's not like I want you." 

"And my hair," she reached up, ignoring the jab, and shook her bangs with her hand. "It's just hair, John. And I know you liked it long, but it was such a pain to care for. Anyway, this is what women do in their 30's now. They get shorter haircuts. More mature haircuts. And you can't tell me you don't think that it's cute..." 

I burst into laughter. "Do you think you're going to out-argue my feelings? Is that what this is? If you just explain to me why I should like the haircut your boyfriend picked out for you, suddenly it will just happen? Is that how you think feelings work?" 

"I'm just saying that I'm sorry for what my motivation was in making these changes...and no, by the way, he did not pick out this haircut for me...but that it doesn't have to mean that they aren't good changes. They are independent of my crimes. I had simply gotten a little lazy about my appearance, and needed to start thinking about my hair and my body like an adult...as a woman in her 30's who needs to be aging gracefully and thinking about middle-age, and how that's going to look. For crying out loud, I had changed my diet and started exercising and looking for haircut ideas weeks before the affair even started! You can't possibly blame my haircut for-" 

"That hardly makes the two independent of one another. Do you really believe that it's a coincidence that you felt the need to completely reimagine yourself just before you decided to give yourself a little something 'extra' on the side? Or that you cut your hair short just after Carl told you he liked short haircuts on women?" 

"That doesn't have to mean that these changes are all because of him!" 

I gave up, waving her off. "You're still doing it," I observed. 

An exasperated sigh, and a bitter, "What?" 

"Trying to change the way I feel using arguments and persuasion. It's not going to happen. It doesn't need to happen. You DO get that, right? As much as I miss my wife, I have to tell you...I'm actually glad you aren't her. I'm glad that the memories I have of the person sitting in front of me are so totally separate from the memories I have of the woman I loved. It's made things a lot easier for me." 

"Well, I don't want to go back to being the frumpy little thing with an embarrassing pant size and ratty hair." 

"Then don't. If you think so little of that person, then never become her again. Why do you think that I'm suggesting you should? Anyway, I don't know who put it in your head that that's what you looked like before, but you were..." I stopped, and barked a laugh. "Now you got me arguing against feelings, too. Just forget it, okay Karen? Just forget it." 

She glared at me for a minute in heated frustration, then visibly relaxed and tapped her finger on her wine glass. "How about if I ask you a different question, instead?" 

How about not. "I'm listening." 

"If you could..." A big deep breath. "If you could answer this question without sarcasm, or bitterness, or without just laughing at me, I'd really appreciate it. But, if you have to do those things...I guess I understand." 

Interesting. "Ask away." 

"If you were me..." She glanced up at me, perhaps expecting the derisive laughter to interrupt as early as that, but I just waited. "If you were me, what would you do? If you had failed, and had fallen as far as I have, and were trying to make things right somehow, how would you go about it? What would you do to start that process?" 

"Things will never be right." 

"Please, John. Words aside, you know what it is that I'm asking." 

I did, and I considered it for a minute. "I'd leave. I'd leave, and give everybody the distance they needed to start healing without me. If it took forever, then I guess I'd never come back." 

"No you wouldn't. You wouldn't walk out on your family. Not for anything." 

"You're right. I wouldn't." But it was worth a shot. "I suppose I would do everything in my power to try and get back to the person I used to be...to the person and the beliefs and the dreams that had prevented me from being so selfish for so much of my history. I'd throw away everything that wasn't a part of who that person used to be. And I'd say some proverbial "Hail Marys"...out myself to people I would never want to out myself to, in the hope that the shame of those moments would provide a lesson of some kind. Things like that." I took a deep breath. "And I guess an affair is a selfish thing, so I'd make a point not to do anything selfish for a very long time. I'd try to...I don't know...excise that tendency from myself." 

She was quiet for a long moment. "Well, that's a lot to think about." 

"And I would have to hurt the person that I had cheated on you with. Even if they didn't deserve it, or if I didn't think they did, I would have to hurt them very badly." 

She flinched, not liking that part. "Why?" 

I considered for a moment. "Well, I suppose because for a time I had put them before you. I had had an active part in their happiness, coming at your expense...at your eternal expense. And sharing that happiness with them during that time must have been far more important to me than anything you might feel as a result...than your very life...or I never would have done it." I wiped my eyes. "I would need to show you that, while I might have placed this other person so far above you for that short time, their long-term meaning to me was less than nothing. I would need to take it to the extreme opposite, to show you...I don't know what. I don't know what it would show. But I would do it. I would do it, and I would never look back." 

She stared at me, her eyes wide and her lips parted. "I believe you would," she said quietly. 

We sat there for a time. 

"There's...there is just one other thing, John." 

"If you're about to tell me that you're pregnant..." 

"Oh god, NO! I..." she caught my wry smile. "Very funny." 

"No it isn't." But I was still smiling at the terror that had crossed her face. 

She took a moment to collect her thoughts, then pushed onwards. "I don't really know how to bring this up, but..." her eyes flickered to my face nervously, then away. "I mean, I know it's been a long time since you've had sex, an-" 

"We are done here." I stood up and walked out of the room. 

To her credit, she didn't call after or chase me, or anything like that. 

It wouldn't have gone well, if she had. 

--==-- 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
--==-- 

"Daddy?" 

"Yes, honey?" 

"Can I ask you something?" 

We were just coming in from a Friday night movie, and I was surprised by how tired I was. I was looking forward to getting the girls into bed and then passing right out. "Go ahead, sweetie," I said wearily. 

"In the...um..." she pulled on my coat sleeve, "in the movie?" 

"Yeah?" 

"That daddy got to save the family 'cause he was strong, right?" 

I kicked my shoes off. "Sure, honey." 

"How come YOU'RE not strong like that?" 

I froze, and closed my eyes. 

What a question to be asked. 

"I'm...pretty strong, honey." 

"No, you're not!" She insisted. "You're skinny!" 

I turned without thinking to look at Karen. Her expression was somewhere between pity and "I told you so." 

Thanks for the help, bitch. 

I turned away from them all. "I'm stronger than you think," I said to the room. "I'm stronger than any of you." 

"But you are pretty skinny..." the other little voice behind me insisted. 

--==-- 
CHAPTER NINE 
--==-- 

I don't know how she did it, exactly, but everybody was there. 

I came home from work to find a house full of people. Every single person from our social circle, everybody who I would usually see or hope to see at one of the Baileys' neighborhood parties, was there. Even a few of those who rarely attend were sitting around here and there, sipping their drinks and laughing. 

There were people I didn't want to see there, too, but I didn't notice them at first. 

In fact, as soon as I came to the door, Karen jumped up and started shouting around the house for attention. 

"I need everybody together in the living room," she called out. "I have a surprise announcement to make, and I need everybody to hear it." I caught her eye with a questioning look, but she ignored it, turning away and waving people into the living room. 

I came around the corner, nervously curious, and felt my blood pressure spike. 

There, in the corner of the room, was Carl. 

She'd invited him into my house? The fucking bitch brought him to my HOUSE? After everything that she'd said the last few months? After he'd HURT her, she'd brought him to the place where our children lived? 

Before I could react, Karen was talking to the group. 

"I need to tell you all something," she announced, "and it's not going to be very easy for me to say, so I'd appreciate it if you'd all be just a little bit patient." She glanced over at me, and who knows what she saw, but she took a deep breath and then continued. "I need everybody here to know what my husband has been doing for his family, during the last year. I...I did something very selfish. Something awful. And he responded by putting every last bit of strength he had to worrying about someone other than himself. He put it to protecting our children. I owe him for that, more than I could ever tell you." 

Some of the people in the crowd were glancing over at me, not sure where this was going. I wasn't sure, either. 

I mean...she wasn't really doing this, was she? 

It didn't take very long to find out. "I had an affair." The sentence dropped right down into the middle of everyone like a live grenade, and all the air left the room. 

Suddenly no one was looking at me at all. 

"There wasn't anything wrong with my marriage, or my husband, or my life, or anything. I just...let myself get coaxed into something that I had no business even considering doing. What's worse, I disrespected all of you in the process." 

Carl was glancing around the room, now, looking nervous. All his friends were about to find out exactly how safe it was to have him around them. Our eyes met, and he actually had the nerve to look a little pleading. 

You're on your own, now. Welcome to the club. 

"I had my affair," Karen continued, "and I stole time from my husband and children to be with another man. I risked everything I had, for nothing at all. I didn't try to prevent it from happening. I thought it was something that life owed me. 

"And what's worse, the man who seduced me away from the people whose lives I should've been protecting with my own was none other than my husband's supposed friend, Carl Jensen." There was a gasp from somewhere, and some low murmuring. "He pursued me, he seduced me, and I let him. Worse, I wanted him to do it. I encouraged it." 

People were looking around the room, finding Carl, and whispering to their spouses. He was suddenly very interested in finding his shoes. 

"Some of you have complimented me on the changes to my appearance over the last year. Well, those changes came about in part because of my affair. They were my way of distancing myself from the woman I'd been, and from the people I loved." She held her arms out in presentation. "They don't look so nice in that light, do they? 

"Some of you remember my husband becoming ill at one of the parties last summer, even though he didn't seem to be drinking very much. That was because he discovered that Carl and I were using all of you to play a little game with each other...to see how much we could act like a couple in front of you and still pull the wool over your eyes. We were selfish, stupid, and we were mean. And maybe some of you won't want to be my friend anymore, after hearing that, but I hope that you continue to be there for John. He's fighting for his family, for his daughter's well-being, and it's destroying him. 

"You've all seen it happening. It can't have escaped any of you how much weight he's lost, or how quiet he's become. He's lost everything, and instead of fixating on that fact he's doing everything he can to make sure others don't lose, as well." 

She glanced over at me again, and gave me a weary smile before continuing. "You should also know that Carl was very practiced, and very effective in his seduction. I won't pretend that I was as hard to get as I should've been, but without going into the details I promise you that it was a determined pursuit, almost clinically professional. I'm only telling you this as a warning, so you can all be more careful than I was." She glanced around the room, like a teacher waiting for questions, then said, "I'm sorry for luring you all here under false pretenses. I'm sorry for having abused your trust in me, in the past. I know the party probably seems like it's over right now, but I'd ask you to stay and drink and chat and have fun. Gossip about me, ask John how he's doing, let your children play downstairs. I'm going to leave, so I'll be out of your hair. 




A Boilerplate Rendering Ch. 03



"Besides," she grimaced, "it's about time for me to go and tell my mother exactly what I've been up to all these months." 

She walked over to me and reached out for a hug. I gave her a short one before stepping back. 

"You didn't have to do that." 

"The hell I didn't." But she looked like death warmed over as she turned to leave. 

I watched her go, then turned back to find a sea of faces staring at me. I gave them a half smile and a shrug. "Isn't anyone in this place gonna offer to get me a drink?" 

What else was I going to say? 

There was some awkward laughter, but the rest of the night went alright. 

Carl hadn't bothered to stick around. 

- 

"You could have warned me, you know," I told her. "Even giving me a chance to stop you, if I didn't wanted to happen." But there wasn't any venom my voice as I said this. If anything, I was amused. Even a little bit pleased, I suppose. She nodded agreement anyway. 

"I was afraid something would go wrong. Maybe people would call and cancel, or...or I guess that I would chicken out at the last minute. And then it would just be one more way that you knew I had let you down. And I guess..." A little half smile appeared on her face, "...I also worried that you would try and talk me out of it, that you wouldn't want me to humiliate myself that way. It needed to be done." 

I couldn't help chuckling. "You did kill a lot of birds with that one stone, didn't you?" 

"I didn't kill any. I just stirred up the flock and turned them loose." She took a test scoop of her oatmeal, tasted it, and blew on the bowl. "They won't all turn their backs on him, you know. At least, some of them won't. It'll be a scandal, and then it'll blow over, and that'll be that. But they won't ever feel quite as easy around him as they used to, or be as comfortable with him roaming around their parties. Over time, they'll call him a little less often, without admitting to themselves that that's what's happening, and then they'll find reasons not to invite him along. They'll just...phase him out...and maybe never even realize that that's what they're doing." She tested the oatmeal again. "Or, that's what they would do if they had the chance. One thing I've learned is that Carl is a face-saver, and a great avoider of conflict. I don't think they'll ever get the chance to push him away." 

I nodded. "I agree. He'll put a smile on his face and act like nothing is wrong for the next few weeks, but it won't take long for people to start noticing that he never seems to call them anymore, or answer when they ring him. He'll just...disappear. Deep down, he's a coward. He's a whiney shit, as well, by the way...and you cost him every friend he had last night. I'm surprised he hasn't been screaming down our answering machine all morning." 

"He'd use my cell phone, to lessen the risk that you might answer. But he won't even do that, because it would just be admitting that I've hurt him. He'll be in total face-saving mode right now, and that means no contact whatsoever." 

I nodded. "For now." 

We sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of us eating. 

"Tell me," I said, "how did you know I wouldn't be mad? Or feel humiliated? I mean, you basically outed me as cuckold to everybody we know last night. For all you knew, I would've been furious with you about it." 

That same small half-smile appeared on her face again, although this time it was matched with a sad twinkle in her eye. "There was never any doubt in my mind about how you would react to my little announcement. You're too big a man to worry about something as petty as how other people look at you. And you never HAVE to worry about that, because you always handle every situation with measured, calm, maturity. You consistently offer an adult response that comes from having real concern for the people around you. That's why I knew you wouldn't be mad, and that's why I knew that those people would react the way they did. They respect you. They like you. And because of that, I knew that they would want to be there for you." 

Memories of last night's showings of support came flooding back, bringing a smile to my face. "They are some pretty great people." 

"No. It's you, John." Her face tightened up with disgust. "I wish that I'd remembered that. I wish I'd kept seeing all the things that make you great, instead of seeing them as predictable or boring, or..." She shrugged. "I guess that's not right, either. I never started seeing you as less. I just started seeing myself as more. I thought I was better than. I thought I was special. Without ever actually saying it that way to myself, I thought I was smarter and more deserving than any of the people around me." She looked down at her oatmeal. "And I was such an ass." 

We can agree on that. And now it's probably cost you your friends, as well. "Well, anyway, thanks for last night," I smiled, "ass. It felt good." 

"Then it was worth it." 

"Hmm," I sipped my coffee. "It's so nice when we can agree on something." 

- 

A week passed, and then I got my second surprise. 

I pulled into the garage on Wednesday after work and there, in place of that practically new SUV, was a significantly older looking sedan. 

I stared at it for a few minutes, taking in the obvious signs of age and peeking in through the windows. Some of Karen's things sat in the middle tray. I went inside. 

"Did something happen to the car?" I asked, my curiosity peaked. 

"Oh," she said, "I just thought I needed something different. Something more 'me,' you know?" 

She busied herself doing the dishes. "It's funny, in a way...when I got that big SUV, I was so tickled by it. I thought it was exactly what I wanted. I thought it fit me perfectly. Come to find out I don't even LIKE the dumb thing very much. It's not comfortable, it feels like a damn boat when I'm out on the highway, and it sucks up gasoline like you wouldn't believe." 

"People change their minds. It happens." 

She dropped a pot cover into the dishwater, splashing it noisily. "I can't even figure out what I thought was so great about it in the first place. It just makes me miserable. So, I thought I'd get something different...something that WAS 'me.' Problem with that idea was that we're so damn broke. The money I was able to get for the SUV had to cover the car, the taxes, and who knows what else...so I had to drop my expectations down a few steps to make it work." She rinsed off the pot cover and began draining the water. "The hardest thing to deal with is, there's nothing I want more in the world right now than to have my old family van back." She dipped her hands into the water. "But that's okay, too. Whenever we go out as a family, now, we take your van...so there's not really any reason for me to have more than just something that'll get me around, right?" 

I studied her for a moment. "I suppose that makes quite a bit of sense," I offered, opening my mouth to say more but not knowing what more I could say. 

She turned around. She had lines under her eyes and no expectations. I went back into the bedroom to change clothes and find my book. 

Sometimes, when you both know a thing, it's perfectly okay if neither of you says it out loud. 

--==-- 
CHAPTER TEN 
--==-- 

So, there we were. 

We'd been getting along pretty good for a while, and ever since she'd ended it with Carl, Karen had become totally devoted to her family. She managed a perfect balance, maintaining a constant loving presence without ever quite crossing over into a hovering nuisance. It got to the point, some weeks following the party, where I didn't even feel the undercurrent of anger in my gut every time she entered the room. 

I won't pretend I didn't get a little pleasure at bags that had formed under her eyes, or the lifeless stare she took on when she was thinking deep. But I didn't push to encourage those things, either. 

And this cooperation may seem, to the uninitiated, like a good thing. Weren't we united, after all, in a common purpose? Weren't we interacting like friendly coworkers teamed up on an important project? And wasn't that everything I could have hoped for? 

The obvious answer is 'no.' And the problem with all this was that Karen didn't want to just be friendly coworkers. She wanted quite a bit more, and wasn't going to give up on that for anything. 

That 'more' came with urgent need, too, since she was now without her alternative emotional and sexual outlet. Oh, she was keeping to her strategy of remaining patient, but cracks were rapidly starting to show, and I was waiting for the day when they would dissolve the foundation out from underneath her whole facade. 

Warning signs had appeared as early as the weekend after the party. She had initiated, without preamble, a subtle yet persistent campaign of minor physical contacts. She would touch my arm while asking the question, or give my shoulder a quick squeeze as she asked how I'd slept in the morning, or even give me a quick, chaste hug when the girls were watching and she knew I wouldn't pull away. 

I was still working on maintaining that much-valued distance, and any time I saw her swinging in for a possible contact moment I would move away. But cumulatively, over time, these actions were starting to have their intended effect: they were starting to make all those little touches seem terribly, terrible "normal." 

I should have been trying harder to avoid them, or simply told her out right to knock it off. But the larger problem underlying all of this was that, on some level, part of me did enjoy the contact. Oh, it still spiked my blood pressure and twisted my guts when it happened. But the flip side of that was that I was still so very, very lonely. Even that small, simple thing...her fingers and thumb squeezing my shoulder as she said good morning...was just about the most human that I'd felt in a very long time. 

And no matter how much I wanted to separate myself from her, there was that small voice deep down inside me forever begging for just a single moment more where I could feel like a real person. 

Maybe if I'd had an outlet of some kind...if I had accounted for that need in some way early on...I wouldn't have had any trouble avoiding her. But this whole experience has been a little bit like getting shot in the chest and then being given the opportunity to record a final message for your children before you bled out...here you were, in the fog of shock, having to commit all your rapidly-dwindling resources to the one task that you deemed worthy of completion. Everything else had to be second tier...no matter what. 

Anyway, that's probably just my excusing it. But that IS how it felt at the time. I hadn't been taking care of the self at all, because the self had become a ghost to my eyes. An apparition. Now I was starting to surface back into the world, and I hadn't bothered to put anything in place to prepare for what would happen when I got there. Having that lone fingertip brush my arm while she asked if the girls enjoyed the movie was like rediscovering that I was human, rediscovering that life was more than just breathing in and out and wondering how long it would be before the breathing would stop. 

And here's the real crux of what infidelity does to you: when I look at those words now, they feel like hyperbole, or dramatics. But when I remember how I felt at that time, they don't seem like nearly enough. They're like two-dimensional drawings of something that was profoundly textured and elaborate. 

What I'm trying to say is I couldn't make myself say no to the touch. 

This realization terrified me, because of the implications it had for my future. I certainly wasn't "falling back in love" with Karen...she had ceased to be somebody I COULD love...and I still wasn't feeling remotely sexual, either. But I could see that these actions, small as they were, were a very successful form of erosion that was acted upon my much-needed isolation and self-control. 

I knew it would have to be dealt with. I knew it had to end. But then there was that fingernail, gently scratching at my neck, and couldn't I just wait a few days before telling her to stop? 

I kept putting it off. It was weak of me. I am aware. 

Then, two things happened which forewarned of a larger, coming confrontation: first, Karen started getting a little short tempered with me, and then she started dressing skimpier around the house. 

There are some things that you simply cannot convey in a story. Things like a lifetime's worth of understanding that comes from having been around a person. Things like the tiniest implications that can be seen within their behaviors. To an outsider, that little increase in moodiness might have produced a thousand different questions. For me, it produced just one very simple, very clear answer, and it was the last thing I wanted to have to deal with right now: 

My wife was horny. 

As the days passed, she grew more and more persistent. Lone touches became repeat offenders. Quick retreats began to linger longer. When I pulled away, she would simply smile a knowing kind of smile and try again later. 

Maybe she thought that if she could get enough physical contact in, eventually I would just break down and one-eighty. But the thing was, I wasn't remotely close to that point, and her own frustration was mounting far faster than my walls could crumble. So there was only one place that all this could lead, and yet when we got there it surprised us both. 

It was evening. The kids were in bed. She had just reached for me in a way that was meant to appear casual, but was dressed in obvious intentions. Her? She wore a t-shirt and some nicely-fitting bikini briefs. 

When I jerked away for the thousandth time, she finally grimaced and snapped, "God dammit, John, I'm really trying here! Can't you at least let me rub your shoulder a little?" 

"Right," I shook my head. "What could possibly be more harmless than coming over to rub my shoulders in your underwear? Then, of course, you'll find that the knots in my shoulders are especially tense, right? And have to really lean your weight into them to make a difference, causing your hips to rub against my back while you work?" I snorted. "What was I thinking? It's all so innocent." 

"You don't have to be sarcastic." She sat down in the chair opposite me, arms folded across her chest. "Yeah, okay, I'm trying to seduce you, and we both know it. What's so wrong with that? I want to make love to my husband! Gosh, what a monster that must make me!" Her face softened, and her eyes turned pleading. "I'm a human being, John. I do have needs. And you do, too...you shouldn't ignore them. I mean, it's been a goddamn eternity for you, so don't tell me you aren't the least bit frustrated. You've got to be tired of doing it by hand, all the..." 

She trailed off. 

Something in my expression had told her too much. 

"Oh," she whispered into her hand. "You've got to be kidding me." She took a deep breath. "You're not doing it by hand, are you? You're not doing it at ALL. John, you have to see a counselor or something. It's not healthy for-" 

"No!" I stood up. "No, goddamnit! I will not sit here, and be lectured to about sex by Carl's fucking whore! I will not be made to feel bad or guilty, because I don't want anything to do with a body that was built for that asshole, wearing a haircut designed to appeal to him, and loaded up with all sorts of new likes and tricks that he introduced! So you can just..." 

I forced myself to stop and held up my hands. 

"I appreciate everything you've done to try and make this easier for me," I said carefully. "I know you want to make everything better. I see that. But there comes a point where 'better' simply isn't a feasible goal anymore. Sometimes you cure the cancer, and all is well...but sometimes you just do what you can to make the person comfortable, because that's what's left to do. You've made me comfortable. I thank you for that. But now it's time to let it go." 

She folded her arms defiantly, not willing to give up. "You know, sometimes people insist on staying in bed long after the cancer is gone and defeated. They get scared, John. Scared to get out of the bed. Scared to go on with their lives. Scared to go back to thinking about tomorrow like it might actually happen. And when that happens, you have to give them a bit of a kick in the ass, because it's the only thing that will push them into living again." 

That pissed me off, and in a flash of heat I lashed out. "You're a very ugly person, Karen. Do you know that?" I looked her up and down. "You used to be a beautiful woman, with a beautiful family and a beautiful life, and you traded that in to become Carl's ugly, scrawny whore. Now why don't you just do us all a favor, and go to hell?" 

I left before she could reply. 

- 

She was stone cold frosty towards me the next few days, and all those little touches evaporated like water in summertime. In fact, it got to the point where she barely spoke to me, and did her level best not to be in the room if I was in it. I couldn't tell if she was angry, or giving up, or what. Her expression was unreadable. 

I surprised myself by feeling some amount of disappointment. All those weeks of peaceful teamwork, of feeling like we were working together, had been nice. Even the unwanted physical contact had carried a sense of safety and stability that I had enjoyed. After all, so long as we were working towards the same goal and as she was trying to get back into my good graces, I didn't really have to worry about tomorrow. I didn't have to consider that she might give up, or go back to Carl, or just go for the divorce out of exhaustion. I didn't have to worry that unforeseen problems might arise, or that stressful conflict might be on the horizon. 

Mostly, I had enjoyed feeling like we were on the same side on something, even if it came with a complete lack of romantic undercurrent. 

Now, I was shut out, and left wondering what might be going to her head. There was little to do about it aside from wait for the other foot to drop, and I found myself doing exactly that. I would run internal calculations in my head all through the workday in preparation...what would a divorce look like for us financially? How often would I be able to see the kids? Would she remarry sooner rather than later? Would he be a father figure for the girls? What kind of father figure? 

A lot of old fears were reappearing. 

That really ate at me...the girls growing up with a new dad. Me missing out on great swaths of their formative years, hearing about everything well after the fact (and certainly being late enough to the game to give any preparatory advice or support). 

It was the last step into loneliness. The final breath of the life I'd once had. 

I had trouble sitting down for longer than a few seconds at a time, and paced until I developed a bruise on the underside of my left food. I found myself gravitating towards whatever room the children happened to be in, or just looking for excuses to interject myself into their play or leisure time. 

I didn't know how much longer I'd have that option, and I wanted to soak up as much as I could before it was too late. 

Then came the morning that I shuffled into the kitchen to find breakfast already made. A great, massive heaping pile of a breakfast, laid out in stupidly enormous proportions. Karen was already seated at the table with a similarly sized meal placed in front of her. The great display of pancakes, egg, hash browns, and sausage looked especially ridiculous in front of this small framed, very fit woman. 

"I think you overcooked a bit," I said dryly, sitting down. 

Karen just shrugged. "I'll eat mine if you'll eat yours." 

"You couldn't eat that if you had all day to do it in."