Read Online All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker - Free Book Online Page A

determined eyes, big white smile, and rounded nose. Bob Sullivan was a self-made man, the kind whom magazines liked to write about. The kind who was so bursting with himself, it seemed a miracle he didn’t explode like a struck piñata and litter confetti across the sky. Bob Sullivan lived in Fairview. He had a “plus-sized” wife and three sons who were being groomed to run the family business. He always drove the latest model of something, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche. He ate a paleo diet and drank red wine without constraint. He was generous but also ambitious, with his sights set upon a seat in the state legislature.
    And he was having an affair with Charlotte Kramer.
    We tend to think we know why people have affairs. Their marriage is bad, but they can’t leave because of the kids. They have sexual needs that aren’t being filled. They’re victims of seduction, their self-control overcome by human desires. None of these were true for Charlotte.
    Charlotte Kramer was two people. She was the Smith graduate with a degree in literature. She was the former assistant editor of Connecticut magazine and now the stay-at-home mother to two lovely children, the wife of Tom Kramer, whose family were scholars and teachers. She was the member of the Fairview Country Club who was known for her impeccable manners and extensive vocabulary. She had built her house carefully, and it was a good, moral, and admired house.
    No one knew the other Charlotte Kramer, the girl who’d slept with her mother’s husband and was forced to leave home. No one knew that her relatives were uneducated alcoholics who lived hard and died young. She was the girl who took off her clothes every night for a man nearly twice her age who smelled of cigarettes and poor hygiene. No one knew any of this—except for Bob Sullivan. Charlotte had put that girl in a cage. But over time, that girl had started to rattle the bars until she could no longer be ignored. Bob Sullivan was Charlotte’s way of recognizing her, of keeping her calm in her imprisonment. It was her way of being whole as she lived half a life as Charlotte Kramer of Fairview.
    When I’m with Bob, I’m that girl again. That dirty girl who gets turned on by bad things. Bob is a good man, but we’re both married, so what we’re doing is bad. I don’t know how to explain it. I have worked very hard to live a “right” life. Do you know what I mean? To not think the bad thoughts and stop myself from having the bad behavior. But it’s always there, this craving. Like a closet smoker, you know? Someone who’s mostly quit and who would sooner die than have the world know she smokes, but then she sneaks one precious cigarette a day. Just one. And that’s enough to satisfy the craving. Bob is my one cigarette.
    You may judge Charlotte Kramer for her one cigarette. For having secret cravings that she cannot control. For not telling the whole truth. For not letting her husband know his whole wife. And for your judging of Charlotte Kramer, I shall have to judge you a hypocrite.
    No one, not one of us, shows the whole self to any one person. And if you think you have, then ask yourself these questions: Have you ever pretended to like something awful your wife cooked? Or told your daughter she looked pretty in an ugly dress? Have you made love to your husband and faked a sigh as your thoughts ran elsewhere—to your grocery list, perhaps? Or praised the mediocre work of a colleague? Have you ever told someone everything would be all right when it wouldn’t be? I know you have. White lies, black lies, a million lies a million times every day, everywhere, by every one of us. We are all hiding something from someone.
    This may cause you to feel disheartened. Maybe it will make you pause when your wife tells you she believes you’ll get that promotion, or your husband assures you that you are well liked on the PTA. The truth is, you will