opening. âWell,â she said. âYouâll have to ask Nick about Esther.â
So I took her up on it. And now I know about Esther. But it was Nancyâs moment in the sun, all right. She basked like a snake on a riverbank, her tongue flicking at the opportunity as though it were a fly.
As the messenger, Nancyâs an easy target. Nancy, my former best friend, Nancy, who disguised her essential misery with her immense charm. She never forgave me for not being fat.
I shouldnât pick on Nancy. Itâs just that I donât even know where to begin. I suppose I should be sitting here trying to figure out why, trying to understand, to make sense. Why has this happened? What did I do?
Isnât that what women do? In the end, they blame themselves. Somewhere I read thatâthat women see themselves as the cause when things go wrong, whereas men blame something external, some other person, a malady, an ulterior motive, the weather.
But right now Iâm not interested in any of that. Itâs after 4 A.M. I canât sleep, canât imagine sleeping ever again, and I donât care about blame, or if blame is even an appropriate issue. All I want to know is, what was it like with you and Esther? What did you do to her, what did she do to you? If youâd kissed Esther, if youâd held her close, that knowledge would be enough; but that you traveled inside her body, straight into forbidden territory, makes my stomach turn.
Some would say Iâm punishing myself, trying to visualize all this. But I want to know, I really do. Does she like the same things I like? Is she anything like me? My husband leaves me after twenty years and doesnât, until many months later, tell me the whole truth, doesnât tell me he was in love with someone else, had been for two years, had a secret agenda. He isnât the man I know, heâs some other man.
You canât imagine how disorienting this is. If I could have named a single quality of the man I married, the person who has been at the center of my life for two decades, that word would be âintegrity.â Even in the tiniest ways, you were someone who never compromised himself. You had that core of wholeness that could not be cracked or chipped. A truly solid man. You were capable of being boring, stubborn, compulsive, irritating, judgmental, oblivious, and, occasionally, of having bad breath. But a word like âdishonestâ could not possibly have applied. That integrity was your draw. It was the thing that made me the most secure, the thing I could depend on. Some women compensate for their own insecurities by marrying money, someone warm and loving, perhaps, but prosperous absolutely.
I married you because I knew, with a certainty that Iâd have bet my life on, that you could be trusted. I married you because you were not like me. I was whimsical and impulsive and given to waves of elation and despair. I might fly away and self-destruct. You would keep me grounded.
This feels like a rape; the betrayal is that profound. It really would have been so much better if you had died. I heard a woman express that very sentiment once at a dinner party. âItâs always best when your first husband dies,â she said, stabbing a smoked oyster with a toothpick. It was delivered as a simple statement of fact, and I accepted it with a single knowing bark of a laugh. Certainly I had wished as much for my motherâs sake. When, more than ten years later, he did die, it was too late. So much of her had already been trampled to death.
Now I see why, among other things, I seemed âjust fine,â as everybody said. Nina told me that it was amazing, I was going through all this stuff, but that I looked better than ever. True, Iâd managed to have good days, but there had been some bad ones, too. I was on a roller coaster that I learned to let take me whichever way it was going. And yet, beyond it all lay a challenge,
So I took her up on it. And now I know about Esther. But it was Nancyâs moment in the sun, all right. She basked like a snake on a riverbank, her tongue flicking at the opportunity as though it were a fly.
As the messenger, Nancyâs an easy target. Nancy, my former best friend, Nancy, who disguised her essential misery with her immense charm. She never forgave me for not being fat.
I shouldnât pick on Nancy. Itâs just that I donât even know where to begin. I suppose I should be sitting here trying to figure out why, trying to understand, to make sense. Why has this happened? What did I do?
Isnât that what women do? In the end, they blame themselves. Somewhere I read thatâthat women see themselves as the cause when things go wrong, whereas men blame something external, some other person, a malady, an ulterior motive, the weather.
But right now Iâm not interested in any of that. Itâs after 4 A.M. I canât sleep, canât imagine sleeping ever again, and I donât care about blame, or if blame is even an appropriate issue. All I want to know is, what was it like with you and Esther? What did you do to her, what did she do to you? If youâd kissed Esther, if youâd held her close, that knowledge would be enough; but that you traveled inside her body, straight into forbidden territory, makes my stomach turn.
Some would say Iâm punishing myself, trying to visualize all this. But I want to know, I really do. Does she like the same things I like? Is she anything like me? My husband leaves me after twenty years and doesnât, until many months later, tell me the whole truth, doesnât tell me he was in love with someone else, had been for two years, had a secret agenda. He isnât the man I know, heâs some other man.
You canât imagine how disorienting this is. If I could have named a single quality of the man I married, the person who has been at the center of my life for two decades, that word would be âintegrity.â Even in the tiniest ways, you were someone who never compromised himself. You had that core of wholeness that could not be cracked or chipped. A truly solid man. You were capable of being boring, stubborn, compulsive, irritating, judgmental, oblivious, and, occasionally, of having bad breath. But a word like âdishonestâ could not possibly have applied. That integrity was your draw. It was the thing that made me the most secure, the thing I could depend on. Some women compensate for their own insecurities by marrying money, someone warm and loving, perhaps, but prosperous absolutely.
I married you because I knew, with a certainty that Iâd have bet my life on, that you could be trusted. I married you because you were not like me. I was whimsical and impulsive and given to waves of elation and despair. I might fly away and self-destruct. You would keep me grounded.
This feels like a rape; the betrayal is that profound. It really would have been so much better if you had died. I heard a woman express that very sentiment once at a dinner party. âItâs always best when your first husband dies,â she said, stabbing a smoked oyster with a toothpick. It was delivered as a simple statement of fact, and I accepted it with a single knowing bark of a laugh. Certainly I had wished as much for my motherâs sake. When, more than ten years later, he did die, it was too late. So much of her had already been trampled to death.
Now I see why, among other things, I seemed âjust fine,â as everybody said. Nina told me that it was amazing, I was going through all this stuff, but that I looked better than ever. True, Iâd managed to have good days, but there had been some bad ones, too. I was on a roller coaster that I learned to let take me whichever way it was going. And yet, beyond it all lay a challenge,
Similar Books
