Infidelity (13 page)

( CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT )

“You changed your hair.”

Ronnie touched her head self-consciously.

“I like it,” Charlie said, pulling her in for a quick kiss without the fear that they would be spotted.

They had gone to a bookstore together that Thursday afternoon in May. Ronnie had driven them out to a big box store in Scarborough in the Volvo station wagon so they could be safe from being seen. They held hands as they walked through the door, and parted as soon as they were inside. The agreement that Ronnie had concocted was they would split up, find each other a gift—a book (not a yoga mat, or scented candle, or inspirational card)—and meet by the magazines when they were done.

Charlie hurried off to the children's literature section and Ronnie to health and self-help.

With their purchases tucked snugly under their arms and their fingers still entwined, they went for a pint at a faux-Irish pub on a suburban six-lane street to exchange their finds.

“Did you notice they only had four of my books there? A fucking crime.”

“Charlie,” she said, touching his arm lightly. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

“I need to talk to you about something important! Four copies! Shameful.”

“Listen to me. I've been trying to get you alone so I can talk to you about something important,” she pleaded.

She realized how silly that statement was. They were always alone.

Charlie wasn't listening anyway. He had moved on to finding a typo in the menu. Typos on menus made Charlie crazy. Typos anywhere generally made Charlie crazy, misplaced modifiers and incorrect commas, but those on menus were a particular sore spot. He was visibly enraged and threatening to see the management while Ronnie tried to regain his attention. He was removing a felt-tip pen from his inside jacket pocket with the full intention of circling the improperly used apostrophe.

“Charlie, did you hear me? This is important. I had some tests done.”

“What kind of tests? You know, it's not even as if they got it wrong. They actually made something up. They made a word up and put it in their fucking menu.”

“A biopsy. I had a biopsy done.”

Charlie finally looked up from the menu. He put the pen down on the table slowly. He stared at her and said nothing.

“It's really not a big deal. It's just a test. They found something they didn't like and they—”

Charlie's eyes suddenly welled up with tears. He gripped the old, heavy wooden table with such force that it shook, and then broke his own rule about touching in public by grabbing Ronnie's hand. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I'm telling you now.”

“There are so many things you never tell me.”

“Charlie—” she said, pulling her hand away. “I'm sorry, Charlie. But this isn't really about you.”

“You don't have cancer. You can't have cancer.”

“I never said I had cancer. I just said—”

“Don't worry, Ronnie, you don't have cancer.”

“I'm not worrying. I just wanted to tell you. It's early yet. We don't know what we're going to have to do.”


“What are we going to do? What are you and Aaron going to do?”

“No, what the doctors are going to do.”

“What does that even fucking mean?”

“Surgery. Then I'll be better.”

“But—the baby. You wanted a baby.”

Ronnie had never heard Charlie refer to “the baby” before. “We still don't know anything.”

Other patrons were staring now. Ronnie looked down at the various initials, hearts, arrows, and curse words engraved in the tabletop by suburban teens, bored and falling in love in Scarborough. She needed to avoid eye contact as Charlie stared at her with increasing intensity, so much that it unnerved her.

The waitress, ill timed, returned to the table with a second round of pints. She paused for a moment and stared at the menu and Charlie's felt-tip pen.

“Um, sir,” she said when she put the pints down on the coasters. “You can't deface our menu.” She put her French manicured finger directly on the apostrophe Charlie had circled.

“Fuck you,” Charlie said.

The books lay out on the table, snug in their shopping bags, unopened, next to their untouched pints.

Charlie had bought Ronnie
Goodnight, Moon
.

Ronnie had bought Charlie a book on loved ones dealing with cancer.

She apologized to the waitress while Charlie found himself incapable of moving.

“I would have been able to give you a baby,” he said.

( CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE )

The hotels, despite the expense, soon became ritual.

Charlie would invent imaginary literary events, occasionally pretending he was reading in a small town somewhere so he could spend the night. It amazed Ronnie that his wife never took the time to check, but he assured her that she cared little for the details of the literary world and wouldn't know where to look anyway. The only reason Ronnie believed it was because she wouldn't know where to look either.

As far as Aaron was concerned, Ronnie had seen her doctor, her dentist, her chiropractor, her eye doctor, her massage therapist, gotten a pedicure (which Charlie did to maintain the ruse, painting her toes while she was nude), and developed a new passion for going to the gym.

“That's really great for the baby, Ronnie.”

What baby?
she thought.

The hundreds of dollars they spent on rooms was difficult to conceal, but somehow they managed it. It was exciting touring the city via its king-sized beds and room-service menus. Ronnie would always order the club sandwich, and Charlie would always drain the minibar of its Canadian Club.

They would often meet at the hotel instead of beforehand, and he would check in while she attempted to look inconspicuous from a distance, drinking a cocktail in the lobby bar to soothe her nerves or pretending to read Toronto tourism brochures provided by the concierge.

Ronnie had spent much of her adult life wondering longingly about the “anatomy of an affair,” had seen it depicted in movies and on television in all its disastrous glory, but when she was actually in it it all seemed too easy. Calm. And certainly not glamorous. There was never anyone in the lobby to run into, no colleague, client, or old friend to spot them and question why they were there.

Still the nerves affected her. Once they had the key Ronnie would rush to the elevator, press the button rapidly, and fidget nervously until it arrived. If they rode it alone she would check for a camera as Charlie gripped her hips and kissed her. If they rode it with someone else Ronnie would stand as far away from Charlie as possible, even press the button for another floor to appear completely innocent. Once they got to the room she would close tight all the heavy curtains, claiming a perhaps faux concern that someone was spying through the windows in the opposite buildings. She would turn on all the lights and turn up the radio, make things seems simple and inconspicuous, simply two colleagues chatting in a well-lit business travel hotel room. She would smooth flat the heavy garish blankets with her damp palm while Charlie washed his face in the bathroom sink.

Sometimes, as a treat, Charlie and Ronnie would have a steak dinner in the lobby restaurant of whatever hotel they were in. At first it was thirty-dollar steaks and then it was fifteen-dollar steaks, but it was always in the lobby because it was near impossible to comfortably have a steak dinner anywhere else. Ronnie got all twitchy and distracted with the fear that they would be spotted, and Charlie would make every effort to embarrass her to the wait staff. He would ask for “another cocktail for my little girl.” And Ronnie would have another cocktail, and her head would be light and her resolution weak. Not that she ever needed excuses.

He would have his steak well done and she would order hers medium rare. They would talk about the university. They would talk about the clients she'd had that week. He would talk about his book. Eventually they made the rule that they would never talk about Tamara or Aaron, and if that rule was broken it would only lead to arguing.

They would certainly never talk about Noah, especially now that Noah was doing so much worse. Charlie would not mention the fact that he believed Noah was doing so much worse because he was never around.

They certainly did not mention cancer.

At first Charlie booked the Sheraton and the Westin, paid in cash, but as time wore on it was the Holiday Inn. Ronnie never questioned how he was paying the bill, always fearful that Tamara's billable hours were facilitating their affair. As the hotels got worse the water got harder and the conversations more strained, the curtains more musty, the fucking more frantic. Where at first it had been deep conversations and lovemaking, sweet and sticky like teenagers in those first months of discovery, they soon clawed at each other's bodies in a hungry desperation that suggested they were attempting to eradicate each other, that if they could only destroy each other the sinking weight of guilt would finally cease.

“Every moment I spend away from you is unbearable.”

Generally when they would go back to their room, full of steak and vodka, they would make love first and then they would fuck, and Charlie would pin Ronnie down by her wrists and call her names, just like she asked him to. She asked him for all the things Aaron would never do. She would ask to be punished, and he would gladly oblige.

In so many ways she felt as if she was no one, and there was a private thrill of the fact that he picked her. He was a married man and as far as she knew he'd never picked anyone else. He picked her out of a room, out of a city, out of a world of people. A famous man picked a nobody like her—a girl who took her laundry to the laundromat and had to look up most of the words he used in the dictionary. Ronnie knew about all the countless wrongs of infidelity, the guilt that lingered in every moment they spent together, but there was something flattering about being chosen . . . she knew every moment he spent with her in that hotel room he was risking an entire life. A livelihood. The love of a wife and child. To be picked as a risk was an unbelievable compliment, and although she realized it wasn't exactly something to be proud of, his decision to see her did make her feel special. Beautiful.

Every time her hips bucked, the book he was penning in her honour became more pornographic. He wrote lines in his head during their most lustful moments, transcribing them into the manuscript until it was a stream of pointless scenes soaked with sweat and want, penned by a desperate man.

When they were finished he would lean in close to her ear and whisper the words “I love you,” to which she wouldn't reply. Not that her reply mattered anyway. He would have loved her regardless of her response. He would cling to her tightly, their naked bodies sticky with sweat, and he would wait to hear a long sigh from her, an acknowledgement of her relief.

“Charlie, when you hold me it's like we're a pair of parentheses.”

“What are we parenthesizing?”

“Is parenthesizing even a word?”

“Who cares?”

“You do, Charlie. You always care about words. You felt-pen typos on menus.”

“And what do you care about?”

“You?”

“Us.”

Sometimes she'd pull him down on the bed and she'd simply lean her head flat against his barrel chest and listen to him breathe. When he tried to pull her up to kiss him, she'd stop him, grip tightly to his frame and frantically hang on, and he would relent.

“What do you hear, Ronnie?”

“Something else.”

Sometimes that was enough for her, the rise and fall of his breath just for her in a quiet room on a busy downtown street. Sometimes it didn't matter that he was married or that she would be. Sometimes she could justify a need for “other,” that this was not a substitute but rather a supplement to a life that Aaron tried his best to fill.

Charlie would rotate her engagement around her ring finger while they lay together. “Why won't you take it off when we're together?” he asked her.

“Because I need to be reminded. It reminds me that this is worth it.”

When they finally slept between the scratchy hotel sheets, safe in the knowledge that the people who waited for them at home believed them to be somewhere else, Ronnie dreamed of the desert. The sky blazed white and she ran barefoot through the sand, uphill, until the resistance became too much and she collapsed into its soft give. She lay still in the sand and gazed into the blinding light of the sky.

Charlie was the sky, and Aaron was the sand giving way beneath her feet.

When she opened her eyes, Charlie was snoring.

( CHAPTER FORTY )

“Have you ever had an affair?”

Ronnie and Lisa were having a beer on a patio on College Street post-shift on a Saturday afternoon. The day was warm and clear, the street busy with beautiful smiling people. Being out in it made Ronnie feel normal in a life that was feeling increasingly less so. After about three bottles Ronnie mustered the courage to test Lisa's moral compass.

“Fuck, yeah. Hasn't everyone?”

“Really? You're joking, right?”

Lisa took a long, thoughtful drag off her Belmont Mild and considered, her expression suggesting she was searching her personal history for examples.

“Can I have one of those?” Ronnie asked, gesturing toward the pack on the table between them.

“Since when do you smoke?”

“It's something I'm trying on. Please continue,” Ronnie said, pulling a cigarette from Lisa's pack and lighting it with her friend's silver engraved Zippo.

“Well, yeah. Sure. Cheating. I mean nothing crazy invested or anything. But I've had a few too many gin and tonics and forgotten I was in a relationship. Dance floor antics. Alleyway gropings. That sort of thing. There was this one time I gave a—”

“I don't need details.”

“All right, ya prude. Why do you ask?”

Ronnie stared out into the street, watching the tanned, scantily clad girls go by. There was a pause, and then a look of shock and sudden realization filled Lisa's face. Her voice fell to a hush. “Shit. Do you think Aaron's got something goin' on?” She looked around the patio as if to suggest they were being spied on.

“Oh god no. No way.”

Lisa stared for a moment. A second realization snuck in. “Rons, are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“It . . . it just happened.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“I met someone.”

Lisa stared at Ronnie across the small table, concealing the lower half of her face with her half-full pint glass. Then she exploded, pointing her finger accusingly in Ronnie's direction. “I knew it! I fucking knew it!”

“What do you mean you knew it?”

“No, no, no. Wait. First things first. Please explain, you ‘met someone'?” Lisa said very slowly.

“I mean that I met someone who is not Aaron.”

“Jesus, Rons. I get that. Just who is this person? A client? Oh please say it was a client. I'd love that bit of gossip.” Lisa's face revealed excitement. Maybe a tinge of self-satisfaction. Of “I saw this coming.” Although it was hard to tell. Her facial expressions were often obscured by a degree of cosmetic theatrics.

“I met someone. And I don't know what I'm doing anymore. At first it was under control, but now I feel like I need to make some sort of decision.”

“Oh, I'm loving this. And here I thought you were a good girl.”

“Stop it.”

“Again. I ask you, Veronica Kline . . . who is this person?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Fuck yeah, it matters. Whether or not I think you should leave Aaron is completely dependent on who this person is. Is he hot?”

“God, Lisa. You're without class sometimes.”

“Class is overrated. Well is he?”

“Can you keep your voice down?” Ronnie glanced around the patio quickly to ensure there wasn't anyone relevant in earshot.

“Sorry. God. I would kill to have an affair.”

“I think you have to be in a relationship to have an affair.”

“Yeah, that too. Maybe I should, as they say, take a lover.”

“C'mon, be serious.”

“No, I really should. I'm bored out of my mind. You've got drama. Intrigue. Totally jealous.”

“No, I've got serious problems. He's married.”

“Shit.”

“With a kid.”

“Double shit.”

“Who is sick.” That word again. The one Charlie hated.

“My god, Ronnie. You must feel so lonely keeping this a secret. You should have said something.”

This is why Ronnie loved Lisa. With all the people who flowed in an out of Ronnie's life, Lisa was the one who, despite being self-absorbed, genuinely cared about Ronnie's well-being above
all else.

“Married with a kid, eh? So he's . . .”

“Yeah. He's older. You don't know him.” Ronnie paused for a moment to reconsider. “Well, you might know him.” Lisa was a reader, always carting around strange little books about feminism and novels by female writers Ronnie had never heard of. Ronnie was surprised that the literary fame factor hadn't occurred to her until this moment. “Charles Stern?”

“Wait a fucking second. You're fucking Charles Stern?
The
fucking Charles Stern? Literary god who has won a bunch of awards Charles Stern? You are fucking Charles fucking Stern?”

“Well, I wouldn't call him a god, per se.”

“Shit. I can't even believe this. The injustice of it. You don't even care about books. How do you get to fuck Charles Stern?”

“That's not true. I read books.”

“Yeah? What was the last book you read?”

“That's not the point.”

“My god, you always seemed so Ivory soap and water, or bread and butter, or whatever that phrase is to imply you're a good girl. Wonder Bread? Whatever. Fuck you.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh my god. You're fucking Charles Stern.”

“Would you stop. Please.”

“What about the wedding? Your wedding?” Lisa said this in a tone that implied she'd entirely forgotten about the wedding. There were times when Ronnie herself forgot the wedding.

“I'm starting to think I'm not really cut out to be a wife. I'm not the baking pies and knitting sweaters type.”

“No one is. That's why there are bakeries and malls. Get over it.”

“Again, not really the point.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I have no idea. Drink this beer?”

“Hell, drink ten beers. I'm buying. Honey, you're fucking Charles W. Stern.”