Love and Other Natural Disasters (26 page)

“Hello?" I said too loudly,
like a person woken up from a nap.

"Eve! You answered." My
mother sounded pleased. She was used to being screened.

"Hi, Mom."

"How are you?" she asked,
lowering her voice the way you would when asking that question of a cancer
patient.

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound all that
fine."

"Well, it's sort of a generic
answer."

"How are you really?"

"I think Jon and I are over.
For good."

"Oh, Eve!" My mother's
disappointment was palpable. "That's terrible!"

I should have tried it out on
someone else first, someone like Lil or Charlie. Unfortunately, they were both
unavailable at the moment. Otherwise engaged, as the phrase goes. "It
could be worse," I said without conviction.

"Of course," my mother
agreed immediately and unconvincingly. "It could always be worse."

"I could have a disease."

"That's true. You could."

"I don't know if there's too
much to say about it right now. I just have to get used to it."

"Are you sure there's no
chance you two could work it out? He really loves you."

"As it turns out, he really
doesn't. Let's not talk about this."

"I just feel like if there's
even the tiniest chance, it's worth it. For Jacob and Liv—"

I felt something white-hot inside
me. "How can you say that? What about my father? And Charlie's?"

"I would have tried. They
didn't want to."

"You said they're bastards.
Both of them."

"They are."

"But you would have
tried."

"Absolutely."

At that second, I felt sorrier for
her than I did for myself. Which was saying something. My anger evaporated.
"There's no hope here, Mom. Let's talk about something else."

She was quiet; then she said,
"I'm sorry, Eve. I know how you've always felt about Jon."

I nodded, feeling the threat of
tears.

"The reason I'm calling is
because I wanted to come see you. And Charlie. I've missed him. He's a pretty
good roommate, isn't he?"

"He actually is."

"And I'm dying to see Liv for
the first time. Phil and I are doing a road trip up the coast. Can you believe
my entire life I've never been through Big Sur?"

"Oh, right. Phil."

"Charlie told you I was seeing
someone?"

"He mentioned it. He said you
sounded happy."

"I am happy. And I'm finally
going to see Santa Barbara. Remember how we used to watch that soap opera
together when you were little? Remember Cruz and Eden?"

She sighed, I suppose at the memory
of the star-crossed lovers. "No couple should have to overcome so many
obstacles."

"Unless there's a team of
writers, no couple ever does."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

For the first few days, I didn't
tell anyone what had happened with Jon, because it would have meant admitting
I'd spent months reading his e-mails. But the thought
ol
him hating me was so awful that I couldn't bear it alone. I decided to confide
in Dyan. Lil was a close second, but Dyan was actually trained to withhold
judgment.

"What were you expecting?"
she asked, a touch judgmentally, I thought.

"For him to act like
Jon."

"Nobody goes through something
like this and stays the same. He's getting in touch with his anger." She
shifted in my visitor chair. "Damn, can't Chad order you a new chair? I
feel like The Princess and The Pea' over here."

"I don't think it's in the
budget."

She waved a hand dismissively.
"Ill work it out for you."

"So, is that it? Is that all
you've got for me?"

"Now you're even, you and Jon.
He lied to you (or months, you lied to him. You're still not over what hi-did,
but you expect him to be over what you did in three days?"

"I only did it because of what
he did."

"Two wrongs make a right in
your book?"

"Remember how you talked to me
when I first got back from maternity leave? What happened to that?" I
asked.

"I was sitting in my therapist
pose then." She shifted into it, then back again. "See the
difference?"

"Any last advice?"

"Settle in for a long wait.
Work on you."

I didn't have long to wait,
actually. Jon left me a message a few days later. "Hi, Eve. I'm still
pretty angry, but my therapist thinks this is a good time for you to join us
for a session. I'm not sure if it'll do any good, but it's Tuesday at
six-thirty." He gave the address and hung up.

Louise looked like the
quintessential San Francisco therapist (in her early sixties, her long silver
hair pulled back in a low ponytail, wearing a linen tunic and loose-fitting
pants) and her office completed the picture. The walls were soft yellow with
Japanese watercolors on all except the one directly behind her, which displayed
her pedigree (Stanford). Between her upholstered white chair and the couch
where Jon and I sat was a coffee table, which held a clear glass bowl filled
with multicolored rocks, a small bubbling fountain, and a box of tissues.
Thanks to the fountain, I had the continuous sensation of needing to pee. Jon's
body was tense next to mine, and his face gave away nothing.

"I'm so glad you could join us
today, Eve," Louise said. "Jon and I have been talking for a while
about inviting you in." She paused and looked at me expectantly.

Not sure how to respond, I came up
with "It's good lo be here," as if I were a guest on a talk show.

"I know it's not a comfortable
thing, coming into a session when I have a preexisting relationship with Jon.
I'll try to be mindful of that." She was shifting her eyes equally between
Jon and me as she spoke. It had a practiced look that I didn't like. But then,
she was a professional. A professional with my life in her hands. Jon trusted
her, it seemed, and he definitely didn't trust me. No matter what she said, her
allegiance was to him, not to me or to our marriage. Who knew what she was
thinking about me, especially in light of the e-mails? "Let me just start
by asking you, Jon, what you'd like to get out of today's session. I'll ask you
the same question next, Eve."

"I'd like to feel less angry
about her reading my e-mails," he said. "Every time I think about it,
I get furious all over again."

"Good. What about you,
Eve?"

"The reason I went over to
Jon's apartment the other day was to try to get a handle on things. I wanted to
know if we were ever going to try again, or if we just need to move on. I feel
like I have my answer, but I don't want Jon hating me."

"So your goal for this
session... ?" she prodded.

"I guess I have the same goal.
For Jon to stop being angry with me. I don't want him smashing any more
glasses."

Jon snorted. "Right. I'm the
one with the anger problem."

"So we're agreed on our
goal," Louise said quickly.

"Jon, what thoughts and
feelings have you been having since Eve told you about the e-mails?"

"Like I said, anger."

"Drill a little deeper,
Jon." She leaned in almost imperceptibly. "We've talked about how
anger can cloak the more vulnerable emotions underneath. Emotions like sadness,
disappointment, fear. Why don't we look at those? Maybe if Eve can address
those, you'll find it easier to forgive her."

"Maybe I don't want to forgive
her," he said. "Maybe I've been too forgiving for our entire
marriage."

"Go with that," she said.

"She's been making all the
decisions for months— years, really—and she comes to my apartment supposedly to
decide together about our future. But first, she's got a bombshell to
drop."

I wasn't following his logic. I
looked at Louise for guidance, but she was nodding slowly, as if he'd unlocked
some great secret vault.

"So her reading the
e-mails...," Louise began.

"Yes, it was all about
her," Jon said. Oh, good Lord, they were finishing each other's sentences.
Yet another woman Jon was more intimate with than he was with me. "She
wanted to know things, so she was entitled to get the answers by any means
necessary. She's got no respect for me. And when I look back at how I've acted
in this marriage, I've got no respect for me, either. How can you have a marriage
without respect?"

Louise looked at me. "What's
your reaction to what Jon just said?"

"It's hard for me to hear her
right now," he said. "I'm still too mad. She just sat there and made
excuses for reading the e-mail. She made it my fault."

"Jon, focus on the hurt
instead of the anger and speak directly to Eve. What hurt you about Eve reading
the e-mails?"

He turned to me, his face creased
with effort. "What hurts me the most isn't that you read the e-mails, it's
that you just assumed all sorts of things from them and you never even asked me
anything. All that stuff you said, about how she was my perfect girl and you
were just my reality—you just assumed all of that. You don't know how I felt
while I was involved with Laney, or how I've felt since you kicked me out. This
whole time, I've been waiting for you to ask me questions about Laney and the
affair, but you never did. I felt like maybe you didn't even care. And then I
find out that you didn't ask me because you were reading my e-mails. But what I
wrote to Laney wasn't the whole story." He swallowed back emotion.
"Fuck, I would have read the e-mails with you if you'd asked. But you
never did."

"How could I have known
that?" I said. "I always thought you were the most honest, decent
person I'd ever met, and suddenly I find out you had another woman. I mean, the
first time I read your e-mail, I wasn't doing it to catch you; I was doing it
to prove that Laney was nothing to you. And in those first conversations we
had, you kept pretending she was nothing, but I knew you were lying."

"I was scared. I didn't want
to lose my family."

"I was scared, too. It doesn't make your
lying okay."

"It doesn't make yours okay,
either."

We turned to Louise helplessly.

"This is good," she said.
"You're both being honest. That's the first step toward forgiveness."
She seemed to expect us to ask what the next step was, but we didn't. "You
really love each other, or you wouldn't both be this hurt. But you need to
decide if you want to move beyond that. You created this relationship together,
and you can re-create it. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be pretty, but
you could, if you both wanted to." Jon and I looked at each other. Neither
of us spoke.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

I figured out which Saturday Jon
had spent with Laney. He'd laid the groundwork all week. The Monday before, he
told me he'd just been assigned a bear of a project and that it had to be done
by 9 am the following Monday, no excuses allowed. He donned a worried
expression, made it sound like his job was on the line. He said he didn't know
how much of the weekend he'd have to work, but it would be at least Saturday.
Obviously, he'd been leaving his options open. If Saturday had gone differently
with Laney, I imagine he would have told me he was working Sunday, too. Maybe they
would have spent the weekend in her hotel room. Who knows?

Having no reason to doubt him at
the time, I told him he should do whatever he needed, pull an all-nighter it he
had to. Seeing how nervous he was, I reassured him that he was good at his job and
that everyone there loved him. I asked him what I could do to support him
through the weekend; whatever it was, I'd do it.

If I'd had a different reaction, if
I'd acted, say, annoyed at the disruption, maybe he would have gone through
with it. Maybe he would have thought he was entitled to sleep with Laney, that
he deserved it for putting up I with someone like me. That was all it might
have taken to send us over the edge, the wrong word at the wrong time. There
was no sanctity in that.

After the therapy session, I
thought about creating a new relationship, but that memory just kept tripping
me up. I pictured Jon feigning job insecurity, and I saw myself going along
with him, taking for granted that what he'd said was the truth. I couldn't
imagine ever feeling that type of innocence again. I'd always know that Jon was
a person who could concoct a scheme to see his mistress, who could come home and put on a
performance, and all the while, perhaps even in his own mind, deny that she was
anything more than a friend.

It seemed I wasn't ready to forgive
just yet. But I'd try to move on.

Lil assured me that the best thing
would be to keep seeing Ray. Since he was still calling, it seemed like the
path of least resistance. We had a few chaste dates. He was in no rush to get
physical, which wasn't doing much for my confidence, but at least it was giving
me time to clear my head.