The Beach House (4 page)

He can’t say that. Can’t possibly cause this much pain. And a future without his daughters is not something he can contemplate. There are times, particularly in the middle of the night, when Daniel wakes up feeling as if he is suffocating. He knows sleep is not an option on these nights, and he goes upstairs to his office, breathing deeply to try to stay calm, grabbing a newspaper or book to try to take his mind off his fear.

So he sits in Dr. Posner’s office, in a studio over the garage, week after week, too frightened to face a reality that will change his life forever, withdrawing more and more, terrified that if he tells the truth he will never find his way back to the only life he has ever known.

Today Daniel isn’t prepared. He is prepared for the usual attack, but is in no way prepared for Dr. Posner’s question.

“So how are things between you physically?” Dr. Posner crosses his legs and looks from husband to wife nonchalantly, as if he is asking how was their morning, rather than a question about one of the most intimate areas of their lives.

Daniel can’t look at Bee, he colors ever so slightly at the question and hears her snort, looks up to see her shaking her head derisively.

“Bee?” Dr. Posner says questioningly, seeing he has more hope of getting information out of Bee.

“Do you mean sex?” Bee’s voice is small, as Daniel continues to shrink into the other end of the leather sofa, his own legs crossed away from Bee, his arms folded protectively over his chest, his entire body language screaming that he would rather be anywhere other than here. “I don’t remember,” she says at last, looking over at Daniel. “When was the last time, Daniel? Nine months ago? Ten? Longer? I’ve given up counting.”

“Daniel?” Daniel is mortified to be even discussing this, but at least he sees there is no expression in Dr. Posner’s eyes, no hint of judgment.

“It’s true.” He shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter.

“And why is it that you haven’t had physical relations in nine or ten months?” He is asking Daniel, but Daniel can’t find the words so Bee answers for him, and the pain in her voice is palpable.

“He will say he’s too tired.” Her voice is almost a whisper. “He will fall asleep while I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth, and if I try to initiate he will brush me off or say he’s too tired, or he has an important meeting in the morning and has to have an early night.”

“And who does initiate it?”

“Always me,” Bee says. “It always has been, but in the beginning it wasn’t a problem. I mean, I knew he didn’t have a huge libido. It was one of the things I liked, that he wasn’t constantly trying to grab me, that it wasn’t all about sex—but to never want it? To never initiate it? It makes me feel ugly.” Her eyes start to well. “I feel useless, and ugly, and incapable as a woman and as a wife. I feel rejected.”

There is a long silence, punctuated only by the soft sounds of Bee crying. Dr. Posner pushes a box of tissues over to her and looks at Daniel, waiting, while Daniel looks at the floor.

“How do you feel about this?” Dr. Posner asks eventually.

“Horrible,” Daniel says. But he can’t say more. Can’t say that he looks at his wife’s body and feels a shiver of revulsion, that when they do make love he is only able to perform by closing his eyes and losing himself in a fantasy. How could he possibly say these words out loud? How could he possibly say this in front of Bee when he knows it would destroy her?

The door to Jessica’s bedroom, plastered with signs warning anyone over the age of thirteen to keep out, is open just a crack, and Daff fights her irritation as she glances over and sees Jessica’s unmade bed, three cereal bowls on the bedside table, and crumpled clothes all over the floor.

Last week, Daff announced that if Jess refused to pick up her dirty clothes and bring them to the laundry room, Daff would no longer wash them. She didn’t. For five days. And then she couldn’t bear walking past the closed door knowing that more and more clothes were piling up, and eventually she had given in with an exasperated sigh and gathered up the clothes, sorting them out into darks and whites as she fought her anger and frustration, and wondered what had happened to the sweet little girl who adored her mother and listened to everything she was told.

Daff had had a difficult adolescence herself, and had joked that it would be payback with Jessica, but she didn’t actually believe that, didn’t believe that her sweet, adorable little girl, who thought her mother was God, would ever become the truculent teenager that Daff had been.

Nowadays it seems that Daff can do no right, Jessica audibly snorting or grunting at her when Daff asks her how her day was, or pounding up the stairs, her grand finale a door slamming shut followed by muffled screams that can be heard from her pillow.

It wasn’t always like this. When they’d been a family, when Jessica’s father was around, Daff doesn’t remember any conflict with Jessica. Jess would certainly never have dared speak to Daff the way she does now, would have been far too frightened of what her father would say when he walked in the front door and Daff told him what had happened.

It has been just over a year since Jessica’s father left. A couple of months before that, Daff had come to realize that the colleague at work Richard had become such good friends with was more than a friend. But when she’d told him what she knew, Richard had denied that anything physical had happened; he’d admitted to having feelings but said that she—Nancy, the other woman— had a husband, a family, that although he thought she was attractive, that didn’t mean anything, and nothing would ever happen.

Daff had believed for a while because she had wanted to believe. Because the prospect of life on her own had been terrifying; surely the devil she knew was better than venturing out on her own.

She had found out about Richard and his colleague in the worst way possible. She had been running errands near Richard’s office one day at lunchtime and had phoned him, wanting to surprise him. “I can’t leave,” he had said. “We have a huge deal coming up and I’m swamped. I’m sorry, darling, but maybe tonight we can go out for dinner.”

So she hadn’t bothered going to his office, but she had been in the neighborhood and had walked past a restaurant, glancing in the window to check her newly blown-out hair, looking beyond her reflection to see her husband sitting in the corner with a woman, reaching out and stroking the woman’s cheek, with a smile on his face that she had seen before. The smile he used to have when they first met, when he would reach out and stroke her cheek in an identical gesture, one that told her he loved her, would always take care of her.

Daff had frozen. She hadn’t known whether to run in and scream at him, or her, demand to know what was going on, or whether to run away. She had, in the end, walked away. Very quickly. It wasn’t until she reached the corner that she started hyperventilating. Not crying, Daff has never been the type to cry in public, but she was shaking like a leaf, and drove home as if in a coma, unable to believe what she had seen.

During the next few weeks Daff read everything she could about affairs, first about emotional affairs, the reasons why the friendships people form at work can be so dangerous, and then about emotional affairs tipping into real affairs. She knew then that if it hadn’t already happened, it was only a matter of time.

You can heal, her latest book said. With therapy, counseling, honesty, you both can heal and can reach a place where you find happiness again. The trust takes longer, but it is possible to seal the cracks and, on occasion, to build a relationship that is even stronger than prior to the affair.

If that’s the road down which you choose to go.

Richard, it was true, hadn’t planned on having an affair. He had never thought of himself as the type to be unfaithful, he took his wedding vows seriously and, up until he met Nancy, had thought he was entirely happy.

There are those who say that affairs don’t happen without reason, that there is always something wrong in the relationship for either spouse to start looking elsewhere, and there are others who say you are bound to be attracted to other people while you are married, but that you have a choice, and you weigh what you have to lose against what you may gain, and make your choice accordingly.

For Richard it was neither of those things. He married Daff because he loved her, he has never felt there was anything wrong with their relationship, and when it came to Nancy, when the unspoken attraction between them became so strong it was almost overwhelming, he felt there really was no other choice.

Daff has always been his friend, his lover, the first person he calls when anything goes wrong. Or right. Of course the passion had dulled somewhat, but they had been married for sixteen years, so that was almost to be expected, and it certainly didn’t mean he was looking elsewhere.

Nancy was unlike anyone he had ever met. Where Daff was naturally beautiful, at least in his eyes, Nancy was the most glamorous woman he had ever seen. Where Daff loved the simple life—being at home surrounded by friends, gardening, kicking her feet up on the porch with a cold beer at the end of the day, Nancy was sipping cocktails at trendy bars, high heels swinging off her feet, sophisticated, sexy, and seriously out of his league, or so he had thought.

Daff had dark blond hair, streaked now with gray, that curled gently on her shoulders. It had been highlighted when they first met, but after Jess was born she hadn’t bothered, nor did she use makeup much these days, spending most of the time in jeans and sweats, running around town, getting on with the business of life.

Nancy, on the other hand, was immaculate. Not a hair out of place, never seen without perfect lipstick, she was beautiful, intimidating, and admired by everyone at the office from afar. When they were teamed together to work on a design project for a new restaurant in town, Richard was terrified, and immediately taken aback by Nancy’s sweetness.

And more, by her interest in him. It became clear, very early on, that Nancy thought Richard was wonderful, hung on his every word, and Richard, after he got over his disbelief, was so flattered that a friendship became inevitable.

E-mail helped. At first the e-mails to one another were about their mutual project, but they quickly became more and more personal, fostering an intimacy that grew up so fast and so seamlessly that within weeks it felt as if she was his best friend, as if he couldn’t possibly live without her.

And still, he wouldn’t admit to it being anymore than friendship. They would have lunch together every day, in the beginning always inviting colleagues to join, as chaperones, he realized later.

But they were both married, he would tell himself during those moments when he allowed himself to think it might be more. It would be insane to think that it was anything more than friendship. Insane to think that either of them would allow themselves to have an affair.

“I would never have an affair,” he announced one lunchtime after they had eaten and were sitting on a bench in the park, talking for what felt like hours.

“I . . .” Nancy stopped. She looked at him, looked at the ground and took a deep breath. “I think that this could be dangerous, ” she said eventually. Haltingly. She looked back up at him and he wanted to drown in her eyes. “I think that it is very difficult for men and women to just be friends, and I needed to say it out loud so we . . . so we don’t cross the line, so we’re mindful.”

Richard grinned. “I agree,” he said, and he did.

Another week went by. Then a confession. “I’m sorry,” Nancy said, over an after-work drink in a bar, “but I’ve never met anyone like you. I feel like you’re my best friend in the world, which is ridiculous because we’ve only really got to know one another these last few weeks, but I can’t imagine a life that you’re not a part of.”

“I know.” Richard felt sixteen again. Omnipotent, ready to handle anything. “I feel the same way.”

“I’m so confused,” Nancy said.

“I know.” Richard’s voice echoed her sadness as he said again, “I feel the same way.”

They became one another’s obsession. Nancy, unhappy in her marriage, thought about nothing other than Richard, and Richard, happy enough in his, thought about nothing other than Nancy. The affair—truly an emotional affair at first—was really only ever just a matter of time.

And lust is a dangerous thing, particularly when your life is settled, when you have forgotten quite how heady, how all-consuming it can be. For lust is not just thrilling, it is addictive, and once you have a taste for it, it is very difficult to walk away.

The first kiss came in a Starbucks. After a lunch on a cold and rainy day, they had curled up on a sofa in Starbucks, and Nancy had covered their laps with her coat, had reached out underneath the coat and taken his hand, stroking his fingers, amazed at her boldness, amazed she had the nerve to make the first move.

Nancy never dreamed she would have an affair, and although she loves her husband, he is fifteen years older, and she feels increasingly that she has grown old before her time. Her sophisticated clothes, her glamorous makeup, are all part of the uniform that’s required to fit in her husband’s wealthy, older world.

Richard made her feel young again. He made her feel carefree. They were the same age, and she had forgotten what it was like to feel forty. Had forgotten what it was like to laugh.

Richard had leaned his head back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He had forgotten his body could tingle like that, had forgotten what it felt like to have every nerve on fire.

“What are you thinking?” he said eventually, opening his eyes and looking at her.

“I’m thinking that you should kiss me,” she said, fighting the impulse to run her fingers through his thick blond hair, wanting to place her lips softly on his eyelids, trace the muscles in his back with her hands.

“Kiss you?” he said, as if in a daze.