The First Affair (19 page)

Trying to imagine what it was going to be like to see Mike after so many years—he moved away when I was fourteen—I gave the diplomat the slip of paper serving as my business card (courtesy of the DOHS copy machine) that I’d been pushing on anyone with a stroller or leash.

Seeing a cab pull into Gail’s circular drive, I quickly corralled the dogs, their noses magnetically pulled to every cryogenic yellow mark. What was I going to say? They tugged me into a gallop across the street. The cab pulled out and I saw a woman turn from the doorman.

“Jamie,” Patty Harnet breathed, her voice thick with surprise.

I was so thrown by the sight of her, standing there on her own, that I irrationally thought he’d brought her with him. I knew Mike’s wife from fundraisers at the library—car washes she helped organize, bake sales she’d helped man.

“Hi!” I became warm enough for palm trees to have cartoonishly sprouted between us. “Hi!”

“Is this who you were looking for?” the doorman asked her, pointing at me.

“Yes,” I jumped in. “This is—we’re great. Thank you.” I nodded that he could return inside. “I didn’t know you were in D.C.!” My pitch flew to a retrograde octave.

“For a conference,” she managed. “For my job. So, yes.”

“Oh, well, hi!” What was going on? How had this happened? Did
she see my text? Did Mike tell her? “Are the kids here?” She’d been pregnant with their second when they left.

“No, four is a lot to transport—”

“Four. Wow.”

“Well, I wanted three and then—twins—and, so, no, we didn’t bring them—they’re—no.”

She shook her head, the flakes turning translucent as they melted on her short hair. When I knew them, it was long—almost waist-length. But she was still as pretty as she always was, as serious as she always was. “I want to take you for breakfast.”

“Oh! That’s so nice.” I was frightened. “Sorry, these dogs are—ugh.” Their leashes wrapped around us.

“Can I take you for a quick coffee?” she repeated, gripping the shoulder strap of her purse, her slim leather boots soaking in salt as I untangled us.

“Of course! I just have to drop them off. Come on in, and—”

Her face tightened. “Can’t you just tie them up here? The heat lamps are on.” She pointed to the awning.

“I guess if we’re fast. There’s a Starbucks around the corner.”

“Fine.”

We walked briskly, the blue crystals crunching beneath our feet. I held the door open. “I’ll order for you,” she said like a mother would.

“Um, just a coffee is great. Tall or whatever. Thank you.”

She got on line. I found a table in the dark purple nook near the bathroom. With my hands clenched in my lap, it occurred to me that I was moments away from this finally being over—detonated—a white flash—everyone radiated into a cloud. I was stunned to realize I welcomed it.

She made her way back and set down a cup, taking the seat across from me, her coat left buttoned. “I’m glad we got a table—this place is always so packed,” I prattled as I took off my parka, because that’s what you do when someone is taking you to breakfast. She slid my coffee over. “Didn’t you want anything?”

The corners of her eyes watered for a second at my question. Then her thoughts seemed to speed. “No, they have food at the conference. Tons, practically a cruise ship.” She undid one button, a
necklace with four initial charms there just below her pale clavicle. “All tastes the same. No small feat getting a roast salmon to taste like a fruit cup.”

“That’s too bad.” I gripped the hot mug.

“No, I’ll take anybody else doing the cooking. People always say I’m so lucky Mike works those library hours—must be such a help. But—” She caught herself, then squeaked out the rest of the sentence anyway. “He can’t
do
anything.” Her purse was still in her lap.

“So how are the kids?” I shifted to something she might want to talk about. “Do you have pictures?”

She rummaged for them and I took a sip of my coffee, sloshing it down in a scalding wave. “We just moved again this summer, which you probably know—”

“I didn’t.” I did. But I was reluctant to further cement the wrong impression. Because of my text she was assuming Mike and I were still in touch, assuming an intimacy that no longer existed. It was the opposite of how it had been years before, when she would make passing comments about him that seemed like she never got it—Mike—right. I knew that he hated pumpkin-flavored anything. That he didn’t want to sell his guitar collection. That the smell of lavender made him sad. “From Missoula?”

“No,” she said, nostrils flaring. “We went on to Akron from there. Anyway, Girl Scouts is the big thing at Julia’s new school. There’s no talking her out of it.” She tapped her phone. “I don’t know where we’ll find the bandwidth. I keep trying to sell her on just getting a cool green dress. I told her she can pick out any one she wants and we can come up with badges for tasks that don’t require driving for a half hour for a half-hour meeting.” She handed it to me, and I saw that her hands were shaking.

“Maybe she can carpool with a friend?” I numbly swiped through shots of kids I had never met.
Just do it
, I willed her.
Just say it.

“We may be moving again.” She took her phone back. “Things at this library aren’t really jelling.”

“Patty, I’m—I want to tell you that—”

“One of the student aides—her parents have been making a stink.” She talked over me, her gaze set on the center of the table.
“The mother doesn’t work. She has
waaay
too much time on her hands and she’s claiming—well. It’s puppy love, right?—at that age. When I heard Mike get a text in the middle of the night, I thought she’d somehow followed us to D.C. Of course I erased it. I came here this morning to tell her to
get a grip
,” she said severely. “But it was you.”

I nodded, breath suspended.

“I can’t ask to be relocated again.” She raised her eyes to me. “But you could tell them.”

“Them?” I asked.

“Her parents. The library. Girls fall in love with him all the time,” she said, trying to laugh. “But obviously it’s a one-way thing.”

I stared at the top of her head, feeling as if I were watching this through a paper-towel tube. “I haven’t seen Mike in seven years.”

“You texted him at three in the morning.”

It hung there between us.

“So you could still speak to it,” she said evenly. “We can’t move again. It’s too hard on the family, on us.”

It was a phrase Mike had invoked frequently for himself—how hard being married was on him, how trapped he felt. By being sympathetic to this burden he had to survive, I maintained his attention, which felt so deliriously fulfilling, given that my parents had none to spare. After years of being outside the whispered exchanges between Mom and Dad, between Mom and Erica, I was finally inside something. I had a secret of my own. But as I looked at Patty and absorbed her request, something came clear for the first time: by keeping me focused on being the other woman, he prevented me from thinking too hard about the fact that I wasn’t a woman at all.

And some part of me, I realized, was stuck there.

“I should get the dogs inside.”

In response to my unspoken refusal, she pushed her chair back angrily. “And I should get back to the hotel. I’m already missing the first session.” We stared at each other. Years ago, Mike told me he was leaving for Missoula on a Tuesday afternoon. In the back of the science stacks, by the drinking fountain that never stopped running. There was no rebuttal; I did have my whole life ahead of me. And I
had to agree that if I loved him, I’d want him to be happy and work where he was respected.

“You look different,” she said, staring down at me.

“Older,” I smiled faintly.

“No, just different,” Patty said, and I realized it was meant to hurt. She turned, and quickly the clamor of those waiting to order obscured my view.

• • •

Minutes later, I was fumbling for my phone as I untied the leashes. “Jean?”

“Jamie?”

“I need to talk to the President.” I wiped my nose with my sleeve. Patty had stripped me of something—the delusion of being special. Without it my mind suddenly seized on Brianne Rice. The fact of her and all that it implied. I had to hear it from him.

“I was going to call you, actually.”

“Good. I can come in—” I tugged the dogs back from an abandoned bagel. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“I don’t think that will be possible. The President asked that I let you know—”

“Sorry?” I switched the phone to my other ear.

“—that he doesn’t think it prudent to proceed with the study at this time.”

“The study?” I gripped the phone, as the wind whipped so aggressively it sounded like a jet engine between us.

“The President will not be proceeding,” she spoke very carefully. “And thinks it best that you put your attention elsewhere moving forward. There isn’t a place for your study currently—or in the future.” A woman tried to pass with two Boston terriers. The dogs yanked me. We were knotted, twisting around each other. I wanted to clamp my hands over Jean’s lips. “Unfortunately,” she added gently and with finality. Was he standing there? Was he on the line?

A snowblower barreled by, its metal blade scraping the pavement.
I can’t—this can’t be
 . . . “Is he breaking—”

“I’m going to have to go now.”

Half my brain was racing to say the perfect final thing and the other half just wanted to fight for this. “But—”

“Take care.”

I saw the look on Greg’s face as he said he was sorry. Sorry for me.

Freshman year, our dorm screened an animal rights documentary about puppy mills. There was this scene in the snow where a worker tossed a cowering cocker spaniel into a vat of flea dip that’s supposed to be administered by the drop. When he hoisted it out by its scruff, the creature had gone rigid from the shock.

I was back by the library water fountain.

Rigid from the shock.

• • •

I don’t know how long I sat on Gail’s balcony, staring at my reflection in the glass doors. The late-morning sun was bouncing blindingly off the snow, making the living room inside appear black. The wind whipped my hair. The drift on the table peaked at the end, sparkling. My eyes stung, my skin tightened, everything constricted and shrank, deeper and closer, until all at once I was pierced. I pulled the door open and stood inside, the heat hurting just as much. There was nowhere to be. I became aware that the doorman was buzzing up, maybe had been for a while. I pressed the button with my knuckle.

“Ms. McAlister?”

“Yes?” But nothing came out. I cleared my throat, wet my mouth. “Yes?”

“There’s a Paul Hoff here to see you.”

“Paul?”

“Just a moment, Miss.”

“Jamie? Are you okay? I’ve been calling—”

“He . . . dumped me.” I would have said it to the doorman. I leaned against the wall, the flocked paper pushing into my cheek.

“Jesus.”

I nodded.

“I’m coming up. Tell them to let me up.”

“Miss McAlister?”

“Yes, please let him up.” I unlocked the door.

A few moments later the elevator opened and I stepped into his arms, falling against his chest. “All right,” I heard him murmur. “You’ll be okay.” He gripped my shoulders and bent to peer at me. “When did this happen?”

“This morning. I didn’t want to—” The thought plunged my face downward with tears.

“What?”

“Start this part.” I inhaled raggedly. “The after part.”

• • •

Paul got me out of my wet clothes, drew a bath, and sat outside the door as I curled up in the steaming water, in no state to question his care. He talked to fill the agonized quiet, sharing a story about a high school summer working the straightest job he could think of—dairy hand. The milk-sodden, muck-covered disaster that ensued. No one had ever done this kindness for me: when Mike left the U-Haul pulled out of their driveway, and I just folded the feeling down like a used napkin until it was small enough to carry.

When I finally cracked the door wearing Gail’s zip-up robe, I found Paul sitting on the floor in the hall, nursing one of her crystal highball glasses, the Hermès box I’d needed to show him still in his hand. “Had to break into the Glenlivet, forgive me.” He clinked the remaining cubes. “You need a silk turban for that outfit, Zsa Zsa.”

I smiled, lifting the heavy hem to join him.

He paused me. “I know you’re on death’s door, but let’s do this on a couch. My ass isn’t as young as yours.”

“Sorry, yes. Of course.” I reached down and tugged him up as the doorbell rung.

“I called Ronald.” Handing me the box, he walked to the entryway. “I thought maybe that would help.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, making myself put it down.

“Oh my God.” Rachelle marched in, unlooping her long scarf. “Jamie.” Seating me on the couch, she took my hands in hers. “What happened?”

“Jean did it for him.”

“He had his
sixty-five-year-old secretary
do it for him?!” Her outrage
was so gratifying. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. What did you say?”

“Nothing. I mean, what
could
I say?”

Paul spoke softly to the carpet. “You have a small penis, I never really loved you, you’re doing me a favor, you fart in your sleep . . .” He helped himself to a refill. “To your dignity.” He lifted his glass for a toast before taking a swig.

“He’s forcing himself to do this, you know that,” she said. I did, but not for the reasons Rachelle assumed. “He’s totally going to regret it,” she declared with absolute certainty, unpeeling her coat.

“Really?”

“Yes! You handled it perfectly. Perfectly.”

“You left him something to miss.” Paul sat heavily in the club chair opposite us.

“It just pisses me off so much!” Rachelle fumed, pounding her fist into the cushion. “Rutland got what he wanted and here you are, gut-wrenched. It makes me literally ill.”

“Men suck.” Extending his legs, Paul rested the glass on his chest.

“But why now? Why all of a sudden?” She turned to me.

I couldn’t tell them what I feared, that finding out about Mike had revealed me to be too broken to be loveable, which was the first time I ever admitted to myself that might be what Mike had done—broken me. My brain slammed shut against the revelation like a cellar door facing a cyclone. I took a girding breath. “Paul, what did happen with Brianne?”