“I know. I'm anything but. I get that. I feel like a complete asshole. Look, I fucked up. I slipped. I made a terrible mistake. I cheated on you. It happened. I can't take it back. But I also need to find out if it was a random mistake, or something more than that, that actually makes sense. I spend more time with her than I do with you now, Tan. We have more in common. We do the same things, have the same friends, want the same life. You're out in the stratosphere somewhere, doing something else. You wanted that. Be honest. Maybe all you wanted was the writing, but you got the whole ball of wax. You can't separate the two. The lifestyle comes with the work. You look mighty comfortable to me in that bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I don't see you running out to rent a studio in some cheap neighborhood, or taking the bus instead of the limo they give you. I think you like all that, and why not? You're earning it. But I can't see you giving that up in six months. My guess is you'll want another film, and another one … you'll never want this life or me again.”
“You have no right to make my decisions for me, or to tell me how I feel, or what I want. All I wanted was to come home at the end of it. And now you're telling me I can't, that there may not be a home, and someone else may have taken my place.”
“It happens, Tan,” he said sadly. “I didn't want this to happen either.”
“But you did it anyway. I didn't. I had nothing to do with this, except that I took a job in another city for nine months. I come home every chance I get.” She was begging him to be fair, but the situation wasn't. Just as life wasn't sometimes.
“It's not enough,” Peter said honestly. “I need more than a wife who comes home a couple of weekends a month. I need someone here with me every day. The last three months nearly killed me. I can't take care of the girls, work, cook, take care of the house. I can't do it all,” he said as he looked at her, and she looked angry again.
“Why not? I did. And I didn't cheat on you to relieve the stress, although I could have. I could be doing that in L.A., but I'm not.” She was sure that several people would have been happy to oblige her. She would never have done that to Peter. But he and Alice had done it to her. It was a double loss, her husband and her best friend, which made it doubly depressing.
“Look, let's try to keep a lid on this over the holidays. Let's try to calm down, and figure out what we feel. We're all screwed up and freaked out. I'll try to sort this out by the time you go back to L.A. I'm sorry, Tan, I don't know what else to do or say. I just need some time to think. We all do. Maybe we'll all get sane.”
“I'm sane,” Tanya said, looking him squarely in the eye. She was deathly pale. “It's you two who went nuts. Or maybe I did when I signed on for the movie. But I didn't deserve this,” she said, as tears filled her eyes again.
“No, you didn't. And I don't want to keep hurting you.” Now that it was out in the open, it had to be cleaned up one way or the other. He had both women pulling on him now, in opposite directions, and he was completely confused himself. “I'd rather we not tell the kids until we figure out what we're doing, if that's okay with you.” She thought about it for a minute and then nodded. They were fucked no matter what. There was no way their children weren't going to sense that something bad had happened. There would be inevitable stress between Peter and Tanya, and overnight Alice had become persona non grata in their house. That was going to be hard to explain. Their lies were going to have to be very creative over Christmas vacation. And whatever lies they told, their eyes told their own tale. Peter looked dead, and Tanya looked broken. Alice was hiding, and hysterical herself. She didn't want to be Peter's stand-in piece of ass while Tanya was away. She had told him that either he wanted an honest relationship with her, or it was over. She was relieved although embarrassed that Tanya had found out. But she said she had no remorse over what they'd done. She loved him, and Tanya finding out forced Peter to make up his mind about what he wanted and was doing, and step up to the plate. Alice had also told him that she was more than willing to sacrifice her friendship with Tanya for him. She loved him, and said she had for quite a while. It was yet another lightning bolt for him.
They were still sitting at the kitchen table when Megan and Molly walked in. They saw their parents and knew instantly that something had happened. Their mother looked devastated. They had never seen her look that way before, except when someone died. Their father got up, and took out the garbage. He needed some air.
“What happened?” Molly asked, looking at her mother, as Tanya put on a totally unconvincing happy face.
“Nothing. An old friend of mine from college died. I just heard the news, and I was talking to Dad about it. It made me sad, that's all,” she said, wiping away tears again.
“I'm sorry, Mom. Can I do anything?” Tanya shook her head, unable to speak, as Peter walked back in. As her eyes met his, he looked as distraught as she did, and Megan saw it. A few minutes later the girls went upstairs, and Jason walked in. He saw it, too, and conferred with his sisters an hour later. Their parents' bedroom door was shut, which was unheard of in the afternoon. They knew something was wrong, but they couldn't figure out what. They could sense that it was serious. Megan was afraid her mother wanted a divorce and was moving to L.A.
“I don't think so,” Molly said. “She'd never leave Dad, or us.” She was sure of it.
“There won't be an ‑us’; next year,” Megan reminded her. “And she left us this year. Believe me, she'd move. I think that's it. Poor Dad looked so upset.” She didn't know what had happened, but she already felt sorry for him.
“Mom looked just as upset as he did,” Jason pointed out to both of them. “I hope neither of them is sick.” They had fully understood that it was a life-and-death matter, or close to it, and all three children were deeply disturbed. In their own room, Peter and Tanya were arguing again, as quietly as they could, so the children wouldn't hear them.
By that afternoon, a pall had come over the house. It felt like someone had died there, and the funereal atmosphere hung over them for days. Tanya finally went out and bought a Christmas tree with Jason, to put them in the Christmas spirit. But she ended up crying while she was decorating it, and Molly saw her. She tried to find out what had happened, but Tanya wouldn't say. Everyone walked on eggs for the rest of the holidays, particularly Tanya and Peter, but the children as well. Tanya saw Alice in the driveway once, and Tanya turned and walked away. And when Megan asked her mother why they hadn't invited Alice over for a drink even once since she was home, Tanya gave her vague excuses and said they were all too busy. Megan confronted her on it immediately.
“You're jealous of her, aren't you, Mom? Because we're all comfortable with her and she's like a second mother to us. Well, face it, if you had stuck around for senior year, she wouldn't be doing all this. She's doing it because you bagged on us,” Megan said with the meanness and shortsightedness of youth. Tanya said nothing and hid her tears. But the same applied to Peter, she realized. If she hadn't gone to work in L.A., Alice wouldn't have been taking care of him either, or inviting him and the girls over for dinner several times a week. In other words, according to Megan, she had gotten what she deserved. Tanya wondered if it was true. But she had been in L.A. for four months, and lonely, too, and she hadn't cheated on Peter.
The atmosphere in the house stayed hostile and depressing all the way till Christmas Eve. They went to church together, as they always did. But this year they didn't join forces with Alice and her two children. They went separately. Only Megan complained about their not sitting with Alice, said she felt sorry for her, and she went to sit with her in church. Tanya spent the entire mass on her knees, with her hands covering her face, and tears running down her cheeks. Peter found himself staring at the two women during the service. The one begging him with her eyes to come and start a new life with her, the other mourning the old one. He had told Alice days before that he couldn't talk to her until he resolved this, it was too confusing, and now she looked panicked. The fallout from their brief affair had been like a tidal wave, and only seemed to be getting worse.