Time slows down. Without realizing it, I’ve stopped breathing. This cannot be Gwen. I must be looking at someone else—an impostor— someone who only resembles my wife. Please, let it be someone else. Let this be an awful dream.
I am standing in full view now, walking in a daze up the deck stairs, not bothering to hide myself. Images flood my eyes faster than my brain can process them.
“Holy shit!” Patrick shouts. He is looking right at me as I stand outside the living room. Gwen turns around and the disbelief on her face strikes me like a punch. As though by their own volition, my legs begin walking backwards, carrying me from this awful scene. Even as every muscle in my body seeks to propel me away, I cannot take my eyes from Gwen. She leaps off Patrick and runs to the back door. I stumble down the steps.
“Please, Phillip, wait,” she grabs my arm. I shirk her off as I head back to the fence.
“I can’t. I can’t,” I gasp as I struggle to climb the fence. It was not supposed to go down like this. I was supposed to be calm, in control. Now all I want to do is get away and this fucking wobbly fence will not let me.
Gwen is pulling on my arm, sobbing. “My God, I am so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. Please believe me.”
I face Gwen, my expression twisted into a mask of grief and fury. “Hurt me! You never wanted to hurt me! How did you expect me to feel when I see my wife screwing somebody else? Happy?”
She tries to put her arms around me, my beautiful Gwen, tears running down her cheeks; I push her back. Patrick stands behind her in his underwear, embarrassed and unsure what to do. The woman next door is at her kitchen window enjoying a front row seat to the spectacle. One thing about Patrick is certain: He is not ashamed. Someone like him never is. I bet he bragged about it to his buddies, describing in vivid detail every filthy act Gwen performed with him.
He steps in front of my wife as though to shield her. My God, this idiot thinks I am actually going to harm my wife and now he gets to play her knight and protector.
“Fuck you,” I rasp. I want to smash his jaw, feel his nose splinter and break beneath my fist. A fury unlike anything I have known erupts within me.
I leap at him. He must outweigh me by sixty pounds. With ease, he grabs me and hoists me off my feet.
“Calm down.” His voice is stern and authoritative. In comparison, I sound hysterical. What am I doing? The sudden rage that flared within me is gone, the inferno snuffed out as easily as a candle. I am no fighter. Life taught me early on—in the bluntly effective way that children size each other up and dominate the weakest—that I am not equipped for physical confrontations. All my adulthood I avoided conflict. Now a sickening fear swells in my gut—a feeling I hoped I would never feel again—the dread of a child picked on by a schoolyard bully.
Patrick releases me and I do not know whom I hate more—Patrick for having an affair with my wife or myself for being too weak to do anything about it. To complete my humiliation I begin to cry. Trying to stifle my tears only opens the floodgates wider. Patrick regards me with a mixture of pity and scorn. I cannot bear for anyone to see me. I want to burrow into the ground like a mole, safe and unseen in the dark earth.
“Let’s talk about this inside,” Patrick says, nodding mindfully to his neighbor.
I sniffle and wipe the tears from my face, trying to salvage what little dignity remains to me. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“If you’ll just let me explain,” Gwen pleads. “Please, just hear me out.”
I cannot listen to her. I try once again to scale the fence but my arms feel like rubber bands.
Patrick scratches his head. “Come to the other side of the house,” he says, almost sympathetic now. “I’ll unlock the gate so you can leave.”
How thoughtful of him. I follow him around the back of his house, shuffling the way I imagine a zombie would, blank-eyed, staring at my feet. My brain is shutting down. A thick, protective fog fills my skull. As I shamble along Gwen weeps behind me, begging me to realize she did not intend to hurt me. Her voice sounds impossibly far, like the cries of onlookers on a beach to a man drowning under the waves. Patrick unlocks the gate and courteously holds it open for me.
I walk past him and dazedly mumble thanks for unlocking the gate, then immediately want to stab myself in the gut. I cannot believe I just thanked the asshole who screwed my wife. Gwen no longer follows me. I hear Patrick speaking to her, leading her back inside, probably to finish what I interrupted. With tunnel vision, I get behind the wheel of my car, gun the engine, and speed away.
Chapter Two
It is dawn—mid-September—and the airport terminal is crowded with bored, sleepy eyed travelers.
“I think our flight is ready to board,” Gwen says. We sit together near the window that allows us to see the planes landing and taking off. Over the intercom, the flight crew begins to call passengers. People rise to their feet, drag their on-flight luggage, and jostle to be the first to wait in a long line. I prefer to remain slouched in my seat, but Gwen is as eager as a puppy pulling at the leash. She folds my jacket and gives me a sweet, hopeful smile that would tug at the coldest heart. When a woman as stunning as Gwen smiles you cannot help but smile back. Ah, Gwen. My beautiful Gwen. You are really trying. I know you are.
My cell phone rings.
“It’s my mother.”
Gwen’s smile slips away, replaced by a small wrinkle of worry around her brows.
“But we’re just about to board our plane,” she says.
I gesture to the non-moving line of passengers. “This won’t take long.”
I walk away from my wife for some privacy—something I would not have done months ago—but a lot has changed since then.
“Hey, Mom. What’s up?”
“Oh, Phillip, I’m glad I caught you before your flight left. Last night I slept so poorly. I can’t stop thinking that you are making a big mistake.”
Here it comes. The Speech. I am only surprised it has not come sooner.
“Phillip, listen to me. I know you are a grown man—and I know you are capable of making your own decisions, but you are the only child I have. Don’t you know that wherever you go you’ll always be my baby boy? You don’t have to go away with her,” she refers to my wife like spitting out rotten fruit. “It is not too late to change your mind. Forget the plane tickets, the hotel reservations. You are not alone in this. Come home.”
“Mom, I have to give this a chance—give my marriage a chance.”
“Or you could give the separation more of a chance. It’s no secret you suffered all summer. Believe me, Phillip, I was crying right there with you, but it will get better. Eventually it won’t hurt anymore. Someone new will come along—someone better—someone you can trust, who won’t take your love and throw it in the gutter. Taking the woman back who did this to you is not the answer.”
My mother cannot hide her exasperation. She is disappointed in me, but her motherly devotion trumps all else. I glance at Gwen, her worry line growing deeper. She does not need superhuman hearing to know what my mother is saying.
My mother sighs. “Well, one thing is certain—regardless of whether you stay with her or not it will be a long, long time before that woman is welcome in my house again.”
I have to chuckle, probably the first real humor I have felt in ages. My mother may be pint sized but within her beats the heart of a roaring grizzly protecting her cub.