Alicia sat on the leather sofa and smoked a cigarette while her husband typed at the desk. When he finished, he folded the letter and put it into an envelope, addressed and stamped the envelope, and swiveled around in his chair to face her.
“I’ve just told Dos to forget about the Spanish thing,” he said and smiled. “I’m not going over.”
Alicia nodded somberly. “That’s good, if it’s what you want. To stay here instead, I mean.”
“It’s exactly what I want. From here on out, I’m a homebody,” he said and paused. “And I’m not going to Greenland, either.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s good, too. If it’s what you want.”
“Alicia, listen. There’s something I need to talk about with you. Something serious. About us.”
“Yes. I know.”
“You know?”
“Before you say anything more, Jordan, I have to tell you that it’s over.”
“What is?”
“I ended it,” she blurted.
“Ended what?” He leaned forward in his chair, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.
“What happened…between Hubert and me.”
“Between you and Hubert? Hubert St. Germain?”
“It’s in the past now. I wrote him today and told him that it’s over. When you saw me out there this afternoon I was putting the letter in his mailbox. By now he’s read it, so he, too, knows that it’s finished.”
“Hubert? Hubert St. Germain? What the Christ are you talking about, Alicia?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t make me say it. Please, Jordan. I’m so sorry it happened, and so ashamed. I don’t know what I was thinking, I must have been crazy. But I promise you, it’s in the past now. And I swear, I’m profoundly sorry.”
“You’re sorry.”
“Yes. Please, forgive me, Jordan.”
They remained silent for a moment, Jordan staring at his wife, who looked down and away, shamefaced. He took out his tobacco and papers and slowly rolled a cigarette and lighted it. Finally, he said, “Are you telling me that you’re having an affair with Hubert St. Germain?”
“Yes. No! I’m telling you that it’s over. I’ve ended the affair. I won’t see him again, ever. And I’m asking you to forgive me. I know it won’t be easy, and I don’t deserve it. Please, Jordan.”
Jordan’s face had clouded over and darkened. This had never happened to him before. In every married couple, he believed, one was a liar and the other a truth teller. Alicia had always been the truth teller. Now, suddenly, the poles were reversed, a circumstance that shocked and confused him even more than what Alicia was actually confessing. As long as he knew that he was the one who lied, the one who kept secrets and generated elaborate deceptions, then he knew who he was and how that man behaved. And as long as he believed that Alicia never lied or kept secrets or deceived him, he knew who she was and how she behaved.
But forgive her? He was the one who had always needed forgiveness. He had never been asked to forgive her for anything before. He wasn’t sure he knew how. What did it feel like, anyhow, to forgive someone? Jordan Groves bore grudges; he had enemies and knew who they were and enjoyed keeping them identified as such: Jordan Groves was a son of a bitch who didn’t mind the reputation, because it kept at bay people who were capable of hurting him. But he had never found it necessary to forgive anyone. Not even his parents. Forgive and forget might be how it went for most people, but not for Jordan Groves. Thanks to his optimistic egoism and self-confidence, Jordan had little trouble forgetting; it was easy for him; but once a lie or a deception was forgotten, what was the need for forgiveness? If you truly forgot the offense, how was forgiveness even possible? Had he been raised Catholic like Alicia, he might have been able to conflate the two, but his parents had been strict Presbyterians, and Jordan Groves’s atheism was founded on that immovable Protestant rock. Thus, while he knew that deep down, like all human beings, he was an irredeemable sinner, he was hard-hearted.
“Well now. So you’ve been fucking my friend Hubert St. Germain.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since mid-March. But not—”
“No ‘buts,’” he said, cutting her off. “And no greasy details. Right now all I want is to know the facts.”
“All right.”
“Where?”
“At…at his cabin. Nowhere else.”
“How often?”
“Only sometimes. Not often. Oh, Jordan, don’t do this, please!”
“How often? Twice? Twenty times? Since mid-March, it must be hundreds of times.”
“We met a few times a week, sometimes once. Sometimes not at all.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“No one, Jordan. I swear it. Except for that woman…Vanessa Von…whatever. Vanessa Cole.”
“Vanessa? How the hell does she know?”
Suddenly Alicia understood her mistake. She felt herself blush with shame. She realized that she could have lied. She should have lied. But it was too late now. She had no choice but to go on telling the truth. “Oh, God. I…I’m so stupid. She came to Hubert’s cabin today, and she saw me there. I thought…I assumed that she knew, and that she told you. And when you flew over the cabin and saw me stopped at Hubert’s mailbox, I guess I assumed that you had seen her. Or she had telephoned you. Or something. Oh, God!” she cried.
Jordan shook his head sadly. “You certainly have been a fool. But not as much a fool as I’ve been. Are you in love with him?”
She hesitated before answering. “I…I thought I was. I was unhappy, Jordan. For a long time I was very unhappy.”
“I don’t care about causes! There are a thousand reasons why a woman commits adultery. And a thousand and one why a man does it. Right now all I care about is getting the material facts. I don’t even care if it was good sex or bad sex or anything in between. That’s your private business and will only disgust me anyway. I want the facts. So I can…so I can know what to do next.” He studied his hands and saw they were shaking, and he was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Are you in love with Hubert St. Germain? Are you still in love with the son of a bitch?”
She hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “But I have closed my heart to him.”
“Oh. You’re in love with him, but you’ve closed your heart to him. Whatever that means. Does it mean you’re no longer in love with me?”
“No, it does not, Jordan. I will always be in love with you.”
“You will, eh? Well, that’s a little hard for me to grasp. Here’s a fact. Except for you, I have never been in love with anyone. Only you. Period. So I don’t know what the hell you mean when you say you’re in love with Hubert, despite having ‘closed your heart to him,’ and that you will also always be in love with me.” He rubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I don’t know how you can be in love with both of us.”