Lisa Unger - Die For You

“Then I’ll see you tonight?” He had a way of making his voice sound halting, nervous, and vulnerable when he was anything but.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

In the East Village studio where he lived, police found evidence of Ben Jameson’s powerful obsession with Linda Book. Stacks of newspaper clippings, photographs from interviews, as well as many taken while she shopped with her kids or dined with her husband or attended her yoga class-he’d been watching her. He’d kept a journal of their imagined affair.

He’d been married, had two small girls. But his wife had left him years ago; he had only limited, supervised time with his children. His wife had cited abuse, mental illness, finally left him after he put her in the hospital with a concussion and a broken nose. She loved him still but was afraid of his terrible rages, the deep well of depression where he often disappeared for weeks, months.

On medication, he was the kindest man, loving and gentle, thoughtful and romantic, she claimed. But without, he could be a monster. She’d been hopeful over the last year. He’d been stable, dutiful about his meds, had seemed almost happy. His visits with the girls were enjoyable, peaceful. But it was his fantasy about Linda Book that had been bolstering him. When he stopped his medication, the downward spiral was quick and final.

“We met at the gallery that was showing my work, at the opening party,” Linda told Erik. “You remember, we had an encounter over a bad review he wrote about one of my shows. But it was fine, even funny. He called a few days later to apologize. We met for coffee. I was networking, you know. But then he kept calling. A week later I bumped into him outside my yoga studio. He said that he’d been in the neighborhood interviewing another artist. But that was the first time I realized there might be something wrong.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want anyone to worry.”

“How long has this been going on, Linda?”

“Six months, on and off.”

“Linda.”

“It’s been so stressful lately. I didn’t want to add anything to our plate. Maybe I thought by ignoring it, it would just go away. He was always polite, never crazy. I don’t know, maybe I liked the attention.”

Erik was silent, his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

She hated herself for her sins of omission, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth, to take another brick out of the foundation of their marriage. Ben was dead. His obsession with her was obvious and documented. No one even seemed to suspect that there was an actual affair. She’d never left him a voice-mail message or sent him an e-mail. She knew his cell phone records, if it came to that, would show a lot of calls to her, but only a couple from her phone. Returning his calls, she’d say. She thought they were friendly, she’d say, if not quite friends. She didn’t want to be rude. He was a reviewer for a major paper, after all. She knew even the text messages she’d sent were purposely vague, innocuous.

“Did you sleep with him, Linda? Were you having an affair?”

She hadn’t expected him to ask the question flat out like that. She tried to muster righteous indignation, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even bring herself to answer.

“Last night on the phone you said, ‘I’ve made mistakes, too.’ Do you remember?”

She nodded. They were alone, for the first time since “the event,” as she’d heard it referred to a number of times. The event of a man blowing his head off in front of their eyes. She found she couldn’t remember anything but the sound of her own screaming. No one should have to see such a thing twice; her psyche seemed to know this and cut her a break. The event, from the moment she heard him call her name on the street, was now a vague black-and-red blur in her memory.

John Brace had left them, finally. Trevor and Emily were still with Erik’s mom and would be for a couple of days until they figured things out. Fred was back at home being tended to by Margie, with staff, of course, to do any of the heavy lifting. And Izzy was out in the fray.

Isabel had left a message saying that she was going to make things right, and not to worry. “Linda, don’t worry. I promise, I’m going to make everything all right for you and Erik again. And I swear I wouldn’t have shot him.” She sounded so young and sweet and silly. Isabel thought that it was about the money . She thought if she could get that money back, she’d fix what was broken in all of their lives, that retrieving it would begin the healing all of them needed so desperately now.

Why didn’t she see that it was about betrayal? Infidelity? That it was about secrets and lies, an erosion of trust? Why didn’t she know that those things cannot be fixed? You can’t restore torn fabric to its original state. You can patch it, you can sew it-but there will always be a seam, a place you can touch with your finger, a place that’s weaker, prone to tearing again.

“I did say that. I remember,” Linda said, looking at her husband.

She was about to deny everything because she could. Because it would be better for her, for him. She could deny any wrongdoing to her grave, and never worry about proof to the contrary, but she realized, in that moment, that more lies would only weaken them further. They needed to accept the truth of each other, to see each other for all their individual flaws and weaknesses and choose to continue on just the same. Or not at all. More lies didn’t mean less pain. Maybe in the moment, but not down the road. She was about to tell him this. She was about to tell him everything. But he spoke first.

“Then let’s move forward from here, Linda. Can we?” He had moved from the couch where he had been sitting beside her, and now kneeled on the floor. He took her hands in both of his, pressed his chest against her knees. “If we’ve both made mistakes and love each other still, can we just move ahead without looking back in regret and recrimination?”

She shook her head. “But Erik, I-”

“I’m begging you,” he interrupted. “Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?”

“Erik, yes,” she said, squeezing his hands, closing her eyes. “But I need forgiveness, too.”

“It’s already done. Don’t say another word. From right here, from this place, let’s move forward and do better for each other. Without looking back even once. Can we? Can we, Linda?”

The look on his face was so wide open, so earnest. He’d known all along she’d been having an affair, hadn’t he? She could see the pain and the understanding and forgiveness in the blue wells of his eyes. She could even see that it was the reason he’d done what he did. He thought that if he could give her the security she craved, she wouldn’t be tempted to seek the cheap and foolish comfort she’d sought elsewhere. She bowed her head in shame.

She’d not been able to keep her father from leaving her. But she could hold her family together now; she could forgive them all, even herself.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. She looked up at him. From this place , he’d said. He hadn’t meant the actual apartment, of course. But it was here that they’d conceived their children. These rooms had been the battleground for every major argument, the place where they’d first made love, where’d they laughed so hard it hurt, where they’d wept and yelled and cooked their meals. Sure, it was hocked up to heaven at the moment, but it didn’t make it any less theirs. She thought of one of Fred’s Zen adages: The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.

“Yes, of course we can.”

She felt grief for Ben. She’d cared for him, made love to him, considered him a friend. She felt some culpability-however irrational-for his death. But she also knew that he was a very sick man. The knowledge of what he would have done to Erik, to her, to both of their children, eclipsed the feelings of affection she’d had for him. She found she couldn’t muster much compassion for him, in spite of her sadness.