Nancy Thompson - What Happens in Paris

My husband had been arrested for lewd and lascivious behavior after being caught in a sex act with—another man?

The high-school basketball coach.

Thursday, they were caught in a secluded park in Seminole County. According to the paper, it’s a place frequented by people—especially men—who are looking to exchange sexual favors. The coach had been arrested there before, but the school had no knowledge of his run-in with the law.

That’s why the story was in the newspaper.

For everyone to read—

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” I was shrieking. I couldn’t stop myself. “Rita, pull over. I’m going to be sick.”

She swerved a little bit. “What’s the matter?” She glanced at me, then back at the road as if she didn’t know what to do.

“Just pull over. Hurry!”

She veered off onto the interstate’s shoulder, and I tossed the paper in her lap as I stumbled from the car in the nick of time before upchucking my bagel.

The next thing I knew, Rita’s hand was on my back and she was handing me a bottle of water.

“Here, rinse your mouth.”

I took it without looking at her and did just that.

“Did you read it?” I asked.

“Enough to get the gist.”

I turned to face her. Hot tears of anger and humiliation and disbelief brimmed and spilled. “Oh my God! What am I going to do? What am I going to say to him? To everyone who knows us? How could he let me find out like this?” I realized I was screaming because the words scalded my throat and I started choking.

Rita took my quaking arm and led me in the direction of the car. But I shook out of her grasp and stumbled back a few steps.

“How could he do this? I hate him! How could he do this?”

I landed hard on my rump in the sparse grass, in the midst of the sharp-edged rocks and sand, sobbing with my head in my hands. In the periphery of my mind I heard my sister urging me to get in the car, then I heard the crunch of tires pulling off the side of the road.

I looked up and saw a cop. Rita confirmed that, yes, I was okay. I’d just suffered a shock after receiving some bad news and needed some fresh air.

All I could think was, Oh God, if the cop runs my name, he’ll know I’m married to Blake. Then it dawned on me that this was how it would be for the rest of my life. Look, there’s Annabelle Essex. She was married to Blake Essex, that guy caught having sex with another man.

I put my head on my knees until I felt a shadow block out the sun. I looked up and the cop loomed over me.

“You okay, lady? You need me to call an ambulance or something?”

I wiped a sand-gritty hand over my face and shook my head. “I—I’m fine.”

“Then get back in your car and move on. It’s not safe to loiter on the side of the highway like this.”

For a split second I contemplated that perhaps getting flattened by a large truck was preferable to getting in Rita’s car and driving back to my ruined life. But then good sense rallied and I realized I’d rather be alive to torture Blake.

He’d have hell to pay for this.

I intended to collect in full.

Having your dirty laundry aired in the newspaper feels like standing in the middle of a busy street stark naked. No, it’s more like standing in the middle of a busy intersection and not realizing the world is looking at you standing there stark naked until it’s too late and—oops, the joke’s on you.

Oh, look—I’m naked.

I’m standing here like a fool.

With that newspaper article, the whole of me was reduced to what was printed on page B–1 of the Sentinel’s Local and State section. Gee, all that and my name wasn’t even mentioned.

It didn’t have to be. Blake’s mug shot and name spoke for both of us.

I’d been oblivious to the gawks Saturday morning as I walked down the driveway to my sister’s car to begin our drive to Saint Pete; blissfully unaware that the reason Joe Phillips next door stopped mowing his lawn and stared at me wasn’t because he thought I looked hot in my new pink sweater that showed just a hint of décolletage. He didn’t speak; didn’t wave. He just stood and gaped at me across the stretch of Saint Augustine grass with a bewildered look on his face.

Ha! And I thought he was ogling my cleavage.

Later, when I realized the truth— Well, you can understand why coming to terms with Blake’s betrayal would be even harder knowing I had to face people who’d read all about it in the newspaper.

Even before I knew, others were devouring the juicy details with perverse excitement because they actually knew the guy who got caught with his pants down in the park.

Oh, and his poor wife. Didn’t she know her husband was gay? But they have a kid. Maybe it was one of “those kinds” of marriages…? What do they call it? A marriage of convenience?

How was I going to explain this to our son, Ben? He’d be wrecked.

Wait a minute. I didn’t have to explain anything. I was not the guilty party, despite the guilt-by-association factor.

Or stupidity by association.

I had to stop blaming myself, thinking this wouldn’t have happened if I’d been a better wife; a little thinner; more in touch with his needs….

More of a woman.

Or at least enough of a woman to keep my man from turning gay.

Rita and I drove to Saint Pete, but we never made it to the Monet exhibit. Good thing because I didn’t want to forever associate Monet’s water-lily paintings with Blake’s coming out of the closet.

Instead of going to the museum, we walked on the beach. We must have walked for miles, me in my low-cut pink sweater that didn’t seem so sexy anymore, and my sister with her sandals in her hand and her white pants rolled to the knee.

She let me talk.

“Ri, you weren’t surprised when you heard about Blake, were you?”

She shrugged, pushed a wisp of short blond hair out of her eyes.

“Rita? Are you saying you knew all along?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it on a sigh, and shrugged again. “Come on, Anna. He was just a little too…” She dragged out the word as if stalling for time.

Finally with a look of resignation she said, “He was a little too in touch with his feminine side. I mean, either that or you’d snagged every woman’s dream man.”

Snagged him? Was that what I did?

Blake and I never had a sweep-you-off-your-feet courtship. We met our senior year of college and dated for about two months before I got pregnant.

No snagging intended. I was as surprised as he was. I was prepared to raise the child on my own. He was the one who insisted he wanted to be a family.

Rita snapped her fingers. “Oh, I read something the other day where someone said something about a man who was ‘just gay enough.’” Rita made air quotes with her fingers. “That’s how I always thought of Blake.”

I must have made a face because she grimaced. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

Afterward, we mostly walked in silence.

Blake wasn’t home when I walked into the dark house Saturday night. He slinked in rather sheepishly Sunday, late morning.

I sat in the living room trying—unsuccessfully—to distract myself with a biography on the artist Georgia O’Keeffe when he walked in.

He flinched when he saw me and shoved his hands in his pockets. Dark circles under his eyes hinted he hadn’t slept well.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking stiff and pale and a little bewildered standing there in his pressed khakis, crisp kelly green polo and navy blue espadrilles that once seemed so Palm Beach, but now just looked…

I wondered where he stayed last night and how his clothing could look so fresh given the circumstances, but I refused to ask.

His gaze darted around the living room, looking everywhere but at me. He seemed so frazzled, like if I made a loud noise or erratic gesture he’d jump out of his skin.