Robyn Carr - Four Friends

“You enjoy him. He can be a real good friend.”

“You can come and find him when you’re done. I’m not going to bed or anything. I’m only in the bedroom because it’s quiet...and there’s no TV in the family room.”

Three hours later Bob knocked softly on the bedroom door, which stood ajar about an inch, and Andy sat up with a start. Beau was sitting upright on the bed, wagging and making a noise that was a combination whine and moan. “Come in,” she called.

Bob gingerly pushed the door open and Beau bolted off the bed to go to him. “He make a good TV buddy?”

“He put me to sleep,” she said. She stretched. “That was great.”

“It’s his best trick. See you tomorrow night.”

“Thanks,” she said. That might be one of the kindest men I’ve ever known, she thought. Too bad he’s...Bob.

three

GERRI BOOKED HERSELF and Phil for three emergency sessions with a crisis counselor. She chose a woman she’d used through CPS, a woman she thought was very good even though her instincts said if her heart was in it, she’d have selected a man who could understand Phil. But she didn’t want Phil to get understanding—she wanted his head on a pike. And at this point, Phil would’ve taken counseling from Gerri’s mother had she been alive, he was that accommodating, that beaten down with guilt and remorse...and hope. He would do anything to make this go away.

She scheduled them for three evenings running, from two days following his apologetic admission. They told the kids they had meetings. She had no idea what he had to say at the prosecutor’s office to leave work on time for a change. She secretly hoped he had to say, “I cheated on my wife and if I don’t go to counseling with her right now, I’m getting thrown out of the house.” She wanted him to feel her pain. His claims of great guilt and remorse weren’t doing much for her.

But he made it home on time to go with her. They held it together pretty well during the session. Phil seemed to struggle but tried to answer the counselor’s questions. Gerri thought, for a prosecutor, he’d make a lousy witness. Judges wouldn’t accept answers like, “I don’t know what I was thinking, what I was looking for,” or, “There wasn’t anything missing in my marriage that I was trying to make up for, I was just extremely tempted and I failed.”

As was typical of marriage counseling, the real bloodletting and fireworks came later, after the session. Usually in the car on the way home, probably to the great entertainment of cars passing by.

“She’s trying to get me to fight it out with you, take shots at your choice of sleepwear as the thing that drove me to it,” Phil said.

“She’s just saying it wasn’t the affair, it’s what was going on in our marriage,” Gerri fired back.

“Bullshit! There wasn’t anything going on in our marriage that hasn’t been going on for over ten years! It was the same! It’s always been a busy marriage, one full of pressure, stressful jobs, kids, horrible schedules, tight budgets. And you’re not asking me if the marriage has been satisfactory lately. It’s been the same!”

“If I asked, you’d say whatever you had to because now you’re scared you’re going to lose everything!”

“I was always afraid of losing everything! She’s trying to get me to say I’m just a little boy who wanted to come my brains out!”

“Well, didn’t you say as much? Isn’t that what ‘extremely tempted’ means?” Gerri railed.

“I’m saying I don’t know why! Seven years ago, for whatever reason, I didn’t have much willpower, much restraint. I never once thought, ‘Gerri’s not putting out so this is okay.’ I had accepted how we were.”

“Accepted how we were? You’re blaming me!”

“Jesus, I’m blaming us! I knew this was going to come back and bite me in the ass, but I couldn’t help myself—I was tempted because it felt too goddamn good to have someone actually tempted by me! You and the counselor want to hear me claim you’re a frigid wife, that I’m just an irresponsible asshole! Goddamn it, Gerri, I’m not a player. I have never been a player.”

“You son of a bitch,” she blustered at him. “Like it was my fault! Not wanting you enough!”

“Come on, don’t go there,” he said meanly. “You know as well as I do that for the past ten years, sex in our bed is rare at best. We’d have to get sex therapy to get up to once a month!”

“I know it’s real rare for you to make any effort!”

“How many no, thank yous do you think a husband can get before he figures out that’s not on the agenda?”

“Oh—so that’s your story now? That I said ‘no, thank you’ too often and damaged your frail little libido? That I drove you to the other woman?”

“Listen, the most love I feel in that house is when you hand me my list of chores and praise me like a puppy for doing as I was told. Aw, Jesus, we don’t need a therapist to help us say cruel things like this to each other! Christ!”

“Well, maybe if you’d fucking hold up your end, I wouldn’t be so tired at the end of the day!”

“See what I mean? Why don’t we just rent a cabin in the woods and fire insults and accusations at each other? It would be cheaper than a hundred bucks an hour! And it sure as hell isn’t helping put us back together! You want to know all the ways you were a less-than-perfect wife? Wanna tell me all the ways I failed as a husband? Because I’m sure the list is long and ugly for both of us!”

When they got home, they separated in silence, holding back the rage in front of the kids. Given they were teenagers, they were mostly oblivious. Jessie asked Gerri, “You mad about something?”

“Just worn out from a problem at work, honey,” she said. “Be patient with me.”

“It’s not, you know, that menopause thing?”

“No! It’s not that menopause thing!”

By the end of the week, a mere five days after the affair came to light, Gerri told Phil, “It’s time. I need to go to counseling alone, you need to find your own counselor, and we have to separate.”

“You’re giving up?”

“I don’t know. If I can stop hating you, maybe we can work it out. But right now, I’m just in too much pain.”

“Where do you expect me to go? Our finances can’t withstand another residence.”

“I don’t care. Stay in the city, come out for dinner, visit on weekends, whatever. But I can’t fight about it anymore. There’s just no explanation for what you did and I can’t get past the betrayal. You just have to give me some space and time.”

“If that’s what you want,” he said. “But I still love you.”

“Well, I don’t love you right now. I want to, but I can’t love a man who can do what you did without even knowing why. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again.”

“Fine,” he said. “This weekend we’ll tell the kids.”

“I don’t agree with that,” she told him.

“We tell them what they’re old enough to understand. That’s what we do in this family. In fact, you wrote that rule. You’re the social worker.”

“I don’t think they’re old enough to understand,” she said.

“Yes, they are. They’re not old enough to sympathize and it’s not in their experience, but they’ll know what we’re talking about. They’ll know that what I did was wrong, that you being out of your mind angry is reasonable.”

She shook her head and a large tear escaped. “Why did you do this to us, Phil?” she asked in a desperate whisper.

“I can’t explain. I’ve had nightmares about this for over five years. If we’re not stronger than one indiscretion, then I completely misjudged us. I thought, given all we’ve had to handle, both personally and professionally, if it came to this, we’d find a way. We’ve seen families through murder that didn’t give up this fast.”