Jennifer Archer - Sandwiched

“Mr. Hoyt…Roger. May I call you Roger?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Cut to the chase, I decide. Ask him point-blank. I lean forward. “Cindy has said that she feels you don’t love her anymore. That you’re bored with her.” I catch his gaze, hold it. “How do you feel? Are you bored with your wife? Have you fallen out of love with her?”

Roger Hoyt reeks of fear, or it might be his aftershave; I’m not sure. He glances at the woman in question and clears his throat. “I still love my wife. It’s just, well, I’m not in love with her. Not anymore.”

Cindy’s lower lip quivers.

I flash back to the moment Bert made the same admission to me, and I sympathize with Cindy Hoyt. “Okay, Roger. When did you realize this?”

He clears his throat again. “I can’t put my finger on an exact moment. It just sort of happened over time. We stopped having fun together, stopped talking about anything except the kids and the bills. That sort of thing.”

“So, you’re saying you’re more like brother and sister now?”

“Yeah, but we still…you know. We’re more than brother and sister, but it’s not enough.” He shifts in the chair. “I want more.”

“You’ve got commitment, the security of family, but no passion?”

He nods.

I turn to Cindy. “What’s it like for you to hear all this?”

“It hurts.” She blinks tear-bright eyes. “But he’s right. We don’t have fun anymore. We don’t really talk. And our sex life has suffered. But I think we can work things out if we try.”

I watch for Roger’s reaction. Interesting. Cindy sees it, too, and looks down at her lap.

“Roger, when Cindy just said that, you cringed. Why?”

“I don’t know. I, um, I guess I’m not sure if I want this anymore. I—”

Cindy sits straighter; her expression hardens. “That’s just what I thought, Roger. Do you think I haven’t noticed how much time you’ve been spending at work?” She turns to me. “I think he’s starting something with his secretary.”

“I am not!” Roger’s face flames.

“Not an affair,” Cindy adds quickly, anger replacing the hurt in her voice. “Not yet. But I saw the e-mails, Roger. I saw them. The woman couldn’t be more than twenty-five.” She crosses her arms and leans back.

A switch flips inside me. I stare at Roger and cross my arms, too. “Would you care to tell me about these e-mails between you and…?”

“Bitsy,” Cindy hisses. Our eyes meet then narrow in unison. In unity.

“So, Roger, you and Bootsy have been flirting with infidelity through e-mails, is that—”

“Betsy. Her name is Betsy. I—we’re—” Roger scoots to the edge of the chair. Glares at Cindy. At me. “We’re not…I…” He stands. “Fuck this! Fuck it! I won’t sit here while a complete stranger and my wife gang up me.”

Oh, no! No! Damn it! What’s wrong with me? What am I doing? I reach my hand toward him. “Calm down, Mr. Hoyt. No one’s ganging up on you.”

“Oh, really?” He paces and tugs at his collar, at the tie that isn’t there. “What would you call it then?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, I was simply asking a question. Perhaps I should rephrase.”

“Perhaps you should.” He flops down in the chair.

“It seems that the two of you are at a point of decision, would you agree?”

Roger’s Adam’s apple bobs. He and Cindy look at one another. The two of them nod.

I tap my index finger against my thigh and study the immature jerk, trying to see deeper. Will he choose some temporary, ego-boosting fun with little Miss Bootsy who, judging from the looks of Roger, is probably only after his money? Or will he decide to make an effort to revive what he once had with the mother of his children, this intelligent, attractive woman he chose to marry? This woman who has washed his dirty socks and underwear, stuck with him through the early, sparse-money years after he started his business, believed in him when he didn’t believe in himself.

Realizing my thoughts pertain to my own marriage, not necessarily the Hoyts’, I take a deep breath. This is about them, not me. “Both of you need to spend some time thinking about what you really want, what’s really important to you.” I zero in on Roger. “Do you want to preserve your commitment or move on to something else? Think hard about that. This affects not only your life, but also Cindy’s. And your children’s lives, too. It’s not a decision to be made lightly.”

I turn. “And you, Cindy.” Her efforts to control her emotions trigger my own. My throat knots up; I tell myself to breathe. “If Roger stays, are you willing to work on the marriage? Can you put your suspicions and bitterness away and trust him again? And if he chooses to leave, what will you do? Your life will change dramatically. How will you deal with that? It’s something to ask yourself.”

We end the session. And while Roger doesn’t promise to come back next week, he does say he’ll consider it.

In the meantime, I have a lot to think about, too. It’s clear I still have Bert issues. I thought I’d worked through the worst of them, buried the pain, cynicism and anger in a deep, dark grave. But judging from what just happened, they’re all still alive. And thriving.

The paperback novel lies open in my lap. A Room For Eleanor. The current literary rage. Four hundred pages of angst and introspection.

Perching my funky new reading glasses on the bridge of my nose, I glance down at the page. The final chapter, thank God. If I have to spend one more week reading about the depressed and depressing Eleanor, I’ll need a room, too. At the psychiatric pavilion.

I look up for a moment, scan the group of four women, all wearing glasses of some kind or another, and one man whose vision must be better than mine, since he’s lens-free. Ten folding chairs sit empty behind them. We started the club a year ago with fifteen members. Fourteen women and Oliver something-or-other, the sharp-eyed old charmer who sits at the end of the first row beside my mother. The club has dwindled to these five people; I don’t know why.

Lifting the novel, I begin to read aloud from chapter twenty-three.

“Eleanor locked the bathroom door, turned to the mirror then lifted the tweezers to her right eye. ‘No more,’ she whispered, plucking one lash then another and another, numb to the pain. ‘No more…’”

As I read, my mind drifts to my session with the Hoyts this morning. I almost crossed the line, let my personal feelings affect my professional objectivity. I transferred my anger at Bert to Roger Hoyt. That scares me. I have no business counseling couples if I can’t keep my own emotions out of the equation. I should’ve made every effort to connect with the man, prove myself to him, gain his trust, not put him on the defensive.

“She turned on the faucet and water spilled out, over her hand, into the tub, warm, soothing water to wash away the pain. And Eleanor whispered, ‘No more…’”

It’s just that, when I saw the Hoyts sitting across from me, middle-aged, miserable, together yet miles apart, I felt I was looking at a photo of Bert and myself from a year ago. Then Roger Hoyt finally started to talk, and I saw my own feelings reflected in his wife’s eyes. Humiliation. Self-doubt. Fear. For a second…okay, maybe more like five minutes, I envisioned the two of us tackling the balding Don Juan, strapping him to the sofa, face-up, castrating him with a dull pair of fingernail scissors.

Not good. Not good at all.

“The water surrounded Eleanor; her legs, her body, her face, filling her with peace, with truth. All her life, she had tried to avoid what she knew in her heart. ‘No more,’ she thought now. ‘No more.’”