Louisa Hall - Trinity

Or as though I hadn’t really existed before he opened the book, and would cease to exist when he shut it.

CALMLY, THOUGH MY STOMACH HAD GONE VERY COLD, I LISTENEDwhile the woman from Chicago finished her story.

She told me in detail about the last conversation she’d had with my husband. He’d told her about my existence and admitted we were expecting a baby. He’d apologized for having deceived her, and went on to say that he hoped they could continue their relationship.

He only asked that she be discreet. He asked her not to tell her friends or anyone else about the relationship they were starting, because if I were to find out, it would hurt me.

THEN, HAVING REACHED THE CULMINATING PAIN OF HER STORY, THEwoman started crying again. But even so, she didn’t stop talking. After a pause, while she caught her breath, she then almost frantically returned to the beginning of the whole story, going back to relate certain details she’d missed, details she’d clearly saved up over the days since their relationship ended, when she didn’t know if she should call me and felt she couldn’t talk to her friends or her family, the relationship now having transformed in such a way that she feared they would judge her.

She was reluctant, she said, to bring the pain of her fictional relationship—her fictional pain—to her family, each member of which was still suffering real pain at the real loss of her brother.

As a result, in the days since that conversation, she’d slept doubly alone, set apart not only from the man she’d imagined she was falling in love with, but also from the family she couldn’t talk to, and the friends who she believed would no longer understand or trust her side of the story, her perspective having been rendered unreliable by the fact that she’d believed him so completely, up to that moment when he finally told her the truth and she ended the relationship, after which point, when he was alone again in his hotel room, he called me and told me he didn’t feel like himself and wanted to come home the next morning to see me.

NOW THE WOMAN WAS CRYING MORE FREELY. IT WAS CLEARLY PAINFULfor her to talk about those days of isolation.

Then, finally stirring myself to speak, I apologized for the distress she was obviously feeling.

Then I thanked her for letting me know. I told her it wasn’t her fault. I took down the name of her hotel, where she said she’d stay for several more days, in case I decided I wanted to see her. Then I thanked her, again, for letting me know.

Oddly, I wished her all the best in her future endeavors.

Then I hung up and went to the bathroom, and vomited until the off-hook tone started ringing.

LATER THAT NIGHT, WHEN MY HUSBAND CAME HOME, IT WAS ALREADYdark. I was sitting on the back porch. Though it was October, it was still very hot, and while I waited, mosquitoes landed on my ankles, inserting their needles into the bare skin between the hem of my jeans and my sneakers.

His car pulled up to the driveway around nine o’clock, and when he came toward the porch, he was still smiling in that sweet, childish way he always smiled on his way up to greet me.

When he’d climbed the steps—still smiling, unaware of what was lying in wait—he sat next to me on the porch swing. He reached for my hand and leaned over to kiss me.

IT WAS HIS CHILDISH HAPPINESS, HIS NAÏVE LACK OF AWARENESS OFwhat I already knew, that made me feel somewhat ashamed as I started relating the story.

I related it, I noticed, in the same somewhat slippery voice that woman had used when she called me: a voice that wasn’t at all steady or strong, a voice that wasn’t sure the story it was telling was either believable or convincing.

And suddenly, as I related those details, I did indeed wonder whether they were correct.

I wondered whether, in fact, the woman on the phone had been lying.

That afternoon, when I was listening to her for the first time, I’d believed every word that she said. But now I wondered whether in fact she might have some reason I didn’t know for hating my husband, and whether, for that reason, she had therefore plotted an ingenious attack on his most personal life, a vicious attack in which I was now participating, ambushing him in that precise moment—coming up the stairs to his house, sitting beside his pregnant wife—when he’d allowed himself to feel safe.

THAT POSSIBILITY TEMPTED ME TO FEEL HOPE. PERHAPS, I TOLD MYSELF,as I related her story in a less and less certain voice, it wasn’t my husband but that woman in her hotel room who had lied, and who had so abruptly altered the foundation of the life I was leading.

Then, in order to convince myself of this possibility, I changed the tone I was using.

Now, as I imparted the same details, I punctuated them every so often with an odd breathless laugh: communicating, or attempting to communicate, my growing belief that this was a fantastical story.

And as I related it in this new tone, the story did begin to seem almost silly. How could they have planned to have children together, when our son was due in two weeks? And how could the thing have continued so long without her having any idea he was married?

I felt almost foolish, repeating that part back to him. By then, I was prepared to believe him completely when he told me that this woman had fabricated the story. But as I continued to relate that fantastical tale, I couldn’t help but notice that the story was affecting him not as something absurd, but as a blow he felt in the deepest part of his body.

The color had drained from his face. Then his hand became very hot. Then he jerked it away from my hand, as if I’d said something vicious.

AFTER THAT, HE NO LONGER TOUCHED ME. EVER SO SLIGHTLY, HEmoved away from me on the porch swing, and I realized that I wasn’t telling him a fantastical tale. I was repeating for him, instead, a series of unbearable facts, unbearable not because they struck him as false, but because he hadn’t expected to hear them in this context.

Now, hearing the facts of that other case repeated out loud in this context, realizing the two cases had invaded each other, his lips had become visibly dry. His hunting knife peeked out of his pocket, pointless and irrelevant, and when I finished talking, he didn’t speak.

There remained between us a sickening silence.

WHEN HE DID FINALLY STIR HIMSELF TO ANSWER, HIS VOICE WASalmost inaudibly low.

“I only saw her once,” he said.

He glanced at me quickly, then looked away.

“Twice,” he corrected himself. Then: “Three times.”

Then he put his face in his hands.

IT WAS THEN, FINALLY, AS IF RELEASED BY THAT GESTURE, THAT THEvague forces of destruction that had hovered around me since I picked up the phone in the kitchen finally gathered their fury and pooled in the belly of those eight words .

“I only saw her once,” my husband said. Then, “Twice. Three times.”

And with each hapless, belated lunge he made toward the truth, I felt my stomach go cold again, as if at the sudden retreat of a knife.

AFTER THAT, THE WORDS WE EXCHANGED BECAME USELESS AGAIN.That conversation between me and my husband continued well into the morning, and yet, when I look back on it now, it seems that almost nothing was said.

Though he admitted he’d slept with the woman in Chicago on three separate occasions, he was adamant that it had never been a relationship. He said that he hadn’t loved her. He said that he’d ended whatever it was that existed between them because it was me that he was in love with.

I asked him why he’d had to end whatever it was that existed between them if it wasn’t a relationship in the first place.