Robin Black - Life Drawing

I hadn’t known. I hadn’t even known there was a woman in his life. Laine may have thought she’d mentioned it, but she had not.

Miriam. Jewish presumably. Like me.

But not me.

Laine knew nothing, of course. Our affair had lasted just beyond the span of her first semester at NYU. Georgia never knew either. No one knew. No one ever would have known had I not told Owen in a fit of guilt that March, just over a month after I broke it off. Guilt. And also fear. Fear that it would start up again. That without making myself accountable to someone beside myself, I would run right back to Bill and accept what he could offer — which were moments. Moments that seemed apart from all the harsh realities of my life. But still, only moments. He had his son at home. He wasn’t going to be that guy, he said. That guy who breaks a family up, who tears a family down. It was bad enough discovering that he was willing to be the man he had become.

Almost two years later, when he and Georgia finally threw in the towel, he phoned. But I had already put Owen through hell, already watched him turn his heart inside out, like some sort of great deep pocket in which he might just find enough of some quality I could barely imagine: generosity, compassion, forgiveness, love. And like a miracle, he had.

I told Owen about the call. So scrupulous had I become. I told him that Bill’s marriage was over, and that he had phoned about picking up where we had left off. And that I had told him I was 100 percent in my own marriage — a marriage, as we had finally exchanged vows — and I had no interest. Not that I felt too guilty to do it or that I was afraid of getting caught. But that I had no interest. And I told Owen I had asked Bill never to call me again.

Along with whatever scruple I felt to be forthright, I’d also expected Owen to view my unambiguous dismissal of Bill as a gift of some kind — which he did not. That phone call cost us about two weeks of misery. What I thought would mark an end, for Owen just dredged it all up again. Bill still existed. Bill was now single. Bill had the ability to pick up a phone and dial. If I had ever thought of telling Owen about my contact with Laine, those weeks put an end to that thought.

Laine. Laine who had no reason to predict the impact of what she had written me.

Sitting with my palms still on the lid of my laptop, I felt dizzy, slightly ill. I didn’t think I would cry, though I wondered. But I didn’t even know yet if sadness was in play. At that moment, it felt more like being slapped.

Eventually, I stood up and walked to my easel, where I stared at a drawing for some time, or maybe at a few drawings, before realizing I couldn’t possibly focus on work.

Alison, in her doorway, said yes, of course, she would come for a walk.

“How’s the pond?” I asked. The pond was fine. “Seven times around is pretty much exactly a mile,” I said. “Owen measured absolutely everything when we first moved in. He can tell you the precise distance between our houses, I’ll bet.”

Alison laughed. “I doubt I’ll ever need the information,” she said. “But in case I ever want to build some sort of walkway, I’ll know who to ask.”

We made our way past the barn, through the thicket of spruce at the lawn’s western edge. The day was cool and cloudy. No threat of rain, not anything serious, anyway. Maybe it would spit a little later but nothing like the downpours to come later in the summer.

“If you stay about four feet out from the edge,” I said, “there’s less mud.”

“Is something wrong?” Alison asked, as she adjusted her path. “Or is this really just a walk around the pond?”

“Points for perception,” I said. “You’re pretty good.”

“Maybe you haven’t seen your face, Gus. I’m not that good. You look like someone’s died. Has someone died?”

“No. Nobody’s died.” I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with soggy air, thick with grass and mud. “It’s a long story, Alison.”

I had never told anyone. Whom would I have told? Charlotte was already gone. Jan was many admirable things, efficient, practical, intelligent, and generous, of course; but all of it held together with wires too barbed for her ever to have been the right confidante for my ribbon-sliced heart. And all of my friends back then were Owen’s friends too, back when we had friends whom we saw more than once a year, back before we ran away into the supposed safety of our solitude. I’d had no right to tell them anything so personal about us both.

And maybe I still had no right, but I couldn’t help myself. “I learned today that an old … an old … a man I once … I should begin at the beginning, I suppose. Five years ago, I had an affair … and Owen knows,” I added quickly — there still being a touch of pride in having fessed up, even though if I’d had it to do over, I might well have chosen to spare us both my unburdening myself.

Alison said nothing.

“It’s been over for a long time. And it didn’t go on that long. I mean, it wasn’t a weekend fling but it wasn’t years either. It was just one fall — in both senses, I suppose. One autumn though, is what I mean. And then into January, too.”

Because we were walking side by side, I couldn’t see her face. Maybe that was why my instincts had brought us outside, though it had felt more as though it would take all the vast sky, all that infinite space to make my disclosures feel small enough to bear.

As I told her the story, I sensed an elasticity to its form, realizing how very malleable a thing I needed my tale to be, how much emphasis I wanted on the terrible emotional state I was in after Charlotte’s death; how little I wanted to linger on the degree to which I knew exactly what I was doing. (That week between when Laine stopped taking lessons and when Bill finally called, how absolutely certain I had been about what was going on …) I could make it so much more comfortable a story with just a little stress here, a small elision there. It didn’t even matter that I knew I was editing, it felt good hearing it that way.

And then I told her what I had not told her before.

“Owen couldn’t have children. We’d just found out. A few months before Charlotte’s death. And that news, I didn’t handle it well. I mean, I said all the right things, and I felt terrible for him. I always did. I still do. But I just felt so bereft, and so confused. No excuses, I know. But everything was such an unbelievable mess.”

“It sounds like a lot. A lot of hard stuff all at once.”

“And today,” I said. “Laine wrote me today that Bill’s remarrying.” We took another couple of steps. “I have no right to … to have any reaction to this. I know that I don’t. And I don’t even know really what my reaction is.”

But it wasn’t quite true. By then I did know. He was in love. That was it. That was the truth exploding again and again. He was in love. He was having it —the fresh start, the moments of joy, maybe even the children, for all I knew; and not the tired, battle-weary, tattered and stitched-together love I had settled back into with Owen. Bill had fallen in love. Again. And not with me. With a woman named Miriam.

“I can see why this would be hard,” Alison said.

“I honestly don’t know why it’s upsetting me so much. We haven’t so much as spoken in years. And I should tell you, I can’t let Owen know I’ve heard this, and definitely not that it’s got me all riled up. And truly not that you know a thing. This really has to be just between us. The fertility stuff, too. All of it.”

“No, no, I understand. Of course. And as for why you’re so upset …” She took my arm, a gesture that felt both awkward and welcome. “I’m not sure who wouldn’t be, Gus. You fall in love with a man and want to run off with him. He stays with his wife, and then, however many years later, he marries someone else. It doesn’t help that he ran back to you after his divorce. You never came first. That’s the thorn in the rose right there. The wife didn’t exactly come first either, but now … I can’t imagine who wouldn’t be upset.”