John Kenney - Talk to Me

He had never loved anyone other than Claire. Not really. College infatuations and summer flings. But with Claire it had been complete and all-consuming. He felt different around her, more himself. They’d gone to the beach one Saturday that first summer after they met. A day trip to Crane Beach on Boston’s north shore. On the drive back, she had fallen asleep for a time. Ted looked over and felt like this was exactly where he wanted to be. This moment, this person. Nothing could come close. He was home. It was the start of everything.

And now, somehow, gone. How? he wondered. Yes, he had changed, as she liked to point out. Yes, he had become colder and more callous, less involved in the world, living in his “Ted bubble,” as Claire called it. A world of privilege and fame and numbness to the real world. Also, she was sure he had the occasional affair.

Of course, he saw it differently. He attributed it to aging and the daily onslaught of horror he witnessed and reported on each evening. War, famine, torture, poverty, disease, natural disaster, murder, corporate malfeasance, faulty airbags that companies knew full well didn’t work and yet, somehow, these people slept at night. It boggled the mind. Took one’s breath away. Depressed the fuck out of you. Until it didn’t. Until you read the words, waited out the commercial break, and looked forward to dinner at your table in the corner at Cafe Luxembourg.

Now, to the question of infidelity. Had Ted cheated? Define “cheat.” Was cheating thinking obsessively about someone else? Gifts? Thoughts of divorce? Afternoons in hotel rooms? Then no, he hadn’t cheated, except for the last two things. Fine, he had cheated. But it was only two or possibly as many as five times. He’d forgotten because it had meant nothing to him and, he’d wager, to the other person. The work of reporters in the field is not unlike that of people shooting a movie or engaging in a political campaign. Close quarters. Long hours. All meals together. An intensity of purpose. Also alcohol, God’s punch line for life. He did it because it was there. The sex. The women. Because he could. Because he was bored. It had nothing to do with love or affection. It was speechless, late-night, awkward fumbling in the dark, 5:00 a.m.–regretful, booze-soaked breath, where-are-my-pants sex.

For many years now, he’d simply lost interest in sex. And it’s not that he didn’t find Claire—find many women—attractive. But something had been lost. Even as recently as a few years ago, he used to sneak a peek at her while she dressed, after a shower, the towel dropping as she slipped underwear on, a bra and T-shirt. Now he no longer cared to see her in even the remotest stages of undress. Their distance—not just physical but emotional, the tones of voice they used with each other that they wouldn’t use with anyone else, the resentment and anger and sadness—was complete.

A few nights before Ted’s birthday, Claire had called, a thing she rarely did anymore. “We need to talk, Ted.”

Ted knew everything he needed to know from Claire’s tone, the strained calm a private school principal might use to parents of a child who kept lighting fires in class. He knew. Despite the distance of the past several years, he still knew her intimately. Noticed as she dressed differently, stayed overnight in the city. He’d catch her staring out the window, a smile on her lovely face. She’d met someone.

And so, he had driven to the Bedford house. He walked in and was greeted immediately and warmly by their dog, Bismarck, an aging German shepherd. Claire made Ted get a dog when they’d bought the Bedford house. She insisted on a big dog for those nights Ted was away. Ted didn’t care for animals, but he had grown to love this one.

The house smelled clean to Ted. Wood and soap and expensive fabric. New rugs. White tulips in a glass vase on the counter. They were in the kitchen and Claire had made herself a cup of chamomile tea. It was late afternoon on a raw April day and she had a dinner reservation that evening with her friend Nancy at the Jean-Georges restaurant in Pound Ridge. Nancy knew Claire planned to tell Ted that afternoon and promised to be at the bar with two large Stoli rocks, three olives, waiting.

Claire couldn’t wait to get to dinner. But first, it was important to her—to the memory of their life together—to do this right. Her therapist had said this and Claire agreed. Also in a way that made sense for both of their “brands,” as well as their status in New York in the years to come. This from Claire’s legal team, which also had a PR component when working at Claire’s particular fee structure.

That said, she was hoping for honesty, for an adult moment that might transcend their current distance and pain and honor the larger life they had shared. They’d given life, buried friends and parents, grown older, grown closer, and then drifted so far apart. She’d imagined the scene and saw that it could play out like a Hugh Grant movie, with the two of them smiling and ultimately hugging before the scene cut, an Elvis Costello track over the end credits.

Ted had also wanted it to go well. He, too, had imagined the scene, though he was using a different lens, different script, and different crew. He saw, from a distance, his magnanimity and understanding, saw Claire’s reaction, how she would want him sexually and how he would refuse her, how he would make a joke about how he didn’t want her to cheat on the man she was cheating with. And how they would laugh. Ted knew little about music and had not scored his credit sequence yet.

After playing with the dog, Ted didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d tried not to look directly at Claire, instead picking up glimpses of her in his peripheral vision. He saw the tea. It bothered him for some reason. He thought, Chamomile tea is stupid. He then thought, That thought is stupid.

After a long and rather awkward silence where they could hear the ticking of the old wall clock in the kitchen, Ted said, “So.” He’d meant to say more. He was sure he would say more. Something profound, something to put her on her back foot. But all that came out was “So.”

“So,” Claire said chattily enough, which annoyed Ted. He felt he was now on his back foot. This from a man who prided himself on his interviewing skills, which, if he was frank with himself, had waned over the years.

“Thank you for coming up,” Claire continued.

Ted nodded. Claire felt it was going well so far. Ted felt it was going poorly. Which led him to try to get the upper hand.

“Let me guess,” he blurted out, instantly regretting it, “you’ve met someone.”

He said it with far more attitude than he’d meant to, which immediately set Claire on edge. She sighed, closed her eyes, composed herself. Soon I will be done with this man.

“Yes,” Claire said finally. “I’ve met someone.”

Ted hadn’t expected to be wounded, to feel jealous. His breath came in shorter bursts and he felt a kind of anxiety come on. She was, he realized, all he had at this point in his life. He’d simply assumed that this way of being—the distance and the fights and the long stretches where they didn’t speak—was how they would always continue.

Ted nodded. He needed time. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew the answer to his question but needed to ask it.

“Is it serious?”

Claire nodded.

Ted was gripping the back of one of the cloth-backed chairs at the island.

“Who is he?” he asked.

Claire noticed that he lacked his usual flippant tone. She could hear his vulnerability and it threw her.

“You don’t know him.”