Дуглас Кеннеди: Five Days

Before I could continue he interrupted me, his face white with anger.

‘I always knew this was going to happen — because I always knew you were so ambivalent about me.’

‘I’m afraid that’s the truth.’

‘So who’s the guy?’

‘There is no “guy”.’

‘But there was a guy, right?’

‘I am not leaving you for someone else.’

‘You’re dodging my question. Because I know that if there isn’t someone now, there was someone. And I’m pretty damn certain you met him that weekend you were in Boston.’

Silence — during which I decided to drive the car straight off the cliff.

‘That’s right,’ I said, meeting Dan’s shocked gaze. ‘There was someone. It just lasted the weekend. Then it ended. Then I came home, quietly hoping that things between us could improve. They didn’t. And now I’m going.’

‘Just like that.’

‘You know we’ve been in a bad place for years.’

‘Which is why you fucked some other guy.’

‘That’s right. If this marriage hadn’t turned moribund, I would never have dreamed of—’

‘“Moribund”,’ he said, repeating the word with contempt.

‘Me and my big words again, right?’

‘You’re beneath contempt.’

‘Thank you for such clarity. It makes this much easier.’

And I stood up and walked to my car and drove away.

Earlier that morning, after Dan had gone off to work, I had packed a final suitcase and dropped it off at Lucy’s. During lunch I had returned home and cleared away my laptop, my favorite fountain pens and notebooks, and several key books, including, of course, The Synonym Finder. These items were already packed into the trunk of my car. When I got to Lucy’s house and began to unload them I had a small private moment of grief. Lucy arrived home from the supermarket a few minutes later with food for our dinner that night. Seeing the red around my eyes she asked me:

‘Was it that bad?’

‘Actually, he was more angry than hurt — which was easier to deal with.’

‘The hurt will come later.’

I drove over to Farmington the next day to see Ben, a date I’d arranged with him earlier in the week. When I got there he told me that his father had called him late last night and was crying down the line, telling him that I was leaving him.

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He told me you’d been unfaithful to him.’

Oh God. I put my head in my hands.

‘I wish he hadn’t said that.’

‘Well, I kind of knew that already, didn’t I? Or, at least, worked it out after we had that talk following your Boston trip.’

‘Your father still shouldn’t have involved you.’

‘I agree — but the guy is clearly so distressed by what’s happened he’s decided to lash out in all directions.’

‘I’m so sorry. What happened — it was just a weekend thing. And the only reason it happened is because—’

‘You don’t have to explain, Mom. I might not like what I heard, but I am certainly not going to take his side in all this. And I’m pleased that you’ve moved out. as long as, wherever you are, there will always be a spare bedroom for me.’

‘I promise you there will always be a room for you in whatever home I have for the rest of my life.’

Then I pitched him the idea of me hiring him and a couple of friends to do the renovations on the apartment in Portland. He was immediately enthusiastic, saying he’d talk to two fellow art students he knew who did a lot of part-time decorating.

‘You’ve come to the right place for home improvements, ma’am,’ he said, his voice arch and funny. But then:

‘I do have to tell you something, Mom. After what went down with Dad last night I took it on myself to call Sally on her cell at the camp. And I told her what had happened, and what Dad had told me.’

Oh God. but this time to the power of ten.

‘The way I figured it,’ Ben continued, ‘if I didn’t tell her first Dad would have. And that would have really thrown her. Thrown her badly.’

‘You did the right thing,’ I said, thinking to myself: Why is it that when people lash out in fury they do their best to entangle those closest to them in their web of harm?

I had already arranged to drive down and see Sally at Camp Sebago the next morning. I was fully expecting her to call me a scarlet woman (or worse), and slam a metaphoric door in my face. To my surprise, however, she put her arms around me when I showed up and said:

‘It’s going to take me a long time to forgive my father for saying all that shit.’

We went out to lunch. I was as direct as possible with her about how her father and I had fallen out of love. I assured her that she could always count on me for everything, and that me moving to Portland wasn’t me disappearing from her life.

‘I kind of worked that one out already, Mom. I also worked out something else — you waited all this time to leave because you didn’t want to mess up my last years of high school. And I am incredibly grateful to you for that.’

Life moved forward. My lawyer, Amanda Montgomery, counseled me not to say anything to Dan about his attempts to get Ben and Sally into his camp:

‘Your children have already seen through that tactic — what we want to do now is get a deal in place without too much drama.’

Still, she had to send some very stern letters to the lawyer representing Dan, asking him to tell his client that if he made absurd demands — like wanting the house and half of the savings account and everything that I didn’t take with me when I moved into that temporary apartment at Lucy’s — we would now demand half the house etc. Did he really want to spend thousands in legal bills, especially when I was asking for so little and there was so little to actually divide?

Dan saw sense. The two lawyers met once and hammered out an agreement. Dan asked that it not be signed for a couple of months to give us both time to think about it; which was clearly his way of hoping against hope that I would change my mind. The curious thing was, once I had left the house he never phoned me — preferring to communicate by email, and only when he had something practical to discuss regarding the house or our children. According to Amanda — who gleaned this information from Dan’s lawyer — my husband still wanted me to make the first move when it came to reconciliation, even though he had to understand that, as I was the one who’d left the marriage, that was never going to happen.

‘People go truly strange in the wake of a long marriage detonating,’ Amanda said. ‘I sense that your husband simply can’t face up to what’s happening — and expects you to make it all right for him. Which, as I explained to his lawyer, was something you had repeatedly informed me was beyond the realm of possibility.’

‘I feel sorry for him.’

‘Not as sorry as he feels for himself.’

News of our impending divorce got around Damariscotta in the expected matter of nanoseconds. But the hospital still organized a goodbye drink for me; a little after-work soirйe at the Newcastle Publick House in town. To my immense surprise, Sally showed up. And then, around an hour into the proceedings, in walked Ben.

‘Surprise,’ he said quietly, planting a kiss on my cheek.

Dr Harrild made a little speech, talking about how I knew more about things radiographic than he did, and how my ‘professional rigor’ was ‘matched by an immense decency’, and how the hospital would be a lesser place without me. I found myself blushing. I have never been totally at ease with praise. But when asked to speak, after thanking Dr Harrild and all my colleagues for such interesting years and such ‘ongoing colleagiality’, I then said this (having thought it through beforehand):