I’d stopped eating meat for personal and ethical reasons, but I can hardly expect to get credit for being ethical about animals when I’m being so unethical about humans: wanting to sleep with the husband of my best friend.
I could never blog about this. Never. The moms would never forgive me. They need to think of me as a loving mother who would never want an animal to be hurt for my sake but who isn’t so rigid that I won’t make hamburgers if that’s all the kids will eat. Some of them might disapprove if I stopped being a vegetarian. But they would never ever forgive me for putting myself to sleep at night by having sexual fantasies about my friend’s husband. They would know what a terrible person I am, and they would send out a firestorm of furious hating posts, which I would deserve. And when they finished venting their anger at me, they would stop reading my blog.
Most nights, Sean and I drink wine with dinner. I’ve started buying good wine, the best I can afford, because it makes everything so much more elegant and mellow. In case I ever doubted Sean about Emily having had a drinking problem, all I have to do is watch the way he scrutinizes me whenever I drink. I sip my wine, and I always make sure to leave a few drops in my second glass. Do I secretly want to let him know that life with me would be better than it was with Emily?
Usually Sean stays and helps me clean up. The kitchen is steamy and warm, and the windows fog up, hiding us from the world outside, creating a private space where we feel safe and alone, shut off and protected from everyone and everything. I’d never realized how sexy doing the dishes could be.
Sometimes the tension is almost overwhelming. On those nights when Sean picks up Nicky before dinner and goes home—he says he’s been learning to cook, but I suspect that they grab a pizza on the way—I’m glad to take a break. It’s a relief when it’s just Miles and me, having our meal in peace.
Miles seems to like his new life. He enjoys hanging out with Nicky’s dad, and after all this time, I think it’s good for him to have a man—a father figure, even if it’s his friend’s father—around the house.
When Miles was a baby, I used to stare into his eyes all the time, but you can’t do that with a five-year-old. So I’ve taken to staring at Miles when he is asleep and noticing (as everybody says) how much he looks like me. But what they don’t say is that he’s a million times more beautiful than I am.
And so my attraction to Sean has become another secret I can’t tell anyone. Sometimes when I’m missing Emily, I think I could tell her. Then I realize that she would be the last person I could tell about being infatuated with her husband.
It only makes me feel more lonely, more desperate to see Sean. And to see Emily. A vicious circle, as they say. Though the truth is that the more I long to see Sean, the more my desire to see Emily starts to fade.
Once, when Sean left his iPod on my kitchen counter, I checked his playlist and bought CDs of his favorite music—mostly Bach and the White Stripes and old-school British bands like the Clash—even though my own taste runs to Ani DiFranco and Whitney Houston. When he and Nicky are around, I play his music instead of mine. When the kids are asleep in Miles’s room, we binge on TV series like Breaking Bad. Sean already watched all five seasons, but he wants me to see it with him. It would have been way too violent for me to think about watching before I met him, but it makes me happy to know that there is something he cares about and wants to share with me.
Sean has talked about how, when he was growing up in the UK, his ideas about the United States came entirely from Charles Bronson films and TV series like That ’70s Show. And now he sometimes wonders if there are kids like him in other countries who think the US is still the Wild West, full of high school science teachers batching meth in RVs and killing Mexican drug lords. I stare at him, rapt with interest. And it isn’t fake. I think what he says is practically the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.
When he told me that he’d watched the series before, I tried not to imagine him watching it with Emily. I try never to think about Sean saying the same things to her that he says to me. I try not to wonder if she thought what he said was as interesting as I think it is. It was Emily who read books, Sean who watched TV. I try not to think about her complaining that he made her feel stupid. I try to concentrate on the fact that he wants me to see it. I’ve begun to think that he cares about me as more than just as a friend, or a friend of his wife’s, or his son’s best friend’s mom.
Sometimes I try not to think about Emily, and sometimes I try not to think about anything but Emily, as if thinking about her could work magic. One day she will simply show up, and everything will go back to how it used to be. Except that I may have fallen in love with her husband.
None of this makes me feel good about myself, but it does make me strangely happy. I feel as if I’m walking around on my own little cloud or swimming in my own little pool of warmth and light and heat, though the winter is coming on, and the weather has been awful.
I don’t know what’s worse. The disloyalty, I guess. Or maybe the most shameful part is that I’ve turned my son into a little spy. When Miles comes home from Nicky’s, I ask, fake-casually, if Nicky’s dad said anything about me. Is Alison still working for them? Are she and Nicky’s dad friendly? Does Sean talk a lot on the phone?
Miles says he never sees Alison. He doesn’t think that Alison is Nicky’s nanny anymore now that Nicky’s dad is home all the time and his mom is gone.
Poor Miles.
One night, putting him to bed, I said, “Honey, do you want to talk about Nicky’s mom being gone? I mean, how you feel about it—”
“No, thanks,” he said. “It just makes me sad. Everyone is sad. Especially Nicky.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I was glad that, in the glow from the night-light, Miles couldn’t see me well enough to notice.
I said, “We’re all really, really sad. But sadness is a part of life. Sometimes it can’t be avoided.”
“I know, Mom,” said my wise, beautiful child. The next thing I knew, he was fast asleep.
One evening, when Miles and I were alone at dinner, Miles said, “Last night, when I stayed over at Nicky’s, his dad was talking about you.”
“What did he say?” I tried to keep my voice level.
“He said I was lucky to have such a nice, generous mom.”
“Was that all? Did Nicky’s dad say anything else?”
“That was it,” said Miles.
It wasn’t so much what he said—nice and generous were compliments, but maybe not what I wanted to hear—that made me happy. It was the fact that Sean wanted to talk about me, that he’d talked about me to my son. He was thinking about me when I wasn’t there.
I feel as if I’m betraying everyone. Emily especially, but also myself.
Sean and I haven’t even done anything yet! But I already feel guilty. If that’s not a sign that I have a conscience, what is? I’ve blogged about how women in general and moms in particular are always made to feel guilty, but now it’s occurring to me, as it has in the past, that there might be times when we should feel guilty. I should, anyway.
Another thing I feel guilty about is that I never felt this same crazy, passionate, out-of-my-head yearning for my husband. Sex with Davis was good. It wasn’t great. It was just what I needed. Davis was what I needed: a truly nice guy. I’d been having a rocky time. A nice guy like Davis didn’t need to know about my problems in the past, and I never felt the need to tell him. Being with him was comfortable. I used to think, This is like going home. This is how going home is supposed to feel. And being with Davis answered a lot of unresolved questions for me—questions about my future. Or so I thought at the time.