“You don’t think she’d really do that, do you?” Ellen asks.
I shrug. “Probably not, no. Although my therapist says that most everyone is capable of an affair under the right circumstances.”
Ellen murmurs her pensive agreement as I find myself thinking about her marital problems from several years before. I don’t know the details, or if anyone else was involved, but somehow I got the impression that the rockiness was more her fault than Andy’s.
“Have you ever been tempted?” I ask.
When she doesn’t immediately respond, I mumble, “Sorry. That’s none of my business.”
“It’s okay,” Ellen says, pausing to stoop down to retie a shoelace. “You can ask me anything. You know that.”
I pause and wait for her to secure the knot, then tighten the other. She doesn’t speak until we’re walking again. “Remember Leo?” she asks as her pace quickens.
“Of course,” I say, recalling one of several long conversations we had about our two most significant exes, Lewis and Leo, and specifically how similar they were. Both were artist types (Leo was a journalist, Lewis was still acting, mostly on Broadway but occasionally appearing in small indie films). Both were native New Yorkers. Like Lewis, Leo had been very intense and had broken her heart.
“Well, a few years back,” she continues, “I started to have…contact with him again.”
“What sort of contact?” I say, struggling to keep up with Ellen’s stride, her legs so much longer than mine.
“Mostly just emailing and texting…but I also saw him a couple of times. Once on a shoot in L.A. Once in New York…”
“Did you…?” My voice trails off.
“No,” she says firmly. “We didn’t have sex or anything close to that. It was really more of an emotional thing. But it was still pretty bad….”
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling vague disappointment that my suspicion has been confirmed, but no judgment whatsoever. If anything, I feel reassured by the evidence that people can recover from major marital setbacks. “Does Andy know?”
“Yeah. He knows,” she says, her voice thick with regret. She then confesses that although it was mostly an emotional affair, she did kiss Leo once.
“One kiss isn’t so bad,” I say, although I’m not sure I entirely believe that.
“Yes. Maybe not. But I contemplated much more than that…including leaving Andy altogether.” Ellen finishes abruptly, and it takes me a few seconds to respond.
“What made you stay?” I ask.
She looks back at me with wide, earnest eyes. “Love,” she says.
“Aww, Ell,” I say, moved by the sincerity and purity of her reply, especially when I was anticipating a more cynical answer: fear or guilt or a sense of duty or that she was already pregnant with Isla. “I’m so glad you worked it out. You’re really perfect together.”
“Well, nothing’s perfect,” she says. “But I do think Andy and I truly belong together. And things are really good now.”
“Did you love Leo?” I say, lowering my voice, as if his name might still hold some power over her.
“Maybe. But it wasn’t a true, deep, real love, like the kind I have for Andy….It was always more of an obsession…an unhealthy addiction….And to a certain extent, maybe I was just feeling that sense of what if?…What if I had married Leo? What would my life be like?”
I nod, thinking the whole concept of the path not taken is partly what has always troubled me. Not so much in terms of Lewis, though I do think about him once in a while. But in terms of a different life altogether, the one I might be living if Daniel hadn’t died and I hadn’t married Nolan, the two events always seeming so intertwined.
“So Andy just…forgave you?” I ask.
“Well, not right away…We definitely had a rough couple of months. Really a pretty shitty year…By the time I met you, though, things were a lot better. And when Isla came—wow.” Ellen’s voice becomes light, yet also awe-filled. “She really took us to a higher place. Fixed things…”
“She did?” I say, finding it a little hard to believe that a baby could have that effect when Harper definitely caused a strain for Nolan and me. Then again, Isla has always been easier than Harper in pretty much all respects.
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t say she fixed things. We did that on our own with a lot of hard work. But she definitely renewed our commitment. It was almost as if her birth gave us something of a clean slate. Put everything in perspective.”
I nod, thinking that this part I understand. Motherhood really does give you a broader perspective about so much.
Ellen continues, “I think the whole ordeal, as horrible as it was, made us stronger in some respects. Maybe that’s just me trying to justify things, but I really think it’s true.”