She takes a seat at the kitchen island as I turn and flip on the coffeemaker and reach into the cabinet for two matching mugs. Upon realizing that most are still dirty in the dishwasher, others piled in the sink, I mentally shrug, grab two random cups, and forgo saucers and place mats altogether.
The next few minutes are awkward, and I am grateful for the task of brewing coffee, while fielding questions from April about holiday shopping and where I am on my various lists. But by the time I hand her a cup of black coffee, I have worked up the nerve to address the real reason I know she stopped by.
“Well. You were right about Nick,” I say, catching her off guard. “And you were right about that woman . . . I kicked him out last week.”
She lowers her mug, her face crumbling with genuine sympathy. “Oh, God,” she says. “I don’t know what to say ... I’m really sorry.”
I nod and numbly thank her as her expression becomes anguished. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Ever.”
I give her an incredulous stare and say, “April. We’re separated. He’s not living here. People are going to find out sooner or later. And anyway . . . what people are saying about me is really the least of my concerns right now . . .”
April nods, gazing into her still untouched coffee. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “Tessa. I have something to tell you . . . Something I want to tell you . . .”
“April,” I say drolly. “No more bad news, please.”
She shakes her head and says, “This isn’t about you and Nick . . . It’s about. . . me. And Rob.” We make fleeting eye contact as she blurts the rest out. “Tessa, I just want you to know . . . that I’ve been where you are right now. I know what you’re going through.”
I stare at her, processing her words, the very last thing I expected to hear from her. “Rob cheated on you?” I ask, shocked. She nods the smallest of nods, looking the way I feel—ashamed. As if Rob’s actions are her failure, her humiliation.
“When?” I say, recalling our recent doubles match and her bold insistence that she would leave if it ever happened to her. She had been so convincing.
“Last year,” she says.
“With who?” I ask, then quickly add, “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. And it doesn’t matter.”
She bites her lips and says, “It’s okay... It was with his ex-girlfriend.”
“Mandy?” I ask, recalling April’s Facebook obsession with Rob’s high school girlfriend and how ridiculous I thought she was being at the time.
“Yes. Mandy,” she says, her voice dropping an octave.
“But. . . doesn’t she live in one of the Dakotas?” I say.
She nods. “They reconnected at their twenty-year reunion,” she says, making quotes around reconnected. “The Fargo-sounding whorebag.”
“How do you know? Are you sure?” I ask, envisioning a scene like the one following Nick’s walk in the Common.
“I read about fifty back-and-forth e-mails. And let’s just say ... they left very little to the imagination. He might as well have taken pictures . . .”
“Oh, April,” I say, letting go of any residual resentment toward her—for her call, for her condescending tone when she told me about Nick being spotted by Romy (a tone that was likely in my head), and most of all, for what I believed to be her perfect life. My mind races as I try to remember any time last year when April was less than her cool, collected self—but come up empty-handed. “I had no idea,” I say.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” she says.
“No one?” I ask. “Not even your sister? Or mother?”
She shakes her head again. “Not even my therapist,” she says, releasing a nervous laugh. “I just stopped going to her . . . I was too embarrassed to tell her.”
“Shit,”I say, exhaling hard. “Do they all cheat?”
April looks out the window into the backyard and shrugs despondently.
“How did you get through it?” I ask, hoping to at least glean an alternative route to the one my mother took.
“We haven’t,” she says.
“But you’re together.”
“Cheaply,” she says. “We haven’t had sex in nearly a year . . . We sleep in separate beds . . . We haven’t even been out to dinner alone . . . And I . . . basically despise him.”
“April,” I say, reaching out for her hand. “That’s no way to live . . . Did you . . . Is he sorry? Do you ever consider forgiving him?” I ask, as if it’s a simple matter of choice.
She shakes her head. “He’s sorry. Yes. But I can’t forgive him. I just. . . can’t.”
“Well, then,” I say, hesitating, thinking of my father, then Rob, then Nick. “Do you ever consider leaving him? Ending things?”
She bites her lip and says, “No. I’m not going to do that. My marriage is a joke, but I don’t want to lose my whole life because of what he did. And I don’t want to do that to my children, either.”
“You could start over,” I say, knowing that it’s not nearly as easy as I’m making it sound. That dissolving a marriage is one of the hardest things a person can go through. I know this because I saw it firsthand with my parents—and because I’ve been imagining it every day, nearly every hour, since Nick dropped his little bomb on me.