Ruthanne sent her daughter to live with Aunt Peg in Hartford. Peg was older than Ruthanne by six years and had managed to land a husband in the insurance business. They had three children, all away at boarding school, and they reluctantly agreed to do the same for their niece. Charlotte never went home again.
Tom did not know about her life with her mother and Greg.
You can understand now Charlotte’s need to repair her house. I imagine there are those of you thinking more of this, that perhaps Charlotte’s insistence on giving Jenny the treatment was because she had something in her past that was sexually perverse. But you would be wrong. Charlotte saw that night on the sofa as a seduction, an act of desire and the beginning of a love affair. Still, she understood that her relationship with her stepfather was “unconventional” and “morally questionable.” It is for those reasons that she did not share this story with anyone—not even her husband.
But this is not the secret that Charlotte feared her mother-in law could see.
Chapter Six
Getting back to Jenny and the night she sat on her bed— Tom’s employer was Bob Sullivan. Bob owned twelve car dealerships throughout the state of Connecticut and had a net worth of over twenty million dollars. His face could be seen on any number of billboards on I-95 from Stamford to Mystic, and throughout every town that still allowed them. You would remember seeing him up there, his full head of black hair, determined eyes, big white smile, and rounded nose. Bob Sullivan was a self-made man, the kind whom magazines liked to write about. The kind who was so bursting with himself, it seemed a miracle he didn’t explode like a struck pi?ata and litter confetti across the sky. Bob Sullivan lived in Fairview. He had a “plus-sized” wife and three sons who were being groomed to run the family business. He always drove the latest model of something, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche. He ate a paleo diet and drank red wine without constraint. He was generous but also ambitious, with his sights set upon a seat in the state legislature.
And he was having an affair with Charlotte Kramer.
We tend to think we know why people have affairs. Their marriage is bad, but they can’t leave because of the kids. They have sexual needs that aren’t being filled. They’re victims of seduction, their self-control overcome by human desires. None of these were true for Charlotte.
Charlotte Kramer was two people. She was the Smith graduate with a degree in literature. She was the former assistant editor of Connecticut magazine and now the stay-at-home mother to two lovely children, the wife of Tom Kramer, whose family were scholars and teachers. She was the member of the Fairview Country Club who was known for her impeccable manners and extensive vocabulary. She had built her house carefully, and it was a good, moral, and admired house.
No one knew the other Charlotte Kramer, the girl who’d slept with her mother’s husband and was forced to leave home. No one knew that her relatives were uneducated alcoholics who lived hard and died young. She was the girl who took off her clothes every night for a man nearly twice her age who smelled of cigarettes and poor hygiene. No one knew any of this—except for Bob Sullivan. Charlotte had put that girl in a cage. But over time, that girl had started to rattle the bars until she could no longer be ignored. Bob Sullivan was Charlotte’s way of recognizing her, of keeping her calm in her imprisonment. It was her way of being whole as she lived half a life as Charlotte Kramer of Fairview.
When I’m with Bob, I’m that girl again. That dirty girl who gets turned on by bad things. Bob is a good man, but we’re both married, so what we’re doing is bad. I don’t know how to explain it. I have worked very hard to live a “right” life. Do you know what I mean? To not think the bad thoughts and stop myself from having the bad behavior. But it’s always there, this craving. Like a closet smoker, you know? Someone who’s mostly quit and who would sooner die than have the world know she smokes, but then she sneaks one precious cigarette a day. Just one. And that’s enough to satisfy the craving. Bob is my one cigarette.
You may judge Charlotte Kramer for her one cigarette. For having secret cravings that she cannot control. For not telling the whole truth. For not letting her husband know his whole wife. And for your judging of Charlotte Kramer, I shall have to judge you a hypocrite.