“So?” In spite of the fact that most of his brain was feeling colossally aggrieved, the last shred of his logical mind couldn’t help but want her to finish her fucking sentence. So what? The lack of apology was maddening. Not the lack of apology, but the crazy conviction that this complete disaster was somehow his fault. And his failure to fall to his knees and beg her for forgiveness was even more reason for her to heap blame on his unworthy head. His many years feeding at the malign teat of gender sensitivity rose in his chest like bile. Those everlasting feminists needed to take a lesson from Van. All that moaning about injustice and patriarchy and victimhood? She could teach them a thing or two about how to avoid that bullshit.
“So I don’t see the need to belabor this,” Van sighed, full of disappointed regret. “I would not have broken up our family in this way,” she informed him. It was a phenomenal performance. “I didn’t choose this.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t choose it!”
“That’s my point, Kyle, neither one of us chose this.”
“And yet only one of us cheated.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, Van. I am not the one who went out and decided to have a child with another person.”
“You would if you could.”
“What? What, what on earth—”
“Don’t act all, don’t—”
“What are you accusing me of?”
“You know what I’m accusing you of, and I don’t think, frankly, I don’t think you should make me say it.”
“Make you say what?”
“You know.” The accusation was profound.
This was all going so wrong. Well, because she’s insane. Is this a surprise, that she’s insane? She’s not insane. Then what is insanity/ what is it/ she’s right you’ve been unfaithful/ never/ she knows/ I should go to bed have to get up at four Lord Jesus Christ.
“Dennis told me.”
The strangeness of this was perhaps the only thing that reached him. The room was so dark, so still. The one light on the bedside table beside him, beside the closed door, really made no impression at all, on the darkness. If she hadn’t been wearing that absurd white dress, she would have been invisible, a black hole, nothing.
“Dennis told you, told you what?”
“Now who’s lying?”
“I don’t know, Van. I guess you think I’m lying but the fact is I don’t know what you’re talking about, what did Dennis tell you?”
“You are still in love with her! When you married me, you were still in love with her, and that wasn’t fair, Kyle. Not to me, not to the girls, to bring them into a loveless home was not fair to any of us.” She was so aggrieved he thought his head would explode. The only thing to do, the only thing he could even think of doing, was to stick so excruciatingly to the facts that the hope of reality might hover around this nightmare of a confrontation.
“I assume you are referring to Alison Moore.”
“Yes, you assume correctly.” The sarcasm was dripping with timeless indignation.
“I have not seen or spoken to Alison in a year. It’s more than that now, I haven’t seen or spoken to her since that stupid dinner party, so I don’t know what Dennis told you—”
“He told me the truth. That you had sex with her, up in his father’s bedroom, you had sex with her while I was pregnant—”
“What—”
“That you are still obsessed with her, that you go over to his place, you lie to me and go over to his apartment and watch her, you make him tape the shows and then you watch her having sex—”
“That is completely ridiculous. It’s beyond ridiculous. I have been completely faithful to you, I am not the one who cheated.” That shut her up. He decided to stick with a winning strategy and just repeat it. “I am not the one who cheated, Van. I never cheated on you. You are carrying someone else’s baby. You cannot make this my fault.”
“You never loved me. Our marriage was never a real marriage.”
“Well, that’s interesting, because it certainly feels like a real marriage.” There was another silence at this. He didn’t know if that meant he was winning or losing. He didn’t know which would be better. “So Dennis told you all this shit—”
“The truth, you mean?”
“Whatever. Why were you off gossiping about me with Dennis?”
“It wasn’t gossiping—”
“Is he the one, he’s the one you slept with?”
“Oh, please. That’s disgusting.”
“That’s disgusting? None of the rest of this—”
“You are so distorting this situation.”
“How would that be possible, Van, seriously, I don’t see how I could possibly distort this any further.”
“I did not sleep with Dennis. He’s your friend. I would never do that.”
“But you would have another man’s baby.”
“I knew you would say that.”
“Say what?”
“All your Catholic righteousness, it flies right out the window when it’s convenient. Well, let me tell you something. I am not getting an abortion. I would never do that. I would never, never do that.”
“Did I ask you to?”
“Didn’t you? What is my choice? If you don’t want me to have another man’s baby, what does that mean? That I should kill it? Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not, I’m just—trying to get to the bottom of this!”
“That’s not what you’re trying to do.”
“What am I trying to do then?”
“If you had come to our marriage with a pure heart, none of this would have happened. If you had tried to love me. But you never did, it is so apparent to everyone, and our marriage never even existed and I want a divorce and an annulment.”
“An annulment?”