“My motor is always running,” she would say. “Always.”
While she wasn’t a lot of things, what she really wasn’t was Mary, my poor stressed-out, always exhausted, always overwhelmed, and increasingly depressed and bitter wife. The constant demands of Ethan had turned our home into a tense and sad battlefield, and my months with Rita were an escape. When Rita and I bumped elbows at the elliptical station, I was going through my own particularly bitter phase. Ethan was becoming impossible, and my affair, I concluded later, was probably an attempt to even the score with life. Driving to our liaisons, I would rationalize/justify what I was doing: I had not asked for Ethan. This never-ending burden was given to me, so I deserved some pleasure. And I was sticking it out at home, when other men surely would have cut and run. At the very least, I had this coming. In fact, my times with Rita, stolen afternoons when Mary thought I was at the gym, was really for the best since they rejuvenated me, helped me cope.
It was bullshit, but I bought it for a while. It was also very out of character for me. Up until then, I only had eyes for Mary.
I broke things off with Rita one rainy June afternoon. We had just completed the act, when Mary called me. I didn’t answer, but seeing her name on my phone with Rita lying naked next to me shook me to my senses. Mary didn’t deserve this. Things were bad enough. Neither, for that matter, did Rita, who, at her core, was a decent person.
I dressed quickly, went home, and impulsively confessed all to Mary. A few hours later I was back at the hotel, but this time, alone. I stayed in room 112, right across from the ice machine, for three months until I found an affordable and depressing one-bedroom condo next to the Stone Avenue train station and just a few blocks from home.
It was there that I began my quest to set things right. I actually went to church for a long string of Sundays, actually said confession to a priest (I used the word adultery there), and was overly helpful with Ethan, frequently taking him on days that Mary was supposed to have him. On Friday nights, I came by and took out the garbage and the recycling bins; on Saturday mornings, I cut the grass, edged the bushes. I also attended support groups for parents of special-needs children so I could learn coping mechanisms other than cheating on your spouse. In between these acts of contrition, I wrote letter after letter apologizing to Mary, emphasizing, in no particular order, my stupidity and my love. She never acknowledged any of those letters.
Over time, I made progress, baby steps first, then more recently big-boy steps. Mary and I began having breakfast with Ethan, and we took him for walks in the evening after dinner. A few weeks back I sent her flowers on her birthday, and she surprisingly thanked me with a brief voice mail when she knew I was out. But progress was still slow, and time was slipping away; I wanted my wife back.
She was more than worth the effort: Mary was the quiet girl who stood off in the corner at parties taking it all in; the smart girl who graduated second in her class at law school; the hard-to-figure-out girl who secretly read trashy romance novels; the no-frills girl who, other than a pair of “lucky” half-moon earrings, didn’t wear or even like jewelry; the dark-eyed, olive-skinned pretty girl who looked wonderful first thing in the morning, and even better late at night.
Smart and a little mysterious, funny and plenty tough, she had been my sweet-sweetie since senior year at the U of I, been my trusted partner in life, and I had torched it all with low-wattage Rita.
Rita. Why she was calling me now, I had no idea. We hadn’t spoken in close to two years. But there was her number on my phone, and there was her breathless message, pleading and urgent, on my voice mail: “John, I need to talk to you. Please call.”
I replayed the message one more time, put the phone down, considered, then decided to sigh. A moment later I heard a stir and glanced over at the other bed. Ethan was finally awake, studying me with large brown eyes from under a mess of blankets.
“Top of the morning,” I said.
My phone buzzed again. Rita again.
“Do. Now?” Ethan asked.
I stared at my buzzing phone. “Funny, I was about to ask you the very same thing.”
*
At the parents support group, we referred to bad days with our children as “survive and advance.” Days that you did anything you could just to get by. Days that the anger and frustration and hopelessness overwhelmed you. Days that you felt sorry for no one but yourself, when you contemplated terrible acts, when you just plain flat-out hated the world and went so far as to wish bad things on other people just so they could be as miserable as you. Endless days.