Caroline Westmont entered my office at three o’clock sharp, dressed impeccably in Chanel from sunglasses to shoes. She looked completely together until she lowered her shades to reveal puffy, tear-stained eyes. I remembered those days of constant crying. Having to hide it from my children, as she may be trying to hide it from hers. My poor dog, Franny, saw a lot of tears that first year. I was sometimes surprised that she didn’t take a piece out of Derek when she saw him. Aside from suggesting that they get a dog, I always wanted to tell clients, “You’ll be fine. Look at me—I was once where you are and I’m doing great!” But that’s not my place. I’m not a shrink, and in this job I learned quickly that similar situations often yield different outcomes. Not everyone feels the same way about infidelity that I did. For me there was no turning back. But there are many couples who come out the other end and stay till death do them part—that death, hopefully, not by the hand of the scorned spouse.
As always, I asked for the entire story of John and Caroline Westmont. She relayed the brutal tale in its entirety, and as usual in cases like this, it struck a chord. They always did when it came to one spouse cheating on another. It was hard work for me not always to assume the worst, especially when it comes to men. I don’t want to become one of those bitter, untrusting women. And as a professional I certainly don’t want to come across that way. I work hard to keep an open mind and to pass judgment only on evidence and facts. But in this case the facts were simple.
Caroline was positive that her husband was cheating on her with his masseuse but had no evidence to back it up. When they had married, nearly twelve years earlier, she had signed an ironclad prenuptial agreement with only one stipulation: if either party cheated, the prenup became invalid. At the time she had been insulted that his family was making her sign a prenup, and they had fought about it a lot. John came from a very wealthy, old-money family that was dead set on it. After much back-and-forth, one compromise was agreed upon: the infidelity clause. They agreed that if John were to have an extramarital affair, he would have to pay Caroline an additional $5 million in the divorce. She signed the papers a week before the wedding.
It was a beautiful wedding at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the newlyweds moved into an apartment just down the block on 116th Street. It was small compared to the sixteen-room apartment on Fifth Avenue where John had grown up, but it was close to his job, and they felt very bohemian. As she told the story I wondered what had caused her transformation, as bohemian was the last word I would use to describe her.
John was a professor of film at Columbia University. About five years into the marriage, when their daughter Chlo? was two, John’s parents died together in a horrible car accident on the Amalfi Coast. (If you’ve ever driven on that road, you have most likely pictured a similar fate befalling you.) When the dust settled, John, Caroline, and Chlo? moved into his parents’ Fifth Avenue apartment. From then on things quickly changed. The money had always been there, but they had never needed or spent it; now it infiltrated their lives. John’s parents’ staff waited like puppies at a pound to see if they were to keep their jobs. Of course they kept them; John and Caroline felt it was their duty. The moldings needed dusting and the twenty-four-seat dining room table screamed out to be set and sat at. “So,” Caroline said, “I rose to the occasion. At first it was a big adjustment for me to be that social. John is really the more social of the two of us. But I loved John, and I did my best to embrace my new role.”
Fast-forward through seven years of smiling while hosting cocktail parties for the parents of Chlo?’s classmates at Spence, faculty dinners for John’s Columbia colleagues, and luncheons for the Junior League, and Caroline seemed happy and settled in her inherited role. Until the day when a hard-bodied masseuse named Anna entered the picture and misaligned the stars.
I had to interrupt. “Hold on, Caroline—you’re telling me John is a professor at Columbia and you think he’s been faithful all this time? I mean, coeds and professors—it’s a cliché for a reason.”
She thought about it before responding. “That’s too obvious for John. He likes to come across as so good. He wouldn’t want anyone to think otherwise, especially at Columbia.”
“He sounds like a hypocrite,” I said.