For Graham, the road was clearly signposted in two-glass intervals, and the brake was always within easy reach. The first drink was unbeatable: delicious, relaxing, restorative—practically medicinal. He had read that alcohol didn’t enter your bloodstream for twenty minutes after the first sip, but everyone knew that was nonsense; it started working as soon as you poured it into the glass.
The second glass was nearly as good as the first, and this was what Graham thought of as the Relaxed Stage. During the third glass, he passed smoothly into the Euphoric Stage. He could almost read the sign, white letters on a reflective green background: WELCOME TO EUPHORIA. It was a mellow, blissful kind of euphoria, but euphoria nonetheless. Words flowed more freely, his outlook was brighter, his muscles more relaxed. Sometimes Graham could extend his stay in Euphoria to three glasses by eating dinner—like pulling into a scenic overlook on the road to drunkenness, he supposed. He and Elspeth cooked elaborate meals—crab jambalaya or lamb shank ragù—and the food could stabilize his sobriety level, at least briefly. Between the fourth and fifth glasses, Graham entered the Mildly Confused State—the country road had sharper turns now, more yellow warning signs, even guardrails. Sometimes Graham was aware that he could not remember a particular word, or realized that he had no idea what time it was. But these were small things. Between the sixth and seventh glasses, Graham would reach a stoplight that flashed red and warned him to go to bed. If he passed that light, he would be sorry the next day, so he almost never did.
And so it was, one night when he was in the Mildly Confused State, and he and Elspeth were sitting on the couch after dinner. Elspeth was wearing a thin white sweater and long wide-legged pants, which made her look like a stilt walker. And yet, Graham liked them. They swirled around her legs when she moved.
Elspeth took a drink from her wineglass. Her eyes over the rim were as clear as blue bath beads.
“I always knew,” she said, “about the affair you had with that teenage typist.”
Graham’s fingers tightened on his wineglass so abruptly that he was surprised it didn’t shatter. She wasn’t a teenager and she wasn’t a typist, but Graham knew exactly who Elspeth was talking about. Her name was Marla and she had been the temporary receptionist in his office. And, well, yes, she was twenty-two, which, Graham supposed, was still young enough to see your teen years if you glanced back over your shoulder.
Marla had lived in a studio apartment with a pet iguana named Leonard, and whenever Graham came over, Leonard would inflate his dewlaps and rock back and forth on his front legs and get ready to charge. Marla said this was because Leonard thought Graham was a male iguana. Graham would have to wait in the hall while Marla chased Leonard around and forced him back into his cage, which he was outgrowing. And then Graham and Marla would have sex on Marla’s daybed while Leonard bobbed his head up and down in the background and whacked the wall of his cage with his tail. After about a month, it had begun to seem to Graham seedy rather than sexy, and Marla’s temp job ended and they stopped seeing each other. Graham almost never thought of her except for a brief time when Matthew was five and had played a song called “I Wanna Iguana” endlessly, and then Graham had thought of her—more precisely, of Leonard—all the time.
He supposed his affair with Marla was unforgivable on a lot of levels, but the absolute worst part of it was that it took place while Elspeth’s mother had been dying. Not just dying (if there is such a thing as just dying) but dying a horrible, undignified death from a series of strokes. The strokes had come quickly—the first at home, the rest in the hospital. The medical staff had been unable to prevent them, unable to do anything to shore Elspeth’s mother’s brain up as it crumbled like an eroding cliff. The last stroke had left half of her face frozen in an ugly sneer that belied her sweet nature. Elspeth’s father was dead by then, and she had no siblings, so Elspeth did everything you do when someone is in the hospital—visited and comforted and consulted and stayed awake and feared the telephone—alone. Alone except for Graham, when he wasn’t with Marla. (Which really had been hardly ever, he told himself.)
Graham swallowed. His throat made a clicking sound. “You must have hated me,” he said finally.
Elspeth looked thoughtful. “I guess I did. A little bit. For a little while. But in a way it made it easier. Well, not easier, but more straightforward. I had to rely on myself. There was no other choice.”
Graham drank the entire contents of his enormous wineglass. His mouth remained as dry as a volcanic plain.
Elspeth was still staring dreamily ahead. “And, of course,” she said, “then I fell in love with Mr. Dutka, and I could hardly hate you after that.”
“Mr. Dutka?” Graham said.
Elspeth leaned forward and refilled her wineglass.
“I know it must sound strange to you,” she said.
Strange? Strange? Mr. Dutka was an elderly Hungarian man who had lived in their apartment building when Graham and Elspeth were married. Elspeth used to do his grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and once she helped him when his umbrella had gotten stuck in the lobby’s revolving door, and that was it, as far as Graham knew. That was the extent of their involvement with Mr. Dutka. He would have bet his life on it. But evidently that would have been a mistake.
“But you weren’t—” Graham said. “It wasn’t— This was an emotional connection, right?”
“No,” said Elspeth. “We were lovers.”
“You and Mr. Dutka? Mr. Dutka, who was, like, seventy?”
“Yes,” she said. “He had incredible stamina.”
He could remember Elspeth arising early on Saturday mornings—she didn’t like to sleep in; that was yet another unrelaxing habit she had—and he could remember hearing her move about the bedroom as he slid deeper under the covers. He remembered the final soft click of the bedroom door on her way out and how that made sleeping in seem extra-decadent, yet also more pleasant—to lounge in bed while his selfless philanthropic wife went off and did some old man’s grocery shopping. Or did Graham actually remember those things? It seemed like he did. It felt like he did. But maybe he was only adding them in, now that he knew the truth. If he did know the truth. If the truth was, in fact, knowable.
“You have to understand,” Elspeth said. “No one had ever seen me as sexy before. I used to think, Well, I’ve always been slender, so I’m not one of those people who have to struggle with their weight, and then I’d think, Thank God I’m intelligent and don’t have to worry about that, and I would sort of add up all my good qualities, like being organized and well-read and self-motivated, and I’d feel so much luckier than almost everybody, and then we’d see some girl—I mean, some awful waitress with the flashiest earrings, and I’d realize all over again that I wasn’t sexy.”