Who Is Rich?

“We can make each other’s lives endurable, and even better, we can be more loving and kind to them. We can do that for each other.” She was determined, and seemed to be steering us back on course.

I had to admit that the bulk of our emailing had been tame. In our diligent way, we’d tried to know each other. Contemplating this woman from a distance, commiserating, holding her firmly in my mind, responding humanely, tuning in to that shimmering idea had required faith. Thinking about her was an escape, but the sheer volume of time and energy had turned it into a kind of meditation, at times approaching bliss. Although it was also a recipe for fragmentation and unrequited horniness and misery, an overwrought emotional substitute for love.

“We can trust it without challenging the other, without disrupting our lives. With you on my side, I think I can handle anything.”

“Sure.” This was more of the same old baloney. My love for her made her strong. Loving me helped her fuck him. I sat up and took off my sneakers and poured out the sand. I could hear it sifting through the cracks of the floorboards, into the apartment below.

I had to figure it out. What the hell, I guess I didn’t want to die. The shame of this undertaking became enmeshed with the mechanics of survival. If it was a choice between hanging myself and making a comic about this crap, I might as well give it a whirl. I’d sign up for another year as her emotional waste dump, affording her this sense of camaraderie, so she’d be nicer to him and not think anymore about leaving. We’d learn to live with nothing, we’d give this to each other, it would be our sacrifice.

“I guess I thought I could train him,” she said. “I thought I could handle it.” She associated his unyielding stupidity with masculine power. “But I need someone, too.”

“Tell me everything.”

She went on listing complaints, fresh ones I hadn’t heard before: hadn’t packed his own suitcase in years, couldn’t be bothered to carry his plate to the sink, or change a diaper, or change a lightbulb. “I have to put his clubs in the car like I’m his fucking caddy.” The Escalade sat outside his office all day, motor running, blocking traffic, emitting greenhouse gases. Took the jet to Miami or Cleveland even though there were thirty-five commercial flights a day.

“Two years ago, he took the fund public without telling me. I’m on the board. He had to forge my signature.” I started rubbing her rib cage, to soothe and embolden her. “I’m a trustee. I’m legally responsible.” I nodded. She was talking about a $20 billion entity. “Don’t get me started on the island he rented for half a mil to go surfing for two days with his regulatory compliance team.”

“Holy shit.”

“My kids don’t even look up when he walks through the door at night. Does that seem odd to you? Seems odd to me….” She went on like that. I don’t think she was aware of rationalizing her own behavior. I think she believed his actions were indefensible and beyond retribution. When she lifted her good arm, I remembered the bracelet as it slid and turned slightly. My daughter’s pre-K tuition: shiny, subterranean, luminous in the dark.

There was something going on between the three of us, between him and her and me. I couldn’t figure out how this thing worked, whether I was being used for their marital enjoyment, or she was being used for his sadistic pleasure, or he was being used for ours. I had a fear that one of us would collide with the other two and end up dead, most likely me. His abuse seemed to satisfy some need in her. Maybe it made her feel different from all those stuck-up assholes at her country club. It gave her a sense of control in an otherwise untethered abundance. Or it made her feel saintly, or it was her miserable Irish suffering, or she dug the whole mentality. I’m abused, I’m an outcast, I’m misunderstood.

“From the start, I knew it was wrong. I had to do something, but I all I could do was lie there. Then kids come. Life is busy. But nothing’s changed. The years go by. A couple weeks ago, I set up the thing for our burial plots.”

“Oh, bunny.” I raised her sleeveless shirt and opened her bra.

“He’s right next to me,” she said. “I’m stuck with him forever.” She sighed, her body sliding against mine. “I asked him point-blank how he’d feel if someone treated his daughters the way he treats me, which is always a good way to end the conversation. He got up and walked out of the room. He doesn’t know how to act. He never had a girlfriend. He grew up in a house where no one paid attention to him, and figured it all out on his own, and now everybody wants him and he doesn’t need anybody.” I put my hand down her shorts. “When I met you, I’d been praying for some way to get through it. I thought I could start all over again. But now it’s worse, because I know how good it could be. I’m sad all the time, dreaming of a life without him, and I was sad last night, waiting for you to text me, and I was a mess when you left my room today.”

“Me, too.”

“Keep doing that.” I did. “But while I lay there talking to my roommates, your come was running down my thighs, spilling out, dripping down, and I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I was happy to feel that. It was beautiful. I didn’t want to go home, but I thought I should, to get away from you. And that’s another problem,” she said. “It hurts here, under my ribs, all the time.”

“Same.”

“The only time I can breathe is when you’re inside me.”

I pulled off my shorts. “You can leave him.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll help you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “But we can go away, somewhere, for a weekend, just the two of us.”

“We already are somewhere.”

“Somewhere else,” she said. “There’s a beach on Minorca I want to show you.” I yanked off her shorts. “I love international flights. I love the whole thing, the international terminal, arrivals and departures, everybody making out at the gate!” We were excited, pretending together. I’d been here before, hoping, believing. My hope was completely dead but somehow still strong, marching with zombie power and conviction, trampling my sanity. But then she gave me that chastising, serious, injured-gymnast look.

“Even if I’m alone for the rest of my life, I’ll never be as sad and lonely as I am now, married to him.”

I guess this kind of talk was therapeutic. She was smiling, although the ponytail had come undone, and in the shadow inside her hair it was a sad smile. Beyond sad. Disturbed. “We don’t need him,” she said. “I told Lily right in front of him, ‘Never let a man treat you the way Daddy treats me.’?” That line of thinking seemed to revive her. She turned toward me. “Will you do me a favor? Don’t sleep with anyone else after I’m gone, or at least don’t bring her here. It’s our place now.”

“Stop.” I was sad too, and that she couldn’t tell how sad I was made me sadder.

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