I watched her wash her hands. I started filling the dishwasher with the dirty dishes. I found the wooden stirring spoon she had used, still covered with batter, and licked it thoughtfully. “You know, ‘What was that like for you? Why do you think that happened?’ I felt like he really saw me for who I was, not just the surface of me but all of me.”
Amy took the spoon and tossed it in the sink. “Stop that. You can get salmonella.” She pushed up her glasses with her middle finger. “Well, he may be good at listening, but he’s not that adept at remembering. He’s had the same conversation with me three times. He asks me exactly the same questions each time and reacts with the same amount of surprise at just the right moment too. And he talks on and on, like one big monologue.”
My face grew tight and I jerked back, surprised and angry. “What do you know? With those loser boys you fall in love with, sneaking around Ma and Pa as if they didn’t already suspect.”
She flinched, her mouth falling open. The moment I saw the hurt flash in her eyes, I was sorry. That was me, lip service to how great Amy was one moment and putting her down the next. No wonder she had such low self-esteem. When she was little, Amy had once run up to a girl who called me Chinkerbell on the street and kicked her hard in the shins.
But now, of course, I realized she was right about Jim. I had been blind. He had seemed warm and kind but he did it to be admired and loved, not out of any true generosity of the soul. He was not that observant either. More than once, we had fought because he was much more social than I was. Like a golden retriever, he loved everyone, or at least wanted them to admire him, whereas I did not have much use for most people. I networked when I had to but never wanted to waste my own time listening to others trying to impress me—and most thought I was cold and stiff anyway.
How could two people move so far away from each other without ever sensing it? How could they lose each other while seeing each other every day?
It started when I found the leopard-print thong mixed in our laundry. It has to be a mistake, I thought. Was it mine somehow? Or Amy’s? Was Jim secretly a cross-dresser? But the part of me that had always relied on no one but myself took over. I hid the thong from him. I controlled the part of me that wanted to confront him immediately because I knew that if I did, I would never have proof.
I started making mistakes at work. I could keep only so much of myself under control—sloppy errors, forgotten emails, unprepared-for important presentations, incomplete financial records. When my engagement manager, Martin, asked if something was going on at home, I lied and said no. I could not admit the truth to anyone because I could barely face it myself.
I did not find anything on Jim’s electronics, so I finally added spy programs to his laptop and his phone to log every keystroke. I watched him with the hundred eyes of Argos. I was the technical one in our relationship and had set up all our gadgets. I had given myself access so I could recover our information if Jim ever inadvertently locked himself out, which he had done before. Meanwhile, I smiled at him as if my heart were not breaking inside.
It did not take long. A colleague on the verge of a divorce had once said to me: If a man takes his phone with him into the bathroom or to shower at night, watch out. But when Jim had started doing those things, I had rationalized them away. I had been completely taken in.
The text messages came in as I was preparing to leave for a late morning meeting. First from her: Got my phone back today. Thinking of licking u, this math class’s so boring. Then his response: You make me lose my mind. The cold rose from the floor to meet me, as if I were falling. First the betrayal, that my Jim could do this to me, and then the slow realization that the other “woman” was a child of sixteen. I had sunk to our unrelenting living room floor, my entire life disintegrating around me, all the pieces flying away like leaves from a tree.
In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories. We are the ultimate unreliable narrators. If we desire to forgive someone, we tell ourselves one version—he did not mean it, he is sorry and will never do it again. And when we are finally ready to walk away, something else—he has always been a lying bastard, I never should have trusted him and you could always see the lie in his eyes. That day, I called in sick to work and read their texts to each other, each one dropping like a brick against the wounded flesh of my heart. I waited for Jim to come home. He was late. He stopped short when he saw me sitting at the table with my computer open, my head leaning back against the wall of our kitchen. I turned the screen to show him the record of his text messages.
I did not need to say a word. His face froze and slowly flushed a deep red. Then all of my composure left me and I started to keen like an animal: Sylvie, who hated to cry. He came over and held me in his arms and I let him. He, the man I had allowed into the most intimate, hidden part of myself, still felt comforting.
I kept saying, “You cheated on me, you cheated on me,” as if to convince myself.
“Oh my God, Sylvie, what have I done? I am so sorry. It’s over, honey. I’ll never see her again.”
For a few minutes, we formed a truce in which we held each other. Until the memory of what I had seen that day crawled into my mind. I’m counting the hours until we can be together again. Nothing else matters when I’m with you.
I pulled away, still heaving as I spoke. “I can’t believe you did this.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Please believe me. I don’t love her. You were always gone and she was there, and I missed you so. She was just a stand-in for you, for the way things were with us.”
But instead of mollifying me, this only enraged me further. I jabbed my finger in his face, my voice rising. “A sixteen-year-old girl could take my place? I looked her up. She’s a student at your school, Jim. She’s half your age. What the hell are you doing?”
He froze, and then gripped the sides of his head as if he could block out my words. He groaned. “What a goddamn mess. There’s no excuse. I know. It’s just you’re always so competent, so brilliant at everything. You don’t really need me.”
I pounded my fist against my thigh. “And this child did. You can’t handle a successful woman, so you had to find a girl who thinks you’re really something. Fuck you.”
His jaw hardened and a cold, hard glint flashed in his eyes. “Sylvie, don’t do anything rash. I could lose my job.”
He dared to warn me? “Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you decided to have an affair with a minor?” I was almost yelling. The neighbors must be having a fit. I pressed my nails into my skin so hard I was afraid I would start bleeding. He should suffer as much as me. “Don’t underestimate me, Jim. I’ll see you pay for this.”
“You vindictive bitch,” he said, and slapped me across the face so hard my head slammed against the wall. I fell onto the floor, stunned by the blow, my vision unfocused. It was all too much. How had this happened? How could this be real? I curled in on myself, sobbing.
There was a slam and he was gone.
Chapter 20
Amy
Sunday, May 8
It’s Mother’s Day morning and Lukas’s real grandma and grandpa are coming to visit. Lukas calls his grandmother Oma and his grandfather Opa in the Dutch way, so I do the same, in accordance with the Chinese tradition of following along in naming family. Oma is tiny and round with a fritz of hair she dyes jet-black. Opa is only a bit taller, but skinnier and white-haired. They remind me of a set of matching garden gnomes.