make sense?”
“Yeah. You know…” I laugh a little. “…you weren’t the only one feeling that way. But I wanted to be your friend first and I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to push you for anything more. But you seemed…”
“…Reluctant?” she says, finishing my sentences like she’s done so many times in our life before. “I was. I didn’t know if I could trust you, trust the changes you were making. You have to admit, Judd, you made a lot of promises in the past and they didn’t last. But the more I saw that you’d changed the more that reluctance washed away and I was free to trust you again. And once I started trusting you, then I could love you again. Really love you.”
“I didn’t realise that I was being watched so closely.”
She smiles and nods, then yawns. “I’m tired.”
“Sure.”
She stands and stretches. She heads down to our room while I clean up and turn off the lights. She’s in bed by the time I’m heading into the shower and asleep when I come out. I was hoping to make love to her tonight. I felt I was ready. But she is exhausted and I don’t have the heart to wake her.
I switch off her lamp and slide in quietly next to her and close my eyes. I pray for her, like she has been doing for me. I don’t know if anyone will hear me. I don’t know if there is a god up there listening and I don’t care. I pray to the universe or fate or god. I want her to be happy and to have all the best things in life. I want her to have wonder and love and joy and security. If I can give her those things, then I will with all my power. And I want her to be strong and healthy, and I want our baby to grow inside her, protected and loved. I fall into sleep praying life into her, into us.
Saturday
“So,” Grant says, sitting back in his chair, “any thoughts you have from the workshop? Any parts you liked or challenged you?”
Quinn nods. Takes a breath. “The talk on the vows.”
“What about them,” Mary asks her. I’d realised pretty early on how the Uptons worked. Grant was in my corner and Mary, Quinn’s. But it was not a boxing match between rivals. We fought together as a tag team, pounding the thoughts and habits and behaviours that railed against us.
“Well...” She hesitates. I squeeze her hand. We’re sitting close now and out hands are locked together. I won’t let her go and I won’t let her have pain without letting her know I’m there and I understand. I guess it will be like that when she gives birth. I’ll be there holding her hand and she’ll be squeezing mine until it goes white and purple.
“Well I remembered that I broke the vows I made to Judd. I realize just what that meant. I made some really important promises and I threw them away.” I can hear voice catch a little. “But I kept them for the better, but not the worst. I left him when I should have fought, tried to make him know I was hurting and try and fix us. And I can’t forgive myself. I know that Judd has, but I can’t.”
She looks down into her lap, away from my eyes. I think she can’t bear to see pain behind them.
“Well, let’s talk about that,” Mary says quietly. “I think it’s about time you tell us about your affair.”
I let her go and she sighs. “I guess we had to come to that sooner or later.”
She hesitates and Mary sees this. Quinn’s counsellor leans forward and takes Quinn’s hand.
“I don’t know what to say,” my struggling wife confesses. “I mean, I’ve told Judd this story, but not everything. I don’t want to hurt him again by reliving all of this. So what do I say?”
Mary smiles reassuringly – a well-practiced and effective gesture. “You know, we only have one rule here?”
“Honesty,” Quinn says with a sad little nod.
“Honesty,” Mary repeats.
“Honesty it is then,” Quinn says and takes a deep breath.
I’ve heard this story. She told me some of it the night I came home. It was hard then. It is hard now. But at least there were no surprises. That’s what I’m thinking anyway, because she’s had time to think hard about what happened, really think. Mary may have set that kind of assignment, or Quinn could have got stuck on it, mulling it over. So now there are a lot of things I haven’t heard - a lot of thoughts and feelings she telling me for the first time. She knows it too, because she’s turned to face me and I turn as well. She telling me and her eyes are running. Mine are too a little, but I don’t cry.
I listen.
I’d just got through the toughest year of my life. I guess I wasn’t through it though, not really. I was still grieving, I know that now. I was still getting over losing our baby and I hadn’t grieved him properly. I hadn’t grieved with Judd because he was moving on to another baby right after we lost him and I wasn’t in that place. And then, when I couldn’t give him that baby, he sort of gave up on me. In some ways I thought that I’d failed him and that he’d move on to someone else who could give him a baby, abandon me like I’d always feared he would. I know that wasn’t true, but that’s how I felt. He’d stopped seeing me, stopped touching me. He was shutting down, disconnecting. I lost him, and that was the hardest thing of all.
It started with the smallest of glances, the faintest of touches. It took me a while to even realise that I was flirting with him, and I guess it was the same for him. Maybe I’ve been flirting with him for years, but it was innocent then. I know Wade from what Judd had told me about him, but I suppose that I’d never seen that sort of behaviour from him, not while we were in company. He can be charming, and I think that I kind of forgot that he uses that to talk women into sleeping with him.
Judd and I... we weren’t talking all that much. He hardly touched me and I was missing that – that human touch that says that I’m loved and worth loving. I didn’t feel that for so long. I told him, over and over again. He promised that he’d change, that he’d pay more attention to me, and he did for a while. I’d scream at him, but the more I did the less he say. And around and around we’d go, never getting any better, and all the while, with each turn, I’d lose a little bit of myself until in the end I couldn’t even recognise myself anymore. And all of the things that mattered to me before – like honesty and loyalty – didn’t seem to matter anymore. It became easy to entertain the idea of lying and cheating because the me that cared about those things was all but gone.
I’m regretting that time, even though I’m having trouble remembering it. I can’t focus on it like I can for the moment I walked in on her and Wade. Regardless there is shame welling up in me, because I know that I neglected her.
I don’t know when I first thought of him as something more than a friend. I think it was gradual. I think that the looks and the flirting and the...
She turns her face from me for a second and I can see the smallest of tears starting to run down her cheek.
...the touching got more and more. It was a risk, every time, and I can remember how my heart used to beat when I was with him. I remember how alive I felt.
She takes a deep breath.
But I loved Judd. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was disappointed with me. And every time I was with Wade – I guess we were starting to talk to each other alone now – I felt that I was disappointing Judd even more. And things were hard at home, really hard. It seemed that every word we spoke to each other was angry or sarcastic or maybe just a little cruel. I know it wasn’t always that way, we went in cycles, you know, when things were better, but we’d always go back to the same place. But with Wade it wasn’t like that. He listened. He saw me, when Judd seemed to just look away.
And then... Then I met him, alone. We met someplace we wouldn’t get recognised. I can’t remember where. I was upset. Judd had... Well, he said something that upset me and I needed someone to talk to. I’m crying. I’m crying into his shoulder and then I look up and... and I kiss him.
She starts to cry again. Is it a remembering how she felt at that time, or is it shame?
It was only for a second, maybe two. And I felt so bad about it. I couldn’t look at Ju
dd after. And then we met again to talk about it. I was going to tell him that it was wrong and that I loved my husband and he was Judd’s friend and then... But I kept looking at him and I kept thinking that Wade is the one that cares for me and that I kind of care for him. He was so empty, so... alone.
I couldn’t stop. I was looking for any chance to see him. Wade was making me feel things that I hadn’t felt for a long time. There was no miscarriage. There was no grief with him. He spoke kindly to me. I felt loved and cared for. I didn’t feel like that at home.
My head is down. Tears a forming. This is my crime. This is how I drove her away. This is my fault.
And it was getting too much. I was drawn to him. I don’t remember how I got there, I don’t remember making a conscious decision, but there I was standing at the door to his apartment. I could feel the anticipation. I knew that it was wrong. Part of me was screaming in my head saying turn around, run away, but I wasn’t listening. I rang his bell and there he was, standing there in the doorway. I stepped in and kissed him again and then we...
...you slept with him, I thought. You gave yourself to him and left me behind.
After, all I had was this terrible shame. I went home and there was Judd, just watching the television, like he didn’t even know I was gone. And he didn’t know that I was gone from then on.
And that’s the