Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(59)

“I went out for dinner with a woman I had met years earlier. She was one of the saddest women I have ever known. She had never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and God knows she would have told me if she had. She was sad, Chrissy, she was damaged in some fundamental way; she had never had a day of therapy, she just lived her life as a tax attorney, and we went out for dinner that night, and then I realized that she probably was an alcoholic. She had at least a bottle of wine that night, and a martini to start off with, and then— Are you listening?”

But I could tell she was. She was watching me with real interest on her face. She nodded.

“And then, for dessert, she ordered these special-made doughnuts that came with chocolate sauce you could dip them in, and as I watched her dipping these little doughnuts in this chocolate sauce I felt such a sense—I guess a sense of fear—because I was in the presence of such deep loneliness. And I thought, Yes, I am going to have that affair.

“And so I went home and wrote him just the word Yes. And he was ecstatic. And that was that.”

Chrissy turned her face to look out over the pond, and she let out a deep breath.

“But I have always thought that if I had not had dinner with that sad, sad woman that night I would not have given in to him. And so now you ask about David. And yes, David adored me, and I adored him. But was it worth it? There’s no way of judging that, Chrissy. But you see the pain that Trey caused Becka—”

“I see that she got out of a marriage she didn’t want,” Chrissy said, turning back to look at me.

I thought about that. “Okay,” I said. “But she married Trey on the rebound. And you did not.” I added, “Her marriage was different from the one you have with Michael. When you met Michael through those mutual friends, you just clicked, Chrissy, everyone could see it. And you would laugh together, remember at your wedding how that guy who gave a toast said he would hear you both laughing and laughing in the hallway of some place?”

I waited a moment, squinting at the duck pond, and then I turned back to her. “Have you told Michael any of this?”

She shook her head quickly.

“But you’re obviously not getting along. Because you want to be with someone else. Or you think you do. So listen to me more, Chrissy. This is important. Do not put this on Michael. You make the decision of what you’re going to do, but you do not need to tell him that you’re attracted to someone else. I suspect he knows this and he feels humiliated and has no idea what to do because everything he does right now you find abhorrent. If you want to leave the marriage, then leave the marriage. But if you don’t, then try to be more openhearted to your husband.”

As soon as I said this I realized she could not do that. So I said, “But I suspect you can’t do that, be openhearted to him now, because you don’t want him.”

Chrissy, who had been looking at me intently, looked away. I watched the side of her face, and she seemed no longer angry; there was a vulnerability to her face, is what I am saying.

I put my hand on her arm. After a few moments, she put her hand on mine briefly, and when she looked at me there were tears in her eyes and they began to slip down her face. She rubbed them away with the back of her hand. “Oh honey,” I said. “Honey, honey, honey.”

I waited to see if she would cry harder, and she did—briefly—and then she stopped.

“Okay, I hear you,” she said, and she stood up.



* * *



—

And then she began to sob—oh, that child sobbed!—and she sat back down and I put my arms around her, and she let me, and we sat there for a very long time while she cried and cried and cried and I kept my arms around her, sometimes kissing her head, which she had tucked down under my chin.



* * *



—

The Italian-speaking woman walked past us again.





v


I did not speak of this exchange to William that night, although I was desperate to tell him; he was staying with Estelle and Bridget out in Larchmont for two nights, he had just arrived, and then he was going back to his apartment for the first time, and I could hear in his voice how preoccupied he was with these things and so I thought: I will tell him when he gets here.



* * *





I lay on the bed with the lace curtains near me. But all I could think of was Chrissy.

Oh child!

Who was no longer a child—



* * *





I thought about William’s affairs, and I will tell you this about finding out about them:

It humbled me. It humbled me unbelievably. It brought me to my knees. And I was humbled because I had not known such a thing could happen in my own life. I had thought that this sort of thing happened to other women. I remember going to a party during this period, and I overheard two women talking about a woman whose husband had had an affair. And what I remember—it scorched me—was how both women said, Oh, come on, how could she not have known?

And then it happened to me.



* * *



—

And when I found out I had been living a parallel life, a dishonest life, it crushed me. But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, this is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger. Because I understood then how a woman could not know. It had happened, and it had happened to me.