The Wife Between Us(83)
That was what I’d tried to puzzle out during the long, empty days when Richard was at work. I’d pull out my notebook and ponder how my cell phone hang-ups had begun immediately after Richard and I had gotten engaged and only seemed to occur when he wasn’t around. I wrote about how I was certain I’d told Richard I regretted insisting Maggie had to wear the blindfold, how much that particular detail—that I’d made her cover her eyes—had bothered me. I added, So why would he give me a blindfold to wear when we drove to the new house? I chronicled how I’d found the heirloom cake topper that had been manufactured years after Richard’s parents had gotten married. The words on my page smudged from my tears as I recalled Duke’s mysterious disappearance.
When my insomnia struck, I’d ease out of bed and tiptoe down the hall so I could fill pages with the insistent thoughts that invaded my brain in the darkest hours of night, my handwriting growing sloppy as my emotions grew heightened. I underlined certain notes, drew arrows connecting thoughts, and scribbled in the margins. Within months, my ink-stained notebook was more than half full.
I spent so many hours writing, my words unspooling across the pages, and in the process, unraveling my marriage. It was as if my relationship with Richard was a gorgeous, hand-knit sweater, and I’d found a tiny thread that I kept worrying between my fingertips. I’d slowly tugged on it, twisting and turning it, erasing patterns and colors and distorting the shape with every question and inconsistency I laid bare in my diary.
He’s, left foot, wrong, right foot. The words fill my brain as my legs churn even faster. I must reach Emma before he does.
“No, Richard. You kissed me.” The only thing Richard hates more than being challenged is being wrong.
I pass Chop’t and turn the corner, glancing behind me down the street. A dozen cabs are heading my way. He could be in any one of them.
“Are you drinking?” He is so good at shifting the focus, at exposing my vulnerabilities and putting me on the defensive.
But I don’t mind as long as he keeps talking. I need to keep him on the phone so he doesn’t warn Emma that I am coming.
“Have you told her about the diamond necklace you gave me?” I taunt him. “Do you think you’ll have to buy her one someday?”
I know this question is the equivalent of throwing a bomb through the window of his cab, and that’s exactly what I intend. I want to enrage Richard. I want his fists to clench and his eyes to narrow. That way, if he reaches Emma first, she will at last understand what he has so adeptly concealed. She will see his mask.
“Dammit, you could have made that light,” he shouts. I picture him coiled on the edge of the taxi seat, hovering behind the driver.
“Have you told her?” I ask again.
He is breathing heavily; I know from experience he is on the verge of losing control. “I’m not engaging in this ridiculous conversation. If you come near her again, I’ll have you locked up.”
I press End Call. Because right in front of me is Emma’s apartment.
I have wronged her so deeply; I’ve preyed on her innocence.
Just as I was never the wife Richard thought I was, I am also not the woman Emma believed me to be.
On the first night I met my replacement at the office holiday party, she rose from behind her desk in a poppy-red jumpsuit. She flashed that wide, open smile and extended her hand to me.
The gathering was as elegant as everything else in Richard’s world: A wall of glass overlooking Manhattan. Ceviche in individual tasting spoons and mini lamb chops with mint being offered by waiters in tuxedos. A seafood station with a woman shucking briny Kumamoto oysters. Classical music soaring from the strings of a quartet.
Richard headed to the bar to get us drinks. “Vodka and soda with a twist of lime?” he asked Emma.
“You remembered!” Her eyes followed him as he walked off.
It all began in that moment: A new future materialized in front of me.
For the next few hours, I sipped mineral water and made polite conversation with Richard’s colleagues. Hillary and George were there, but Hillary had already begun to distance herself from me.
The entire night, I felt the surge of energy arcing between my husband and his assistant. It wasn’t that they exchanged private smiles or ended up side by side in the same conversational group; on the surface, they were perfectly appropriate. But I saw his eyes slide to her as her throaty laugh spilled out. I felt their awareness of each other; it was a tangible, shimmering link joining them across the room. At the end of the party, he ordered a car to see her safely home, despite her protestations that she could hail a cab. We all walked out together and waited for her Town Car to arrive before we got into our own.
“She’s sweet,” I said to Richard.
“She’s very good at her job.”
When Richard and I arrived home from the holiday party, I began to climb the stairs toward the bedroom, looking forward to rolling down the elastic band of the stockings that were cutting into my stomach. Richard extinguished the hallway light and began to follow me. The moment I stepped into the bedroom, he spun me around to face the wall. He kissed the back of my neck and pressed himself against me. He was already hard.
Usually Richard was a tender, considerate lover. Early on, he’d savored me like a five-course meal. But that night, he grabbed my hands and used one of his own to trap them over my head. With his free hand, he yanked down my stockings. I heard a ripping sound and knew they had torn. When he entered me from behind, I gasped. It had been so long, and I wasn’t ready for him. He thrust against me as I stared at our striped wallpaper. He came quickly with a loud, raw groan that seemed to echo through the room. He leaned against my body, panting, then turned me around and gave me a single kiss on the lips.