Confessions on the 7:45(15)

“It’s okay,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m a klutz. I’m used to falling.”

She was clumsy, and always wearing some kind of impractical shoe. The city sidewalks conspired to take you down; she seemed always to be running late, was rarely mindful.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Ugh,” she said, looking down. “Gross.”

Blood ran down her calf, a single rivulet from her knee to her ankle. She dug a tissue out of her bag while they stood there in the drizzle. She could barely look at him, she was so embarrassed. He took it from her before she could stop him, bent down and wiped at her leg.

When he looked up at her and smiled—rakish and knowing—she was in love.

“I’m Graham,” he said.

“Selena.”

“Are we going to tell our kids about this night?” Graham asked when he rose, tossing the tissue in a nearby bin.

She almost started to cry; it had been an awful day—overslept, missed her train, fouled up royally at the office, earning a talking-to from the boss who already seemed perpetually underwhelmed by her performance. But it turned out to be the best day of her life. That day.

Poor Will. They were living together at the time. She broke up with Will before she started dating Graham; she wouldn’t even kiss him until she’d moved out into her own place. It was a politely painful split, where they tried to hold on to their friendship. Are you sure about this guy? Will had asked a few months later over coffee. More sure than I’ve been about anything. Which, looking back, was an insensitive thing to say to your ex.

A glorious courtship—dinner at Eleven Madison Park, zip-lining in Costa Rica, a surprise trip to Paris. A glittering diamond presented at Wollman Rink in Central Park. Big (stupidly big) wedding at her father’s country club, honeymoon in Hawaii, a new house. Picture perfect.

Are you sure about this guy?

The first time she caught Graham cheating—well, not really cheating as he saw it—he was sexting with an ex-girlfriend. Selena happened to see his phone, discovering the X-rated chain complete with dirty pictures. There was a screaming blowout. She went to stay with Beth in the city for a few weeks—this was before the kids. He begged her forgiveness. There was counseling.

Graham had issues with self-worth, and admitted an addiction to porn (this sext affair was really just an extension of that, wasn’t it), fear of intimacy—all this from the male therapist. They worked on it, moved on. Then there was Oliver. A babymoon period followed where they were in love with their child, their new life as parents.

Then, the boys’ weekend in Vegas. Strippers. A prostitute; the details even now were vague. She thought it was best to keep it that way. She didn’t need a visual; she already had sexting pictures seared into her imagination. Graham and their friend Brad got arrested in Vegas that weekend. She had to leave Oliver with her mother, fly there to bail them out. More counseling. The stress of new fatherhood, this time, according to the therapist, who was frankly starting to sound like an apologist. Poor Graham was struggling with the responsibility, the crushing effort of working and parenting and being a husband. God, it was just all so hard. More counseling.

“Think of him as an addict,” said her new therapist in one of Selena’s individual sessions. This doctor had fewer excuses for Graham. “His behavior is something outside of you that you don’t control and can’t fix. Don’t hang your worthiness on his failings. But now you have to decide where your boundaries are, what you will and will not tolerate. Every marriage is a negotiation. Both parties have to obey the terms.”

After Stephen, Graham changed, or really seemed to. Stephen was his soul mate. Something about that child’s arrival caused Graham to calm down completely. Graham plugged in to their family, focused on work with a new zeal, weekends he was home. There were no more boys’ nights—it helped that his two most corrupting friends had both settled down.

There was a night when both boys were down, and they stood together over Stephen and watched him sleep.

“Thank you,” he’d whispered to her. “Thank you for waiting for me to become a better man. I’ll never let you down again. I swear to god.”

She believed him. She had to, wanted to. She loved him so much—wild, deep, mad love, even when she hated him, wanted to kill him, railed against his stupidity and selfishness. There was something raw and primal beneath it. He was hers. And she was his. A fiery, blind devotion.

That’s what she thought.

Now this.

It hurt even worse because she had believed in him, in them.

“I saw her on top of you, Graham. In the boys’ playroom.” No point in beating around the bush.

The look on his face. It was almost comical. It shifted from stunned, to a practiced look of innocence, then to despair.

“The nanny?” she went on into the leaden silence. “Really, Graham?”

She didn’t want to cry; she promised herself she wouldn’t. She needed a steel resolve for what would come next. But she did cry, a tear trailing down her face.

He started stammering. “I—It-it-it was a mistake, a moment, it just happened,” he said. “I’ve been—depressed, I think. You know with losing my job and everything. She came on to me and I just—reacted.”

Really? He was going to make it sound as if Geneva came on to him? What a sad play. She truly couldn’t see it.