Evidence of the Affair(11)

Do you think their relationship is over? I can’t make heads or tails of all this.

Love, David





August 15, 1977

Encino, California David,

On Monday morning, just as Ken was getting ready to get in the car for the drive to Palm Springs, he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you come with me?”

I said, “With you?”

And he said, “Yes, come with me.”

And I found myself packing up a couple of things and getting into the car with him.

It turns out there truly was a consult. It wasn’t a lie.

How odd to feel confused that your husband is telling the truth. And yet, I have to admit, there was real comfort in that. It was as if the Ken I fell in love with reappeared: trustworthy, dependable.

I spent my days walking around the town and shopping, and then during the evenings Ken and I would go out to restaurants and have drinks at bars and order room service for dessert. I swear, when he looked into my eyes, it truly seemed like he loved me. It felt like a new beginning, I suppose. It was as if the past had never transpired.

He said he wants to take me on a vacation to Italy next year. He called it a “second honeymoon.” I’m not quite sure how I feel about it all right now. I’m a bit stunned, to be frank.

Is it possible that after all we have both been through, it has ended with them coming back to us?

All my best,

Carrie





August 20, 1977

Carlsbad, California

Carrie,

Last night, Janet and I put the kids to sleep and then decided to watch some TV in the living room. I was sitting in my recliner, Janet on the sofa, when she walked up to the TV and turned it off.

She said, “I’ve been sleeping with someone else.”

And she confessed everything.

She started at the very beginning—how they met years ago and she thought nothing of it but then ran into him for the second time last August. I didn’t realize it, but the night they met again was a night in which she and I had gotten into an argument about how I was always grading papers on evenings we were supposed to spend together. She’d decided, rather angrily, to go out with her friend Sharon.

Apparently, she didn’t come home until the next morning, and she said I barely even noticed. It strikes me as almost unbelievable how little attention I paid to her back then. Not that I’m blaming myself. After knowing the full details, my anger at Janet has somehow become stronger but also more tolerable. That doesn’t make much sense, I guess.

Anyway, she admitted how long they went on like that, how often they met up, what she was feeling, why she did it. And when she confessed, so did I.

I told her I had known for some time. I told her that you and I had been exchanging letters and had become close during this bizarre time. I shared some of our letters as well.

There was no confession left to be made by the end of the night. Or I should say wee hours of the morning. Janet and Ken are through. And there are no more lies living in our marriage anymore.

Janet told me this morning that she wants to stay together, and she asked me point-blank if I thought that she and I could get past this.

It was a difficult question to answer. I kept thinking of you, to be honest. What you have shown me, how much I look forward to seeing you. You have come to mean so much to me.

But if I ask myself whether I believe I can one day forgive the mother of my children and begin to trust her again, the answer that I keep coming to is yes. I believe that I can.

And if I find that I can’t, I still have to try. I want nothing as much as I want to live in the same home as my sons, to see them every morning, to say good night to them every night, as they grow into men. I want the future I had hoped for.

I told Janet that I am not quite ready to forgive her, but I do feel ready to work to get there. And that, right now, is enough of a start for both of us. We believe we can put this thing back together.

As for the details of the end of their relationship and the trip over the Fourth, Janet has told me the full story. And then she showed me Ken’s last letters.

From what Janet says, she and Ken spent the Fourth of July in Newport Beach. They made plans to contact divorce attorneys and made some decisions about where they would live and what kind of custody she would request of the boys. It was all but settled.

As they were getting ready to leave, Ken went to pay the bill, and Janet went over to the convenience store next to the hotel and grabbed a drink and a sandwich for the ride home. When she paid, she realized she was a penny short, and so she grabbed one from the “Leave a Penny, Take a Penny” tray. She said it was brand-new, not a scratch on it. It was bright and shiny, exactly the kind I’ve always loved. And as she held the penny in her hand, she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen me pick one up.

She couldn’t remember the last time either of us had taken a second of joy for ourselves.

Janet says that is when she realized that our broken marriage had hurt both of us. That I must be hurting, too.

She says she understood, in that moment, that what she wanted more than anything wasn’t a life with a new man but our life back.

As she said this to me, she said, “I could never get back what we had by marrying him. I can only get that back by staying with you.”

When your husband came to find her, she told him it was over.