The Silver Linings Playbook(71)

I’ll never forget the look on his face. He looked as if I had shot him in the stomach.

“Is something wrong?” he said. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No. It’s not like that at all.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Is it normal to have sex several times a day?”

“Don’t you love me anymore?” Tommy asked me with this wounded-little-boy look I still see whenever I close my eyes at night.

Of course I told Tommy I loved him more than ever, but I just wanted to slow down a little with the sex. I told him I wanted to talk with him more, take walks, and find some new hobbies, so sex could be special again. “Having this much sex,” I told him, “sort of takes the magic out of it.” For some odd reason, I remember suggesting that we go horseback riding.

“So you’re telling me the magic is gone?” he said, and that question was the last thing he ever did say to me. So you’re telling me the magic is gone?

I remember talking a lot after he said that, telling him we could have sex as much as he wanted and that this was just a suggestion, but he was wounded. He was looking at me suspiciously the whole time, as if I were cheating on him or something like that. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to slow down a little so I could appreciate sex more. Too much of a good thing, was all I wanted to tell him. But it was clear I had hurt him, because before I could finish explaining, he stood up and went upstairs to take a shower. He left the house without saying goodbye.

I got the call at work. All I remember hearing was that Tommy was hurt and had been rushed to West Jersey Hospital. When I got to the hospital, there were a dozen men in blue uniforms, cops everywhere. Their glistening eyes told me.

Later I would find out that Tommy had gone to the Cherry Hill Mall during his lunch break. They found a Victoria’s Secret bag full of lingerie in his cruiser—every piece was my size. On his way back to Meadowville, he stopped on the highway to help an elderly woman whose car had broken down. Tommy called her a tow truck, but then he stood at the nervous old lady’s window chatting with her, keeping her company while she waited. Tommy was always chatting with people like that. The cruiser was behind him, the lights were going, but he was standing at the edge of the highway’s breakdown lane. Some driver who had drunk his lunch dropped his cell phone, and when he bent down to pick it up, he pulled the wheel to the right, crossed two lanes, and …

The lead in the local paper read “Police Officer Thomas Reed—who was responsible for starting Meadowville High School’s Anti-Drinking-and-Driving Club—was killed by a drunk driver.” It was all so ironic, almost funny in a sadistic way. There were so many cops at his funeral. Kids from the high school made our front lawn into a living memorial—they stood on the sidewalk with candles and flowers. When I refused to go outside, these teenagers sang so sweetly to me through the first few evenings, a chorus of sad, beautiful voices. Our friends brought food, Father Carey talked to me about heaven, my parents cried with me, and Ronnie and Veronica stayed at our house for the first few weeks or so. But the only thing I could think about was how Tommy died believing I no longer wanted to have sex with him. I felt so guilty, Pat. I wanted to die. I kept thinking he would not have gone to Victoria’s Secret on his lunch break if we had not had the fight, and then he would have never passed the old woman in the broken-down car, which meant he would not have been killed. I felt so guilty. I still feel so f*cking guilty.

After a few weeks I went back to work, but everything in my mind got switched up. My guilt turned to need, and suddenly I was craving sex very badly. So I started to f*ck men—any man who was game. All I really had to do was look at a man in that certain way, and within a few seconds I knew if they were going to f*ck me. And when they did, I would close my eyes and pretend it was Tommy. To be with my husband again, I’d f*ck men anywhere. In a car. In the coatroom at work. In an alley. Behind a bush. In a public restroom. Anywhere. But in my mind, it was always under the kitchen table, and Tommy had come back to me, and I had told him I wasn’t tired of having sex, but would make love to him as many times as he needed, because I loved him with all my heart.

I was sick. And there was no shortage of men who were eager to capitalize on my sickness. There were men everywhere who—with glee—would f*ck this mentally ill woman.

Of course this led to my losing my job, therapy, and many medical tests. Luckily, I did not contract any diseases, and I’d be happy to get tested again if that ever becomes an issue for us. But even if I had contracted AIDS or whatever, it would have been worth it to me at the time, because I needed that closure. I needed that forgiveness. I needed to live out the fantasy. I needed to f*ck away my guilt so I could break out of the fog I was in, to feel something, to feel anything, and begin to start my life again, which I am only now beginning to do—since we became friends.

I have to admit that during Veronica’s dinner party I only thought of you as an easy lay. I sized you up in your stupid Eagles jersey and figured I could get you to f*ck me, so I could pretend you were Tommy. I hadn’t done it in a long time. I no longer wanted to have sex with strangers, but you weren’t a stranger. You were handpicked by my own sister. You were a safe man with whom Ronnie was trying to set me up. So I figured I would begin to have sex with you regularly, just so I could fantasize about Tommy again.

But when you held me in front of my parents’ house, and when you cried with me, things changed—in a very dramatic way. I did not understand it at first, but as we ran together and ate raisin bran at the diner and went to the beach and became friends—simply friends, without any sex to complicate things—it was sort of nice in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I just liked being around you, even if we didn’t say anything.