Over the course of the next few days, it is all I can think about. I am seething with jealously over something that I have no evidence of. It consumes me to the point where I can’t sleep night after night. By Friday, I can’t keep all this angst to myself. I ask Mila’s advice.
“Do you think he’s already slept with someone?” I ask her when we’re getting tea from the office kitchen.
“How should I know?”
“I just mean, do you think that he has?”
“Why don’t we talk about this at lunch?” Mila says, looking around the kitchen in the hopes that no one is listening.
“Yeah, OK,” I say.
Mila and I go out for Chinese food, and she brings it up. It takes her about four minutes. Which is four minutes longer than I wanted to wait, but I didn’t want to seem like a crazy person.
“Do you want the truth?” she says.
I’m not clear on how to answer, because it’s entirely possible that I want to be lied to.
“Yes,” she says. “I think he probably has.”
It’s a knife in my chest. I’ve never been the jealous type with Ryan. It was always so clear that he wanted no one but me. For so much of our relationship, it was obvious that he loved me and desired me. I never felt threatened by any woman. He was mine. And now I’ve set him free.
“Why?” I say. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, first of all, he’s a man. That’s the biggest piece of evidence. Second of all, you said yourself you two were not having all that much sex. So it’s probably been pent up inside of him. He probably slept with the first woman who looked at him the right way.”
I take a long sip of my soda. It becomes a gulp and then sort of a chug. I put my cup down. “Do you think it’s with someone prettier than me?”
“How on earth would I know that?” Mila says. “You have to stop torturing yourself. Accept that it has probably happened. The stress of questioning whether it has or has not happened is too much. You have to just assume that it has happened and start to deal with it. He slept with someone else. What are you going to do?”
“Die, mostly,” I say. Why does this feel so awful? Why does it feel so much more awful than when he left? Deciding to separate was hard. Actually separating was hard. But this? This is something entirely different. This is devastating. This is . . . I don’t know. It feels as if I will never feel better in my entire life.
Mila grabs my hand. “You’re not going to die. You are going to live! That is the point here. C’mon! You were not happy with him. Let’s not sugarcoat the past. You were deeply unhappy. You said yourself that you didn’t love him. You two are going your separate ways. If anything, this should just show you that it’s time for you to find your own way.”
“What does that mean, though?” I say. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?
Mila puts down her fork and clasps her hands, getting down to business. “What are you doing this weekend?” she asks me pointedly. “Do you have plans for tonight?”
“Well, I got a new book from the library,” I say. Mila makes a face but doesn’t interrupt me. “And then I heard LACMA is free tomorrow, so I thought maybe I’d check that out. Haven’t been in a while.” I made that last part up. I have absolutely no plans to go to LACMA. I haven’t gone to an art museum since college. Probably not going to start now. I just didn’t want to admit that I have no plans at all.
“Uh-huh.” Mila is not impressed.
“What?” I say.
“That sounds pretty close to what I’m going to do, except instead of LACMA, I’m going to take Brendan and Jackson to get their hair cut.”
“OK . . . ?” I say.
“I’m in a committed relationship with twins, and you’re single.”
Single? No. I am not single. “I am not single,” I say. “I’m . . . married but . . .”
“Estranged?”
“Oh, that’s an awful word.” I don’t know why it’s such an awful word. There’s just something about how all the vowels and consonants come together that I don’t care for.
“You’re single, Lauren. You live alone. You have no one who expects you to be anywhere at any given time.”
“Well, Rachel sometimes . . .” I don’t even finish the sentence. “Fine, I’m single,” I say. “What is the point?”
“Get out of the house! Go get drunk and screw someone you don’t know.”
“Oh, my God!” I don’t know why I find it so shocking. I guess it’s that she’s talking about me. Me! I mean, I know that is what people do. They go out to bars, and they meet strangers, and they have casual sex with them after a few dates or no dates or however many dates they feel they need to justify what they want to do. I get that. But I have never done that. I never really had the opportunity. And now, I guess, I do have the opportunity, but it feels as if I’ve missed the starting line for that sort of thing; that race took off without me. I gather myself and look at Mila, but her face doesn’t change.
“I’m serious,” she says. “You need to get out there. You need a love affair or something. You need to get laid. By someone who isn’t Ryan. You need to see what it’s like with someone else. Have you even ever slept with someone besides Ryan?”
“Yeah,” I say, somewhat defensively. “I had a boyfriend in high school.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes!” I say, now definitely defensive. “What is the big deal?”
“It just isn’t enough people.”
“It is!” I say.
Mila shakes her head and puts down her fork. She tries another approach. “Do you remember what it was like the first time you kissed Ryan?”
“Yeah,” I say, and within a second, I feel as if I’m back there. I’m leaning across the table, over my burger and fries. I’m kissing him. And then I remember how it felt when he kissed me back. When he kissed me on the way home. When he kissed me good-bye. Even after kissing became a thing we did like breathing, without thinking, without care, I held on to those first kisses. I relished the way my heart stopped for a second whenever our lips met.
“Remember how good it felt to be kissed for the first time? How it felt electric? Like you could power a whole house off your fingertips?”
“You’ve really thought about this.”
“I just love the beginnings of relationships,” Mila says wistfully. “The first time Christina kissed me . . . nothing compares to that. Now I kiss her, and it’s like, ‘Hey, how are you? What smells? Is it the trash?’”
We both start laughing.
“Anyway, I can’t help but be excited for you, knowing that you have the chance to have that feeling again. You can meet someone and feel those butterflies again, if you want to.”
“No, I can’t,” I say. “I have a husband to go back to.”
“Yeah, in ten and a half months. Some marriages don’t even last ten and a half months. You can have a love affair, Lauren. One that makes you feel like you did when you were nineteen. If it were me, that’s what I would be doing.”
I let this settle for a minute as I think about it. It does sound nice, in a lot of ways, and it also sounds terrifying and messy. How can I have a love affair when I’m married? How can I juggle those two huge relationships? An active romance and an inactive marriage?
“Do you think Ryan is having a love affair?” I ask Mila.
Mila loses her patience. “That’s what you’re taking from this?”
“No,” I say. “I get your point. I do. I’m just . . . if he was . . . what would that mean?”
“It would mean absolutely nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Did you love your high school boyfriend?”
I shrug. “Yeah, I did.”
“Do you give a shit about him now?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“Well, that’s a love affair for you.”
• • •
Despite Mila’s advice, I continue to obsess. I think about it on the drive home. I think about it as I’m feeding Thumper. I think about it while I’m watching TV, while I’m reading a book, while I’m brushing my teeth. It drives me mad. My brain replays the same imagined images over and over. It falls down a rabbit hole of what ifs. I just want to know what is going on in his life. I just want to hear his voice. I just want to know that he’s OK and he’s still mine. I can’t have lost him yet. He can’t be someone else’s yet. I can’t do this. I can’t live like this. I can’t live without him. I can’t. I have to know what he’s thinking. I have to know how he is.
I want to call him. I have to call him. I have to. I pick up the phone. I push the icon next to his name, and then I immediately hang up. It didn’t even get a chance to ring. I can’t call him. He doesn’t want me to call him. He said not to call him. I can’t call him.
My laptop is right in front of me. It’s easy to grab. When I open it up, I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I’m not sure what I’m doing. And then, opening the browser, I know exactly what I’m doing. I know exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t bother trying to hide it from myself. I have gone into the deep end. I have lost control.
I sign into Ryan’s e-mail.
His in-box loads, and it’s empty. I stop myself. This is wrong. It’s incredibly, very, super, really, totally, completely, and absolutely wrong. I move my cursor to the menu, and I hover over where it says “Sign out.” This is where I should click. This is what I should do. I can turn around. I can pretend I never did this. I don’t have to be this person. For a second, it feels so easy. It seems so clear. Just log out, Lauren. Just log out.
But before I click it occurs to me that he never changed his password. He could have, right? It would make sense if he had. But he hasn’t. Does that mean something?
I notice the number seven by his drafts folder. He has seven unsent e-mails. I don’t even think, really, it’s just an impulse. I drag the cursor down and click the folder open. There I see seven e-mail drafts, all addressed to me. All with the subject “Dear Lauren.”
They are addressed to me. They are for me. I can click on these. Right?
• • •
August 31
Dear Lauren,
Leaving the house today sucked. I don’t know why we did this. When I wrote you that letter, it took everything I had not to rip it up and sit down and just stay there until you came home and we could sort this all out.
But then I thought about the last time you were happy to see me when I got home, and I couldn’t remember when that was. And thinking about that made me so mad that I picked up the last of my things and I walked out the door.
I didn’t say good-bye to Thumper. I couldn’t do it. It makes me sick to think about sleeping in this stupid apartment tonight. I don’t have a bed yet. I don’t have much of anything yet except our TV. My friends have helped me put everything where it sort of belongs, and they left about an hour ago.
I’m miserable. I’m fucking miserable about this. I was glad when my friends left, because I didn’t have it in me to pretend to be OK anymore. I’m not OK. I feel sick. I’ve lost my wife and my dog. I’ve lost my home.
I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t even know if I’m going to send it. Part of me thinks that you and I have been so dishonest with each other lately that a little honesty, a little discourse, might improve things. I have spent so long saying, “Sure, I’ll go to the mall with you to pick out new lipstick,” when I didn’t want to. Saying, “Yeah, Greek food sounds great,” when it doesn’t, that I hate you for it now. I hate Greek food, OK? I hate it. I hate how we can never just get a hamburger anymore. Why does every dinner have to be a tour of the world? And if so, why can’t we just stick with normal shit like Italian and Chinese? Why Persian food? Why Ethiopian food? I hate it. And I hate that you love it. It’s so pretentious, Lauren. Just eat normal food.
Ah. See? This is why I know that it’s good that I left. I hate you for liking falafel. I don’t think that’s healthy.
But also, I don’t know that it’s so unhealthy that it means I have to sleep alone tonight on this shitty carpet.
But then I think about going home. I think about walking through the door and you not even getting up off the couch. I think about how you’ll just look at me and say, “Pho for dinner?” and I want to punch the wall.
So, fine. I’m here. I’m alone. I’m miserable. And I know it makes me a terrible person, but I really hope you’re miserable, too. That’s the truth. That’s how I feel right now. I really, really hope that you’re miserable, too.
Love,
Ryan
• • •
September 5
Dear Lauren,
I know I told you not to call me, but sometimes I can’t believe you aren’t calling me. I can’t believe you’re able to just live your life like I was never there. How can you do that? It makes me furious to think about sometimes. You’re probably just going to work and acting like everything is fine.
I told my parents about us today. It wasn’t easy. They were not happy. They got really mad at you, which I thought was weird. I tried to explain to them that this isn’t about one or the other of us. I tried to tell them that it was a joint decision. But they weren’t listening. I think, you know how they are, they have such a narrow view of marriage. And they are disappointed in me. They made that clear. They kept saying, “This is not how you should be handling your problems, Ryan.” And they kept saying they were upset at you for taking my house and my dog. They can’t see clearly, I don’t think. They think we should split it up so that one of us gets Thumper and the other one gets the house. Neither of us should get both. I don’t know. I don’t agree with them. I don’t see it that way. It doesn’t feel right to take the house from you, and it doesn’t feel right to take Thumper away from his home so abruptly.
I know I said that I wanted to date other people, but now that I’m out in the real world, it feels really strange to think about. Very unnatural. How is that even supposed to work? It doesn’t make sense. To think about kissing someone other than you? I almost feel like I don’t remember how to do it. There is a new girl at work who keeps flirting with me, and sometimes I think that I’m supposed to jump on it, go for it or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t even want to talk about it.
I’m still not sure if I’m going to send these to you. Sometimes I think I will. There is a part of me that feels like years ago I stopped fighting with you. It just became easier to agree with you or ignore you. I feel like I just said whatever you wanted to hear. And I stopped being honest. I stopped telling you what I really thought. What I really wanted. And so maybe if I tell you all of this now, maybe we can clear the air, maybe we can start again. The other part of me thinks that if we do tell each other everything, if I send you this stuff, we might not survive it. So I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I’m not sure you’d care, anyway. I mean, sometimes I think you don’t really see me anymore. I know you see me, see me. But I’m talking about the fact that sometimes I don’t think you listen when I say things. Sometimes I think you just assume you know what I’m going to say next, or what I’m going to do next, or what I’m going to feel next, and your eyes glaze over as if I’m the most boring person you’ve ever met.
You didn’t use to think that, though. I remember in college, one of the reasons it was so nice to be around you was that you made me feel like I was the most interesting person in the room. You made me feel like I made the funniest jokes and told the best stories. And I don’t know, I don’t think that was fake. I think you really thought that.
And now I don’t think you think that at all. I think I’m like looking at the back of a cereal box for you. I’m just something you sit and stare at because I’m there.
This is getting sad. I hope you are doing OK. Sometimes I think I should send you these just so you might write back and I can hear how you are. I wonder how you are all the time.
Love,
Ryan
• • •
September 9
Dear Lauren,
Do you remember when we moved in with each other for the first time? Right after we graduated from college? And it was such a hot day, and we moved into the shithole apartment in Hollywood, and it was way too small, and the kitchen smelled like some sort of weird chemical? And you almost started crying because you didn’t want to live in such a crappy apartment? But it was all we could afford. I was living off of the last of my parents’ graduation gift money, and you were starting your job in the alumni department. And I remember thinking, as we crammed into that small bed that first night, that I was going to take care of you. I was going to work hard and get you a better apartment. And I was going to be the man who gave you the life you wanted. And I mean, things don’t really work out exactly how you think. You were the one who made enough money so that we could afford to move out of that place and into Hancock Park. But I mean, I negotiated with the landlord. I did everything I could to convince her, because I wanted you to have everything you wanted. I really did think I did a good job of taking care of you. I always wanted you to feel safe with me, to feel loved by me, supported by me.
I learned how to stop trying to solve your problems and just let you vent about them. I learned that you need a few minutes in the morning before you can talk to somebody. I learned that you never leave yourself enough time to get somewhere and then you freak out about being late. And I loved it about you.
Why wasn’t that enough?
Doesn’t it seem like it should have been enough?
Back then, moving in together, lying in that tiny bed, I just thought that my job was clear. All I had to do was support you and love you and listen to you and take care of you. And it all seemed so easy back then.
Now it seems like the hardest thing in the world.
What am I doing sitting here writing to you? I’m wasting my time.
Ryan
• • •
September 28
Dear Lauren,
The last time we had sex was in April. Just in case you were wondering. Which you’re not. But you never seemed to care very much, and I do care. So if I ever do send these to you, I think you should know that the last time we had sex was almost five months before I moved out. That’s four months before you told me you didn’t love me anymore. Four months of us living in the same house, pretending to be good to each other, pretending to be happy, and not laying a hand on each other. I figured I’d wait until you noticed. And you never noticed. So, you know, in case you ever notice and you want to know. It was April. And it sucked.
• • •
September 29
Dear Lauren,
Happy Birthday! I know that you’re at a surprise party. Charlie called me a few weeks ago before he knew we were whatever we are. Anyway, I know your family is with you. I know you’re probably having a blast. It’s nine o’clock right now, so you’re probably living it up as I type this. I’m hanging out here at my apartment. There is only so much you can do to distract yourself from the fact that it’s your wife’s thirtieth birthday and you’re not with her. You know?
I gave up on that about a half hour ago, and now I’ve just been nursing a beer and thinking about you.
I almost got up off the couch and drove over to your mom’s place to be there.
But I figured that was a bad idea.
Because what happens? We see each other and we admit how hard this is and we end this crazy experiment, and then what? In two months, we’re back where we were. We haven’t changed. So nothing would change. You know?
So instead, I’m sitting here, doing nothing.
I just want you to know that I thought about it. I thought about showing up at the house with two grocery bags, ready to make you Ryan’s Magic Shrimp Pasta.
I didn’t do it, but yeah, I guess I just want you to know that I thought about it.
Happy Birthday,
Ryan
• • •
October 1
Is Thumper doing OK? It’s killing me being away from him. It’s so stupid, but I was in the grocery store the other day getting dinner for myself, and I remembered that I needed laundry detergent, so I went into the aisle to get it, and it was also where they kept the pet food, and I thought, “Oh, do we need food for Thumper?” and, you know, it just flashed into my mind for a split second before I remembered that I don’t live with him anymore.
Love,
Ryan
• • •
October 9
Dear Lauren,
I’m not going to take Thumper. This pain of living without both of you, it’s too hard. It’s too lonely. It’s too sad. I can’t do that to you.
Love,
Ryan
• • •
I can’t see through my tears anymore. Looking at these is sort of like standing in a burning-hot shower and seeing how long I can bear it. I’m way past the point of worrying about whether this is wrong. I know it’s wrong. I know he isn’t sure whether he wants me to see these. But I also know that I have to read them. They matter too much. I care too much. It’s too much.
These letters are the evidence of how ugly our marriage has become and yet proof that we are tied to each other. We can hate and love, miss and loathe each other all within the same breath. We can never want to see each other again while never wanting to let go.
He hates me as much as he loves me. I hate these letters as much as I love them. The pain and the joy are locked together, tightly bound. I read the letters over and over again, hoping to separate one from the other, hoping to discern whether love or hate wins out in the end. But it’s like pulling on the ends of a Chinese finger trap. The more I try, the tighter they cling to each other.
When I finally get hold of myself, eyes dry, nose running, light-headed, I go into the kitchen and pull a piece of bacon out of the fridge. I put it in a pan. I wait for it to sizzle and pop. When it does, I put it in Thumper’s bowl. He comes running as he hears the sound of the bacon hitting the stainless steel. He eats it within half a second. I pull out another piece and put it in the pan as he waits. That’s when I really put the pieces together. If Ryan sends me that e-mail about me keeping Thumper, then I won’t see him in a few weeks. I really will be on my own for the foreseeable future.