On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it to log into someone’s e-mail without them knowing?” I ask Rachel over the phone. I’m sitting at my desk at work. I’ve read the e-mails tens of times. Some parts I even know by heart.
“I guess I’d need to know the particulars,” she says.
“The particulars are that I logged into Ryan’s e-mail and read some of his e-mails.”
“Ten. That is a ten out of ten. You should not have done that.”
“In my defense, they were addressed to me.”
“Did he send them to you?”
“They were in his drafts folder.”
“Still ten. That’s really bad.”
“Wow, you’re not even going to try to see my side of it?”
“Lauren, it’s really bad. It’s dishonest. It’s rude. It’s disrespectful. It completely undermines—”
“OK, OK,” I say. “I get it.”
I know what I’ve done is wrong. I guess I’m not really wondering if it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. What I’m looking for is for Rachel to say something like, Oh, yeah, that’s wrong, but I would have done the same thing, and you should keep doing it.
“So I should not keep doing it?” I ask her. Maybe if I go about this directly, I can get the answer I’m looking for.
“No, you absolutely should not.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I say. I should not have done it. But what can I do? I already did it. And does it really matter if I keep doing it? I mean, it’s already done. If he asks, Have you logged into my e-mail account and read my personal e-mails that were addressed to you? I will have to answer yes whether I did it once or one hundred times.
“Let’s say he addresses another one to me, though,” I say. “Then it’s OK to look.”
“It’s not OK to be checking in the first place,” Rachel says. “I have to get back to work,” she adds. “But you better cut it out.”
“Ugh, fine.” It’s quiet for a moment before I ask my final question. “You’re not judging me, right? You still think I’m a good person?”
“I think you’re the best person,” she says. “But I’m not going to tell you what you’re doing isn’t wrong. It’s just not my style.”
“Yeah, fine,” I say, and I hang up the phone.
I walk over to Mila’s desk.
“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it to log into someone’s e-mail without them knowing?”
She looks up from her computer and frowns at me. She picks up her coffee cup and crosses her arms.
“Is the person you? And the other person Ryan?”
“If it was . . .” I say.
She considers it. “I can see where you’d think I was the person to help you justify this, because really, I would probably read them if I were in your position,” she says, swiveling back and forth in her chair. A victory! “But that doesn’t mean it’s OK.” Short-lived.
“He’s writing to me, Mila. He’s writing to me.”
“Did he send them to you?”
“WHY IS EVERYONE SO PREOCCUPIED WITH THAT?”
Everyone turns and looks in my direction. I switch to a whisper.
“The letters are for me, Mila,” I say. “He didn’t even change his password. That’s basically like he’s admitting he wants me to read them.” I’m now too close to her face, and my whisper is breathy. I’m pretty sure she can tell I had an onion bagel for breakfast.
Mila politely backs away a bit. “You don’t have to whisper. Just don’t shout. A normal tone of voice is fine,” she says in an exemplary normal tone of voice.
“Fine,” I say, a bit too loudly, and then I find my rhythm again. “Fine. All I’m asking is that if you were me and you knew that he was writing to you, baring his soul to you, saying the things that he never said when you were married, saying things that broke your heart and made you cry and made you feel loved all at the same time—if that was happening, are you telling me you wouldn’t read them?”
Mila considers it. Her face turns from stoic to reluctant understanding. “It would be tempting,” she says. I already feel better just hearing that. “It would be hard not to read them. And you have a halfway decent point about the password.”
I pump my fists in the air. “Yes!” I say.
“But just because something is understandable doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”
“I miss him,” I say to Mila. It just comes out of my mouth.
Mila’s resolve fades. “If it was you writing the letters, would you want him to read them even if you didn’t send them?”
My gut answer is yes. But I take my time and really think about it. I stand and look at Mila and consider her question. I put myself in Ryan’s shoes. The answer that keeps coming back is yes.
“Yes,” I say. “I know that answer seems self-serving, but I really mean it. He said in his letters that he feels like he often didn’t tell me how he really felt. That he kept a lot of stuff inside just to make things easier, and then he started to resent me. I did that, too! I would sometimes choose to just go along with what he wanted or what he said so that I didn’t cause a fight. And somewhere along the way, I started to feel like I couldn’t be honest. Does that make sense? Things became so tense, and I started to resent him so much that I was suddenly furious about everything, and I didn’t know where to start. I think he feels the same way. This could be an opportunity for us. This could be what we need. If it were me writing to him, trying to bare my soul, trying to show the real me, I would want him to read it.” I shrug. “I would want him to see the real me.”
Mila listens, and when I’m done, she smiles at me. “Well, then, maybe it is the right thing for the two of you,” she says. “But you’re taking a huge risk. You need to know that. This could be exactly what he wants. He may be happy to know that you can understand him better and that you know the deepest parts of his soul and you accept him for that. That might be what he’s hoping for.” From her tone, I can tell that she’s not done, but I wish that was the end of the sentence. “But he also might be furious.” Here we go. “He might be livid that you betrayed his trust. He might not trust you again. It could be a terrible way to start off this new chapter in your lives together. When the year is over and he comes back, how can you tell him all that you know? Are you going to admit what you did? And do you really, truly, in your heart, feel like he is going to say, ‘OK, sounds good’?”
“No,” I say. “But I do think that more good will come from it than bad.”
Mila looks unconvinced.
“I feel like I have an opportunity to learn who my husband is in a whole new way. I have an opportunity to get to know him without a filter. I can learn what I did wrong. I can start to understand what he needs from me. What I can do better the next time around. I’m going to learn how to love him again. I’m going to learn how to be a better wife to him, how to give him what he needs, how to tell him what I need. This is good. I have good intentions. This is coming from a good place.”
I set out to convince Mila. I just wanted someone to tell me that it was OK to do something I knew wasn’t OK. But in doing so, I’ve convinced myself somehow.
“Well, I wash my hands of it, then,” she says. “It sounds like you know what you’re doing.”
I nod and head back to my office. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Mila calls to me just as I’m almost out of earshot. “Mexican?” she says.
I look at the clock. It’s twelve forty-seven. “Give me five minutes.”
When we get into the elevator to head downstairs, I ask Mila if she likes Persian food.
“What is Persian food? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”
“It’s a lot of rice and saffron. A lot of stews.”
“Stews?” Mila says, making a face. “No, I’m not one for stews.”
“Greek food?”
She shrugs. “It’s OK.”
“Vietnamese?”
“Don’t think I’ve ever had it. Is it like Thai?”
“Sort of,” I say. “It’s mostly noodles, meats, and broth. Sometimes stuff is served with a fish sauce.”
“Fish sauce? A sauce made of fish or a sauce for fish?”
“No, it’s made of fermented fish. It’s delicious.”
“Why don’t we just stick to Mexican?” she says as we get off the elevator.
I nod my head. It’s that simple. Why didn’t Ryan ever just say, Why don’t we stick to Mexican? Why sit through all of those foods he didn’t like? I would have gone out for a burrito instead. I wouldn’t have even minded. Why didn’t he know that?
“You know,” Mila says. She’s walking a bit ahead of me and trying to find her keys in her purse. “If you think Ryan will be happy with you reading his e-mails and spying on his most vulnerable moments, then it’s only fair that you subject yourself to the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“What scares you? What do you want?”
“I don’t know. I guess I—”
“Don’t tell me,” she says. “Put it in an e-mail.”