If You Only Knew

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Adam, I thought we were having lunch today. Did I have the wrong day?”

Just let me send him a text.

Him.

And so I know. I know.

Adam is cheating on me with her.

“Emmanuelle, you remember my wife, right? Rachel, you’ve met Emmanuelle, I think. The holiday party at the club?”

I’ve seen your vagina, I want to say.

“Um, mmm-hmm,” I mumble, because my mouth is full of unchewed arugula.

You fucking slut, is my next thought, but then again, of course she’s a fucking slut; she couldn’t be a slut without fucking, could she?

“Emmanuelle and I are working on a case together,” Adam says.

“Really,” I say, swallowing the mouthful of roughage without chewing. Really, Adam? Because you do corporate tax law, and she’s a criminal defense attorney, and even your stupid little housewife knows that you would not work on a case together.

“Adam, I didn’t mean to interrupt your little...picnic,” she says, and her eyes run over me, making me feel childish in my pink sweater, silly with my “trying to be artistic” earrings, like a failure in my little wifey-goes-out-to-lunch dress. She’s wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck dress, Armani, maybe. Jenny would know in a heartbeat. Her glossy, dark red hair is pulled into an unforgiving twist. Tiny gold hoop earrings. A wide, hammered gold ring on her right forefinger. No other jewelry. Black ankle boots with thin, thin heels that must be four inches high. Red soles. Those are... What’s that name? Christian Louboutin, right. Ridiculously expensive.

These details are razor-sharp, slicing through my brain with barely any blood spilled.

I’m wearing a heart necklace. As if I’m in third grade or something.

No. There are pictures of my children inside there. I’m a mother. Emmanuelle is not a mother, no sir.

Not yet.

“I guess I’ll talk to you later, Adam,” Emmanuelle says easily. “Nice to see you again, Rachel.” Then she’s gone. The smell of her perfume lingers like radiation.

Adam exhales. “So. What else have you got planned for today?” His face is studiously bland.

“You fucking liar,” I say, and then I throw his iced tea in his face and walk out of his office.

* * *

The upside of having three toddlers is they don’t leave you much time for thinking. I make the girls supper, read them poems as they eat, then finish their macaroni and cheese, because that stuff is delicious. I let them have a longer bath than usual, and read them extra stories and play Animal Kisses, in which they close their eyes while I woof, meow or moo softly in their hair till they guess which animal I am, or giggle so hard they can’t. For once, they’re all smiling and sweet when I give out their final hugs. No one gets out of bed, no one asks for water, no one cries.

Clearly, I’m the world’s most amazing mother.

I go downstairs, pour what has to be a ten-ounce glass of wine and sit on the couch and wait.

The look on his face, his wet, green-tea-drenched face, was almost funny.

Oily black anger twists and rises inside me. I try to dilute it with a few swallows of wine, but it stays.

I can’t be too angry about this. Well, of course, I can be... I am. But I can’t make decisions in anger. There are five of us to consider, not two.

Jenny has left two messages for me. Does she sense something? I haven’t answered.

Adam has not contacted me. That terror I felt last weekend shudders back to life.

Does he want to leave me?

An image of my daughters in the future flashes in horrible clarity: all three resentful, whiny, confused at having to go spend a weekend with Daddy—and Emmanuelle. They’ll become horrible teenagers, piercings and tattoos, and I’ll find condoms in Rose’s backpack, get a call from the school that Grace beat someone up, that Charlotte sold pot to her classmates. I’m already furious at Adam for doing this to our girls.

Furious, and terrified.

And then there’d be me. Divorced. Alone. I picture myself trying to date again—me, forty, with a Cesarean scar and a pooch of skin made by another man’s babies. Me, shy at best, socially terrified at worst, making conversation in the bar in the Holiday Inn while the Yankees are on, a sticky tabletop and a glass of cheap wine, uncomfortable vinyl seats.

Adam comes home at 8:07 p.m. Our girls have always been the early-to-bed types, so I’m sure he’s lurked somewhere—the office, a bar, his whore’s house—until he’s sure they’re asleep. He might be a cheating douche bag, but he doesn’t want the girls to hear us fight.

He comes into the living room, looks at me, sighs and pours himself a scotch. “So I guess we have to talk,” he says, and my eyes fill with traitorous tears, because I love his voice, and now I have to listen to him tell me that I’m right. This living room will never be the same again. It will always be the place where he told me he cheated.

He sits down across from me. I can see the stain from the green tea on his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“How long?” I ask.

“About three months.”

Three months? Holy Jesus! It’s late April now, so most of April, all of March, all of February.

He gave me the locket on Valentine’s Day.

“Tell me everything,” I say, and my voice is choked and brittle.

He sighs, as if I’m exhausting him, the asshole, and starts talking. He didn’t plan it. It just happened. She came on to him. He couldn’t help himself. He’s a guy, and when a beautiful woman comes on to a guy, it’s hard to say no. He loves me. He doesn’t want a divorce. He’s sorry.