Skipping a Beat (22 page)

“It’s complicated,” I finally said. And now I’d made it even more so. “I can’t leave him. Not now, anyway.”

“He’s really rich, right?” Brad abruptly pulled on his Levi’s. “Someone said something about it the other day. About wondering why you worked, when your husband had all that money.”

“Brad, it isn’t like that,” I said, even as a shameful little voice inside me asked,
It isn’t?

“I loved Michael before he had any money,” I protested. “We’ve been together since high school.”

“So why are you sleeping with me?” Brad asked.

I looked down at my shirt again, not knowing how to answer.

“I should go,” I finally said. “I’m sorry.”

Brad shrugged, as if he didn’t care, but I could see him fighting not to speak. He probably wanted to say something cruel and cutting; I’d hurt him, and now he wanted to lash back. But he was too nice a guy to give in to the urge. I’d made such a mess of everything.

I left Brad’s apartment without another word, and I didn’t see him for months. Once I called him late at night, but my voice abandoned me when he answered and I hung up. I still didn’t know what to say to him, how to explain what had happened between us. It would be months before I figured it out for myself.

By the time we worked on another job together, Brad was clearly over what had happened—over me. He smiled at me, and quickly squeezed my arm in greeting, and then turned his attention back to the pastry-wrapped filet he was cooking. After plating the artisanal cheeses with fig spread and setting out the mini berry cheesecakes for dessert, he took off his apron and washed his hands. I caught myself staring as those elegant fingers caressed one another. Then I heard someone call his name, and I turned to see a nice-looking woman with glasses and short blond hair walk up to the outskirts of the reception area. Her eyes searched the crowd, and when she saw Brad, she smiled in a way that told me everything I needed to know. They left together a few minutes afterward, and Brad never once looked back at me.

I was relieved—so relieved—that he didn’t hate me. And I was lonelier than ever.

Otello
is considered by many to be Verdi’s finest opera. The Moor Otello becomes convinced his wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him after he assembles pieces of evidence. Of course he’s dead wrong. But an interloper named Iago—someone a lot like Dale—whispers in his ear, goading him and fueling his suspicions.

I’ll always wonder what would’ve happened if I’d chosen to talk to Michael during that raw, terrible time. Would I have changed the whole course of our marriage? Maybe I could have thrown down his cell phone and held his BlackBerry hostage until we’d pieced together exactly what had happened, not just with Roxanne but between the two of us.

It took me a long time to figure out why I cheated, but I finally realized it didn’t have anything to do with revenge. It was because I was facing an impossible choice: If I forced Michael to admit he was having an affair, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay married to him. But if I left him, I’d lose everything—our house, our cars, the luxury I’d always craved. By having my own affair, I’d managed to carve out another option. I could pretend to myself that I’d evened things up, somehow, and stay married to Michael and keep clinging to our glittering new lifestyle.

I think part of me did it because I still loved Michael and couldn’t bear to let him go, as warped and crazy as it sounds. But another, uglier part of me was willing to trade love and trust for security and luxury. I never told anyone, not even Isabelle, about what I’d done. In my mind, Michael’s offense was worse—he cheated first. That’s how I tried to justify it, anyway.

Creating my own secrets meant I’d never have to force Michael to reveal his. So I let the silences and misunderstandings grow and multiply, like mushrooms in a damp forest, pushing Michael and me further apart than ever.

Thirty

“I, AH, DIDN’T EXPECT to hear that,” Michael said. He tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace.

“I’m so sorry.” I reached out a tentative hand, then pulled it back. I had no right to touch him.

“Give me a minute, okay?” Michael turned away from me and stared out over the rows of simple headstones.

“I should’ve talked to you,” I said, my voice pleading. “It’s just that when I thought you and Roxanne … but that’s no excuse.”

“No,” he said fiercely. I could see tears glistening in his eyes. “It was
my
fault. I abandoned you first.”

“But I was the one—”

“Julia, what kind of person was I?” Michael slid down against the tree and slumped onto the ground next to me. “I drove you to an affair. I cheated that kid out of a real settlement. I toyed with Dale just for the fun of it, and I rubbed my family’s face in my money even though they probably could’ve used some real help financially….
What
did I turn into?”

He buried his head in his hands, and I could barely hear what he said next: “I never thought I’d end up like this.”

“Michael, listen to me. You’re a good person,” I said, but he just shook his head.

“Everything is snowballing, Julia. The more good I try to do, the more I realize how many people I hurt. I almost lost you. I
did
lose you, for a long time, and the worst part is, I didn’t even know.”

“With Brad … it didn’t mean anything,” I said, hating myself for using the tired cliché. “I didn’t love him. I barely knew him.”

Michael slowly nodded, but I knew he wasn’t with me. He was somewhere else, maybe watching Brad and me tangled together in the warm sheets of a bed. I knew those images would torture Michael; I’d spent enough nights fighting away similar ones.

He was still sitting on the ground. His nose was red from the cold, and a knitted cap barely contained his crazy brown curls. This was the town where everything had started for us so many years ago; it couldn’t be where things ended, too.

I love you
.

The words just sprang into my mind. Maybe I’d never stopped loving Michael, but now it felt different. I loved him despite the injuries we’d inflicted on one another, because of the bad times as well as the good ones. I loved him even though he wanted to rip me away from the extraordinary life he’d given me, and while part of me longed to cling to it, another part was suddenly excited about what lay ahead of us, about what else we might build together starting from scratch. Our love was richer and bumpier and more complex than it had ever been before.

I opened my mouth to say the words aloud, but then my breath shot out of me, as forcefully as if I’d been kicked in the gut.

“What is it?” Michael said, lifting his head at the sound of my gasp. “Julia?”

He twisted around to follow my gaze.

It wasn’t an apparition; it was him.

The tall form, the gray tweed coat, the quick walking pace … I was desperate to run away, to put as much distance between us as possible, but my legs refused to move.

“Julia?” Michael asked again. His hand tightened on my arm.

“Do you feel sick? Do you want to leave?”

I made myself look one last time, and that was when he passed under a streetlight and I realized the person wasn’t my father, after all. It was just another man walking down the sidewalk outside the graveyard.

I leaned against Michael, feeling my body tremble.

“It’s okay,” I said more to myself than to Michael.

“Should we go?” he asked, his eyes searching my face, and I silently nodded. He held on to my arm the whole way to the car, and I held his, too, unsure of which one of us was holding the other one up.

“We’ll get past this,” Michael said, and I didn’t know if it was a promise or a vow. “We’re going to be okay, Julia.”

We drove home without stopping, our car moving quickly down the dark, lonely roads. Only a few tractor-trailers and other nocturnal travelers passed us, the flashes of their headlights briefly washing over our faces. We exchanged polite questions—
Are you hungry? Need a restroom stop?
—before falling back into heavy silences.

I knew Michael had been completely honest about Roxanne. When he’d said it was enough for him to know she wanted him, I’d instantly recognized the truth in his statement—it was even more convincing than the intensity of his voice or his clear, unwavering gaze. It meshed perfectly with the secret, wounded side of my husband that nobody but me knows about.

I closed my eyes and thought back to the time, a few months after Michael’s company went public and its stock price soared, when I came home from work and discovered his Maserati—so new that the temporary tags were still on—parked in front of our house.

I’d looked at the clock on my car’s dashboard in surprise: It was only 6:15
P.M
Michael hadn’t gotten home this early in years, literally. I’d called his name as I walked through our front door, hearing my voice echo in our two-story, marble-floor foyer, but he didn’t answer. I’d climbed the steps and checked our bedroom, then wandered down the hall to his office.

That was where I found him, standing in the middle of the room and staring up at the wall he’d filled with framed press clippings: the
Fortune
article, a photo of Oprah Winfrey and her bottle of DrinkUp, a three-column profile in the
Washington Post’s
Business section.

Something in his expression had made me speak gently: “Michael?”

He’d turned to me with dull eyes. “My mother called today.” I’d taken a step backward in shock, then instinctively hurried closer to him.

“What did she say?” I’d asked.

His mouth had twisted into something meant to pass for a smile. “She wanted to congratulate me on my success. It seems she always knew I’d make a name for myself. Which is funny, since she never mentioned that little premonition before. All of a sudden, she wants a relationship.”

He’d glanced back up at the wall, and his voice sounded so harsh I barely recognized it: “Gee, I wonder what made her change her mind?”

I’d wrapped my arms around him, wanting to absorb his hurt. “What did you say to her?”

“I told her I was busy, and that I’d call her back.”

“Will you?” I’d asked.

He’d shaken his head. “Ever since I’ve been twelve, all I’ve ever gotten from her is a crappy birthday card. I can’t tell you how often I used to dream that she’d come back for me. Do you know one of the most clear memories I have? I was six or seven, and my brothers were fighting as usual, and my dad was sitting on the couch flicking through the television channels with his beer gut hanging out. And my mom had this painting she really liked—it wasn’t anything fancy, just a picture of the ocean, I think, but it was one of the few nice things in our house—and one of my brothers threw something and it shattered the glass and ruined the painting. Tore the paper. And my mom just stood there and I saw her look around at them, and then at my dad, and her face … it kind of crumpled. I heard her whisper, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’”

I’d hugged him tighter. “Did she leave right after that?”

Michael had nodded. “A few weeks later. I know she was really young when she married my dad, and she didn’t plan on her life turning out the way it did. He must’ve looked good to her when she was a teenager; he was a big football player, a popular guy. The thing is, I
get
how she felt, Julia. I know she probably woke up one day and realized she’d married a guy who’d stopped maturing in high school and had created little clones of himself. I didn’t want that life either. I knew exactly what she meant when she said it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this; I know why she left them. But
me
, Julia? Why did she leave me?”

His voice had grown dangerously soft. “She got herself a brand-new family. She has a little girl and a baby boy with her new husband.”

I’d looked up at him incredulously. “She told you that?”

He’d shrugged. “She wants me to meet my half sister and brother. She invited us over for dinner. Just one big happy family, sitting around the table and catching up on old times: ‘Hey, Mom, remember how I spent that first Christmas after you left sitting next to the phone all day because I was so sure you’d call and say you were coming back for me?’ I would’ve killed to have her call me back then. Today I told my secretary to never put her through again, no matter what she said.”

I’d rested my head against his chest, hearing his heart pound wildly against his ribs. His arms were around me, but his hands were still clenched into fists. “I don’t blame you,” I’d whispered.

We’d stayed like that, in the middle of his office, for a long time. After a while Michael had given a sigh that sounded more like a cut-off sob, and he’d said something that broke my heart: “You are the only person in this whole world who loves me.”

The next morning he’d gotten up early, showered, and put on a beautifully cut navy suit and crisp white shirt. He’d considered three ties before finally choosing a blue-and-red one, then he’d retied it twice, until the knot was perfect.

I’d leaned against the doorjamb, watching him get ready. “Are you okay?” I’d finally asked.

He’d walked over and kissed the top of my head. “I will be,” he’d said. “As long as you never leave me.”

For a week or two, it had brought us closer together. Michael had called me in the middle of the day from work just to say hi. We’d taken a Jacuzzi together late one night and shared a bottle of wine. I’d rubbed his back when he couldn’t sleep, until the tension finally left his body and he dozed off for a few hours.

But soon we began to slip away from each other again: Michael stayed later and later at work, and started to travel more. My jobs often fell on weekend nights—the rare times he was home—and our BlackBerrys and cell phones refused to stay silent. Michael bought an interest in the Blazes, then joined the charity boards. The invitations started pouring in, and our life just grew and grew. It became so big that it seemed, somehow, to swallow our marriage whole.

Thirty-one

“ISN’T THAT YOUR PHONE?” Michael asked the next morning. Neither of us had slept much. Sometime around midnight, I’d reached over for his hand, and after a moment, his fingers had closed around mine. I’d almost wept with gratitude.

“I think it’s yours.” I walked over to the bureau to check.

“Just let it go to voice mail,” he said. “It can’t be important.”

Michael’s cell number was private, which meant even though a few especially persistent members of the press were still wooing him for exclusive interviews, their calls came through the house. Only a handful of people knew his cell number, and they were all employees at his company. Or his soon to be former company. His mobile rarely rang these days.

Something was drawing me to it, whispering that I needed to answer it.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my hand lingering on the phone.

He shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Julia?”

Dale. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

“What’s up?” I asked briskly.

“Just wanted to give Michael a heads-up,” Dale was saying, his words coming out as thick and smooth as dribbles of oil. “That kid who crashed our truck?”

Revulsion gripped my stomach. “The brakes failed, Dale.” I struggled to keep from shouting even as I suspected that Dale
wanted
me to shout, to lose control of myself. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Dale continued as if I hadn’t even spoken. “He’s going to sue. It won’t work, you know. We can bury him in paperwork, and delay until his legal bills mount up. He might get someone pro bono to take him on, but even so, we’re covered. Everything is watertight.”

“Is that what you called to say?”

“Just wanted to let Michael know,” Dale said. “It’s his signature on all the paperwork.”

I hung up the phone without saying another word. Michael was sitting on the bed now, watching me.

“The guy who was in the accident is going to sue,” I said. I walked over and sat down next to him. “The one who lost his memory.”

“I don’t blame him,” Michael said simply. He drew his knees to his chest, then wrapped his arms around them. “He
should
sue. I deserve to be sued a dozen times over.”

He looked over at me. “This isn’t the only time I’ve done something like this.” His voice was almost mechanical, it was so emotionless.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“A few years after I started the company, there was a problem with the glass our supplier gave us for the bottles. On the manufacturing lines, bottles kept shattering—they were under pressure and heat, and if the glass had been good, everything would’ve been fine. But it was thin in parts. It was substandard.”

“So the glass shattered …” I prompted him when his voice drifted off.

“There’s this whole safety procedure in place for when something like that happens. You’re supposed to shut down the line, throw out any open bottles within six feet of the shattered one in case shards of glass flew into other drinks, clean everything off … We did it, the first few times. But more kept shattering. One after the other, going off like little bombs. I flew up to Buffalo the second I heard. At first I thought we’d be okay. We could weather it; we could get new glass. But the supplier vanished. We had orders flooding in—it was after Oprah endorsed us, and we had hundreds of new accounts. I had to get those drinks out, Julia.

“We cleared everyone out of the plant except a few people and gave them huge bonuses to keep quiet. We kept running the bottles through the line, and more shattered—I can still hear the noise they made; it was this huge, ugly pop, as loud as a car backfiring—and we threw out the bottles on either side of the broken ones and we kept running the line. We didn’t stop it. We didn’t throw out every bottle within six feet.”

I saw kids in soccer uniforms drinking Michael’s tainted lemonade; pregnant women twisting the lids off Berrywater at picnics, grandfathers popping into convenience stores on hot days to grab PuckerUp Limeade.
Oh, Michael
, I thought.

“I would’ve gone under. I would’ve lost everything,” he said, his voice still oddly robotic. “We settled sixteen cases. Dale handled each one; he was on an airplane within an hour of us hearing a complaint, with a blank check in his pocket. Somehow, he convinced every single person to keep quiet, except for one woman who lived next door to a reporter for a local paper in Anniston, Alabama. Roxanne shut it down somehow, though. She met the reporter, pretended she was in town for another reason. She convinced him it wasn’t a story. And so everyone who found a piece of glass in their drink got ten thousand dollars, fast, and no one knew how widespread it was. Most people spit it out without swallowing it. Only one guy got sick, and he got a hundred grand.”

I put my hand over Michael’s, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I wanted to tell you, but I thought if something happened, something bad”—
if someone died
, I thought, and I knew Michael was thinking it, too—“you might’ve been considered complicit. If we were sued, they could’ve gone after you.”

“You must’ve been so scared,” I said. I almost said I wished he had talked to me, but I couldn’t lie to Michael either, not anymore. If I had to choose between letting a few bottles go out with shards of glass in them and losing the whole company, watching as Michael was overtaken by debt and lawsuits he’d never be able to pay off, I didn’t know what I would have done.

Maybe I’d been more like Michael than I’d thought.

“Do you see why I have to fix this, Julia? I have to help that kid now. If I can just do right by him … But I made copies of the paperwork and brought it home and I’ve gone over it a dozen times. I don’t think we can change anything. If I had anything left, I’d give it to him. But my lawyers have already parceled everything out. I’m turning over the deed to this house to Doctors Without Borders. The D.C. public schools are planning to buy a bunch of computers for their classrooms with the money from my cars. The pound is hiring a new investigator for animal cruelty complaints, and I committed twenty million to cancer research…. There isn’t anything
left
. I’ve already committed everything I have.”

He leaned back against a pillow and stared up at the ceiling.

“I keep thinking I should go talk to him.”

“What would you say?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I could apologize. I could explain that I was wrong.”

I mulled it over. “I hate to say it, Michael, but wouldn’t that give him more ammunition in the lawsuit?”

“Maybe,” he said.

I looked at Michael and saw the worry etched on his face. A few days ago, I’d heard him phone a lawyer he’d known for years, begging him to check the papers for an escape clause. “No, you don’t understand,” Michael had said. “I
want
the settlement to be invalid.” He’d faxed over the papers, and an hour later, when his phone rang, he’d snatched it up. “I see,” he’d said, cradling the phone between his shoulder and ear and massaging his temples with his fingertips again. Another headache, I’d thought, and I’d slipped some Tylenol into his hand.

“Michael?” I said now. “I think you should go see him. Screw the lawyers.”

He looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time since I’d revealed my affair. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, and a trace of a smile appeared on his face.