The Seducer (43 page)

Michael reached for her large hand and held it reassuringly. “I don't need space. Let's stay together through this, Baby. We belong together.”

“I've always thought so too. But I think we need to be apart for a little while, so that you can be sure that's what you really want, before we actually ...” she paused for a moment before bringing up the concept that seemed to scare him away, “... marry.”

To her surprise, Michael didn't withdraw. “I could come visit you every other weekend,” he offered.

“What about the other weekends?”

“You can come visit me here,” Michael said, knowing full well that such an arrangement would be prohibitively expensive and impractical.

“What if you fall in love with someone else while I'm away?”

“You don't have to leave. We can work things out here, together.”

Karen shook her head. “Not until you're absolutely sure you want to commit to me.”

“So what are you saying? That, for now, we're together yet free?” Michael attempted to control his glee.

Karen smiled at him only with the corners of her mouth while the rest of her features remained fixed. “You're the only one who needs to be free, Michael. Not me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can't compete with your torrid affair.” She intended to sound sarcastic, but ended up sounding jealous.

This time, he didn't contradict her. With the manipulative man's instinct, Michael sensed that to denigrate Karen's rival would mean to lose one of his most important game pieces. He planned to milk the rivalry he had fostered between the two women for all its worth, long after Ana was out of the picture.

“If you don't get that woman out of your system, we have no future together,” Karen continued. Her eyes pleaded with him. “You need to do whatever it takes to flush her out completely.”

They exchanged a complicit glance. “You mean the way I got over Amy?” he alluded to his bout of promiscuity after his first girlfriend had left him.

She looked away. This decision was excruciating for her.

Few women would accept such an arrangement, Michael thought, looking at Karen steadily to ascertain what was really going on in her head. He didn't know if he should disdain his fiancée for agreeing to this new humiliation or admire her for confronting it so boldly. One thing is certain, he observed. This woman loves me. “Anytime you want to come back home, you'll be welcome,” he declared wistfully. To distract her from scrutinizing his reaction, Michael pushed the plate of scallops towards her. “Have some before they get cold.”

Karen took a little bite of a scallop. After not eating much of anything for so long, its lukewarm chewiness turned her stomach. Even after this unexpected twist of fate, she still felt dejected.

Michael grabbed a scallop by its toothpick and popped it whole into his mouth. He chewed with his whole face, cheeks full and pumping. His heart pounded with glee. Screw all that cheating and hiding crap, he thought. What a coup! An open relationship on his side alone. And, in case things didn't work out with someone new, Karen would still be there waiting for him, closing her eyes to his player lifestyle, just so that he'd forget about her rival. Forget who? Michael jokingly asked himself recalling Ana's mystified expression when he had told her to get out of his car. The past was already behind him, the present filled with promise, while the future looked brighter than ever.

“I don't believe psychiatrists can help unless you're clinically insane,” Ana said to her husband as they pulled into the parking garage. “There's a place over there,” she pointed to an empty spot.

“Then he should be able to help you,” Rob commented.

“How so?” Ana pretended not to get the unflattering innuendo. “I've already broken up with Michael.”

“Yeah, but if he comes to get you, which he still might since I don't think we've heard the last of him yet, I'm not sure that you won't leave me for him again. Besides, there's so much damage this affair's done to our marriage. We don't really know how to fix it. If left to our own devices, we'll just go back to ignoring each other.”

Ana directed him a skeptical glance: “And you really believe that paying a shrink two hundred bucks an hour to tell us that we're in love with our parents will fix all our problems?”

Rob took Ana's cool hand into his. For the first time since she could remember, he chivalrously helped her out of the car. “This isn't just about us.” His gaze shifted nervously. “I can't even look my own parents and colleagues in the eye, given what you've done to me. At least now I'll be able to tell them that we're making some genuine effort to work on our marriage with a professional therapist. Otherwise, I'll look like a chump who doesn't have the guts to break up with his two-timing wife.”

Ana contemplated her husband's statement as they climbed down the staircase that led them out of the garage. “I didn't think you cared so much about appearances,” she said, without masking her disappointment.

“Yeah, well, you'd care more too if you had gone through the humiliation I have. But you're incapable of putting yourself in my shoes,” Rob reproached her.

“It's not like your colleagues necessarily have more empathy than I do,” Ana countered. “And I feel terrible about what I did. That's part of why I changed my mind. But, frankly, I don't care about what your colleagues and their secretaries think,” she stuck to her original point. “Ultimately, it's our lives, not theirs. We'd be the ones to suffer had we separated. And we'll be the ones to suffer if we stay together and our marriage is unhappy.”

“That's the whole point of therapy,” Rob took her argument in the opposite direction. “I don't want to stay in an unhappy marriage. And obviously neither do you. We need to work together to improve our relationship.”

“I agree,” Ana replied looking directly into her husband's eyes as she squeezed his hand in solidarity. “But I seriously doubt that a shrink can help us,” she reverted like a spring to her initial prejudice.

“Dr. Emmert is an experienced marriage counselor, not just any therapist,” Rob defended the psychiatrist, who had been highly recommended by two of his colleagues at Ford Motor Company. “We're here,” he opened the gilded front door of a tall, posh-looking building.

Ana stepped in first. “This is like a mini skyscraper. For Ann Arbor, at least,” she remarked, being easily impressed by the air of opulence.

“His office is on the fifth floor,” Rob pressed the elevator button.

“Promise me that if we don't get anything out of this session, we won't schedule another one,” Ana whispered into her husband's ear once they stepped out into the hallway. She paused before the mirror outside the psychiatrist's office to adjust her hair.

“I promise,” Rob agreed, since he wasn't a proponent of throwing money out the window either. “And you, in turn, promise me that you won't try to seduce him,” he said, noticing that his wife was applying a fresh layer of lipstick.

“When do I ever?”

“Don't get me started on that!” Rob warned her. “I've seen how you behave with clients at your gallery. You always try to draw men into your orbit.”

“That's not ...” Ana was about to object, but she didn't get the chance to finish her sentence since the therapist opened the door.

“Please come in,” Dr. Emmert invited the couple into his office. Ana noticed that he was tall, younger than she had anticipated and, somehow, less German looking. Stereotyping psychotherapists, she had envisioned a Freud look-alike with a white beard. Not only was the therapist more handsome than her mental picture, but also he had these large, expressive brown eyes that, ironically, reminded her of Michael.

“Hi, I'm Rob,” her husband shook hands with the psychiatrist. “And this is my wife, Ana,” he introduced her.

“Nice to meet you,” she smiled at him.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” Dr. Emmert gestured towards the two chairs facing his desk. “So how can I be of help?”

Rob gazed briefly at his wife, to see if she wanted to begin. But Ana didn't give any such sign. She was busy visually inspecting the room, to see what she could tell about the psychiatrist based upon the objects in his office. Not much, she decided after a brief examination. Dr. Emmert's office was sparsely furnished: two wooden bookshelves filled with books on developmental and child psychology; a chair that didn't look particularly imperial; no fancy Persian rugs like she had expected; a computer and no ornaments on his desk whatsoever. One of these days I'll have to bring him a couple of Moldavian vases to spruce up the place a little, Ana made a mental note, as if the psychiatrist were an old friend.

“We're here because my wife almost left me for another man,” Rob began.

Dr. Emmert nodded, encouraging him to go on. He had heard that story dozens of times before although, in all fairness to Ana, usually it was the men who cheated.

“Basically,” Rob continued, “A few weeks ago my wife informed me that she's been having an affair. She told me that she's in love with a man named Michael and that they want to marry. She asked for a divorce.” Rob spoke quickly as if to get the unpleasant business over with. He paused briefly, to gather the strength to continue. “At first, I was unbelievably hurt by this news. Not just for my sake, but for the whole family, especially our kids, Michelle and Allen, who are eight and nine. But after awhile,” Rob went on, “I got used to the idea of divorce. In fact, I even looked forward to having a spouse who'd treat me better than Ana did, which, I figured, wasn't setting the bar that high. And that's precisely when she changed her mind and told me that she wants to leave her lover and stay with me,” he pursued. “Initially, I was almost as devastated by her change of heart as by the news that she wanted to leave me. Because I wanted to start a new life with someone who wouldn't hurt me the way she did.” He took a deep breath before completing his statement. “But I still love Ana and she claims she still loves me. We're here because we'd like to save our marriage,” he concluded his summary.

“Okay,” the psychiatrist replied. He had listened carefully to Rob, then switched his attention to Ana, to hear her side of the story.

“Part of the problem we're facing right now is that it will be difficult for Rob to trust me again,” she took the cue. “And even before, our marriage had serious problems. Also, emotionally speaking, I'm still not completely over my lover. He's probably not given up on me yet either, even though we've broken up, of course.”

Dr. Emmert shook his head, as if something didn‘t quite mesh in these two complementary descriptions: “What's the point of even trying to work on your marriage if you're still in love with another man?” he asked Ana, then turned his attention once again to her husband, to observe his reaction.

“That's what I can't figure out either!” Rob concurred. “Frankly, I never understood why Ana changed her mind. And how do I know that she won't change it again?”

“Can you try to answer this question?” Dr. Emmert looked directly into Ana's eyes with his calm, penetrating gaze.

“The answer's simple, but Rob doesn't believe me,” she replied. “It's because, ultimately, I still love him. It hurt too much when I tried to leave him. Plus I didn't want to see the kids much less, since he and I would be sharing custody. I was crying every day about that,” her voice started to crack with emotion just from the recollection of those trying weeks.

“Those seemed like crocodile tears to me,” Rob remarked flatly.

“They weren't!” she protested.

“Ana's reasoning struck me as similar to that of the Nazi doctors,” her husband elaborated. “Some of them may have had genuine empathy for their victims, but they continued inflicting the damage. She complained every day about leaving me, but she was still going through with that decision anyway.”

“Yes, but the fact remains that I didn't,” Ana insisted. “I couldn't. My suffering wasn't innocent, obviously, because I was the one causing it. Yet it was real, in that I genuinely felt it.”

“Sorry, but it was tough to feel any sympathy for you under the circumstances,” Rob retorted.

“Then why did you reconcile with her?” Dr. Emmert asked him. “Many husbands wouldn't have, under the circumstances.”

Rob shrugged as if unsure, even though he had been contemplating this question for days. “I don't know. Part of me believes that it's because I have no backbone. Another part of me believes that it's because I have this idealized image of the nuclear family.” He took a furtive look at his wife, then directed his comment to the psychiatrist. “But another part of me believes that it's because I still love Ana. We have over ten years of history together. I also think I wanted to save her from a man I considered very dangerous for her.” As he said this, Rob enveloped his wife in a protective glance, his own pain momentarily eclipsed by a concern for her wellbeing. “I realize that I'm biased given my position as a jilted husband. But I honestly thought that she was making the biggest mistake of her life.”

“He thinks that Michael's a horrible person.” Ana's tone reflected skepticism rather than agreement.

“And you don't?” Dr. Emmert asked her.

Ana shrugged. “I'm ambivalent about him. During most of our relationship, Michael treated me better than any other man. But towards the end he acted pretty badly. I couldn't even recognize him anymore.”

“Then why didn't you go through with your decision to leave your husband?” the psychiatrist pursued, beginning to pick at the thread of her narrative.

“Mainly because I love my family. I couldn't build my happiness upon its destruction. Even though Rob was getting used to the idea of divorce, it still broke his heart,” she said, looking at her husband. “And mine too,” she turned again to the psychiatrist. “Our children were also pretty devastated. They're old enough to realize what was happening and to suffer because of it. We had worked out a divorce settlement that stipulated joint custody. But kids don't particularly enjoy being shuttled back and forth between parents.”