mother, having failed as perfect wife. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been sleeping with twenty-three-year-olds in their bedroom.
He finally touched on the subject halfway through lunch. She had been dreading it since she got there, but it was why they were having lunch in a busy downtown restaurant, and he wouldn’t be coming home to her that night.
“So where are we headed, Caro? I’ve got the apartment for three more weeks, and I need to know what I’m doing.” That was it? The apartment? What about their life? Her heart? Their kids? Their future? Was it time to divide up the books, the furniture, and their sports equipment? And decide who got the couch?
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Where do you think we should be going? What’s happening with you?” She wanted to sound stronger, but her heart was pounding so hard she could almost hear it and was sure he could too.
He sighed when he looked at her, and almost visibly deflated, like a balloon with a hole in it. He wasn’t the man she remembered, confident, cocky, strong, hers. She noticed that he’d lost weight over the summer, and he noticed the same about her. She looked fit, and her tan was golden brown. He hadn’t dared tell her she looked great when he saw her.
“I think I went a little crazy two months ago. Some kind of midlife crisis or something. Maybe I was afraid of getting old. I can’t make excuses for what I did. And I don’t know if you can forgive me. It might have just screwed us forever. I hope it hasn’t, but I wouldn’t blame you.” She had never heard him sound so humble and contrite.
“Interesting choice of words,” she said tartly, and he looked embarrassed, as he should have.
“Whatever. You know what I mean. Do you want a divorce?”
“Want one? No. Need one? Maybe. I’m just not sure I can get past it. I want to, but I can’t get it out of my head. I can hardly walk into our bedroom without feeling sick. You broke my heart,” she said as tears filled her eyes, and she struggled to hold them back.
“I’m so sorry, Caro. I don’t know what happened. I went nuts. That’s all I can say. I feel terrible. I didn’t want to hurt you. I wish I could erase it for both of us.”
“And now?”
“It’s over. I ended it. She quit. She went back to New York a few weeks ago. She’s young, she’ll get over it. I spent a lot of time this summer trying to figure out why it happened. It was like a drug.”
“And the next one, just like her, if you go nuts again?”
“There won’t be a next one. I love you.” He had finally said it. She wondered if he would. She didn’t say it back, because she was no longer sure if she still loved him. That was the problem. Her feelings for him had been frozen since June, and nothing she thought or said or tried to remember seemed to defrost them. After the initial agony, she had been numb and confused ever since. “I love our life, our kids. I don’t want to do this to them or to you.”
“You should have thought of that two months ago.”
“I should have, but I didn’t. I was a massive fool. It’s like I thought I was single for a minute, in a way I never had been. I never did things like that before we got married. It’s all different now. It’s cellphones and selfies and texting and fast sex from dating sites. Instead of ordering pizzas, they order people. It’s a giant supermarket of bodies, fast lays like fast food and no feelings. I don’t know how they cope with it. It made me crazy, and it scares me to death for Morgan, out there in a few years. I don’t know how any of them handle it. OkCupid, and Tinder, and Twitter. I’ll lose my mind if that’s what I have to do now. I don’t want a divorce. I want to come home, if you’ll have me.”
She didn’t answer him for a long time, as she looked at him and thought about it, and tried to figure out what she wanted. She wanted to turn the clock back to before June, and she knew that couldn’t happen. She didn’t want what they were left with either. Anger and bitterness, and a broken heart