something I’ve asked a hundred times before. Why do so many people being deceived by their spouses go to absurd lengths to deny what they see? What they sense with their intuition? Even what, in the end, they hear whispered by their friends?
I used to think it was to avoid the pain of betrayal, of facing inadequacy, of confronting a train of mistakes and admitting that their lives are an illusion and that they didn’t measure up to their partner’s image of them. But that’s not the marrow of it. Once a wife or husband begins a love affair, the marriage becomes a brittle, carefully maintained façade, beneath which lies a horror that most humans lack the courage to face. And the horror is this: when your wife or husband truly gives themselves to another person, they haven’t done it to hurt you. In fact, they’ve probably taken great care to avoid hurting you. No, the unspeakable truth is that you no longer matter to them. Except as the mother or father of their children, you do not exist. That is why people refuse to see. To do so, they’d have to crack the door on a limitless darkness in which they have come to mean nothing to the person who knows them better than anyone else in the world. They must face, probably for the first time, being utterly alone. And that way lies madness.
How many nights has Paul lain awake and wondered if he’s losing Jet, or has already lost her? Has he wondered how his son would react to his mother leaving the house? Maybe even leaving the state? Who could possibly take Jet’s place? A hundred local women would be happy to move into her house and give their best years to Paul. But how many could fill the massive hole that her departure would create? None of them. I know what it’s like to try to replace Jet Talal. I tried, and with a damn good woman. But even she never quite banished Jet from my mind and heart.
“Dying doesn’t scare me,” Paul says softly, still looking at the floor.
A chill races over my arms. “What?”
“Dying doesn’t scare me. In fact, there’ve been times when I would have welcomed it.” He looks up, his face scarlet from hanging his head over like that. “Don’t freak out, I’m not about to slit my wrists. I’m just saying, I’ve seen death up close. You know that. You saw some with me.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s dying alone, man.”
“Now you’re talking crazy.”
“Am I? My mother’s gone, Goose. She’d dead. My father may have killed her. And Jet? Who knows, man? I feel like she’s miles away, even when we’re sitting across the table from each other. Even when I’m inside her. She’s just . . . not there.”
I breathe slowly, keeping my face immobile. “Maybe that’s just in your mind.”
He shakes his head with conviction. “No! I’m not saying I blame her. I’ve got all kinds of problems. Head problems, dick problems—which drugs don’t always help—but mostly anxiety. And my temper. I can’t keep my shit in one sock. Sometimes, I’ll be at one of Kevin’s baseball games, and some asshole parent will start trash-talking a ref or even a kid. In less than a second I’m one tick from walking over and snapping the dude’s neck. It’s like my mind goes red, my brain’s on fire. I don’t carry a knife anymore, because I’m worried I might decapitate some asshole in the time it takes to cover three rows of bleachers.”
I get up and walk around my desk, sit on its top. “Paul, you know what that is. PTSD. You’ve got to talk to somebody.”
He looks up with irony in his eyes. “Ain’t we talkin’?”
“Yeah. But you came in here to ask if I’m fucking your wife.”
“Are you?”
This time his gaze is piercing. I don’t even allow myself internal dialogue before I give him a reflexive “No.”
His stare doesn’t waver. “You used to, though.”
“Yeah, in high school. Ancient history, man.”
He nods slowly. “You must have tapped it a few times since then. Right? College? She come up to UVA for a weekend? D.C., maybe?”
Did he put Jet through this kind of grilling? If so, what did she answer? “Paul, goddamn it. This is pointless.”
At last he breaks eye contact and looks at the floor again. “Don’t mind me. I’ll get out.”
“You don’t have to. Tell me about Kevin,” I say, hoping to steer him to more solid ground.