she also seemed to be happy with a part-time lover, with the stolen hours and midnight departures. I often went to sleep on the daybed in my office so as not to wake Blythe and Sweetheart, although I would often, after a late night, return to the master bedroom for a restorative nap; on these occasions, Sweetheart liked to join me, shoving her nose into my armpit and stabbing me with her hooves. Actually, it was strange how well we got along during this period, after almost two years of uneasy coexistence.
Katrina and I had been friends for years, a fact that helped to mask the drift into physical intimacy, to make it seem innocent even to ourselves, right up until the irrevocable moment—the kiss in the back of the taxi, my hand sliding down her shoulder to her breast, her hand sliding up my knee.
“This is probably a terrible idea,” Katrina said as she unfastened my belt. After the night we moved from her couch to her bed, we fell into a pattern of twice-a-week trysts.
I probably would've been satisfied with this arrangement indefinitely, but eventually Katrina's conscience started to bother her; she wanted more, yet was loath to demand it, and I wasn't nearly ready to leave Blythe. But I was crushed when Katrina ended our affair, and in order to console myself, I embarked on a crime spree of serial infidelities. Or perhaps I'm being too easy on myself; maybe I'd just developed a taste for it.
I must have been exuding some kind of scent that telegraphed my debauched availability and my intentions, because there were willing women wherever I looked. I had never noticed them in the early years of my marriage, but suddenly I was awash in opportunity: the dental assistant who held my gaze as she suctioned my gums; the librarian who helped me find Peter Quennell's Byron in Italy; the studio executive I met on the plane to L.A. I was compulsive and insatiable. It reminded me of one of Blythe's folksier aphorisms—that once a dog starts sucking eggs, there's no stopping him. In her part of the world, where guns were standard household equipment, the implication was that the dog needed to be shot. Yet in the end she was surprisingly forgiving.
The tipping point was reached back in Tennessee, where I was spotted emerging from a hotel at midnight with the wife of one of Blythe's cousins. At that point, the community, which teemed with friends and relatives, took it upon itself to advise Blythe that enough was enough.
The showdown was surprisingly muted.
We were lying in bed, Sweetheart splayed between us, her sharp cloven hooves thrust toward me. She grunted interrogatively, hoping for a tummy rub, just as Blythe launched her interrogation.
“They say people are calling me the Hillary Clinton of Tennessee.”
Scared and guilty as I was that we were finally addressing the elephant in the room, I tried to delay the inevitable. “Down here, I guess that's a bad thing to be.”
“This isn't the time for you to be a smart-ass Yankee. They mean I'm a fool who's turning a blind eye to your flagrant and relentless philandering.”
“I know,” I said. I was, I realized, actually relieved that we were finally discussing this.
“This can't go on. I can't go on.”
“I know.”
“You realize my father would have had you shot. And I'm not even exaggerating.”
“I guess I could only say I deserve it.”
“Now you're exaggerating. You don't believe that, so stop bullshitting me. Stop bullshitting yourself. You've been lying to both of us. And don't you dare say not really. Not telling isn't the same as not lying. Now listen, I'm not going to give you a real hard time about this, though I probably should. People think I'm crazy, that I should cut your balls off and have done with it, but I just don't have it in me to yell and scream and cuss. I can't say I'm not hurt. I am. You really stabbed me in the heart and turned the blade. But nobody can help falling out of love with someone else.”
“It's not that,” I said. “I still—”
“Shut up and listen,” she said. “All I ask is that you tell me everything—and everyone. I'm serious about this. You owe me that much at least. And if I think you're not being honest, you'll end up wishing Daddy was still around to shoot you and put you out of your misery.”
So, I told her. About Katrina. About the dental