“Sometimes. But never particularly hard, it seemed to me.” She looks at you for a moment, thinking. “Okay—here’s an example, off the top of my head. This one time, you were really, really tired—Danny hadn’t been sleeping. But Tim wanted sex. Since he wasn’t actually going to come—too messy, too out-of-control—sex usually went on until you came. So, on this occasion, you faked it. But you obviously didn’t do it too well, because he picked up on it. He went on at you about it for days. If Jack had done that to me, I’d have given him his marching orders. But you were always so damn understanding. Anyway, I told you Tim’s attitude was outrageous—I couldn’t understand why you’d felt obligated to have sex in the first place, let alone fake an orgasm, but since you had, it was none of his business. I must have convinced you I was right, because that’s what you eventually told him.” She shrugs. “Hardly a big deal, right? But Tim didn’t talk to you for weeks. Just cut you off. Then when he did start talking, and you told him it came from me, he wouldn’t have me in the house. He got mad if you even spoke to me on the phone.”
You wait to see if the memory of what Lisa’s describing comes back to you. But there’s nothing. “How are you and Jack these days?”
She gives a short, bitter bark of laughter. “Well, there’s the thing. We separated a few years back.”
“Tim and I must have been doing something right, then.”
“I guess.” She gives you a glance. “Or you were too scared to leave him.”
You frown at her. “What makes you say that?”
“You always tiptoed around him. Everyone did. The brilliant Tim Scott, the boy wonder who was going to change the world. He didn’t have employees. He had acolytes. Like a cult. I always thought it was a shame you met him in that environment—all those yes-kids falling to their knees whenever he so much as walked past their desks. Personally, I can’t imagine anything worse than living with someone like that. There was something creepy about the way you always had to live up to this perfect image of yourself that he’d created in his head.” She shudders. “But if you were having second thoughts, you probably wouldn’t have told me. You’d have hated me to have been right about him.”
You think of that book hidden in the bookcase, Overcoming Infatuation. Perhaps it wasn’t you who was the infatuated one, after all. Perhaps you were simply trying to understand the man you were married to.
You push the thought away. Lisa always did this. She enjoyed being the all-knowing, sensible older sister. It was one of the things that, growing up, made you delight in being reckless. Whenever she said something was too dangerous, you just went right ahead and did it anyway.
“And do you remember how you cut off all your hair that time?” she’s saying. “You decided braids were impractical now that you were a mother. Plus there’d been some stuff on social media about it being cultural appropriation or something. So you took a pair of scissors to them. It looked stunning, actually—everything looked stunning on you. But you hadn’t consulted Tim. He was furious. You had to get extensions and braid them exactly the way they’d been before.”
You shake your head. “I don’t remember that, no. Are you sure that really happened? Perhaps I was exaggerating.”
“You didn’t exaggerate. If anything, you had—what do they call it?—Pangloss syndrome. Everything was always beautiful and brilliant and so damn perfect in this amazing new world you and Tim were building together. Arrgh.” She mimes sticking her fingers down her throat.
You think how just the other day you’d asked Tim whether he liked your French braids, and he’d said it was up to you how you wore your hair. And yet, after the poisoned fish debacle, you’d changed it back again. Unconsciously trying to please him, perhaps?
Such tiny, tiny things. And, after all, there are little glitches in any relationship, tiny creases in the carpet. Faking an orgasm—in the great scheme of things, it was nothing. Every wife has done it, and every husband’s suspected her of it. Okay, maybe Lisa wouldn’t, out of some kind of feminist principle, but Lisa always ended up with quiet, downtrodden partners who eventually ran off with someone more fun anyway.
Nothing she’s said makes you believe that Tim ever did