but I’m guessing he has. I know everything. He told me everything.” Even as she said the words, she knew they were untrue. No one knows everything.
“Hen, I just want to say that I am so, so sorry. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I don’t deserve it, I know, but please understand—”
“Joanna, it’s okay. I’m not calling to yell at you. I’m just calling . . . I don’t know why I’m calling. I guess I want to hear your side of the story and not just Lloyd’s.”
“Okay,” Joanna said, and took a long, audible breath. “When did . . . What did Lloyd tell you?”
“You haven’t talked with him yet?”
“Um . . . briefly. He’d told me that for a while he’d been planning on finally letting you know about . . . what had happened.”
“He didn’t let me know, actually. I figured it out, and then he confessed to it.”
“Oh.”
Hen could tell Joanna hadn’t been told about these recent developments and that she was trying to catch up, trying to figure out what she should and should not say.
“He hasn’t talked with you, has he?” Hen asked.
“I think I should go.”
“Joanna, he told me you two were over, that you broke up over the last weekend you were together.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
Hen heard what sounded like an exasperated sigh. “Can I ask you something, Hen?”
“Okay.”
“Have the two of you been talking about getting a divorce?”
“What do you mean? Like recently, now that I know about you and Lloyd?”
“No, I mean before. Like for the past six months.”
“We just bought a fucking house together. No, we haven’t been talking about divorce. Is that what he’s been telling you?”
“Maybe he’s implied—”
“Implied that we were going to get divorced?”
“Is that not happening?” Joanna actually laughed. “He told me you were both unhappy, that things weren’t going well, that you bought the house to try and save the marriage.”
“None of that is remotely true. I mean, maybe it was true in his own mind, but we never had a conversation about any of that. He’s never told me he’s unhappy. It was a total shock for me that he was having an affair.”
Silence again. Then Joanna said, “I’m sorry. I never would have—”
“You can stop saying you’re sorry. Did you think . . . Are you planning on being with Lloyd?”
“I hadn’t planned anything, exactly, but I did think that you and him were breaking up. And I did think that it might work out between us. Jesus, have I been a total idiot?”
“Well, if you’ve been an idiot, then so have I.”
“It’s still my fault. I was the one—”
“Let’s just say it’s all Lloyd’s fault and leave it at that, okay? I’m kicking him out of my house, by the way. I just decided. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that he might be looking for a place to stay.”
“He’s not staying here.”
“I don’t really care where he stays, Joanna, so you don’t have to say that for my sake.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was another pause, and Hen realized that there was nothing left to say. She said, “I’ve got to go now. Thanks for talking with me.”
“Stop being nice. I think I’d feel better if you yelled at me or something.”
“Well, thanks for talking with me, and fuck you for everything else.”
“Thanks, that’s better. Sorry again.”
Hen hung up, put her phone down on the arm of the ragged upholstered chair she was sitting on, and felt a surge of energy, half anger and half . . . something else—maybe excitement, although that wasn’t the exact word. It was more like anticipation. Everything was changing so rapidly. Lloyd was not who she thought he was. Not even close. The cheating was one thing—people were flawed and made mistakes—but the outright deceit, not just toward her but also toward Joanna, who suddenly seemed more like a fellow victim instead of the enemy, was something else altogether. She stood up, shook her hands out, and wondered what to do next. Her body was buzzing, like there were tiny wires sparking just under the surface of her skin. In a way, it reminded her of times when she was manic, but that wasn’t the case now. Any mania she was experiencing was strictly related to what was going on in her life.
She decided that what she really wanted to do was to just go home and send Lloyd packing, but she knew he was going to resist, claiming she was in