Anybody who knows me knows that I am obsessed with adultery. Being betrayed by the person you most trust, being humiliated, rejected, and alone... I don't really understand why every book ever is not written on this topic.
I may nod my head and smile when you bring up other artistic subjects like social commentary, and spiritual enlightenment, yeah yeah. But my guilty, indulgent inner toddler wants what it wants. I want the suffering, the treachery, and occasionally, the poetic justice.
Given that I spend minimum half an hour a day imagining scenarios in which I catch my husband cheating on me, I figured I should channel that into productive energy and blog posts. Thus the idea for the series The Thousand Betrayals. Each post in this series will be related to infidelity. It might be a story, or even just a scenario. It might be research on infidelity. It might be celebrity gossip. There are no wrong answers people. This is blogging! And yes, I was wearing a flowing cape and kicking another blogger into a bottomless pit while I typed that.
Today's story: The Touch
It had been a while since we had sex. The dry spells were more common since the baby. We were so busy with groceries and dishes, who was taking the baby to daycare? Who was giving the bath tonight and who was putting the baby to sleep? What about work? We still have to do that? Weeks came and went with barely a peck on the cheek and a prayer for an extra hour of sleep. I knew it wasn't ideal, but I thought we were on the same page. We were a team. We were working together to build something. It never would have occurred to me that there was a problem until the touch.
It happened on his birthday. Idiot that I am, I baked him a fucking cake like Betty fucking Crocker and took it to his office. I walked in after lunch, just when the rhythms of the work day were settling into a steady flow. Typing, and chatting, his eyes smiled when I came in the room. I said hi to Andrew and Jen and Felix. Bernie and Linda were not in that day. Maggie the secretary said the boss was on her way, as his coworkers complimented me on my uneven frosting job. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, his favorite. I hate chocolate cake.
I was laying out the dishes and the silverware, fussing at the cake and looking around when I saw Jen come up from behind him and touch him on his shoulder as he sat at his desk. She showed him something on her cellphone. She was smiling, and leaning in. The way he nodded once and then turned back to his computer, studiously, as if trying to ignore her, made my skin grow cold and my palms start to sweat.
That touch. That touch on his shoulder. So familiar, so warm and intimate. How many conversations had they had together, how long had he known her? How many hours had they been alone? I barely knew her name! How could anybody so foreign to me be juxtaposed with the person nearest to me, and touching him? It made no sense.
But it was his indifference that let me know, and once I knew, it was like the wolf blew my house down. I was exposed and raw, seconds from crying. His gaze locked onto my gaze from across the room, the grief written plainly on my face. He looked worried, perhaps panicked. I excused myself and told everybody to sing Happy Birthday without me.
Afterward he came and found me in the bathroom. "What's going on?" he wanted to know. "I think you know," I said. And he did.
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