It had started last Christmas. My husband had long expressed an interest in learning to play piano. His parents hadn't been able to afford lessons when he was growing up, and once he was on his own, his work and family obligations made it hard for him to be able to set aside time to take lessons, not to mention the practice time he needed. As Christmas neared, I'd asked my son's young piano teacher if she ever taught adults. Rarely, she told me--she'd discovered that adult learners tend to fall behind in practice because life gets in the way (and, she told me laughingly, they don't have a parent nagging them to sit down at the piano). But when I told her about my idea for a Christmas gift, she agreed to take my husband on as a student.
The lessons had been a hit from day one. He came home from each lesson at her studio eager to show me what he'd learned. It started with Chopsticks, of course, but soon he was able to zip through the beginner's version of Fur Elise. I was impressed by how diligent he'd been about practicing every night.
"Don't tell him I told you," the teacher told me one day when I brought my son in for his lesson, "but he's working on a song for your birthday. It's a gift for you." He upped his lessons to twice a week. I assumed it was because he wanted to get extra time in on the song he was preparing to surprise me with. I was, of course, wrong.
My birthday came and went without a piano performance--or a gift. It wasn't the first time I'd seen him peel out of the driveway at 6pm on the day of my birthday, or Valentine's Day, or our anniversary, and return with a bouquet of grocery store roses. As I unwrapped the roses from their plastic this time, I tried not to be upset. He'd been this way since I'd known him and had chalked it up to the fact that he hadn't been raised in a family that exchanged gifts. Granted, he'd had many years to learn a new way, but just like he overlooked many of my flaws, I decided to overlook this one, too, and thanked him for the flowers.
It all came to a head the week after the soccer party. I found out when he left his laptop open on the dining room table after taking Jackson to get ice cream. I suppose he'd forgotten that he'd linked his text messages with his iMessages. But here they came, so many chiming notifications that it sounded like a handbell choir gone loco. I went to shut his laptop and saw that it was his work friend, Phil, blowing up his phone. Worried that something was the matter, I clicked on the message thread:
"I can't stop thinking about you," Phil said.
"I can still smell you on my fingers," my husband replied.
"Next time, I want you to fuck me on the piano bench."
"My back will probably give out, but I'm willing to get into traction if I can fuck that sweet pussy again."
My world stopped. I thought I was going to be sick. Obviously, he'd hidden her name under Phil's contact. And he was probably standing in line for ice cream as he was responding to her messages, totally oblivious that they were popping up on his laptop. I slammed his laptop shut and sat down in the dark living room, staring at my hands. If I were writing a book and had included this plot twist, my editor would have thrown my manuscript across the room and demanded I do better, but this wasn't fiction--this was my life.
How could I not have known? All the signs were there--I'd just misread them. Him telling me I was too insatiable, that he couldn't keep up--it had been a lie. Ten years older than me, I'd believed him when he told me he couldn't manage more than twice a week. Now I knew better. He was used up. On the nights he turned me down, he'd already given everything he had, physically, to her. I'd built my fantasies to fill the gaps, but they were just fantasies--they kept me from cheating. I had had no intention of ever acting on them. Meanwhile, he was living out his fantasies in the studio of my child's piano teacher. I felt unsteady on my feet as I trudged up to our bedroom.
I sat down on the bed and looked at myself in the dresser mirror. I was now embarrassed to think about how attractive I'd felt around J.. Real or imagined, he'd made me feel seen and appreciated, and, as a result, when I looked in the mirror, I felt better about myself. Now, instead of seeing the forty-something who still looked young enough to be carded occasionally (albeit usually at the American Legion!) and who could still catch the eye of men both older and younger, I saw an undesirable nobody. My full lips, which I liked to darken with rose-colored lipstick, struck me now as crooked and ugly. My large blue eyes, always my best feature, my saving grace on those days when I just felt unattractive, were bloodshot and filmed over with tears that wouldn't fall. Even my body, which I worked so hard to keep trim, looked gross. No amount of exercise would hide the fact that I'd once carried a child. I could have a core of steel, and I almost did, but there would always be that little bit of loose skin, a reminder that I brought a beautiful boy into this world. I'd been proud of that mark, because it was something I shared with my husband. Now I was embarrassed by it, because I knew the piano teacher, childless and at least fifteen years younger, didn't have to worry about that sort of thing.
What happened next followed the usual trajectory. I confronted him and he denied it. I told him I'd seen the messages, told him I knew he'd hidden her in his phone as "Phil." That was it. He cried and held my hand, telling me he had been "confused" and was struggling with getting older. He quoted the line from Moonstruck, when the wife, who has learned her husband of fifty years, is cheating on her, tells a dinner companion that men cheat because they're afraid of death. It took all my strength not to laugh in his face. "And what about the note?" I asked.
"What note?"
"The note you gave her."
He looked at me blankly. He didn't think I would've approached her, but I had. She'd handed me a note he'd written. "I'm so sorry. I assumed the note was true," she said. After a beat, she added, "I'm horrified that you had to see those text messages." The note was addressed to her, and said that he really wanted to get a drink with her, and a bit more. "She knows," he wrote. "We have an open marriage."
In the midst of all this, soccer tryouts were scheduled, and I had to ferry my son up to the middle school. I knew J. would be there, but now I didn't care what I was wearing, or what he thought when he saw me. What was the point? He'd never really been looking at me anyway. Everything I thought I'd observed--him keeping an eye on me during practice, his promised "explanation" for why he never spoke to me--it was meaningless. Easily explained away. The delusions of a woman whose husband had lost interest in her and who was probably on her way to the dreaded invisibility experienced by so many women. When I was sitting on that bench at practice, thinking I was looking halfway decent, maybe even cute, my husband was fucking another woman. How could I have thought for even an instant that I could be attractive or desirable. Events had unfolded that indicated the exact opposite.
And as I pulled into the parking lot of the middle school with my son and saw J. standing at the fields, clipboard in hand, I was again overcome by embarrassment at the way my wild imagination had designed scenarios where I'd be the focus of his attention.
I forced myself to be cheerful. "Good luck! And don't sweat it. You'll do amazing."
"Thanks, Mom."
I watched as he joined the other boys circled around J. and the other evaluators. J. said something to them and they all simultaneously turned toward the parking lot and beckoned the parents to the field. Reluctantly, we all got out of our cars and made our way to the field. The boys were sent to warm up while J. waited for all of us to gather round him. Kayla fell into step with me. "Looks like the coach wants to talk to the parents. How was your three weeks of soccer freedom?" she asked. I glanced over at her, and she could tell at once that they hadn't gone well. "Are you okay?" I bit my lip and shook my head, but gave her a look that I hoped said, "Later." She got it.
As we gathered round J., I avoided his eyes. I pulled my baseball cap low and thrust my hands into the pockets of my warmup jacket. My yoga pants had a bleach stain on them. I didn't care. I was done trying.
"Just wanted to chat with the parents for a second about how tryouts are going to roll out this year," J. said. I hadn't heard his voice in so long. I realized that I'd missed it. "We expect to make two elite teams this year due the excess talent at this age level. Both teams will play in the ECNL, but will have different schedules. I don't want to say there will be a top team and a lower team, but the Black team can be considered the A team and the Blue team the B team."
I zoned out for the rest of the talk, catching only the fact that J. would coach one team and another coach would coach the others. I didn't even remember who would coach which team. It didn't really matter who coached my son now. J. had reverted to being just another coach because my fantasy of his interest had imploded, and when fantasy implodes it can't easily be rebuilt. There's a magic in the suspension of disbelief, and once that magic is ruined, it's over.
