At first I thought the fallout would be insurmountable.
And for many weeks it seemed that way.
Opening the side door to our old New England farmhouse kitchen that late October Saturday, with sunset just around the corner, I was taken completely by surprise to see Barb standing by the window staring out into our backyard. She turned to face me when I entered, and the look she leveled at me said a galaxy of things. I was caught, the jig was up, and she was pissed.
I stopped and tried to collect my thoughts. I kept my voice low and even, but soft.
"I thought you wouldn't be back 'til later. I was just going to start up some dinner for us."
These were both true statements.
Barb's eyes were keen, on the verge of accusing, and they bored straight into me.
"I sent you a text, Clay. Rachel wasn't feeling well, and we called off our shopping early."
We looked at each other.
"But you were occupied." Meaning why I hadn't seen her text.
Her words and tone revealed that she knew a lot.
"I saw you. In the garage. In that Volkswagen van of yours."
She said "Volkswagen" like it was a hand grenade with the pin pulled.
"Roger's pants were off," she said in a flat voice. "You were between his legs. I couldn't see his penis, but your head was plastered to his crotch and moving around. I knew exactly what you were doing."
Her eyes got all strange and moist. She wiped the side of her left eye with the back of her hand.
"Clay. How could you? No wonder you two have been together so much."
She turned away, looked out the window again.
Barb is not typically an imposing woman. A couple inches shorter than me, and I'm not even that tall, she has never been lean, but forty years and a couple kids meant extra weight, and in our little rural town in the Berkshires she passed as sweet but unremarkable.
But she held herself well, and no one could doubt her essential kindness with a touch of backbone. Pointed chin, long narrow nose, a face normally graced with a wide big-toothed smile. Her shoulder length dark hair with a touch of silver was loose, not in its usual pony-tail, and she had even worn a long skirt to go into town.
I had gone and created a world of unhappiness for her.
I did not like that my hands were clenched shut. That my stomach felt awful. That the warm glow that had been coming from my penis not moments before, which Roger had pleased so nicely with his energetic wet tongue and lips, had evaporated.
Not for the first time in a crisis, my mind went numb. Words eluded me, but I knew they provided the only possible route to safety. Silence would have been the worst possible option.
"Barb. I'm sorry. Let me explain."
I stopped, while she still stood at the window, looking out. Her body was tense, unpleasantly rigid.
"Look, this is a bad move on my part. I still love you."
I meant this.
"I did not mean to hurt you. This is just one of those things that..."
"Betrayal!" She whirled and faced me with a ferocity I had only seen a couple times before in our twenty-plus years of marriage.
"Behind my back! Sneaking around! Doing sex with another... guy." She spat out this last word.
"Hey look, it's Roger. Not just 'another' guy."
She looked like she was going to say something, her face got all scrunched up, but her lips clamped shut. She held up a hand.
"Clay." This was a command. "We need to talk. A lot. But not right now. I'm too upset."
She turned away from me. "Get some dinner going and let me know when it's ready. I'll join you, but leave me be for the moment. I'll be upstairs."
She poured herself a glass of wine, and I heard her footsteps go up the old wooden stairs to our second story bedroom, sounding like the drumbeat at a dirge.
I made dinner, a decent fall stew with onions, potatoes, parsnips. My hands stayed steady some of the time while cutting the vegetables. I think one of the worst feelings in the world is when you have hurt someone, let them down, and you need to atone, make amends, not something I do very often or well.
I thought about every angle I might take in explanation. How I could outline the manner in which Roger and I had become an item, that it wasn't about cheating, or infidelity, it was just two married guys who'd found ways to make their cocks feel good. No harm, no foul. But nothing I said to myself sounded very convincing.
And then I thought about Roger. I was going to have a hard time with Barb, but once Carrie found out, there was going to be a lit stick of dynamite in the old Roger/Carrie marriage world. I felt my whole body tense up. Maybe Barb wouldn't spill the beans. Barb might manage this but not Carrie. But the moment I considered the chances of non-disclosure, I knew it would be inevitable.
At the kitchen table we ate in silence. Barb scarcely looked at me. Every noise in the room was magnified. Setting my knife down on the plate after buttering a bread slice. The wind rattling a loose window in its frame. The clank of a spoon along my bowl, fishing out the last bit of potato.
I stole a glance at her from time to time, thinking about our history together. Friends would describe her as a "horsey" sort of woman, down to earth, no-nonsense. She looked like she'd grown up on a farm, although she hadn't.
I had been thrilled when we got married, and our mutual enthusiasm went on for several years, diminishing a bit with our first-born Stephen. Then when Jon arrived two years later, life became more of a domestic Olympic long-distance event. But now it appeared I had thrown a big wrench into the marriage works.
Barb turned to me when dinner was done. "I'm going to bed. Please don't talk to me until tomorrow. But we need a conversation, Clay."
I was quiet and assented with a head nod, feeling contrite. I was at her mercy.
New Englanders are not known for dealing well with big emotions, and this certainly qualified.
That night was not a good one. Although our bodies were in the same bed, the distance between us, both emotional and actual, felt like you could drive a big rig through the gap. I didn't sleep a whole lot, and it bothered me how my thoughts ping-ponged around. Mostly about Barb, her feelings, the damage I had done to the marital fabric. How I might make good, regain trust. But there was another set of thoughts that crashed through my head.
The way Roger's lips on my penis had felt so good that afternoon, coaxing semen load number two out of my cock. How I'd finished him off nice in the back of the Volkswagen, after a good long time licking those incomparable balls of his, all slick and wet and heavy with semen, with his legs out stiff and shaking at the end when he pushed his cock into my face, pumping out a good eruption of sperm. How that event might have been the last time anything like that would ever happen.
After breakfast the next morning, handled in silence, Barb turned to me.
"Let's go to the living room."
I followed her, and she settled into her favorite chair next to the fireplace. I sat on the chair on the other side, facing her.
