* * *
Our conversations continued that way throughout the weekend. I thought I might suffocate from the apartment’s stale air, but consistent rain kept us indoors. Hours passed as I stared out the gray window, waiting for the next stream of questions. We were in Bill’s courtroom now, and I was on the stand.
He wanted to know how David and I had ended up in a hotel room the second time. And whether or not I’d spent the night afterward. Reliving the details cheapened the experience. It made everything seem so dirty, when it had actually been its own kind of beautiful.
Bill continued to remind me that it wasn’t fair, that he didn’t deserve it, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. All things I accepted with an apology. He threatened to go see David.
It was easy for us to forget during working hours; we had no choice. But as soon as Bill picked me up, our masks came off. After the first couple nights, I didn’t think things could get worse, but as his shock wore off, he became more upset. I did my best to make things right by answering his every question and playing the role of an honest and transparent wife.
He invited me back to bed on Tuesday. It was what I’d wanted until he said the words aloud.
“Come to bed.”
I wasn’t ready to sleep by his side, so I told him so.
“How areyounot ready?” he’d asked.
As weeks went by, his questions became more creative, more intrusive. But I felt that I owed him the truth, no matter how hard it was for both of us. I wasn’t sure what I feared more: that he might ask how deeply my feelings for David ran, or that he might not. The question never came. I didn’t know if it was because it never occurred to him—or because he was afraid of the answer.
23
One soggy, wintry morning in November, Bill came to the couch not long after sunrise. Deep sleep had eluded me lately, so I woke easily when the cushion dipped under his weight. He looked as puffy and tired as I felt, but his eyes narrowed on me. He stuck his hand between my legs.
I flinched and began to protest. His unnerving gaze fastened on me as he tugged gently on my underwear. “I want to come inside you. Last time we did it, you made me pull out. Was it because of him?”
At a loss for words, I shook my head. It ran deeper than that. I’d known that, while having an affair, there would be no worse moment to get pregnant. Or, so I’d thought.Thiswas worse. “He didn’t . . . I didn’t let him, either.”
He stripped and climbed on top of me, somehow not touching me. “I need this. I think. I’m revolted, but I also want you. Bad.” He dropped his head into my shoulder. “I want you,” he repeated, kissing my neck.
This was wrong, and I sensed he knew that. Emotionally, neither of us was in the right place to be intimate, but I feared rejecting him now would only greaten our divide. “We’re not ready for this.”
He dropped his weight on me, and I thought I felt his shoulders heave. “Let me come inside you,” he said.
“Not this way,” I said. “What if I was to get pregnant?”
He drew back and looked at me with red eyes. “And that would be so bad, wouldn’t it?” he whispered.
“I don’t want to bring a child into the world like this. I know you don’t, either.”
“Please,” he said, kissing my cheek and putting his hand back between my legs.
I grabbed it. “I’m not ready.”
I could see him thinking, fighting whatever it was he thought he needed in that moment. He sat back on his calves, still hard, and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Am I crazy to want you? I fantasize about it, but I don’t want to want you.”
“It’s normal to feel confused,” I said. “I am, too. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that you cheated, or sorry that you told me?”
I looked away, seeing no way that answering the question would help anything.
“It’s lucky you didn’t catch something,” he continued. “That filthy piece of shit has been all over town.”
Bill had made me go to the gynecologist and get tested. But deep down I knew that David wouldn’t put himself or me in that position. It had never occurred to me that he might, because I trusted him.
“Is this because of him?” Bill was asking. “Is that why you won’t have sex with me?”
“No,” I said, taken aback.
