Long After the Fact Ch. 01

"I'm still totally at loose ends, Sam," he concluded. "I go every day to spy on Susan, feeling like an idiot; and I've got nothing to do here, so there's nothing to keep me from brooding all day long about her goddamn affair."

Sam asked carefully, "do you have any idea yet what you want to do, Dan? It seems as though there are two basic choices."

Dan sighed. "I know. Part of me thinks that if I really just wanted to say 'Screw her, goodbye', I would be a thousand miles from here by now. On the other hand, I'm certainly not ready to waltz back to her and say, 'hi honey, I'm home!'."

He grimaced. "I'm not proud of it, but I'm furious and hurt and I want her to be in pain too."

Sam said, "believe me, Dan, she is."

He then did something exceptionally kind: he changed the subject, and mused about a technical problem in a new project at work. As he hoped, Dan was instantly interested, and the two chatted for an hour about possible solutions. Before Dan dropped Sam off at his car, the two men had agreed that Sam would email Dan the specs and Dan would work on them, as a free-lance "consultant", from his apartment. Sam promised that they'd work out payment later for Dan's efforts.

Dan hardly noticed, but the next week he was markedly more cheerful than he had been. At least he had a project to occupy him, and being productive gave him less time to be miserable. He even cut back on the visits to his home to every other day.

***************

It had been exactly four weeks since her return from the cruise, and Susan was beginning to lose hope. The agency had found no sign of Dan, either through credit card receipts or any other way. She didn't know who else to call. Dan had only one brother, in California, with whom he was not at all close; she'd telephoned him but he hadn't even known that Dan had left home.

Her sessions with Dr. Branden seemed increasingly to be about preparing her for the worst: that Dan was gone for good. Susan swung back and forth between guilt and rage—guilt for her affair, and rage at Dan for not at least giving her a chance to talk to him, to persuade him how totally she loved him.

Her friend Diana had been a great help: endlessly supportive, endlessly patient. They met for coffee or talked on the phone nearly every day, and Diana never seemed to get annoyed at Susan for going over the same ground again and again.

That Saturday, Diana said something that shocked and frightened Susan. "Susie, have you given any thought to . . . well, to talking to a lawyer?"

Susan knew it was meant in a kind way, but that didn't prevent her from starting to cry. "Diana, how could you? Why not just say to me, 'Dan's never coming home, you'll never see him again, get over it'?"

Diana sighed. "I'm not saying that, honey. But you know that it's possible. I don't mean go to a bar tonight and pick somebody up; but I think you have to start looking forward a little bit. You have to have a life, and you deserve to be happy, whether it's with Dan or without him. If he's really left you for good, you need to think about getting a divorce and moving on."

Then she sighed again, not saying another word as Susan quietly wept.

***************

After 38 days Dan impulsively decided to stay and see Susan. It was a Tuesday, at around 4 pm, and he had just finished listening to the recorders, having learned nothing new except that Diana had mentioned to Susan for a second time that she should speak to a lawyer, and Susan had angrily rejected the suggestion.

Dan had no idea what would happen—no idea even what he wanted to say. He put the recorders back in place, sat in the living room and thought, but no plan came into his mind.

When he heard Susan's car pull into the driveway at 5:15 Dan rose to his feet. He didn't want to wait inside the house and accidentally frighten her, so he opened the front door and stood waiting. Susan was looking down, fumbling in her purse as she came up the front walk.

He said, "hello, Susan".

She stopped short, dropping her purse to the ground. "Oh my God—Dan!" She started to run towards him, her arms outstretched; then after a few steps hesitated, clearly unsure as to whether a hug would be welcome.

Dan had no interest in being hugged; he came down the steps and began putting Susan's things back into her fallen purse, while she watched him in silence. He stood up and handed her the purse, noting that she was trembling violently.

"Why don't you come inside?" he said quietly. Submissively she trailed behind him into the kitchen and sat in a chair he held for her. She was still trembling, and tears were flowing down her cheeks. Without a word he poured a mug of coffee for her, added half a teaspoon of sugar as she liked, and placed it in front of her.

Then he waited, watching as she tried to bring the mug to her lips. She couldn't stop looking at him. She was very pale. Finally, just to say something, he said, "how are you?"

He could see that she was fighting to keep control. He waited, and she said, "now that you're here, I don't know what to say." Her face was wet with tears, but she ignored them.

"I've imagined you back here a million times, Dan, and all the things I prayed I would get a chance to say to you. And now it's just . . . I can't . . ."

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut for a moment, then opened them. "Dan, I am so sorry. I am so sorry for my . . . affair . . . and I am so sorry that you found out in this . . . awful way. You're the person I love most in the whole world, the one I most want to care for and make happy, and I . . ." She stopped, and put her face in her hands. The sobs broke forth, and Dan watched her shoulders shake as she wept.

"I still love you, you know." Dan's words surprised him as they came out of his mouth. She looked up at him, startled, red-eyed, and he went on.

"If I didn't still love you I'd be long gone by now. California, Australia . . ." He waved a hand. "Somewhere you'd never find me."

She wiped her eyes with her hands, and managed a weak smile. "Somewhere warmer than here, I bet!" He smiled back at her. Maybe her obvious misery had softened him a little bit—he didn't know.

"Dan, I . . . all I want is for you to give me a chance. I want to explain why it happened, and why I never told you. And I want you to ask me a million questions, and yell at me and call me names if you need to . . .

"And then I want you to tell me you'll come home—and let me make this up to you. I will, I swear I will. I'll show you every minute of every day how much you mean to me!" She was crying again, looking at him imploringly, her hands clenched into tight fists.

"I don't know, Susan," he said, and it rocked her.

She sat very still, looking small and frightened.

"I've gone back through it over and over—our whole marriage, that awful summer after we lost the baby, then the two and a half years since then, since the day you came back to me."

She nodded, knowing he meant that day in late August.

"We've been so happy since then," Dan said; "or at least I have, and I always thought you were too. And I know you love me. I've felt like the luckiest husband on the planet.

"But now it's like you're a different person. The Susan I thought I was married to couldn't have done what you did. So I must have been married all this time to someone else. And now, it's like I don't even know who you are."

Suddenly he started to sing. It made her cry harder, because he had always liked to sing to her when he was happy or affectionate—almost always a Beatles song, it seemed as though he knew every one of them. It wasn't even that his voice was so great, but she loved it because it was him.

"I'm looking through you, where did you go?

I thought I knew you, what did I know?

You don't look different, but you have changed;

I'm looking through you, you're not the same."

Dan stopped. He had considered going on to the middle eight: "Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right? Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight." But he just stopped; and looked at her, and shrugged his shoulders.

They both sat quietly for a minute. Just as impulsively as he'd decided to stay, Dan decided it was time to leave. He stood up, saying only, "I'm going to go, Susan. I'll call you."

Susan moved swiftly, desperately, and before he was halfway out of the kitchen she stood in front of him. "Please, baby, don't leave! Please don't . . ." She was overcome by sobs again. Dan let her put her arms around him, and she clung to him like a drowning victim to a life preserver. She cried and cried, and finally he had to peel her arms away.

"I'll call you, I promise—in a few days."

She looked up at him with ravaged eyes, afraid he was lying to her.

"I promise, Susan. I'll call, and I'll see you again."

"Baby, can't you please stay? I'll move out of the bedroom if you want. I'll . . ."

"No, Susan." He touched her cheek with his hand, gently; and he moved to the door. He needed to be out of the house. He needed to be out in the cold and the wind, with his own thoughts.

He was glad he'd held back the angry words that came into his head when Susan held onto him and cried. "Is this how you hung onto Teddy, crying—before you lay down and spread your legs for him?" But not saying them didn't mean he wasn't thinking them.

****************************************

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THERAPY

April 18

Dr. Branden looked at her date-book. Susan and Dan Flood were her next appointment. She sighed to herself. This would be their fifth appointment together, and she was beginning to feel pessimistic about the outcome.

Three weeks earlier she had been delighted to get Susan's excited phone message. Dan had appeared! He hadn't moved thousands of miles away; he was living in an apartment in Mentor, and he'd come back to see her. They'd talked twice, and Dan had even agreed to come to Susan's therapy appointments with her!

Dr. Branden had shared most of Susan's optimism and relief; it had been so long that she didn't really expect Dan to turn up. And his willingness to come to the appointments, and to hear from Dr. Branden and from Susan herself about her depression and the reasons for the affair, was very encouraging.

But the sessions didn't seem to accomplish much, she mused. Dr. Branden had worked to make sure that Dan understood the seriousness of Susan's depression that summer, how she was for all practical purposes not in her right mind. She'd used the example of a normally law-abiding citizen who one day robs a bank: the point was that people were capable of completely uncharacteristic, totally illogical behavior when in the grip of such a mental problem.

Susan and Dr. Branden had both spoken of the enormous change in Susan during her first few weeks of therapy: how as she began to come out of her depression, Susan began to feel guilt and revulsion at her behavior. Within just a few weeks, she was able to break off the affair with Teddy and rededicate herself energetically to her marriage. Dr. Branden told Dan she had been deeply impressed by Susan's ability to face her mistake and bring the affair to an end quickly and permanently.

Then Dr. Branden had reviewed with Dan the lengthy discussions she and Susan had had about whether to reveal the affair to him. Dan needed to understand that Susan's decision had been made not simply for selfish reasons, but to spare him terrible pain. Susan loved her husband; he loved her too, and they both wanted the marriage to succeed; and she knew beyond any doubt that she would never cheat again. Under the circumstances, keeping the affair a secret had been a reasonable, loving choice.

To all this Dan had listened politely, attentively, and patiently. He had occasionally asked a question or made a brief comment. But his body language had been closed and self-contained, not involved: he sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, frequently crossed his arms tightly on his chest. He never smiled or laughed, he never sent Susan a warm or sympathetic look. And he never raised his voice, never showed anger at all. He behaved like a man listening to a story that had nothing in particular to do with him.

Dr. Branden recognized the obvious fact that Dan was distancing himself from the situation, keeping his feelings of anger and hurt locked deep inside him. And she feared that if they didn't come out soon, he would just quietly, unemotionally slip away, and be lost to Susan forever. The marriage would end—anticlimactically, with no apparent bitterness, but with great pain for both parties.

When the couple entered her office she watched them carefully: nothing had changed. Susan was attentive and responsive to Dan, watching which chair he preferred, looking at his expression. Dan was neutral and distant, not bothering to make eye contact, settling back defensively in his chair, his arms folded.

"So, Dan," Dr. Branden began, a bit aggressively. "You've been listening for a couple of weeks now, but you haven't had much to say. How are YOU feeling about all this?"

There was a pause. Dan gazed neutrally at her. "How am I feeling?" he asked. "Well, let's review the facts, shall we?" His tone was dry, sarcastic.

"A couple of years ago I was happily married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Then there was an accident, and our unborn baby was killed. A kid ran out into the middle of the street—no one's fault, nobody to blame. Just an 'act of God' that took our baby from us. Then we learned that Susan could never have children again.

"And when I reached out to my wife, to share her grief, to try to find some way we could be happy together again—she wasn't there. She was distant, vague, unreachable.

"So I had to grieve by myself. And my sorrow was ten times worse because I thought I was losing my wife at the same time—I thought my marriage was going to be the next casualty of that accident. Susan was drifting away, all my desperate attempts to pull her back were failing, and she didn't even seem to care.

"I even thought about divorce. It certainly seemed like she didn't want to be married to me anymore."

Dan's tone and body language had changed. He was leaning forward now, speaking intently towards Dr. Branden, with an undertone of powerful feeling.

"And then her doctor and I convinced her to come to see you. And it was a miracle, I thought. Within a few weeks she was coming out of her fog. The person that I loved began to reappear. And on that wonderful day in August she reached out to me, apologized for her depression, for being so far away, and showed me she was back.

"So we've had two wonderful, loving years. I was so happy! Yes, we'd lost our chance to have children, but I had my wife back! My loving, devoted, generous, beautiful wife. And I felt so lucky, like we'd weathered a terrible storm and come through it safe and sound."

He stopped for a moment, collecting himself. His voice had grown more and more passionate. Dr. Branden and Susan both watched him attentively.

"And then—and then this! Those damn emails! And I find out it was all a lie. While I was grieving for our baby, fighting with every breath to hold onto my wife, she was spending the summer humping Teddy O'Neill. Writing him emails telling him how much he excited her. 'I've never cum so hard in my whole life! You just turned me inside out.' "

Dan's voice had turned colder, and his face glistened with his anger.

"All that summer, while I'm being patient, loving, supportive, attentive—and scared to death—Susan's having the wildest sex of her life. And I'm the fool, the cliché, the stupid clueless cuckolded husband. How many times did I kiss her mouth after she came home from sucking his dick?" Susan gasped, but he hardly noticed.

"How many times did I get sloppy seconds? Wait, I know the answer to that one: hardly ever, she barely had sex with me the entire summer. Maybe once or twice, Susan?"

He turned from Dr. Branden to glare furiously at Susan. She couldn't help but shrink back a little into her chair.

"And the last two-and-a-half years have just been one big lie. Susan came back to me, but she didn't exactly tell me the truth, did she? All this time she's had her juicy secret, her hot love affair, tucked away where I'd never know about it, and I still thought I had a faithful wife!

"So that's what I'm dealing with, Dr. Branden. Are you surprised? I'm just a wee bit angry, just a tiny bit hurt. Feeling just a little betrayed, slightly humiliated, you know?"

He had grown steadily more emotional as he spoke, and was now bursting with fury, his fists clenched, his voice strained. Dr. Branden was fascinated, in a way. It was a carefully rehearsed performance, however unconscious Dan must have been of that fact. He'd clearly been practicing this speech over and over in his head for weeks.

"And now you and Susan have been sitting here for two weeks, explaining how she wasn't in her right mind, she was clinically depressed, it wasn't the real Susan behaving like that. OK, fine, you're the doctor, I believe you. But where does that leave me?

"My wife cheated on me, betrayed me, had mad hot sex all summer with that asshole right under my nose. But I shouldn't feel angry at her because there's no one to blame, is there? Not Susan's fault, she was 'clinically depressed'! So what then? Tell me! 'It was one of those things'? It was another 'act of God', like the accident? 'No harm no foul'? And just what am I supposed to do with my feelings?"

There was silence in the room, except for the sound of Dan's rapid breathing as he leaned forward, his face red. Susan sat huddled in her chair, her face wet with tears. Dr. Branden was inwardly delighted. She knew this outburst had to come, knew that it might be the start of helping Dan get past some of his pain.

"What's the worst part of it, Dan?" she asked gently.

Dan seemed stunned, both by the question and by the mildness of her response to his anger. He looked baffled for some moments, then sat back in his chair and shrugged slightly.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "How do I separate any part of it from the rest? One thing is all the time she's been keeping me in the dark—all the time she's never told me the truth.

"For me that day in August was so special! I had my wife back—she loved me again! And now I realize it was all just more deception, more lies."

He took a breath, trying to focus his thoughts. Susan drew a breath to speak, but Dr. Branden made a gesture urging her to wait.

"And another thing is thinking about all the times Susan and I have made love since then—me thinking only of her and of our pleasure together, her secretly thinking about that asshole, comparing him to me. 'Who's got the bigger cock? Who lasts longer? Who gets me more turned-on, gives me better orgasms?' "

Dan was suddenly furious again, almost beside himself. "Oh wait, I guess we know the answer to that question—it's in the emails!"

Before Dr. Branden could stop her Susan interrupted. "No, Dan, it's not true! I never compared you to him!" she cried.

Dan whirled to face her. "Oh no? Just look at me, my loving wife! Tell me that you never once thought about him while we were fucking! Tell me you never thought about his dick, or the way he moved his hips, or just about how exciting it was to fuck around behind the back of your ignorant, clueless fool of a husband! How can plain old boring marital sex ever compare with that?"

The answer was obvious to all three of them—Susan couldn't look him in the eye. She began to cry again, while Dr. Branden wondered how to get the situation back under control.

"And then there's YOU, dear Doctor! What kind of shrink tells her patient to lie to her husband, to keep him in the dark about something so important as the fact that his wife has been having an affair for a whole summer? How do you justify your own role in this farce?"