The Perfect Marriage

by Adam Mitzner

“Or until you decide to fuck someone else behind her back, you mean, don’t you, James?”

  Haley watched James’s eyes search the room, looking for her. He clearly recognized her voice. Finally, he spotted her. She could tell by the look in his eyes.

  “Really, everyone, you do all know that is the genesis of this great love story you’re all toasting, don’t you?” Haley shouted, loud enough that she was certain everyone could hear. That point was further driven home by the slack-jawed expression of the guests around her.

  Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Malik looking as dumbfounded as anyone. She hadn’t told him about her connection to the happy couple, for fear that even the promise of sex wouldn’t be enough for him to join her if he knew her intentions. Poor guy . . . he thought they were making a courtesy visit to an old friend’s party, then going back to her place for the night. He hadn’t realized that the arrangement was more transactional than that: sex in exchange for being something of a human shield.

  Now that she had the floor, Haley was not about to yield. “James and Jessica, the patron saints of romance, thought the vows from their first marriages were shit, and decided that fucking each other behind their spouses’ backs was a good thing. So long as they were happy, they didn’t give a fuck about anyone else. Let’s all drink to that, shall we?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not a party until your ex-wife breaks the terms of her restraining order to shout profanity at you,” said James. “Am I right?”

  Haley heard zero laughter in response to James’s retort. She had won.

  “Fuck you all, and fuck you the most, James,” Haley shouted. “And you too, Jessica, you slut whore,” she added for good measure.

  With that said, Haley took Malik’s hand and led him to the door. When she opened it, she turned back to James and flashed her best fuck-you smile before exiting.

  4

  “Who was the blonde?” Jessica called out to James, who was in the bathroom with the door open.

  It was 2:00 a.m. The caterers had just left, and she was in bed.

  “What blonde?” he asked.

  “What blonde,” she repeated, all sarcasm.

  “Oh,” he said, a chuckle in his voice. “Sarah Roth. She owns a gallery in Chelsea. Don’t worry, she’s harmless. Her bark is much worse than her bite.”

  “It wasn’t her bark that caught my attention, my dear.”

  Plenty of people had questioned how Jessica could trust James after he cheated on his first wife. Some said it without even the slightest sense that James should be wondering the same thing about her.

  Jessica had been propositioned before. Men never tired of trying to seduce married women, and real estate agents were a particularly inviting target. But she had never thought twice about any of these overtures. And not because the men weren’t interesting or attractive—often they were both. Instead, she thought of herself as a good person, a moral person, and her marriage vows meant something.

  Why did she break those vows for James? That was a question that she had never fully been able to answer. A part of her liked to believe she had simply been overwhelmed by their connection and rendered incapable of resistance.

  James enabled this narrative by saying that it was precisely what had compelled him.

  “I was brought up a Catholic,” he told her once, after their affair had begun. “I was an altar boy, the whole thing. But I never believed. Not the way some people claimed that they did. But I wished that I had faith that there was something out there that powerful. Something that made you feel safe, that banished all your fears and made you feel loved. And then I met you, and suddenly, I believed.”

  James said that he had not been tested in that faith since. In fact, he sometimes joked that he was Jessica’s disciple. Like the original twelve, he would follow her anywhere.

  “You know what happened to their leader,” she said once. “And then they all turned. Some of them thrice.”

  “Not me,” he said. “Never. I promise you that.”

  Did that mean that James would never stray? Jessica didn’t know, of course. No spouse ever knew that for sure. They might assume they knew. Oh, my husband, he’s not that kind. But Wayne would have said the same about her, once upon a time. The truth was that all you could ever know for sure about your spouse was that you never really knew what they were capable of.

  The one thing she did know, however, was that she was a different person from the woman who’d been with Wayne. She was happy now, and in love. Why would such a fortunate woman ever be unfaithful? And if that was true of her, she had every reason to believe it applied equally to her husband.

  James stepped out of the bathroom wearing only pajama bottoms. He looked good. Too good, Jessica sometimes thought.

  His smile made clear he was thinking exactly the same thing about her.

  “You like?” she asked, referring to the lingerie she had purchased for tonight—black lace and hardly there.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Enough that I’ll be very careful taking it off you.”

  After the fireworks created by James’s ex-wife, Owen’s mother had tried to talk to him, but all he’d wanted to do was go back into his room, shut the door, put on his headphones, and escape into the world of his computer. She let him go, but James came into his room a few minutes later. He told him that what Haley said wasn’t true. That she would say anything to hurt James, and he was sorry if Owen had been upset by her lies.

  Owen said he understood. No big deal.

  The truth was that he had long known about his mother’s affair. They’d all tried to keep it from him, even his father. After his mother moved out, she went so far as to rent a small apartment in Forest Hills for three months as part of the subterfuge. She claimed she’d met James during that summer.

  Sometimes they slipped up. His mother would mention some interaction she had with James that winter, which could not have happened if they’d met in June, as she claimed.

  Even though his mother was the unfaithful one, Owen blamed his father for the divorce. To his way of thinking, his father should have done more to keep his mother happy. Owen recalled their fights, which, more often than not, were over nonsense: his mother’s desire to see her siblings, not his, over the holidays; his father’s refusal to close the kitchen cabinet doors after opening them; or his father’s failure to buy her a birthday or Valentine’s Day gift because, according to his stupid joke, he treated her specially every day.

  Why couldn’t Wayne have made Owen’s mother happier? Done the things she wanted?

  That was part of the reason that Owen had decided to go with his mother when the choice was presented. He simply couldn’t imagine living with a man as weak as his father.

  Reid hated fake tits. He had decided to overlook it because Sarah was so very willing, and he thought that there might be some business upside in it for him. (She claimed she was involved in the art world somehow, although he couldn’t remember how, exactly.)

  As soon as he unhooked her bra, he began having a serious case of buyer’s remorse. Let that be a lesson to you, his mind (okay, maybe not his mind) told him. Never go for the sure deal when there’s a better transaction that requires more work to close. In this case, he was kicking himself for not making a play for the hot young caterer.

  At least Sarah got the hint that his place wasn’t a bed-and-breakfast. After they were done, she gathered up her clothes and did the walk of shame. He told her that he’d call, but she looked like she knew he wouldn’t, which was just as well because he had no intention to.

  All in all, he had been right to attend the party. The evening’s carnal activity had been a bonus, but the primary objective had been to whet James’s appetite for the Pollocks. On that score he could declare mission accomplished.

  He had expected James to hem and haw a bit. James was that way. Like a woman needing to put on a show of resistance so you wouldn’t think she was too easy. That kind of performance had never made any sense to Re
id. Everybody wanted the same things—sex and money. Why not embrace it?

  “Was it everything you had hoped for and more?” James asked.

  They were basking in the afterglow. Still a bit sweaty.

  Jessica looked at him with a sly smile. He got the joke without her having to say a word.

  “I meant the party. I could tell that you enjoyed the other thing quite a bit.”

  “Oh, the party,” she said with an exaggerated laugh. “To be honest, when I imagined it in my mind, it didn’t include your ex-wife calling me an adulteress in front of my seventeen-year-old son and all of my friends.”

  James had wanted to be a good and faithful husband to Haley. Truly he had. And he could recite chapter and verse why he had failed in the objective, a litany of complaints about Haley—how she wasn’t exactly who he thought she was when he proposed; her workaholism; her anger issues. Or he could turn it around and argue that their split had nothing to do with her at all. Excuses ranging from his own miscalculation about his readiness for marriage to his simply being unable to resist his attraction to Jessica.

  In the end, however, he knew that all these things were just that—excuses. He had consciously decided to cheat on Haley with Jessica, while a more honorable man would have found a way to refrain. In other words, Haley was right: he’d made a vow to be faithful to her, then treated that vow like shit.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” James said for about the millionth time this evening.

  “And you thought my inviting Wayne was going to be the low point. But you know what they say—if the second marriage is successful, the first one wasn’t a failure.”

  “I actually didn’t know that’s what they say.”

  “Well, they do.”

  James reflected on whether there was any truth to what they apparently said. “I prefer the Hemingway approach.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “That the first draft is always shit.”

  “That’s certainly the better quote,” Jessica said, laughing.

  “I talked to Owen about it afterward. I think he’s okay with it all.”

  James had initially expected nothing but hostility from Owen. Even though Jessica did her best to pretend that James’s arrival into his life had nothing to do with Owen’s parents’ divorce, James assumed that Owen knew better. Still, and much to James’s surprise, he and his stepson had quickly formed a bond of their own. Not like father and son, because Wayne filled that space. Fun uncle and nephew, perhaps. The guy who’ll slide a fifty to the youngest server at the party to be extra nice to his stepson.

  “I talked to him a little bit too,” Jessica said. “Maybe I should just tell him the truth. He’s almost eighteen. I think he’ll understand.”

  “What would Wayne think about that?”

  “As if I ever knew what that man thinks about anything. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to come tonight, but there he was. With a date, no less.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Trust me, not even a little bit. Wayne’s love life is the least of my worries.”

  “I didn’t think you had any worries, my dear.”

  He kissed her. At first softly, then with her encouragement, more deeply. When he rolled on top of her, as his body pressed against hers, he was ready to go again.

  After bearing witness to an evening celebrating the perfect wedded bliss that his ex-wife was now sharing with another man, Wayne had hoped for a little attention in the bedroom from Stephanie. He’d thought they were on their way when Stephanie agreed to stay over, but as soon as they got to Wayne’s house, she announced that she was tired, which signaled that he might as well not even try.

  “I thought Owen didn’t seem so good,” he said once they had gotten into bed and the television was on.

  “He seemed okay to me,” Stephanie answered.

  “Tough position for him to be in. First, hearing his mother telling the world that she was never happy with his father—that she’s finally found true love with this other guy. And then that she was cheating on me.”

  “You never told him?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “No teenager wants to think about his mother that way, whether it’s true or not. Makes you wonder, though, what James did to that woman.”

  Stephanie laughed. “I would have gone the other way on that. It makes me wonder what’s wrong with James that he ever married such a nutcase.”

  “I don’t know what’s crazier—showing up uninvited and making a scene so you can tell off your ex-husband and the woman he cheated on you with, or raising a glass to toast your ex-wife’s happiness with the guy she cheated on you with.”

  Stephanie offered him a soft smile. “Thanks for saying that. Sometimes, you get so defensive about your relationship with Jessica that I don’t understand what’s going on between the two of you.”

  “I’m just . . . trying real hard not to be like James’s ex-wife, is all.”

  “I get that. I also think that what you did tonight was good for Owen. Not to mention very brave of you. I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not sure I know many people who would have.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t mean that you should do it again. In fact, let’s make a pact right now that we don’t go to their second anniversary party.”

  “Even money they don’t make it to next year.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Nothing really. Just a feeling. Did you see the way James was talking up that blonde who looked like she might tip over?”

  Stephanie’s shrug said more than words.

  “What?”

  “If anything, I thought that Jessica was pretty engrossed with that guy with the shaggy hair.”

  Wayne had to laugh at that. “I guess I’m the last person on earth who’d know what Jessica looks like when she’s cheating on her husband.”

  Among Wayne’s many self-recognized shortcomings, he believed this to be the worst. How could he have been so blind that he didn’t realize his wife was sleeping with another man? In hindsight, the signs were glowing neon. The late nights she claimed to be working, her newfound dedication to the gym, her loss of interest in sex (at least with him).

  It had been easy at the time to attribute it all to Owen’s cancer. That first year, they had been in shock, not themselves at all. Even after Owen was in remission, when Jessica first met James, her extracurricular activities had seemed a legit way of finding positive outlets to cope with the trauma of almost losing Owen.

  He realized now that he had been all too willing to let Jessica grieve and process on her own. He simply hadn’t had the bandwidth to be there for her while grieving and processing it himself.

  Had they been better partners, they would have helped each other get through it. Instead, they retreated into their separate spaces. Jessica’s, apparently, had been too empty, so she’d invited James in.

  But the real blame, he knew, lay only with him. It was his weakness that directly led to his wife’s infidelity. A stronger man—a man, dare he say, more like his father—would have protected what was his. Indeed, if there was one thing Wayne knew for certain, it was that Archibald Fiske would have made damned sure that no man broke up his family.

  Somewhere along the line, someone must have told Malik that being able to have sex for a long time was the same thing as being good at it. Haley was certain that there were many women who enjoyed his combination of a chiseled body, larger-than-average equipment, and commitment to an hour of intercourse, but Haley would have preferred that he be a little more attentive to her.

  Almost as soon as they were finished, Haley told Malik that it was time for him to get going. “Busy day tomorrow, love. But you were great, as always.”

  She didn’t think Malik wanted to hang around anyway. He wasn’t the kind to stay for breakfast.

  After she hustled him out the door, Haley relit the blunt the
y’d been sharing for the few moments before the undressing began. As she inhaled deeply, a smile came to her face. Her plan had been perfectly executed. Even as she imagined the angry call from her lawyer on Monday, she was still glad that she’d called out her cheating sack of an ex-husband in front of his new wife and their friends.

  PART TWO

  5

  The intake nurse was pretty. Her name was Sasha. She was seated behind a glass partition like a bank teller.

  Sasha always seemed happy to see Owen, as her smile that morning confirmed. “Cool tee,” she said.

  Owen had worn the shirt for her, so he was pleased that she’d commented on it. During last week’s visit, she had told him about liking Batwoman, the TV show on the CW. He tried it but found it unwatchable. Still, he’d decided to wear his Batman and Joker split-face graphic T-shirt today.

  “I see that this is a redo,” Sasha said. “So sorry about that. I know it’s no fun to come here two weeks in a row because we didn’t get a good read from last week’s sample. Why don’t you meet me at the door, and I’ll take you in. With any luck, you’ll be in and out real fast.”

  “I’ll be right out here, Owen,” his mother said.

  She had a way of making it seem like she was sending her baby off to war, rather than to a routine blood test.

  The brief walk from the waiting room to the exam room was the only time Owen would spend with Sasha. Sometimes she was still at the front desk when he scheduled his next appointment, but last week she hadn’t been, and some old guy with a disgusting beard had done the honors.

  “So, I watched that show you mentioned,” he said as soon as they were alone.

  Sasha looked momentarily confused.

  “Batwoman or whatever,” he said.

  “Right. Batwoman. What did you think?”

  “It was okay.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I just mean . . . I don’t know. It took a little more suspension of disbelief than I thought made sense.”

  “It’s a show about a woman who pretends to be Batman, Owen. It’s not a documentary.”