Affairytale : A Memoir

by C. J. English

  My throat swelled and my mouth went dry, making it difficult to swallow as I approached Levi and I’s house. I feared Levi would see through me, see wine on my tongue or smell another home in my hair, or just know my sins by looking at my face. But he never did. He never noticed a single thing. I was actually getting away with it.

  Sizzling, uninterrupted nights of repressed passion became our normal routine, and with them came a sexual desire for one another that increased exponentially each time I visited.

  It became hard to be around each other and focus on anything else. But he was worth any amount of waiting—waiting for what, I don’t know, we were already breaking all the rules. What did it matter if we broke some more, but we agreed to wait.

  I suggested we wait until Fiji.

  ***

  Babe! Uh-oh.Hurricane

  heading toward Maui!

  Hope it’s still there

  when we go!

  Chapter 27

  “HE LOOKED AT HER THE WAY ALL WOMEN WANT TO BE LOOKED AT BY A MAN.”

  ―F. SCOTT. FITZGERALD. THE GREAT GATSBY

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Fiji,” I said. “We could stay in those over-the-water bungalows and consummate our relationship there.”

  “That is a great idea,” Grant agreed, so until then, we decided to play pretend.

  On one sultry summer evening, in the dim evening light of his bedroom, we were nearly naked, and barely able to hold back from ravaging each other and breaking our pact. We played a torturous game of desire vs. willpower.

  He started, “Let me tell you what I’m going to do to you the first time we make love.” Heat pulsed through my veins at the thought of it. “Imagine that you’re standing over a glass floor in the center of our bungalow above the turquoise ocean.” He brushed my skin with the tips of his fingers, making me shiver. “The ceiling fan is circulating air over our suntanned bare skin, it’s the perfect temperature. Its sunset but you’re still wearing that little black bikini, the one I’ve dreamed about taking off of you.”

  “Yes, baby, keep going. I love it,” I said, standing against the cold wall in his bedroom in nothing but my bra and panties.

  “Imagine that I’ve just taken a shower, I’m in nothing but a white towel,” he went on, “I’m holding you in my arms, relishing you…” He acted out the words and I could almost feel the breeze from the palm-leaf fan blowing warm Fijian air over my skin and him adoring me.

  “Imagine me kissing you, passionately on your lips then moving down…” He tugged on my hair, pulling my head back gently, exposing my neck. I closed my eyes. “I’ll start here, like this…” He grazed his lips across my bare chest, “then I’ll move to your breasts, like this…and touch you, like this…” he went on, “I’ll kneel down in front of you…like this, and trace my lips everywhere along your beautiful body…like this.”

  “Yes, baby, more, more,” I begged. We both laughed at our devious little game.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t stop. I’m going to kiss you everywhere.” He sensuously did just as he’d explained until I was ready to implode. “I’ll slip down your bikini and caress your tiny hips,” He went on, then slid one side of my panties down and traced along the contours of my hips with his tongue. “Then I’ll move in closer…like this,” he looked up at me and grinned. “I’ll put my hands all over your body for hours, then I’ll stop so you can rest before I start all over again.”

  He stopped our pretend session, which was only half pretend and let out a frustrated sigh and bowed his head. “This is killing me. I love it, but it’s killing me.”

  I never wanted it to end. I’d longed for this kind of romance. Sensual, confident romance, with a man who’s unafraid, with a man who will help me become unafraid. I absorbed every moment of our encounter committing it to my eternal memory.

  “We’re not stopping,” I said when I knew he was reaching a breaking point. “I haven’t gotten a turn. Lie down.” I demanded, pushing him backward and onto the bed. Then I whispered in his ear, “After you’ve had your way with me, I’m going to have my way with you. I’ll unwrap your towel…like this,” I tugged at the elastic on his boxers then slid them down, but only a little, “I’ll rub myself all over your naked, gorgeous body…like this.” Then I sat him up and straddled his lap. “I’ll clench onto you tight…like this,” I wrapped my legs and arms around him, he groaned in pleasure. I whispered in his ear, “I’ve longed for you to be inside me. I’ve thought about it so many times, how you would feel, how we would move.” An agonized groan escaped his frustrated lips, but it only encouraged me to tease him more. “I’d say yes right now if you asked me to,” I went on. “I’d beg if you want me to. I’ll beg for you to…” He cut me off before I could finish.

  “God, Babe!” He yelled into the air. “You’re killing me.”

  “I’m sorry, do you want me to stop?”

  “No. Yes. No!” He groveled. I flung myself down on the bed beside him and propped myself up on my elbow. It took every ounce of restraint I had to not tear off my panties and beg for real.

  “Say you’ll take me to Fiji so we can just do this already,” I whined.

  “Of course I’ll take you to Fiji, I will take you anywhere you want to go, start making a list.”

  “Will you take me to Jamaica?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And Napa?”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding playfully.

  “What about Hawaii?”

  “Definitely Hawaii.”

  “And the moon? Will you take me to the moon?”

  “I would love to go to the moon with you. Maybe we’ll be able to someday.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “I have one last request.”

  “Anything.”

  “Will you take me flying with you?”

  “Yes! Baby, I will take you up anytime you want to go.”

  ***

  It was time.

  I couldn’t touch Grant one more time with my wedding ring on—I wouldn’t. I made excuses to be away from Levi, excuses for working late, and excuses for being frigid. I needed to find the courage and just do this already.

  Prison yard barbed-wire surrounded the broken laundromat parking lot, and bells tied together with twine clinked on the glass door as people toting laundry baskets walked in and out. I sat in my car in the parking lot and made a call to a distant friend, Addy.

  “Addy, I need a divorce lawyer.”

  Addison was a stunning woman in her thirties and smart, but like too many women I knew, she too had married a toad and was now divorced.

  “C.J., I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. I just need a quick divorce. I need to get this over with. Who did you use?”

  She schooled me for half an hour in the art of war and divorce.

  “So, like a shareholder, I would get a fifty-one percent say in what happens to Dani?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s custodial custody, that’s what you want.”

  Dani was safe with Levi. It was he and I together that became a collective poison that contaminated her childhood.

  “What about child support?” I asked.

  “If you get custodial custody, he’ll have to pay,” she said without emotion, “otherwise you’ll have to pay him.” She told me not to feel bad about taking the money.

  I didn’t want his money or the strings attached to it. I just wanted to be free. I wanted him out of my life, and I wanted him to go quietly and not come back.

  I sat in my car outside the laundromat as college students and single men went in and out with their clothes baskets. It was a reminder of what single life was like and how I wanted nothing to do with it. My greatest fear was that I’d end up divorced from my husband, dumped by the boyfriend I left my husband for and folding my clothes in a laundromat watching soap operas.

  I looked up the lawyer’s phone number. “Quick Cheap Divorce,” the advertisement said.

  A day later I
found myself sitting at a cardboard table, in the basement of an apartment building with a divorce lawyer that seemed more like he was about to cut out one of my kidneys than give me than legal advice.

  Mr. Quick & Cheap got straight to the point without judgment, personal comments, or a box of tissues.

  “So…” He set his elbows on the wobbly table. “What do you want?” He asked, and my statement went something like this.

  “I don’t want anything except custodial custody of my daughter and my dog, he can have the rest. I can take care of myself.”

  He advised against it, in fact, he wouldn’t even write it down. I was forced to reconsider.

  “Okay how about this,” I said, “I want the house, the dog, the bed, the upstairs furniture, my piano, part of the kitchen dishes and custodial custody of Dani. I will keep my own bills and any debt, he will keep his. I will pay for the mortgage and waive my rights to child support. He will have to find somewhere else to live and leave me alone.”

  Simple. Done.

  Deeming me incompetent, Quickie took over.

  “You can’t negotiate the financial wellbeing of the child,” he said. “One of you will have to pay. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll create a first draft, and we’ll go through it together. You can revise anything you like at that time.” He slumped back and crossed his arms. “If he signs the papers, we’re done. If he doesn’t and we have to make another draft, that’ll cost extra.”

  “Who delivers the papers?” I assumed he had a delivery guy who would show up while Levi was filling gas or something, stuff an envelope in his hand and say you’ve been served.

  “You deliver the papers,” he said.

  Shit.

  “I’ll call you in a week, you can come back and revise anything you want then.”

  Quickie shook his head as he slid my documents into a manila folder. He hadn’t even written anything down. He’d seen it before, women needing to get out for one reason or another, willing to forfeit their entire lives just to get away from a broken marriage. I stared at a cigarette burn in the carpet and knew I was in the right place. It was as broken and burned as I was. Which was comforting actually, anything more put together than me would have made me feel even worse.

  I needed the only thing that could make me feel better.

  ***

  What time r u done tonight,

  baby? I’m skipping trivia.

  Need 2 give u some lovin’. ;)

  Chapter 28

  “I HAVE SINCE AN EARLY AGE ABJURED THE USE OF MEAT, AND THE TIME WILL COME WHEN MEN SUCH AS I WILL LOOK UPON THE MURDER OF ANIMALS AS THEY NOW LOOK UPON THE MURDER OF MEN.”

  —LEONARDO DA VINCI

  God—I know it’s been a while—and I’m really sorry but I wasn’t sure if you were real or not and I didn’t want to insult you by praying only when I needed something. But really, what’d you expect, since you’re invisible. And don’t give me that faith lecture, I need proof!

  Why the hell am I doing this?

  God, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to doubt you and all but you really haven’t given me much to go on here. If you are who you say you are and you’re so forgiving and powerful and all that, then I need your help.

  I know I’ve been bad—really bad, but this hangover will not go away and it’s been five days. I feel like I might die, something’s wrong, I feel my life’s energy draining out of me.

  If you let me live I promise to never, ever eat meat again. I’ll stay healthy, and take care of myself, and devote my life to a good cause. Please let me live, and I’ll keep my promise okay?

  Love—C.J. from Minnesota.

  And that—is how I became a vegetarian.

  Turns out it wasn’t a five day hangover but some rare pneumonia. I lived anyways, and never ate meat again.

  Surely my genius boyfriend would see the folly in eating animals.

  “I made us dinner!” Grant yelled as I walked through the door of his place.

  I was mortified at his proud declaration, but aroused when I saw him shirtless in the kitchen standing over a plastic cutting board slicing vegetables.

  “Baby, that’s so sweet,” I rubbed up behind him, wrapped my arms around his warm skin, and stood on my tiptoes to kiss his stubbly neck.

  I peeked over his shoulder and watched him cut red onions and avocados, but all I could think about was bovine spongiform encephalopathy. How it might be living in-between the plastic grooves of the cutting board since it was likely that he’d used that same cutting board for raw hamburger. To me, eating farm animals was the equivalent of eating the family pet. I could not, would not, eat it. Ever again. Nor would I buy it or prepare it, for anyone. On this, I could not budge.

  “Looks great, what are we having?” I said.

  “My favorite sandwich.”

  Yeah right…an all vegetable sandwich is your favorite? How sweet of him to lie for me, aww…

  I pressed my lips to his. “Looks like just my style. You’re not going to try to slip some meat in there are you?” I said as I strutted away, wine glass in hand.

  “Baby, I’d never do that to you,” he said, “the only meat I’m going to slip you is…” But he didn’t finish his sentence. He peeked around the corner and flashed me a devilish grin.

  “Well stop teasing me already and just do it then,” I said from the couch as I sipped on a delectable glass of Cabernet while he prepared a vegan dinner.

  “I actually eat this sandwich often,” He boasted, “see, I can do vegetarian. I like vegetarian food.”

  He said it like a meat-eater would. With the assumption that there’s some other grocery store that vegetarians shop in. A funky smelling place filled with weird and unrecognizable health food.

  He handed me a large dinner plate with a whole grain veggie sandwich overstuffed with avocado, hummus, red onion and alfalfa sprouts.

  Impressed.

  The guys I knew and grew up with would never have deviated from a summer sausage and cheese with mayo on white bread sandwich. This veggie masterpiece was impressive. We sat cross-legged on the floor because the kitchen table was occupied with half-dry laundry, wads of crumpled receipts, and half a dozen old phone books. From my dinner seat on the floor I noticed his laundry closet, overflowing with clothes that had matriculated onto the floor and now crept down the hallway. And on my way in, was the first time I’d noticed the canoe. It sat resting in the unused stall of his double garage. A virgin, fire engine red, tag-still-on, brand-new canoe. Except this canoe would never see the waters of the ten-thousand lakes we called home. No, this full-size, just off the factory floor canoe, was filled-to-the-brim, hoarders-style, with unopened mail. A few years’ worth of unopened mail.

  “How did you stay single all this time?” I nodded toward the overflowing heap of clothes, easing him into my next question, about the canoe. He stopped my gutty humor with a marvelous response.

  “Because I compared all of them to you.”

  “You did not…” I said, hiding my awestruck expression, hoping I could coax him into saying it a few more times.

  “Yes. I did,” he said, “and none of them came close. You wrecked dating for me.” He smiled, “why do you think I rarely brought girls down to the lake? Because I couldn’t face you. I didn’t want to compare them next to you. I knew how I would feel.”

  “Honey,” I said with a lump of happiness in my throat. “You don’t know how good it feels to hear you say that. I can’t believe it’s really you.” I crawled into the space between us, then leaned over his dinner plate, he pulled back.

  “Me…I can’t believe it’s you!”

  I heard it, I rationalized it, I even believed it, but I was still unable to fully absorb the gift he was offering. I was too damaged. Un-loveable. I’d read about my condition in a book called Receiving Love. It said that if I didn’t figure out how to accept and feel the love he was offering, if I kept rejecting it, I’d lose him. My chest filled with anxiety.

  “I’m sc
ared you might change your mind about me. Since—you know—I’m married, and I cheated on my husband, and you were a husband who got cheated on.”

  “I’m not going anywhere baby, I knew what I was getting into,” he said, “I know who you are, and I know where your heart is.”

  He was so secure, he acted like we’d been together for a thousand years—and somehow it felt like we had. I twirled my broken vow around my finger, yearning to take it off.

  “I saw a lawyer today,” I said, “he started the paperwork. I want to get it done as quickly as possible, so I found an apartment too. Just in case he contests me staying in the house, which I think he will.” I took a large gulp of wine. “Levi has always said there’s no way in fucking hell he’d let me keep the house.” I shrugged, “I figure I’ll need to compromise so I need to prepare to move.”

  “Is this what you want to do?” I was delighted to hear the smile behind his voice.

  “I want you, so, yes.”

  “Aww, baby,” he said in a way I thought only girls were allowed to say. “Come here,” he held out his arms and scooted toward me. “I’m here for you. Always. If there is anything you need just ask.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll be fine. I need to do this myself.” He couldn’t help me move or figure out where to live or give me money. I had to do this on my own.

  The ultimate irony in all of this was that when I went home to my husband, somehow that had become the affair. It was time to tell Levi, time for me to take off my ring and get out. It couldn’t wait any longer.

  I have to do it tonight.

  ***

  “I am not happy!” I yelled as I whisked plates from the island and threw them in the dishwasher, cleaning up a kitchen mess I didn’t make. “I haven’t been happy for a long time. What it is going to take for you to listen to me, to hear me!” I turned to face him. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Then I stopped, I couldn’t finish, it would crush him. As much as I loathed him, I’d loved him once too, and I didn’t want to hurt him.

  His programmed response rolled out like ticker tape. “You exaggerate,” he said with a lazy drawl, “everything’s fine. Just knock it off.” Then he’d reach out his arms for the usual peacekeeping hug laced with silent undertones of wanting makeup sex.