by Warren Adler
Glen’s situation was a bit more complicated. He and Anne had been married for twenty-five years. They had one child who now lived on the West Coast and hoped to have a career as an actress. Anne had inherited a tidy sum from her parents, who were both deceased. She was enormously attractive and popular and spent much of her time on philanthropic boards; she and Glen often appeared in the style section of the New York Times attending one or another charity event. Both enjoyed their large single-floor apartment, their lifestyle, and each other when they were together. They never fought. Glen was proud of his wife, who was an elegant dresser, an excellent speaker, and, he was certain, an honorable and faithful spouse.
Of course, in a long marriage, the sexual part of their lives had become routine, although Glen made certain that he exercised his sexual duties at least once a week, which appeared to be enough of a requirement for Anne, more like a validation of their long marriage, a kind of periodic stamp of approval.
What had happened was that, quite by accident, since they were thrown together in the workplace, both Glen and Sara had fallen in love. Fallen, of course, was the operative word. It was as if both of them, almost simultaneously, had fallen over a cliff together. It had happened quickly, one of those sudden explosions. At first both thought it was simply lust, that disembodied chemical state where their relationship was measured in the number of climaxes each induced in the other, which were considerable.
They continued to be considerable, but there was a lot more to it, the angst, the despair, the discipline required to maintain the secretive nature of their relationship. Sara felt no guilt, only longing and loneliness when he was not with her at night and weekends. Although she had girlfriends from college and the office, she kept them at a distance regarding her personal life, although she suspected that the more perceptive of them might have suspected that she had a secret lover.
At times, when her friends’ curiosity tried to breach her defenses, she parried their thrusts until they gave up their pursuit. On weekends she mostly she stayed home, went to the movies or shows or took long city walks. Glen’s path never crossed hers at night or on the weekends. Glen and Anne’s social life occupied a different strata, and Manhattan life was layered strata by strata.
Since they spent a great deal of time together, encouraging conversation (“quality time” they called it), they were quite candid about their situation, deliberately transparent and revealing. Despite the deep intimacy of their relationship, he had made it clear from the beginning that he had no intention of leaving Anne, both for practical and emotional reasons. He admitted that he loved their lifestyle, was comfortable with it, enjoyed the fruits of her inheritance and, although he was head over heels in love with Sara, under no circumstances would he ever marry her.
“I am a cowardly bastard and I know it,” he told her often. “Worse, I am in love with a beautiful young woman who, if this goes on much longer, will hurt her chances for marriage and a family.”
“It’s true,” she would reply. “You are a cowardly bastard. And I am a stupid slave to my passion. Yes, this whole affair could ruin my life and I know it, but I am in love. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make you happy. Nothing. I am your willing slave, darling. A damned fool.”
“Away from you,” he assured her, “there is this awful void. I try my damnedest not to think of you, try to keep you shut up in another compartment. I succeed maybe one quarter of the time. It is a really painful situation.”
“Of course, you could always stop the pain,” she would say. But she genuinely feared pressing too hard. Since Anne was wealthy and could sustain herself financially without him and had a busy life, she would wonder out loud why he could not sever that relationship.
“Please, darling,” he would answer. “I haven’t got the guts to hurt her. She has been a wonderful wife. I know it’s totally illogical since I am madly in love with you, but I just haven’t got the character and courage to untie the knot.”
“I’m becoming a nag,” she would counter. “I’ll stop it now.” Then they would make love and that issue would be put aside.
Weighing her options, she could not bear the thought of losing him. As she told herself often, half a loaf is better than none. She forced herself never to fantasize about the future, although she could not help analyzing her situation. She was addicted to him, could not wait for him to wrap his arms around her every weekday morning.
There were, of course, occasional longer absences. Glen and Anne traveled. They visited their daughter on the West Coast, and Sara went home on holidays to visit with her parents who lived in Portland, Maine. Occasionally Glen had to be away for a day or two on business, but they could never take the chance of traveling together. If they were found out and a nasty event ensued, she would never forgive herself and was certain that such a revelation would end their affair forever.
Despite their joyful morning meetings, the angst of separation took its toll on him. Yet he could not stop himself and often would see himself as a victim, caught between a rock and a hard place.
“Leading a double life is not easy,” he told her with increasing frequency. “Of course, in many ways, our life together is my real life.”
“I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t.”
It was true. It was a lot easier for her to handle the situation. All she had to do was to be discreet in the office. They never went out together at night and there was little opportunity for them to be found out. Getting in and out of her apartment house was about the only risk he ever took, but even that was not much of a risk.
He did buy her gifts, mostly expensive jewelry for which he paid cash. The fact was that she demanded nothing although she lived far above her means. She rented a well-furnished condominium that was far too expensive, but it was necessary to consider both the geographical implications and the matter of ambiance. She thought it demeaning for her lover to come to her in a dumpy and badly appointed apartment.
While she gallantly refused any financial help, he would, knowing her financial situation, contribute sums to her maintenance, which he literally forced upon her. It worried him that she was having a tough time making ends meet.
“I am your lover, not your mistress,” she would contend.
“I fail to see the difference.”
“It’s one of nuance.”
He did not argue the point, fearing that it would open up a path of thinking that he knew she did not wish to confront. There was, of course, a practical consideration. Their affair depended on proximity. It simply would not do to waste time taking a cab or subway to another less expensive place in Manhattan or one of the other boroughs where the rents were considerably cheaper. It was hard enough to get up early and still make it to work on time. Thankfully, Anne never questioned why he left home so early.
“My husband works like a dog,” she would often tell friends. “Especially since there is no need.”
There was no denying, too, that there was a physical toll on him, a man over fifty, however well preserved. Often, a glance in the mirror in the men’s room at the office would show the ashen complexion of a drained man. It was not uncommon for him to offer up his seed, as he characterized his couplings, three times during their nearly two-hour trysts. Hardly more, but never less. He was quite proud of the count and Sara marveled at his stamina.
“I didn’t know what love can do,” he joked.
“Is there an award for such a performance?” she would giggle.
She had no difficulty in matching his release. Indeed, her previous experience had been tepid in that regard. Occasionally it worried him that he would be inhibited in his marital duty, but he had always suspected that his wife often faked her ardor. At times, he had to merely act the part.
Nevertheless, Glen knew he was a man hanging on a thread between guilt and joy. No matter how hard he tried he could not resolve it. As the guilt grew stronger, so
did the joy. He had never experienced such passion, although he had been in love before, but that was before his marriage. He was not a philanderer and was always brutally honest with himself, rational, practical, thoughtful.
He did fairly well as a lawyer, specializing in estate planning and issues that concerned death and inheritance. Through his practice, he had learned a great deal about human behavior. Death, he knew, revealed many secret lives that could no longer be hidden. Up until he met Sara, he had always believed himself a proud and moral man. He had never been unfaithful and he made it a point of honor to insist that most of their living expenses came out of his earnings, although he allowed Anne to buy their exquisite apartment, their expensive art work and furnishings.
Upon his insistence, they did not own a country house, a decision that predated his relationship with Sara, but since then, he had considered this decision wonderfully apt. It would have meant losing time away from Sara. Thankfully, Anne never brought it up anymore.
At times, he wished fervently that he was not in love with Sara, that he could walk away from this relationship, quit cold turkey. His battle with guilt was debilitating and exhausting. It was a condition within him that ebbed and flowed and he confessed to Sara often that it made him feel weak, indecisive, and ashamed.
“You mustn’t dwell on that part, darling,” she told him.
“It’s making me crazy.”
“Leave it home. Dispense with such feelings when we are together.” She wished she could be more delicate about it, but the idea frightened her and she wanted him to put it aside. She wondered if it was building inside of him and becoming too hard for him to handle.
The conflict was becoming a growing affliction, and, like a virus, ideas to resolve it spread through his mind. Perhaps, he thought, he might find a way to compromise his dilemma, like formalizing the arrangement, confessing all to his wife and attempting to get her to agree to legitimize the relationship with Sara.
Among the French, he had been told, a mistress was quite tolerable. In fact, the former President François Mitterrand’s wife and mistress had publicly attended the man’s funeral, proof positive that such an arrangement was workable.
Knowing Anne, he was certain she could never agree to such a humiliating arrangement. Besides, legitimizing the idea could prompt Anne to take a lover. Certainly she would attract many takers, especially fortune hunters who would take full advantage of the situation. He could imagine a situation where everybody involved would have additional partners, a giant free-for-all of copulation and a dangerous exchange of bacteria and viruses.
Sara ridiculed the idea.
“As a lawyer, think of the complications,” Sara pointed out. “Upon death, who inherits what?”
“Maybe we can put it all on paper. Hell, because I’m a lawyer I could make it contractual.”
“The human heart cannot be contracted,” Sara had responded, believing it implicitly. “It goes its own way.”
“Besides, I would be profoundly jealous if you had another man in your life.”
“How am I supposed to feel?” she responded cautiously. “You have another woman with whom you have sex.”
“That’s different. I am married to that other woman.”
She feared going beyond that argument. Another Pandora’s box would open. She had often wondered if their numerous couplings were psychologically designed to drain him of any desire for sex with Anne. It was a subject he refused to broach.
“Render unto Caesar’s what is his and unto God what is his,” he would joke. His meaning was clear.
There were other ironies that plagued him. Despite the limited time frame of their relationship, their conversations were deep, penetrating, and far more honest and numerous than those he had with Anne. Beyond the sex, there was the absolute, or almost absolute, transparency of their revelations to each other. They were able to transmit their inner thoughts and emotions. Both agreed that in the after-play, the intermissions to their couplings, they could empty their minds and hearts without inhibition, like a free association session with one’s therapist.
Neither of them had ever been to a therapist. He feared revealing his secret to anyone, not even a therapist who was legally committed to privacy. She did not feel she needed one. What could a therapist possibly tell her? she wondered. That she was a damned fool, a co-dependent or whatever could be defined in the jargon for someone like her, committed to what was most likely to be a hopeless cause? Who needed a therapist to tell her that? Was there a twelve-step program for a committed lover to break her of her addiction?
One favorite topic of their after-play was why they had fallen in love with each other. Why her? Why him? Did he remind her of her father, whom she adored? Was there something in the chemistry of their bodies that stimulated their attraction? Where did this strange all-encompassing feeling come from? For lovers, these were weighty questions. Unfortunately, there were no answers, only more questions.
“We got hit by Cupid’s arrows. Leave it at that,” he would tell her after all aspects of the issue were tackled without resolution. The fact was that they finally concluded that this was one of life’s mysteries and, whatever the consequences, it was the most profound emotional high that each would ever experience in their lives.
Unfortunately, the agony over his guilt began to weaken his resolve. It was becoming too burdensome to sustain. He was losing sleep, becoming disoriented, fixating more and more on the pain of her loneliness when she was away from him.
“As long as I know you will come to me in the morning, I am very content,” she assured him. There was a germ of truth in the assertion but it was not convincing.
“Thinking of you alone is painful, darling,” he would respond. “You’re just a few blocks away, but it seems like the distance of light years.”
“Then don’t think too much about me.”
“Don’t you think of me when you’re not with me?”
“All the time.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Very much, but then I know you will arrive in my bed every weekday at precisely six-thirty in the morning. How many women can boast of such a wonderful surprise?”
“For me it’s become a risk and reward situation. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.”
As time went on and the glow of their relationship did not diminish, the guilt accelerated. He was losing sleep. At times he became disoriented and his work suffered. The burden of his guilt became too much to bear.
“I am ruining your life,” he would tell her often.
“It’s my life,” she would counter. “By my lights, you’re enhancing it.”
“You won’t say that after a few more years of this.”
“I might say it more so as the years go on.”
“I think you’ve lost your mind. Besides, I’m twice your age.”
“So you say.”
“My birth certificate says it.”
“Your libido is lying.”
“It won’t lie forever.”
“There is always the pill.”
She worried about such subjects dominating their conversation. It indicated that his anxiety about her was accelerating. And it was.
Finally, he did realize that he’d have to take charge of the situation, which, he knew, required great sacrifice on his part. He lit upon a rational solution that he knew would be hurtful to both of them, but it was necessary, especially for her. As a trained lawyer, he always opted for rational solutions of benefit to his clients.
In this case, he tried to imagine her as a client. It was difficult to shake the emotional baggage, but he tried valiantly and finally came up with an idea. It took him months to broach the subject.
“This can’t go anywhere for you, my darling. I can’t live with the guilt. I just can’t.”
“Is your ardor cooling?” she a
sked, deliberately flippant, but he knew she was stunned by his assertion, although she had always lived in fear that it would come some day.
“You know that’s not true. But someone has to make a move. And that job falls to me.”
She had turned ashen and her eyes had misted, but she quickly gained control of herself.
“I’ve accepted my role, Glen. No need to push the envelope.”
“It’s a lousy role, Sara. You know it and I know it. And there is no way I can find the courage to fix it. I’m on the horns of a dilemma and if I don’t take action you will be the loser over the long haul.”
“How lawyerly. What then do you propose?”
She listened carefully as he laid out his plan, refusing to comment, her mind trying to comprehend his so-called rational solution.
“Here’s what I propose, darling.” He cleared his throat. He had rehearsed the idea over and over again in his mind, had made preparations, had solved the logistics. “I want you to go away from here, to find a new life somewhere else, to forget this episode.”
“Can you?”
“Never. But don’t interrupt. This is very hard for me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want you to accept a million-dollar gift from me.”
“Stop this, please.”
“Just listen. Anne will never know. I have made arrangements to borrow this money on my own. I want you to take this money and start a new life somewhere else. You have a marketable skill and the money will give you the freedom to explore your options.”
Feeling upset and humiliated, she tried to retain her composure.
“I feel like a prostitute. At least leave me my pride.”
“I love you, Sara. I love you with all my heart and soul, but I cannot accept the continuing burden of my own guilt. I know what I’m doing. I’m trying to make you an offer that you cannot refuse. In fact, I urge you to accept it, if only for my sake alone. I cannot sustain this life of guilt. I cannot divorce my wife. I am a coward, I know. There is something ugly about this proposal, but I want you to consider it. I cannot continue this relationship, the lies, the dissimulation. Please do it for my sake. I plead with you. For my sake, Sara.”
