The Infidelity Pact

by Carrie Karasyov

  “Hey, Helen,” said Andy, popping up off the Moroccan throw pillow and coming over to give her a big kiss. He always kissed her, she had noticed. If she left the room even for a few minutes, he found some excuse to come over and re-greet her and plant another wet one on her. Wesley didn’t seem to observe or care, so she didn’t make a big deal of it, but it was sort of weird. Not that Wesley would ever suspect that she was interested in Andy, and she wasn’t really. She usually liked very lean men with small features, and mostly blonds, which was funny, considering Wesley was neither. Andy was about ten years younger than Wesley and was a big guy in shape, but with a slight belly that could easily be eliminated if he didn’t eat or drink so much. And he had longish floppy brown hair and big bushy eyebrows. He looked kind of like a giant puppy that jumps up and slobbers all over you when you walk in the door.

  “Hey, Andy,” said Helen. She glanced over at Wesley, whose lips were parted as he took a huge drag of marijuana, and saw the bags of Veggie Booty and realized that Andy had been there for a while. Although a film editor by trade, Andy was a pothead by vocation. He didn’t deal, but he didn’t turn down money for his “fine Colombian friend” when Wesley offered it to him. And it seemed as though lately they had been doing a lot of smoking.

  “How was yoga?” asked Wesley, taking a deep breath.

  “It was great,” said Helen. “I think I’ll go shower.”

  “Want some?” asked Andy, holding the joint out to Helen. She paused. She wasn’t against the occasional toke but she was really enjoying the ride her endorphins were giving her after yoga and hated to compromise that sensation.

  “No thanks,” she said finally.

  In the shower, Helen thought about her plans for the next week. She wanted to do yoga every day, and her friend Amy had said that there was a really good core fusion teacher coming to town from Seattle and she’d host a workshop at her house, so she was definitely on board for that. She also wanted to go to Manhattan Beach and photograph the smokestacks, because she really sensed a place for them in her new photo collage. She was compiling pictures of things that were so ugly that they were pretty, a project her photo teacher had suggested and that really excited her. But as she progressed, she realized that everything in L.A. was so ugly it was pretty. It was like examining a bruise. At first you shudder, but then you see the purple, blue, and red colors under the flesh and find beauty in it. But only if you look really hard. At quick glance, it’s hideous. Same with L.A. In fact, it kind of made her eyes sore to think how ugly this town was.

  Helen’s mind briefly flickered on her daughter, Lauren, and then immediately moved on. Lauren, age seven, was a beautiful, sweet, and precocious child. But it was clear from the start that she was a daddy’s girl. Helen didn’t even try to compete. She knew Wesley was a better parent. She had not had a good example in that department so was ill equipped. Better to let Wesley take care of her.

  “Sorry,” said Andy.

  Helen spun around. She had gotten out of the shower and was drying herself off, and didn’t hear the door open. She immediately held the towel over her body.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She waited for Andy to leave. But he didn’t. He stood there staring at her through the steam, his eyes watering slightly, his face unreadable.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he asked. His tone was neutral, not accusatory, not scandalous, just sort of factual. Helen didn’t know how to respond.

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  She should probably be freaking out and demand that he leave the bathroom. The situation was all so weird: her husband was in the next room and was Andy coming on to her? But somehow she felt weighted down and didn’t want anything to happen. There was no sense of urgency, no sense of fear, just a desire to play out the scene but allow someone else to be the director.

  “I guess I’ll go,” said Andy finally, but remaining motionless.

  “Okay,” said Helen.

  He paused another second and cocked his head to the side as if he were going to say something else, but then he stepped back and closed the door, leaving Helen alone. Helen turned and wiped off the steamed mirror with her hand until she could see her face. She didn’t feel beautiful. And she wasn’t really attracted to Andy. But it was exciting to her that he had said that. Something inside her started to flutter, a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time. And she suddenly felt as if she were coming alive.

  When she’d finally dressed she decided not to return to the living room, instead reading her book and waiting until she heard the front door close and Andy’s car drive away. Before Wesley entered the bedroom, Helen had turned off the lights and closed her eyes.

  •• 6 ••

  “So how much can we put you down for, Leelee?”

  Ashley Windham cocked her perfect oval face to the side and gazed at Leelee with her bright blue long-lashed eyes. Leelee stared at Ashley’s hand, in which she held a solid gold Tiffany pen that was poised and ready to take down a notation in her pink leather Kate Spade notebook, and blinked. Leelee wanted to say three thousand like Emily, or five thousand like Meredith or even a thousand like Brooke, but she couldn’t. She was maxed out. There was no way she could buy more than two tickets for the ovarian cancer lunch. Just no way.

  “I’ll take two tickets,” said Leelee finally. Three hundred and fifty dollars. That’s still a lot, Leelee wanted to scream as she watched Ashley write down the number in her bubble handwriting. Three hundred and fifty dollars for a plate of leaves, a small piece of grilled chicken breast, and a scoop of sorbet that no one would touch even if she wanted to. She knew it was going to a good cause, but Leelee could really use that money. She could pay her cell phone, TiVo, and dry cleaning bills for a month with that money. Or she could sign Charlotte up for baby cooking classes for an entire session. Or she could get one Jimmy Choo shoe and not have to buy the rip-off Banana Republic version. It was so demoralizing.

  “Great, so now let’s go over items for the silent auction,” said Ashley, wiping a wisp of her white blond hair out of her eyes.

  Leelee felt herself panic. The silent auction. More money to cough up. She was in over her head. The problem was that everyone assumed Leelee had a lot more money than she did, because she was a Swift. Leelee Swift Adams. She never failed to mention her maiden name. “Yes, that’s Swift, like the toaster.” Her great-grandfather, Branson R. Swift, had been the founder of Swift Industries, the man who revolutionized the method of attaining hot bread as we know it. Leelee was in the Social Register. She was a Daughter of the American Revolution. She grew up in a rambling town house in Boston, summered in “the Vineyard,” attended a preppy boarding school and college, and took a semester in Australia. Her family kept up all appearances, but the fact was, they had no connection to the mammoth conglomerate that Swift Industries had become, and no money to speak of. Her father had been a spoiled dilettante whose less than prudent business decisions and general distaste for scheduled labor had rendered the family virtually penniless. Houses were mortgaged, club dues paid out of a minimal trust fund that her mother had received from a benevolent aunt, and costs kept to a minimum. No, there was no extra money to be thrown around at a charity lunch.

  “Before we do that, y’all, I have some great news,” said Brooke in her enthusiastic Charleston, South Carolina, accent. Brooke moved her eyes across every committee member’s face, making sure that she had everyone’s complete attention. “My super-duper hubby has gotten his dear friend and motorcycle buddy Jay Leno to agree to be the auctioneer for the live auction part of our event. Can y’all deal? How great is that?”

  It was great, everyone agreed. It was so fantastic that it unleashed ten solid minutes of superlatives and praise directed toward Brooke, her husband, Trip, and his dear friend Jay Leno. Take that, breast cancer benefit committee members! The ovarian cancer benefit would kick your benefit’s butt! The conversation then digressed into what should be the live auction item. Ashley said her husband
could probably secure a golf game with Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. “They owe him a favor” is how she phrased it. Meredith chipped in a round-trip flight to New York aboard her private jet. Other women added jewelry from Harry Winston, a weekend at the Four Seasons Punta Mita, and season tickets to the Hollywood Bowl. Then it was Leelee’s turn.

  “Gosh, I’ll have to brainstorm,” said Leelee. She had been planning on asking Burke Williams to donate a massage gift certificate, but now that seemed so lame.

  “Maybe Brad can get something from work?” asked Ashley, a perfectly groomed eyebrow raised.

  “Maybe,” said Leelee softly. “I’ll definitely ask him.”

  But she would not ask him. It would be a waste of time. She already knew the answer: he had nothing to offer. He had no connections, no access to anything remotely glamorous, and nothing that anyone would bid on at a charity auction emceed by the king of nighttime.

  “Hey, aren’t you friends with the Porters? Maybe you could ask Senator Porter for tickets to the Democratic Convention?” asked Meredith suddenly.

  Yes! The Porters! Why hadn’t she thought of that? “Of course, I could. The Porters are dear, dear family friends. Jack and I are like…brother and sister. We e-mail every single day.”

  Jack Porter, son of Senator and Mrs. Ward Porter (D, Rhode Island). The man Leelee was supposed to have married. Her mother had wanted it, his mother had wanted it, and Leelee had wanted it. The only person who hadn’t wanted it was Jack.

  “I’ll ask Jack today,” said Leelee with a smile. And it was the first time all day that she felt good about herself.

  That night, after distractedly feeding her daughters, Charlotte and Violet, chicken nuggets (organic), tater tots, and lima beans, Leelee planted them in the living room, flipped on Dora the Explorer, and wheeled out their enormous Barbie camper so that she would have time to clean the kitchen in peace. She set up her little iPod speakers in the kitchen and turned on her eighties beach party mix, then hummed along to the songs that had carried her through her angst-filled teenage years while washing the dishes. They had a dishwasher, but sometimes Leelee liked to spend the extra time soaking her hands in the warm, soapy water and washing the delicate Tiffany plates that she’d gotten for her wedding and insisted on using even when they didn’t have company. Because the fact was, on their budget, they couldn’t really afford to have company, not to mention that they didn’t have the space. Their house was cute but tiny (the Realtor had called it “charming”), and rather than opting for a dining room Brad had insisted that they use the extra space for a TV and play area for the kids. It made more sense, but it still frustrated Leelee that she had to live in a compromised state.

  Brad was working late, as usual, and it didn’t even bother Leelee anymore. It meant that she could put the girls to bed, chat on the phone, eat dinner on a tray in the family room, and watch all the reality shows that her husband loathed. She didn’t even miss his presence, especially lately, when his moods were increasingly gloomy. Brad now was not the man she married. She had met him at a graduation party. She had just majored in political science at Trinity and Brad was a friend of the hostess’s older brother. She would never have given Brad the time of day if Jack had not just shown up at her graduation and whispered in her ear that he had just eloped with his anorexic, silly blond socialite girlfriend, Tierney Harris, subsequently smashing Leelee’s heart into a million pieces. But then there was Brad. Standing by the keg in a white button-down shirt and a blue Patagonia vest, smiling his genuine white-toothed grin at Leelee. She was intrigued, and became even more so when she learned that he had quit his job at Morgan Stanley and founded an Internet company, Birthday Reminder1.com, which was now worth an estimated five hundred million dollars. That night they had sex in a broom closet with sound effects so loud that a small group gathered outside the door and applauded them when they finally emerged. They were married six months later in a lavish wedding on the Vineyard replete with fireworks and a cameo appearance by Aerosmith. When Brad carried Leelee over the threshold of their new 7,000-square-foot loft in Tribeca, she thought she was the happiest woman on earth.

  And then it happened. The dot bomb. Leelee had literally been shopping for private jets when Brad called her and told her to come home, and when she did, he told her that he had lost everything. Everything. He was mortgaged and leveraged and everything else, and was not actually really rich but something she learned was a “paper millionaire,” which meant he had nothing. Brad collapsed in tears on the floor of their indoor basketball court and begged for Leelee’s forgiveness but she could not help him. She was furious. If she had not been eight months pregnant with Charlotte, she would have left him. She had always sworn to herself that she would never be like her parents. She never wanted to be one of the have-nots, one of the people constantly “keeping up with the Joneses.” She had seen how her mother regarded her father with disgust; she had been subjected to years of her mother’s disparaging comments and petty remarks about her dad, or the neighbors, or anyone who had money or who had somehow wronged her mother in reality or her imagination, and she swore she wouldn’t do that. But when it took Brad a year and a half to find a job, and it turned out that it was in Los Angeles, a place where they had no connections and no friends, and they had to move into a rental on an Alphabet Street north of Sunset in the Palisades, Leelee couldn’t help herself.

  She felt wronged. She felt as if Brad were no longer a man. And he knew it, and she knew he knew it. And all she could do was try to build a life for them so that they wouldn’t appear so desperate. Leelee asked her mother to ship her whatever antiques were in her parents’ attic, and then took her small decorating budget and painted her walls in citrus colors courtesy of Ralph Lauren paint and invested in some well-upholstered furniture, and ultimately just made sure everyone knew that the rental was temporary until they decided what part of town they really wanted to live in, because not being native Angelinos they had no idea where they would end up. Leelee hosted trunk shows for baby clothes to make extra money, and Brad toiled away at some low-level banking job in equity sales or something boring like that—Leelee didn’t even know or understand—and they lived their facade. And in the land where everyone was friends with movie stars and had estates in Hawaii, all that remained to separate Leelee from her pals was her friendship with the Porters. That was her claim to fame. And Jack Porter, who had always captured Leelee’s heart and imagination, became her everything.

  •• 7 ••

  “Eliza Ryan.”

  Eliza felt a hand on the back of her arm and heard a somewhat familiar man’s voice call her by her maiden name. When she turned around to see who it was, she was unprepared to see Greg Matthews, her high school English teacher. She finally knew what the phrase “blast from the past” meant, because she felt as if she had been hit by a large gust of wind and she wasn’t sure if she would be able to remain standing.

  “Mr. Matthews,” she said. It was the first thing out of her mouth, and she kind of sputtered. She was always disconcerted when she ran into past lovers.

  “Greg,” he said with a smile. It had been fifteen years, but he had barely changed. The only difference was that his full head of dark hair, which was still a little too long around the ears and the back, just as it had been then, was now flecked with gray. His eyes, those brilliant eyes, were the same. They were large and blue and full of humor, the type of eyes that you could see across the room and that would stand out in a group photo.

  “Greg, how are you? What are you doing here? Do you live in L.A.?” asked Eliza, the words all stumbling out at once. Greg Matthews. She had always wondered what happened to him. And now here he was, standing by the bathrooms on a Thursday night at the Brentwood, a darkly lit, noisy restaurant off Sunset Boulevard. She was glad she had worn her black skirt. It showed off her legs. She’d almost worn pants, but luckily she’d changed her mind.

  Greg smiled. He still had a sheepish grin, which was even sexie
r now that his face had some age. “No, I don’t live here, I’m just here for a conference at UCLA. I’m staying with friends,” he said, his eyes locked on Eliza’s. He was always able to do that, keep his eyes on a person until they felt embarrassed, as if he had penetrated their soul. “My wife and I are staying,” he added.

  Maybe she was reading into it, but he seemed a little embarrassed, or uncomfortable, maybe, mentioning his wife. And even though Declan was sitting at a table ten feet away with their friends Marshall and Stephanie, Eliza felt a pang when he said it. His wife. Mr. Matthews had married.

  “A conference?” she asked, recovering. “What kind…?” she trailed off. She didn’t want to appear too eager to know the details of his life, but she was eager.

  “I’m an English professor now, at Williams, in Massachusetts,” he said.

  “I know where Williams is,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. She sounded so childlike. Call on me, me, Mr. Matthews! I know the answer.

  He smiled. “Yes, well, it’s a teachers’ conference, actually, on Faulkner.”

  “That’s great. And is your wife a teacher also?” she asked. He looked like a New England professor, but he had always dressed that way. Eliza took a closer look at his tweed blazer and wondered if it was the same one he had worn all those years ago. Even the blue checked button-down looked familiar. God, how she had analyzed his clothes. He’d seemed so grown up and cool when he stood in front of the class and talked about poetry.

  “No, she’s a stay-at-home mom,” he said. Was he embarrassed about that? wondered Eliza. He’d said it kind of quickly.

  “How many kids do you have?” asked Eliza, reddening. Why did she feel weird that he had kids?