“By chopping off his wives’ heads,” said Eliza.
“Listen before speaking,” said Victoria, exasperated. “I’m saying that it’s unfortunate that we’re living at a time when having sex with someone who is not your husband is frowned upon. It’s not natural, if you think about it. If it was, we’d marry our spouse and never have any feelings for another man again.”
“Just think, no one would go see Brad Pitt movies anymore,” said Leelee.
“The box office would be dead,” agreed Helen.
“Human nature cannot be made to constrict to the rules of fashion. Emotions can be constrained, but they really can’t be controlled. Attraction is a chemical reaction. Hence love at first sight…” said Victoria. She knew it existed, and although she had never felt it, she was sure that the example would appeal to her target audience.
“We’re married, we’re not dead,” said Helen.
“Excellent point,” said Victoria, turning to Helen. “We’re not dead. We have emotions. We have needs. And life is so fucking short, we need to fulfill these needs. It doesn’t make us bad people. We deserve this.”
“Do our husbands deserve this?” asked Eliza.
“They don’t have to know,” interjected Helen, before Victoria could answer.
“Yes, they deserve this,” said Victoria. “Most of them take us for granted. They think it’s just dandy that we have to opt out of the workforce, put our brain on hold, and raise their little rugrats. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my boys, but I wonder why it was that I had to be the one to quit my job and take care of them. I would probably have made more money than Justin. Hell, I mean, I went to better schools. But no, he gets to go off and schmooze and wine and dine and make deals while I hold down the fort.”
“Maybe you should just go back to work,” suggested Eliza softly.
“Come on, you know that is not possible. Having it all is a lie. A lie! So if I can’t have it all, and I’m not really having anything that is for me, why is it wrong to change that?” said Victoria heatedly.
“I definitely don’t want to go back to work,” said Leelee, trying to lighten the mood.
“Maybe not, but aren’t you in a rut? Don’t you see yourself in a holding pattern? Is there anything that really excites you anymore?” asked Victoria with hostility.
“My new headboard should be ready next week,” offered Leelee lamely.
“See,” said Victoria, pointing at Leelee. “How pathetic is that? A new fucking headboard. I mean, really. Has life come to this? There’s nothing else to get us jazzed up but a stupid Ballard Designs headboard. We know it, our husbands know it. But we can do something about it. We can spice it all up. If we go out, get some action, feel good about ourselves, then when we come back to our marriage, it will be so much better.”
“Yes, but then we will be racked with guilt, everyone will know, our husbands will be cuckolded…” said Eliza, shaking her head.
“Can you imagine those bitchy gossips at the club?” asked Leelee, nodding.
“Here’s my plan,” began Victoria with a commanding voice while flicking her flaxen hair behind her ear. When Victoria was on, she was on. She could be the most magnetic person in the room. There was a reason that women got nervous when their husbands were seated next to her at dinner parties. (Women at luncheons also got jealous when they weren’t seated next to her.) “One of the biggest problems, the biggest, with having extramarital relations—I refuse to call it cheating, Eliza—is that someone always finds out. The reason is that the philanderer—usually the woman, because surprisingly men can be more discreet—has to tell someone. It makes the affair more titillating, and that’s actually a third of the reason that we tell. The other part is guilt; it’s the nature of the beast. And only our friends can assuage our fears. But if we are having affairs to feel coveted—as Eliza said the other night—well, you can’t truly feel coveted unless you tell your best friend you were. It’s human nature. So my proposal is that we all have affairs and we tell each other only.”
“An infidelity pact?” asked Eliza, incredulous. But no one else appeared as fazed as she did.
“So, you mean like we cheat, with ground rules?” asked Helen.
“Not cheat, have affairs. Make ourselves happy. We have one year to do it. Relationship—or relationships, depending on what you want—have to be started and finished in one year. We don’t sleep with each other’s husbands—”
“Thank you,” said Eliza, sarcastically.
“And we try to avoid psychos. But the most important thing is, we tell only each other.”
“But—”
“Think about it as you would a spa treatment. You get your nails done, your bikini line waxed, your eyebrows plucked, your hair colored—all of that stuff to look good. When all you really need is a good fuck. You get that, your husband will be happy as a clam.”
“You’re insane…” interrupted Eliza.
“Shhh…I want you all to think about it for one minute. Literally one minute. I’ll time you. Enjoy your appetizers,” said Victoria, taking a bite of her carpaccio.
Helen had been thinking about having an affair for a while. In fact, Victoria knew this because one night after they’d had too many drinks at the Fourth of July party at the beach club, they had wandered down to the edge of the ocean, slipped off their shoes, dipped their feet in, and confessed how miserable they were to each other. Helen couldn’t even attempt to comprehend the depths of her misery with Wesley. There was no rancor or nasty fights (unlike with Victoria and Justin), and no obvious sources of pain such as money problems or infidelity; there was just…indifference. When Helen married Wesley she knew what she was getting into: he was much older, and a repressed, conservative, somewhat uptight upper-class British lord. Those types are hardly renowned for their openness or effusiveness. But she thought she could handle his personality and what she perceived as shortcomings precisely because she was the opposite. Whereas Wesley would choose not to discuss something, avoiding testy topics and jokingly moving on when discussions turned contentious or revelatory, Helen dove in completely. She felt that her life journey—which is how she referred to it—was a personal quest for information, understanding, and, most of all, connection. But the more she pressed Wesley, the further he retreated. She knew he was frustrated with his career, and yet he wouldn’t talk about it. She knew that his parents, who were now in their seventies, still irritated him immensely, and she suspected that one of the reasons was their opinion about his marrying her, a Korean American, but he wouldn’t talk about them. She knew he must have dreams and goals, but he wouldn’t talk about those either. The more she pushed, the more distant he became. Every conversation was topical, with doses of humor to lighten up a touchy subject. If she freaked out about something, he immediately did whatever he could to placate her. Maybe it was a British thing. But whatever the source, they were left living like formal acquaintances in their stark modern home, and Helen felt as if she was re-creating the childhood that she had loathed.
When a minute was up, Victoria raised her finger. “Okay.”
“You are more outrageous than I thought,” said Leelee, teasingly wagging her finger at Victoria. The question was, could she be that outrageous? Infidelity had never occurred to Leelee, but then, why not? But for her it wouldn’t be with just anyone. It would have to be with Jack. It was Jack or nothing.
“The consequences would be too devastating. Someone would find out, and too many people would be hurt,” said Eliza, looking at her friends, who, she was sure, would agree with her. She would never go there. It was fun to think about for a second, but that was it. And yes, she had thought about it when she saw Greg Matthews, but that had been in her mind. You can entertain a lot of possibilities in your mind—it’s your actions that matter.
“I don’t know. If we really agree not to tell anyone else…” said Helen, sliding her finger around the edge of her wineglass. “I mean, maybe it would make us happier and no one
would get hurt in the long run.”
“We’d have to be strategic about who we picked,” said Leelee, excitement in her voice. “It can’t just be Joe Schmo.”
“It can be whomever we want,” said Victoria. “We shouldn’t make rules other than silence.”
“And it can be more than one person,” said Helen. “Like, maybe that way we don’t make a real connection, one that would ruin our marriages.”
“You guys, are you serious?” asked Eliza. She couldn’t believe that her friends were actually entertaining the thought of committing infidelity. “This will never work. First of all, didn’t we promise to love, honor, and cherish? We all took our vows.”
“The divorce rate is more than fifty percent,” said Victoria, matter of fact.
“Okay, well, look…yes, in theory this is an amazing idea. We all get our kicks and walk away unscathed. But that will never happen. Someone will get hurt,” said Eliza.
“But maybe we’re just hurting ourselves by not taking a chance. Do you want to be half dead?” asked Victoria.
“I don’t feel half dead,” protested Eliza.
“Listen, Eliza. Remember you had a crush on that actor you interviewed, Tyler Trask?” asked Helen, leaning in.
Tyler Trask. Eliza could barely hear his name without blushing. When she’d see his face plastered on the cover of some tabloid, she had to do everything in her power to avert her eyes. She just couldn’t go there.
“What if you could get together with him?” continued Helen. “You said you had a connection.”
“Oh, that was years ago,” said Eliza. “I’m sure he’s forgotten who I am. And maybe I was making it up. It was probably nothing.”
But she knew she wasn’t making it up. Tyler still invited her to his premieres and even left a message or two when he was in from Australia. Now that he had a baby with his girlfriend, she’d thought he would forget her, but he had sent her a postcard as recently as Christmas. It was a picture of San Fernando Valley in all its glory, a reference to a joke they’d had between them about the outer parts of L.A. He had written only Wish you were here.
“You know that’s not true,” said Helen.
“Yeah, remember the postcard?” asked Leelee.
Eliza never should have told them about the postcard. “Whatever. Okay, say I do go with Tyler and have this stormy affair. Then what? Am I really going to leave my husband for some movie star who has women at every port?”
“It’s not about leaving our husbands,” said Victoria. “It’s about one year; it’s about taking necessary, emergency steps to make ourselves feel like viable, attractive human beings. And the fact that we are all in it together, that we are making this pact to have relations with men other than our spouses, means that we will all look out for each other. If someone gets in too deep or someone needs advice or help or whatever, we are all there for each other,” said Victoria with precision.
“Have some more wine,” she then instructed, motioning to their glasses. “And take another moment to fantasize. Think about a life other than the one you have now. One that is less predictable, where you have some sense of excitement, one where you feel as though it matters if you look good, that you worked out.” She said the last part for Eliza’s benefit.
For a few minutes no one spoke; each was lost in her reverie. The alcohol that Victoria was plying them with had the desired effect. It was a great equalizer, allowing desires and fears to coexist. And in the darkened romantic restaurant (a prescient choice by Victoria) it made all the women, even reluctant Eliza, feel dreamy. In their now hazy minds they had visions of themselves with other men. How nice it had been for Helen when the handsome new pottery teacher at the art center had wrapped his hands around hers to show her how to make an urn. She felt like Demi Moore in Ghost. She had wanted him to take that clay and spread it all over her body, to get down and dirty with him but in the most sensual and organic way, to coat each other with clay from the earth…Eliza thought about Tyler. He was the person who would be able to conjure up those emotions that she had suppressed for so long…Leelee thought of the man of her dreams, the one who had betrayed her terribly, and with the alcohol enhancing her imagination, she dreamed of a different outcome to her life.
Victoria knew what she was doing.
The busboy took away their appetizers and all the women kept their eyes on Eliza.
“I think it’s our only chance, Eliza,” said Helen.
“So you’re in?” asked Victoria, turning to Helen for confirmation.
“Absolutely. I need to rejoin the world of the living,” sighed Helen.
“What about you, Leelee?” asked Victoria.
Leelee glanced at all of them coyly. “Sure,” she said, giggling. For tonight, anyway. This way she could dream about Jack with a little more hope than she usually did.
“What about you, Eliza?” asked Victoria.
“Guys, sorry, but no.”
“Eliza, one day you’ll realize that life is so short. We have only tiny moments cobbled together and then we are gone. You should enjoy it. If you want to feel coveted, then you need to feel coveted. Maybe what you need is not a physical affair but an emotional one. Maybe you just need a connection with another male,” said Helen. She brought up life and death often, having learned early how inexorably linked they were.
“Don’t make Eliza decide now. Let’s talk about it tomorrow, after she’s had a day of carpooling and grocery shopping,” said Victoria.
Before Eliza could reply, Anson Larrabee, an acquaintance who lived in the Palisades, interrupted them. He was exactly the type of person who would be a great danger to the girls if he had heard any of their conversation from the past thirty minutes. Anson was a larger-than-life character in every sense. He stood six feet, four inches tall and had an enormous belly and a mop of blond hair on his head that was still thick even in his forty-seventh year of life. His voice was just as grand and booming as his body, and had a southern lilt to it. He was the town gossip, who reigned over the society column in the Palisades Press with his poison pen, and enjoyed lunching with ladies to find out the comings and goings of everyone in the neighborhood. Although his sexuality was dubious, he referred to the recent divorcées that he squired around town in his convertible Mercedes as his “lady friends,” and he showered them with gifts until they moved on to someone else, no hard feelings. He was currently “dating” Imelda Rosenberg, Eurasian former restaurant hostess who had just left her husband, a high-ranking executive at Paramount. Actually, he had left her; when he found out she was sleeping with the tennis pro he threw all of her clothes out the front window of their house, which was right on Alma Real, where everyone could see. A minor scandal to say the least.
“Now this looks like a fuuuun dinner,” said Anson with his Alabama accent. “I bet half of the ladies in the Palisades have ringing ears—no doubt you all are havin’ one of your good old-fashion’ bitchfests.”
If it was meant to be funny, it fell flat. Eliza and Victoria exchanged an eye roll, and Leelee gave Anson her iciest smile. None of them liked him. Had he been merely a harmless wit, they would have given him a pass. But they had all been subjected to his vitriolic tongue and had quickly and rightly discerned that it was best to stay away from him.
“Oh, Anson, you know we never talk about other people,” said Helen with a cold laugh. “We leave that to you.”
Anson smiled at what he probably took to be a compliment. “Well, if you can think of anything interesting for my column, let me know—my deadline’s tomorrow. So far the only thing I have is that Imelda and I ate dinner next to Tyler Trask and he had not one, not two, but three bottles of wine. Probably needs that much alcohol to get through dinner with his girlfriend…I hear she is a total bo-ore. A darling figure but air running through the head.”
The ladies all turned and looked at Eliza. Tyler Trask? Eliza’s crush? Eating dinner at the same restaurant as them? Surely this was a sign.
“Tyler’s here now?�
�� asked Leelee, her head bobbing over the others to scan the restaurant.
“He just left,” said Anson. “Probably outside beating up paparazzi. Why can’t these actors act like gentlemen? Do they think it’s sexy to punch people out?”
“I thought Tyler lived in Australia,” said Helen. She was asking Anson but staring at Eliza, who was feigning nonchalance by swirling her bread in her tomato sauce.
“In town, making a movie. Don’t you gals read Variety?” asked Anson.
Before they could answer, Imelda emerged from the bathroom and wrapped her arm around Anson. They were an odd pair. She was tiny, but had overdone everything about herself so that she appeared out of scale. Her eyes were over-shadowed, her cheeks over-rouged, her raccoon-streaked hair overly teased into large Farrah Fawcett clumps that cast a shadow across her face. And her outfits were always tight and flashy. Tonight she was clad in pencil-thin, skintight black leather pants and an ostentatious leopard-print tank top. Anson, on the other hand, wore his requisite pastels; tonight it was a bright pink button-down shirt with apple green pants, held up with a peppermint whale-print belt. He called his look “Palm Beach chic,” which it probably was at one time, but he hadn’t been there since the seventies.
The women all greeted each other before Imelda gave Anson a look, and he took his leave.
“Toot-a-loo, gals,” he said, waving as he walked away.
The ladies waited a beat to make extra sure he was out of earshot before turning to Eliza in astonishment.
“Okay, how random is it that the man of your dreams was in this very restaurant tonight, when you were talking about having an affair with him?” asked Leelee, excited.
“I wasn’t talking about having an affair with him,” insisted Eliza.
“This is cosmic, sweetie. This is the gods talking and telling you it’s okay. You have to believe in signs,” said Helen, dreamy-eyed.
The Infidelity Pact Page 6
