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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Reasons Not to Forgive : Page 1, 2, 3, 4 During the nightly sitcoms which your new wife watches religiously, you have an hour to retrace some of this, to try and decipher again, for the millionth time, where and how your first marriage began to falter. You begin with Corey, since she is the hinge on which things still hang. You were teaching fifth grade math when Corey was born, a job you dreaded, but it was offered to you after your student teaching, and you were newly married and Liz was pregnant. Liz finished her Bachelor’s in Design and stayed home for a year with Corey, which was probably a mistake, because she grew restless, and by January she had a plan to apply to graduate school in New York City and uproot the safe haven of your life in Rhode Island. It was only for a year, she argued when you hedged, and it was what her designs needed - an infusion of city life. This brought you to New York, where things began to unravel. Because you are not a saint. Because there was another woman. But this is where you waver, where you can’t tell things right from wrong. A temp agency placed you at the New York office of the Spanish Embassy, where you worked for the head of the embassy, Carmelita Vidal, while her usual assistant was on maternity leave. You admired Carmelita, for many of the same reasons you had fallen for Liz: she was sure of herself, opinionated, and a bit of a ham. And she had the added charm of long black hair, fascinating eyes, and a forbearance for men and their excesses which you had never known in a woman before. She talked openly about her husband’s affairs in Madrid and how she came to accept this as the price of her career at the embassy. As the year drew to a close and Carmelita’s trust and dependence on you grew, she suggested a deal: an offer to spend the summer at her lavish house in Greenwich while she returned to Madrid, in exchange for caring for the property and her pet parakeet. At first you thought she meant just you, and you said, "But my wife and daughter," and she laughed and said, "No darling, I mean all of you." The first night she asked if you would come out alone to be acquainted with the duties of the house, and so there you were with her, while Liz and Corey were suffering the heat and noise of your cramped apartment in Queens. And yes, something happened with Carmelita Vidal, something that you are not the least bit proud of. What you remember is your back against the cool blue tiled floor of the solarium and her hair draped around you and your mouth bone dry and your muscles shaking with suppressed urges to flight. But then you let go. At some point you made the switch and became involved in the moment. There is no way to explain how you let it happen, especially when you could tell there was another agenda to her suggestion that you come out there alone. But you also thought: I have to do this. If I don’t, our summer plans will fall through. You were already evicted from the Queens apartment for breaking the lease. "Don’t you dare try to justify this with some self-sacrifice bullshit." Those, the words of Liz, late September of that year. You had moved back to Providence. You thought you were safe, thought you’d gotten away with it, and then one day Carmelita called and left a message. Liz had been suspicious ever since you came back from Carmelita’s and wouldn’t take your shirt off to sleep, hiding the scratch marks on your back. Now, with this phone call, Liz was furious. She stood over you as you called Carmelita back, told her you could not see her, and asked her to not call again. "I knew it. I knew that’s why I got sick," she screamed, referring to the rampant yeast infection she had developed at the beginning of summer. You tried to lie and say there had been no intercourse, but she insisted you both have AIDS tests and herpes and gonorrhea screens. How did you let it happen? You were weak, that’s all. Weak and needy. And still a little bit perturbed at being uprooted and supplanted in New York, a city you had feared since childhood, a city that made you worry more than ever about making enough money and keeping your small family out of harm’s way. In your weakness you could not even end the marriage promptly. Instead you hung on for years. You kept busy with graduate school and with Corey, submitting to the purgatory of a lifeless marriage, a place where Liz endured your tenderness and mocked your concern. When the phone rings you startle. "I thought you were going to call," Liz says. You are disoriented and unsure of what she is talking about but then remember: you had agreed to talk later about the plan for Corey to continue in the alternative school. "I’m sorry," you say. "This is what Corey is proposing," Liz says. "She will go to school tomorrow and the next day and every day after that if you will come pick her up in the morning and bring her." |
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