393: Infidelity

28:56My secret waste is still a secret. And I make it to the last night. We have a little farewell dinner at a seaside restaurant and we're walking on the beach one last time for old time's sake saying our goodbyes. Everyone's a little misty except me. I can't wait to go home in the morning when France says, does anyone want to go swimming? And her relatively more modest sister says, we don't have suits. And the fearless, guileless Germanic Susan says, that's okay with me. And a couple of minutes later, they're standing on the beach in panties and bras, which are very different than bikinis. Frances are chocolate brown lace, and her skin is the color of milk.

29:48She looks like a profiterole.

29:53my favorite dessert it is agony to keep my eyes open but I can't close them and the three of them run into the water laughing and splashing and then finally disappearing underneath the surface so everything's quiet for a moment and then one, two, three, they pop up and start calling at me like sirens who actually lived in Positano 3 ,000 years ago. James, come in. It's wonderful. And I haven't been swimming one time, and it's dark, so I make a decision. I'm going to take off my shoes and socks and pants, and I put them on a beach chair, and I unbutton my shirt and thread out my arms so there's this hanging there like a little poncho, and when Franz disappears into the water again, it goes off on the back of a beach chair and I'm in.

30:49But I've waited so long to make up my mind that Susan's cold. She has bad circulation. And she always used to bug me. And Franz's sister is ready to go back as well. But Franz is fine. And I just got in. And we're all vacation buddies. So Susan and the sister go back to the hotel, leaving France and I, for the first time, alone. In the dark, in our underwear, in the Mediterranean, where they invented the word philander. And where it occurs to me, we can have sex without her seeing my body.

31:38So I swim around for a little bit and try to figure out what's the personal space in the Mediterranean How close can you swim before you can't swim away? And whatever that distance is, Franz swims right to the edge of it and says The water makes me feel so free

31:58It's not having that effect on me I got bear claws to hide and promises to keep and I am so tense that I can't breathe normally, which makes me look abnormal, which leads Frost to say, is everything okay? Maybe we should go back. And she gets out of the water and stands on the beach, tripping in the moonlight, dabbing at herself with her dress. So I've got one eye on her and the other on my shirt, which is fluttering off the back of this chair. and I get closer and closer, spreading my legs wider and wider so that only my head is visible, like an alligator. It looks like I'm in about six feet of water, but really it's about 18 inches.

32:54My thighs are in agony and I can't hold out much longer when France lifts her shirt dress over her head and I spring up on the beach and behind the chair and I am wet but covered when her head pops through the dress hall and she steps back in surprise and lets out a little French vowel. Ah! And we get dressed and we're walking across the cobblestones back to the hotel which are slightly uneven so the backs of our hands brush and she takes mine and hers which I've read in Let's Go Europe. is a friendly and warm gesture among European women. I don't get any ideas. So I'm feeling friendly and warm, trying not to have any ideas.

33:41When Franz says, Susan is very lucky to have you, and I say, well, thank you very much, but I'm very lucky to have her trying to regain a shred of dignity while holding on to this woman's hand. and Franz smiles the smile of the boyfriendless and yet supremely confident goddess and says, why? And there are all sorts of reasons I'm lucky to have Susan but I can't think of any of them at the moment because my mind is blank. And I say, well, why are you friends? And Franz looks at me and says, because she pursued me. and our hips bump at the base of the stairs of the mountain to the hotel and she puts her arm around my waist right above the bear claw and all I can think is to hunch down like I've got osteoporosis so that her arm slides up my rib cage but with each step up the stairs it slides back down and then it hits and she starts laughing and this bubbly French laugh.

34:56And she says, What's softage? I don't speak French, and I don't want to know what that means anyway, so I keep walking. And she says it again, What's softage? You have a life preserver. It's so cute. And she keeps her hand right there, like a girlfriend. up the stairs and into the lobby of the hotel and into the elevator, which is too bright and too small to be touching. It's a tiny little hotel, tiny little elevator. So she's in one corner and mine in the other. When the doors close and the floors start ringing off one by one, and we just look at each other, and there's not much more time to go, and then the doors open before I can make up my mind what to do, and we're standing there in front of our rooms and she just looks at me with the most beautiful face I have ever been swimming with and one that I have never wanted to kiss more but I just can't do it to Susan.

36:11So I kiss Franz on the cheek three times which I've learned that week which allows you to change your mind potentially. But I make it into my room in a closed door behind me, and Susan's up in bed reading Let's Go Europe in anticipation of the debate that's probably going to happen tomorrow morning over where to go. And she looks up and says, how was it? And I say, it was hard, Susan. It was really hard. And she looks right at me and says, I know. like she does know, like she really understands why I've avoided the beach for a week on the beach vacation. And she accepts it. So I take off my shirt and get in bed next to her and turn my back.

37:08And suddenly I start crying. These weepy little hide-them-in-your-hotel-room pillow tears. Which is not the kind of guy I am. I'm a poker-faced, poker-bodied, magical thinker. I've been eating bear claws for a year and thinking I'm in shape and that I can be faithful and philander at the same time. And it's an overwhelmingly sad and yet strangely comforting relief to lie there and know that I can't and that I've actually made a choice that after seven days, seven years, really most of my adult life, to lie there next to Susan and right or wrong, finally, be me. Thank you.

37:58James Brawley. The story became part of a one-man off-Broadway show called Life in a Marital Institution, 20 Years of Monogamy in One Terrifying Hour. His website, James Brawley, that's Brawley, B-R-A-L-Y.com. Thanks, as always, to The Moth, which of course features personal stories told live in front of an audience. If you like this story and you don't know their stuff, check out their podcasts, The Moth Radio Hour and The Moth Podcast.

38:29Act three, how did I get here? So James Brawley gave us the thoughts of somebody in a moment before infidelity occurs. Danny Shapiro has this story about the confusing mess it can be during the affair. Here, in no particular order, are some things Lenny told me. That he and his wife didn't sleep in the same bed. That they hadn't had a real marriage in years. That she was undergoing electroshock treatment in a clinic outside Philadelphia. That he had cancer and had to fly to Houston three days a week for chemotherapy. That his youngest daughter, age three, had a rare form of childhood leukemia.

39:06That he could not get a divorce for all of the above reasons. That he was heartbroken that he could not leave his wife and marry me. For a long time I believed him. With every bone in my body I trusted that Lenny Klein was telling me the truth. When we talked about it, his jaw would tighten and his big brown eyes would fill with tears. His voice would quaver with pent-up, complex feelings that I couldn't possibly begin to understand. Poor Lenny. I marveled that so many bad things could happen to one person, and I vowed to take care of him. I exhorted myself to be a real woman, one who could step up to the plate and be good to her man in his moment of crisis.

39:55Years later, I hold Lenny's lies up to the light and examine my own reasons for believing what in retrospect seems preposterous. I reread my old journals and notice the way my girlish handwriting deteriorated into a scrawl as I wrote, I have to be there for Lenny. He needs me, and he's going through so much. I don't know if I can handle it, but I have to be strong. I try to remember that Lenny was a trial lawyer, that he built an international reputation based on his own pathology, that he lied with an almost evangelical conviction. He prided himself on being able to convince anyone of anything.

40:45The lies had small beginnings. Lenny called me from a business trip and told me he was at Montreal Airport, waiting to catch a flight to Calgary. I checked with the airline and found out that the flight would take approximately five hours. So when Lenny called an hour later to say he had landed in Calgary, I very calmly asked him where he really was. Calgary, he said. No, Lenny, really. He stuck to his story. In the time that I knew him, he never, ever changed his story midstream. I hung up on him and called his family's house in Westchester. When the maid answered the phone, I asked to speak with Mr.

41:23Klein. And when he picked up the extension and I heard his rough, craggy hello, I screamed so hard into his ear that he dropped the receiver. He raced into the city. he let himself into my apartment and found me curled up in bed. He scooped me up and held me to his chest. His wife wasn't home, he told me. She was having shock treatment, and someone had to take care of his daughter. He hadn't wanted to tell me because he'd wanted to spare me to protect me from the horror of his life. Surely I understood. Shush, sweetheart, he murmured into the top of my head as I wept, my face beat red like a little girl's.

42:02So many people need me, he said, but I love you best of all.

42:12Two years have passed and something has gone wrong, terribly wrong with my life. I don't in fact think of my life as my life, but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection. I am no longer a student. I dropped out of Sarah Lawrence after my junior year, supposedly to pursue acting. and I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of an actress. But I'm doing an even better imitation of a mistress. Lenny's been busy buying me things. I don't particularly want these things, but they seem to be what Lenny is offering in lieu of himself. So quite suddenly, overnight really, I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible.

42:51And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mink coat, a Cartier watch, a Bulgari necklace with an ancient coin at its center. The Mercedes is a step down from the first car Lenny gave me when we had been going out for a month, a leased Ferrari. I don't know how to drive a stick shift, so the Ferrari was a bit of a problem. What I must have looked like, a 20-year-old blonde dressed like Ivana Trump, stalled in traffic, grinding gears, trying to find the point on the clutch to hold that ridiculous car in place.

43:30Lenny rented an apartment on a pretty little street in Greenwich Village, a furnished triplex with a garden, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed. He called it Our House, as if he didn't have another home with a whole family in it an hour north of the city. He kept half a dozen suits in the bedroom closet, and a brand-new silk robe hung behind the bathroom door. There was an entire floor we didn't use, a large, airy children's nursery. My parents knew that something was up. They knew I was going out with somebody, but they had no idea who. I was drifting away from them, and they were letting me go.

44:09One night I invited them over for dinner. I pushed all traces of Lenny out of sight. But of course there were clues. A glossy brochure for Italian yachts, a humidor in the center of the coffee table, I cooked up a storm and the place was filled with homey smells, garlic, basil, coriander. It was winter and the snow was piled up on the sills. Spotlights in the backyard shone on the landscaped garden, the redwood table, the Adirondack chairs. I had my father's favorite music, Dvorak's Symphony for the New World, playing on the stereo system.

44:51My parents rang the doorbell. They looked so solid standing on my front stoop, their cold red noses poking out from above their mufflers. If nothing else, they looked like they belonged together. They were elegant and rangy, similarly proportioned. Unlike Lenny and me, Lenny is thick as a linebacker, and I had become so delicate the wind could have picked me up and blown me away. My mother strode into the brownstone as if it wasn't the weirdest thing in the world to be visiting her daughter in a lavish apartment with no name on the outside buzzer. My father trailed behind her warily, as if setting foot on another planet.

45:31My mother entered the living room, flung her arms wide, and did an impromptu dance to Dvorak. Tra-la-la-la, she trilled. My father and I hung back and watched, our faces crumpled into awkward smiles. It didn't occur to me that she was frightened, that this was a lot for her to take in, her college dropout daughter living in the lap of luxury. All I could see was her outsized self twirling around my living room in her fur coat and boots. I wanted a drink.

46:08I poured two glasses of Chardonnay for my parents and a large vodka for myself. I figured that if the vodka was in a water glass, they wouldn't know the difference, especially if I drank it like it was water. My drinking had taken on a new urgency in the past few months. It was no longer a question of desire, but of need. I could not get through an evening like this without the armor of booze. I handed them their wine and directed them to the couch. On the coffee table, I had put out a plate of crudités and a bowl of olives. Quite a place, my mother said brightly, her gaze darting around the room at the white brick fireplace with its wrought iron tools, the glass wall overlooking the garden, the soaring ceiling.

46:50My father stared at the fringe of the rug, glassy-eyed. He needed to be as numbed as I did to get through this night. Thanks, I murmured, as if she was paying me a compliment. I checked on dinner, using the opportunity to gulp some wine from the open bottle in the fridge. Vodka and white wine was a combination I knew worked for me. If I stuck with the formula, things shouldn't be too bad in the morning, especially if I wasn't eating, and I couldn't see myself eating. The music had stopped by the time we all sat at the dining room table, but I didn't notice then. If I had, I would certainly have changed the tape, filled the air with something other than the tinny, lonely sound of our three forks scraping against plates.

47:34I pushed my chicken from one side of my plate to the other. My stomach clenched and growled in protest. It seemed that my parents and I, after 22 years in each other's company, had run out of things to say. I already knew their views on the political situation in Israel, and we couldn't discuss my schoolwork. I was no longer in school. My father pressed a corner of his napkin to his lips and murmured something about the food being delicious. My mother agreed. My wonderful daughter, she said, shaking her head. You've turned into such a little homemaker. I looked at my parents across the table. Is that what they really thought?

48:13How could they just sit there? Some small piece of me wanted my father to fling me over his shoulder and carry me kicking and screaming to the car he had parked outside. I secretly wished that they would drive me home, deposit me in my childhood bedroom, and feed me chicken soup and saltines. I wanted to start my life over again, but I didn't know how.

48:40In the face of the most tangible proof that Lenny had been lying to me all these years, I remained with him. My little girl is dying, he would say whenever I noticed the discrepancies in his stories, or my children's mother is having electroshock therapy. When I couldn't take my own confusion anymore, was Lenny lying to me? Was I going crazy? I decided to hire a detective to get to the bottom of it. By this time, my parents knew all about me and Lenny in theory, but it wasn't something we could talk about. When I think back to my younger self rifling through the New York City yellow pages in search of a private investigator, I feel like I'm watching a movie about someone else, a girl so clueless she really didn't know that her desire to hire a detective was all the answer she needed.

49:27I chose a detective agency based on nothing more than its good address in the East 60s, a neighborhood filled with private schools and shrinks. This isn't what you think, I told the detective. I'm in a relationship with a married man, and I want you to find out if my boyfriend is cheating on me with his wife. At this, his eyebrows shot up. Come again? He claims his wife is in a mental hospital. He told me he hasn't been with her in years. And you think he might be lying, said the investigator. Did I see the laughter behind his eyes, or is my memory supplying it now, because I simply cannot imagine a middle-aged man listening to an earnest, overdressed 22-year-old girl tell him that she thinks her boyfriend might still be sleeping with his wife?

50:15Yes, I said.

50:22Days later, I got the proof about Lenny's lies. In tears, I called my mother. Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do? I don't think so. A pause. Do you want me to call his wife? My mother and Mrs. Klein had met each other at a few school functions back when none of this could have struck anyone as a remote possibility. Yes, I said, call her. I'll do it right now, my mother said. I sat by the phone and watched the minutes tick by. I pictured Lenny's wife answering the phone with a chirpy hello and my mother's slow, steady explanation of why she was calling. I had set in motion a chain of events which was now unstoppable.

51:07More than 20 minutes passed before my mother called me back. Well, I did it, she said. You talked to her? The world felt unreal, hallucinatory. Yes, she called me a liar. She told me she has a happy marriage to a man who travels a lot, that he's on his way to California. And I said, no, he's on his way to see my daughter. My mother sounded proud of herself, immersed in the drama of the moment. How did she seem, I asked. What do you mean? Lenny's wife, was she angry? No, my mother said slowly. She just didn't believe me, Danny. I spent the rest of that day in a state of awful excitement. Something was going to happen.

51:52And when Lenny showed up that evening at the apartment we were still sharing in the West Village, I was ready. He put his bags down and gave me a hug. The phone rang. My mother had given Mrs. Klein the number at the apartment and suggested she find out for herself what her husband was up to. Lenny picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. Hello? I watched him, and for the first and only time in the years I knew him, he looked genuinely surprised. He didn't say a word. He just listened for a few minutes, then hung up the phone. That was my wife, he said. I was silent. How did she get this number?

52:32I shrugged. I have to go. I'd imagine I said faintly. When Lenny slammed out of the apartment, I was certain I would never see him again. I knew the truth now. It was staring me in the face, in the concrete form of flight lists and photos. And he knew that I knew. And besides, the whistle was blown. What could he possibly tell his wife? This was it, I told myself. Absolutely, positively the end.

53:07It wasn't the end. Lenny still called 10, 12 times a day. He left messages on my answering machine. Hello? His voice filled my bedroom. Fox, are you there? Sometimes he didn't say a word. He would stay on the line for as long as five minutes, just breathing. Eventually, he did get to me again. And for the next year that we were together, three days here, four days there, my life became unrecognizable to me. I idly wondered what it would take to get me to leave him. I wondered about this over bottles of chilled white wine or heavy glasses half-filled with scotch. I was still wondering about it when I went to stay for a while at a health spa in California.

53:55The phone rang in my room one day. There had been a car crash on a snowy highway. My mother had 80 broken bones. My father was in a coma. They were lying in a hospital 3 ,000 miles away. And suddenly, in ways I could not have imagined seconds earlier, nothing else mattered. As I packed my bags, I remembered my mother twirling, dancing to Dvorak through the doors of Lenny's brownstone and the glassy look in my father's eyes. I prayed that my father wouldn't die disappointed in me. And I knew then what I had to do.

54:38Dani Shapiro. That story is in her memoir, Slow Motion. Her latest book is called Inheritance, A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.

54:51Act four, The Man Who Knew What I Was About to Say. So in this second half of our program, We've had the moment before a possible affair. We've had what it's like during the affair. And now we turn to the aftermath of an affair, at least the very immediate aftermath. This story is by writer Edgar Carrad and read for us by actor Matt Malloy. The man who knew what I was about to say sat next to me on the plane. A stupid smile plastered across his face. That's what's so nerve-wracking about him. Smart he wasn't, or sensitive either. But still, he knew those lines and managed to say them. All the lines I meant to say.

55:31Three seconds before me. Do you sell Guerlain Mystique? He asked the flight attendant a minute before I could. And she gave him an orthodontic smile and said, there's just one last bottle left. My wife goes crazy for that perfume, he said. She's positively addicted. If I come back from a trip without a bottle of Mystique from the Duty Free, she says I don't love her anymore. If I dare come into the house without at least one of these, I'm in deep ****. That was supposed to be my line, but the man who knew what I was about to say stole it from me without missing a beat. Soon as the wheels touched the ground, he switched on his mobile, a second before I did, and called his wife.

56:14I just landed, he told her. I'm sorry, I know it was supposed to be yesterday. Flight was cancelled. You don't believe me? Check it out yourself. Call Eric. I know you don't. I can give you his number right now. I also have a travel agent called Eric. He'd lie for me, too.

56:41When the plane reached the gate, he was still talking on his mobile, giving all the answers I would have given, without a trace of emotion. Like a parrot in a world where time flows backwards, repeating whatever is about to be said instead of what's been said already. His answers were the best ones under the circumstances. His circumstances weren't too hot, not too hot at all. Mine weren't either. Nobody was answering my call, but just listening to the man who knew what I was about to say made me stop trying. Just listening to him, I could tell that this was a hole that, even if I dug my way out of, it would be to a different reality.

57:21She'd never forgive me. She'd never trust me. Ever. All my coming trips would be hell on earth, and the time in between would be even worse. He went on talking and talking and talking, all those sentences that I'd thought up and hadn't said yet. It just kept flowing. He stepped it up, changing the intonation, like a drowning man struggling desperately to stay afloat. People began getting off. He got up, still talking, scooped up his laptop in the other hand and headed for the exit. I could see him forgetting it behind. The bag he had put in the overhead compartment, I could see him forgetting it.

58:02I didn't say anything. I just stayed put. Gradually everyone walked out, until the only ones still there were an overweight religious woman with a million children and me. I got up and opened the overhead compartment above me, as if nothing. I took out the duty-free bag like it had always been mine Inside were the receipt and the bottle of Guerlain Mystique My wife goes crazy for that perfume She's positively addicted If I come back from a trip without a bottle of Mystique from the duty-free She says I don't love her anymore

58:43Someday he'll come along The man I love Matt Malloy, reading a story by Edgar Carrot from Edgar's story collection, Suddenly a Knock on the Door. Edgar sends stories and poems to subscribers in his sub-stack newsletter, Alphabet Soup. I'll do my best to make him stay Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike and our senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder, with Alex Bloomberg, Jay Marie, Sarah Caney, Lisa Pollack, Robin Semenin, and Alyssa Shipp. Production up from Aaron Scott. Seth Lind is our production manager, and Emily Condon was our office manager for this show. Our musical consultant for the show was Jessica Hopper.

59:28Help on today's rerun from Adrian Lilly, Molly Marcello, and Ryan Rummery. Special thanks today to The Moth and to Paul Tuff. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Ms. Troy Malatia. you know, I'm a happily married man. So does it mean anything when he swims over to me at the company retreat and says things like, The water makes me feel so free. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. I'm waiting for the man I love.

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