Chapter 2

“‘Shit’ is right.”

“What are you going to do?” She looked over at me. “What are you going to say?”

I got up and she got off her back, though she remained on the bed.

“I knew this day would come, when you’d be gone, and that I’d have to decide whether I would stay with your father.”

“So you’re putting this on me?”

It was the last thing I wanted to do. I sat next to her and grabbed her hands.

“Being with you and him and this family was what made me happy. With you going, though—” I needed to get this right. “With you going, it’d be just him and me, and that’s what I mean.”

She was staring.

“But we’re the perfect family. I’m the envy of virtually my entire class because of you and Dad.”

“It was all a lie.”

There. I said it. It Was All a Lie.

“Everything?”

“Not you. Not everything. But our marriage. Your father deserved much better than I offered. Than I could offer.”

I did not tell Mattie that I tolerated sex with Tim. I was available whenever he wanted and I was willing to do almost anything he wanted. I’m sure he thought we had a great sex life, that it too would be the envy of the village if our neighbors knew about it, and because I was a good actress, able to fake orgasms. He thought he was a great lover. Maybe he was. He lived at times for the orgasms he thought he was giving me. These were more of my lies. In bed with a wonderful, handsome man inside me too often pretending to be in the throes of passion when all I wanted was to be done with it.

I was up and pacing yet again. How do you tell a husband of twenty-three years, the father of your daughter, that you are a liar and a faker and a cheat?

“You have to tell him. And you have to do it now.”

She was right, of course. I stopped, standing in front of her.

“What about you?” I asked. “What do you think? That I never trusted you to say anything.”

“I wish you had. It would have made things easier for me.” I felt stabbed. “But I understand why you didn’t. Now you have. I guess all we can do is go from here.”

She stood, wrapping her arms around me and telling me she loved me.

“As to Dad. We’ll tell him together. I’ll go first because I think he’ll be OK—”

“He will be. I know he will.”

“I hope so. Then you have to tell him. I’ll be there for you, but you know it’s up to you.”

I knew.

She sat back down on the bed.

“We’ll do it together.”

I sat wrapped an arm around her.

“I’m sorry I stepped on your news. First, let’s talk about you and what you should say to your dad.”

We discussed it. I assured her he would be fine, even great, with it. He and I cared nothing except for what was best for her and at the top was that she be free to love whomever she loved. Tim was the best and kindest man I’ve ever known. His happiness turned on hers.

We would do it when he got home.

“And you have to tell him about you,” she repeated.

“I know. That’s going to be…that’s going to be awful.”

“Mom. You have to do it.”

After another “I know,” I told her I needed to get dressed, and she slipped out of the room.

I called her back in.

“I’m sorry, Mattie. I didn’t ask you. Is there somebody?”

She stepped to me and put her arms around me. “No, Mom. Not yet.”

“But you’ve—?”

“Not even a kiss.” She kissed my cheek and again left the room. I heard her shut her door

One’s never ready for a day of reckoning, no matter how long its arrival has been inevitable. As I dressed, I thought about my life with Tim. A good life. As Mattie said, to others it appeared the perfect life. And perhaps to Tim it was. Or thought it was.

For me, it was like I had taken a piece of myself when I married him and locked it away. I took it out one summer with Helen. That was wrong, taking it out that summer, I knew, even at the time, and I put it back, gathering dust but always there. For years, I thought about telling him. But I didn’t.

Whatever plans I had to tell Tim and to chart my new life had exploded when my daughter forced me to be honest with her. And him.