Infidelity
By: Donna Barrow-Green, Rose Gluck
Tags: Fiction, Marriage, Love, Mental Health, Poetry

Infidelity

A Poem in Five Acts

I first took notice of his arms. His muscles under the short sleeve of his shirt. I tried to imagine him; a complete him with his muscles taut then softening as he touched me. I tried to imagine his words: a softness when he spoke to me as his lover, whispering my name against my flesh.

—

I do not want to be something for him to dip into. A temptation. I do not want to be standing water: calm and deep. I want to be the ocean. I want my passion free.

I love him.

I love him.

I love him.

—

In the mirror this morning, again this afternoon. Looking at myself in a bathing suit, I wondered. What would he think of my body?

Someone who is in love with you defines you. They shape and sculpt the contours of your body with short glances.

I feel sexy right now in a short, whit cotton tank dress. My hair is held up loosely in a bun.

—

David says that the more pressing issue is my marriage.

—

I feel like I belong here on this part of the coast: Stinson, Bollinas, Marshall, Point Reyes. The windy roads, the dramatic cliffs, and the Pacific Ocean. The weathered, old wood homes. I belong here, I can feel myself expanding, being creative.

—

I find myself missing my husband today.

“Are you lonely?” I asked him last night as we lay across our bed together.

“Yes.” He answered.

“Me too.”

—

It was quiet. I wanted to stay on the bus: keep moving. In the dim light of dusk, in the oily smells, and under the dull electric lights.

—

We went back to our apartment in San Francisco to feed our cats and I lay on the couch and stared up at the white, painted plaster walls and Neil played the piano. I thought to myself how much like an independent film that moment was: my eye fixed on a chipped piece of plaster, the yellowish light of afternoon, my husband’s music.

—

I saw the tears falling on words and I thought of Jackson Pollack. And I thought of David and how I had said “you are Michelangelo and I am Jackson Pollack.”

—

In Kate’s car today. I felt in the right place: riding in the back seat with Neil, my feet out the window, reclined against him. He had his hand on my leg and I noticed how his fingers seem slender, ready to hit a piano key. I listened to his voice, how he pronounced words. I thought of how much I like him, just who he is and how he listens and squints his eyes when he considers a question. I like his restraint and how he can gauge a conversation and hold it up and keep it organized.

All of this while I tapped my feet on the ceiling, listened to Led Zeppelin and watched the pelicans and egrets as they passed by the car on our way to Pt. Reyes.

—

I thought of how much like a mother I felt: Neil laying on top of me, his head buried against my neck. I was rubbing his back and softly kissing his forehead.

“People aren’t this close when they first meet,” he said to me.

—

I feel peeled open. Cut into.

—

I said to David, “I’ve felt like this for a year.”

David said “incubation can last forever. Those feelings can last forever in incubation. It is when they are consummated that you know whether they are viable outside of the fantasy.”

—

His words are sewn together, hidden in the fabric of our work.

“…in my eyes you are perfect, absolutely no flaws…I don’t want you to leave…I care about you.”

—

At first his eyes landed on me when I didn’t expect it. At the coffee stand.

I looked up and smiled at him. There was a pause, then he smiled back.

—

Before I went to talk to him, to tell him I was leaving (I was wearing a loose sun dress with thin straps. It was casual and revealing), I had said a prayer to God and I had figured (and still believe) that I had to find a path to righteousness.

“I care about you,” he said to me on that day. I traced the grain of the table with my finger.

To my sister he has two sides; she has only my eyes through which to view him.

She doesn’t understand why he kept his wife on speaker phone with me in the room waiting. To my sister this is a sign.”

—

“You are just like my wife.”

“She sounds like an amazing woman,” I joked.

—

David said “you are so flippant about that phrase: in love.”

The Pacific was breaking in silent waves outside the think, glass windows of the Cliff House.”

—

I miss him. I miss how his eyes twinkle, grow large when I speak. I miss how he watches me and I miss those rare moments when he touches me. The one time we embraced, my body fit into his. It was perfect.

—

I can feel it inside of me.

It is a hand and it opens like a bird when it comes out.

—

(he was teasing me)

You were right. I was wrong.

You were right. I was wrong.

You were right. I was wrong.

You were right. I was wrong.

You were right. I was wrong.

You were right. I was wrong.

Can you forgive me?

—

I know what his wife looks like because he has a framed picture of her on his desk. She is very pretty with short, dark hair.

I’ve heard her voice. We were working alone in his office. He had a speaker phone on the desk in front of us. The phone rang and it was his personal line.

“I’ve got to get this,” he said to me. He hit a button and her voice filled the room.

“Sweetie?” she said into the air. I looked down at my hands, feeling out of place.

“Ya?” he said into the box on his desk.

“Why did you call earlier?” she asked.

“To get the address (of someone) to send a sympathy card — I already found it though and sent the card,” he said. He looked at me and smiled.

“You’re a sweet thing, aren’t you?” she teased.

He laughed a little. “I’ve got to go. I’m in a meeting. I’ll see you later.”

Then her voice disappeared.

—

I saw a little girl’s face in the ivy leaves. My eyes were playing tricks on me. They were dry from crying.

—

Neil played a Hank Williams song with his friend tonight and I sat watching him and thinking how much music he creates; how talented he is: what a beautiful man he is.

—

I’m scared and I wonder about not drinking: the dreams, the anxiety; holding my eyes open for such a long, extended period of time.

“you have more to uncover,” my priest had told me. He also told me not to indulge in the darkness: drinking, cutting myself. “Be careful,” he had said.

—

“I’m honestly worried about you,” he wrote to me.

—

I was nervous talking to him, asking him for something.

“It’s OK. You’re doing OK.”

I looked at him; it felt like he was holding my hand. That is how I wrote my novel; with him holding my hand, protecting me.

I trust him.

There they are again, the three birds dancing gracefully in the sky, just above the waves. They are pelicans and now they are overhead: flying between me and the sun on their way back to the lagoon behind the beach house.

—

My sister thinks he’s in love with me. She thinks that he wouldn’t want to hurt me by having an affair.

In my heart, I wonder about yesterday. Could something have happened?

—

I started crying because I’m going into his office to meet him. No one else was in the building. I wrote a prayer:

God please bless me and protect me. Help me become righteous. Keep me on the path of virtue. Please show me signs to guide my will and behavior. Help me understand passion as temptation or love — whichever it is. Calm me, even with these fires. Keep me virtious. Help me make the right decision. Give me Grace and allow me to do the will of God.

—

They don’t have the problems that I do. The people in the cars. Moving a snail’s pace to the toll plaza.

—

I felt like I had sought him out. In his office. Alone with him at night.

“Do you ever relax” he asked me.

“No,” I said growing nervous.

“Never?”

It is the way that he’s interested in me that makes me feel self indulgent. I want him.

“When I had my book, I could but now that it’s done…” I said.

“What do you mean ‘your book?’ What kind of book?”

“A novel,” I said. I felt my neck growing warm and my throat closing. My words shrinking.

He was smiling at me.

“That’s another side of me,” I said softly.

Our eyes met and slowly his smiled faded. I looked at him awkwardly for a moment. Then, I made an excuse and left.

—

Driving over the bridge, I scribbled on a napkin:

Is it possible that God used you to sculpt me, your eyes carving me in the parts of me that you have noticed over the years? Is it possible that your love has been my inspiration, and through you, God has made me your instrument? Because, all that I have become belongs to you, and now my heart, my mind, and my will know only the path to your love.

—

I am whispering now, but no one can hear my voice. Into the darkness, I am asking my life to become different. I am asking myself to become. Just become.

—

I rolled over and my eyes felt dry and sticky from sleep. I opened my eyes and the absence of him was noticeable. It almost startled me. I sat for a moment and listened, but all I heard was the rhythm of the ocean.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I thought, what if there were a war, I was a prisoner? Who would I want with me? It was Neil, of course. Of course it was my darling, Neil but he is so far away from me. He always has been. I think, perhaps, it is something to do with a sadness, a sadness that I have detected in him since I stopped drinking. I can not have Neil. I think that is an unsolvable problem. I can’t have my husband.

—

It’s fuzzy: Neil’s voice on the cell phone.

“Isn’t it amazing?” he asks,” that I can call from the camp site?”

The phone goes dead and doesn’t ring back.

—

Am I causing the loneliness in our marriage?

The waves are large and they are ominous, pushing towards the three figures — one of which is my husband. They all look small, juxtaposed against the vastness and the power of the ocean.

—

I can hear the ocean. To me it sounds like a storm, like a car passing in the dark, through slush; or, loud winds.

—

Neil is sleeping on the edge of the bed. He draws a straight line with his body to the window out towards the ocean. Every time I glance at him I can’t help but notice the Pacific and the thick foam of breaking waves as they inch closer to us.

—

I see the stream of light focused on Neil. I can smell the sweetness of the marijuana and see the smoke dance in the tube of light. His music pours into the living room; through the spotlight and into the darkness beyond.

He doesn’t look up at me; his eyes fixed on the piano, his fingers methodically striking the keys.

Not a glance. Not one. Not at my legs or the neckline of my lilac dress that buttons up the front and folds slightly, revealing my cleavage.

Not a glance.

Instead, he looks around my messy office.

“It’s going to take you more than three weeks to clean out your office,” he says, not smiling.

“This stuff isn’t even mine,” I say back, teasing, “see the conditions I’ve had to word under for three years?”

“You’re a saint. Truly a saint.”

I mention something about work. Work business.

“Ya well…” he says.

His eyes have forgotten me.

—

Is it true, what David said? That if I don’t bring it into the real realm that it will continue to torture me?

Should I have told him at lunch today, with him looking back at me, seeing me?

—

He studied my hand, followed it when I touched my hair, pulling it back, adjusting my barrette.

I smiled, “I’m sorry. I’m not hungry.” I said to him.

“It’s OK,” he said gently. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

—

“I’m going to miss you,” I put my arms around him and hugged him.

He held me for a moment.

His neck turned flush and he walked back a step.

“OK, well…” he said.

—

It is dawning on me. I won’t see him any more. The words linger, whisper back. Any more.

—

My face feels swollen and old. It’s not.

It’s just leaving him; his glances on my flesh, defining me. It’s losing his touch.

It is just leaving him.