When I meet him, from the moment of shaking his hand, I know what it would be like to kiss him. I see into the future. I feel his hand on my back and I taste the scotch on his tongue. So that, when the kiss and the rest of it, what comes after, happens, it is as though it has happened before, and I am re-living it in a vague dream, half-asleep. On the flight home, I think only of how something small, like the freckle on his wrist, could have been an invitation, or even permission.
At home, Peter hands me a glass of pinot noir and reminds me that the DeWalts are coming over at seven o’clock. He says that Chelsea is upstairs with her door closed, and he confesses that she did not work on her college applications while I was gone. It is the one thing I asked her to do as I was leaving, and yesterday I texted Peter between meetings asking him to check in with her. I take a sip of wine and shrug, giving him a small smile. “It’s no big deal,” I say. “She’ll get to them eventually.” It takes effort, but I am rewarded when he raises an eyebrow, surprised to be getting off so easily. He asks me how the conference was. “Boring,” I tell him. “Financial projections and budget stuff, you know how it is,” and he nods.
A few days later, Peter and I start to argue about whether to change our pool maintenance package. They are over-charging us and I know it. They haven’t been doing what they promised. Peter is surprised when I relent abruptly. Remembering, the guilt coiled inside me, a heavy thing at the bottom of my stomach.
Sometimes at night, instead of sleeping, I lie in bed beside Peter and think about what I’ve done. I am forty-six years old and I have traveled for work for almost twenty years. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It has seemed impossible, something that other people might do, but not me. Not to Peter. Until this time, when something about it felt inescapable, when I could barely stand up under the weight of the inevitability. And I know that blaming Peter for my mistake wouldn’t be fair. It would be like waking up with a grudge against someone simply because of a bad dream you’ve had about them, not because of anything they’ve actually done.
At church, I pay particular attention to the confession. Even though I am speaking softly like everyone else in the pews around me, I mean what I say, that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed. The priest says “Almighty God have mercy on you” to everyone in the church and I imagine the words settling on my shoulders like a comforting blanket. But nothing happens; I feel the same way I did walking in. When we leave, the sky is low and cloudy and the air is hot. Peter asks if we’re ever going to get a break from the heat, and even though I’m aware that he doesn’t expect me to answer, I do. I say I don’t know. Because I don’t; I can’t see that far ahead.
Several weeks later I sit at the doctor’s office, looking around the waiting room at the other women flipping through magazines or looking at their phones. Somehow I know that, out of all of them, I’m the one who will get the phone call explaining that I need to come in for a meeting with the doctor. The kind of meeting where the doctor will sit at his desk, his white coat draped on the back of his chair, trying to create a more comfortable environment, trying not to be intimidating as he shares what he has seen.
Peter is there, tapping his foot because he’s nervous, even though he doesn’t want me to see it. The doctor points to a shadow on the picture, and Peter reaches for my hand. As the doctor taps a line on the page of biopsy results, I uncurl my fingers, meeting Peter’s. I can’t help thinking that there is something right about what the doctor is saying, what he refers to as the trials ahead. He stacks the papers on his desk over and over again, squaring the corners carefully, and I hear him saying phrases like “treatment options” and “state of the art.” Part of me knew this, or something like it, was coming. Like a judgment. Or penance. On some level I know that isn’t how it works, that redemption doesn’t look like this. But I can’t be sure, which is why, instead of railing against this dark thing, it is like a cool wind on my face and I rise up to meet it.
