I'm Fine and Neither Are You

I was about to call her back when the phone rang again.

“Where have you been?” It was Yolanda, of course. “Sheryl said you went to a meeting, but there’s nothing on the books.”

Naturally, she had checked our shared calendar. I wouldn’t be surprised if she began requiring us to implant GPS chips into our forearms so she could have ops on us at all times.

“I’m here now,” I said. “How is your vacation going?”

“The Lake Michigan shoreline is teeming with potential donors, Penelope. You should make the trip. The PD I want you to call is John Sterling. He’s number three at Xerox. He got his MBA from Columbia but his daughter had a lifesaving aortic arch repair at the Children’s Hospital. Obviously, major potential donor. Are you memo-ing this?”

My IM box popped up; it was Russ, who was confirming our meeting—an actual, on-the-group-calendar meeting with the graphic designer who was working on a new fundraising campaign—at two.

“Hello?”

“I’m still here, Yolanda.”

“Good.” She rattled off a number and an email address. “And Penelope? Don’t blow this.”

I stared at the phone. Sanjay told me to be direct. If this backfired and we had to take up residence at his parents’ house, this was on him.

“Yolanda, if I had actually blown one opportunity in the past seven years, I’d feel that comment was warranted,” I said. “But since I haven’t, I’m going to assume you’ve confused me with someone else. I’ll call Sterling today. And rest assured, I won’t blow it. Talk soon.” Then I hung up.

I could just barely make out my reflection on my computer monitor. Wavy hair, laugh lines, shoulders sloped from so many hours at a desk: these were features I recognized.

But if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn there was another woman looking back at me. And if I was honest—a practice I was starting to question—I was a little bit afraid of her.

TWENTY-ONE

A single secret is like a lone roach. You know there will be more—it’s only a matter of when. After learning Jenny’s marriage was a wreck, the revelation about her addiction was more an inevitability than a real surprise. And though I hated to think about it, I was pretty sure those weren’t the only things she had hidden from me. Keeping secrets of that magnitude would have required too much maneuvering for her to be truthful all the time.

What I had not anticipated, however, was that one of the secrets that would shake me out of my stupor wasn’t Jenny’s.

It was Sanjay’s.

“I’ll pick up the kids tonight,” I told him as I was getting dressed for work on Thursday. His job interview was later that afternoon.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed in the T-shirt and boxers he’d slept in. “No, I can get them. I can’t imagine the interview would go past five, and it’s only a couple of miles from camp.”

“But you have band,” I pointed out. “You’ll need time to change and get to Christina’s.”

“I don’t have band.”

He had a weird look on his face. Which I told him.

“I’m not trying to be weird,” he said, shrugging. “I quit.”

“What? When?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“When you took me out to dinner, you said you were just skipping a night.”

“At that point, I was just taking a break. Last week I decided it was permanent.”

I had a sinking feeling in my gut. “This is about the list, isn’t it? And your job interview. You think you’re not going to have time to write, so you’re already cutting back on the stuff that makes you happy.”

“It’s not about that, Penny.” His voice was flat.

“Then what’s the problem?”

His pupils were so large they almost enveloped his irises. “Christina.”

My pulse was whooshing in my ears. For all my evangelizing about honesty, the second Sanjay said the name of his band’s keyboardist, it struck me that some things in life—many of them, really—are better left unsaid. “What do you mean, Christina ?”

“There was . . . tension.”

The look on his face made it clear said tension was not of the artistic variety. I felt sick. “Are you having an affair?” I whispered.

“No,” he said.

“What is it then? If you let me sit here and speculate, I can assure you my mind is not going to go to happy places.”

“She’s too flirty.”

Christina was the kind of woman who would bat her lashes at a blind man. “Yeah, so?” As I stared at him, the picture slowly became clear. Sanjay would not have quit if this was just about her giggling at him or him wondering what she was like in bed. “Were you falling for her?” I spat.

“No. But . . .”

“But what!” I erupted.

He looked nervous. “You’re yelling at me. Didn’t you say you wanted us to be honest with each other?”

I wasn’t sure when, but I had begun to pace our bedroom. “I’m supposed to stop pretending things are fine when they’re not, but I can only do that in specific ways that involve not raising my voice. Got it.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Yell if you need to. But believe me, Penny—there’s no affair. No touching, no shared secrets—nothing. I just felt like things between me and her were heading in the wrong direction.”

My heart hurt so much that he may as well have confessed they’d been tearing off each other’s clothes every Thursday night. Someone had been attracted to my husband. And he was attracted to her, too. Why wouldn’t he be? She had curly blonde hair and dimples and was barely thirty. Even more than that, though, Christina oozed charisma. She laughed easily and complimented frequently and was one of those people who made every conversation more interesting.

Whereas stale, old wifey had to pedal her mental wheels hard in order to come up with something other than work and pee accidents to talk about. As for radiating wanton magnetism? That ship left the port the very hour my first pregnancy test came back positive.

“What do you mean, wrong direction ?” He didn’t need to tell me not to yell this time; my words were again a whisper.

He took a deep breath. “I felt like she was paying too much attention to me, and I was liking it too much. I didn’t want to stick around to see if anything more developed. I mean, you and I are working on our marriage right now, and spending time with Christina seemed like . . . the opposite of that.”

What Sanjay had done was the right thing to do. It was exactly how any woman who cared even an iota about her marriage would have wanted her husband to behave in similar circumstances. Yet his acknowledgment made me understand why he had so readily agreed to work on our marriage. We were in more danger than I had realized.

Which was why his first request had been for us to have sex.

“Please don’t be upset with me, Penny,” he said. “I would have preferred not to tell you, but we’re supposed to be honest with each other, right?”

“I’m not upset with you,” I said quietly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

No, I had been the one to screw this all up. Suggesting honesty to improve our relationship. Thinking we could resuscitate our erotic life with a few compulsory rolls in the hay.

Assuming the only cracks in my marriage were the ones I could see.

Sanjay crossed the bedroom to where I was still pacing. When he reached me, he hugged me. “Penny,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

My arms hung limp at my sides; I could not bring myself to embrace him. My husband had kept a secret from me. What else would he soon disclose? I didn’t want to know.

“I’m fine,” I said into his shirt. “And neither are you.”

I was still feeling weepy and defeated when I sat down at my desk later that morning. When I turned on my computer, a notice informed me that Yolanda had scheduled an impromptu meeting with me in half an hour.

Fantastic, I thought, eyeing my to-do list. Couldn’t whatever it was wait until our usual Tuesday meeting with me, her, and Russ? But she’d just gotten back from vacation and probably wanted to lecture me for snapping at her about John Sterling.

I passed Russ’ office on the way to Yolanda’s. His door was open but he wasn’t at his desk. For whatever reason, I stopped and stepped inside.

Russ’ walls were white, just like mine; his furniture was identical to the generic pieces I used. Like me, he had no window. The only real difference was that his space was free of personal items, whereas I had decorated with family photos and taped up Stevie’s and Miles’ artwork.

But upon further inspection, Russ’ office was slightly larger than my own—maybe two feet wider in either direction. How had I not noticed this before? Or maybe I had, and had promptly tossed this information into the mental trash can where I put unfair things that I could not change.

It’s not important, I told myself as I stepped back into the hall. More space wouldn’t buy groceries or pay for car insurance. Besides, what I most needed from a work environment was the ability to generate cash for my family.

When I reached Yolanda’s office, she was not on the phone or looking at her computer. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, she was not doing much of anything. Which was strange.

“Come in,” she called. “Close the door behind you.”

I sat in front of her, wondering what she would say. She leaned back in her Aeron chair and folded her arms. “You made contact with Sterling?” she said.

“Yes. We have a meeting scheduled for next week.”

“Good. I was surprised at your response when I asked you to follow up.”

Now we were getting down to business. “Well, I was surprised you doubted me,” I said in what I hoped was an even tone of voice. “Especially on the heels of the Weingarten donation.”