Raccoons would soon venture into the blackness behind the floor-to-ceiling windowpanes; their eyes would flicker behind the tall rustling bamboo sentinels. Sometimes across the glass, they would play the staring game, but tonight, Bob and I were the only two creatures that seemed to exist.
“Oh really,” Bob said, trying to sound casual and interested. “What did he say?”
“He took the bottle of vodka from above the oven and drank some of it with his friends since my father was not watching them closely.” I half-smiled. Bob half laughed, somewhat incredulous he asked,
“Andre just offered that information. Why would a teenager do that? Did he suspect
that you knew?”
Maybe, Bob was also wondering how much longer his secrets would be safe. Our vast box house seemed a tiny space just as Bob’s large frame had seemed to shrink. Bob was falling into my trap easier than I thought he would. I had to tread lightly. Not explode. Not rush it. Just hope that he, who I had come to realize was a master at deception, would also be cornered by his guilt. A fire was burning me inside, its toxic fumes threatening to suffocate me. I would not allow that. Instead, I let them steadily and invisibly seep out my ears, my nostrils, my eyes, every pore of my skin, and curl my lips into a gentle smile.
“I think he just felt burdened,” I said in my most compassionate voice as if I had always been such an understanding and insightful mother.
“Burdened by what?” Bob replied. Could he be asking me this?
Was he unconsciously following the crumbs I was spontaneously laying to the trap? Or was it just hitting too close to home? Could he be pretending to be naïve? Bob was 50, Andre was 14. I was about to use my teenage son to get across the importance of honesty in a relationship. Really?
I fidgeted with the tiny yellow and pink beads on my necklace, curling and uncurling them on my index finger. Bob did not move an inch closer to me. I did not move an inch closer either. We sat still in our places on the sofa. The black piano contrasted the beige stones around the fireplace, which before would have already been lit, and I would have been lounging on the sofa listening to Bob play and sing the song he wrote for me. A song he had recorded with my children as a gift on Mother’s Day. I still question how so much love could breed so much pain.
“Burdened by the fear of me finding out and not having told me,” I said, flashing my message loud and clear.
I had always asked my sons to trust me, to allow me into their world in case they needed help. I cannot remember if I had noticed something and dropped a hinting remark, but my son had truly felt remorseful and wanted to tell me about his mischief. I remember thinking that if a teenage boy can feel guilt over lying, maybe a 50-year-old can too.
I had not planned how the confrontation with Bob would go or even considered if I would get somewhere. Maybe I would be left with the very bitter feeling of having to play along for a bit longer, but it was worth a try. The conversation spontaneously felt like it was snowballing to a gentle, relentless emotional boiling point.
“Lying when you love, I guess, is a heavy burden,” I ventured to add and looked down
at Bob’s big hand on the sofa, his long fingers, not slender or clumsy.
The Swiss watch I had given him for his birthday sitting on his wrist, counting time just like the metronome on the piano. Tic. Tic. Tic. I looked up. Bob looked down. Suddenly out of nowhere, the truth sprung up, and I let its reality slap me again. I had kept his secret to myself. Now I was hearing it aloud in his voice. My breath shortened. My heart beat with the intensity of the opening of Beethoven’s fifth bam, bam, bam, bam but imbued with the mood of Shostakovich’s. No allegro in his voice. No brio in my listening. The light from the standing octopus lamp continued to shine on the orange microfiber sofa. I saw his lips moving to say,
“Well, I think this is my cue …” He rubbed his hands, the Swiss watch wiggled on his wrist as Bob continued to say he had an affair in London, and the woman, whose name by then I knew, was having a baby.
Time stilled, TIC, at the same time spinning into a kaleidoscope of Halloween colors, blackness crashing through the windowpanes fighting the orange sofa for my attention. Did he suspect I already knew? Was it courage, guilt, or decency that pushed the words forth?
I swallowed hard. I had Bob where I wanted. To see him shamed, confessing one of his many secrets. Of course, it also meant I would be denied what I wanted, which was for none of this to be true. I stared into the orange blackness, blinked. He had dropped his guard and caught me unprepared for success. The thoughts raced through my head. What would be the logical reaction for someone pretending she does not know her beloved is having a child with his lover on another continent?
- Slap him
- Choke and break into tears
- Frown, yell some obscenity at him
- Down an alcoholic drink
- All of the above, followed by throwing him out
Trying to avoid a stereotypical telenovela scene, I went for option D. I got up, inhaled, exhaled, stared at him, turned on my heels. I felt the polished cement hard and cold under my feet. I saw the ceiling lights reflected on the bright floors. For some reason, I seem to recall the floors; maybe it is a way to stay grounded. The night jasmine was absent, or I was indeed so shocked that my sense of smell went blind and deaf. I crossed the dining room into the designer kitchen, almost running. Ten meters from the orange sofa to the kitchen, but I was out of breath as if I had run the 100-yard dash. Bob strode close behind. I wonder now if he thought I was going for a knife. If he had, he would have probably thought I would slit my wrists since no narcissist would think the knife could serve any other purpose.
I pulled up a little stool to the same cabinet above the oven my son had tried to raid and fetched the expensive bottle of XO rum Bob’s cousins recently brought us when they visited from Trinidad. I wrestled the bottle top slightly. My nose came back to its senses, teased by the scent of caramel fire, delicate vanilla notes, and the comfort of the Caribbean as the tawny spirit cascaded straight into a glass. I downed it. Now the fire burned real from my throat to my stomach. The back of my tongue had not recovered, but I poured another, wondering, “AM I believable?” I heard Bob’s voice. I don’t turn, fixated on my hand on the bottle, the lights beneath the cabinet shining on the black granite counter.
“Maybe I need a drink too,” I hear him say.
I looked up to grab another glass, inhaled, exhaled, poured him a small drink, and filled mine to the brim again. I ask myself, had I not known already, would I have chosen another option? A violent reaction seasoned with expletives? A dramatic, emotional tear-laden victim pose? A well-deserved eviction from the relationship and our home?
I will never know. My discovery of Bob’s multiple affairs had numbed me. I had started shivering with extreme cold when I read Sakeena’s email with the list of baby items to be bought. I had also frozen when I first read the correspondence that traced how Bob met her at a conference where we had been together. He stressed he was in a serious relationship; she talked about soccer and how much she longed for him. I learned she had been with him on business trips I could not go, that my beloved was sleeping with her in Paris when I had called to say his father died. Now I understand why he would not answer his mother’s phone call, but he answered mine; of course, I had priority status. The discovery had turned me into a maniac internet stalker. I had found out where Sakeena worked, that she had been born in Mauritius, she was nine years younger than I and was a Capricorn. Some things had been easy; they were all in the emails. She’d had their natal charts drawn up by an astrologist. Her uncle made killer burgers.
I was starting to shiver again. I handed Bob his drink without looking at him. I grabbed mine, got off the stool, and reversed my steps across the open floor plan, from the kitchen, across the dining room, back to the orange sofa. I hid from him that I had the entire story. I wanted him to have to tell me in his own words how he had cheated me while making me think I was to blame for our demise, how according to him, I was uncaring, how he loved me more than I loved him, how my work took precedence over our relationship.
Back on the orange sofa, his scent was strong as the rum he held in his hand. His fingers wrapped around the glass. I have never forgotten his hands, the shape of his nails, how he moved them when he played the piano or strummed his guitar. In his eyes, a combination of pain and pity. There was silence except for my chattering teeth. I could not control them. They chattered, I shivered. He stared at me. His reactions depended on mine. He was as unprepared for this moment as I thought I was not.
Now he had to sit there with my silence, my chattering teeth, and my shivering. I stared into the fireplace next to the piano, the first dose of alcohol still burning inside. I breathed in the rum, and then I broke the silence with the most unexpected question:
“Are you sure it is yours?”
What was I thinking?? I wanted “No” to be the answer. I wanted it all to be a nightmare. At the same time, I felt relieved knowing that I was not the one murdering our relationship. I had made my mistakes, but none of them consciously. I still wanted to forgive Bob, to salvage what had been beautiful. The universe knew deep-down what I was thinking. I was doing just what my mother had done, what my half-brothers’ mother had done, what my half-sister’s mother had done. They had all forgiven my father. At that moment, I understood them, and I hated them too.
Françoise Nieto-Fong is in the MSMU Creative Writing program. She grew up between Bogotá and Oakland’s Chinatown, having been born in NYC to a Chinese-Jamaican mother and a Colombian father. She speaks five languages which have come in handy working in film production, distribution, and translation. She writes and hosts the Spanish language podcast Mujeres Al Desnudo, which recently wrapped its first season on all major platforms.
On The Edge 
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