Someone Else's Husband(108)

I agreed to let him come today. Richard. I’ve been watching Oppy three afternoons a week since Cassandra’s new baby came, giving her a few extra hours to herself. I take her to the big playground in Central Park, the one on the East Side with the wood chips that smell of cedar. The one that was Cassandra, Elizabeth, and Becks’s favorite when they were small. It’s Oppy’s favorite, too.

But I don’t have much time today. Classes have started—we’re two weeks into the fall semester—and I have to be at my Intro to Civil Procedure lecture in an hour. NYU Law School. Part of me feels foolish being the oldest person in class. But a far bigger part of me feels like it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

So Richard and I will overlap, briefly, to share the babysitting. We have only seen each other in passing since he got out. Eighteen months for interfering with a police investigation and tampering with evidence. He was moved to Queensboro Correctional Facility, a more humane place than Rikers Island, to serve his time. Or so Scotty and the children said; I never visited, myself. We were separated then, as far as I was concerned. We’re still separated now.

I stayed at Richard’s side until he pled no contest. The optics were important. Because he is still the father of my children. And because whatever he’d done had been, at least in part, to protect me. But then I needed protecting only because of what he’d done in the first place.

A lot of romantic obsessing about Frankie and some kissing was what he claimed it amounted to—Richard had finally “come clean” in a long letter he’d sent me while he was in prison. So much of it had already come out through pretrial testimony before the plea. All the times they’d met in New York, the time he’d wanted to go home with her. All the flirtatious texting. That one time in Africa. But no sexual intercourse. This seemed so very important to Richard. Much less so to me. When your heart has been blown to pieces, who cares about the precise trajectory of the blast?

And Brooks. I’m not sure I have processed that fully yet, such a strange mix of horror and yet also sadness, for the boy and man I once knew, and loved—even if, it turned out, Brooks had a darkness, a cruelty in him that I’d somehow never seen. Maybe I too badly needed him to be good. Needed the way he cared about me to mean something.

Richard and I are not yet divorced. But with each passing day, a reconciliation becomes, for me, less and less likely. The further I drift from my marriage, the more clearly I can see it. Or maybe it’s just myself I can make out. Either way, Richard and I now seem such an odd fit. I can’t say if we started out that way, or if, in time, we grew in different directions. I do know that I truly loved him once. And that he loved me.

If only love were enough.

I watch now as Richard pushes Oppy on the swings. He looks like he’s struggling with the effort, trying to protect his back as he responds to her demands. “Higher, higher, Granddad!” And when he does, the air is filled with the music of her giggling. Richard looks over at me and smiles with his whole face. I still feel it. The fluttering in my stomach. But it’s much softer now. Like a whisper. Or a ghost.

What matters now is this moment. How I live it. I am sure only of one thing: where to start. And that’s with the truth about myself.



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The Venice Biennale is packed—not just my exhibition area, of course. Every corner of the opening reception buzzes with gorgeous people in glittering gowns. Champagne glasses held like afterthoughts. But an inordinate number of people seem to be clustered in the exhibition area where my paintings are displayed.

Guy won’t notice me standing there, watching. He doesn’t know what I look like. No one does. So I can safely stand right here, fading into the background like any other attendee. But it’s nice to watch him across the room, very dashing and, well, French, in his perfectly tailored suit. He gestures passionately at one of my portraits, explaining it with words I can’t hear to a group that is hanging on his every word. Guy is a renowned Parisian gallery owner, that rare breed who is equal parts salesman, genuine connoisseur of art, and champion of unknown artists. He stumbled on a painting of mine hanging in a tiny café in Saint-Rémy. I’d lived there as Thalia Noah for six months, had gifted the painting to a café owner I’d befriended during my stay. She wouldn’t share my email with Guy when he said he wanted to buy the painting, but she did pass along his message. And so, sell the painting I did. When you’re living the way I am—forever on the run—cash is crucial.

It was Noah I called that night, right after it happened. He showed up and helped me move Brooks—of course he did. There, always, when I needed him most. He has never told me exactly where he buried Brooks. But over the years he’s talked about the empty woodlands that extend for endless acres beyond Rhinebeck. The kind of place if you got lost, you’d never get found. The same goes for Brooks’s body, hopefully. Noah also gave me cash for the flight and taxi, plus some extra. I haven’t been in touch with him since, and it seems the police have never connected him to anything—thank God. Someday I hope I’ll be able to tell him how grateful I am. But then, some things exist forever beyond words.

After Guy bought my painting, we started exchanging emails in which he was effusive but always respected my need for privacy. “Banksette,” he called me at first, but with obvious affection. Our friendship started with long emails about my work, then art in general, the life, then our own lives. Soon it moved from emails to texting, more casual, more frequent. And it all felt so natural, like we’d known each other our whole lives. It’s different than what I felt with Richard, less intense, perhaps, but also deeper and more comforting. With no push-pull roiling inside me, I’m left only with my actual feelings, which are maybe stronger than I’m ready to admit.