Through an Opaque Window

Chapter Two TAKE YOUR FACE OFF February Life continues to roll on. Continuous, stable, and ultimately uneventful. Declan continues to work extensive hours. I start picking up hobbies to keep myself busy and try to expand my palette. I continue to write this horrible, confessional novel. Is this what OJ felt like? I wonder what Ian would think if he ever found out that I was penning an allegorical love note to him. I’m not sure if he'd be intrigued and flattered that I mentioned him in these private notebooks, or completely creeped out. It didn't surprise my therapist that I was talking about Ian, or the ideal version of him, the window into the world that I was longing for. Adventure with an old friend? A different kind of passion to reignite a spark? It had been a long time coming, but that dream was like an epiphany. The final clue I needed to tell me how unhappy I really am in my marriage. I sit in Deb's office with the proverbial tissue box in my lap, sobbing about how lonely I am. She would nod, assuring me that it made perfect sense that I am resorting to some farfetched fantasy about my best guy friend—who I just so happened to be painfully and god awfully attracted to. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically. In all the areas that should have been dedicated to my husband, in the blank spaces of my awareness that should have been filled with affection and adoration to the man who promised me forever, images of Ian kept popping up. Some were innocent, like our college years spent talking and laughing with our friends. Some were E.L. James fantasies that I had just wished happened in college so I would have closure of some sort. I remember what our marriage was like before the affairs. People had always said that the first year of marriage would be difficult, and it was difficult. But most people just left it at that and said that we'd get through it just like every other mildly content, successful couple. We'd fight and make up. The cycle would continue over and over again. It was all very normal. By the second year, we weren't even fighting so much as just avoiding each other. That’s when he'd start toiling through the 70-hour work weeks. I'd find excuses to grab drinks with girlfriends after work. On weekends I'd book solo trips to remote resorts in upstate New York. I thought if I devoted attention to myself that it would fill in the unescapable voids of my marriage. Happiness was a skill, right? And skills can be taught, refined, and practiced until one became a master at it. One Saturday in the summer, instead of joining my girlfriends in the Hamptons, I wandered Manhattan. They were having the summer street festivals. I sauntered up and down Broadway, looking for food to eat and little tchotchkes to catch my eye. Two ladies sat smoking cigarettes in a silvery, covered tent. Their full palm readings were normally twenty bucks, but she liked my outfit so she only charged me five. I would have spent twenty dollars on a cocktail at a lounge in Columbus Circle, so I figured I had little to lose. I laid my palms out flat on Sister Maggie’s lap. She’s channeled the goddess Isolt to give me clarity on my love life. Maggie is eyeing the amethyst necklace dangling above my cleavage. “Darling, your third eye is spinning. Where did you get that amethyst?” I point to a tent down the block, “I saw it and bought it a few minutes ago. It spoke to me.” She is nodding, “Listen to me. Your husband is your soulmate. Do not divorce him. You two are meant to be. What does Switzerland mean to you?” “I studied abroad there when I was in college.” “Soon you will return. Enjoy it. It will be for pleasure, not work, but you will be working on your personal life there.” It all seemed too decidedly arbitrary. Threads of my life somehow sewn together when all she asked about me were my first name and month and day of birth. I left skeptical, but couldn’t help looking behind me as I walked away. Before I was a GM on the operations side of the hotel business, I worked in sales. In the third year of our union, I started to eat my feelings. My coworkers were nervous about how fat I was getting. It made them uncomfortable to see a girl who was just 5’2” weigh in over 125. I gained a whopping ten pounds, and in the sales world, given my originally petite (up and down, side to side, heaven forbid I ever wear lateral stripes!) figure, this was unforgivable.