Driving down Washtenaw, we left Ann Arbor under a tunnel of autumn leaves and hit the stark freeway. “I ask because I want to know. Did you sleep with Matt Reynolds?” I said nothing. “Okay, that’s clearly a yes. Why then did you sleep with Matt Reynolds?”
“Come on, Cindy,” I begged. “It’s not like he’s a strange guy I hooked up with at a bar. It’s Matt.”
Evie was softer in her direct examination, but still she too was pissed at me. Why were they angry at me? They each seemed personally betrayed by my fling-turned-engagement. And they only knew half the story. “What about Reilly?” Evie nodded in the rear-view mirror. “Did you ever consider that this would kill him?”
“You guys, you don’t understand. This is Matt. Matt Reynolds. I love him. I. Love. Him. Not only do I love him, I love the sound of saying ‘I love him.’ That’s how much I love him.” I rested my head on the front passenger seat. “I really love this guy.” I thought my friends would come around on that. Who couldn’t understand losing one’s head for love?
“Okay, but you’re married,” Cindy said to the road. “If it’s such true love then go home, divorce Reilly, then sleep with Matt.”
“Come on, Cindy, that’s unrealistic. You’re in the heat of the moment and you stop and say, ‘Let’s put this on hold for a few
months’
?”
“Yes!”
I was incredulous. “Come on, Evie, surely you’re with me on this one.”
“There is such a thing as self-control, Prudence,” she replied.
Maybe this is why your life is numbingly dull,
I didn’t say aloud.
“I mean, how would you feel if Reilly cheated on you?” Evie continued. The truth dropped on me like a ten-pound bag of sand. I wouldn’t care
.
* * *
Where Evie and Cindy left off, Guilt took over
. Hey Slut,
she announced from the seat next to me on the plane.
You didn’t think I could stay away for long, did you? Okay, where shall I start?
Cindy had obviously given her the yellow pad of paper from the hotel.
Not only did you cheat on your husband, you promised to marry another guy who, incidentally, you lied to and told you were a widow. What kind of a shallow twit are you? Is this the way to treat people? Reilly is a good man and you killed him. This takes the cake for the most selfish thing you’ve ever done in your life, except of course for the “Closed for Business” sign you hung on your uterus.
But I love Matt,
Passion defended.
This is my one true love. How can I go on living with Reilly when I know I’m in love with someone else? And what’s more, Matt loves me too. We can finally have a chance at happiness. I have one shot at happiness, why shouldn’t I take it? It’s not like Reilly and I have children.
No, it’s not, is it?
Guilt asked smugly.
And whose idea was that? Who cut off all possibilities that Reilly will ever have children, cruel double entendre completely intended?
Reilly is a good man. He deserves a wife who loves him. That is not me. I am really doing him a favor.
This was a duet played by Passion and my Inner Male.
I should have gotten out years ago, but it’s not too late for Reilly to find someone new if I let him go now.
I hate to bring this up during your time of euphoria, Prudence, but where exactly has Matt been for the last fourteen years?
Common Sense asked.
He got rid of you like gum on the bottom of his shoe and now suddenly he wants to marry you? Where is your loyalty? Where is your commitment? Where is your head?!
People change,
Passion explained.
Let Matt be who he is today. Forgive him for yesterday and enjoy a happy life together.
* * *
It became too busy in my head so I decided to call Matt’s home in Los Angeles from the plane. I knew he wouldn’t be home, but I was dying to hear what kind of outgoing message was on his voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Matt. I’m out right now. You know what to do,” his machine announced. God, this man is hot.
You know what to do.
But I didn’t. I had no idea what to do. What exactly does a woman with a fiancé and an un-dead husband on opposite ends of the country do?
“Hi. It’s me. Malone,” I shouted into the phone. “I just wanted to say hi, so, um hi.”
My status as sexiest woman he’s ever known is in a precarious state right now.
“Call me when you get home, okay?”
* * *
“Corporate Redemption” shouted the headline of
Time.
The cover shot was of Paul Lofton, the tire manufacturer who donated $75 million to a scholarship fund in Malaysia last month after his father died and left the company to him. That in and of itself was newsworthy, but the new heir of the black rubber empire said the donation was not charity, but rather redemption for years of exploitation of the good people of Malaysia. You’d think at that point his board of directors would call an emergency session where they subsequently stripped the flesh off his body and grilled it for a weekend barbecue. You’d think the company’s lawyers would go ape shit at the prospect of being sued by everyone from Malaysian workers to stockholders. Actually, the attorneys did go berserk, but with no good reason because no one ever filed a claim. No, instead of being branded a hillbilly Jesus freak, fired by his board and sued by everyone, Paul Lofton became a corporate folk hero. He’s called Johnny Tireseed. I remember the quote from the
Wall Street Journal
story. “We d’unt do nothing illegal, but we still w’unt right. Today’s the redeemin’.” I saw him interviewed on Larry King a week earlier. “A mistake d’unt gotta be a mistake if you put back what you took. The Lord sees it that way, anyhow,” he said.
Lofton was a dullard but he earned great public admiration for his straightforward honesty. I had to admit, he did seem sweet. Perhaps in his simplicity, Lofton figured out what public relations experts have struggled with for years: how to look like a hero after years of wrongdoing. If only it were that easy with Reilly. All I’d have to do was find Reilly a new wife to replace me once I left. Marital redemption. Maybe I could be on the cover of
Time
, I laughed, and closed my eyes. Thirty seconds later, Operation Wife of Reilly was conceived.
* * *
When I arrived home Sunday night, Reilly was already in bed. I tiptoed into the bedroom hoping not to wake him.
“Welcome home, Prudence,” he whispered.
“You’re still awake?” I asked, leaning across the bed to kiss him.
“How was Ann Arbor? I saw the highlights on television and it looked like a hell of a game,” Reilly noted.
You don’t know the half of it.
“It was a lot of fun,” I dismissed.
After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I crawled into my familiar bed with Reilly and asked if he was asleep yet.
“Not yet. What’s on your mind?”
“What if something happened to me and you wanted to remarry. What would you look for in a wife? I mean, describe your ideal woman.”
Reilly sighed, exasperated. “Prudence,” Reilly said while turning on his lamp. “You’re my ideal woman. That’s why I married you. Enough with this morbid talk. With all the traveling I do, I’m far more likely to go down in a plane wreck. You don’t see me grilling you about who you’re going to remarry.”
I didn’t get to sleep until two that morning. Half the time I spent thinking about Matt and our blissfully happy future together. The other half was thinking about how I was going to find a new wife for Reilly, inarguably one of the most decent people I’d ever known. Good. Kind. Smart. And wonderful. But not the love of my life. Not Matt.
* * *
That night I realized that my whole marriage to Reilly was a reaction to being dumped by Matt. We met at Wharton where Reilly was also earning his MBA. I was a waitress at one of the restaurants near campus where he used to eat his breakfast and read the
Wall Street Journal
every morning. There was something about a guy that ate at the same place every morning that was extremely appealing to me at the time. We also had a few classes together where he showed himself to be extremely diligent and committed to making things work. We were both assigned to the same mock project management team in class, and ran into some serious financing and cash flow issues. Other problems were also threatening this Acme Widgets’ viability; the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. By midnight, the three other students in our group had thrown in the towel and said they’d think about solutions the next day. I was so impressed with how Reilly stuck with the task at hand and finally came up with a workable strategy for the fake company. It was five in the morning, and he looked like he’d been through the spin cycle of the dryer, but the man finished what he started, just as he promised he would. Anyone with that kind of determination was the guy for me, I decided. A month earlier I had put together a list of the five character traits I was looking for in a husband: stability, consistency, reliability, dependability and sensibility. Reilly was better than a new washing machine.
He was also cute and funny and had a daffy charm about him. Over the months I grew to really love and respect Reilly. When he asked me to marry him, I saw no reason to decline. I convinced myself that passion is something that would build over time, but was later informed that it was actually the other way around.
What we lacked in chemistry, Reilly and I made up for in our ability to work together as life partners. Things were not bad with Reilly. In fact, I was quite comfortable with our life together. But when I compared our relationship with the weekend I had with Matt, I realized I loved Reilly like the brother I never had. I loved Matt like the husband I never had.
Of course, Reilly is not the Patron Saint of Husbands either. Our first big blow-out was a month before our wedding when he surprised me by telling me that his parents were paying for our honeymoon as a wedding gift.
“That’s unbelievably generous of them!” I said. “It’s so extravagant, though. A month in Italy is not cheap.”
“Well,” Reilly hesitated. “I know we talked about Italy, but my parents booked something a little different for us. They meant well and I think we can make a good time of it.” I didn’t want to make a good time of it. It was a honeymoon. If ever there was a time I didn’t want to work, this was it. Italy was my dream. Italy would just
be
wonderful. I wouldn’t have to make it that way.
We didn’t just “talk” about Italy, as Reilly so politically put it. We made an itinerary. We had reservations at local pensiones. I was even taking a conversational Italian mini-course on Monday nights after work. I had always romanticized the thought of taking a gondola ride with my husband in Venice, seeing the great museums and eating like a glutton in paradise. Suddenly that plan was out, and his parents had booked a two-week stint for us at Club Wed, a cheesy little honeymoon paradise in Aruba.
Club Wed was so trite it was gag-worthy. Heart-shaped pink bathtubs. Top Forty love songs blasted over the resort sound system. And all the staff members introduced themselves as “Cupid Joe” or “Cupid Mary” or “Cupid Whoever.” Even the maid knocked on the door each morning and announced in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Cupid Juanita is ready to clean. Y’decent?”
Couples weren’t required to participate in the scheduled activities, but if they chose not to, they never heard the end of it. Once Reilly and I opted out of the game of passing fruit to each other while holding it between our chin and neck, and Cupid Annie never let us live it down. “Cupid Annie was so sad not to see her favorite wove birds at Body Sports this afternoon,” she said to us as we nibbled on chocolate-dipped strawberries and drank cheap pink champagne. “You don’t want to break Cupid Annie’s wittle heart now, do you?”
“Um, no, of course not, Annie, er, Cupid Annie,” said Reilly. “We’ll be sure to make it tomorrow.”
We will?
I thought.
“No you won’t, pumpkin puddins. Tomorrow afternoon I’m leading Sweethearts Tennis, where the score is always love, love,” Annie said with a hiccup of a laugh.
Splashing champagne in her face would be considered rude, right?
I thought.
“Sound like fun, what’d’ya say, sweetheart?” he elbowed me. For a moment, I thought he was kidding. Sadly, he was dead serious. The fact that Reilly was not hostile toward her made me hostile to him. At least if we both hated Cupid Annie we could bond together against the common enemy. His cheery accommodation of every goofy request the staff members made was a complete turn-off. I’ve never been a sloppy sentimentalist, but even I knew it was a bad sign for a bride on her honeymoon to mutter “Grow some balls” at her new groom.
During our pre-wedding battle Reilly promised Club Wed could be great fun.
“Italy was going to be great fun!” I shouted. “Why can’t you tell your parents thanks but no thanks?”
“Prudence, be sensible,” Reilly switched his strategy. “If we put off the trip to Italy we can put a down payment on a loft in SoHo that’s right above a gallery. We can live among art for the rest of our lives, and it will make a great investment. The trip is completely free. It would be rude to turn it down. Prudence, I know it’s important to you to see Italy, but we’ll go another time. It’s not going anywhere.”
“That’s what they said about Pompeii,” I moped.
“That’s the spirit,” he said.
How exactly is that the spirit?
I thought.
Did you even hear what I said?!
After that I should have known that Reilly and I weren’t well suited for each other, but I never even considered canceling the wedding. The invitations had already been mailed. My bridesmaids had paid for their dresses. My mother was so proud of my choice.
I suggested we go to Italy for our fifth wedding anniversary, but Reilly said we needed to wait until we were more financially secure. We had no kids and each earned six-figure salaries. How much more secure could we get? I asked again on our tenth anniversary, but Reilly suggested that everything I would ever want to see at an Italian museum could be viewed on the Internet.