The Aftermath of Lies and Loss

This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people 's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about why people do the things they do. Download the latest episode and subscribe at Schwab.comslash podcast or where It was a while ago, the spring of two thousand nine, that a writer named Jessica Pressler noticed a small cultural shift going on in the wedding pages of the New York Times, the section that the paper calls the Bow section. The shift it happened at a time when, uh , for whatever reason, there was a rush of news stories about famous and powerful people cheating on their partners. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford publicly confessed that his soulmate was a woman in Argentina who was not his wife. Nevada Senator John Ensign admitted paying $96,000 in cash to his former mistress and her husband . Reality T V stars, John and Kate, had just split, after reports that he'd had an affair. And so it was in the middle of all that that Jessica Pressler noticed, in the wedding pages of the New York Times, that there were couples getting married who cheerfully told the newspaper, as part of their meat cute story, that the way they got together was that one of them cheated on a spouse or longtime partner. Um I believe one of them says the h the headline on it is something like it took a while but they finally got together. And you're like, because he was having a three-year relationship with another person in the meantime. Yeah. Jessica Pressler wrote up her discovery on the New York magazine blog, Daily Intel. She noted that there was a kind of code language in all these wedding articles. They always say like their road to to finding each other was a bumpy road , um or they had a a difficult time, many ups and downs. They encountered some obstacles along the way and it's like, no, those are those are people. Those are like other like lives. They're not speed bumps . Take for instance the married woman who, according to a romantic write-up on the Val's page of the New York Times, flew to Paris to see another man and stayed with him in a hotel in the Latin quarter for two weeks, where they quote, reveled in their own V Bohem, before she flew back to the US and moved out of the home in New Jersey that she shared with her husband. I mean, it's just weird because vows is something that you have to try to get into. You have to kind of lobby to get into that column. So it's like Mark San ford , he had to speak publicly about his affair. Most people don't have to go around telling everybody about it. Aaron Ross Powell See see but that's what's so strange about it is that somehow some part of them doesn't think I shouldn't talk about this. Like somehow the notion I had an affair is so just nothing to them. Right. I think it's probably just people when they cheat on other people tell themselves that they're doing it because they have to , because there's fate is involved and whatever happened y you're better off and probably the person that you broke up with is better off and this is the way it was meant to be. Yeah. This is fate as of the cheated on ex partner . When the story appears in the newspaper on the wedding pages, it's almost as if the newspaper is siding with the cheating couple. The ex-part is justner collateral damage on the weight of their wedding. They don't get to say anything for th themselves . It's like not their story anymore. It's somebody else's love story. Well that's the thing. If if it were any other section of the newspaper, the reporter would go to them too for a comment to get their side. But because but because it's the wedding section, it's just like, well they're not it's not really their story. Right. Yeah. They just they have no say for themselves. They're they're done. They're this had nothing to do with them. It's very bizarre. It raises all kinds of questions for me. As a reader, I'm very distracted by it. Well, today on our radio program, we go where the newspaper marriage colum ns fear to tread. We hear from all parties to the affair, the cheated on as well as the cheaters, and their differing takes on what happened, and no surprise, they are very different from one another's. From WB Easy Chicago, it's this American Life, I'm Ara Glass. Today on our show, Infidel ity, stay with us. This message comes from Rosetta Stone. If you have travel coming up, like a spring break or summer vacation, imagine arriving, actually understanding the language. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages to choose from. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit rosetta stone.com/slash npr today to explore Rosetta stone and choose the language that's right for you Merican life myra glass today shows a re run act one let me kiss your stiff upper lip so we begin with the story from England, and if you read much 19th century British literature, or seen any of the many, many movies based on those books, they give a sense of England as an island filled entirely with people who are full of submerged and often misplaced passions for other people. Which brings us to this next story. Ribby Wright interviewed her own parents, Lal and George. And also the man who split them up. Andrew. Andrew, you've always lived in Dorset. Yeah. But why did you end up in this part of Dorset? Uh I was looking for a house for myself and my two daughters, somewhere to live. And I w I'd always wanted to live in the countryside, having always lived in the towns in Dorset . And I saw saw it in the paper. It was as simple as that. And you didn't know anyone around here? No. So how did you know about us? I was at the pub and um this couple walked in and the bloke was wearing a leopard skin pillbox hat and I thought I've got to get to know this person . And he had a very attractive wife I,'ve been there with nervous. I just saw them in the pub and thought I must know these people . This guy, Andrew, moved to the village and he'd met us both together at the same time in the pub. And I would say that we both had a closeness to Andrew. And my closeness to Andrew was very much about um talking about how I felt and how he felt. And he would have various sort of unsuitable girlfriends, he'd have sort of flings with people and I'd say, come on then Andrew, tell me about it, you know. And he was rather candid I liked it, he was very candid . I was a single parent at the time and it just seemed as an idyllic sort of situation, was sort of a beautiful old cottage with this couple and their daughter living in it and um it was a home from home became a home from home for me. And you became a very good friend and I remember you know you you'd come up a lot and we'd come down and see you and you were always a very cosy person to have And it was always a delight when you used to come up and and see us. Yes, I mean I agree I'd fall in love with the whole family. Um including you and Ed indeed at that point When I started to fall in love with Andrew, it was like my falling in love with him was a direct sort of parallel of my father dying. So as my father was dying at home of of cancer, I was falling deeper de ineper and love with this man, Andrew, and Andrew would talk to me about my father dying because he'd been with his mother who died of a brain tumour. He'd actually been sort of beside her bed with her as she died, and during that period, and I think I sort of valued being with someone because George's parents were both still very much alive at that point, and I think for me it was a sort of I felt he had an understanding of what it was like, and um it was kind of very hard for me not to fall in love with him . Did you think something was always going to happen? No, I was convinced nothing would happen. I'd fallen in love with her I had fallen in love with her, so probably over the summer after her father's death. I was single at the time with just living with Tams and my younger daughter. And I didn't really want a partner at the time. So falling in love with well, I kind of I thought that's okay, I can I can love somebody from afar and I don't need to love anyone else. And it had never occurred to me that she might even dream of falling in love with me. It just didn't occur to me that Lau might look at anyone other than George Um how did I know? When I come back um from this trip and it was Christmas and um Lal said we're going to spend Christmas with Andrew and I was delighted because you know I couldn't think of anybody nicer to spend Christmas with. And it I remember Andrew coming up um the evening I got back, and I was going off to get a present for him that I bought, and I thought that's odd. Then Dal and Andrew are not talking to each other. There's sort of silence in the kitchen. And when he left, he kissed her on the back of the head. And I just some something I don't know, maybe I was one part of me was expecting something to happen one of these days and um I I it was confirmed because mum had left her diary lying around um and you know I read it and there it was. So it was like she wanted you to find out without having to say it. I think yes. And you actually had to tell me. I think were you going to tell me together? Yes, we were going to tell. I mean I don't think we'd even discuss telling you. But what happened was you had been away on um a holiday and um had come home and I'd picked you up I think um and you said to me where is mum ? And I thought, in it, what am I going to tell Ruby? I have probably half a minute to decide. Am I going to tell her the truth or am I gonna make up some story? And I thought I just said to you, well I think she's down at Andrew's, and I didn't have to say anymore. You seem to know You were very angry with me quite rightly. And I think up until that point we'd always had a very close relationship and your anger manifest itself mostly by you just refusing to see me . I think it was just people were very shocked by what happened and I was very shocked. And Dad was very shocked . Were you kind of s surprised at yourself, or were you surprised at your at the force of your own attraction and actions . Um I am I am shocked now at how incredibly selfishly I acted, and how oblivious I was to your pain and George's pain and Ed's pain. Almost like I deserved this thing. I was on this sort of track and I was heading off on it, and nothing was gonna deter me. But as to say, almost as if I deserved it, almost as if I was owed it . George was sort of tipped off . And I felt as soon as I knew I went I felt I had to go and face him so I walked up to Mount Over and I can remember standing outside in the in the bottom field for a good half an hour, summoning up the courage to go and say to George, this is true . And when I'd expected him, quite literally expected him to sort of hit me or sort of bloody my nose or something like that, or at least shout at me, or rave. And um he I knocked on the door, he said, Oh Andrew, Andrew, come in, come in, have a have a glass of wine. And five minutes later I was in tides of tears and George wasn't. And it was just very odd. It was all kind of wrong. But what he said to me stayed with me sort of till now really. He said he said, Andrew, I've lost my partner. I don't want to lose my best friend . You know, I know I have a a a real problem with anger. I mean I don't tend to get angry. I find it a very hard emotion to express . But I mean um I was angry at that point. I was very angry. I mean I remember sort of standing at the sink doing the drying up and somehow the plates ended up in the s ma being smashed on the floor and I mean the emotions were very very odd because I was terribly, terribly fond of Andrew and he was very concerned about my well-being . You know, I still at that point I still believed strongly that we would all become friends again . I mean looking back it was all terribly naive really but that's what I felt at the time. So I wanted to keep keep a relation, some kind of relationship going with George for this future sort of a blissful time when we were all friends again I think in my fantasy world I would have carried on having a passionate physical sexual relationship with Andrew and a kind of fond relationship with George and the two would have somehow run together. You know, I think some couples , through all their anger or hatred or battles, there's this sort of incredible chemistry that still comes back, you know, to your irritation. You can't get rid of this sort of thing and I think with George somehow for me the chemistry disappeared quite early on . I mean the one thing we haven't discussed in all of this, you know, the question of sex. And I mean that was really at the heart of our split up, that mum, you know, did not you know, she was not satisfied in that department. And I I knew that I had a part in this, that there was a part, you know, there was an aspect of our relationship you know namely the sexual part of it that I wasn't facing up to um that I had a responsibility in it. I wasn't an innocent victim, as it were . You know, you you you could say that George George loved Lau he could understand me loving Lao . And whilst that was contrary to his needs or wishes or whatever, he could understand it. Um in a sense I think he never blamed me . I think he blamed Lao and not me. It got very complicated because George and Andrew, far from becoming rivals and kind of having a duel at dawn , far from George challenging Andrew to a duel at dawn . George kind of welcomed Andrew into the fold and Andrew became a kind of member of my family, but without me there, and there would be Sunday lunches and Saturday suppers and dances and Evershart and and they were, you know, they were part of, he was part of that. And of course I was I felt like I was living in exile. I felt like I'd been exiled to this foreign country, albeit a beautiful one and it was six miles away, but I felt I couldn't have been further a way. And Andrew was welcomed into the bosom of the family, and I think that caused enormous resentment from me. I know it did, and I don't know whether Andrew ever understood that, what it was like on a Sunday to know that he was having lunch with my daughter and my son and my ex-partner, and I was here . What then happened was that um Mum's relationship with Andrew didn't last and I still continue to see Andrew because he you know lived just round the corner and um I know that she found that incredibly hard that when despite the fact that she wasn't seeing Andrew that I still was his friend and she felt sort of excluded from my new life and I didn't think she had much much right . I've heard people say that it's impossible to have a relationship you can't stay with the person you leave your family for because there's too much guilt and emotion and do you think the fact that you left George for Andrew ultimately meant that you couldn't s continue this relationship with him. Yes, I do. I don't think it's impossible but I think it was if not inevitable, it was quite likely that those seeds of destruction that were kind of laid right at the beginning and blame did did in the end undermine our relationship . You wish that you could turn the clock back? No, because at that point I think I was still complet ely obsessed with Andrew, you know, this idea that love being a madness. So I don't think at that point I I did wish I could tell I think it was much later I would w ake in the night with the window on the wrong side of the room , sometime around dawn or before dawn I think, and just think what am I doing in this place? How have I got here? And it was as if I'd slept walked out of my other life with no explanation. And I'd woken up and here I was and it was truly terrifying and I think that as long as I was damaging you lot, I was kind of really not aware, but it was when I came to damage myself that was when I really woke up. Because I lost you, effectively I lost you between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. So my biggest loss was losing you for five years at puberty. You were 13, you were just about to have your first period, you went off with George to Africa. You came back and you looked different. And actually, with maternal intuition, which I obviously didn't have much of, I remember looking at you and thinking, she's changed, she started her period, she's becoming a young woman, and sure enough you told me, and I thought, God, George was there for that. Her dad was there for that. Why wasn't I there for that ? And I think I think during that whole time really we didn't we didn't really talk about how we felt, did we? No, I don't think so. RubyWright. She's an illustrator and author. Her website is RubyWright. That's W-R-I-G-H-T .com. Coming up, what to say to your parents about the rich married guy who set you up in an apartment when you're twenty two years old, and what to say to yourself and other dilemmas of cheaters and the cheated on. a In minute. From Chicago Public Radio, when our program continu es. This message comes from Total Wine and Moore. With the largest selection, finding a favorite Cabernet or discovering a new single barrel bourbon is simple. Shop total wine and more, in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Must be twenty one . This message comes from Jerry. Are you tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record? That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1, 300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry.ai slash NPR today. Support for this American life and the following message comes from Dunning Bradstreet. Whether you're bidding on contracts or seeking financing, the right business identity can accelerate the process. A Dunn's number from Dun and Bradstreet helps you do just that. This unique identifier links to your business credit file and creates a trusted identity separate from your personal credit. It's free. It takes just minutes to apply. Give your business the identity to move faster at dn b . com or download the MyDnB mobile app. It's this American Life from Hour Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, infidel ity. So back when we first broadcast today's program, presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth were still people who were in the news. He admitted cheating on her, and she stayed with him, despite that, for a while anyway. And if you read the comments about it online, about them, lots were just vicious, calling her crazy, calling her delusional, calling her an idiot to stay with her husband. It was very Lindy West, if you know what I'm talking about . But a few women wrote in to say , it all seemed more complicated to them. One posted this, I am in this situation right now. It's a difficult call to make . My mom was a psychologist and she specialized in couples where somebody had cheated. She treated hundreds of these couples, and she did studies looking at hundreds more. She wrote a book about her findings. There's solid research, a variety of researchers have shown that in one out of two couples, one or both partners will cheat during the lifetime of a relationship. That's fifty percent of all relationships. Most affairs are never detected. And one of the surprising things that my mom found out in her research was that tons of people will have affairs even though they're happy You don't have to be unhappy to have an affair. Fifty-six percent of the men and thirty-four percent of the women in one of my mom's studies said they cheated though their marriage was happy. And she said lots of couples came in to see her where that was the situation. When not only the cheated on partner, but the cheater seemed genuinely surprised that this had happened in their marriage. Which brings us to our next story, about the cheaters lurking inside any relationship . We're at Act Two of our show. Act two, the Italian job. This story comes from James Brawley, who told it at the storytelling series The Moth in front of a live audience. I am sitting on my suitcase in the main train station in Rome next to my girlfriend Susan who's sitting on hers. And we're rifling through our Let's Go trying to agree on the next destination of our vacation . Susan grew up in Germany. So she'll go basically any place , as long as it's sunny . But I need to go to the right place . And I have a pathological terror of going to the wrong place. So whenever Susan suggests someplace in particular, I suggest someplace else . Because I can see something wrong with every place . And this is a gift I bring uh to every area of my life . Notably my relationship with Susan. We've been together for about seven years since college, and every time she brings up the uh subject of commitment, maybe it's a good time to get married. I I say I I think I I need a little more time just to make sure that what we're doing is right . So So uh as a result, all of the lights on the arrivals and departures board are blinking. And the man on the public address system keeps saying deparzione over and over and over again. And Susan is up on her feet screaming at me. Make up your mind before all the trains pull out. Well I am kind of hypnotized by this the hem of this flower print dress that's about ten feet away, fluttering in the breeze each time a train pulls in or out of the station, which at this point is frequently, which is hanging off what may be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, who's standing next to her beautiful friend. When Susan says, are you looking at those women? And I say, where ? And she says, right there in the flower print dresses. And I say, you mean them? And she says, yes. They look interesting, don't they? Like maybe they're going someplace interesting. We might want to go. You know what? I think I'll ask them. And before I can tell her what a bad idea that is , she's over there talking to them in French. And they're pointing at me. And a few minutes later, she's introducing them to me . Isabel is the uh beautiful one and her sister is uh a gloriously beautiful woman named Fran ce, uh, who has a face off of one of those French go-to-war, buy war-bonds posters that makes you want to invade . So I'm just staring at her. Susan says, guess what, James? They're going to Positano , which is one of the uh numerous fishing villages we debated going to. What do you say we all travel together And two minutes later, Franz and I are on the same vacation . Sitting on a train to Naples and then on a hydrofoil to Positano and then checking into the same hotel into adjacent rooms where we're going to change into our swimsuits and meet on the beach. Now, uh, I haven't been in a swimsuit uh for a year since the last time I was on the beach. And I'm looking in the mirror in the hotel and things have changed since then. A little Italian bakery opened up around the corner from my office . And I've been going there every workday having apricot bear claws . And now I have uh two apricot bear claws uh hanging off the sides of my waist, bubbling up over my swimsuit. And it's one thing to decay in front of your girlfriend. There's a kind of mutual decay contract where you're all gonna atrophy at more or less the same rate . But I don't have that deal with France . And uh there's no way she's seeing my bear claws . So uh when we meet on the beach the the girls are in French bikinis and uh I'm in my uh shorts and my button-down shirt from the train ride like I forgot to undress half myself . And after a couple of hours of uh swimming, then swimming, Franz comes over to me and says, Do you not swim? And I say, indoors. I burn easily. And she hands me her bottle of sunblock and I start to shake my head sadly and point to one of the ingredients and I say I'm allerg ic. And there are six more days to go. So uh the next morning, after an all-nighter with uh Let's Go Europe, I have a comprehensive understanding of all the cultural high points within a 30-mile radius of the city of Positano. None of which include the beach . There is Mount Vesuvius and the Grattas of Capri and the Hanging Gardens at Ravenna, and we can go to a beach anywhere, but there's only so many places you can see this kind of culture . That's the position I'm taking. And the French love culture. And uh the Germans admire the French . So six days later, we're all just about as pasty as when we stepped off the hydrofoil. My uh secret waste is still a secret. And uh I make it to the last night, we have a little farewell dinner at a seaside restaurant, and uh we're walking on the beach one last time for old time's sake, saying our goodbyes. Everyone's a little misty except me. I can't wait to go home in the morning. When Franz says, Does anyone want to go swimming? And her relatively more modest sister says, We don't have suits. And a fearless, guileless Germanic Susan says, That's okay with me . And uh a couple of minutes later they're standing on the beach in panties and bras , uh which are very different than uh bikinis . Frances are uh are chocolate brown lace and uh her skin is the color of milk. She looks like a profiteral . My favorite dessert . It is agony to keep my eyes open, but I can't close them. And the three of them run into the water, laughing and splashing, and then finally disappearing underneath the surface. So everything's quiet for a moment, and then one, two, three, they pop up and start calling at me like sir ens who actually lived in Positano 3,000 years ago. James, come in. It's wonderful. And uh I haven't been swimming one time and it's dark. So uh I make a decision. I'm going to take off my shoes and socks and pants, and I put them on a beach chair, and uh I unbutton my shirt and thread out my arms so that it's just hanging there like a little poncho . And when France disappears under the water again, it goes off on the back of a beach chair and I'm in . But I've waited so long to make up my mind that Susan's cold. She has bad circulation. And uh she always used to bug me . And uh Franz's sister is ready to go back as well, but France is fine. And I just got in. And uh we're all vacation buddies . So uh Susan and the sister go back to the hotel, leaving uh Franz and I for the first time alone uh in the dark in our underwear in the Mediterranean where they invented the word philander And uh where it occurs to me we can have sex without her seeing my body . So I swim around for a little bit and trying to figure out what's the personal space in the Mediterranean. How close can you swim before you can't swim away? And whatever that distance is, Franz swims right to the edge of it and says, The water makes me feel so free . It's not having that effect on me . Uh I got bear claws to hide and promises to keep. And uh I am so tense Which makes me look abnormal . Which leads Frost to say, is everything okay? Maybe we should go back . And she gets out of the water and stands on the beach dripping in the moonlight, dabbing at herself with her dress. So I've got one eye on her and the other on my shirt, which is fluttering off the back of this chair. And I get closer and closer, spreading my legs wider and wider, so that only my head is visible, like an alligator . It looks like I'm in about six feet of water, but really it's about eighteen inches . My thighs are in agony and I can't hold out much longer when France lifts her shirt, her dress, over her head, and I spring up on the beach and behind the chair and I am wet but covered when her head pops through the dress hole and she steps back in surprise and lets out a little French vowel. Ah And we get dressed and uh we're walking across the cobblestones back to the hotel, uh which are slightly uneven, so the backs of our hands brush, and she takes mine and hers, which I've read in Let's Go Europe , uh, is a friendly and warm gesture among European women. And I don't get any ideas. So I'm feeling friendly and warm, trying not to have any ideas. When uh Franz says , Susan is very lucky to have you . And uh I say, well, thank you very much, uh, but I'm very lucky to have her trying to regain a shred of dignity while holding onto this woman's hand. And Franz smiles the smile of the boyfriendless and yet supremely confident goddess and says, why ? And uh there are all sorts of reasons I'm lucky to have Susan, but I can't think of any of them at the moment . Because my mind is blank. And I say, well, why are you friends? And Franz looks at me and says, because she pursued me . And our hips bump at the base of the stairs up the mountain to the hotel and she puts her arm around my waist right above the bear claw and all I can think is to hunch down like I've got osteoporosis so that her arm slides up, my ribcage, but with each step up the stairs, it slides back down and then it hits . And she starts laughing in this bubbly French laugh. And she says, Boisautage . I don't speak French, and uh I don't want to know what that means anyway, so I keep walking. And she says it again, what sau tage? You have a life preserver . It's so cute . And she keeps her hand right there , like a girlfriend , up the stairs and into the lobby of the hotel and into the elevator, which is too bright and too small to be touching. It's a tiny little hotel, tiny little elevat or. So she's in one corner and mine on the other. When the doors close and the floors start ringing off one by one, and we just look at each other. And there's not much more time to go . And then the doors open before I can make up my mind what to do, and we're standing there in front of our uh our rooms, and uh she just looks at me with the most beautiful face I have ever been swimming with. And one that I have never wanted to kiss more . But I just can't do it to Susan. So I kiss Franz on the cheek three times, uh, which I've learned that week, which allows you to change your mind, potentially . But I make it into my room and a closed door behind me and Susan's up in bed, reading Let's Go Europe , uh, in anticipation of the debate that's probably going to happen tomorrow morning over where to go. And uh she looks up and says , How was it ? And uh I say, uh, it was hard, Susan. It was really hard. And she looks right at me and says , I know . Like, she does know. Like, she really understands why I've avoided the beach for a week on the beach vacation. And she accepts it . So I take off my shirt and get in bed next to her and turn my back and suddenly I start crying. These weepy little hide them in your hotel room pillow tears. Which is not the kind of guy I am . I'm a poker-faced, poker-bodied magical thinker. I've been eating bear claws for a year and uh thinking I'm in shape and that I can be faithful and philander at the same time. And it's an overwhelmingly sad and yet strangely comforting relief to lie there and know that I can't, and that I've actually made a choice that after seven days, seven years, really most of my adult life, to lie there next to Susan and right or wrong, finally be me . Thank you . James Brawley. The story became part of a one-man off-Broadway show called Life in a Marital Institution. 20 Years of Monogamy in One Terrifying Hour. His website, James Brawley, that's Brawly B-R-A-L-Y .com. Thanks as always to the moth, which of course features personal stories told live in front of an audience. If you like this story and you don't know their stuff, check out their podcasts, the Moth Radio Hour and the Moth Podcast . James Brawley gave us the thoughts of somebody in a moment before infidelity occurs. Danny Shapiro has this story about the confusing mess it can be during the affair. Here in no particular order are some things Lenny told me, that he and his wife didn't sleep in the same bed, that they hadn't had a real marriage in years, that she was undergoing electro shock treatment in a clinic outside Philadelphia, that he had cancer and had to fly to Houston three days a week for chemotherap his wife and marry me . For a long time I believed him. With every bone in my body I trusted that Lenny Klein was telling me the truth. When we talked about it his jaw would tighten and his big brown eyes would fill with tears. His voice would quaver with pent-up, complex feelings that I couldn't possibly begin to understand . Poor Lenny. I marveled that so many bad things could happen to one person, and I vowed to take care of him. I I exhorted myself to be a real woman, one who could step up to the plate and be good to her man in his moment of crisis. Years later, I hold Lenny's lies up to the light and examine my own reasons for believing what in retrospect seems preposterous. I reread my old journals and noticed the way my girlish handwriting deteriorated into a scrawl as I wrote, I have to be there for Lenny. He needs me, and he's going through so much. I don't know if I can handle it, but I have to be strong . I try to remember that Lenny was a trial lawyer, that he built an international reputation based on his own pathology, that he lied with an almost evangelical conviction. He prided himself on being able to convince anyone of anything. The lies had small beginnings. Lenny called me from a business trip and told me he was at Montreal Airport, waiting to catch a flight to Calgary. I checked with the airline and found out that the flight would take approximately five hours. So when Lenny called an hour later to say he had landed in Calgary, I very calmly asked him where he really was. Calgary, he said. No, Lenny, really . He stuck to his story. In the time that I knew him he never ever changed his story midstream. I hung up on him and called his family's house in Westchester. When the maid answered the phone I asked to speak with Mr. Klein, and when he picked up the extension and I heard his rough craggy hello, I screamed so hard into his ear that he dropped the receiver . He raced into the city. He led He led himself into my apartment and found me curled up in bed . He scooped me up and held me to his chest. His wife wasn't home, he told me, she was having shock treatment, and someone had to take care of his daughter. He hadn't wanted to tell me because he'd wanted to spare me, to protect me from the horror of his life. Surely I understood. Shush, sweetheart, he murmured into the top of my head as I wept, my face beat red like a little girl's. So many people need me, he said, but I love you best of all . Two years have passed and something has gone wrong, terribly wrong with my life. I don't in fact think of my life as my life, but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection. I am no longer a student. I dropped out of Sarah Lawrence after my junior year, supposedly to pursue acting. And I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of an actress. But I'm doing an even better imitation of a mistress. Lenny's been busy buying me things. I don't particularly want these things, but they seem to be what Lenny is offering in lieu of himself. So quite suddenly, overnight, really, I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible. And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mink coat, a cartier watch, a bulgarian necklace with an ancient coin at its center. The Mercedes is a step down from the first car Lenny gave me when we had been going out for a month, a leased Ferrari. I don't know how to drive a stick shift so the Ferrari was a bit of a problem. What I must have looked like, a twenty-year-old blonde dressed like Ivana Trump, stalled in traffic, grinding gears, trying to find the point on the clutch to hold that ridiculous car in place . Lenny rented an apartment on a pretty little street in Greenwich Village, a furnished triplex with a garden, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed. He called it our house, as if he didn't have another home with a whole family in it, an hour north of the city. He kept half a dozen suits in the bedroom closet, and a brand new silk robe hung behind the bathroom door. There was an entire floor we didn't use, a large airy children's nursery . A humidor in the center of the coffee table. I cooked up a storm and the place was filled with homey smells, garlic, basil, coriander . It was winter, and the snow was piled up on the sills. Spotlights in the backyard shone on the landscaped garden, the redwood table, the Adirondack chairs. I had my father's favorite music, Dvorjak's Symphony for the New World, playing on the stereo system. My parents rang the doorbell. They looked so solid standing on my front stoop, their cold red noses poking out from above their mufflers. If nothing else, they looked like they belonged together. They were elegant and rangy, similarly proportioned. Unlike Lenny and me, Lenny is thick as a linebacker, and I had become so delicate the, wind could have picked me up and blown me away. My mother strode into the brownstone as if it wasn't the weirdest thing in the world to be visiting her daughter in a lavish apartment with no name on the outside buzzer. My father trailed behind her warily, as if setting foot on another planet . My mother entered the living room, flung her arms wide, and did an impromptu dance to Dvorjak . Tralala , she trilled. My father and I hung back and watched, our faces crumpled into awkward smiles. It didn't occur to me that she was frightened, that this was a lot for her to take in, her college dropout daughter living in the lap of luxury. All I could see was her outsized self, twirling around my living room in her fur coat and boots . I wanted a drink . I poured two glasses of Chardonnay for my parents and a large vod ka for myself. I figured that if the vodka was in a water glass, they wouldn't know the difference, especially if I drank it it like was water. My drinking had taken on a new urgency in the past few months. It was no longer a question of desire, but of need. I could not get through an evening like this without the armor of booze. I handed them their wine and directed them to the couch. On the coffee table I had put out a plate of crudetes and a bowl of olives. Quite a place, my mother said brightly, her gaze darting around the room at the white brick fire place with its wrought iron tools, the glass wall overlooking the garden, the soaring ceiling . My father stared at the fringe of the rug, glassy eyed. He needed to be as numbed as I did to get through this night. I checked on dinner using the opportunity to gulp some wine from the open bottle in the fridge. Vodka and white wine was a combination I knew worked for me. If I stuck with the formula, things shouldn't be too bad in the morning. Especially if I wasn't eating, and I couldn't see myself eating . The music had stopped by the time we all sat at the dining ro om table, but I didn't notice then. If I had, I would certainly have changed the tape, filled the air with something other than the tinny, lonely sound of our three forks scraping against plates. I pushed my chicken from one side of my plate to the other. My stomach clenched and growled in protest . It seemed that my parents and I, after twenty-two years in each other's company, had run out of things to say. I already knew their views on the political situation in Israel, and we couldn't discuss my schoolwork, I was no longer in school. My father pressed a corner of his napkin to his lips and murmured something about the food being delicious. My mother agreed. My wonderful daughter, she said, shaking her head, you've turned into such a little homemaker . I looked at my parents across the table. Is that what they really thought? How could they just sit there? Some small piece of me wanted my father to fling me over his shoulder and carry me kicking and screaming to the car he had parked outside. I secretly wished that they would drive me home, deposit me in my childhood bedroom, and feed me chicken soup and saltines I wanted to start my life over again, but I didn't know how do it. In the face of the most tangible proof that Lenny had been lying to me all these years, I remained with him. Or my children's mother is having electroshock therapy. When I couldn't take my own confusion anymore, was Lenny lying to me? Was I going crazy? I decided to hire a detective to get to the bottom of it. By this time, my parents knew all about me and Lenny in theory, but it wasn't something we could talk about . When I think back to my younger self rifling through the New York City yellow pages in search of a private investigator, I feel like I'm watching a movie about someone else. A girl so clueless she really didn't know that her desire to hire a detective was all the answer she needed. I chose a detective agency based on nothing more than its good address in the East 60s, a neighborhood filled with private schools and shrinks. This isn't what you think, I told the detective. I'm in a relationship with a married man, and I want you to find out if my boyfriend is cheating on me with his wife. At this his eyebrows shot up. Come again? He claims his wife is in a mental hospital. He told me he hasn't been with her in years. And you think he might be lying, said the investigator Did I see the laughter behind his eyes, or is my memory supplying it now, because I simply cannot imagine a middle-aged man listening to an earnest, overdressed-,t wo-22 old girl tell him that she thinks her boyfriend might still be sleeping with his wife. Yes, I said. Days later I got the proof about Lenny's lies. In tears I called my mother. Oh darling, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do? I don't think so. A pause . Do you want me to call his wife ? My mother and misses Cline had met each other at a few school functions back when none of this could have struck any one as a remote possibility. Yes, I said, call her. I'll do it right now, my mother said . I sat by the phone and watched the minutes tick by. I pictured Lenny's wife answering the phone with a chirpy hello, and my mother's slow, steady explanation of why she was calling. I had set in motion a chain of events which was now unstoppable. More than twenty minutes passed before my mother called me back. Well I did it, she said. You talked to her ? The world felt unreal, hallucinatory . Yes, she called me a liar. She told me she has a happy marriage to a man who travels a lot. That he's on his way to California, and I said no,, he's on his way to see my daughter. What do you mean? Lenny's wife, was she angry? No, my mother said slowly. She just didn't believe me, Danny. I spent the rest of that day in a state of awful excitement. Something was going to happen. And when Lenny showed up that evening at the apartment we were still sharing in the West Village, I was ready. He put his bags down and gave me a hug. The phone rang. My mother had given Mrs. Klein the number at the apartment and suggested she find out for herself what her husband was up to. Lenny picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. Hello ? I watched him, and for the first and only time in the years I knew him, he looked genuinely surprised. He didn't say a word. He just listened for a few minutes, then hung up the phone. That was my wife, he said. I was silent. How did she get this number? I shrugged. I have to go . I'd imagine, I said faintly . When Lenny slammed out of the apartment, I was certain I would never see him again. I knew the truth now. It was staring me in the face, in the concrete form of flight lists and photos. And he knew that I knew. And besides the whistle was blown. What could he possibly tell his wife This was it I told myself. Absolutely, positively the end . It wasn't the end. Lenny still called ten, twelve times a day. He left messages on my answering machine. Hello ? His voice filled my bedroom. Fox, are you there ? Sometimes he didn't say a word . He would stay on the line for as long as five minutes just breathing . Eventually he did get to me again, and for the next year that we were together, three days here, four days there, my life became unrecognizable to me. I idly wondered what it would take to get me to leave him. I wondered about this over bottles of chilled white wine or heavy glasses half filled with scotch. Nothing else mattered. As I packed my bags, I remembered my mother twirling, dancing to Dvor Jacques, through the doors of Lenny's brownstone, and the glassy look in my father's eyes . I prayed that my father wouldn't die disappointed in me. And I knew then what I had to do. Danny Shapiro . That story is in her memoir, Slow Motion. Her latest book is called Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Fraternity, and Love. Back four, the man who knew what I was about to say . So um in this second half of our program we've had the moment before a possible affair. We've had what it's like during the affair, and now we turn to the aftermath of an affair, right This story is by writer Edgar Carrot and read first by actor Matt McLoy. The man who knew what I was about to say sat next to me on the plane. A stupid smile plastered across his face. Lines I meant to say three seconds before me . Do you sell girl, Mystique? he asked the flight attendant a minute before I could. And she gave him an orthodontic smile and said there's just one last bottle left. Mm. wife goes crazy for that perfume, he said. I dare come into the house without at least one of these. I'm in deep . Touched the ground, he switched on his mobile, a second before I did, and called his wife. I just landed, he told her. I'm sorry, I know it was supposed to be yesterday. Flight was canceled. You don't believe me? Check it out yourself. Call Eric . I know you don't. I can give you his number right now . I also have a travel agent called Eric. He'd lie for me too. When the plane reached the gate he was still talking on his mobile, giving all the answers I would have given, without a trace of emotion. Like a parrot in a world where time flows backwards, repeating whatever is about to be said instead of what's been said already . His answers were the best ones under the circumstances. His circumstances weren't too hot , not too hot at all. Mine weren't either. Nobody was answering my call, but just listening to the man who knew what I was about to say made me stop trying. Just listening to him I could tell that this was a whole It would be to a different reality . She'd never forgive me. She'd never trust me . Ever . All my coming trips would be hell on earth, and the time in between would be even worse . He went on talking and talking and talking, all those sentences that I'd thought up and hadn't said yet. It just kept flowing. He stepped it up, changing the intonation, like a drowning man struggling desperately to stay afloat. People began getting off. He got up, still talking, scooped up his laptop and the other hand and headed for the exit . I could see him forgetting it behind. The bag he had put in the overhead compartment, I could see him forgetting it. I didn't say anything. I just stayed put. Gradually everyone walked out till the only ones still there were an overweight religious woman with a million children and me . I got up and opened the overhead compartment above me, as if nothing , I took out the duty free bag like it had always been mine . Inside were the receipt and the bottle of Guirla Mystique . My wife goes crazy for that perfume. She 's positively addicted . If I come back from a trip without a bottle of mystique from the duty free, she says I don't love her anymore . Some day he'll come along Matt Malloy reading a story by Edgar Carrot from Edgar's story collection suddenly a knock on the door. Edgar sends stories and poems to subs cribers in his substack newsletter, Alphabet Soup. I'll do my best to make him sta y Well, our program is produced today by Nancy Updike and our senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder, with Alex Bloomberg, Jay Marie, Sarah Caney, Glisa Pollock, Robin Seminen, and Melissa Ship. Production up from Aaron Scott. Seth Linder's our production manager and Emily Condon was our office manager for this show. Our musical consultant for the show was Jessica Hopper. Help on today's rerun from Adrian Lilly, Molly Marcello, and Ryan Rummery. Special thanks to D emoth and to Paul Tuff. This American Life is delivered to public