“What?” he asked.
“How about ‘I love you’?”
“I love you too,” he replied, relieved that she had said this in front of Buddy. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Feel better. Good night.”
But his hopes gradually faded as the minutes stretched on. And it was more than an hour before the other man left the house. When the Land Rover pulled away from the street, Philip followed, dutifully.
Zhmuhin began to send letters after that, penned in his own awkward hand, bearing information about Anna Sergeyevna’s indiscretions: how she had retired with the stranger to the sanctity of her hotel room; how the couple had shared a cab to Oreanda, where they had sat near a church and held hands as they stared at the sea; how they now took their meals together regularly; how they stole kisses in the square.
Zhmuhin was fastidious in his details: There was cream in the crab soup they shared at lunch on Tuesday; the wine they drank after dinner on Thursday was a Madeira, uncorked just for them. Zhmuhin had walked past them near the church in Oreanda, but had recognized no remorse in the man’s eyes; the couple’s kiss in the square was fleeting, the one in the garden approximately half a minute in duration. Gone was Zhmuhin’s insolence, but his cold precision and simple matter-of-factness were perhaps more brutal, giving Evgeniy’s grief little room for relief. Evgeniy wept like some sniveling child. His eyesight became bleary with tears and his face turned so red that he stayed home from the office. He caught the servants exchanging glances when he passed them in the house. What a poor excuse for a man he had become!
And what a poor choice he had made for handling this crisis. He should have traveled to Yalta at once, he would think later. He should have challenged the other man to a duel. He should have punished his wife for her indiscretion with the same firm justice with which he might forgive her for it afterwards. But instead he had written her a letter. There is something wrong with my eyes, he had explained. Please come home as quickly as possible. A weak lie to avoid a scandal. A coward’s choice. He had signed it Your husband as if he needed to remind her of the fact — a thought whose shame he would also long bear.
Even as he dripped the wax onto the envelope and reached for his seal, he knew that any choice he made was a mistake. If he didn’t confront the situation now, he would be unable to do so later. How could he admit to her in years to come that he had known all along, that he had borne her adultery in silence? And yet what ramifications would ensue if he acted rashly? His public might acquit him of any action he took now in defense of his home, but could they avoid looking upon him differently once they’d discovered him a cuckold? How would they ever trust him as a leader if they suspected that some mismanagement of domestic affairs had sent his wife into the arms of another man?
Such was simply not possible. He sealed the wax.
WSHA had gone off the air at midnight, and hours of cold, dry static had whispered from the speakers as Philip drove restlessly through the night, haunted by images, miles of worry accumulating. The Land Rover at the curb, the light in the bedroom window, the cigarette in the street... the stale aftertaste of tequila from Catherine’s kiss, the feel of her lips light on his forehead several nights before... the passions in her painting, the pizza in the microwave... her admission that Buddy was there when he called, her admission that she had slept with him before. Another man’s hand rested on her hip, caressed her breast. Her fingers wandered in the hair of his chest, their lips met, their bodies twined...
Chekhov had been right, he thought, still crafting the short story in his head, trying in vain still to distract himself from the other story, from all that had happened in recent hours. Each of us does have two lives, one open and the other running its course in secret. But Chekhov had missed the despair of never truly being able to know the other’s secret existence, always balancing trust against doubt. Gurov had found some prurient irony in the idea of secret lives, Anna Sergeyevna had been torn asunder by her two worlds, and Evgeniy von Diderits... But it wasn’t Evgeniy’s story, after all, Philip recognized, the simplest truth. Anna’s and Gurov’s was the grand, conflicted passion. Von Diderits’s life was static, negligible. Philip had simply chosen the wrong character. And while another man had been wooing and perhaps winning Catherine, Philip had stuck himself away in 1890s Russia, missing the chance to be of significance in his own story, precisely when he should have been strengthening his role.
But now he’d secured a place in both stories, had taken special pains to assure that his presence would be felt.
Dawn had broken by the time Philip drove the rented Buick back to his own house and parked it at the curb where the Land Rover had stood the night before. The neighborhood was now lit in soft tones. Sprinklers were rotating in a lawn down the street — set off by an automatic timer, as regular as clockwork, as if nothing had changed. In another yard, a cat stalked some animal unseen. As Philip walked toward his front porch, he heard the neighbor’s door open and then saw her step out to pick up her paper. She stopped when she spotted him, and even from a distance he could sense her hesitancy, her apprehension. Did she not recognize him? He saw that she didn’t have her glasses on. The Buick must have confused her too. Perhaps she suspected an early-morning burglar?
“Good morning, Mrs. Rosen,” he called out, with a nervous wave. “Just me. Philip.” Yes, just like the sprinklers, he told himself. Act asif nothing has changed. And then he thought, But maybe she hasseen me clearly, maybe it’s not that she doesn’t recognize me but that she’s sensed something better than she should. He quickly turned his key in the front door and pushed it inward, not waiting for a reply.
Once inside, however, he still felt himself an intruder, as if actually breaking into some strange house. He saw even the most familiar objects as if for the first time: a piece of pottery he and Catherine had picked up in Chatham County, a photograph of them on their honeymoon in London, Catherine’s purse on the chair. The painting over the mantel seemed darker than usual. The fabric of the couch didn’t quite match the floor. He noticed that a Mingus CD he had left in the player had been swapped out for Moby and that an empty bottle of Pinot Noir stood on the kitchen counter. Two glasses sat in the sink.
Had Buddy touched this newspaper on the counter? Which chair had he sat in? The carpet runner in the hallway had been kicked up at the corner. The hand towel in the bathroom had a streak of grime. Was that another man’s piss on the rim of the toilet? Under the fluorescent lights, he noticed that there were still traces of red on his hands — ink? No. Not ink. Not ink — not this time. He took a moment to wash them again and then waited to let them dry in the air, reluctant to share the hand towel that the other man had touched.
In their bedroom, the rising sun crept around the edges of the window, leaving the room in morning twilight, and Philip detected the thick scent of black currants again, wildflowers. Beneath the sheets wrapped around her, Catherine’s breasts rose and fell in easy rhythms. Her black hair strayed out across the pillow, and a mascara stain marked the case, almost in the shape of an eyelash itself. Someone had propped a condom against the edge of the alarm clock. Durex. Unopened.
Sitting down in the chair in the corner of the room, Philip twirled the condom in his hand, examined the edges of the wrapper, the expiration date, phrases from the package: “super thin for more feeling,” “nonoxynol-9,” “if erection is lost before withdrawal...” It was from a box of twelve in the bathroom, he knew, and he also knew that if he hadn’t come home before she awoke, if he’d really been in Virginia, then the condom would have been returned to its spot, the evidence vanished. But unopened? He started to go into the bathroom and count the ones that remained in the box, to see if others were missing, but he couldn’t remember with any certainty how many had been in there before he left. It had been awhile since they’d made love, he realized with regret, with shame.