In the fall of 1994, Bill had an affair with Teddy’s math teacher, Adrienne Devine. From practically the beginning of the school year, Teddy had been failing trigonometry. The notices came home, and India addressed them with Teddy. Teddy said trig was stupid, it was nothing he would ever need to know, he had tried to drop the class but was told he needed it to graduate. India pointed out that not only did he need it to graduate but if he wanted to go to a good college, then he needed to get a decent grade, an A or a B.
He claimed he couldn’t do it. India passed the buck to Bill.
You handle this, she said. Personally, she agreed with Teddy: trigonometry was stupid and useless.
Bill went in to meet the math teacher, Adrienne Devine, a hundred-pound, dark-haired twenty-four-year-old beauty, right out of the graduate teaching program at Columbia. When Bill came home and India asked how it went, Bill said, “I can’t believe they have someone like her teaching those boys.”
India didn’t ask what Bill meant by this; she assumed the problem was dealt with, and indeed, Teddy’s marks in math improved.
The affair, as it was later explained to India, started shortly after the parent-teacher conference, with Bill calling Adrienne Devine at home and telling her he would like to come to her apartment to make love to her. Adrienne Devine, without hesitation, said yes. There had been a spark between them at the conference. She was intrigued by the fact that Bill was a sculptor.
(Intrigued by the fact that Bill was a sculptor? Surely she could do better than that? But no. She was so young, she didn’t know any of his work.)
The affair continued, as many afternoons as they could manage, through the fall, through the holidays, into the new year.
Bill told India about the affair in January during a trip to Sweden. The City of Stockholm had offered Bill a commission for a series of pieces. It was the largest and most lucrative commission Bill had received in years. India knew he was bothered by the fact that from now on, most of his new work would be installed overseas, but that was how it was shaking out. His popularity was waning at home; he should have been grateful it was burgeoning in nations like Dubai and Thailand and Sweden, where having a Bill Bishop was considered a sign of American prestige (albeit one that Americans would find outdated-like a gold Rolex or a Cadillac).
On that trip to Sweden, Bill should have been energized and driven, but instead he seemed listless and sad. India asked him, innocently, what was wrong, and he told her about the affair.
India took the news quietly at first. She was curious about the details, and Bill was happy to provide them, though they weren’t interesting because Adrienne Devine wasn’t interesting-she was a twenty-four-year-old math teacher. The affair was about youth and sex; it was about anger against India and anger against Teddy. Bill was showing Teddy who was boss by screwing his math teacher. Were men really so stupid and shallow? India supposed they were. India realized that although she loved Bill, she had lost respect for him. It had been happening for years.
Indeed, the most upsetting thing about the affair was that Teddy hadn’t learned any math; Adrienne Devine was giving him passing grades because of Bill.
Clearly, Bill expected a bigger reaction from his wife, and not getting a big reaction-or any reaction at all, really-embittered him. What could India say? She wasn’t surprised. When she married Bill Bishop, she had expected that he would have affairs. He was a man with enormous appetites. That he had not had affairs before this was something that pleasantly surprised her. That he was having an affair now only made him predictable. She told him as much as they waited on the subway platform. He slapped her. She stared at him, and the Swedes stared at him, though no one intervened.
She whispered, “You’re a coward, Bill.” And she walked away.
She found her own hotel room for that night, and when she returned to their original hotel the next day, she found Bill in bed, naked, drunk, weeping. She realized, when she walked into the room, that this was exactly what she had expected.
In October, when Bill went to Bangkok to discuss a commission for the king of Thailand’s summer palace, India stayed home. The affair with the math teacher had ended months before, but the aftereffects were toxic. The marriage was a shambles; India had basically moved into the guest room, her “sanctuary,” and Bill often slept in his studio, and their bed became a surface where they stacked laundry and books and magazines and newspapers. They had gone to Tuckernuck that summer and they had been happy in the way that they were always happy on Tuckernuck-but when they returned to Pennsylvania, it was as if a storm cloud settled over their house. In September, Billy left for Princeton, and while India missed him, having him out of the house was a relief. Teddy and Ethan were both playing football, and they got home so whupped and exhausted they didn’t have the energy to beat up on each other. The house was eerily quiet. There was no conversation.
When Bill told India about the Thai commission, she was happy for him, but she said she would not go along. He begged her please; he wasn’t doing well. Right, she knew he wasn’t doing well. He had gained twenty pounds, he wasn’t exercising, he was drinking too much. He had missed all of the football games without so much as an apology to the kids. India knew it was time for an ultimatum. Either he went to a shrink, or she was moving out. She needed to do something to galvanize the man, make him snap out of his funk, respond, act like a human being. But India didn’t issue an ultimatum. She let him be. After all, she wasn’t depressed. She had friends and lunches, and the boys to look after; she had her me-myself time, and plenty of personal space. She would not go to Bangkok because, quite simply, she didn’t want to. She was sick and tired of being Bill Bishop’s wife; she couldn’t stomach a week in a hotel room alone with Bill; she couldn’t stand to be that close to his mood swings. She was looking forward to Bill being gone. She was throwing a catered dinner for twelve women friends one night, and on a different night she was hosting a bonfire and pig roast for the entire Malvern Prep football team. India was looking forward to both events and the serene evenings that would surround them. She was looking forward to living in her house without fearing Bill, stalking the premises like a tiger.
He came into the guest room the night before he was to leave. It was late; India was asleep. She was frightened when she opened her eyes and saw his form looming over her like an intruder.
She said, “Bill?”
He didn’t speak.
She said, “Bill, what’s wrong?”
He climbed into bed with her and took her from behind. India and Bill had made love only a few times since returning from Tuckernuck, and a couple of those times, Bill had suffered from impotence. India remembered the sex that night as being thrilling in a twisted way; it had felt like sex with a stranger. She had lain in bed afterward, breathless and sweating, thinking, My God.
Bill, however, had started weeping. For such a big, powerful man, he cried like a child.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
He said, “Come to Bangkok with me, please, India. I’m not going to make it on my own.”
She shushed him, cradled his head, stroked his mane of hair. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She didn’t voice any other thoughts-for example, that it would be good for them to have some time apart-because she didn’t want to patronize him. She felt sorry for him, but she couldn’t wait for him to go.