Issue 42 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

visit my grandfather whom I never met. I was his squire. I spent
hours with him doing things for people without knowing why. At
the end I would always promise not to tell my mother.
Of course, now I know there were no clandestine meetings, and
we did things for people because my father owed them money.
Saddest of all, I never saw my grandfather because my father was
too angry at him for putting my father and his brothers and sister
up for adoption.
I made up stories because I had to fill the void left by my father.
How would I have reacted to that misdirected primal scene taking
place in the CICU lounge if it was my own father in the hospital
bed? At that time, I imagine it would've been with the same air of
practiced pragmatism and detachment the son showed me. Now,
15 years later, I wonder whether I would be struck by how much I
have become like my father.
I was reminded ofall this when - as my sons and I were going
to sleep recently - my eldest said matter-of-factly, "Mommy told
me you had an affair and that's why you aren't married."
He was right; I did have an affair. But I was stunned by his
statement, and only later did I get the voicemail message from
my ex-wife alerting me to their conversation.
I felt cornered. What I wanted to say was a combination of, uTake
that question back right now; your mother did not have my permission
to tell you that; you are too young, I'm not ready to tell you;
don't talk about this in front of your brother!"
But what I said was, "That's a really long and complicated conversation
that we should really have tomorrow, not when we're
going to sleep."
But even as the words were coming out I knew both of us would
be unhappy with that, and that this moment represented a chance for
me to be something different from my own father. So while my
younger son distracted himself with some toys, my older son and I
got out of bed and started talking.
It had only been several weeks since I had asked him if he had
any questions about sex. All he said to me was, "No." So first I
asked if he even knew what an affair was.
"Sure" he said, "it's what Henry's father had." (Henry was one of
his closest friends whose father had already remarried.)
So, unprepared as I was, I began to talk.
I did not talk about what it felt like to be desperate in life or in
marriage. How it felt to deceive his mother, or how it felt to deceive
myself. I did not tell him how convenient it was that I was a doctor,
that excuses to leave the house were just a page away, each coded
beep a place and time. I did not say how delicious it was to have sex
with someone else, after not having sex for so long. I did not say how
I felt reanimated by the deception and danger. How good it felt to be
wanted, and how good it felt to want. I did not try to explain that in
some ways my affair was a brief, perfect moment of hiding in plain
sight. I did not reveal how lost I was at that time, how little I knew of
Inyself. I did not tell him how it felt to tell his Inother or how it felt to
have all of our friends and family find out. I did not tell him about
how it felt to have the mask of "good husband, good father, good
doctor" ripped from my face.
What I said was that at the time I was very unhappy. I was sad
and depressed. I told him that affairs generally do not cause divorces
but are symptoms of problems within marriages, and that I deeply
regretted having one. I told him that he and his brother were the happiest
part of my life but that somehow things were not right between
his mother and me. I told him that when people are sad or troubled
they sometimes make wrong decisions that can cause pain to the people
they love. I told him that I regretted what I had done and that
every day I think about the hurt it has caused him.
I'm not sure what he believed or did not believe but what he said
next was, "Why have an affair when you can just get divorced?"
uYou're right," I said, but that is a story for another night, I
thought to myself. And as I fell asleep, I was aware of the pictures on
the wall. Pictures of us on vacation, of us on my sister's boat, of us in
my small apartment. And pictures of my sons proudly holding up a
pumpkin grown in my father's garden. II