A Second Chance Read online

  Adam got on with all the chores without saying anything. He fed Sara, dressed her, and then left the apartment after checking to see if I was doing any better.

  Later, when I was at work, Peter called me again. I had both feared this and wished for it. He could not stand the solitude, the silence. He was in pain, physically. He had a ghoulish need to talk and to understand. He asked if we could meet in the afternoon for coffee.

  I agreed. The school where I worked was not far from the university. The trolleybus stop was at the corner, and the trip took five minutes.

  This time, Peter had chosen the terrace of a small restaurant. He said the café where we had met the day before made him sick. He would always associate that place with the nausea he was feeling that day. He needed to eat something, too. When he got home after our meeting, he had pretended to have a stomachache and went straight to bed. He was unable to go through the motions of everyday life. He was less gifted than me at play-acting. He also feared his physical strength. What if he hit Lara in a moment of rage, or even killed her?

  The ways in which the two sexes differ, when faced with adultery, is not in the state of their heart but in the power of their muscles. The difference between Peter and me was that he could relieve his anger with a few punches.

  We ordered pork chops. Peter asked me if I wanted a glass of wine. In fact, it was not so much a suggestion as a command to keep him company. He didn’t want to get drunk, just to anaesthetize his pain. I accepted a glass of red wine. After a short hesitation, Peter changed his mind and ordered vodka. He asked if I wanted to smoke. I had stopped when I got pregnant, but I accepted and took a cigarette.

  The vodka had the effect Peter had counted on. His eyes filled with tears. He was watching me, waiting for something nice, unexpected, encouraging. His eyes were begging me to touch him, rub his hand, kiss him on the cheek. He desperately needed to be comforted, a few kind words to soothe his awful pain.

  I told him I was sure Lara still loved him. This was what I wished to be told in turn. He did not reciprocate.

  From that day on, the practice of play-acting our normal life at home carried on along with this daily rendezvous. Peter and I ate and had coffee together at lunchtime. We stopped talking about what had brought us together. I didn’t ask for details, and he lacked the courage to say more. Did he have any photos, videos, tapes? Had he hired a private detective? What was it that tipped him off?

  I did not want to know more. I accepted his revelation, as I had no choice, but I didn’t want to hear anything further.

  One day, I told Peter that his mother-in-law was certainly aware of the affair. He completely denied it. He was convinced the old woman would never give her consent to this horror. I did not insist. It surprised me, though, that Peter was able to discover his wife’s betrayal but not to track down her accomplices.

  What childish naïveté. Peter believed in his wife’s vileness but not in her mother’s. He did not understand the first thing about a mother’s determination to protect her offspring.

  As for me, I already knew I was right. For some time now, Lara’s mother had not been in her usual spot at the front of the building when I came home. I was glad about this, as it would have been difficult for me to see her. I knew, though, that things would not stay this way.

  One day, I had to face the situation I was preparing myself for.

  I had just gotten home and had kicked off my shoes when the doorbell rang. My heart started beating like crazy. I knew without a doubt it was the old lady.

  I opened the door.

  There she was, with tears in her eyes, unable to utter a word.

  My hands became suddenly cold. From that moment on, nothing in the world could make me doubt that my husband was having an affair. I doubly hated this woman for removing my last shred of hope.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” I said, and then I slammed the door in her face.

  The next day, I asked Peter if he had noticed any change in Lara’s attitude. He said no. I couldn’t trust him. He was no longer able to tell what was normal from what was not. I didn’t tell him about the old woman’s visit, but I was sure Lara had been warned. What was she doing at this very moment to protect herself against the fear of seeing her secret revealed in the cruel light of day?

  At home, I was doing a good job of simulating normality. In the morning, I did not need to fake a headache. I woke up numbed by the passionate lovemaking of the night, for Adam’s betrayal had stimulated a voracious sexual appetite in me. My desire was fed by my profound knowledge of his body, by the familiarity of his smell, his strength, his gushing sperm. Adam seemed unappeasable, too. I did not understand any of it; I just surrendered myself to my passion, my hunger for him, without knowing if I was experiencing the end of our relationship or a new start.

  I got used to seeing Peter at lunchtime, and we prolonged our meetings more and more. We went well together. We sat in the sun on the terrace watching the pedestrians and the traffic on the boulevard.

  This situation might have gone on like this for a long time if Adam had not happened to see us one day. He was crossing the boulevard in his car, heading to one of the branches of the company he worked for. Behind the mass of vehicles, passersby, and trolleybuses, he caught sight of us on the terrace with our plates and glasses of wine.

  He could not stop because of the traffic and because there was nowhere to park, but I noticed a change in his attitude as soon as he came home that evening. A certain hesitation in his eyes and the tentativeness of his hug and his kiss warned me. He was acting the way Lara’s mother had acted. I had already charted the psychology of guilt and easily recognized it in my husband.

  He was afraid of accusing me of anything. He asked me the question as genuinely as he could: why was I meeting Peter on the terrace without mentioning it? Was it a pre-arranged rendezvous or a habit?

  I told him I was seeing Peter from time to time to have coffee together.

  Adam got it. Peter and I were either lovers or confidants. Either we were sleeping together or we were licking each other’s wounds. Which one of these variants did he prefer? Which one was more difficult to bear? Which did he fear more?

  I kept quiet. My hands were shaking, but I happened to be busy in the kitchen, preparing supper. The stirring of food on the stove and the chopping of onions and carrots justified my long silence. I avoided his eyes, his questions. I intentionally delayed my answers. I was torturing him.

  I pretended to change the subject, asking him to bring me some canned tomatoes from the pantry. Adam obliged and was silent for a few minutes. I put his snack on the table and carried on with the supper preparations.

  Sara was in the living room with her dolls. This was the difference: when Adam came home he dropped his bags and went in to play with her, to kiss her, to throw her in the air. During the day, he missed his daughter physically. This is what he once told me.

  This time, he just kissed her and sent her off to play with her toys while he had his snack. He wanted to be alone with me to assuage his doubts.

  He was swallowing pieces of salami and cheese with great difficulty. I served him a beer, and he was grateful. He pushed his plate away, barely eaten, and put his elbows on the table. He was focusing on the bottle. By the time he’d finished it, he asked me if Peter was well. I answered that he suspected that Lara was cheating on him with one of their friends.

  He hesitated for a long time before asking me this question:

  “And what do you think?”

  “Anything is possible,” I said. “But I think it’s pathetic.”

  He stood up, saying that he was going to take a shower and go to bed, that he did not feel well. When he had gone, I went to comfort Sara, for in her own way, she too felt this was not a regular day for us.

  I finished my supper and gave Sara her bath. Adam had come back to the living room. I let
him sleep or rest without questioning him. I tried as much as possible to keep my own normality, even though I was not sure there was any normality, where I was living.

  The next day, Peter called me at work to tell me when he could leave the university. I told him I had an important meeting with the principal and the staff, and it would be impossible for me to join him. He insisted. He said he was ready to take a day off and find a substitute to teach his class, if this was all right with me. He had to see me. He just couldn’t go home without soothing his grief.

  I told him it was impossible for us to go on like this, with secret meetings and vodka in the middle of the day. Nothing would ever change what we had learned. It was time for him to decide whether to forgive.

  As for me, I was ready to give Adam a second chance.