Chapter Seventeen
TERESA - JOHNSTON, NY
Ronnie leaned against the kitchen counter, looking around and exhaling cigarette smoke, which Teresa tried not to breathe in.
Teresa and Frank had moved to a new rental home a few weeks before, in the town of Johnston, and Ronnie was visiting for the first time.
As the crow flew, Johnston was only about ten miles from New Rochelle, yet it felt worlds away, with pretty lawns, garages left wide open, and bicycles abandoned on the grass with no chance of being stolen.
“Gorgeous place. I love it,” Ronnie said.
One of Frank’s coworkers from the Cadillac dealership had moved his family to Johnston a year earlier and raved about the beautiful town and superior school system.
Teresa and Frank had longed to expand beyond their cramped attic apartment.
When Frank’s coworker put them in touch with a landlord with a duplex home they could afford to rent on Frank’s salary, they’d jumped at the chance.
Teresa nodded at Ronnie halfheartedly. To leave New Rochelle was both a relief and a disappointment.
The relief lay in knowing it would separate Frank from his playmates.
Teresa, though, was being torn from the people and places that provided her with a sense of comfort.
She sighed and said a silent prayer that the move to Johnston would help change things back to normal.
Help change Frank. But she had a feeling that what she was praying for amounted to a miracle. And she no longer believed in miracles.
Ronnie narrowed her eyes at Teresa. “Okay, enough with the house tour, sweetie. Spill the beans. What’s going on?”
Teresa went over to the kitchen table, motioning for Ronnie to sit down. “I feel...” She searched for a word or phrase that could adequately describe the mixed emotions churning inside her. She landed on the closest one she could think of. “Stuck.”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Teresa.
You should leave him. There's no way he'd get the kids.
He's hardly home, and you've always been the hands-on parent.
Besides, it's almost the 1980s. No judge is going to take kids from their mother unless she's completely unfit, which you, my dear, are not.”
Teresa stared out the kitchen window at their new backyard, wondering why her husband wanted so badly to lead a separate life.
She felt like an afterthought. If he couldn't make their family the center of his life, then what she really needed was to be left in peace.
It was this anguish of living with a ghost—the uncertainty, the fear of the unknown, the wondering—that was really driving her crazy.
But being left in peace meant being alone. A divorcée. For that, she needed money of her own, more money than anyone in her extended family could afford to give her even if she asked, which she wouldn’t. So her only choice for the moment was to stay.
“I can't afford to leave him,” Teresa said, but that wasn’t the entire truth. “I don't want to leave him. I want him to quit being out so much and come home and be with his family.”
“You know that won’t happen if he’s doing what we think he is,” Ronnie replied, pouting her lips and tilting her head down.
Doing what we think he is. Ronnie’s comment made Teresa recall her exchange with Frank this past weekend. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee, when Frank walked in, dressed for the boat. It was Sunday morning, and he didn’t have to work at the boat club.
“Oh, I thought you were going to stay home today. The kids want to go to the mall for lunch, and then I told them we’d take them to the movies. It’ll be a great way to escape the heat.”
“Sorry. I promised Henry I would take him out on the boat to the sand dunes of Port Jefferson. He’s never been all the way out there. I've been promising to do that for a while now, and I knew you wouldn’t want to take such a long trip on the water.”
Henry again. Teresa sighed.
“Besides,” Frank said, “you know it's hard for me to stay away from the boat all weekend.”
Stay away from the boat—or Henry?
He grabbed his keys, kissed her on the cheek, and headed out the door. She could smell his cologne and, as he walked away, noticed a spring to his step. He’s happy while I’m sitting here, miserable.
The old version of Frank was right there.
Teresa could clearly see him. His flirtatious banter.
His sexy smile. He’d been just like that with her in the early years.
And she’d been watching him direct that same behavior to Henry for some time now.
How obvious he was. Doesn’t he realize I can see right through him?
Thinking of Frank going out with Henry conjured up pictures in her mind of them doing things she didn’t even want to imagine. She tried to bury the images, but they kept rising like bile—images of Frank being a homosexual. It twisted her up in knots.
How odd that she knew there were lesbian women, and that didn't bother her that much. She had one standard for women and a different one for men. Or maybe it wasn't different for all men. Maybe her standard was just different for the one man who was hers.
Teresa acknowledged she’d been uncurious about others’ sexual preferences and habits.
In fact, it amazed her to realize she’d just assumed most people—maybe all people—were interested in the opposite sex.
How limiting and closed-minded. She wondered if sexual attraction was variable for some people and inflexible for others—if it was like a continuum.
Maybe some people were one hundred percent heterosexual while others might be less, and most people didn’t know exactly where they fell on the continuum.
Of course, because she was one hundred percent one way, she found it impossible to imagine there was a continuum at all, because she’d always believed everyone was exactly the same as her.
She’d grown up thinking that. She’d been taught that.
It was like an unwritten rule she took for granted.
And now Teresa realized the rules had changed and what she’d believed to be the absolute truth all along might not be.
She wanted to turn back time and unlearn everything she’d learned in the last few years.
What do I do? Sure, she’d confided in Ronnie, whose husband had cheated but with a woman, not a man.
And the gender mattered, adding a layer of shame, the sense of something taboo.
Even though she wasn’t the one who was cheating, she felt as if by staying with Frank, she was guilty by extension, an accomplice to his socially unacceptable lifestyle.
Then she realized there was indeed one person she could talk to who was in the same boat as her—Henry’s wife, Joanie.
Teresa wondered why she hadn’t thought of that earlier.
Maybe deep down, she’d been avoiding talking to Joanie.
The woman intimidated her. Joanie was in a different league.
Teresa had ignored that when they interacted early on, as couples, at the boat club—she’d been able to fool herself that they were somewhat on equal footing.
But that wasn’t true. Joanie was involved in all sorts of community events, and she and Henry had help with their home and their kids.
Teresa had felt inferior to Joanie. But that didn’t matter now.
What mattered was that when it came to their husbands and what might be going on between them—an affair—Joanie and Teresa, sadly, might indeed be on similar terms. And it was time to get some genuine answers.
She swallowed hard, anxious just thinking about it, not sure she could summon the nerve to approach her about this. What does Joanie actually know? Will Frank be livid if he finds out? Teresa decided she needed to chance it.
Before she lost her nerve, Teresa called Joanie to make a date to meet up. She didn’t tell her what it was about, and fortunately, Joanie didn’t ask. When Joanie accepted, Teresa felt sick to her stomach but also determined to see this idea through.
The following week, while the kids were at school, Teresa met Joanie after lunch at a little trattoria off the thruway in Yonkers.
Teresa realized she’d never met Joanie without Frank and Henry being with them.
If Joanie was suspicious, she said nothing.
She was already sitting at a booth, a martini in front of her, when Teresa arrived.
She stood and greeted Teresa, and they briefly hugged.
Joanie styled her long blond hair in a high ponytail, which gave her face a tightly pulled effect.
Teresa had always thought Joanie resembled Barbara Eden, the actress from the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
The server came over, and Teresa ordered her signature nonalcoholic drink that looked good next to people drinking cocktails—cranberry juice with seltzer and a twist of lime.
When the server left, Teresa inhaled a deep breath and jumped right in, saying the lines she’d rehearsed in the car on the way over.
“I believe your husband and my husband have a very special type of friendship.” Teresa paused and then kept going before she lost her nerve. “They’re... lovers.”
Joanie took a long sip of her martini, a small frown turning down the corners of her mouth. She said nothing. Teresa couldn’t tell if she was in shock or just not reacting.
“Wow. I’ve never said that out loud,” Teresa said.
Joanie didn’t take her eyes off Teresa while swirling her drink around with her finger. “Yes, I know. Henry and I have talked about it. I’ve known for a while. Frank is not... the first.”
“Oh,” said Teresa, feeling flushed. She clenched and unclenched her fists. She hadn’t expected this. “I didn’t know you knew. I’ve been so consumed by what this means for Frank, for our family...”