unconscious decision: you decided you'd be better off staying with him even though you knew he'd been out fucking around on you than you would be without him, as long as he didn't do it again. That was what you said to him; he'd hurt you but you forgave him and were going to believe he wouldn't do it again. And on the strength of that you were giving him another chance.
'Those weren't the words you used, because you didn't want to hear yourself saying them. But that was what the words you did say meant, and so that was what he heard. And that was how the two of you, by working very well and carefully together, got through a major crisis.
Teamwork. If it'd been handled any differently with any less delicacy; with brutal honesty, say it would probably have meant the end of your marriage. The perfect, picture-book couple, working together to resolve the crisis but at the same time making absolutely sure neither one of you had to come to grips with what'd caused it; take a good hard look at how damage'd been done. That way you could pretend there hadn't been a crisis, or any damage. You could tell yourself your marriage was rock-solid; everything still A-okay. And he could tell himself you'd given him permission to fool around, if he'd only be discreet.
'So,' Diane said, 'McGovern, you said? That would've been ten years ago. Stacy's long gone, but things haven't changed. Since then there've been other times when you've told me other, but similar, stories. Not really that many, but I've never thought that was because there weren't many to tell you just preferred to keep them to yourself; that way they wouldn't seem so real.'
'Oh, gee, yeah, I guess,' Mercy said, shaking her head. 'Sometimes it's been pretty hard.'
'Hey,' Diane said, 'you two did a very impressive job that night, shadow-boxing with each other. Textbook example of how two people whose marriage is in deep trouble can keep it together if they both really want to, provided they're willing to compromise and then both work really hard. You both wanted to, had a lot to lose. You, the marriage, and Dan his political career. So you reached a modus vi vendi a way to live with each other.'
Mercy held the stem of her marguerita glass between the tips of the fingers of both hands and impassively met Diane's gaze with dry eyes.
'Happy?' Diane said.
Mercy snickered. 'No,' she said, drawing it out. Then she said: 'That surprise you?'
'Yeah, sort of,' Diane said, 'if you were happy living this way, I'd say the accommodation you and Dan arranged was a very good one.
Excellent, in fact. After all, the truce's held. It's worked for eight fairly peaceful years. You could even call them 'contented.'
You've gotten along without any major blow-outs, far as I know. Your kids've turned out well; they seem to be in good shape. Peaceful two-parent families're good for small persons; the two of you're good parents.
'Dan's been successful. He doesn't drink any more than most of the men his age that I know, including my own dear husband. That's far too much, of course, but this isn't a perfect world. He doesn't gamble and he doesn't hit you. You may not think you still look as good as you did in your twenties, and you're probably right about that so, say you now only look like about nine-hundred-thousand bucks. That still ain't chopped liver, dearie. You've got a lovely new home. You're making good progress toward an interesting career of your own.
'This's not a bad life that you two've made, not a bad little life at all. You're what, forty-two? And he's forty- six? You've been married about twenty years? Somebody did something right. Many people would look at what you and Dan have and say it looks pretty damned good.
Dan's habitual and persistent infidelity's just about the only flaw in it, at least that I can see. If he did decide now that he wanted to change, for whatever reason some philandering close friend of his were to die of AIDS and throw a big scare into him he probably couldn't do it. He's priapic. By now he most likely can't help it.'
Mercy sighed.
'It isn't an uncommon problem, Marcy,' Diane said. 'Several of the Kennedy men seem to've suffered from it. Lots of marriages that have it survive forever, and I don't mean just royalty, either. Far more couples than most people think stay together despite incorrigible infidelity or at least until one of the spouses dies, as close to forever as we get. If you're able to be happy even though it means you'll always have to overlook his one shortcoming — maybe that isn't the right word my advice would be: Leave it alone.
'But if you were happy, or could convince yourself you were, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Or any of the others we've had about essentially the same subject through the years. So then, if all of that means that you haven't been happy, just unhappily sort of inert; that you're not happy now and don't really see much chance you ever will be, as long as you stay with him, for the rest of this one life you have left, then I would say: 'It's over; it's dead and ain't gonna get better pronounce it. Call it quits. Kick him out.'
Then the Sunday night dinners suddenly became very important to Hilliard, taking on an aspect of poignant urgency.
Merrion was compassionate. He had watched a number of people whom he knew reasonably well as they stumbled and staggered emotionally and mentally through divorces, and he was satisfied that the days and nights that they exhausted invariably brought demoralizing anguish under the best of circumstances. 'But yours is going to be worsen the usual mean pissing contest, and God knows those're bad enough. This one I'm braced for.'
'Oh, she's going to crucify me,' Hilliard said, sharing a six-pack of Heinekens one night in the office on High Street.
'I reckon she'll try to,' Merrion said.
'And you don't blame her,' Hilliard said.
Merrion had prepared for that question. 'Danny,' he said, 'I didn't say anything, you start having the one-night stands while you're staying in Boston. I think it was prolly quite a while before I begin to know about them. Mercy knew as much as I did, I think, and what I knew was nothin'. You were bein' very careful then.
'But then around me this's just around me; I don't think you've gone completely out of your mind so that you've started tippin' off Mercy it seems like you maybe start getting' a little careless. Droppin' a few hints here and there; sort of letting things slip out. I was stunned.
It was so outta character for you. Adultery wasn't like you, Dan.
'Cheating? On his wife? Danny Hilliard doesn't cheat, not on anybody.
He doesn't break his word. Dan Hilliard told you something? It's gold; you can take it to the bank.' I think that's how you got away with it so long. People who'd known you a long time, including me and Mercy, we never dreamed you'd ever do a thing like that to her. We weren't looking for the signs and so we didn't see them.
'So you start givin' clues. I do my best to ignore them. If you're getting laid in Boston, well, I didn't think it was the best idea you ever had maybe get yourself a little herpes you then bring home to the bride; might be tough, explain that but then I'm not your chaperone, tell you to keep your pants zipped. You didn't hire me for that. I'm your, what, 'close advisor'?' ''Confidante,' Hilliard said. 'That's what they call you. They think I confide in you. We've heard the chimes at midnight. Tell you what it is I've got on my mind; ask you what you think I should do.'
'Okay,' Merrion said, 'so I'm your 'confidante' then. 'Friend' would've been what I would've said, somebody asked me what I was, I was trynah be anyway, but 'confidante' 's okay. Lemme see if I got this straight now: this would then mean that when you started dropping the hints you'd been fucking your brains out and I mean that here, literally you were meaning to do it. You weren't being careless at all: You were confiding in me that you were getting a lot of out-of-town pussy while you're far from your happy home, and asking me for my advice.
'Geez, I'm really sorry, Dan; I blew it. Really let you down; didn't realize that's what you wanted. If I had've, my advice would've been I didn't think it was very damned smart, fucking around on the side. In fact I thought it was fucking stupid, that is what I thought it was.
'Then I would've told you what you should've already known: 'Seeing how I'm getting laid now and then, not as often's I'd like, but not bad, I know I'm not being a good example for you; but I'm not trying to be one. Being a good example's never been part of my job. If it had been, I wouldn't've taken it.
''And furthermore,' I now see I should've said when what you were after was advice about extra-curricular fucking, but I was too stupid to see it I should've reminded you of something that I would've thought you already knew, without me reminding you; I should've said: 'I am not married. This is a very important distinction when what we're talking about's getting laid. I know there're people, still lots of people, who don't approve of getting laid unless the person who's in bed with you's your wife. Or if you're a woman, your husband. But nobody seems to think you should be punished for it if she isn't unless she's someone else's wife, or you've also got a wife. Then they think you should be at very least admonished heavily, like we sometimes say in the court. Some would even go so far as to say you should be booted out on your lying ass and see how you like that.' And as of course we — and the
