staying with your wife until you are parted by death, just as the Scriptures instruct.”
“Yes.”
“Or unless she leaves you.”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“You are one flesh, Talcott, you and your wife. That is Christian marriage.”
“I know.”
“So perhaps it is time you found it in your heart to forgive her.”
“Forgive her for…”
“For her transgressions against you, Talcott. Real or imagined.”
An unexpected shot. And he is grinning as he fires it. “What do you… when you say imagined, are you implying that I… uh.. .”
He folds his plump hands in his lap and swivels his chair, this way, that way. “Talcott, you came to me in the summer and said your wife was having an affair with a coworker. But, as far as I can tell, you have no actual evidence.”
“Not evidence that would stand up in a court of law, but… well… a husband just knows these things…”
“Talcott, Talcott. Listen. You have told me she often works late. You have told me she often is not at her desk when you call, sometimes for hours. She goes out of town a lot with her boss, and she seems to have lots of meetings with him when they travel. Why is it impossible, Talcott, that she is simply a hardworking lawyer, devoted to her job and trusted by her boss? If a man worked the same hours at the same firm and did the same things, would you, Talcott, assume that he was having an affair with the boss?”
I hate being hemmed in this way, but Dr. Young is an expert. “You’re forgetting those furtive telephone calls…”
“No, Talcott, I have not forgotten. You say you will be eating dinner or lying in bed and the phone will ring and your wife will answer it and she will say, ‘Sorry, Jerry, I can’t talk now.’ And when you ask her what that was all about, she will say something like, ‘Oh, I just didn’t want to interrupt our time together.’”
“Exactly.”
“One interpretation is that she and Jerry-or whoever was really on the other end of the line-are, indeed, engaging in an adulterous relationship. Another, however, is that she is simply telling you the truth. She does not want to ruin what precious time she has with you and your boy by getting into an extended telephone conversation.”
I shake my head, certain it cannot be this simple, yet suddenly assailed by doubts. “I… you would have to know Kimmer. The kind of person she is. She’s totally devoted to her work. She wouldn’t hesitate to interrupt our time at home for a business call.”
“Talcott, Talcott.” Smiling in that avuncular way of his. “Perhaps your wife senses in your marriage the same strains as you do. Perhaps she thinks she is partly to blame, the way she works. Perhaps she is trying, in her own way, to fix it.”
“I don’t know…”
“And there is the point, Talcott.” Pouncing like an experienced litigator. “There is my very point. You don’t know!” Excited now, he leans across the desk, no easy feat for a man of his bulk. “You don’t know for sure she is running around with her boss. You don’t know for sure if she has had any extramarital affair. Except the one, of course.”
“Which one?”
“A little over a decade ago, Talcott, in Washington, D.C. When she was married to Andre. I mean the affair she had with you.”
I blink. This shot hit me, as it was supposed to do. They say that Dr. Young boxed when he was in the Army, back in the fifties, and I can believe it, for he has the boxer’s mind, the ability to weave and jab and jab and weave until, finally, he lands a straight right.
“I… I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe you are just assuming that your wife will do to you with someone else what the two of you did to her first husband.”
Another blow lands! I reel into the ropes, memories tumbling through my mind at a dizzying pace. Kimmer and I dated during our first year in law school, and then she broke up with me over the summer because she found one of our classmates more interesting. We dated during our third year in law school, but she broke up with me three months before graduation, again for another student, although not the same one. In Washington, she spent two years dating me along with two other men, and then she pared the number to two, of which I was not one. A year later, she married one of the finalists, Andre Conway, formerly Artis, a production assistant at a television station, with dreams of becoming a big documentary filmmaker. By then, I, too, had moved on. My new girlfriend, Melody Merriman, a journalist and member of the darker nation, expected to marry me. I suppose I expected to marry her. Then, a little more than a year into her marriage, Kimmer began a torrid extramarital affair… with me. Kimmer left Artis-Andre, I left Melody, scandal ensued, and when Stuart Land called a few months later to ask if I was interested in teaching yet, I decided to leave a law practice I loved in a city I hated. My father was delighted, but I was never sure I wanted to be a professor: I probably fled to Elm Harbor as much to escape the Gold Coast gossip mills as because of my desire for the academic life. But I also had the hope that Kimmer would follow me, demonstrating through this affirmative act on her part a commitment to our future.
To my astonishment, she came. To my astonishment, we married. Kimmer put off starting a family until she feared her biological clock might just stop ticking altogether. Then God gifted us with Bentley.
And, in what is about to be nine years of marriage, I have hardly given a thought to what Kimmer and I… did, that was the word Dr. Young used… what we did to Andre Conway. Or, for that matter, what I did to Melody Merriman, which I am sure Dr. Young will bring up momentarily.
I continue with difficulty. “So-you’re suggesting that I… I’m just projecting…”
Dr. Young holds up a hand. “Talcott, listen to me. Listen carefully. Have you asked the Lord to forgive you and your wife for the wrong you did your wife’s first husband?”
I nod slowly, admitting the truth. “Yes. Many times.” I close my eyes briefly. The heating vent gives off a brief, angry whine. “But, to be honest with you, I don’t know if I… if I’ve forgiven myself.”
Morris Young is too old a hand to be sidetracked by a therapeutic confession. “We can certainly work on that, Talcott. But at the moment, I am more interested in whether you can forgive your wife.”
“For these… imagined transgressions?”
He shakes his heavy head. The telephone on his desk begins to bray, but he ignores it. “For what she did to her first husband.”
I open my mouth, close it again, then try once more. “You think I’m mad at Kimmer for… for cheating on Andre with me?”
“Mad? I wouldn’t know. I do wonder, though, if you have somehow. .. frozen her in that moment of time. The only Kimberly you are able to perceive is, not to put too fine a point on it, the adulteress.” The phone has stopped ringing. “In your eyes, she is stuck in a particular pattern of behavior. But the Christian life is a life of constant growth. Perhaps you need to give her the chance to show she has grown.”
“You think she’s changed that much?”
“Have you ever cheated on your wife?”
“No! You know I haven’t.”
“So you have changed, Talcott. Don’t you see? And perhaps your wife is as capable of change as you are. Maybe not at the same rate. But the same capacity.”
I am getting the message. Slowly, but I am getting it. “You think I… look down my nose at her?”
“I think, Talcott, that sometimes your marital fidelity is a wall between you. Perhaps you are right and she has been unfaithful. Very well, how have you responded? Perhaps you have used your own virtue to keep your wife at bay. Remember, Talcott, that her sins are only different from yours-not necessarily worse. And that you promised to love her for better or worse.” He pauses to allow this to sink in. “Now, understand me. I am not exonerating your wife. She may indeed be engaging in an extramarital relationship with Mr. Nathanson. Or with someone else. But, Talcott, right now, what matters is your own conduct. If your wife is straying, the time will come when it is appropriate to deal with her behavior. For the moment, however, I wish to ask of you a simple favor: that you will, until the next time we meet, try to treat Kimberly as you would want to be treated. You do remember the Golden
