sad to face a cavernous house.
When Arnie came home that weekend, we sat in our matching TV chairs with a clean ashtray and fresh packs of Marlboros at our side, and I told him we needed to talk. He leaned back and lit a cigarette, classic ad-man style. “What’s up?”
My mouth was dry. “Arnie,” I said, “you might have noticed I’ve been more distant from you than usual.”
He shrugged. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.
“I’ve been having an affair.”
“Who?” he said, without taking his eyes off me.
“Steven.”
He jumped up and practically ran to our guest bathroom, slamming the door shut before vomiting up the news into the black commode. I stayed in my chair, squirming, wondering what could possibly happen next. I had no idea what I wanted. I just knew I couldn’t go on with this secret any longer. When Arnie came back, he sat down, lit another cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “I’ve had an affair myself.”
“You had an affair?”
“A photo rep at work. We even snuck into the house one night when you were away.”
I was horrified, amazed, and impressed all at once. “Did the neighbors see you?”
He shook his head. “She stayed on the floor of the car until we got into the garage.”
We howled with laughter at that and rolled a joint, smoking and laughing and sharing our secrets. This was the friend I’d needed. I felt genuinely happy for Arnie, happy our affairs had brought us so much joy. And I was freed from guilt, which was a huge relief. But we knew we needed something to help our marriage if we were going to stay together and personally thrive.
That’s when Dr. Thelma came into our lives.
We started seeing Dr. Thelma, first separately and then together. Dr. Thelma was a marriage and family psychotherapist in White Plains. At her suggestion I joined one of her therapy groups, and it was there I had my first awakening. Dr. Thelma asked each woman in the group to ask the woman beside her to identify herself. Easy. The woman seated to my left faced me. “Who are you?” she asked, her brown eyes looking boldly into mine. “I’m Kern,” I smiled, using my childhood nickname to introduce myself. She glanced at Dr. Thelma, who nodded for her to go on. She looked at me again and repeated it: “Who are you?” “I’m Arnie’s wife,” I said, still smiling. She came back a third time. “Who are you?” I was starting to squirm. What was this game anyway? “I’m Robin’s mother,” I said, knowing that my success with answers was over. She asked yet another time. “Who are you?” At that point I shattered, dissolving into tears. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”
I quit Dr. Thelma after that meeting. I was tired of her tough-love ways of banging at the locked doors of me. This was my second bad experience with psychotherapy—a cold, clinical Freudian psychiatrist I’d seen when Arnie and I were first married wouldn’t stop trying to get me to say “penis” and was fascinated by what I’ve always called “rocking my legs.” Robin was about to enter kindergarten, giving me even more time to wonder what I was doing with my life, but I enrolled in some classes at Westchester Community College. I signed up for a yoga class and jewelry-making and devoted myself to flirting with my hippie jewelry teacher. These were comfortable protections, easy distractions. On Arnie’s weekends home he continued to devote himself to his daughter with the kind of adoration I wanted from him. I felt invisible to them except when it came to fulfilling their needs for food and comfort.
At Christmas that year we visited Johnny and his new wife, Cherrie, in Colorado. It was 1972, and Cherrie was pregnant with their first child. I was excited for Johnny. We were each other’s lifeline to family, and he and Arnie were like brothers. Johnny had visited us in New York a few times when he was on leave from the army and, later, when he was in college. We confided in each other about our confusion and sadness about our mother, who had long suffered from mental illness, and about Dad and his wives and our stepsisters, and how we felt about what they expected of us. The truth was always easy to share with Johnny. I was the older sister, and in some ways, I suppose, a replacement for the lost parts of our mom.
After we visited Johnny and Cherrie that Christmas, on the way home, we stopped in Chicago for a friend’s New Year’s Eve party. There, I met a man who would instantly shake up my world and lead me to this day, driving west to start a new life.
“This is my brother Eddie,” our friend Lee had said, and Eddie and I shook hands.
Eddie returned my smile with all the information I needed.
I endured the evening, my thoughts a zillion miles away as I sat close to Arnie while he made everyone laugh. Eddie hugged me goodnight in the wee hours of the morning, his eyes gazing longingly into mine. He whispered, “I’m meeting a friend in April to sail from England to Spain in his forty-five-foot ketch. There’s plenty of room for you, Kern. Come with me!”
All the way home and for weeks after that, all I could think about was Eddie’s invitation. We talked often by phone after I put Robin to bed when Arnie was away at his studio in Manhattan, and I trembled uncontrollably as we spoke, which worried me. Why was I so affected by this man? I was a responsible mom, a loving wife. Eddie was single with little to tie him down besides an apartment in Chicago he’d give up to go to Europe. I had to join him. I had to know life wasn’t passing me by. I had to grab this brass ring. The adrenalin was intoxicating.
One Saturday night after Arnie had read Robin her bedtime story and turned out her light, I joined him on the couch. I had already decided to tell him as plainly as I could that I’d been invited to go on a sailing trip with Eddie and his friend.
“I need to go on this adventure, Arnie.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I need a break for a while. And I need a break from mothering for a while, too.”
Arnie frowned. “Are you seeing someone?”
I told him I wanted to sail from England to Spain with Eddie. I would leave in early March and return in early July. “I want to taste parts of life I have missed before it’s too late, Arnie. Can you understand that?”
“And who is Eddie?”
I reminded him.
Arnie nodded, probably remembering my silence on the long drive back to New York after that New Year’s Eve, my fading interest in serving him his favorite dinners on his weekends home. He sighed a long sigh. “Are you in love with this guy?”
“I don’t know, Arnie, but something big is happening. I haven’t stopped thinking about him since we met. This is the chance of a lifetime to learn more about myself, an opportunity I may never have again.” Eddie and I planned to travel through England, Wales, and Scotland, then sail from southern England to the northern coast of Spain before I returned home.
“You’ve been talking to this guy, making plans?” Arnie was surprised, but curious. “What about Robin Lee? What about us?”
“I suppose you could call it a leave of absence,” I said. “We can look at it all when I’m home in three months.”
I reminded him that I’d gotten engaged in my senior year of high school and had married him just after my eighteenth birthday, and he surprised me then, with the greatest possible show of true love. “Do what you need to do, Kernie. I may be your husband, but I’m also your friend.” I flung my arms around his neck and held him close, loving him more in that moment than ever before.
After that, though, the tension between us was thick. We slept on the farthest edges of our king-sized bed, and every day I had to steel myself against what I would miss, or I may never have gone. I couldn’t bear thinking of Robin wondering why I wasn’t there to send her off to school in the mornings after brushing out her long, tangled hair. Why I couldn’t cook dinner for her, or read to her, or talk to her about her friends in preschool. To distract myself, I spent hours on the phone with Eddie,