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someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”
I told all this to Kathy at the time, and she suggested we make a pact. We swore never to lie to each other. Never pretend. Always be truthful.
“What happened?” I said. “What went wrong?”
Ruth hesitated before she spoke. What she said surprised me.
“I suspect you know the answer to that. If you would just admit it to yourself.”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t.”
I fell into indignant silence—yet I had a sudden image of Kathy writing all those emails, and how
passionate they were, how charged, as if she was getting high from writing them, from the clandestine nature of her relationship with this man. She enjoyed lying and sneaking around: it was like acting, but offstage.
“I think she’s bored,” I said eventually.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because she needs excitement. Drama. She always has. She’s been complaining—for a while, I
suppose—that we don’t have any fun anymore, that I’m always stressed, that I work too hard. We fought about it recently. She kept using the word fireworks.”
“Fireworks?”
“As in there aren’t any. Between us.”
“Ah. I see.” Ruth nodded. “We’ve talked about this before. Haven’t we?”
“About fireworks?”
“About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks—for drama and dysfunction. But
real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm—and constant. I imagine you do give Kathy love—in the true sense of the word. Whether or not she is capable of giving it back to you is another question.”
I stared at the box of tissues on the table in front of me. I didn’t like where Ruth was going. I tried to deflect her.
“There are faults on both sides. I lied to her too. About the weed.”
Ruth smiled sadly. “I don’t know if persistent sexual and emotional betrayal with another human being is on the same level as getting stoned every now and then. I think it points to a very different kind of individual—someone who is able to lie repeatedly and lie well, who can betray their partner without feeling any remorse—”
“You don’t know that.” I sounded as pathetic as I felt. “She might feel terrible.”
But even as I said that, I didn’t believe it.
Neither did Ruth. “I don’t think so. I think her behavior suggests she is quite damaged—lacking in
empathy and integrity and just plain kindness—all the qualities you brim with.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“It is true, Theo.” Ruth hesitated. “Don’t you think perhaps you’ve been here before?”
“With Kathy?”
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I mean with your parents. When you were younger. If
there’s a childhood dynamic here you might be replaying.”