My friend Cate has been the mistress of a married man for the last three and a half years. So far, Harry has managed to keep the whole thing a secret from his wife.
A few days ago, Harry’s elderly mother died. What this has meant for Cate is that Harry has not kept to their usual schedule: two or three times a week, he lets himself in to her condo at 6 a.m., and crawls into bed with her for 45 minutes or so; once or twice a week, they meet for lunch somewhere near where he works; sometimes, on Cate’s days off, they have a few hours for a romantic tryst before or after lunch, or are able to see a matinee together. In public, he’s always on the lookout for someone he knows, someone from his “other life.”
This week, she hasn’t heard from him, except for the occasional text message reading, “Hugs and Kisses.” Cate wonders how he’s coping with the loss of his only remaining parent. She speculates that he’s probably distracting himself by taking care of business, which is what he feels most comfortable doing: attending to details, getting the paperwork in order, coordinating with his siblings about funeral arrangements. He’s never been one for overt displays of emotion, but this must be a difficult time for him. Cate imagines what Harry might be doing and feeling, but she doesn’t really know.
She can’t be there with him, so she can’t be there for him. “The only thing I can do right now is give him his space,” she told me, wistfully.
Cate sometimes wonders what it would be like if something ever happened to Harry. Suppose he were in some kind of accident? She might never know what had happened to him. There would be no contact from him, and she’d start to worry. She’d do what she could to get in touch with him. Maybe, after a while, she’d get desperate and try to track him down at work. He wouldn’t be there. She’d go home and play the scenarios in her head: Harry in France or Buenos Aires, drinking a Scotch on the terrace of some expensive hotel, trying to forget her; Harry, pale and wan, wrapped in the white sheets of a hospital bed; Harry in a casket, surrounded by anemic lilies.
She knows this: she won’t be invited to his funeral.
It's the price she will pay for having been his secret.
Clandestine relationships have a certain allure. I know; I was once in one myself. When Scott and I first became lovers, he was engaged to Monique. I still remember the delight I took in our secret assignations, the deliciously delinquent feeling of sneaking around with him: meeting at the office late at night; checking into a cheap motel at dinnertime and checking out again at midnight; making love in the tall grass by a stream or, on a moonlit night, in the shadow of trees or the lee of a hill at the edge of a public park; or hurriedly fucking on the couch at his house, knowing that Monique’s commute home would take her half an hour, give or take five minutes, then covering up the evidence and composing ourselves to greet her calmly at the door. I remember watching Monique put down her briefcase, walk into the kitchen, and pirouette: “Scott,” she announced, “I’ve had quite the day. Pour me a glass of wine, will you?” She was wearing a gray suit with a tailored skirt. She exuded legitimacy. I felt as though I were standing outside, looking in through a window at the two of them, at their life together, where there was no place for me. It was a very strange feeling.
Monique knew that Scott and I were friends, so my existence as a person he cared about was, thankfully, not a secret. I was invited to their wedding – so, unlike Cate, I never had to worry that there might someday be a funeral I would never know about. But I did sometimes imagine myself standing there beside his dead body, struggling to keep in check a grief all out of proportion to what his family and friends would expect from “just a friend.”
There are consequences to living in two different worlds, inhabiting two different selves. There are consequences to maintaining the fictional boundary that keeps them apart, and there are consequences to allowing that boundary to collapse: it often creates one huge mess.
Travis, who had a brief affair with a married woman a long time ago, described the experience this way: “It was this very honest thing – the raw, naked truth of our passion for each other – surrounded by a big lie. I once went to a Christmas party at my lover’s house. Her husband was there. I was looking at him and thinking, He doesn’t know. It was surreal. Eventually, it was all just too much for me: playing dual roles, keeping secrets, worrying that he was going to find out – I couldn’t handle it anymore.” Travis ended up leaving town, not knowing how else to end the relationship before it blew up in his face.
I don’t judge Cate or Harry for the choices they’re making. From what I can tell, their relationship seems to be a good thing for both of them, at least so far. Perhaps Harry’s wife won’t ever wake from her dream of ignorant bliss; perhaps the strain of compartmentalization won’t ever take too great a toll on Harry’s health; perhaps the shame of being the invisible girlfriend won’t ever make Cate lose her self-respect.
For myself, though, I have sworn never again to be someone’s dirty little secret.
