In that moment, just hearing Charlie say he had broken up with Zulya wasn’t enough for me. As Anabelle suggested in her comments on my last post, I couldn’t trust him, at least not yet. I needed proof. And an apology.

As I put the phone back in my handbag, I finally took in the picture I’d been staring at. Sure enough, it was a photo of the famous four-person wedding: Dad, Mom, Laura and Leif stood on their dais, joyful but self-conscious. Leif is dressed incongruously in a tuxedo, Dad in a jacket and tie, Mom in a business suit and Laura in a green scoop-necked dress. I imagined that anyone who looked at this picture could tell, by the way their hands are linked, that these are more than friends.

As I absorbed the photograph, my breath shortened. Read more »

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When Laura said she had more photos of the group marriage, I was surprised by the eagerness in my voice. “Can I see them?” Read more »

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Ivor’s ex-wife, Julia, lives in a brown-shingled house in the Oakland hills, tucked in a grove of live oaks and so obscured by camellias and rhododendrons you can barely make out the door. Ivor pulled the Explorer to a slow halt and sat idling for a moment as though having second thoughts before he cut the engine. He didn’t turn to face his kids and for a while there was silence in the truck. Read more »

Were our ancestors polyamorous? That is, did they have multiple spouses? Influential biologists going back to Darwin think we descended from small bands of people whose sexuality was not confined to a single partner. Read more »

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Thanks for the comments about where I should go. I liked Annie’s idea. Apparently this place where Leif lives has a kind of open-door policy for anyone willing to put in the effort of finding it, somewhere in the North Carolina mountains. Read more »

Without asking me the kids had found the VCR in the living and were watching an old Bill Nye the Science Guy video, about the only video Ivor had in the house. I turned it off and knelt in front of them where they sat on the sofa. Read more »

Dear Adrienne,

Will you forgive me?

I just discovered this website with the story of everything you have gone through in recent months. It took me some time to believe it was you who was writing under this assumed name. I read it with growing shame.

When we first met, I saw myself reflected. Everything I wasn’t, you were: beautiful, light, a healer of hearts. For years I was completed in you. Then one day I woke up to realize you weren’t there anymore.

Somewhere in the diapers and the takeout cartons, we had lost each other’s pulse. I still caught glimpses sometimes of your thoughts as you pulled nylons on in the morning, or I heard your whisper before we said goodnight.

I tried in my clumsy way to get through to you, to find time for us to be alone together. But there was always an appointment at the hospital, a patient, a fundraiser, a deadline that came first. We had become partners in the business of affording good schools, colleagues in putting pizza on the table, coworkers in paying the mortgage, no longer together in nourishing each other.

I got up from our bed one night and stumbled to our computer where a few taps took me out across the globe. There were thousands of women there. And their faces turned to me. When I spoke, Zulya answered. She has nothing on you, Adrienne. Not your poise, not your dedication, not your energy, your power to do good. But she was willing to entertain a conversation, and I needed that all these days and evenings alone.

The night you came to Zulya’s apartment was meant to be our last. I only went there to break up with her, face to face. I should thank you for bringing the children, because I saw in their expressions what I was doing wrong. I realized how much I need them, how much they need us to be together.

But it’s not only them. In these days since you’ve been gone, I’ve realized how much I depend on you. Every day you get up knowing what needs to be done, for your patients, for our kids, for our life. If you didn’t always have the time for me I wanted, it was only because you were using it to save someone else’s life. I should never have held that against you.

I know I’ve said some things in my phone messages that I shouldn’t have said. I was desperate, lost. I know I have no right to expect your forgiveness. But if ever you find the generosity to talk to me again, I will be here waiting.

And I love you.

Charlie