I am in a safe place now. I’ll explain later how I got here. But for now, let me try to catch you up on the madness of my recent life.<\/p>\n
Shortly after I got Zulya’s address, I went to Boston for a business meeting. I’d told Charlie I was spending two nights there, but I found myself unable to focus and I ended up heading back the next day. As the train clacked back to New York, I refrained from calling to tell him about my change in plans. I made up all sorts of reasons — I didn’t want to disturb him. My cell phone was low on minutes. I might stop for food and couldn’t give a reliable ETA. Of course none of them was the real reason. But why should I have to make excuses to him? Wasn\u2019t he the one who had to account for his behavior?<\/p>\n
It was almost eleven when I opened the door to my apartment. The TV was on in the living room and in its glow, Lucia stirred from the bed she\u2019d made on our couch. \u201cOh, Adrienne. I fell asleep!\u201d She sat up, rubbing the side of her head. \u201cYour meeting is cancelled?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to come back for something. Where\u2019s Charlie?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me to stay. Some customer needs him right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat time is he coming back?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t know. Maybe not today.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was it then. The room began to pulsate.<\/p>\n
Lucia stood up and switched on a floor lamp by the couch. \u201cYou are not well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m fine.\u201d Suddenly I felt the weight of my laptop and overnight bag on my shoulders. I let them drop.<\/p>\n
\u201cSit down.\u201d Lucia came to me and put her hand on my cheek. \u201cI\u2019ll make you some soup.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was still clucking and fussing as I pushed her out the door.<\/p>\n
And hardly ten minutes passed before I realized my error. In my mind\u2019s eye, I\u2019d seen myself bursting in on Charlie and Zulya half-naked in my bed or hers. But of course that made no sense. Now that Lucia was gone, I couldn\u2019t leave the kids. The evening would pass, Charlie would come home at whatever time he came home, with whatever excuse he chose to make up, and I would have no way to prove he was lying.<\/p>\n
Nothing about our unbearable life would have changed.<\/p>\n
I changed into my pajamas and stretched out in bed. But I couldn\u2019t sleep, glancing every ten minutes at the red digits on Charlie\u2019s nightstand clock. Since Charlie was telling me I had nothing to worry about, I had been trying to live that way. And to the people who knew us, our lives probably looked no different. Only we knew how our eyes no longer found each other, how we no longer read oddments to each other from the Sunday Times<\/em>. How I had started sniffing Charlie\u2019s dirty shirts and underwear for Zulya\u2019s spoor. Once, I\u2019d plucked an unfamiliar hair from the sink and brought it into the hospital to actually examine under a microscope.<\/p>\n The decision<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe if I\u2019d been able to talk to someone about all this, I would have settled on a healthier course of action. But my best friends from growing up and from college had dispersed to places like Boston and St. Paul. And what I needed to talk about wasn\u2019t easy to broach long distance. It was even harder to bring up over coffee at work, on the treadmill at the gym, at the park on a kid\u2019s play date. It was always Charlie I turned to when something was gnawing at me, Charlie who heard me out, who helped me understand my feelings, who gave me my bearings in the human landscape.<\/p>\n I kept looking at the clock. Charlie didn\u2019t come home and he didn\u2019t come home and I finally after midnight, I began to lose my mind. That is the only way I could explain to myself afterward what I did to my children that night. And there\u2019s probably no other way to describe it, the sweating frenzy that I worked myself into, the state in which I was no longer thinking and planning but simply acting. I sleepwalked, my consciousness surfacing only sporadically to register scenes that made no sense: Here I was grinding coffee beans, enough for about six people \u2013\u00a0 next I had the computer on in the vestibule and I was searching for something in Charlie\u2019s Hotmail — then I was playing “Mi tradi<\/em>” from Don Giovanni on the stereo at a volume that could have woken up the whole building \u2013 then I was getting dressed, all in black.<\/p>\n When I returned to awareness, I was in Chloe\u2019s room. And I had made up my mind. Chloe lay in the yoga position called \u201cpose of a child\u201d: on her stomach with her legs drawn up under her, butt in the air. To make her look dressed without waking her, I turned her on her back and slipped a skirt over her pajamas. Dante lay spread-eagle, his face cocked in the blind surprise you often see on Charlie when sleeping. When I lifted his legs to pull a pair of sweat pants up them, he asked \u201cWhere\u2019s Lucia?\u201d But his eyes stayed shut, even while he stood in the middle of his room and I fitted a sweatshirt over his head. When I turned to search for his shoes in the darkened closet, he collapsed back onto his bed and I had to pull him up again.<\/p>\n Chloe quickly fell asleep again in the stroller; Dante I towed like a raft. Only when we passed into the hallway, with its bright twenty-four-hour lights did he flutter awake. \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cTo see your father.\u201d<\/p>\n We were getting out of the elevator in the lobby when he spoke again. \u201cIs he at work?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. Just visiting someone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired.\u201d<\/p>\n Both of them dozed in the taxi, but getting Chloe into her stroller again, after the ride to Harlem woke her up. Her mouth worked rhythmically on the finger thrust in her face and her round pale eyes — Charlie\u2019s eyes — began to take in everything.<\/p>\n I had no plan. Beyond going to her apartment, beyond finding them there, I hadn\u2019t figured out any of the details. And so we stood, for a long time opposite the locked door to Zulya\u2019s very ordinary seven-story brick building, watching, waiting.<\/p>\n Three men passed, smoking and talking loudly in Spanish. A woman dressed in a blanket asked us for spare change. Two feet from the door, half obscured by an ice cream sandwich wrapper, lay a flattened beige condom. In her stroller, Chloe began to whimper, and Dante said over and over that he wanted to go home. He, too, had begun to cry when finally after one o\u2019clock, a Sikh in an old-fashioned smoking jacket emerged from the lobby, pushing open the door. When he saw me leap forward to catch it, he stopped and held it so I could push the stroller through. Dante followed.<\/p>\n Breaking and entering<\/strong><\/p>\n Zulya\u2019s lobby was surprisingly ornate, with faded gilt pilasters. But there was no elevator, and so I had to carry Chloe upstairs in one arm and the stroller in the other, tugging Dante along by command alone. On the second floor landing he stopped. \u201cI\u2019m tired.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a little further.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCome on, Dante. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe sooner we go up and see Daddy, the sooner we can all go home together.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to go home now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what: when we get to the top of this flight of stairs, I\u2019ll give you a special treat.\u201d<\/p>\n Dante got up. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll have to go up the stairs to see.\u201d And the treat is: your dad in the arms of a naked woman.<\/em> I knew this was the wrong way. But by now I couldn\u2019t stop myself. I\u2019d let my fury build too long, let myself go half crazy.<\/p>\n We climbed. Zulya\u2019s apartment lay down a long carpeted hall that smelled of many long-ago dinners. I pushed the button of the mechanical bell under the peephole in the front door. No one came to answer.<\/p>\n \u201cI want my treat now,\u201d Dante said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a minute.\u201d I rang the bell again.<\/p>\n This time there was stirring and a female voice from the inside. \u201cWho is?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou said you\u2019d give me a treat,\u201d said Dante.<\/p>\n \u201cAdrienne Eisenberg.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n Muffled through the door, I thought I could hear a man as well. \u201cCharlie\u2019s wife. Is he in there? It\u2019s an emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n The door came open a few inches, then stopped, held by its chain. I could only see a slice of Zulya\u2019s face, but from the photograph she had e-mailed to Charlie I recognized the dark lids on her eyes. \u201cWhy do you ring my door?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI need to see Charlie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is middle night.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet me in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCome back in morning. We cannot talk \u2013\u201d<\/p>\n Without thinking, without knowing I had the strength in me, I grabbed the door handle, drew it back and thrust hard. The chain guard must have been a very old or very loose because it tore free and the door swung open.<\/p>\n Go to go now. Keep the comments and emails coming, either here or to eisenbergadrienne@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am in a safe place now. I’ll explain later how I got here. But for now, let me try to catch you up on the madness of my recent life. Shortly after I got Zulya’s address, I went to Boston for a business meeting. 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