"I Can Forgive You, But I Will Never Trust You As You Need to be Trusted"

On divorce, friendship, and teamwork.

March 5, 2014.

It takes me longer to ride my bike to the restaurant than I’d calculated. I’d told Eira I’d meet her at one o’clock for lunch, but it’s five past the hour before I walk in, out of breath, and kiss her cheek.

We’re in an unassuming little Vietnamese place in the heart of Beverly Hills. Eira and I have been here twice before, but not since the Catastrophe of nine months earlier. The Catastrophe is what I’ve taken to calling my wife’s discovery of my secret life, my subsequent psychiatric breakdown, and the eventual loss of my teaching job.

Before the Catastrophe, I liked pho. I suppose I still do. I order a bowl.

We put in our orders, and as soon as the waitress turns her back, I sense what’s coming.

“I’m ready to tell you I want a divorce.” Eira is an effortless deliverer of bad news. Her sentences are stripped of any and all ambiguities before they pass her lips.

We separated the previous July, but during my many hospitalizations in the summer and fall, my wife refused to discuss the question of staying together. Terrified of losing my rock, I was sure I wanted another chance. Fearful of what I might do if that possibility were withdrawn, Eira repeatedly told me we’d discuss it when I was better.

I am better now. I have my own little place, I have a little job, and my brain is clearing. I am ready to absorb bad news.

“I’ve been celibate for seven months,” I tell her. “I’m going to meetings. I’m working really hard.”

I’m declaring facts, but it sounds like pleading. The tickle starts in my nose and my throat tightens; the tears are seconds away.

Eira takes my hand. “For months, I’ve wondered what it would take to make this marriage work. I knew I could forgive you. That wouldn’t be the problem. But I could never trust you, and not trusting you is exhausting.”

I tell her I understand. There were so many lies, for so many years, so many plausible denials building to a devastating and dizzying set of revelations. It’s hard to find a road back from that.

“We both deserve to start over with clean slates,” Eira says. “I deserve a man I can trust, and you deserve a woman willing to trust you.” She pauses. “When you’re ready,” she adds.

My tears are falling now, and Eira’s aren’t far behind. “I’ve known you half your life,” I say, and wince. That’s a non sequitur. I’m grasping.

She laughs. “We’re very different now.”

I remember the moment I met her, on January 9, 1995, when a striking 19 year-old showed up late and breathless to the first day of my first women’s studies class. I thought she was one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen. She had a boyfriend and I had my second wife; it would be seven years and two divorces before Eira and I would end up together.

“We buried our dads together.” I’ve decided that now, just as the steaming bowls of pho arrive, is the right time to offer the obituary for our marriage. I am alone in that assessment.

“And you were cheating on me even then,” she says, her voice still calm, but I can hear the faint hiss of a blade being sharpened. “You love your memories, Hugo,” she continues. “But I see all of our past through this filter of what I know you were doing, and I think how foolish I was not to have known. So if we can avoid reminiscing, that would be helpful.”

“Okay,” I nod.

We slurp for several minutes without talking. Then Eira begins to speak about details, like money and custody, and how she’s sure that we won’t argue, and I tell her I agree.

Her parents were amicably divorced; so were mine; so we will be. If we did not quite break the cycle, at least we can do a sad and familiar thing, and do it well.

It is an efficient little lunch. After another 15 minutes, Eira and I have sketched out the plan for our lives apart, and how we can cooperate most effectively for the sake of the children.

She pays the bill, and excuses herself to go the restroom. I watch her as she goes, and my brain lights up with a highlight reel of our nearly 20 years together. That first day in my class in her dance leotard, the flush on her cheeks; our first kiss on Zuma beach; her body arching, gasping above mine in a hotel room in Bogota; her kissing her dying father goodbye; her intestines piled on her stomach as a C-section gave us Heloise; the rage and hurt on her face when the window into my other life opened and the world turned red.

And and and the laughter the workouts the fighting the airports the rubbing the tears the graveyards the blood the hospitals the diamonds the vomit the seven continents the cum the sweat the debts the diapers — the whole pulsing universe of a common life.

She is back. “Ready?”

We walk out into cool late winter sunshine.

We stand by her car for a moment, talking about the kids. I get a sudden vision of Eira’s next husband, my children’s future stepfather. I envision Armand Assante. I envision a man centered in himself, calm and certain enough for her to relax her guard. I see them on a couch, her head in his lap, a glass of wine in his hand.

I wonder if I’ll ever kiss another woman.

Eira hugs me. I breathe in her perfume, feel the silk of her blouse beneath my fingers.

“We’re going to be co-grandparents together,” she whispers in my ear.

My throat tightens. I can’t speak. I hold her car door for her. She sits, looks up at me. “And you know, when I get good news, you’re still the first one I want to call.”

This strikes me as funny, and I laugh. “Then I hope you get lots of good news.”

She drives off. I find my bike and pedal away.

One more memory comes.

On that January morning in 1995, after I’d finished my opening lecture, Eira had come up to apologize for being late. She was so beautiful I could barely look at her. “You got my name right on the first try,” she added, “that never happens.”

I grinned. “Sometimes I get lucky.”

An earlier version of this story appeared on Medium in 2016