What Happens in Paris

I wiped a sand-gritty hand over my face and shook my head. “I—I’m fine.”

“Then get back in your car and move on. It’s not safe to loiter on the side of the highway like this.”

For a split second I contemplated that perhaps getting flattened by a large truck was preferable to getting in Rita’s car and driving back to my ruined life. But then good sense rallied and I realized I’d rather be alive to torture Blake.

He’d have hell to pay for this.

I intended to collect in full.

Having your dirty laundry aired in the newspaper feels like standing in the middle of a busy street stark naked. No, it’s more like standing in the middle of a busy intersection and not realizing the world is looking at you standing there stark naked until it’s too late and—oops, the joke’s on you.

Oh, look—I’m naked.

I’m standing here like a fool.

With that newspaper article, the whole of me was reduced to what was printed on page B–1 of the Sentinel’s Local and State section. Gee, all that and my name wasn’t even mentioned.

It didn’t have to be. Blake’s mug shot and name spoke for both of us.

I’d been oblivious to the gawks Saturday morning as I walked down the driveway to my sister’s car to begin our drive to Saint Pete; blissfully unaware that the reason Joe Phillips next door stopped mowing his lawn and stared at me wasn’t because he thought I looked hot in my new pink sweater that showed just a hint of dеcolletage. He didn’t speak; didn’t wave. He just stood and gaped at me across the stretch of Saint Augustine grass with a bewildered look on his face.

Ha! And I thought he was ogling my cleavage.

Later, when I realized the truth— Well, you can understand why coming to terms with Blake’s betrayal would be even harder knowing I had to face people who’d read all about it in the newspaper.

Even before I knew, others were devouring the juicy details with perverse excitement because they actually knew the guy who got caught with his pants down in the park.

Oh, and his poor wife. Didn’t she know her husband was gay? But they have a kid. Maybe it was one of “those kinds” of marriages…? What do they call it? A marriage of convenience?

How was I going to explain this to our son, Ben? He’d be wrecked.

Wait a minute. I didn’t have to explain anything. I was not the guilty party, despite the guilt-by-association factor.

Or stupidity by association.

I had to stop blaming myself, thinking this wouldn’t have happened if I’d been a better wife; a little thinner; more in touch with his needs….

More of a woman.

Or at least enough of a woman to keep my man from turning gay.

Rita and I drove to Saint Pete, but we never made it to the Monet exhibit. Good thing because I didn’t want to forever associate Monet’s water-lily paintings with Blake’s coming out of the closet.

Instead of going to the museum, we walked on the beach. We must have walked for miles, me in my low-cut pink sweater that didn’t seem so sexy anymore, and my sister with her sandals in her hand and her white pants rolled to the knee.

She let me talk.

“Ri, you weren’t surprised when you heard about Blake, were you?”

She shrugged, pushed a wisp of short blond hair out of her eyes.

“Rita? Are you saying you knew all along?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it on a sigh, and shrugged again. “Come on, Anna. He was just a little too…” She dragged out the word as if stalling for time.

Finally with a look of resignation she said, “He was a little too in touch with his feminine side. I mean, either that or you’d snagged every woman’s dream man.”

Snagged him? Was that what I did?

Blake and I never had a sweep-you-off-your-feet courtship. We met our senior year of college and dated for about two months before I got pregnant.

No snagging intended. I was as surprised as he was. I was prepared to raise the child on my own. He was the one who insisted he wanted to be a family.

Rita snapped her fingers. “Oh, I read something the other day where someone said something about a man who was ‘just gay enough.’” Rita made air quotes with her fingers. “That’s how I always thought of Blake.”

I must have made a face because she grimaced. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

Afterward, we mostly walked in silence.

Blake wasn’t home when I walked into the dark house Saturday night. He slinked in rather sheepishly Sunday, late morning.

I sat in the living room trying—unsuccessfully—to distract myself with a biography on the artist Georgia O’Keeffe when he walked in.

He flinched when he saw me and shoved his hands in his pockets. Dark circles under his eyes hinted he hadn’t slept well.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking stiff and pale and a little bewildered standing there in his pressed khakis, crisp kelly green polo and navy blue espadrilles that once seemed so Palm Beach, but now just looked…

I wondered where he stayed last night and how his clothing could look so fresh given the circumstances, but I refused to ask.

His gaze darted around the living room, looking everywhere but at me. He seemed so frazzled, like if I made a loud noise or erratic gesture he’d jump out of his skin.

It took a few beats to find my voice. “Why didn’t you tell me, Blake? How could you let me find out like this?”

At least he had the decency to hang his head. “What was I supposed to say?”

“Something.” I set the book on the end table and pulled my knees to my chest. “For God’s sake, anything would have been better than letting me read it in the newspaper.”

He didn’t reply, just raked his hand through his hair—he always messed with his hair when he was anxious—and stared at his espadrilles. I worried the fabric of my pink velour sweatpants.

“I didn’t know it was going to be in the paper,” he murmured so softly I could barely hear him.

I traced a zigzag in my pants’ velvetlike texture and decided he was probably telling the truth.

The paper said his partner in crime was a high-school coach who’d been arrested twice for public indecency. The story admonished the county for its lax screening of teachers more than it focused on exposing the men who meet at Live Oak Park to exchange sexual favors.

Of course. Blake’s name and mug shot made the paper because he made the fateful choice of having sex with the wrong man.

“Was this the first time, Blake, or have there been others?”