My Husband's Sweethearts Read Free Page B

meant!"
    The flight attendant isn't startled at all. She gives a sad,
wry, guppy-lipped smile—as if to say, You think it's easy being me?
    I shrug.
    I've successfully shut this conversation down, and I
didn't even have to pull out the great guns of I'm an auditor, which tends to clam people up. The older woman
opens up a book that she's made a little cloth jacket for—
to hide the cover. A bodice ripper? I'm not interested in
her little jacket-wearing book.
    I turn my head to the oval window. I fiddle with the
plastic shade and I feel my throat tighten up, and I know
that I'm about to cry. I don't like being emotionally messy.
I try to distract myself with little mental notes about
which partner to call to talk through how this necessary
leave of absence from work will be sorted out, who will
lead my team of managers, who will hold the hands of my
clients. I decided to be an auditor because it sounded so
sturdy. I was drawn to it for its tidy rows of numbers, for
the way those numbers can be ordered around, for the
emotionlessness of it. Auditor. It's the kind of job my
father never could have held down. He was an "entrepreneur,"
but never discussed the details of what that meant.
He was, in many ways, the first lovable cheat that I fell in
love with. I went through a phase in college of being a lovable
cheat myself, but I couldn't stomach hurting people.
I tethered myself to the role of auditor to keep me steady.
Auditors don't cry. They don't get emotional about your
tax choices. They pore over digits. They calculate. They
decide whether those numbers are accurate or fudged. I
chose to be an auditor because I knew it would put me in
stuffy room after stuffy room with other auditors—mostly
men and none of them anything like my father. I imagined
falling in love with a fellow auditor and leading a very
well-ordered, emotionally tidy life. Auditing would
toughen me up, shut me down. And maybe it did for a
while. Maybe it did. But then I met Artie.
    I stop fighting the crying jag. I just let the tears slip
down my cheeks. I pull a tissue from my pocketbook—
digging around Artie's love notes—and pinch my nose. I
drink the gin and tonic straight down, order another before
takeoff.

Chapter Three
There Is Barely a Blurry Line
Between Love and Hate
    With each exhale, I'm aware that I'm
steaming up the shuttle van with gin
fumes. I'd apologize to the driver, but I
can hear my mother telling me not to apologize to those in
the service industry. It's so middle class. The fact that we
were middle class throughout my childhood never seems to
matter. I decide not to apologize though because I don't
want to make the driver uncomfortable. Apologizing for
drunkenness is something that you shouldn't have to do
while drunk—that's one of the benefits of being drunk,
right? That you don't care if people know you're drunk. But
the fact that I want to apologize is proof that the drunk is
wearing off, sadly. I pop a few chocolate-covered cherries
bought off an airport rack and make idle chatter.
    "So, any hobbies?" I ask the driver. I've had drivers
who were epic gamblers, brutal genocide survivors, fathers
of fourteen. Sometimes I ask questions. Sometimes
I don't.
    "I give tennis lessons," he says. "It didn't used to be a
hobby, but I guess it is now."
    "You were good?"
    "I've gone a few rounds with the best of them." He
looks at me through the rearview mirror. "But I didn't
have the last little bit it takes to push you to the next level.
And I didn't take it well."
    He looks like a tennis pro to me now. He's tan and his
right forearm muscle is overdeveloped like Popeye's.
"You didn't take it well?"
    "I took to drink—as my grandmother would say."
    This is alarming—he's at the wheel.
    He must read my nervousness. "I'm in recovery," he
adds quickly.
    "Ah." I feel guilty for being drunk now—like the time
Artie and I brought a bottle of wine to the new neighbors
only to find