This American Life - 393: Infidelity

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Stories of cheating, cheaters, and the cheated. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks with Jessica Pressler about a phenomenon she noticed in the wedding notices in The New York Times. Couples were cheerfully telling—as part of their "meet cute" stories—how their relationships began with one of them cheating on a spouse or long-time partner. (4 minutes)Act One: From England, Ruby Wright has a story of an affair where—even years after it ended—it wasn't much discussed. (14 minutes)Act Two: Ira reviews some infidelity stats from his mother's book on the subject, Not Just Friends. And author James Braly tells a story of temptation live onstage at The Moth. (15 minutes)Act Three: Dani Shapiro on the confusing mess things can be during an affair. The story is from her memoir, Slow Motion. (16 minutes)Act Four: Etgar Keret describes the moment in the immediate aftermath of an affair. Actor Matt Malloy reads. (4 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

It was a while ago, the spring of 2009, that a writer named Jessica Pressler noticed a small cultural shift going on in the waiting pages of the New York Times, the section that the paper calls the VALS section. The shift, it happened at a time when, I don't know, for whatever reason, there was a rush of news stories about famous and powerful people cheating on their partners. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford publicly confessed that his soulmate was a woman in Argentina who was not his wife.

Nevada Senator John Insid admitted paying $96,000 in cash to his former mistress and her husband. Reality TV stars John and Kate had just split after reports that he'd had an affair. And so it was in the middle of all that, Jessica Pressler noticed in the wedding pages of the New York Times that there were couples getting married who cheerfully told the newspaper

as part of their meek-cute story that the way they got together was that one of them cheated on a spouse or a long-time partner. I believe one of them says the headline on it is something like, it took a while, but they finally got together. And you're like, because he was having a three-year relationship

with another person in the meantime. Yeah, yeah. Jessica Pressler wrote up her discovery on the New York Magazine blog, Daily Intel. She noted that there was a kind of code language in all these wedding articles. They always say, like, their road to finding each other was a bumpy road, or they had a difficult time, many ups and downs.

They encountered some obstacles along the way, and it's like, no, those are people. Those are like other, like, lives. They're not speed bumps. Take, for instance, the married woman, who, according to a romantic write-up on the VALS page of the New York Times, flew to Paris to see another man and stayed with him in a hotel in the Latin Quarter for two. two weeks where they, quote, reveled in their own the bo-M before she flew back to the U.S. and moved out of the home in New Jersey that she shared with her husband. I mean, it's just weird because vows is something that you have to try to get into.

You have to kind of lobby to get into that column. So it's like Mark Sanford, he had to speak publicly about his affair. Most people don't have to go around telling everybody about it. See, but that's what's so strange about it, is that somehow some part of them doesn't think, I shouldn't talk about this. Like somehow the notion I had an affair is so just nothing to them. Right. I think it's probably just people, when they cheat on other people, tell themselves that they're doing it because they have to, because their fate is involved. And whatever happened, you're better off and probably the person that you broke up with is better off.

and this is the way it was meant to be. Yeah. This is fate. As with the cheated-on ex-partner, when the story appears in the newspaper on the wedding pages, it's almost as if the newspaper is siding with the cheating couple. The ex-partner is just collateral damage on the weight of their wedding. They don't get to say anything for themselves.

It's like not their story anymore. It's somebody else's love story. Well, that's the thing. If it were any other section of the newspaper, the reporter would go to them too for a comment to get their side. I think they should do that. But because it's the wedding section, it's just like, well, it's not really their story. Right.

Yeah, they just, they have no say for themselves. They're done. This had nothing to do with them. It's very bizarre. It raises all kinds of questions for me. As a reader, I'm very distracted by it. Well, today on our radio program, we go where the newspaper marriage columns fear to tread. We hear from all parties to the affair.

the cheated on as well as the cheaters, and their differing takes on what happened. And no surprise, they are very different from one another's. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Myra Glass. Today on our show, Infidelity, Stay with us. Dis American Life, Am I Our Glass? Today shows a rerun, Act 1.

Let me kiss your stiff upper lip. So we begin with this story from England, and if you read much 19th century British literature or seen any of the many, many movies based on those books, They give a sense of England as an island filled entirely with people who were full of submerged and often misplaced passions for other people. Which brings us to this next story. Ribby Wright interviewed her own parents, Lle and George.

And also, the man who split them up. Andrew. Andrew, you've always lived in Dorset. Yeah. But why did you end up in this part of Dorset? I was looking for a house for myself, my two daughters. I was going to live. and I always wanted to live in the countryside, having always lived in the towns in Dorset.

And I saw it in the paper. It's as simple as that. And you didn't know anyone around here? No. So how did you know about us? I was at the pub, and this couple walked in, and the bloke was wearing a leopard-skinned pillbox hat, and I thought, I've got to get to know this person. I had a very attractive wife, I mean, that was...

I just saw them in the pub and thought, I must know these people. This guy, Andrew, moved to the village and he'd met us both together at the same time in the pub. And I would say that we both had a closeness to Andrew. My closeness to Andrew was very much about talking about how I felt and how he felt and he would have various sort of unsuitable girlfriends who'd have sort of flings with people and I'd say, come on then Andrew, tell me about it.

And he was rather candid, I liked it, he was very candid. I was a single parent at the time and it just seemed to start an idyllic sort of situation was sort of a beautiful old cottage with this couple and their daughter living in it and it was a home from home came home from home for me and you became a very good friend

and I remember you know you'd come up a lot and we'd come down and see you and you're always a very cosy person to have around and it was always a delight when you used to come up and see us yes I mean I'll give her I'd fall in love with the whole family, including you and Ed, indeed, at that point. When I started to fall in love with Andrew, it was like my falling in love with him was a direct

sort of parallel of my father dying. So as my father was dying at home of cancer, I was falling deeper and deeper in love with this man, Andrew. And Andrew would talk to me about my father dying, because he'd been with his mother who died of a brain tumor. He'd actually been sort of beside her bed with her as she died and during that period. And I, I think I sort of valued being with someone, because George's parents were both still very much alive at that point. And I think for me it was a sort of, I felt he had an understanding of what it was like. And it was kind of very hard for me not to fall in love with him. Did you think something was always going to happen?

No, I was convinced nothing would happen. I'd fallen in love with her. I had fallen in love with her. So probably over the summer after her father's death, I was single at the time. with just living with Tams of my younger daughter. And I didn't really want a partner at the time. So falling in love with Lowe, I kind of... I thought that's okay. I can love somebody from afar,

and I don't need to love anyone else. And it had never occurred to me that she might even dream of falling in love with me. It just didn't occur to me that Lowe might look at anyone other than George. How did I know? when I come back from this trip and it was Christmas

and Lahl said we're going to spend Christmas with Andrew and I was delighted because, you know, I couldn't think of anybody nicer to spend Christmas with and it I remember Andrew coming up the evening I got back and I was going off to get a present for him

that I bought and I thought that's odd that Lall and Andrew are not talking to each other there's sort of silence in the kitchen and when he left he kissed her on the back of the head and I just some something I don't know maybe I was one part of me was expecting something to happen one of these days

and it was confirmed because mum had left her diary lying around and you know I read it and there it was so it was like she wanted you to find out without having to say it I think yes and you actually had to tell me I think were you going to tell me together?

Yes, we were going to. I mean, I don't think we'd even discuss telling you. But what happened was you had been away on a holiday and had come home. And I'd picked you up, I think. And you said to me, where is mum? And I thought, you know, what am I going to tell Ruby? I have probably half a minute to decide.

You know, am I going to tell her the truth or am I going to make up some story? And I thought, I just said to you, well, I think she's down at Andrews. And I didn't have to say anymore, you seem to know. You were very angry with me quite rightly. And I think up until that point, we'd always had a very close relationship. And your anger manifests itself mostly by you just refusing to see me. I think it was just people were very shocked by what happened. I was very shocked and dad was very shocked. Were you kind of surprised at yourself or were you surprised

at the force of your own attraction and actions? I am shocked now at how incredibly selfishly I acted and how oblivious I was to your pain and George's pain and Ed's pain, almost like I deserved this thing. I was on this sort of track and I was heading off on it. Nothing was going to deter me. But as to say, almost as if I deserved it, almost as if I was owed it. George was sort of tipped off. And I felt as soon as I knew, I felt I had to go and face him. So I walked up to Mount Over and I can remember standing outside in the bottom field for a good half an hour, summoning up the courage to go and say to George, this is true. And when, I expected him, quite literally expected him to sort of hit me or sort of bloody my nose or something like that, or at least shouted me or rave.

And I knocked on the door, he said, oh, Andrew, Andrew, come in, come in. Have a glass of wine. Five minutes later, I was in floods of tears and George Watson. And it was just very odd. It was all kind of wrong. But what he said to me, stayed with me, until now, really. He said, Andrew, I've lost my partner. I don't want to lose my best friend.

I know I have a real problem with anger. I mean, I don't tend to get angry. I find it a very hard emotion to express. But, I mean, I was angry at that point. I was very angry. I mean, I remember sort of standing at the sink doing the dry nap and somehow the plates ended up being smashed on the floor. I mean, the emotions were very, very odd

because I was terribly, terribly fond of Andrew, and he was very concerned about my well-being. You know, at that point, I still believed strongly that we would all become friends again. I mean, looking back, it was all terribly naive, really, but that's what I felt at the time. So I wanted to keep a relation, some kind of relationship going with George

for this future, sort of blissful time when we were all friends again. I think in my, if I think, In the fantasy world, I would have carried on having a passionate physical sexual relationship with Andrew and a kind of fond relationship with George and the two would have somehow run together. You know, I think some couples, through all their anger or hatred or battles, there's this sort of incredible chemistry that still comes back, you know, to your irritation. You can't get rid of this sort of it.

And I think with George, somehow, for me, the chemistry disappeared quite early on. I mean, the one thing we haven't discussed in all of this, you know, the question of sex. And I mean, that was really at the heart of our split-up that mum, you know, did not, you know, she was not satisfied in that department. And I knew that I had a part in this, that there was a part, you know, there was an aspect of our relationship, you know, namely the sexual part of it, that I wasn't facing up to. that I had a responsibility in it. I wasn't an innocent victim, as it were. You know, you could say that George loved Lough, he could understand me loving Lough.

And whilst that was contrary to his needs or wishes or whatever, he could understand it. In a sense, I think he never blamed me. I think he blamed Lough and not me. got very complicated because George and Andrew, far from becoming rivals and kind of having a duel at dawn, far from George challenging Andrew to a duel at dawn, George kind of welcomed Andrew into the fold and Andrew became a kind of member of my family but without me there and there would be Sunday lunches and Saturday suppers and dances and Evershot and they were, you know,

they were part of, he was part of that and of course I was, I felt like I was living in exile. I felt like I'd been exile to this foreign country, albeit a beautiful one, and it was six miles away, but I felt I couldn't have been further away. And Andrew was welcomed into the bosom of the family, and I think that caused enormous resentment from me. I know it did, and I don't know whether Andrew ever understood that,

what it was like on a Sunday to know that he was having lunch with my daughter and my son and my ex-partner, and I was here. What then happened was that mum's relationship with Andrew didn't last, and I still continued to see Andrew because he, you know, just around the corner, and I know that she found that incredibly hard, that despite the fact that she wasn't seeing Andrew, that I still was his friend, and she felt sort of excluded from my new life, and I didn't think she had much, much right.

I've heard people say that it's impossible to have a relationship. You can't stay with the person you leave your family for because there's too much guilt and emotion. And do you think the fact that you left George for Andrew ultimately meant that you couldn't continue this relationship with it? Yes, I do. I don't think it's impossible, but I think it was, if not inevitable, it was quite likely that those seeds of destruction that were kind of laid right at the beginning

and blame did in the end undermine our relationship. Do you wish that you could turn the clock back? No, because at that point I think I was still completely obsessed with Andrew, you know, this idea that love being a madness. So I don't think at that point I did wish I could. I think it was much later I would wake in the night with the window on the wrong side of the room.

sometime around dawn or before dawn, I think, I'd just think, what am I doing in this place? How have I got here? And it was as if I'd sleptwalked out of my other life with no explanation, and I'd woken up, and here I was. And it was truly terrifying, and I think that, as long as I was damaging you lot, I was kind of really not aware,

but it was when I came to damage myself, that was when I really woke up. Because I lost you, effectively I lost you between the ages of 13 and 18. So my biggest loss was losing you for five years. At puberty, you were 13, you were just about to have your first period, you went off with George to Africa, you came back and you looked different. And actually, with maternal intuition, which I obviously didn't have much of,

I remember looking at me and thinking, she's changed, she started her period, she's becoming a young woman, and sure enough, you told me, and I thought, God, George was there for that, her dad was there for that. Why wasn't I there for that? And I think during that whole time, really, we didn't, we didn't really talk about how we felt, did we? No, I don't think so. Ruby Wright. She's an illustrator and author.

Her website is Ruby Wright. That's W-R-I-G-H-T.com. Coming up, what to say to your parents about the rich married guy who set you up in an apartment when you're 22 years old. And what to say to yourself? And other dilemmas of cheaters and... and the cheated on. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio,

when our program continues. This American Life from our glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bringing different kinds of stories on that theme, today's show, infidelity.

So back when we first broadcast today's program, presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, were still people who were in the news. He admitted cheating on her,

and she stayed with him, despite that, for a while anyway. And if you read the comments about it online, about them, Lots were just vicious, calling her crazy, calling her delusional, calling her an idiot to stay with her husband. It was very Lindy West, if you know what I'm talking about.

But a few women wrote in to say, it all seemed more complicated to them. One posted this, I am in this situation right now. It's a difficult call to make. My mom was a psychologist, and she specialized in couples where somebody had cheated. She treated hundreds of these couples, and she treated. did studies looking at hundreds more, short a book about her findings. There's solid research, a variety of researchers have shown that in one out of two couples, one or both partners will cheat during the lifetime of a relationship. That's 50% of all relationships. Most affairs are never

detected. And one of the surprising things that my mom found out in her research was that tons of people will have affairs even though they're happy in their marriage. You don't have to be unhappy to have an affair. Fifty-six percent of the men and 34 percent of the women in one of my mom's studies said, they cheated though their marriage was happy. And she said lots of couples came in to see her where that was the situation. Well, not only the cheated on partner, but the cheater seemed genuinely surprised that this had happened in their marriage, which brings us to our next story, about the cheaters lurking inside any relationship.

We were at Act 2 of our show, Act 2, the Italian Job. This story comes from James Brawley, who told it at the storytelling series The Moth in front of a live audience. I am sitting on my suitcase in the main train station in Rome next to my girlfriend, Susan, who's sitting on hers. And we're rifling through our let's go Europe trying to agree on the next destination of our vacation. Susan grew up in Germany. So she'll go basically any place, as long as it's sunny. But I need to go to the right place. And I have a pathological terror of going to the wrong place. So whenever Susan suggests someplace in particular,

I suggest someplace else, because I can see something wrong with every place. And this is a gift I bring to every area of my life, notably my relationship with Susan. We've been together for about 70 years since college. And every time she brings up the subject of commitment, maybe it's a good time to get married. I say, I think I need a little more time just to make sure that what we're doing is right.

So, as a result, all of the lights on the arrivals and departures board are blinking. And the man on the public address system keeps saying, Departione, over and over and over again. And Susan is up on her feet screaming at me. Make up your mind before all the trains pull out. While I am kind of hypnotized by the hem of this flower print dress, It's about 10 feet away, fluttering in the breeze each time a train pulls in or out of the station, which at this point is frequently, which is hanging off what may be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, who's standing next to her beautiful friend.

When Susan says, are you looking at those women? And I say, where? And she says, right there in the flower print dresses. And I say, you mean them? And she says, yes, they look interesting, don't they? Like, maybe they're going someplace interesting. We might want to go. You know what?

I think I'll ask them. And before I can tell her, what a bad idea that is, she's over there talking to them in French. And they're pointing at me, and a few minutes later, she's introducing them to me. Isabel is the beautiful one, and her sister is a gloriously beautiful woman named France, who has a face off of one of those French go-to-war by Warbonds posters

that makes you want to invade. So I'm just staring at her. Susan says, guess what, James? They're going to Positano, which is one of the numerous fishing villages we debated going to. What do you say we all travel together? And two minutes later, Franz and I, are on the same vacation, sitting on a train to Naples, and then on a hydrofoil to Positauna,

and then checking into the same hotel, into adjacent rooms, where we're going to change into our swimsuits and meet on the beach. Now, I haven't been in a swimsuit for a year since the last time I was on the beach, and I'm looking in the mirror in the hotel, and things have changed since then. A little Italian bakery opened up around the country,

corner from my office. And I've been going there every workday, having apricot bear claws. And now I have two apricot bear claws hanging off the sides of my waist, kind of bubbling up over my swimsuit. And it's one thing to decay in front of your girlfriend. There's a kind of mutual decay contract. Well, you're all going to atrophy at more or less the same rate. But I don't have that deal with Fromms.

And there's no way she's seeing my bear claws. So when we meet on the beach, the girls are in French bikinis, and I'm in my shorts and my button-down shirt from the train ride, like I forgot to undress half myself. And after a couple of hours of swimming, then swimming, Franz comes over to me and says, do you not swim? And I say indoors. I burn easily.

And she hands me her bottle of sun. sunblock and I start to shake my head sadly and point to one of the ingredients and I say, I'm allergic. And there are six more days to go. So the next morning, after an all-nighter with Let's Go Europe, I have a comprehensive understanding of all the cultural high points within a 30-mile radius of the city of Positano, none of which include the beach. There is Mount Basuvius and the grottos of Capri in the hang gardens at Ravenna. And we can go to a beach anywhere, but there's only so many places you can see this kind of culture. That's the position I'm taking. And the French love culture. And the Germans admire the French. So six days later, we're all

just about as pasty as when we stepped off the hydrofoil. My secret waste is still a secret. And I make it to the last night. We have a little farewell dinner at a seaside restaurant, and we're walking on the beach one last time for all time's sake, saying our goodbyes. Everyone's a little misty, except me. I can't wait to go home in the morning. When Frant says, does anyone want to go swimming? And her relatively more modest sister says,

we don't have suits. And a fearless, guileless Germanic Susan says, that's okay with me. And a couple of minutes later, they're standing on the beach in panties and bras, which are very different than bikinis. France's are chocolate brown lace, and her skin is the color of milk. She looks like a perfideral.

My favorite dessert. It is agony to keep my eyes open, but I can't close them. And the three of them run into the water, laughing and splashing, and then finally disappearing underneath the surface. So everything's quiet for a moment. And then one, two, three, they pop up and start calling at me, like sirens, who actually lived in Positano 3,000 years ago. James, come in.

It's wonderful. And I haven't been swimming one time, and it's dark. So I make a decision. I'm going to take off my shoes and socks and pants, and I put them on a beach chair, and I unbutton my shirt and thread out my arms. arms so that it's just hanging there like a little poncho. And when Franz disappears under the water again, it goes off on the back of a beach chair, and I'm in. But I've waited so long to make up my mind that Susan's cold. She has bad circulation. And she always used to bug me. And France's sister is

ready to go back as well, but France is fine, and I just got in, and we're all vacation buddies. So Susan and the sister go back to the hotel, leaving France and I for the first time alone. In the dark, in our underwear, in the Mediterranean, where they invented the word Philander. And where it occurs to me, we can have sex without her seeing my body. So I swim around for a little bit and trying to figure out what's the personal space in the Mediterranean. and how close can you swim before you can't swim away. And whatever that distance is, Frant swims right to the edge of it and says, the water makes me feel so free.

It's not having that effect on me. I got bare claws to hide and promises to keep. And I am so tense that I can't breathe normally, which makes me look abnormal. which leads Frost to say, is everything okay? Maybe we should go back. And she gets out of the water and stands on the beach, tripping in the moonlight,

dabbing at herself with her dress. So I've got one eye on her and the other on my shirt, which is fluttering off the back of this chair. And I get closer and closer, spreading my legs wider and wider so that only my head is visible. Like an alligator. It looks like I'm in about six feet of water, but really it's about 18 inches.

My thighs are in agony. And I can't hold out much longer when France lifts her shirt, her dress, over her head, and I spring up on the beach and behind the chair, and I am wet but covered when her head pops through the dresshole. And she steps back and surprise, and lets out a little French vowel. And we get dressed, and we're walking across the cobblestones, back to the table. the hotel, which are slightly uneven, so the backs of our hands brush, and she takes mine and hers, which I've read in Let's Go Europe, is a friendly and warm gesture among European women, and I don't get any ideas.

So I'm feeling friendly and warm, trying not to have any ideas. When France says, Susan is very lucky to have you, and I say, well, thank you very much, but I'm very lucky to have her trying to regain a shred of dignity while holding onto this woman's hand. And Frant smiles the smile of the boyfriendless and yet supremely confident

goddess and says, why? And there are all sorts of reasons I'm lucky to have Susan, but I can't think of any of them at the moment. Because my mind is blank. And I said, well, why are you friends?

And Franz looks at me and says, because she pursued me. And our hips bump at the base of the stairs of the mountain to the hotel. And she puts her arm around my waist right above the bear claw. And all I can think is to hunch down like I've got osteoporosis

so that her arm slides up, my rib cage. But with each step up the stairs, It slides back down, and then it hits. And she starts laughing, this bubbly French laugh. And she says, what softage? I don't speak French, and I don't want to know what that means anyway. So I keep walking. And she says it again, what softage?

You have a life preserver. It's so cute. And she keeps her hand right. There, like a girlfriend, up the stairs and into the lobby of the hotel, and into the elevator, which is too bright and too small to be touching. It's a tiny little hotel, tiny little elevator. So she's in one corner and my mom and the other. When the door's close and the floors start ringing off one by one, and we just look at each other,

and there's not much more time to go. and then the doors open before I can make up my mind what to do and we're standing there in front of our rooms and she just looks at me with the most beautiful face I have ever been swimming with

and one that I have never wanted to kiss more but I just can't do it to Susan so I kiss France on the cheek three times which I've learned that week which allows you to change your mind potentially.

But I make it into my room and a close door behind me and Susan's up in bed reading Let's Go Europe in anticipation of the debate that's probably going to happen tomorrow morning over where to go. And she

looks up and says, how was it? And I say it was hard, Susan. It was really hard. And she looks right out. man says, I know. Like, she does know, like she really understands why I've avoided the beach for a week on the beach vacation. And she accepts it. So I take off my shirt and get in bed

next to her and turn my back. And suddenly, I start crying, these weepy little hide them in your hotel room, pillow tears, which is not the kind of guy I am. I'm a poker-faced, poker-bodied magical thinker. I've been eating bear claws for a year and thinking I'm in shape and that I can be faithful and philander at the same time. And it's an overwhelmingly sad and yet strangely comforting relief to lie there and know that I can't

and that I've actually made a choice that after seven days, seven years, really, most of my adult life, to lie there next to Susan, and right or wrong, finally, be me. Thank you. James Brawley, this story became part of a one-man off-broadway show called Life in a Marital Institution, 20 years of monogamy in one terrifying hour. His website, James Brawley, that's Brawley, B-R-A-L-Y.com.

Thanks as always to The Moth, which, of course features personal stories told live in front of an audience. If you like this story and you don't know their stuff, check out their podcast. The Moth Radio Hour and The Moth Podcast. Act three, how did I get here? So James Broly gave us the thoughts of somebody in a moment before infidelity occurs. Danny Shapiro has this story

about the confusing mess it can be during the affair. Here in no particular order are some things Lenny told me, that he and his wife didn't sleep in the same bed, that they hadn't had a real marriage in years, that she was undergoing electro-shock treatment in a clinic outside Philadelphia, that he had cancer and had to fly to Houston three days a week for chemotherapy,

that his youngest daughter, age three, had a rare form of childhood leukemia, that he could not get a divorce for all of the above reasons, that he was heartbroken that he could not leave his wife and marry me. For a long time I believed him. With every bone in my body

I trusted that Lenny Klein was telling me the truth. When we talked about it, his jaw would tighten and his big brown eyes would fill. with tears. His voice would quaver with pent-up complex feelings that I couldn't possibly begin to understand. Poor Lenny, I marveled that so many bad things could happen to one person, and I vowed to take care of him. I exhorted myself to be a real woman, one who could step up to the plate and be good to her man in his moment of crisis. Years later, I hold Lenny's lies

up to the light and examine my own reasons for believing what in retrospect seems preposterous. I reread my old journals and noticed the way my girlish handwriting deteriorated into a scrawl as I wrote. I have to be there for Lenny. He needs me, and he's going through so much. I don't know if I can handle it, but I have to be strong. I try to remember that Lenny was a trial lawyer, that he built an international reputation based on his own pathology, that he lied with an almost evangelical conviction. He prided himself on being able to convince anyone of anything. The lies had small beginnings.

Lenny called me from a business trip and told me he was at Montreal Airport waiting to catch a flight to Calgary. I checked with the airline and found out that the flight would take approximately five hours. So when Lenny called an hour later to say he had landed in Calgary, I very calmly asked him where he really was.

Calgary, he said. No, Lenny, really. He stuck to his story. In the time that I knew him, he never, ever changed his story. midstream. I hung up on him and called his family's house in Westchester. When the maid answered the phone, I asked to speak with Mr. Klein. And when he picked up the extension, and I heard his rough, craggy, hello, I screamed so hard into his ear that he dropped the receiver. He raced into the city. He led himself

into my apartment and found me curled up in bed. He scooped me up and held me to his chest. His wife wasn't home, he told me. She was having shock treatment. and someone had to take care of his daughter. He hadn't wanted to tell me because he'd wanted to spare me to protect me from the horror of his life. Surely I understood. Shush, sweetheart, he murmured into the top of my head as I wept, my face beat red like a little girl's.

So many people need me, he said, but I love you best of all. Two years have passed and something has gone wrong, terribly wrong with my life. I don't in fact think of my life as my life. but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection. I am no longer a student. I dropped out of Sarah Lawrence after my junior year, supposedly to pursue acting. And I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of an actress.

But I'm doing an even better imitation of a mistress. Lenny's been busy buying me things. I don't particularly want these things, but they seem to be what Lenny is offering in lieu of himself. So quite suddenly, overnight, really, I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible. And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mint coat, a Cartier watch,

a bulgarie necklace with an ancient coin at its center. The Mercedes is a step down from the first car Lenny gave me when we had been going out for a month, a leased Ferrari. I don't know how to drive a stick shift, so the Ferrari was a bit of a problem. What I must have looked like, a 20-year-old blonde dressed like Ivana Trump, stalled in traffic, grinding gears,

trying to find the point on the clutch to hold that ridiculous car in place. Lenny rented an apartment on a pretty little street in Greenwich Village, a furnished triplex with a garden, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed. He called it Our House, as if he didn't have another home

with a whole family in it, an hour north of the city. He kept half a dozen suits in the bedroom closet and a brand-new silk robe hung behind the bathroom door. There was an entire floor we didn't use, a large, airy children's nursery. My parents knew that something was up. They knew I was going out with somebody, but they had no idea who. I was drifting away from them, and they were letting me go. One night I invited them over for dinner. I pushed all traces of Lenny out of sight, but of course there were clues,

a glossy brochure for Italian yachts, a humidor in the center of the coffee table. I cooked up a storm and the place was filled with homie smells, garlic, basil, coriander. It was winter, and the snow was piled up on the sills. Spotlights in the backyard shone on the landscaped garden, the redwood table, the Adirondack chairs. I had my father's favorite music, Dvorzac's Symphony for the New World, playing on the stereo system. My parents rang the doorbell. They looked so solid standing on my front stoop, their cold, red noses poking out from above their mufflers. If nothing else, they looked like they belonged together. They were elegant and rangy, similarly proportioned. Unlike Lenny and me, Lenny is thick as a

linebacker, and I had become so delicate the wind could have picked me up and blown me away. My mother strode into the brownstone as if it wasn't the weirdest thing in the world to be visiting her daughter in a lavish apartment with no name on the outside buzzer. My father trailed behind her warily, as if setting foot on another planet. My mother entered the living room, flung her arms wide, and did an impromptu dance to Dvorzac. Tra la-la-la, she trilled. My father and I hung back and watched. Our faces crumpled into awkward smiles.

It didn't occur to me that she was frightened, that this was a lot for her to take in, her college dropout daughter living in the lap of luxury. All I could see was her outsized self, twirling around. my living room in her fur coat and boots. I wanted a drink. I poured two glasses of chardonnay for my parents and a large vodka for myself. I figured that if the vodka was in a water glass,

they wouldn't know the difference, especially if I drank it like it was water. My drinking had taken on a new urgency in the past few months. It was no longer a question of desire, but of need. I could not get through an evening like this without the armor of booze. I handed them their wine and direct

them to the couch. On the coffee table, I had put out a plate of cruditates and a bowl of olives. Quite a place, my mother said brightly, her gaze darting around the room at the white brick fireplace with its wrought iron tools, the glass wall overlooking the garden, the soaring ceiling. My father stared at the fringe of the rug, glassy-eyed. He needed to be as numbed as I did to get through this night. Thanks, I murmured as if she was paying me a compliment. I checked on dinner using the opportunity to gulp some wine from the open bottle in the fridge. vodka and white wine was a combination I knew worked for me. If I stuck with the formula, things shouldn't be too bad in the morning, especially if I wasn't eating, and I couldn't

see myself eating. The music had stopped by the time we all sat at the dining room table, but I didn't notice then. If I had, I would certainly have changed the tape, filled the air with something other than the tinny, lonely sound of our three forks scraping against plates. I pushed my chicken from one side of my plate to the other. My stomach clenched and growled in protest. It seemed that my parents and I, after 22 years in each other's company, had run out of things to say. I already knew their views on the political situation in Israel, and we couldn't discuss my schoolwork. I was no longer in school. My father pressed a corner of his napkin to his lips and murmured something about the food being delicious. My mother agreed,

my wonderful daughter, she said, shaking her head. You've turned into such a little homemaker. I looked at my parents across the table. Is that what they really thought? How could they just sit there? Some small piece of me wanted my father to fling me over his shoulder and carry me kicking and screaming to the car he had parked outside. I secretly wished that they would drive me home,

deposit me in my childhood bedroom, and feed me chicken soup and saltines. I wanted to start my life over again, but I didn't know how. In the face of the most tangible proof that Lenny had been lying to me all these years, I remained with him. My little girl is dying, he would say, whenever I noticed the discrepancies in his stories, or my children's mother is having electroshock therapy.

When I couldn't take my own confusion anymore, was Lenny lying to me? Was I going crazy? I decided to hire a detective to get to the bottom of it. By this time, my parents knew all about me and Lenny in theory, but it wasn't something we could talk about. When I think back to my younger self rifling through the New York City Yellow Pages in search of a private investigator,

I feel like I'm watching a movie about someone else, a girl so clueless she really didn't know that her desire to hire a detective was all the answer she needed. I chose a detective agency based on nothing more than its good address. In the East 60s, a neighborhood filled a detective. with private schools and shrinks. This isn't what you think, I told the detective. I'm in a relationship with a married man,

and I want you to find out if my boyfriend is cheating on me with his wife. At this, his eyebrows shot up. Come again? He claims his wife is in a mental hospital. He told me he hasn't been with her in years. And you think he might be lying, said the investigator. Did I see the laughter behind his eyes, or is my memory supplying it now,

because I simply cannot imagine a middle-aged man listening to an earnest, overdressed 22-year-old girl tell him that she thinks her boyfriend might still be sleeping with his wife. Yes, I said. Days later, I got the proof about Lenny's lies. In tears, I called my mother. Oh, darling, I'm so sorry.

Is there anything I can do? I don't think so. A pause. Do you want me to call his wife? My mother and Mrs. Klein had met each other at a few school functions back when none of this could have struck anyone as a remote possibility. Yes, I said, call her. I'll do it right now, my mother said. I sat by the phone and watched the minutes tick by. I pictured Lenny's wife answering the phone with a chirpy hello, and my mother's slow, steady explanation of why she was calling. I had set in motion a chain of events which was now unstoppable, more than

20 minutes passed before my mother called me back. Well, I did it, she said. You talk to her? The world felt unreal, hallucinatory. Yes, she called me a liar. She told me she has a happy marriage to a man who travels a lot, that he's on his way to California, and I said, no, he's on his way to see my daughter. My mother sounded proud of herself, immersed in the drama of the moment. How did she seem, I asked. What do you mean? Lenny's wife, was she angry? No, my mother said slowly.

She just didn't believe me, Danny. I spent the rest of that day in a state of awful excitement. Something was going to happen. And when Lenny showed up that evening at the apartment we were still sharing in the West Village, I was ready. He put his bags down and gave me a hug. The phone rang. My mother had given Mrs. Klein the number at the apartment

and suggested she find out for herself what her husband. husband was up to. Lenny picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. Hello? I watched him, and for the first and only time in the years I knew him, he looked genuinely surprised. He didn't say a word. He just listened for a few minutes, then hung up the phone. That was my wife, he said. I was silent. How did she get this number? I shrugged. I have to go. I'd imagine, I said, When Lenny slammed out of the apartment, I was certain I would never see him again. I knew the truth now. It was staring me in the face, in the concrete form of flight lists and photos.

And he knew that I knew. And besides, the whistle was blown. What could he possibly tell his wife? This was it, I told myself, absolutely, positively the end. It wasn't the end. Lenny still called 10, 12 times a day. He left messages on my answering machine. Hello?

His voice filled my bedroom. Fox, are you there? Sometimes he didn't say a word. He would stay on the line for as long as five minutes, just breathing. Eventually, he did get to me again. And for the next year that we were together, three days here, four days there, my life became unrecognizable to me.

I idly wondered what it would take to get me to leave him. I wondered about this over bottles of chilled white wine or heavy glasses half filled with scotch. I was still wondering about it when I went to stay for a while at a health spot in California. The phone rang in my room one day. There had been a car crash on a snowy highway. My mother had 80 broken bones.

My father was in a coma. They were lying in a hospital 3,000 miles away, and suddenly, in ways I could not have imagined seconds earlier, nothing else mattered. As I packed my bags, I remembered my mother twirling, dancing to Dvorzac, through the doors of Lenny's brownstone, and the glassy look in my father's eyes.

I prayed that my father wouldn't die disappointed in me, and I knew then what I had to do. Danny Shapiro. That story is in her memoir, Slow Motion. Her latest book is called Inheritance, a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love. Act four, The Man Who Knew What I Was About to Say. So in this second half of our program, we've had the moment before a possible affair.

We've had what it's like during the affair. And now we turn to the aftermath of an affair, at least the very immediate aftermath. This story is by writer Edgar Carrot and read first by actor Matt Malloy. The man who knew what I was about to say sat next to me on the plane. A stupid smile plastered across his face. That's what's so nervous. talking about him. Smart, he wasn't, or sensitive either. But still, he knew those lines managed to say them. All the lines I meant to say, three seconds before me. Do you sell

Girlin Mystique? He asked the flight attendant a minute before I could, and she gave him an orthodonic smile and said, there's just one last bottle left. My wife goes crazy for that perfume, he said. She's positively addicted. If I come back from a trip without a bottle, bottle of mystique from the duty-free, she says I don't love her anymore. If I dare come into the house without at least one of these, I'm in deep... That was supposed to be my line. But the man who knew what I was about to say stole it from me, without missing a beat. As soon as the wheels touched the ground, he switched on his mobile, a second before I did, and called his wife. I just landed, he told her. I'm sorry, I know it was supposed to be yesterday. Flight was

cancelled. You don't believe me? Check it out yourself. Call Eric. I know you don't. I can give you his number right now. I also have a travel agent called Eric. He'd lie for me too. When the plane reached the gate, he was still talking on his mobile, giving all the answers I would have given,

without a trace of emotion, like a parrot in a world where time flows backwards, repeating whatever is about to be said instead of what's been said already. His answers were the best ones under the circumstances. His circumstances weren't too hot, not too hot at all. Mine weren't either. Nobody was answering my call, but just listening to the man who knew what I was about to say

made me stop trying. Just listening to him I could tell that this was a hole that even if I dug my way out of, it would be to a different reality. She'd never forgive me. She'd never trust me. Ever. All my coming trips would be hell on earth, and the time in between would be even worse.

He went on talking and talking and talking, all those sentences that I'd thought up and hadn't said yet. It just kept flowing. He stepped it up, changing the intonation, like a drowning man struggling desperately to stay afloat. People began getting off. He got up, still talking, scooped up his laptop in the other hand and headed for the exit. I could see him forgetting it behind. The bag he had put in the overhead compartment, I could see him forgetting it.

I didn't say anything. I just stayed put. Gradually everyone walked out until the only one still there were an overweight religious woman with a million children and me. I got up and opened the overhead compartment above me, as if nothing.

I took out the duty-free bag like it had always been mine. Inside with a receipt, And the bottle of Giela Mystique. My wife goes crazy for that perfume. She's positively addicted. If I come back from a trip without a bottle of mystique from the duty-free, she says I don't love her anymore. Someday he'll come along, the man I love.

Matt Malloy, reading a story by Edgar Carrot from Edgar's story collection, suddenly a knock on the door. Edgar sends stories and poems to subscribers in his substacked newsletter, Alphabet Soup. Our program was produced today by Nancy Optiak and our senior producer at the time, Julie Snyder, with Alex Bloomberg, Jay Marie, Sarah Caney, Lisa Pollock, Robin Semenon, and Alyssa Schip,

production up from Aaron Scott. Seth Lind was our production manager, and Emily Condon was our office manager for this show. Our musical consultant for the show was Jessica Hopper, help on today's rerun from Adrian Lilly, Molly Marcello, and Ryan Rummery. Special thanks today to The Moth and to Paul Tuff. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Malatia.

You know, I'm a happily married man. So does it mean anything when he swims over to me at the company retreat and says things like, The water makes me feel so free? I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. I'm waiting for