Beate Sigriddaughter
The Mistress
Not what any of us expected, that’s for sure.
I remember our first meeting. I was at Starbucks reading a magazine article about Frida Kahlo. It wasn’t all that crowded. Nevertheless, she stopped at my table, something frothy in a mug in her hand.
“May I join you?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m Linda. Linda Thomas.”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh.”
Greg had pointed her out to me one day in the public library where we met at the circulation desk by chance. She was studying the bulletin board. Small, dark short curls, almost translucent porcelain skin. Ethereal somehow. He didn’t call her over to introduce us. Lovely, I’d thought then with a quick pang of guilt. But not nearly as lovely as now when she was sitting across from me at Starbucks.
“I’m Melody.” I extended my hand. She hesitated a fraction of a moment, then she reached across the table to shake.
“If you already know who I am, then you probably also know why I want to talk to you,” she said.
“Yes. Greg.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said breathily. “So I can understand.”
I looked into her eyes, and I had goosebumps on my arms, on my ankles. I knew my life as I had known it would not be the same ever again. All of a sudden, we were in a lengthy and involved exchange of mutual admiration, which hasn’t stopped to this day.
*
This day. She’s moving in today. We haven’t told him yet. That is to say, I haven’t told him yet. I don’t know how to do it. Somehow, I kept hoping he’d figure it out on his own. Instead, it’s become my job to break the news. Well, okay, I did volunteer, though I regret that now. Seeing the discomfort in her eyes, though, what else could I do? Still, she’d be better qualified, no? She’s known him longer. Better. Though I don’t know about better. Thing is, he has to be told. Sooner or later. Preferably sooner. That’s all there is to it.
He really was quite wonderful as a lover. Exciting. Uplifting. I had dreams of doing my precious artwork 24/7 with minimal interruptions because he’d be busy spending time with his wife and his career. No children, thank God. And from time to precious time, he’d be with me. He always brought me roses. We always made love. It always was delicious. But always amounted to once a week or every two weeks for a few hours. It didn’t disturb my comfortable solitary life. I liked being part-time lover to a man committed to staying with his wife. It gave me this shining sense of being loved and noble both. Far be it from me to disrupt a marriage.
He told me right from the start he would never leave her. I readily bought into that, with just the tiniest ache in my heart, to be sure, especially when he’d keep harping on his commitment to her, but I still got to maintain my illusion of being noble. He told me he loved her. She was fragile and not sexually inclined. But lovely. Well, he was wrong. She’s neither fragile nor asexual, though he was spot on about the lovely part. I’d never been with a woman before. Neither had she. We had no trouble figuring it out.
What we haven’t figured out yet is how to let him know. We definitely don’t want a threesome. As far as we know, he’s still under the impression that she’s moving out as a trial separation to sort things out for herself. For which reason he hasn’t been with me for weeks now, a few months actually, because he felt he needed to sort things out on the home front, mending fences and all that. This of course made it convenient for me to avoid the issue which now can no longer be avoided. I did ask him once on the telephone, what if those fences can’t be mended? He shrugged it off, confident that he could fix everything, given a chance. That in itself didn’t come as a huge surprise. It was typical for him to interpret the world in his favor.
This might sound like a comedy, but it isn’t funny. It might sound like poetic justice, but it isn’t that either. Maybe it’s all for the best. Per Linda, he likes novelty. And we like each other. She cried when she told me one time that once she’s gone, he probably won’t even notice, though his ego might. The tears were not so much over him, but over how negligible she felt in this world. I hope I can keep making her feel important.
As for me, I have no idea how my artwork will fare with all this imminent commotion. Unlike Linda, I haven’t lived with another person since sharing a dormitory room first semester in college. And now, instead of painting flowers and mermaids, I’m hanging a glass bead curtain in what is to be her room. She really is lovely.