Happy Anniversary, You Liars: A Wife Walks In

Across the room, on the right side of his desk, my husband was holding a woman in a red dress close, and they were kissing.

I did not call out his name.

I walked straight in, and when I reached the desk, I swung my arm and knocked the box out of my hand and onto the floor.

The lid popped open, and food and little containers skidded across the pale stone tiles.

David began to turn toward me, but the woman in red was still pressed against him.

I pivoted, lifted my leg high, and kicked her.

My heel caught her low, her body pitched forward, and she dropped to her knees on the floor.

Then I stepped right up to my husband.

I kicked him hard in his lower stomach, and he jackknifed backward into the edge of the desk.

His arms flew up, his balance went, and he fell across the desktop with both feet leaving the ground.

I planted my foot and stood there while he rolled behind the desk and the woman in red crawled on the tiles in front of it.

She lowered her head, then looked up at me.

I said, “Happy anniversary, you liars!”

David pushed himself up behind the desk and stared at me as if he were seeing a stranger.

The woman in red got one knee under herself, then stood and hurried around the desk, out of the space between us.

I stayed where I was and let her pass.

David came around the right side of the desk with his hands open and his palms turned up.

He kept walking toward me, saying, “It’s not what you think.”

I did not step back.

I looked straight at his face and asked, “Then why were you kissing her?”

That stopped him where he stood.

He tilted forward with one hand still out while the woman in red moved behind him and sat down on the edge of his desk.

I pulled the beige perfume box out of my coat and held it up in front of his face.

I shook it once for emphasis and said, “That perfume was on you before.”

He looked at the box, then at me, and his hands dropped to his sides.

He had no answer for that one.

I lowered the box beside me and shook my head.

I said, “You already ended this.”

He just stood there, silent, while the woman in red watched us from behind the desk.

I turned toward the door with my bag in my left hand and the perfume box in my right.

I walked fast, and I did not look back, even when I heard him come after me.

He reached toward me as I crossed the threshold into the hallway.

Then I spun around, my brown hair and my white blazer swinging with me.

David stopped with both hands raised in front of him.

His hand found the edge of the door, and he called my name.

I want you to understand that the hallway was completely empty by then.

It was just the two of us at that doorway, with everything I had believed lying in pieces on his office floor.

I stood there with my hand on the door frame, and for the first time in eleven years of marriage, I had no idea whether I was going to take another step.

The hallway was completely empty by then.

David’s voice followed me, calling my name.

I did not answer.

My white blazer felt heavy on my shoulders.

The beige perfume box was still in my right hand.

My bag was in my left.

David’s hand had been on the door frame when I turned back.

I saw the fear in his face before I kept walking.

I reached my car in the parking garage and sat behind the wheel.

I did not start the engine right away.

I stared at the steering wheel and tried to breathe.

My hands were still shaking.

The office floor had been covered in food and broken pieces of that box.

David had been on his back against the desk.

Natalie had been on the carpet in her red dress.

I had kicked them both.

It felt like a dream I could not wake up from.

I started the car and drove home.

The drive took twenty minutes, but it felt longer.

I passed the restaurant where we were supposed to have dinner.

I had bought a new dress for the evening.

It was still hanging in my closet with the tags on.