Installment Fifty-Three

Deborah was first to phone me the morning after Gabe’s confession.

Actually, that's not quite true. She tried ringing me several times after I returned home from the dinner, but I just wasn't ready to take her calls. Instead, I had stared at my bag of 'sleeping medication' before finally convincing myself that smoking it would not solve my problem.

And, besides, there were no potato chips within easy reach.

The story Sean's father told me could be a deal-breaker in their reconciliation. Gabe confided in me (although I was already aware) that he still had not talked with his son about the past. He was just so happy to see him again, he said, that he couldn't figure out a way to tell him.

My cousin and best friend Julie was next on my phone list, but I was too embarrassed to tell her I had clung so foolishly to the idea of a man that has no basis in reality.

I absolutely ignored all calls from TBM.

Edna had the good sense and decency to leave me alone.

Finally, it was Carolyn I unleashed the story on. She had turned up at my door as I had forgotten a lunch date we had made. Taking one look at my face and without saying a word, she went into my tiny kitchen, made me a cup of tea and sat down with me on the couch salvaged from the garbage.

"Start from the beginning, Joelly."

It became my turn for a monologue which began haltingly.

"He's a shit."

“You are going to have to be more specific than that.”

"Why do I always end up with shits?"

"Go on, Joelly. We can talk about your choice in men another time."

"He didn't know his wife was as ill as she was until it was too late to really do anything about it."

Deep breath.

"Carolyn, Gabe was sleeping with someone! It was a young local hire working at his Embassy. His job involved a lot of travel and she went with him everywhere. He was smitten, ignored his family and didn't notice that his wife's health was deteriorating."

Carolyn looked suitably shocked. I found it hard to continue the story but carried on.

"The children felt their mother was unhappy but had no idea she was sick. They only knew their father was rarely around and they figured her depression was due to that."

"When the cancer diagnosis finally came, Gabe had to deflect his guilt somewhere. So, he threw it at his foreign office instead of taking responsibility for his own unfaithful behaviour.”

"When she died..." and here I stopped because I really thought the tale could not get any worse..."he took his children home to Ireland, parked them with their maternal grandparents and said he was so angry with his foreign ministry he was going to take a sabbatical."

"How on earth did he keep this all a secret?" Carolyn asked, finally getting a word in edge-wise.

"No one knew about the affair," I told her. "He was always very clever and he just managed to conceal it. And then he ran away--with her. People just thought he ran away grief-stricken."

"Well, of course it didn't last. It wasn't the life she had envisioned for herself and eventually she left him. But this was long after it was apparent he wasn't coming back to his children or to rejoin his foreign service."

"So he decided to change his name and has been hiding out for almost a decade in a remote Irish village."

She was rendered speechless by the tale.

"Seriously, Carolyn, could I make this up?"

"Well, you got one thing right," my friend finally commented.

"He is a real shit."