Page 57 of Breathing Under Water

“I’m not who you thought I was, okay?”

“What?”

He lifts his head and swipes beneath his eyes. He meets my gaze and then quickly looks away. “I’m not sick, I’m not having an affair. I’m just a pathetic loser.”

“A loser?” As I repeat the word, it dawns on me this has to be about something financial.

“I’ve been trying to take care of everything so you’d never know. The worst part of all of this has been imagining you seeing me the way I’ve been forced to see myself.”

I pull him by the hand into the kitchen and point toward the table.

“Sit. Start at the beginning. All of it.”

He does as I say, slumping into his chair, still wiping at his eyes.

“It was the home health monitoring devices. We never should have invested so much in them. And then the warehouse in Connecticut. We’re paying rent to store those devices, but they’re not selling, and we’re getting deeper and deeper in the hole. The business is tanking. And I’ve tried a million things to save it. But come next week, we have to declare.”

“Declare what?”

“Chapter 7. Total bankruptcy and liquidation.”

He looks up at me, waiting for my reaction.

“What else?” I ask.

“What do you mean ‘what else’? That’s it. That’s the whole story. Isn’t that enough?”

I struggle to maintain my composure as I respond.

“That’s it? That’s the big, scary, secret thing? The thing you couldn’t trust me with? All these months of sneaking around, the moodiness, the travel, letting me think you’re having an affair, that maybe you’re fucking dying... All of it, and it’s just some business troubles?”

He shoots out of his chair at my words.

“It’s notjust some business troubles! We completely screwed up. The company I spent years building. My employees. I can’t even bear to think how this is going to affect Christo!” He nearly yelps the name of his longtime executive assistant. “What will he do now? And all the other employees. Berry, this isn’t just business troubles. It’s our whole livelihood. My employees, my reputation, my self-respect—I’ve lost everything! All these people depend on me, and I’ve let them down. This is what they liveon! I can’t stand the sight of myself, and the idea of you looking at me the same way I do... I don’t know if I can survive it. I’ve been working hard my whole life, trying to make something of myself, and I’ve got exactly nothing to show for it!”

“That’s bullshit.”

Phil winces at my language, but I’m well past catering to the sensitivities of his ears. I point a finger at his chest as I step closer. “Your company is not everything. I’m sorry that something you worked so hard on has started to fall apart. I am, but that’s it. That’s all this is. You will find another way to earn money. It’s not our whole livelihood. Have you forgotten that we are a double-income household?” I motion toward the little desk in the corner where so many of my materials from Stillwell are scattered. “I can steer the ship for a while, and that can be okay. And may I remind you that I’m up for a lucrative promotion? You are so much more than your paycheck, Phil! You’ve always tied your identity too closely to your earnings. Enough!

“And since you can’t seem to see yourself for who you are, let me clear things up. You are the man who never leaves his wife to do dishes on her own, the one who listens to his teenage son list flight path changes nearly every night, the one who makes sure the walkway is salted each time it snows so the postman doesn’t slip. I don’t know what your damn parents taught you, but this is life! Sometimes you have a lot, sometimes you have a little, and you just figure it out.” I lean even closer, our noses nearly touching. “What you donotdo is keep secrets from the one person who has supported everything you’ve ever done. You don’t sneak around and come back smelling like perfume, letting the woman who would lie down on railroad tracks for you wonder why you’ve replaced her!” Remembering thoseother questions, I step back. “Speaking of, care to explain the perfume? And the dress shirt? And the trips to Westchester? None of those details make sense.”

Is it possible he’s still lying to me?

“Dean and I have been trying to find investors on our own, but nothing has panned out. We took on too much risk, and nobody wants to get involved. I finally asked my dad for help.” His shoulders have dropped so low, he looks like he can barely tolerate being inside his own body.

“Dad knows venture capitalists. I’ve been walking him through all the details of what’s going on so we could strategize about—”

“Hold up,” I interrupt as I take a step back. “You told your father? You told your father. And not me.” I have to repeat this information to digest it. “The same father whose values made you afraid to tell me?” After all the years of his parents teaching him to measure his self-worth by the number of zeros in his bank account, and he was still more comfortable going to his dad.

“Phil, you know I have never cared about how much money you make! So long as we can take care of our kids and put food on the table, we can figure everything out. Isthiswhy you haven’t wanted to pay for any extra services for Leo? Instead of owning your own failures, you started taking things away from our kid who needs them. So I wouldn’t notice our bank statements looking different? Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t you trust me to handle this, the same way we’ve handled so many other things together?”

“I’ve lost trust in everythingexceptyou. I can’t lose anything else. First my mom. Then the business. I’m having trouble letting go with Leo. It’s too much.” His eyes are wet as he says it, and I start to soften.

But then I think again of the rest. “You still haven’t explained the perfume.”

“It was an investor I had a breakfast meeting with. She and I were right next to each other, looking over reports.” He looks away from me again.

“So why didn’t you just say that? ‘Gee, Berry, it was just a breakfast meeting.’ You wouldn’t have had to get into all the details. So why?”