AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d started to think something was seriously wrong with me. I should have realized it was my conscience. Not only was I betraying my brother; we’d had to sneak around the whole family. And we snuck around a lot.
I felt like shit all the time. I was always high or drunk, or both. Whatever cut through the guilt. I had to guard every reaction, every expression. Nothing felt natural anymore. I was paranoid. Anyone could have discovered the affair if they had just glanced at us. She wasn’t exactly being careful.
A couple of weeks after our first time together, George and Dad had gone together for a pick-up. Ma had run to the grocery store. Eleni had been super sweet to me all morning, making careful eye contact over a steaming coffee mug, rubbing my shoulders after I told her I didn’t feel well. She’d laughed and kissed my chest, right over my heart, to make it all better.
After office hours, we’d been sharing a bowl. That was our pretense for getting together. George fucking hated the smell of weed. Wouldn’t let it anywhere near his sacred funereal spaces. He’d only grudgingly allowed it in their apartment, so it always bought Eleni and me a few minutes alone.
“You know where I’ve always wanted to fuck?” she asked, blowing smoke into my lungs through a kiss, gripping my balls hard in her fist. “The prep room.”
“You’re not allowed in there. You’re not licensed.” It was my feeble way of discouraging her.
“Hmm,” she murmured as she bit my lip hard. “Are the cops going to come arrest us? If we’re caught, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than an unlicensed woman minding her own business inside a room in her house.”
She unbuttoned her silk blouse down to her navel. Right there in her kitchen. She hadn’t worn a bra to work in the office, and frankly, that kind of flagrant show was all I needed back then. Sliding the fabric to the side of one breast, she toyed with me. “I can put these away then, if you want.”
“Fuck it. Go downstairs.”
Maybe part of me was trying to get caught. Maybe I wanted George and everyone to hate me as much as I hated myself. It was a cop out.
And I would pray for forgiveness for the rest of my life, for my weakness—not just the cheating, but doing it where the act would be burned into my brother and sister’s memory—because Soula had seen it too. All of it.
A storm had killed the power in the house that night, and the generator hadn’t kicked on. While I was busy pounding into Eleni at the end of the casketing table—jeans around my ankles, balls swinging away—it finally registered. Eleni was talking, andit wasn’t directed toward me. She stared over my shoulder as I pumped and pumped, making no motion to stop me.
Suddenly, the lights flashed on. Two shadows darkened the door. I jerked out of her and turned to the wall, but I’d seen the cold, dead expression in her eyes.
Hatred rolled off her. Not for me, but for my brother.
I’d been using Eleni as an ego boost. But she’d been using me as a .22 blade scalpel to carve George’s heart out of his chest.
I puked on the linoleum. I didn’t even have time to put my cock away.
That was all I could think about last night when I held Decca. Jack and Coke puke running into the floor drain of the prep room. The fluorescent light strobing off the bright, gray-white wall. Eleni’s cruel smile. Shattered images forced themselves into the forefront of my memory.
I didn’t understand it. I’d had plenty of sex after Eleni and I'd never gotten these visceral flashbacks. I rarely even thought about the affair in gory detail.
Last night scared me. It had started out so tenderly and turned into something monstrous. It wasn’t Decca’s dress I was unzipping. It was Eleni’s. Not my wife’s breast I palmed, or lips I kissed, or skin I ran my hands over. It was Eleni.
I’d had to rush to the bathroom to dry heave into the toilet.
My brother’s wife was my rock bottom and, at the time, I didn’t think there’d ever be a way to crawl out.
Maybe I hadn’t crawled as far as I thought.
I’d gotten help. With God and the saints of the faith. With the Church and Holy Tradition. With Father Vasili and Dad.
And when I was prostrate in despair, you raised me to glorify you with your power.
I’d been so certainof my new purpose.
After college and seminary, new friendships, and true reconciliation with George, I was still scrabbling upward. I could see the sun peaking over the edge of the rocky cliff wall and that rock—the same one that had been in the pit of my stomach since Eleni—it had been dissolving little by little.
Now here was Decca at the very top, kneeling down, offering me a hand. Using her strength to pull me over the ledge.
But I couldn’t accept it.
Over the years, I’d gotten a lot of help for these feelings of shame and worthlessness. I’d grown up, and I’d rushed to the church to seek forgiveness, which meant a denial of self and every selfish act.
Sex had always been the ultimate selfish act.
