Deeper

Not long after Mara went away for slicing up her husband I get this letter in the mail. Says something about how the author says I should've known better, telling me wasn't I some kind of backstabber, just because Jere and I had been friendly from time to time. But what's friendly where sex is concerned? I can't say love, or maybe it is that I won't say it, but in any case it's not getting said anytime soon. And, sure, maybe I should've known better, but that's not getting said anytime soon either.

And that's what set her off the handle, says this letter I received. That of course she thought it was love, how could she not, and wasn't I the one that led her on that way to thinking so. Which, who knows, perhaps I did. Not through anything intentional. How much of an affair is intentional anyway? It's just a thing that happens, and then you're in the middle of it, and you figure, well, now I'm doing this thing I guess. It's the danger and the deception and all the things people say it is.

But not to her, the letter goes on, no, to her it was something more. Jere had been neglecting Mara and not for any short stretch of time. She felt cooped up; cooped up in her house, cooped up in her marriage, cooped up in her mind. I never claimed to have any wire cutters to get her out, although maybe that was my mistake. Like I said, it's a thing that happens, one thing that led to another, and before I knew it she was free to think what she wanted. Me? I thought we were both adults. She came over with an idea, probably too many to count. And, sure, I let it happen. Who am I to argue with an unhappily married woman?

Hell, maybe I asked for all this. Physical things can be the hardest. They shouldn't be, but they are. Too many emotional precepts getting in the way of what we're made of. We were created as one thing, and sometime along the way some people decided that they could get some power by saying that was all bullshit. Well, maybe it is bullshit. But I'd rather live with the bullshit I was intended to have.

We're all the same, I read. I was no different than Jere, certainly no better. In many ways the author says I'm worse. That I could see the problem and chose to continue on anyway. That all I had to do was talk to her, listen to her. How is that different from what poor Jere did? How is that different from what he should've done?

I told him not to press charges against Mara, told him he could take a knife to mine if it would even the score. But he wanted to see her suffer. He wasn't mad at me. And I don't think she was mad at him. I don't think things like this get started as a way to hurt people. Not this thing anyway. But people wind up hurt all the same, and there's a way to avoid that I think. But when you're knee deep inside a woman there's not much else you're capable of thinking except, hell, I bet I could go deeper.