Chapter 1

Bill Perez was one of the single men in our church. He was tall, and handsome, and well off financially. We were friends – he, my husband, and I – almost from the day my husband became the pastor of Gilead Church in Albuquerque. At that time Frank and I had been married for nearly four years.

When we'd been in the church for two years, Bill became my lover.

Looking back I can hardly understand why or how it happened. It wasn't that I didn't love Frank, for I did love him as much as ever. There were things that I could point to with which I wasn't satisfied, or with which I wasn't fully satisfied, but none of them were good reasons for going outside my husband's bed.

No, they weren't. There is never a good reason for such a thing. All I can do is make excuses, and I'm not going to do that. I did enough of that when I broke it off.

It was a Friday – I will never forget that. I'd met Bill at a restaurant for lunch and told him I couldn't continue as I was. I'd done my best not to cry, but I hadn't quite succeeded. "I care for you, I really do," I'd told him, "but I'm married, and my husband is the pastor. Your pastor."

"He was my pastor when we began."

"I know ... I know. But I can't go on like this."

Bill's face had registered hurt. I didn't believe that he loved me. He'd never said that he did, and all we'd had was, after all, the adultery. But I suppose rejection always hurts. "Gen," he'd said, the first syllable of my name having a soft G, "I don't see why not."

I'd shaken my head. "I don't know why I got into this. All I know is I've got to get out." And I'd suddenly gotten up, not knowing I was going to until I did, and fled the restaurant. And it wasn't until I was halfway home that I remembered I'd left my food sitting untouched on the table.

Frank was in his study when I returned to the parsonage. He devoted Friday and Saturday to his sermon preparation. I almost postponed what I knew I had to do next, and the sermon made a very convenient excuse. But I knew that if I didn't use my courage while I had it, I never would, and then eventually Frank would find out some other way. And I couldn't stand that.

I knocked on the study door with the little rhythm I'd developed over the years. We didn't have any children so it wasn't any sort of code – I'd just gotten into the habit and it was a little joke between us. I did it now without thinking about what I was doing.

"Come in," Frank called.

I opened the door and stepped in, shutting it behind me. I've seen many preacher's studies, and Frank's was about average. It was a big room, probably the master bedroom originally, but a previous pastor had apparently converted it. Frank's desk was to the left, against the wall, and there was a small table in the center of the room. Of course there were bookshelves all around the walls, and there were always books on the desk and on the table. Frank's computer was on the desk, and so he did most of his studying at the center table, which was of 2x4s and looked like it had originally been patio furniture. Frank had found it at a garage sale, and had stripped it down and stained it, and now it looked very nice.

He was at the table just then, in his usual seat facing the door. He looked up from his books at me. "Hello, Gen. What can I do for you?"

"I need to talk to you, Frank."

"Can it wait?"

I wanted to say that it could, but I didn't dare. "No, I'm afraid it can't."

He half rose from his chair, and gestured to the one across the table from him. "Please, sit down." Frank's natural formality reinforced the good manners he'd learned in his youth.

I pulled out the chair, a ladder-back chair that Frank had also bought used and had restored, and sat down. I moved a book out of the way and forced myself to look at him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, suddenly seeing something in my face – perhaps my eyes, which I realized might show the effects of my crying in the restaurant. They might be red, and my mascara might have run.

"Frank," I said, "I'm not all right. I have a confession to make." The cliché might have made me laugh were I not so terrified of what came next. "I have been unfaithful to you."

I've never had any sort of sudden emotional blow, so I can't say from experience, but I suppose that such a blow produces shock. Frank just looked at me for a few seconds, and then said, "Excuse me?"

"I've been having an affair. I broke it off today."

"How long?" The shock seemed to be wearing off, for Frank's voice was ragged.

"Three months."

"Who?"

I stood mute, as the saying is.

Frank wasn't going to settle for that. He glared at me and growled, "Who, Genesis?"

"I don't want to tell you."

The shock was certainly gone by now, and Frank was becoming angry. "Genesis, I am not going to accept that. You will tell me who you committed adultery with, and you are going to tell me now."

"Frank, please—"

"Genesis – tell me who."

I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep the name from him, so I yielded. "Bill Perez."

"Our friend?"

I was holding onto myself by my fingernails. "Yes."

I could tell by the look on Frank's face that even if he didn't say it, and he didn't, he could have easily threatened Bill's life just then. "Frank," I said, "blame me. Don't blame Bill. I'm the one who initiated it." And that was true.

"I'll blame whoever I want to!" he shouted. "Did you at least have the decency to keep him out of our bed?"

It was a cruel question. "I guess I deserve that," I said, breaking into tears. "Yes, I..." I found I couldn't claim decency. "I always met him elsewhere."

"Well, thank God for small favors." And he got up so quickly that his chair fell over, and walked around the table and around me, and slammed the study door behind him as he left. In a few seconds I heard the front door slam as well. And then I laid my head down on the table and wept.

I'd told Frank of my adultery just before noon. By the time I came to myself enough to notice anything other than the wreck I'd made, it was getting close to two in the afternoon. I got myself out of my chair, and forced myself to open the study door and go out into the hallway. I decided to begin preparing supper. It wasn't that I was indifferent to the circumstances, but that I was, for the moment, numb. Once I got myself moving, I operated on automatic pilot – and that automatic pilot said "fix supper."

I had been planning on chicken enchiladas with green chili and sour cream, tortillas, and refried beans. I'm not a native New Mexican but I'd learned to cook several traditional New Mexican dishes, partly because that's what you find in Albuquerque, and partly because Frank liked them.

The familiar actions of cooking lulled me into – as the cliché puts it – a false sense of security. I began to feel almost normal, and I began to hope that it would be over sooner, and more easily, than I had feared. This was an irrational thing to think, for I had dropped a live grenade into Frank's life and the explosion was still reverberating. But I was not thinking rationally at that point.

I had the enchiladas in the oven, and was ready to go into the living room and take a break, when I heard the front door open. I glanced at the clock ticking on the wall – it was just after three. I went into the living room and found Frank standing there, looking lost.

"Are you all right?" I asked, exactly as I would have had there been no adultery and he'd looked that way.

He looked at me as though I were a cockroach. "What do you think, Genesis?"

His disdain struck me like a blow, and I remembered what I had never, really forgotten – I was a confessed adulterer, and this was the man against whom I had sinned. "I'm sorry, Frank. I..."

"Please wait there, Genesis," he said, with the cold politeness that is an insult. "I have a phone call to make, and I wish you to be present while I make it."

I clasped my hands in front of me, not knowing whether to be afraid, or something else – what else I might be, I didn't know.

Frank picked the phone off its charger and dialed without looking up a number. Holding it to his ear, he waited – while it rang, I assumed. After a moment he said, sounding as he always did, "Hello, Bill?"

My hands came up to my mouth, and Frank sent me a cold glare, and pointed his finger at me. I didn't need him to speak – I knew he was ordering me to remain silent.

"Yes," Frank said into the phone. "I wondered if you could come over to the parsonage. Yes, I've got something I need to talk to you about." He nodded. "That'll be fine. Thanks." And he hung up.

My hands were still at my mouth. "Frank..."

"Genesis, you have no voice in what is happening here. You have forfeited any right to contribute to the proceedings of this home. Kindly be silent, and remain available to my call."

It was as though he were speaking to a servant for whom he had great contempt. I would almost have preferred that he be violent – that he had smashed furniture, or even bruised my face with a vicious slap. This coldness, this impassable distance, was worse than violence. I felt as though he had cast me off.

And yet I couldn't blame him. I had betrayed him in a way that struck directly at his ego, his manhood, his heart – his very self. He had allowed me into his life in the most intimate way, and I had stabbed him under the fifth rib. I knew this intellectually – but emotionally his coldness was cruelty itself, and I felt it as though he were scourging me with scorpions.