Brett's name flies to my screen with an incoming email.
"Call back soon," I say, and hang up a friend.
The last time I spoke to Brett was that the Obama family lived in the White House. The last time I thought of him? Last year when Melania made her third jump into the President's Christmas decorations and I didn't have enough spirit to get our pre-lit tree out of the garage.
Brett's message came through the contact form on my website. He invited me for coffee; full of respect if I refuse.
Four years ago I contacted Brett. On a dreary morning in early December 2015, I called his office to report that our spouses had an affair.
The receptionist put me on hold. I held my breath and tried: I don't know if you remember me. My husband Sean used to work with Rebekah –
A soft click, then Brett's voice on the line "Jess". He held this syllable of my name as if it were a premature baby who was just born. "I'm so sorry for Sean."
I slumped on the sofa. Five weeks later, I was still surprised to be greeted with condolences. "Thanks, Brett." I said. "And I'm sorry for what I'm going to tell you."
Sean had a heart attack on November 4, 2015 at the Houston airport. That morning I woke a mother who stayed at home and whose extremely successful husband was about to become CEO of a medium-sized company. At lunchtime, I was an unemployed widow and single parent of a nine-year-old with a broken heart.
My love story with Sean started in 1995. He was my greatest supporter, my closest confidant and co-author of a life full of inside jokes. When Sean died, I lost my best friend in the world. Two weeks later, when a good friend – who thought I already knew – revealed that Sean and Rebekah had an affair … I lost him again.
I knew I was a mess and resisted the urge to shed my pain on Brett. But I finally decided to call him after I contacted Sam Harris: "By lying, we deny others the view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty affects not only the decisions they make, but often determines also the decisions they can make. Every lie is a direct attack on the autonomy of the person we lie to. "Bingo.
Years earlier, the newly enchanted lovers Sean and Rebekah had arranged a dinner in the Redwater Grille with Brett and me. I got to know Brett a bit that night and (since she wasn't attending Sean's funeral) this evening was the last time I saw Rebekah. We sat side by side in the leather cabin. She took a bite of her salad and then held her French-groomed fingertips to her lips. "I think I broke my head." Her cheeks were flushed pink. She looked shy and wide-eyed like an anime character.
"Let me see," I said, and she lowered her hand a little. The white porcelain veneers on both of her front teeth had broken off and showed a black crescent moon and rugged yellowed ridges. "It's not that bad," I said, patting her arm as she slipped past me to the washroom. "You can hardly notice it."
Sam Harris would not have been impressed by me that day.
I told Brett about the affair to show him the respect I wanted. That doesn't mean he greeted my call. He never accepted my offer to provide phone records or receipts for boutique hotels. I don't know what happened next in Brett's world. Maybe he forgave his wife.
Not me. A few weeks after speaking to Brett, I went for revenge. No public shame. No, "You beat up my husband – prepare for death." I owed Rebekka a few medical details, and I felt grateful to be able to inconvenience them and deliver them at an extremely inconvenient time.
Christmas Eve 2015: I dropped my son off to sleep with a cousin, went for a walk with my dogs on the river and then settled in an armchair at home under a cozy blanket. In the late afternoon twilight I pulled out my cell phone and fired a rush of text messages.
I felt like a boss for eight seconds and then realized how easily she could have thwarted me: Block the caller – pass on eggnog. Damn it.
I resent the messages to Rebekah’s Skype account and directed them to let me know that they had received them. No Answer.
I went up and down and stared out the window. Lights flashed in my neighbors' houses. Smoke rose from their chimneys. I called Rebekah's cell. Landline called the family. Nothing. I looked at my car keys hanging next to the garage door. If Rebekka didn't recognize me by midnight, I would tear down her bloody chimney.
Around the time that each of us should have been eating Santa's cookies and going to bed, it occurred to me that Sean had once been Rebekah's boss. I logged into Sean's personal email account and wrote to Rebekah's work account with the subject, "Take Immediate Action: Possible HR Concerns". Immediate response. She shot back and said she would sue me for harassment.
I deleted your empty threat. Boom, bitch.
Four years later I'm curious to see how Brett's life developed. I'm excited to see how my revenge plan ended up at Rebekah's end, and I just want to ask Brett what the hell happened.
screeching for me: "How could you?" to Sean's side of our empty bed turned out to be rather unsatisfactory. The only answers I have ever received are those that I have paved with my skills from Nancy Drew. Brett's email invitation was, "A lot has happened since Sean's death (and the events in his life that have woven something into us)." He is right – we are intertwined. I can't wait to speak to him.
Brett is running late. He writes: Urgent call from his son's school. I order a latte and grab the last free table – a large two-seater just a few inches from other guests.
I get up when Brett arrives and go to meet him near the door. Brett is tall, broad-shouldered and sporty. We have both aged in the eight years since we last saw each other, but he still looks young, in his early fifties, and is an attractive guy. We hug and say hello. I point through the crowded café, point out the lack of privacy and say: "Do you want to get out of here?"
He looks at me questioningly. I burst out laughing and realized what I had said. We end up in the winter garden of a quiet restaurant. It's the afternoon rest and we almost have the space to ourselves. Our table is directly under a blazing patio heater. I put my winter parka in the corner of the stand and sit down. I order a burger and an iced tea. He gets a cranberry soda.
Brett tells me that when I called him back in 2015, he and Rebekah were 90 percent on their way to divorce. He hadn't been a perfect husband. She had been happy to blame him. He says that his conversation with me was a light at the end of the tunnel. It's been a long process, but her divorce will soon be over.
Brett mentions that he is writing a book. The same applies here. He had a lot of physical pain and health problems from the stress of it all. Me too. He learned mindfulness practices to heal. The enemy of my enemy is my new beast. The server checks whether drinks should be refilled. We do it.
Many years ago I knew a fitness fan who followed a sugar-free diet, but one Saturday a month he went to the cinema, sneaked into a bag of goodie rings and a bag of Twizzlers and polished the biscuits and red liquorice while looking at the Show.
I feel like this guy watching Fatal Attraction when Brett starts talking about Rebekah.
"She has these kinks in the bedroom …" (om nom nom)
"She pretty much slept with all her bosses …" (nom nom nom)
“Our son suspected she cheated on me. He confronted her and she tore off a strip so deep that she cut it to the core. "
(swallow)
My text attack on Rebekah ended with: "My Christmas wish? That your children find out what a worthless, selfish, life-destroying coward their mother really is. “A hint of guilt flares up in my stomach. I take a sip of iced tea.
I'm telling Brett about a three-day trauma release workshop that I recently completed. “There was a dead alarm clock for Rebekka in this class. I could hardly look at her. She looked exactly like her, but ten years younger. "
"Ten Years? Could be. You should see what she spends on plastic surgery. "
I raise an eyebrow.
"Well, she has to somehow – a lot of people see her naked." (Nom nom nom)
When it is time to pick up our children, we thank you for the meeting. I close my parka. Brett says, "I hope it was half as good for you as it was for me."
It was better. I am dizzy in a Schadenfreude rush.
One morning a week I venture into Rebekah's neighborhood to see my physiotherapist. When I arrive at the traffic lights near the hospital, I always hold my breath and worry that she's in a nearby vehicle and mocks me in my fourteen-year-old minivan. After today I will never be nervous again when I come across Rebekah.
That night my stomach hurts. Excerpts from my conversation with Brett are bubbling up.
He told me that Rebekah's family had emigrated from Hungary. I have spent the past two years learning as much as possible about healing traumas. One of my teachers is Dr. Gabor Maté, who was born in Budapest. He was two months old when the Nazis invaded. His grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, his father was sent to a forced labor camp. He and his mother starved. He talks about the far-reaching effects of these experiences on his own life and the effects on his relationships and children.
Dr. Maté's story gives an overview of what could also apply to Rebekah's parents.
Brett said Rebekah's father was a problem drinker. My Also. Colorful details fill themselves into my imaginary picture of Rebekah's early life.
One area of trauma research that I am particularly interested in is epigenetics. Our body contains molecules that cause genes to either express themselves or to remain inactive. Therefore, some people with genetic markers for cancer develop the disease and others do not.
Traumatic experiences can be a stimulus for gene expression and, moreover, traumatic experiences code into our genetic material so that our offspring can recognize threats.
When children experience trauma, they stop coding the connection and begin coding the protection. This can affect the way they can relate to others. I don't know if this is true for Rebekka, but when I attacked her I felt this pain point.
The first eleven Bazilion views of Brené Brown's TEDx lecture The Power of Vulnerability – that was mostly me. When I listened to Brown, I could see how people in my life settled in two camps: on the one hand, those who believed they were worthy of love and belonging, and on the other: the tortured, the restless who have favourited Donkey people who had a relationship, as if they were driving a pothole-filled street. The erosive force that kept these people lonely, insecure and unconnected: shame.
When I attacked Rebekah's worthiness, I tried to crush her damn windpipe. I wish her children would see her as a coward because that was the most hurtful thing I could say. I wanted her to die of shame.
I imagine the scene that Brett told me about: your teenage son confronts Rebekah about the affair. I can see her screaming with a red face, her finger pointing into his chest. Her big blue eyes are narrow with contempt.
I imagine the boy shrinks back. His nervous system is flooded with chemicals that will help him build nerve pathways to avoid this danger in the future. It codes for protection. He learns to doubt himself.
My wish has come true. This boy saw his mother wear the coward's ugliest face: the bully. I wanted something that hurt a child. If I had eaten a bag of goodie rings and a bag of Twizzlers, I could remove that feeling from my system, but I have to be in the gurgling awareness that the pain is being passed on to another generation.
The next day, I feel painful and drained. Brett follows with a text and thanks me for the meeting. I thank him back. He told Rebekah that we had lunch together and she was not pleased. He adds: "It seems that she has no regrets for what she did to you and me." That should annoy me, but it doesn't. I reread Brett's text and tried to provoke outrage. Nothing.
The way Brett framed it for me and expects Rebekah's remorse looks like a bait trap with steel jaws. I am not outraged because I can see the danger and I am not caught.
It becomes clear to me that – admittedly long chances – I have come to terms with Sean, also because I have waived the requirement that he apologize. Of course I wanted Sean to be sorry, but given the circumstances in which I can't hear him saying these words. I wanted Rebekah to be sorry too, and she's alive. She could make up for it if she chooses, but if Brett and I need it, we'll give her the power to hold it back.
Brett and I didn't deserve to be cheated. We don't deserve to be lied to. But the most hurtful lie of an affair is the romantic whopper, for whom no one ever apologizes: that two people are moved by an overwhelming chemistry – the whole world falls away. .
Raise your hand if you fell away while your partner was sneaking around with someone else. Hey – would you watch this? We were all still here.
The chemistry of an affair is a complex chain reaction. Bonds are broken. New bonds are formed. Highly reactive, unstable isotopes are formed. When Rebekka recorded with my husband, she also established a relationship with me – not as an unfortunate by-product, but as an inevitability. To this day, she tries to ignore this fact. I started to know that she was a force in my life, but its effects were felt long before I knew what caused the change.
Rebekah's instinct is to delete me from her world. This is not so different from my attempt to wipe out her vitality in a stranglehold of shame. It is not easy to find common ground with someone who wants to ban you from existence.
At lunch that day, Brett gave me the piece that changed the equation: it was up in her bedroom when Rebekah received the call that Sean had died. He heard a sound from the kitchen, an animal howl that he didn't recognize as Rebekah's voice – until she started to sob. I know the tone he means. My body let out the same agonized cry of loss of the same man.
This type of pain is not just a commonality. it is original, alchemical. We couldn't see each other, but Rebekah and I were together in this pain place.
That's enough for me. I want to stop contributing to suffering. My well-being does not depend on someone's remorse. it depends on my decision not to cause any more pain.
It is not Christmas Eve, but somewhere in the cosmos there is a shooting star, a strip of light that runs through the darkness. In Rebekah's real name I would like this star:
May your children know you as worthy, generous, creative and brave.
When I sent this hateful message to Rebekah, I thought I would withdraw my power. I imagined my defiance as a ballistic missile, quick and targeted. Now I see a staggering, desperate woman – all alone – waving a slingshot like a madman.
I'm stronger now.
This new wish? There is a mushroom cloud above. Shock waves ripple from its epicenter. This wish seeps into the groundwater.
May you recognize yourself as worthy, generous, creative and brave.
We all like.
Boom, fellow bitch.
About Jessica Waite
Jessica Waite lives in Calgary, Canada. She encourages people to write to heal after the loss and keeps stories of relatives who have died at: www.endlesstories.love.
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