Free The Last Chance by Rona Jaffe

Hank she had to meet with someone from her office. It didn’t matter if anyone who knew Hank saw them. Her husband didn’t know anything about her job, any more than Jim’s wife knew about his, she imagined. The channels of communication were so much more open with people you weren’t married to.
    After dinner they would go off to “their” motel—or perhaps they wouldn’t even bother with dinner. Jim had wanted to be bold and rent a suite at the Plaza, but Ellen had refused, shuddering.
    “Something horrible happened to me there on my wedding night,” she said. “I could never stay there again.”
    “What, sweetheart, what? Tell me.”
    “No … I don’t want to talk about it. Even to you.”
    Especially to you, was more like it, Ellen thought wryly. The Horrible Thing was what she always did to Jim with great mutual enjoyment. But she had been so much younger then, and so innocent, it was as if all that had happened to another person who just happened to be wearing her body.
    “That’s why your marriage went wrong from the start,” he said.
    She nodded. “That was the main reason.”
    “I’d like to punch him!”
    She put her hand on his, gently, and then lifted his hand to her lips. “No. Forget Hank.”
    Tonight in the bar Jim ordered champagne. Ellen’s recollections of her traumatic wedding night did not include a distaste for champagne. They toasted their one beautiful year together.
    “People will think we’re rich,” Ellen said.
    “I’ll tell them you just got a promotion.”
    “I wish I would. I have such good ideas for publicity. I feel wasted doing what I do. But it’s been only two months. They said I’d get more responsibility very soon. Funny, I was wasted in my job eighteen years ago, and I’m still being underused. Opportunities for women aren’t all people say they are.”
    “We won’t talk about the office tonight,” he said. They smiled at each other.
    “Tonight it’s just us,” Ellen said.
    “I have a surprise for you,” he said. “I told my wife.”
    Ellen felt her skin prickle. If she’d been an animal with guard hairs they would all be standing up. “Why did you do that?” she asked shrilly.
    “Don’t be afraid. I had to tell her. I couldn’t stand it any more. I told her I love you and I want a divorce.”
    “Oh, no,” Ellen breathed. “No.”
    “You’re such a good, dear woman,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hurt her. But I can’t go on like this any more. I’m not good at dissembling. I want to marry you.”
    He’d ruined it. What an anniversary present! How could he have done such a stupid thing? “You can’t leave your children,” Ellen said. “I can’t leave mine. It’s not their fault you and I fell in love.”
    “I’m willing to leave my children,” he said. “And you can get custody of yours. They can come to live with us. I’d be glad to have your children live with us.”
    “You don’t understand. My children adore their father. They’d be heartbroken …”
    “Children are selfish little beasts,” Jim said. “If they have two parents trying doubly hard to make it up to them they don’t mind a divorce at all.”
    Ellen sighed deeply and trotted out her lie. “Jill, my older daughter—you know, the beautiful one you met?—she came to me just this Christmas and she said to me; ‘Mommy, promise me you and Daddy will never split up. I want us to be a family.’ How could I ever hurt her?”
    He looked down at his glass, and when he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “Ellen, my wife … she … she cried all night. Then she said she would stay with me anyway. She knows about us and she’s willing to stay with me anyway. Why are we so insensitive?”
    “I’m not insensitive.”
    “I am. I would leave her even though she’s willing to stay with me. She said she hoped I would stop seeing you, but she wouldn’t demand it. She said she’d put up with even that.”
    “She sounds like a wonderful woman.