It was quite clear to me: I would have to go on pretending to Marianne that everything was fine, until I had absolute proof of her adultery. And her creative lie to me the day before about her panties indicated that she had no intention of ever confessing. I would have to throw the proof in her face.
One thing in my favor was my job. I had a lot of freedom within my company—I could come and go during the day, to see clients or visit job sites, and it would not seem unusual. On the other hand, the same was true for Marianne. She worked in client relations for a public relations firm, and was always going to lunch or to business meetings. It would be impossible to check her work schedule and find any suspicious pattern of absences from the office.
I had a college friend named Terry, who worked in Chicago in the security and surveillance business. It took no more than a friendly 20-minute conversation, with a bit of catching up on one another's lives, to get all the equipment advice I needed. I told him I was doing a project for a commercial client obsessed with security, and explained that I'd need the latest in miniaturized listening devices that would transmit wirelessly to recorders. He said, "I'll do you one better: everything is digital nowadays, you can record to digital audio tape or even directly to digitized audio files that you can upload to your computer and listen to."
No more than an hour after our conversation, Terry emailed me all the specs, prices, and model numbers for what we had discussed. I drove out to a large electronics warehouse in the suburbs and bought all of what I needed. Nearly $1400 on the credit card—but I figured that by the time Marianne saw the bill, that would be the least of my worries.
I went home to our house, empty in the middle of the day, and set up audio recorders in our bedroom, spare bedroom, guest room, my study, the living room, and the kitchen. Each of them was no bigger than a thimble, and easy to hide. They were all sound-activated, so that they would begin to record whenever someone spoke or made noise in any of the rooms. And each was set up to transmit wirelessly to tiny digital recorders I'd hidden in our attic. Whatever Marianne or I did in our house, I'd have a sound recording of.
Why didn't I use video? The answer may seem surprising. As I continued to torture myself with images of Marianne fucking and sucking someone else, I realized that I didn't want to see those images. Knowing about her adultery was painful enough—hearing it, or hearing her talk to her lover, was going to be even worse. I was afraid that if I actually SAW them together, I would never be able to erase those pictures from my mind. Better, I thought, to be tormented by my imaginings than to have to see the reality, over and over for years to come.
While I was at it, I checked through all our credit card bills and our phone records. I found nothing incriminating: no unexplained hotel stays, no charges at restaurants I hadn't been to, no pattern of frequent calls to any one number besides the familiar ones of our friends and family. Marianne had clearly been very very careful. I realized I would have to check her purse, and put a recorder in her car, in addition to what I had already done.
In the meantime, I went back to my office. Alternately heartsick and furious, I managed to get through my day without my colleagues noticing how I was feeling. That evening after dinner, Marianne and I made our weekly phone call to our kids at camp. This was a new torment, both of us being cheerful with them while I tried to give no hint of my despair.
After Marianne and I went to bed, I waited quietly until I was sure she was asleep. Then I went outside and carefully installed an audio recorder in her car, transmitting to a tiny receiver hidden under the spare tire in the trunk. Returning to the house I went through her purse. To my surprise I found two cell phones—the one she had always used, and a cheap throwaway model, the kind that's used with pre-paid minutes. This explained why there were no unexpected calls on our cell phone bills! I grimaced to myself, thinking again of how careful and systematic Marianne had been in her efforts to deceive me.
Each day that week was worse than the one before. I pretended to Marianne that everything was fine, smiled and nodded and tried to act natural, though I did manage to avoid sex with her by pleading lots of work one night, and a bad headache another. She could surely tell I was still upset about something, but she played the loving wife without questioning me about it. Each night after she was asleep, I listened to all the recorders I had set up in the house and her car, and until Friday night there was nothing interesting.
That night I finally got confirmation of what I was already sure of. It was a short phone call that Marianne received in her car that morning, undoubtedly on her throw-away cell phone. I heard only her side, but that was enough to make things perfectly clear.
"Hello? ... Hey, babe .... Yeah, I'll BET you have! (with a throaty laugh) .... No, I explained that last Monday ... Yes, Tom hasn't said anything else but I can tell it's still on his mind. I have to let a bit more time pass before I can see you again ... Of course I still want to! But you always knew that my marriage would come first —haven't I been clear about that? ... Yes ... Uh-huh ... Yes, I think next Tuesday will work. But let's not go back to the place we've been going, I want to be extra careful. ... Where? ... You mean that place out on Route 8, near the orchard? ... Yeah, we were there three times before, but not in a while. ... OK, babe, Tuesday at 11am. .... (laughs again), Yes, I'm sure you will be ready! ... Me too ... OK, bye."
I sat slumped in my chair in the study, where I had gone to my computer to check the recordings. It wasn't any surprise, I had known ever since finding the thong, but somehow this confirmation still shattered me. Marianne was cheating on me! And had been for some time, it seemed. She was regularly letting another man fuck her, kissing and stroking him, letting him between her thighs, on top of her, beneath her as she rode him, behind her as he plowed her doggy-style...
Judging from her words on the recording, she must have called him the previous Monday (after our conversation about her panties on Sunday) and warned him that I was suspicious, and that they'd have to cool it for a while. Obviously this was no one-time thing, no sudden slip into a single night of passionate adultery. It was an ongoing affair, one that had gone on for months—or years?
My agonized thoughts went on and on, as image after image played in my head like some kind of nightmarish slide show. One of the most special gestures Marianne sometimes made with me was a way of embracing me when we hugged and kissed. Instead of putting her arms tightly around me and pulling me to her with her hands on my back, she sometimes slid her arms up over my shoulders and kept them straight. In this way her arms hung out behind me, wrists dangling. Something about that position that was magical to me: it meant that she was embracing me with no restraint, no holding herself back. She was utterly open to me, completely mine. As I imagined her with her lover, the single worst image of all was of her embracing him in that way, kissing him with her arms flung over his shoulders, giving herself completely to him.
That weekend, the only particular horrible time (in a whole weekend of desperate sadness for me) was a Saturday night party with some of our friends—busy working parents like ourselves whom we don't get to see very often. As Marianne and I circulated, sometimes together and sometimes apart, we were greeted warmly by friends we liked, who were glad to see us and eager to hear how we'd been. Sharing the usual stories, about work and the kids, felt especially desolate to me. Part of me longed to say to someone, "Well, actually, I've not been doing so well. Marianne is fucking some other guy and won't tell me about it, and I'm pretty devastated. But what's new with you?"
On Monday I left work during the morning and drove out along Route 8 to the Sunflower Motel, which I recognized as the one Marianne had mentioned to her lover. It was a strip motel, a row of rooms side by side with parking places directly in front of each room. So I was confident that, if I put a listening device inside Marianne's purse, the recorder hidden in her car would be close enough to record what went on inside—the range of the devices was supposed to be 150 feet.
That night, I got up after Marianne was asleep—I seemed to be doing that every night—and took her purse into my study, where I carefully sewed one of the tiny wireless microphones into the bottom. She would never find it unless she happened to dump out the entire purse and look for it.
I also re-checked all the listening devices, the recorders in the house and in her car. But there was nothing incriminating or suspicious. Marianne had already set up her rendezvous in the Friday phone call, and didn't risk any further communication with her lover.
