Two Different Roads

Bye Bye Bye

Only a couple of days later, the moment Mike had feared ever since Ellen found out about his infidelity arrived.

"I'm going away for awhile," she told him one evening as he sat alone at their twelve foot dining table nursing an after dinner scotch and coke.

"You're leaving me?" His formidable self-control failed him entirely on this occasion. He was unable to keep the devastation from his voice OR his face. Of course he should have expected it. She'd avoided him even more diligently since she'd given in and had sex with him that last time. It was inevitable that she would come up with a more lasting solution to her undiminished attraction for him.

"I'm not saying it's permanent," she conceded. "I just want to be alone for a bit."
"More like you want to be away from ME."
"All right fine, yes. I need to think. I need to decide whether this is worth trying to save, and I can't do that if you keep confusing me."

"Why is it MY fault you're confused?"
"Because you won't leave me alone. You keep tempting me into doing things I shouldn't. One minute I want to slap you. The next, I want to...well, you know."
"I'd say that's your problem, not mine. If you can't resist me it's on you."
"But if you didn't press the issue every chance you get..."
"I refuse to apologize for that Ellen. You're my wife, and I love you. It's only natural for me to want to have sex with you."

"Maybe so, but if we're going to fix this, we have to figure out if it works outside of bed as well as in."
"Well how can we do that if we're not together?"
"With some distance from it we can both see things more clearly. We can evaluate our relationship without our physical attraction for each other getting in the way."
"Where will you go, your mother's in Liverpool?"
"You must be joking. She adores you. She'd find a way to blame ME for what YOU did."
"Where then?"
She sighed, paused as if she knew this would not go over well. "The boys are going to India to study transcendental meditation. I've been invited along."
"You mean JOHN asked you to go. He's been waiting for his chance all along. I guess this is it."
"We stayed with him in his house. If I'd had the inclination I could have indulged it then. I didn't."
"But I was with you, and you weren't mad at me then."
"Michael, he's my friend. ALL of them are my friends. Besides that, Cynthia will be there as well. It's about the meditation really. I told John things were 'difficult' for me right now, and he said it's supposed to do wonders for stress, that it really clears your head. It sounds like the perfect thing."
"I don't care what you use to justify it. I don't want you going. I dont want you seeing him."

"Michael, you're not my father. You're my husband, and barely THAT right now, so I'll do what I think is best. I wasn't sure before, but I think you've just decided me. I'm going."
I suppose you'll be taking Jonathan with you. There's not much I can do about that, but Christian is MY son, and he stays with me."
His pronouncement was a bit of a shock, and it hurt for him to say MY son, but her self-control rivaled his on occasion. She gave nothing  away as she told him, "If that's your attempt to blackmail me into changing my mind and giving you what you want, it won't work. If you insist on him remaining with you, YOU can explain to him why, not me."
She got up and left the room. Alone where she couldn't see, he cried.