Andy
I’ve been married for nine years. These years have been the best of my life. I’m like a kid in a candy store every day when it comes to interacting with my wife and getting what I want. I’m not a kid, of course, but she makes me feel so young and vibrant that it’s as though she keeps the best parts of my childhood alive. I love her for this, but the other day, I found a diary that she has been secretly keeping from me. I found it under the mattress. When I was a teen, that was where I hid my pornos. I wondered if she had anything of interest there.
I picked it up, examined it, like Sherlock Holmes trying to decipher the meaning of a clue. The diary was all pink with little gold crowns on it. There was a lock. I needed to find the key. My wife was out, grocery shopping, and I figured that I had about an hour before she would be home. I rummaged around the bedroom, looking for the key, but then I realized that I should check my wife’s underwear drawer. I figured that this was the last place that she would ever expect me to search. I found a small gold key that I knew would fit the lock, but I still had doubts as to whether or not I should read the dairy. I even wondered, if I did manage to get it open, whether or not I would find some coded sentences on the pages that I would not be able to understand. I hoped I could figure it out.
I put the key in the lock and turned it. It opened. I saw dated pages and my wife’s gorgeous handwriting. I read and read, but found that there was nothing of interest. I mean, I hate to say that it was boring, but it was just long strings of thoughts that had to do with her hair or her clothing. It was as though she wanted to keep a record of which hair products worked best and which blouses went best with which pants. It was like reading the musings of customers who had done shopping on a home shopping channel. I was blown away by how plain and dull it all was.
I was flipping through the final pages, hoping to find something of interest, when I felt a familiar hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing?” said my wife.
“You caught me.”
“You’re a naughty boy.”
“Are you angry?”
“No. I’m just a bit disappointed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know what you were expecting to find. Evidence of an affair, maybe?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Well, now that you’re done snooping, will you help me with the groceries?”
“Of course.” That wasn’t the end of it though. I talked to her a bit more about the diary and got to thinking that this was her decoy diary. She said a few things that made me think that she was still hiding something from me. I knew she was eloquent with words. She’d won a short story contest that she’d entered online. She could write.
That night, while she was in bed, I fired up her laptop. I found a file called, “Mr. Miyagi.” I tried to open it up, but it was password protected. For whatever reason, I guessed the password was the birthdate of her mother, a woman she admired deeply. That, magically, was it. I read a file that contained stories about a man she was cheating with. His name was Andy. He was Japanese. He was very handsome. In fact, I thought I had remembered meeting him.
Again, I felt that familiar hand on my shoulder. “Have you found my Andy?” I hated the way it sounded coming out of her mouth.
“You have some explaining to do.”
“It’s nothing. It’s just a bit of secretive erotic fantasy that I keep up for myself. You know, like a record of a second life.”
“You’re telling me that Andy is not real?”
“He’s no more real than the dreams you have at night.”
“I’m sorry.”
She bent down and kissed my neck. “You have to trust me, babe. You know I love you. I’m faithful.”
“I have to stop snooping.”
“Yes, you do.” We went back to bed.
I dreamed that night that I was put on trial for not trusting my wife. I knew that there was never going to be a guarantee that she was 100% faithful to me. I knew that I didn’t need that kind of certainty. There was always going to be a degree of doubt as to whether or not she was cheating on me or hiding something from me. I checked my jealousy at the door and decided to stop being a little boy. I may find something, in the future, that indicates she is cheating on me or keeping some fabulous secret second life from me, but as I laid in bed next to her, smelling her soft and pleasant scent, I thought about how lucky I was to have her, but as she turned over, readjusted, I thought to myself that I might check her smart phone and see if there was anything on there, but I smiled, remembered that she’d never done anything to make me doubt who she was. Just as I was putting those thoughts to rest, her cell phone got a text. I reached over her, grabbed and looked at her phone, and saw one word: “Andy.”
© Sean Ryan
Sean Ryan is a forty-year-old writer with a disability. He enjoys learning languages: German and French. He lives in San Diego, CA.
The Loch Raven Review 