My Husband Buried Me for His Mistress

The photos came in waves. Nathanael at The Mark, stepping into a town car with a woman who looked like she'd walked straight off a runway. Nathanael at some Chelsea gallery, his hand on the small of a blonde's back. Nathanael in the Hamptons, morning light catching the edge of his monogram on a robe that wasn't being worn by me.

I stopped opening the messages. Didn't matter. They found other ways in. A text from my cousin. An email from a college friend I hadn't spoken to in years. A tabloid left on the kitchen counter by someone on staff who knew exactly what they were doing.

I sat in Dr. Bishop's office and told her I was fine. My thumbnail found my palm. She watched it happen and didn't say a word.

"How are you sleeping?" she asked.

"I sleep," I said. It wasn't exactly a lie. I closed my eyes most nights. Whether that counted as sleep was a different question.

She made a note. "And eating?"

I thought about the meals that arrived on trays, the ones I picked at until someone came to take them away. "Enough."

Another note. She set her pen down and looked at me in that way she had, like she could see through the performance I'd gotten so good at. "Saoirse, I need you to hear me. What's happening to you is not sustainable."

I nodded. I didn't know what else to do.

Armani was always there now. At breakfast. At dinner. In the car when Nathanael went somewhere he thought I should see him leave from. She had this way of smiling at me that made my skin crawl—not mean exactly, just empty. Like I was a problem she'd already solved and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

One morning I tried to call Nathanael's lawyer directly. The call didn't go through. I tried his accountant. Same thing. I pulled up my contact list and started going down it, one by one, and realized I didn't actually know who in his world would take my call anymore.

I went to his study that night. He was at his desk, bent over another one of his models. He didn't look up.

"I know you don't believe me," I said. My voice sounded thin even to me. "But I need you to hear it one more time. I didn't do what you think I did."

He adjusted a piece of the model with tweezers. "You're still here," he said. Not a question. Not even really directed at me. Just an observation, like he was surprised I hadn't figured out the door was unlocked.

"I'm your wife."

"You were a lot of things." He set the tweezers down. Looked at me for the first time in weeks. His face was blank. Perfectly, carefully blank. "Now you're a lesson."

I left before my legs stopped working.

Eighteen months in, the invitations started arriving. Black cardstock, embossed lettering, an address in Lower Manhattan I didn't recognize. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new pedestrian bridge. Funded by the Foster Foundation. Designed by someone whose name I'd never heard.

I didn't go. Obviously I didn't go.

I saw it on the news the next morning. The camera panned across the crowd—black ties, champagne flutes, Nathanael in a tuxedo with Armani beside him in something red and architectural. Then the camera cut to the bridge itself.

I stopped breathing.

The railings. The supports. The archways. Every line, every curve, every angle—it was me. My body. My proportions. Posed in ways that made my stomach turn, made my skin feel like it didn't belong to me anymore. The reporter called it "provocative." Called it "a commentary on modern femininity and public identity." Called it art.

Someone had already nicknamed it The Scarlet Bridge.

I sat on the floor in front of the television and watched them walk across it. Watched people take selfies with it. Watched a group of tourists laugh and point at a particular sculpture, the one that looked like I was on my knees.

My phone started ringing. I turned it off.

By that afternoon, it was everywhere. Twitter. Instagram. The evening news. A feminist group showed up with signs. Art critics published think pieces. A late-night host did a whole monologue about it, and the audience laughed in all the places they were supposed to.

I went back to Dr. Bishop the next day. I didn't have an appointment. I just walked in and sat in her waiting room until she came out and saw me.

She didn't ask me any questions. She just opened the door to her office and let me in.

I sat in the chair by the window. My hands were shaking. I pressed my thumbnail into my palm until I felt the skin break.

"He built a monument," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "He built a monument to hating me, and people are taking pictures with it."

Lennon didn't write anything down. She just sat across from me and waited.

"I didn't do it," I said. "I need you to know that. I didn't do what he thinks I did."

"I know," she said.

I looked at her. "How do you know?"

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and looked at me the way she always did—steady, unflinching, like she'd already decided I was worth the effort. "Because I've been watching you for eighteen months, and you are not a woman who ran toward anything. You're a woman who's trying to survive what's chasing her."

Something in my chest cracked open. Not relief. Not hope. Just the faintest recognition that someone, somewhere, still saw me as a person.

I stayed in her office until the sun went down. We didn't talk much. She made tea. I drank it. When I finally left, she walked me to the door and put a hand on my shoulder.

"You're going to get through this," she said.

I wanted to believe her. I really did.