I started tuning into Showtime’s award-winning drama, The Affair, simply because it followed Homeland, a show I love. I’m a sucker for espionage tales, but infidelity among affluent New Yorkers? Not so much. Everything about the series felt uncomfortably relatable. The character Noah Solloway, portrayed by Dominic West, is a struggling novelist and high school English teacher. On particularly tough days, I’ve felt like a female version of “Noah,” swapping out novelist for playwright and English teacher for adjunct professor.
Television is my escape; I crave adventures in far-off places like Pakistan, Fargo, or Nashville. But please, spare me from the Brooklyn dinner parties where writers fret over their craft—that’s a typical breakfast at my own home. I was expected to enjoy The Affair, so I resisted it on principle. Yet, against my better judgment, I couldn’t tear myself away. Now, I proudly count myself among its fans. The show takes a painfully familiar narrative and flips it on its head with remarkable artistry. But my initial reluctance had deeper roots.
You see, cheating runs rampant in my family. It’s practically a tradition. My maternal grandfather was married four times, with three of those marriages crumbling because he was already involved with his next partner. One of his divorces was so scandalous that the court sealed the records for 50 years, suggesting some jaw-dropping antics that would make The Affair look downright tame. My maternal grandmother also had three marriages, and there are whispers that one of my aunts might not even be her biological child. Dinner conversations on my mother’s side often revolve around speculation about who your true parents might be.
My father, on the other hand, was married to one woman for an eternity (not my mother, mind you), yet he was infamously unfaithful, reportedly following women he met on the bus home. I can’t quite imagine what occurred on those bus rides, especially since I’ve never met anyone on public transport I wanted to see again. I guess back then, my dad’s good looks and charming accent had their advantages.
As for my mother, while I wish I could depict her as a paragon of fidelity, she had a knack for falling for unavailable and married men. Many of her more scandalous affairs occurred before my time, so I didn’t experience them firsthand. Before she passed away, she attempted to write a memoir about her romantic escapades, though she never completed it. I can’t say whether she was unfaithful during her two brief marriages, but with such short durations, there simply wasn’t enough time for infidelity to take root.
The phrase “happily married” has always made me uneasy. I grew up in a household where my mother was rarely married yet generally content. As a child, I envisioned my future family consisting of just me and two daughters, with no husbands in sight. Ironically, my current family includes my husband, Leo, and we are indeed happy and married. In many respects, I owe this stability to my mother.
For much of the last 15 years of her life, my mother lived on a quaint Greek island, restoring a 300-year-old stone house. She spent the modest advance she received for her memoir on what was essentially a fixer-upper. The house was her only asset, yet it remained unfinished, just like her memoir. During my twenties, visiting her meant enduring a 10-hour flight to Greece, an overnight stay in Athens, and another six-hour ferry ride to reach her rocky paradise, a costly trip for a struggling actress/massage therapist.
In September of my 25th year, I made that trek out of necessity. I thought I was in love with an actor who had played my husband in a summer stock production—he was a drunk and a cheater, yet I was infatuated. When I shared this news with my mother over the phone, I expected her to empathize, given her own history with unavailable men. Instead, she promised to buy me a ticket, having just received a new credit card. A budget-friendly plane ticket was booked for me via Belgrade, and my mother assured me that September in Greece would mend my broken heart.
I was a terrible guest. I cried at breakfast while my mother pretended not to notice, humming to herself while pointing out the peeling walls and leaky faucets she couldn’t afford to repair. I accused her of being coldhearted and stormed off to my favorite beach one day after a particularly dismal breakfast.
While sitting on a rocky ledge, listening to Alanis Morissette on my Discman, I sobbed to the sparkling Mediterranean about my isolation. Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Leo. I’d known him since I was 10, and like my family, he had been lured by the dream of building a home in Greece. He was visiting his mother, who had her own restoration project in a nearby village. We dove into the frigid sea together, laughed, and reminisced about the intricate alphabet we had created as children. Later, as the sun dipped below the Aegean, we shared fried cheese balls and crisp white wine at a beachside taverna. Leo mentioned running into my mother in town, where she had begged him to find me and cheer me up, dramatically throwing her arms in the air and confessing, “I’m hopeless with the depressed!”
A few days later, my mother threw me a birthday party, borrowing a fully completed house for the occasion. Apart from the generous hostess, a childhood friend of mine, she only invited men. With the tourist season winding down, the options were limited. She invited two local jewelers she deemed “devastatingly handsome” (they were only if you squinted), a Frenchman whose “terrifyingly blue” eyes had caught her attention on a bus, and a bank teller whose only claim to fame was his superior English skills. She even tried to invite the hefty local garbage man because he was a good dancer—she wanted lively men at my party.
In that moment, I felt a wave of sympathy for Penelope in The Odyssey. Juggling all those suitors must have been incredibly stressful while Odysseus took his sweet time returning home. I pondered my options: leave or drink. I chose the latter and downed three generous glasses of Retsina before noticing Leo sitting alone at a small table. His warm smile soothed me. He handed me a tiny malachite box containing an uncut garnet he had found on one of his island adventures. Holding the smooth stone, I felt a surge of courage. I playfully slipped off my flip-flop and began to play footsie with Leo under the table. He responded by slipping off his espadrille and running his sun-kissed toes up my ankle, sending electric sparks up my spine. I whispered tipsily that I wished everyone would leave. In an instant, Leo leapt onto the table and bellowed, “The party is over! Everyone needs to go home. Immediately!”
One of the joys of my married life is how effortlessly things flow between Leo and my mother. While she made a series of questionable choices in love, she was surprisingly supportive of Leo, often praising him to the point of annoyance. “He has such a fine mind,” she would say. “Of course he’s clever, but he’s more than that. He’s an original thinker. So few people are original, darling.” As she faced the decline of her own sharp mind, she would enjoy sweet tea while discussing literature with Leo. “Leo, which of Hawthorne’s Roman stories do you prefer?” Though he has never read any of them, he’s the kind of guy who will ditch his plans to comfort a childhood friend crying on a rock. He’s also the kind of man who will stand on a table and shout to win over the girl. I feel incredibly fortunate to have him as my husband.
Sometimes, I think my mother was able to leave this world a little earlier because she knew her daughters had found love. My sister, Claire, married one of our mother’s dearest friends, defying the romantic pitfalls that plagued our family. By steering us away from her own mistakes, she helped us find what she could never attain: the right partner.
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Summary: This reflective piece explores the author’s complex family history of infidelity, drawing parallels between her experiences and the narrative of The Affair. It delves into personal anecdotes about her mother’s relationships, her own struggles with love, and ultimately the joy of finding a supportive partner in Leo. The narrative emphasizes the importance of love and understanding in breaking generational cycles.