Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

Be careful to whom you tell your darkest secrets...

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” —George Orwell, 1984

She’d always been this way, the surface calm, the depths rumbling. She pressed things down, away—until she couldn’t. The eruptions were epic.

You don’t sleep with your boss.

It’s really one of the things mothers should teach their daughters. Chew your food carefully. Look both ways before you cross the street. Don’t fuck your direct supervisor no matter how hot, rich, or charming he may happen to

Her marriage—Graham and Selena—it was the fairy tale, the love-at-first-sight, happily-ever-after. It was the envy of—everyone. Now, they were just like everyone else—pitifully flawed, broken—possibly beyond repair.

“Don’t you ever just wish your problems would take care of themselves?” Martha said with a sigh.

“Men,” said Martha when Selena stayed silent. “They’re so flawed, so broken, aren’t they? They’ve screwed up the whole world.” The other woman’s tone had gone dark, her eyes a bit distant. “All they do is create damage.”

She couldn’t unsee what she’d seen, unknow what she now knew about her husband. She wasn’t like her mother. She couldn’t just stand by for the sake of the children. Could she?

She kept her face open, innocent, a wondering smile on her lips. It was an expression Pop had helped her to perfect. They don’t know what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling. Keep it off your face, whatever it is.

Anne looked up at Kate now, and felt a hard, familiar twist of envy. No, it was darker than that, whatever the feeling was. It was the feeling that made her want to key beautiful cars, or slash priceless art, or make happy people cry.

When the same thing happens again and again, we have to look at that. We have to unpack it and figure out why we cause ourselves and others pain.

Story is story, Stella said. It’s a portal you walk through into another world. And this world—which usually sucks—just disappears.

“But don’t stay. It’s not worth it. He won’t stop. You always think it’s going to be the last time. But it’s only the last time when you leave him.”

Should she keep track? Of the lies, how many? Yes, a notebook of all the lies she was telling to others and to herself. It could come in handy.

There was still a pull to him; that connection, that attraction, it never went away. She just chose someone else. And that’s all life was—a series of choices and their consequences.

People didn’t fall in love with other people. They fell in love with how other people made them feel about themselves.

“The con,” Pop always said. “Isn’t violence. Isn’t a smash and grab. It’s a dance. It’s a seduction. You always have to give something first. And then they’ll give you everything.”

“You know,” he went on into her silence. “Quit your job. Travel. See where the road takes you. At the end of the day, when you close your eyes before sleep, think about it. What do we all want? We want to love and be loved. We want to belong. We want to see the world, but we want to go home to the embrace of people who care. That’s all there is. There isn’t more.”

“Love is a lightning bolt. Sometimes there’s no avoiding it. We don’t always choose who we love or why. We can’t make ourselves love someone we don’t.”

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

“Why am I just hearing about all of this?” she said, incredulous. “Where were you keeping it?” “Deep, deep inside,” she said. “Where we keep everything ugly, all the things we don’t want to broadcast, don’t want to deal with.”

“I mean—are some men just flawed by nature? Or do we enable their bad behavior, make it worse in a way because we hide it, and don’t demand better from them?” “Maybe it’s some combination of both.”

“Because the women I know, they’re not creating damage in the lives of the people they’re supposed to love and protect. They’re not cheating, abusing, lying. Or worse.” Or worse. Was it worse than she imagined? Was her husband a monster?

There was no undoing the bad without losing the good. That was the trick of it all. The tangle of life. Just move forward, recalculate, recalibrate, find a new path.

Sometimes, I wonder where you are, he said one night. It’s like you’re always just drifting away from me.

What was it that Pop always said? Three can keep a secret if two of us are dead. One down, one to go.

But, of course, she’d burn it all to the ground. That was her way.

The divine nowhere of airports. The ultimate liminal space, neither here nor there. Not truly in the place you’re leaving, nor in the place you’re going. A bardo. Here there might be a breath, a pause between selves, between worlds.

The truth like a wildfire that burned everything in its path. One that destroyed but also cleansed. And then from the ash, new life.