I told him Sophie was three months old and was sleeping in a crib at my mother’s house, which was the first place since her birth where someone other than me had held her for more than five minutes. I told him invoking Sophie’s name in a negotiation about his infidelity was not parenting. It was leverage.
He hung up.
His mother called twenty minutes later.
Marguerite Calloway was a woman who had spent her marriage managing appearances the way some people manage investments, carefully, strategically, and with a particular intolerance for any event that disrupted the portfolio.
She told me what I had done at dinner was unforgivable. She told me family matters were handled privately. She told me Elon was devastated.
I told her Elon had spent two months telling another woman he was going to leave me. I told her devastated was the word for the woman at home with a newborn discovering that information through an open phone line. I told her the word for Elon was caught.
