Review: The First Time

The First Time by Joy Fielding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Liked it!
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SPOILERS!
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I remembered reading this book and doing a detailed review at the time. But it disappeared completely or the author changed her name and I didn't find the old review.
You follow the story of a successful couple with a teenage daughter. They married because of her unwanted pregnancy. They stayed together for their daughter, but he betrayed her from the beginning and multiple times.
Our heroine is depressed because she has once again found proof of his new infidelity.
She is really upset about it. He is in love with his mistress and determined to divorce and leave home immediately.
He opens the game with her and says he will leave. She returns from the hospital after a car accident and finds his closets already empty. He went to live with his mistress.
Our heroine after a series of exams finds that the cause of the accident is a degenerative disease and that she will soon die.
Our Zero is not at all pleased, because his wife's illness ends up disrupting his plans with the new mistress.
Our heroine is obliged to accept his help because she has no other option. Their teenage daughter is very shaken and angry at her father's betrayal.
As the story unfolds, we learn details of their family life and what their childhood was like. Both have very serious childhood traumas, but they have never talked about it.
His relationship with mistress is very detailed. She is neither prettier nor smarter than our heroine, and I think he felt inferior to our heroine.
A psychiatrist would write a huge book just about their issues.
I cried in some scenes and in others I was very angry with Zero, because if he had commit in their relationship, everything would have been better, because deep down they loved each other. But he never accepted it and entered the marriage out of obligation. He never fully committed himself. Our heroine only reacted to the pain he caused.
Our heroin's disease has no cure and unfortunately we have seen her death and her family's mourning period.
I hoped he and his mistress got totally screwed up in the end. But that's not what happened.
There was no HEA. But it was a good read.

she’d found the hotel receipt in his jacket pocket—the jacket he’d asked her to send to the cleaners—that announced his latest infidelity as boldly as a headline in a supermarket tabloid.

Except that he didn’t love her. Not then. Not now.

Anything for Kim. The reason he’d married her in the first place.

The first time he’d been unfaithful was just after their second wedding anniversary.

a receipt for a room at the Ritz-Carlton, dated several months ago, around the time she was suggesting the...

You’re fucking other women! she screamed underneath her rants about wanting to renovate the kitchen. I don’t want to be here! he shouted beneath his protests that she was spending too much money, that she had to cut back.

“Damn you, Jake,” she said finally, choking down unwanted tears. “Why couldn’t you have just loved me? Would it have been so hard?”

Sometimes he wished she would just disappear.

Her fault for getting pregnant in the first place, for insisting on having the baby, for pouncing on his reluctant offer of marriage, even though she knew it wasn’t what he wanted, that they weren’t right for one another, that it was a mistake, that he would always resent her.

“I love you, Jason Hart,” Honey told him. Jake smiled. Honey was the only person in the world he allowed to call him Jason, the name his mother had given him,

Or the reason Kim had seen her father kissing on a street corner, full on the lips in the middle of a sunny afternoon around the time they’d moved to Evanston, a reason who was plump and dark-haired and looked nothing like her mother at all.

He’d already taken most of his clothes over to Honey’s, transferred his toiletries to the bathroom downstairs.

He wondered what Honey was doing, whether she was wondering the same thing about him. “Do you think she knows?” Honey had asked him again the other night. “About me,” she added, unnecessarily, when he failed to respond. “Do you think that’s why she did it? Out of spite?”

Mattie walked to the fireplace, leaned against it, her back to him. “Are you moving in with your little friend?” Jake felt his body turn to ice. “What?” “I think you heard me.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “Don’t insult my intelligence. You think I don’t know about your latest girlfriend?”

“Not personal? You’re leaving me for another woman, and you don’t think it’s personal?”

“By the way, how was your room at the Ritz-Carlton? It’s always been one of my favorite hotels.” “You had me followed?”

She’d known of his plans the second she opened the bedroom closet and found most of his clothes gone.

They didn’t need Jake. What did they want with a man who’d made it clear he’d rather be with another woman?

As Kim grew into her teens, she saw even less of him, their busy schedules at constant odds. Since moving to Evanston, she’d hardly seen her father at all.

Bullshit, Kim thought. Her father didn’t love her. He’d never wanted her. She didn’t want him now.

“The mother of your child,” Mattie repeated. Of course. That’s all she’d ever been to him. The mother of his child. She was pathetic, she thought, straightening up, pushing her shoulders back and her chin out.

You bailed just in time. Now nobody can accuse you of being a no-good, miserable son-of-a-bitch for walking out on your wife when you found out she was dying.

“Why do men cheat on their wives?” Roy Crawford shrugged, laughed, looked the other way. “You know the old joke, Why does a dog lick its privates?” “No,” Mattie said, wondering at the connection. “Because he can,” Roy answered, and laughed again.

She’d exchanged one loveless home for another, devoted sixteen years to a man who’d left her for a whore of his own.

A father without a face. A daughter without a body. A mother without a clue. Some family.

“Jason,” Mattie repeated out loud. Hadn’t he always hated that name? Mattie threw her head back against the top of her spine, trying to regain control of her breathing, folding one shaking hand inside the other. “That was a very stupid thing to do,”

Maybe if you’d taken the time to get to know me, she thought, the same kind of time you’ve squandered over the years on women like Honey Novak, then you wouldn’t have to ask.

They were lying in her bed, wrapped in newly purchased pink-and-white gingham sheets. “Special for the occasion,” Honey had quipped as they tore off each other’s clothes and jumped into bed, only seconds after Jake’s arrival.

He’d made small talk with Mattie over breakfast, all the while imagining Honey’s body and elaborately plotting in his mind the various things he was planning to do to her as soon as he got to her apartment.

How many women would have put their lives on hold for him the way she had? The way Mattie had, he realized with a shudder, for almost sixteen years.

Jake felt a welcome stirring in his groin and quickly pulled Honey into position, pushing his way roughly inside her. Honey gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders.

No, this time, she was going to savor every second. She was going into this affair with her eyes wide open. Roy Crawford was in great shape for a man his age, Mattie thought, running her fingers across his smooth chest.

On the phone, you said I had to get home right away. You made it sound pretty urgent. Is something wrong?” “You mean besides the fact I’m dying and you’re fucking other women?”

“What’s the point of an apology if you’re not really sorry?”

“Does she want to get AIDS? Does she want to get pregnant? Does she want to—” He stopped abruptly. “End up like us?” Mattie asked, finishing his sentence for him.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Mattie insisted. “What I need is to be with someone who loves me. What I don’t need is to be with someone who loves someone else.”

“I don’t give a shit about your intentions!” Mattie cried. “What I want is your passion. What I want is your loyalty. What I want is your love. And if I can’t have those things, if you can’t at least pretend to love me,” she said, that word again, “for a year or two or however long I have left, then I don’t want you here.”

And Jake had only married her because she was pregnant.

He’d promised to call Honey before three o’clock.

Honey, he thought, closing his eyes in consternation, remembering he hadn’t called her all day, knowing how disappointed she’d be—with the situation, with the way things were going, with him.

“I am excited,” Jake said, realizing this was true. He’d been pretending to be looking forward to this trip for so long, it had become a reality.

He was just trying to make a dying woman’s last months as pleasant as possible. He didn’t really love her, for God’s sake.

“Honey, what the hell is going on? What are you doing here?” Honey’s face flashed

Honey tried to laugh, but the weak sound slid into more of a cry. “I’ve missed you so much, Jason.” “I’ve missed you too.” “Have you?”

“I love you,” Honey said again. Jake knew she was waiting for him to say the same thing, that her declaration of love was really a request to hear it from him.

She’d been so patient, so understanding. And she felt so good, he thought, kissing her firmly on the lips, his hands grasping her buttocks, as he imagined the pliant flesh beneath the harsh denim of her jeans. “Oh, Jason. Jason,” she was moaning, her hands reaching under his jacket, tugging at his shirt. “Lock the door,” she said, pulling her own blouse free of her blue jeans, planting his hands on her breasts, kissing him again and again, her hungry mouth threatening to swallow him whole. “Lock the door, Jason,” she urged, guiding him toward the sofa at the end of the room. It would be so easy, Jake thought. Lock the door, tell his secretary he wasn’t to be disturbed for anyone. Not his partners, not his clients, not his wife. His wife, Jake thought as Honey’s tongue slid between his open lips. Could he really do this to Mattie? Wasn’t it enough he was about to break his promise regarding their trip to Paris?

Jake smiled. It was good to see her. He really had missed her. “Speaking of the dead, how’s Mattie doing?”

“You’re not a monster.” “No? What am I? I’m spending all my time waiting for someone to die, praying for someone to die.”

“Are you sleeping with your wife?” Jake looked helplessly around the room, a sudden headache gathering force behind his temples. This was worse than the altercation in the restaurant, worse than his meeting with Frank. “I can’t abandon her, Honey. You know that.”

“I believe we have another guest from Chicago staying with us,” the woman said. “Chicago is a big city.”

She wondered where Jake had gone with Cynthia. No, not Cynthia. Honey. Honey Novak. Honey with an e-y, she thought bitterly, dragging herself toward the elevator, realizing she’d forgotten her cane, and pushing the button repeatedly with the back of her right hand.

What the hell was she doing in Paris? In this hotel? What had she been doing with Mattie? What had she said to her?

“Mattie knows.” “I don’t understand. How could she—?” “You called me Jason.” “What?” “Downstairs. When you were about to leave, you said, ‘Goodbye, Jason.’ ”

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