Rusty Sabich and Carolyn Polhemus’s affair

Rusty Sabich and Carolyn Polhemus’s affair is a concealed relationship that outlasts its end as a private attachment. It becomes a liability in Rusty’s murder trial, an obsession in his recollections, and part of the account he eventually gives Barbara Sabich of Carolyn’s death. Rusty presents the affair as neither an excuse nor a simple explanation: he says Barbara mattered more, while also acknowledging that his fixation on Carolyn had a power over him that he did not believe he could readily escape.

The Affair and Its Exposure

The evidence establishes the relationship as an affair but does not supply its beginning, duration, or a full account of its private course. Its importance instead emerges through what follows: other people’s suspicion, the legal danger of acknowledging it, and Rusty’s later attempt to describe its hold on him. The relationship is therefore seen less as a sequence of romantic episodes than as a secret whose consequences spread into marriage, courtroom strategy, and the explanation of a killing.

During a conversation with Nico Delia Guardia, Rusty recognizes that Nico is probing whether Barbara will support his alibi. Rusty suspects that the question is also a test of how he reacts to the prospect of the prosecution examining his wife. Nico’s insistence keeps the possibility of Barbara’s testimony in view, even as Rusty tries to end the conversation. The affair is not explicitly discussed in this exchange, but it supplies the private vulnerability behind Rusty’s concern: the relationship could draw Barbara into the case and expose the strain between the public defense and the intimate truth.

That danger becomes explicit when Rusty asks Sandy Stern whether he is reluctant to put Rusty on the stand because of Carolyn. Rusty acknowledges the relationship rather than denying it. Stern agrees that the affair could strengthen the prosecution’s case and notes the possibility that related facts might surface if Barbara were cross-examined. A marital communications privilege might prevent questions about Rusty’s admissions to his wife, Stern explains, but its protection is not certain. The affair thus matters in court not only as a fact about Rusty’s past, but as a risk that could change what the jury hears and whether the defense chooses to present its own client as a witness.

Obsession and Retrospective Meaning

When Rusty later speaks to Barbara, he tries to distinguish the importance of his wife from the force of his attachment to Carolyn. He tells Barbara that Carolyn was never more important to him than she was. At the same time, he admits that he was absolutely obsessed with Carolyn, that he saw the obsession as his own weakness, and that he believed he would not have got over it for years, perhaps not at all, while Carolyn remained alive. His explanation holds these claims together without making them comfortable: he asserts a hierarchy of love, but describes a fixation capable of dominating his attention and shaping his conduct.

Rusty does not treat the affair as proof that Carolyn was uniquely suited to him or that their relationship could have supplied a lasting alternative to his marriage. He says only that there was something in the attachment he did not believe he could find elsewhere. The emphasis falls on his own susceptibility as much as on Carolyn’s influence. In his account, the relationship’s power is inseparable from his willingness to remain absorbed in it; his description of Carolyn’s effect does not remove his responsibility for the choices that followed.

The Affair in Rusty’s Account of the Murder

Rusty connects his understanding of the affair to the way a fantasy can become action. Looking back, he describes a progression in which an elaborate plan first becomes stimulating to contemplate, then encourages a first step, while the person involved tells himself that no real harm has yet been done. He presents this process as a way of thinking about how a person can approach wrongdoing without fully grasping its consequence until an extraordinary moment carries it into reality. The account gives the affair a dark afterlife: what began as an attachment becomes part of Rusty’s effort to understand the circumstances in which Carolyn was killed.

He also acknowledges that revenge formed part of his thinking. In addressing Barbara, Rusty says that getting even had been a benefit to him and that he had imagined some part of what happened as being for them, for the good of their marriage. He offers this not as justification but as an attempt to put his understanding of the circumstances into words. The explanation remains morally unstable. By framing the murder partly through his marriage, Rusty makes the affair central to his retrospective account, yet that framing cannot turn violence into a repair or establish a defensible purpose for it.

Material Traces and the Marriage Afterward

The relationship’s consequences are not confined to memory or testimony. After the trial, Rusty finds a trace of blood and a blond hair on the Whatchamacallit, the black iron yard tool used to kill Carolyn. He takes it to the basement and washes it in the laundry tub; Barbara comes downstairs and sees him doing so. The scene places the domestic aftermath of the affair and murder beside an ordinary household object. Rusty’s later handling of the tool shows that the past has not disappeared simply because the trial is over, while Barbara’s presence makes the concealed history part of their shared home.

In October, Rusty finally speaks openly to Barbara about his reasoning. He apologizes and tries to explain both his obsession and his belief that some part of his actions had been for their marriage. He says he wants to continue their life together and to reduce the damage to their family, while insisting that the conversation is not a threat. Barbara stands and listens; when he finishes, she is crying and apologizes. The exchange does not erase the affair or resolve its consequences. Instead, it changes their marriage by making explicit what had remained unspoken: Rusty’s attachment to Carolyn, the destructive place it occupied in his life, and his wish to carry on with Barbara despite the truth he has disclosed.