Across That Line

"Sounds wonderful," Ashley said, closing her eyes and resting quietly for a bit. "You should take more time off," she said at length.

Brad nodded his agreement. The forecast had been so good for today he'd called in to take some personal time. It was something he did every so often these days.

"I think I will," he said, realizing his wife's eyes were still closed. She wouldn't have seen his nod.

"I went to lunch with Margaret today," Ashley announced in a neutral tone. Brad snorted.

"How is the beautiful and gracious Margie?" he asked. "She still want me to get her with child?"

"Yeah...right," Ashley answered sardonically. "That'll be the day."

"Uh huh," Brad agreed, "the old biddy," he said scathingly. Margaret...Margie...was not one of his favorite people, and he was not one of hers.

"She's not that bad," Ashley remarked.

"Bull...Margaret is a fanatic feminist who thinks it's a case of rape every time a man makes love to his wife," Brad declared. "Fortunately...she's too darn ugly to ever have to experience that kind of rape personally," he added.

"Darn, Bradley," Ashley said casually, "and she speaks sohighly of you..."

Brad snorted. "That'll be the day!" he retorted.

Ashley didn't reply for a time. "Well, Margaret has her faults...but she can be helpful at times."

"Okay..." Brad replied after a long pause. "So long as you use her as a "Dutch Uncle," I suppose she can be...helpful." He opened the grill to turn the chicken quarters and the half-dozen ears of corn over.

"So what did you and Margaret decide about the male portion of the human race...or was it just me you were talking about?" Brad asked.

"Just you," Ashley replied matter-of-factly.

"K," he said. He waited.

"I've just about figured out how much you've manipulated me over the last...I don't know how long," Ashley remarked dispassionately. She might have been commenting on the weather.

"Uh huh," Brad said, checking the level on the propane tank. "So...with her incredible insight into the human condition," he said sarcastically, "how did Margaret feel about how you've manipulated me?"

Ashley's eyes snapped open. "What?"

Brad used the long BBQ tongs in his hand to motion out into the yard. "Ash, you brought those young ladies with us on our third date to make it clear you and they were a "package" deal."

Brad poked at the chicken breast with the tongs. Ashley was looking at her husband with a small frown on her face.

"Oh, you might not have done it consciously," Brad continued, "but you knew damned good and well I was already so much in love with you I'd have agreed to you bringing along your Mom and Dad, all your brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and all their dogs and cats too into the marriage." He snorted.

"And I think you had it pretty well figured your babies were so starved for some kind of father figure they'd latch on to me in a heartbeat," Brad said. "You were right...and that time...when Cathy came over to where I was sitting on the couch...she wasn't even walking real well yet...but when she made it, she leaned against my knee and held up her arms for me to pick her up." He stopped for a second to savor the memory. "Anyway, after she did that...and that first time Cindy looked up at me from her crib and smiled like an angel at me...hell, I was lost, and I knew it.

"So...don't tell me you haven't manipulated me, Ashley, my dear." Brad remarked. "I knew what was happening, I cooperated all the way down the line...but that doesn't change anything."

"And after Dallas...? You told me several times how much youand they loved me," Brad added, cutting Ashley off when she was about to say something. "First few months after Dallas, you pushed me and them together as often as you could manage...not that I minded...but I saw what you were doing. That was manipulation with a capital "M."

"When we started talking about me adopting them...so there wouldn't be any embarrassment at their names when they were registered at school...wasn't that what you said at first? Well, I watched you maneuver me around to get what you wanted then too, Ash."

"So you're saying you wish you hadn't gone through with it?" Ashley asked huskily.

"On the contrary," Brad said briskly, "it was one of the proudest days of my young life when we came out of that hearing room...right up there with marrying you in the first place. Doesn't change the fact that you wanted something from me, you figured I'd balk, and you set about to get things your own way. The fact that I wanted to be their father too...so bad I couldn't see straight...was just lucky. In the end, everyone got what they wanted," he finished.

Ashley looked at him uncertainly.

"No, you don't have to be concerned about anything," Brad assured her. "I love Cindy and Cathy so much it hurts sometimes...and that's never going to change...period."

"Okay...well, I..."

She halted in confusion.

Brad smiled wryly. "Sorry, Ash...I'll stuff my defensiveness back into its hole and lock the lid down on it, okay? I only meant to make a small point. I didn't mean to totally deflect you from what you were about to say...forgive me?"

Ashley nodded distractedly. She was still thinking about what he'd said.

"Right after I found out you were lying to me about your relationship with Glenna Hartford," Brad remarked.

Ashley winced. Any reference to swinging or any of the swingers they knew brought on that reaction these days.

"What?" she asked.

"You were wondering how long I've been "manipulating" you," Brad explained. "It was right after that I realized how deep a hold that swinging culture had on you and I started thinking of some way to get you to see the light.

"What kicked it off was the funny way you were acting for a while...and then Glenna called the house, by mistake I learned, you lied about her...and...well, then we were off to the races."

"I...how did you find out she called our home phone by mistake?" Ashley asked faintly.

"Read your email to her," Brad told her shortly, poking at the chicken again. "I put a program on the computer that recorded every keystroke you made while you were online...that gave me your password on that Yahoo account and the instant messaging too...and I started finding out things I actually didn't suspect you of at the time."

"You were spying on me?" Ashley asked with an edge in her voice.

"Some people need to be spied on," Brad answered coolly. He wasn't the least apologetic in tone or expression.

"Tell ya what," he continued. "Spy onme. I invite you to do exactly that...watch me like a hawk," he said.

"You won't find a damned thing," he said, "not because I'm that good at hiding things, but because I'm not doing anything I wouldn't do with you standing at my shoulder," he told his wife.

Ashley lay on the chaise lounge and watched her husband. Margaret had urged Ashley to divorce Brad or file some kind of action in court but Ashley had rejected that suggestion without even thinking about it.

On the other hand, Ashleyhad anticipated she'd have the upper hand in this conversation, but it wasn't turning out that way at all. She was glad she hadn't come home angry and on a mission to set her husband straight.

"So...anyway," Brad continued, "I found out you'd been using your cell phone to talk to Glenna months before she called the house. You lied to me about that when I asked you who she was that evening she called. I figured she was some woman fronting for a lover you'd connected with somehow...I thought you were telling me his name was Dean for a while...but I accidentally found out about the swinger websites you were visiting just a couple of days later and everything got pretty clear."

"I...I...oh, damn," Ashley said wearily. "I won't ever get out from under this, will I?"

"Not as long as you try to skirt the truth, Ash...by keeping something from me or actively trying to tell me day is night," Brad said quickly. This had bothered him for a long time.

Ashley watched him pensively. She swallowed.

"Do you remember me telling you...right after...right after Dallas," she said delicately, "I said to you I'd been married twice before I met you, but I didn't know much about how to make a marriage work?" Brad nodded.

"Well..." Ashley continued, "about the only thing Idid learn from those marriages was that I had to keep certain things from my husband in order to get along with them...I don't know if you can understand that...but it was what I believed had to be done. I know it's wrong now...I just haven't turned that around yet, not as much as I need to. I...I want you to understand I'm trying," she added.

"I know," Brad said, turning the barbeque fire down lower. "I've seen it, and I'm beginning to feel the trust coming back," he added.

Ashley nodded. She wet her lips. "Is...there anything youdon't know about that time...with Glenna and the Internet and stuff?"

Brad shrugged. "I don't know," he said carelessly, "you'll have to tellme someday.

"Anyway, once I figured out what was going on, I pulled the keylogger off the computer and stopped reading your email and stuff. I even quit recording your conversations with Glenna when y'all met for lunch. Once I heard you tell her you'd never cheat on me...heck, I stopped everything," he said.

Ashley gasped. "You even knew what we were talking aboutin person?"

"Yep," Brad said matter-of-factly. "Both our names are on each other's car title and that gives me a legal right to put a recorder...oh...say taped on the underside of the driver's seat with some good old duct tape or something.

"But, like I said, I quit doing all that once I figured out you weren't cheating on me...well, at least not with a lover," Brad remarked.

"I wish you'd stop saying that word...cheat," Ashley said weakly.

"You were deceiving me, keeping parts of your life secret, you had an email account specifically dedicated to living vicariously as a swinger through Glenna and the Internet. Your fascination with the "lifestyle" was affecting our marriage, our love life, and just about everything else in our lives," Brad explained. "What part of "cheating" is not included in all that?"

He waved his hand irritably. "Look, we can do this from another angle," he said. "Let me put it this way." He took a deep breath.

"Okay, yes, I manipulated you six ways from Sunday...but only after it became clear you weren't keeping your promise never to get involved with swinging again. You said that before we were married...and you said it again after Dallas...but you couldn't keep your promises."

Brad pulled one of the patio chairs close to the lounger where Ashley sat. He leaned over to put his elbows on his knees and clasped his hand together.

"I didn't think talking about it a third time was going to do much good, Ash, so I didn't even try...it was clear to me something had a hold on you and you couldn't shake it anymore than a heroin addict can get the monkey offhis back."

"Brad!" Ashley protested. "I was...darn it...it was never that bad."

"Sure it was," Brad said, contradicting her. "I saw the patterns, Ash. Think about it." He leaned closer and lowered his voice still further.

"It wasreal clear, honey," he told her. "I knew every single time when you'd come home early to check out those websites...or when you'd gotten an email from Glenna talking about somestud she'd had sex with the night before...or when you were in a chat room and they were talking about sexual encounters...or whatever."

"You know how I could tell? It was easy. On those evenings...and a few days afterward...you came to bed so horny you couldn't stand it. You didn't want me to make love to you; you wanted to be fucked...so I did. Also, when youdid get your fix, the kids got stories read to them at bedtime, I didn't have to do the laundry all the time, you had plenty of time to give us all hugs and kisses...and we didn't have to eat something quick and easy to fix for supper," Brad told his wife.

"On the other hand, if you went a week without any contact like that, you were pretty damned irritable all day long. I couldn't talk you into sex for love nor money, the kids came tome to read to them, we ate take out or something from a can, and getting a hug from you when you came in from work was so rare, the kids would ask me if you were through being sick.

"Now do you see why I think of it like you were an addict?" Brad asked her.

"Brad...I didn't...I..."

Her voice trailed off. Ashley was stunned. She wanted to deny it all, but memories flooded her mind. At the time, she'd dimly seen some of the things Brad had pointed out, and even tried to correct them. They were in sharp focus now.

"Oh, God," Ashley said in a tormented voice. She bent over and tried to hide her face in her lap.

"No, no," Brad said. "Look, Ash, it's not something to cry about now. That won't do either of us any good...what's done is done, and the best thing we can do is forgive each other, okay?"

"Look, the bad times then weren'tall bad...you can start forgiving me by excusing me for emphasizing things too strongly just now. I did it to make a point but I did it too much." He studied his wife for a moment. "Please...forgive me?"

Ashley nodded uncertainly, but she raised her head to look Brad in the eyes.

"Thank you, darling," Brad told her. He reached out to take Ashley's left hand in his right.

"Baby," he said reflectively, "I felt like there was something that happened in your...your psyche back then when you thought about having sex with some new person. Honey, the very idea of having sex with someone new was taking over your life. I could see it happening."

Ashley took in a deep breath but found she had nothing to say. Brad's analysis was too close to what she remembered feeling. It wasn't comfortable listening to him but, strangely, it helped that he was being almost clinical about it. She could almost pretend all this had happened to someone else.

"I don't know about brain chemistry and psychoanalysis and stuff like that," Brad explained when Ashley didn't say anything, "but I knew what that flush meant when I saw it, I understood what caused that sparkle in your eye, and I didn't have to ask why you sometimes acted like you were a five-year-old again and it was Christmas morning.

"You'd tried to shake it twice, but it had already come back again a third time," Brad said regretfully. "I didn't see anyway it wasnot going to wreck our marriage, so...I admit it...I set out to manipulate you and I did it on purpose."

Ashley watched Brad with hooded eyes. She literally didn't know what to say. Margaret had warned her not to accept any lame excuses from Brad. She hadn't had any advice for a situation where Brad openly and unashamedly admitted he was a controlling, manipulating...well, Margaret went off the deep end sometimes.

"I hoped some porn would do the trick," Brad told her quietly, laying it out for his wife.

"Then I hoped the porn together with letting you flirt with some men would work...then we went to role playing...and toys...and finally we wound up with...uh...shoot...that Army couple, whatever their names were...having sex while they did it right next to us. Nothing worked. All you could think of was raising the bar even higher.

"That "monkey on your back" wasn't going to accept anything less than getting back into full swaps in the lifestyle...so I gave up trying to find a substitute that would beexciting enough for you. Do you have any idea how many times you used the word "exciting" back then?"

"No," Ashley said quietly. "I know you got tired of it but until you said something about it that time, I wasn't aware I was saying it all that much. I'm sorry," she said tentatively.

"Nah...don't be sorry," Brad said briskly. "Let's take all this as a lesson learned...we learn from our mistakes, right? We canboth learn from these experiences. Heck, Ashley, we've already come through the worst of it, haven't we? If you can forgive me for manipulating your life for a while, darling, we're home free," he told her.

"Anyway," he continued, "we can finish this up pretty quick here. Once I figured out wewere going to be swingers, I set to work giving you all you could handle of the "lifestyle." I wanted to make you sick of swinging...make you gag when you even considered screwing another man.

"I wanted to burn away the pleasure, that breathless anticipation...the thrill you felt when you thought of an encounter at the clubs or at one of the parties. And it looks to me like the cancer I saw...heck...I can't think of the words to use...uh...the cancer I saw...in your soul...I think it's all gone now. I pray it is anyway."

"You know...you surelooked like you were having fun with...the role playing and flirting and porno...and I could havesworn you got your rocks off one hell of a lot with all kinds of those...women," Ashley said acidly.

"Iabsolutely enjoyed a lot of it," Brad said calmly. "Where is it written that one has to be grumpy, unhappy, and dour in order to do something one considers "right?" Actually, honey, I read somewhere some very fine surgeons enjoy the sight of blood and the cutting into a human body...is that wrong? I don't know, myself..."

"Do you have an answer foreverything?" Ashley asked crossly.

"Pretty much, yeah," Brad answered serenely. Ashley's eyes narrowed to mere slits. Her Irish temper was easily ignited anyway. It didn't pay to provoke her unnecessarily.

"Ishould," Brad said quickly. "I've had this conversation with you...even if it's been just in my head...about a zillion times." He smiled.

"I knew you were going to figure out what had been happening real quick after the "excitement" fog wore off, Ashley. You're too smart not to. So I knew this day was coming, and if I wanted to stay married to you, I'd better be prepared to defend myself...right?" Brad asked.

"So...where do we go from here?" he asked his wife. He watched her carefully. Brad didn't think it would happen, but Ashley could react with a blind fury. In many ways, Brad wouldn't have blamed her.

"Oh..." Ashley said wearily, "I decidedthat when Margaret tried to get me to call her favorite lawyer," she told him. "She's not real happy with me right now 'cause I told her I wasn't going to leave you, no matter what," Ashley assured her husband. "We've been through too much to turn back," she added.

Brad closed his eyes and nodded thankfully. "I hoped you'd say that...or something like that," he whispered. "I love you too much to lose you now."

Ashley snorted. "Don't you start thinking you're off the hook," Ashley declared. "I didn't promise to not make your life a holy hell for a while to teachyou a lesson or two," she said. "You still stand a pretty good chance of that."

"I'll get by," Brad said cheerfully. He stood.

"KIDS!" he shouted, trying to keep it to a low roar. "Suppertime...go get your hands washed and get to the table..."

"DADDY, CAN RONNIE--?"

"Yes," Brad called back, "but she has to help you do the dishes," he answered. There was a short silence.

"Helpus do the dishes?"Cathy asked dubiously when she got to the patio. Cindy looked on with a frown on her face.

"You got it," Brad said, confirming their fears.

"Awwwww,Daddy..." they chorused.

"You better get a move on," Brad said implacably. "If you three aren't at the table in five minutes all washed and everything, you don't get dessert," he cautioned.

The three turned and ran for the house and the bathroom to wash their hands and faces.