Do Not Pass Go

"You're right, my family doesn't need me, do they?" I said trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

"Of course they need you. Not financially, but..." Her eyes looked lost for a second as the moment stretched out as my wonderful mother-in-law tried to think of some reason for my existence. Let's see, hmm, no use as a breadwinner, no use as a partner or sexual companion for the wife, not particularly attractive or funny and as a father? As a father she probably felt anything I contributed could be taken care of by a small group of El Salvadoran women who came in three times a week.

I shook my head. "Okay I've got the message. The universe has been speaking to me loud and clear tonight, but it's always nice to get the personal touch."

My mother-in-law sniffed in annoyance.

"Yes?"

"I'm just telling this for your own good..."

"Well thanks," I said trying to stare her out of the car.

"If there's something wrong you should tell Jessica about it..." As she said it though she had a grimace so sudden it looked like a seizure.

Seeing the discomfort on my mother-in-law's face gave me a tiny spark of joy. "Something the matter, Barb? Maybe there's something Jessie hasn't told me that we should talk about?" It felt good to see her at a loss for words for once. It felt even better to see her squirm.

"I saw that Jessie just got home." I just let my words sit there and watched my mother-in-law pale. "It's funny that the guy dropping her off did it a block and a half away from the house."

Barb shook her head. "A marriage isn't simple..."

"Thank you Barb, it's so great that YOU tell me what a marriage is. There's nothing like going to an expert when you're having a problem."

My mother-in-law's face quickly returned to the pinched disapproving cast that was its normally shape. "Neither of you talk to each other anymore. I know that it's difficult with the hours my daughter has to be in her lab..."

"But it's not just her job is it?" I asked, beginning to grow hot. "And you knew about it," I said it out of spite, but the fleeting sullen look of guilt on her face astounded me. Maybe I should have known it before, but in that moment it became crystal clear.

"You did. You knew it. You sanctimonious... you knew Jessica is screwing around and you're trying to lecture me about having a drink? Lecturing even when every second you don't tell me about Jessie you're lying to my face.

"Barb, you're so good at this advice have you thought about being a marriage counselor, because I'm so glad you're sitting here telling me what it takes too have a good marriage. I'm curious which part involves a wife screwing another man?"

She was floundering. "Maybe if you..."

"Maybe if I what, Barb? You've shoved yourself into the middle of our family. Please stick your nose into the marriage bed now. Why don't you just sit down and make some diagrams for me to follow."

"I'm not excusing my daughter's action, but..."

I was tired of listening to my mother-in-law. Tired of every annoying word I had put up with through sixteen years of marriage. "BUT? I don't give a damn about anything you have to tell me anymore. No, that's wrong. I want to hear one thing from your mouth. How long? How long have you been lying to me and how long has my wife been fucking around on me." The rest of my breath blew out of me like a train whistle. "Don't just gawp at me answer the fucking question, MOM. How long has she been breaking her marriage vows? Because while you might not like me, there's no vow for us to be nagged to death by our in-laws until death do us part, but I kind of think that screwing another man blow the 'love, honor, cherish and forsaking all others' part right out of the water."

Her face had gone pale. "This isn't what I wanted, to happen. Maybe you won't believe me, but this doesn't make me happy. "

"Bullshit. What a fucking load. Do you even believe what you say anymore?"

"You don't have to swear, Peter."

"Actually, BARB, yes I fucking do. Because at least when I say fucking, it's just a word. I don't feel the need to act it out with other people. But your daughter likes to be clear about things, so when she's demonstrating things I guess you see it really as an act of Christian charity?"

Barb grabbed onto the crucifix around her neck halfway through my rant. "Whether you've been the best husband or not..."

The laugh grated out of me. "Don't give me more crap. You've never liked me. The only thing you're sad about in this situation is that Jessie fucked this guy before the divorce."

She stared up at me, but bit her lip forcing down her bile.

"Don't even try to say it isn't. Because yes, it fucking is, Barb."

She shook her head. "I talked to her until I was blue in the face, but Jessica made me give my word not to tell you." She looked down, her eyes studying her crucifix. "Maybe it would have been better to have broken the promise, but I tried to do everything I could..."

"Well I'm glad you can sleep at night."

"... I tried to do the right thing for my family, if..."

"If what MOM," I spat out. "If I had been a better husband or father? Because clearly your darling little girl has been the perfect wife. But if you did the right thing for your family, I'm glad your conscience is clean. Because no matter how much of an ass my wife is, she is family. All I did was provide a little DNA. If I even did that."

My mother-in-law looked up and shook her head in a tight gesture. "That's wrong and it's spiteful."

"Thanks for the morality lesson. Thank you so much." I was gathering steam again, but, as it built up, the pressure was getting dangerous. Even now, with both her and her daughter up to their necks in sin, Barb tried to make me the villain. I was getting angrier and angrier and as much as I hated my mother-in-law, words felt less and less adequate to express my rage. "Well I'm glad we had this chance to talk, but it's time for you to go now, Barb."

She shook her head. "It would have been better for the two of you to settle this on your own..."

"Well, we're going to do that MOM. Now MOM would you mind getting out of the car? There's a lot of things to take care of tonight and I don't have time to chat."

Reaching past her I opened her door and pushed it wide open.

"Don't do something in the heat of the moment that you'll regret later...

"Yeah, thanks for the advice. I wonder if you said the same thing to Jessie or was it just make sure to use a condom. But no you wouldn't say that because you're against birth control so you probably told her to be sure not to use a condom." I didn't even get any pleasure by the shocked look on her face. "Okay, I'm done talking, get the fuck out of my car."

My mother-in-law probably wouldn't have gotten out if I didn't crank the ignition and gun the motor. I began pulling out into the street even before she closed the door. Heading into my driveway I saw her walking back toward me probably headed to her car.

The rage left began to drift away almost as quickly as it happened. My anger was for my mother-in-law and somehow Jessica's betrayal seemed minor. Barb's betrayal was personal and spiteful, while Jessica's, well pretty much any emotion was wasted on her. My wife just didn't care anymore. At some point, love had turned into comfort and then comfort had turned into convenience. Now her lover had just become more convenient. Except that I didn't really believe that there was real passion in her trysts. It wasn't the sex, but the infidelity that brought excitement to her cold blooded heart.

Since Tommy had been born Jessica's work had slowly been taking over her life. Once we talked about our work and the kids' school there usually wasn't much we had time to say. Day to day, I spent more time with my mother-in-law. The only emotion I saw in her now was nervousness or an occasional pissy attitude when the order of her day was disrupted.

In the last few years Jessie had become another person. Between the increasingly rare attacks of motherhood or wifely affection, her life was divided between sleeping and spending time in the lab. Even during the times she played house, she had changed. The truth was in the last year there were maybe three times I had felt close to my wife. The rest of the time she was just a counterbalance that allowed for even wear on our mattress.

Inside the house it was like nothing had changed. My ten-year-old, Tommy, was doing his best to get an early start on Carpal Tunnel though he paused his game to show me that he had finished his homework. "I'm in the middle of the game."

"It's already past your bedtime. Is there a save function on the game?"

I could see my son hesitating, wanting to lie. "Yeah, but I'm almost done with this level." He saw my look and started to save the game.

Tommy looked up in one last puppy dog appeal.

"Okay, you've got ten minutes. Then I want you upstairs and in bed." It would have been nice to get a hug, but at least when I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, he didn't try to wriggle away.

My twelve-year-old, Traci, was watching television in the kitchen and during commercial breaks she went about putting the dishes in the dishwasher and cleaning the countertops. She was watching Sex In The City. It wasn't HBO though so the most explicit stuff had been cut out of it, thank God.

"Dad which one of the girls do you think I'm like the most?"

I'm pretty sure Traci didn't want an answer, she just wanted to watch by herself. The way she laughed as I slunk out of the room was a tip off. Before I left I opened my mouth, but Traci beat me to it. "Yeah dad. After this up to bed." For sheer brainpower Traci was maybe even smarter than her mother, though at this moment that didn't make me feel very good.

My fourteen-year-old, Jenna, wasn't around, but there was loud music coming from behind her door and when he knocked on it, she poked her head out for a second, saying hi and giving me a quick kiss on the cheek.

"In bed in thirty minutes?"

She nodded her head in acceptance. Then taking her phone off hold, she immediately said, "Oh, it was just my dad."

Just because I knew our happy home was a mirage, didn't mean my children should. If I could have taken the last half hour away, maybe it could stay the same, but there was no way I could pretend that nothing was different. Confronting my wife was going to be a piece of cake compared to talking to my kids about what was going to happen. It would have been nice to force my wife to do it by herself, but this wasn't revenge, this was my children's happiness.

When I went into the bedroom, I could hear the shower going in the master bath. The only thing that disturbed the peace was the incessant buzzing of Jessie's cell phone. Picking it up out of my wife's purse, I saw that it was Barbara calling. I turned off the cell phone and figured that my daughter Jenna would take care of blocking out anyone calling on the house line. I settled down on the bed and flipped on the tv turning it to the cable news and tried to let my mind numb out.

It was all so ordinary. Cheating was such a minor thing to my wife that it didn't even disrupt her routine. This morning as she was drinking her orange juice she must have ticked through her to do list: go to work, pick up dry cleaning, fuck stranger, watch tv in bed with husband, go to sleep. How long had it been going on that it had become effortless for her to cheat on me?

The more I thought about it the worse it got. I could see her fucking him... or was it them? Fuck, she could have been doing this for years. The kids were mine though... the genetic testing we had done to check for diseases proved that. Didn't it? She couldn't have gotten someone to fake the tests. Could she?

A half hour ago my wife had loved me. Shit, no she hadn't. I had just thought that. No, a half hour ago I had loved my wife. There had been no reason why. It wasn't that she deserved it, it had become automatic.

How many times had we made love with passion in the last few years? During our last anniversary she had taken a call just as we had gotten in bed. Two hours later she had woken me up and we had fucked, quickly though because she had to get in to work early the next day. It had probably been the guy in the car and they had phone sex in the other room as her chubby hubby read his Robert Ludlum novel for a half hour before falling asleep.

If I broke into her computer files, I bet I'd find a date circled sometime in 2013. Her day of freedom. The day Tommy would head off to college and the day she could shake me off and get on with her real life. But probably she didn't even care about the kids. I'm sure it had more to do with the scandal. How many times did the university play up the fact that their molecular genetics wonder girl was a happily married mother of three? Her liberation day was probably more geared around funding issues than family.

It was a petty thought, but I knew that I had to beat her to the punch. The thought of her walking in the kitchen on some morning and handing me the front page and the sports along with divorce papers just about killed me. But I couldn't think that way. The most important thing now was my kids and losing my temper wasn't going to help any when it came time for a custody hearing. This was just a fucking business deal that I had to close.

Jessie walked out of the bathroom still rubbing at her hair with a towel. She smiled at me in passing and sat up against the bed near me and watched the tv tick through the headline news.

"You're awfully quiet tonight," Jessica mentioned as the commercials started.

And I was quiet. I was being a wimp, putting this off.

I cleared my throat. "I got a job offer and I'm going to take it..."

She went back in the bathroom and started getting her coldcream out and rubbing it into her hands.

"Does it pay more?"

"A lot more actually." I avoided laughing at the thought. "You remember Tate?" Jess shook her head. "J. Tate Peeler? He was one of the guys I shared the house with Junior year." My wife just shrugged. "Well, I'll be working under him. The only complication is that it's in St. Paul."

She stopped rubbing. "You're kidding."

"It's going to be rough for the kids to move in the middle of the year, but they're tough. I figured we would stay with my sister in that broken down palace of hers until we find something permanent."

"You're not funny."

I ignored her. "Actually, my sister was one reason St. Paul sounded so good. Jenna and Traci actually like their cousins, so I figure they would already have a couple of friends to start off."

Jessie was just staring at me. "And I'm supposed to convince the university that I want to move my lab a thousand miles away?"

"I didn't say that."

My wife just look poleaxed, still though more surprised than upset. How could she be otherwise. Our lives were such quiet, regular things. Hell, I bet she used a damn metronome when her lover was fucking her so that her schedule wouldn't suffer.

Jessie tried to smile as if it was a joke, but seeing my expression her lips thinned. "You want me to commute from Northern Virginia to Minnesota?"

"If you like you could fly in on the weekend, but I wouldn't really expect you to do that," I said heading into the bathroom. "You'd better get to sleep pretty soon. Friday's always a long day for you. If you want to talk about this more, we can either do it or breakfast or you can call me during the day when you have some free time."

Jessie walked into the doorway of the bathroom, staring at me, as I brushed my teeth.

I made eye contact with her in the mirror. "They laid off our division today."

I could see her mind trying to connect the dots. Trying to figure out how something that happened in my life effected hers.

"There were some vague rumors months ago, but just in case I have been shopping my resume around. It's just lucky this happened now. Tate and I talked last Monday and he really wanted me to come work for him. He said he had a spot he could keep open for me for a couple more weeks. That's why this is happening so quick.

"The way I see it I'll fly down there in two weeks and commute back here on the weekends until we get everything settled here that way the kids can spend some time saying goodbye to their friends and adjust to the idea of moving a bit."

"I can't just move my lab. There's grants and tenure and..."

I tore off some floss. "Relax, I'm not asking you tuh... muhve."

It's not like my wife is dumb, but, just as I was, she was stuck in the routine. "You're divorcing me?"

I reached for the mouthwash. "No, just moving. If you want to fly in on the weekend, or maybe just alternate weekends you're welcome to. I figure after we sell the house, you could stay with your Mom or get a small place closer to your office." I expected her to say something as I rinsed, but she kept quiet. My wife was always one for plans and fallbacks and for once it looked like I had caught her flat footed.

I rinsed my mouth and spit. As I came back in the room, I hesitated in the doorway. "Light on or off?"

"ON!" Her body was tense and it looked like she wanted to punch me out. "So you just assume you'll get custody?"

I stared at her as I picked up a well worn copy of The Eiger Sanction. "Jessie, would you even want to have custody? I'm sure you have problems with me, but you know that I'm a good father. You really think the kids would be better off with a nanny than with me?"

"There's my mother..." she said, her voice trailing off as even she wasn't convinced by her suggestion.

"Even if the kids liked her, Barb's sixty-one and has bad knees, bad eyes and smokes a pack a day. Either her or the kids would go nuts inside of a month. She can't handle it physically. If you went through with it that would be bad for both her and the kids.

"Give it some time." I opened my book and started trying to figure out where I had left off. The book was familiar so it was easy, relaxing even, to read it and talk. "See how it is flying in alternate weekends for a couple months. As it is you're pretty much a ghost to the kids during the week..." I closed my eyes and bit down on the rest of what I wanted to say about that. I put the book down and looked at Jess. "Doing it this way you'll get twelve days to work as late as you want and then spend two days with the kids, free and clear. Actually, I bet you'd end up spending more time with them than you do now."

The look she turned on me made me sick. An attempt at affection, so poorly acted even a soap opera character wouldn't believe it. "Peter, it's not like I like being away this much..."

I opened my mouth to say something but the image of her making out in the guy's car choked me.

Since crocodile-affection had failed, Jessica put on her diplomat's face, the one she used when talking to journalists or to our kids -- that polite, happy condescending smile. "We've talked about my spending less hours at the lab. Didn't we agree this was just a temporary thing and we could get put up with it for a little while?"

I nodded. "You're absolutely right. And now the agreement's off. If you're unhappy about that why don't you see if you can get a judge to enforce it."

Jessica looked so logical, so rational. Hell, even I was acting like this was a contract negotiation and not a marriage. God, I wanted to scream at her. Whore. You fucking whore. This whole time we've been talking about her seeing the children and not once has she said a thing about missing me or loving me.

Jessica shook her head. "You can't just uproot my life like this..." What ever emotion she was working herself up to drained out of her and she stared at me in confusion.

I was glaring at her. Even now this was all about her. As much as she fucking cared, she could have been talking to a door that told her it and the hinges were moving to another house.