Golf Lessons Ch. 01

The development company had three identical large, white sport utility vehicles. The vehicles had artwork on both sides and the rear indicating they belonged to a combination golf course and country club. All three SUV's had brought people to look at the site one afternoon. More than a dozen people had climbed out of the vehicles in their jeans and hiking boots. They spent several hours walking around.

After that, I only saw one vehicle come anywhere near the property. The man who drove it introduced himself as Tino Palinte, bragging that he would be the golf pro when the golf course was completed. He insisted on calling me Mr. Hudson, but he called my wife, Steph, just as I did, and just as her family did. Everyone else always called her Stephanie, even casual acquaintances.

Racking my brain, I tried to remember everything I could about Tino Palente. I recalled him saying he had a temporary office at another golf course the development company owned about forty-five miles away. The first time he came by the house, he gave us coupons for free golf lessons, saying each of us could have three lessons or one of us could use both coupons. Steph seemed excited but I wasn't really interested. I got enough physical exercise doing my job. I took the coupons and tacked them in one corner of the small bulletin board beside the refrigerator where Steph kept things like food coupons she wanted to use when she went grocery shopping.

Tino returned to talk to Steph and me one more time. He offered to purchase the property and give us just a little higher price than the development company had offered. I wasn't certain what was going on, but I thought I should know. I contacted the other two land owners the combination golf and development company was talking to and discovered Tino had made them the same offer. Evidently, he thought he could get control of the properties and make a little extra for himself by putting the land deals together and selling it as one package.

I love my wife. In my entire life, I have never loved another woman. We went to school together, I was a grade ahead of her, but that didn't bother either of us. We didn't really start dating until a few months before I graduated. I wasn't a virgin, but I'd only had a couple of short-term girlfriends with whom I'd had more than hand-holding or kissing dates. Stephanie was a virgin. I didn't get to take her to her senior prom, but we had a date the next night. She wasn't a virgin after that night. We were married a few months later and were parents less than a year after that.

My last two years of high school, I had a job at the local feed store. It's really a lot more than a place to buy animal feed. They sell tools, farm implements, hardware, and even some boots and clothing. My job has always been in the warehouse, receiving shipments and loading the heavier merchandise purchased by farmers and hunters. The half suburban, half rural location of the store brought customers for a rough circle of more than a hundred miles.

In almost seventeen years of marriage, I can't recall ever looking at another woman. I'm sure I've enjoyed seeing other women who were pretty or had a nice figure, but I've never been attracted to any of them. Yesterday, I would have said Stephanie had never looked at another man. As I sat on the old rotting tree stump, I could not honestly say that now.

There had been one incident that bothered me, but the way Steph acted about it, I soon learned not to let on that it bothered me. A few years after we married, Steph and I attended a party at my brother's house. The house was full of people having a very good time with several groups spilling out to the back yard. My brother Mark's brother-in-law was a few years older than Stephanie and me. Darren was a gregarious person, enjoyed being the center of attention, and flirted with all the women. He seemed to target Stephanie, partly because she was so shy.

Sometime during the evening, I looked up. Darren was walking beside Stephanie as they returned from the side of the house. She was inebriated enough that she stumbled a couple of times as they walked across the grass. As soon as she saw me, she shrugged off his arm and walked quickly to my side. Darren followed and tried to explain that Steph had been sick and he was just helping her. Her lipstick was smeared and the top button on her blouse was undone. I took her home and put her to bed. That meant I undressed her. I discovered she wasn't wearing panties. That I knew of, she had never gone anywhere without underwear.

Sephanie was upset the next morning when I asked about her panties. She got up late complaining about a headache. She didn't like to be teased about drinking too much the previous evening. She finally put her arms around my neck and whispered that she had planned to ask me to drive to our old necking spot to see if we could still contort ourselves to have a little fun in the front seat of my pickup. I reminded her that before we married I'd had a much older truck with a bench seat. The newer truck I was now driving had contoured seats separated by a padded armrest.

For a few years after that, anytime Mark or Gail asked us to a party at their house, or to some kind of family gathering, Stephanie would inquire if Darren would be there. If he was around, Steph stayed close to me and barely spoke to him. About two years later Darren moved out of town. In the following years, Gail may have mentioned him a few times and he may have been come home for an occasional holiday. But by that time I had no reason to suspect a repeat of that single incident, one that I wasn't sure had even happened. Or if it had, I attributed it to Steph having too much to drink around a man who was a predator.

Stephanie and I enjoyed sex with each other. It wasn't like the two or three times a day of the first couple of years we were married, but it was at least once a week and often more than that, depending on the season and how late I worked that week. In the winter, it was more like twice a week. We both enjoyed oral sex. I can't say it's our favorite, because I'll never tire of watching Steph's face below me when I'm pushing into her. Her eyes open wide and her mouth makes a little 'O', then she takes a deep breath and pushes back at me. It's as if my cock has found a place it never wants to leave.

There were a few times and occasionally as long as two weeks, when Steph just didn't seem interested in making love. Aside from her female reasons for not having sex, those weeks bothered me, but I attributed them to hormones because she also seemed nervous and short-tempered. They weren't seasonal or predictable and the girls didn't seem to have more than the usual amount of activities to attend. I heard some of the men at work make the same comments about their wives moods.

I never thought she was genuinely a critical person, but the longer we were married her disparaging remarks about my job got on my nerves. We did have a pretty good life and were able to find the money in our budget for something special she really wanted. There was also enough extra that I could buy something I really wanted, like the time I dithered over a special set of router bits and Steph insisted I order them because I would enjoy them. She even found the set online for a better price than I could have bought them locally.

I'm a tall muscular guy and Steph is a slender willowy person, but she has more sexual energy than I do. Her orgasms are almost violent, she thrashes and squirms and heaves her hips up at me as if she could buck me off. But the part I like the best is Steph is a gusher. It's not just a little liquid. It's juice that squirts all over me, over and over, especially when I use my fingers inside her. I love the taste of her. When she lets me lick her to an orgasm, her juice gets in my hair, coats my face, splatters on my shoulders, and runs down my chest. When she is under me, it splashes on my balls, runs down my thighs, and leaves a puddle on the bed.

We've tried everything from a waterproof mattress cover, to towels under her hips. None of that works. The waterproof mattress cover gets brittle and leaks. The towels never move across the bed with her thrashing. We have finally given up trying to prevent the puddle on the bed and simply enjoy that part of making love to each other. We just know that one or both of us will spend the rest of the night sleeping on a towel to absorb her ejaculate. She leaves the covers folded at the foot of the bed the next morning. We know we will need to replace our mattress every few years.

All of that was the reason for my agitation. During the first few years of our marriage, the morning after we had sex, Steph would strip the bed, including the mattress pad, and place a fan to blow on the bed to dry it during the day. That is exactly how I found her great-grandfather's bed when I was replacing one side of the door facing between the bedroom and the bathroom. I was certain my wife had sex in that bed sometime during the day while I was at work.

After Charles's question about the golf pro's SUV in our driveway, I was wondering how long my wife had been unfaithful to her marriage vows. The first visit from the golf and development company had been almost six months earlier, before Christmas. That is the holiday when Steph's brother-in-law noticed the door facing had split along the grain in the wood. Some time around that date was probably the last time I'd been in that bedroom. I'd tacked the coupons for free golf lessons under a Valentine card from Steph's younger sister. It was now the first week of June and I was contemplating that I might have been a cuckold for as long as six, but more than likely, around four months.

Troy came outside to tell me supper was ready. I wasn't really aware when Steph and the girls got home from their class. I may have spoken to them or they may have hurried into the house with the box of fried chicken we often had for supper the nights after the girl's gym class. I'd already had four bottles of beer and considered telling Troy to inform his mother that I was drinking my meal. Instead, I used the old waist-high vegetable washing sink on the outside of the garden shed to wash my face and hands.

With all three children talking about their weekend plans and the upcoming last week of school, I could get by with being silent. The coupons for golf lessons were missing from the corner of the bulletin board. Steph gave me several strange looks, but I tried to keep a calm look on my face. I couldn't recall if I'd plugged in the fan or just walked out of the old bedroom and left things lying around. Frankly, I didn't care. In another two hours, I was going to confront my wife about what I'd figured out.

As soon as supper was over, I went back outside. It wasn't unusual for me to spend an evening in my workshop. There were always a few projects in process, some things I was building, or repairs in progress or a piece of antique furniture I was rebuilding. Occasionally I did some work for other people, but I didn't do very much of that. I was too slow, too much of a perfectionist for most people who just wanted a piece of furniture repaired, rather than restored.

I didn't really need a clock. I could tell time by when the lights in the upstairs bedrooms turned on, and then turned off, indicating the kids had gone to bed. Not long after the last upstairs light turned off, Stephanie would come outside to tell me it was bedtime.

At supper, the girls had talked about how I was able to watch them in competition the next day. The gymnastic meet was almost a two-hour drive, which meant we would need to leave the house by seven in the morning. About once a month, I had a Saturday and Sunday off, rather than Sunday and Monday.

When Steph walked around the corner of the shop, she found me sitting on the tree stump with a fresh bottle of beer. "Hi, baby. Do you have one of those for me?"

Stephanie and I enjoyed sitting outside in the late evenings if it wasn't too hot. We often had our best conversations in the near darkness with the light inside the shop spilling out beside us. I waved my hand at the door to the shop and waited for Steph to return and sit on the same bench Charles had used earlier in the afternoon. She crossed one leg over the other, swinging her foot, and looked at me. She turned her head toward the road as a car passed by, going a little slower than traffic usually does.

"Do you think they're lost or looking for someone?" Stephanie asked for probably the thousandth time since we'd first moved into the house. It was her usual question when an unknown vehicle drove by. There were only eight houses on our road and we knew every vehicle that belonged to each house. We were enough distance from the highway that it was quiet when we sat outside.

I was so disillusioned I didn't have the energy to raise my voice. "Did you enjoy the golf lessons?"

"Golf lessons, what golf lessons, Paul?"

In the last four or five hours I'd already had six bottles of beer and they weren't doing any good, all I really wanted to do was go to sleep. I didn't have the energy for this confrontation. "How long Steph?"

My heart started beating a little faster when Steph asked with such innocence, "How long what, Paul?"

I looked straight at her, "How long have you been fucking around?"

"Paul!" The shock in her voice was much louder than she had previously spoken.

I stood up and glared at her, "How long, dammit? Don't lie to me. How long have you been fucking the golf pro?"

I took one step toward her and her head jerked back against the outside wall of the shop. I'd never hit my wife and her thinking or reacting as if I might do so made me even angrier. "How long, Stephanie? How long?"

Stephanie stood and stomped her foot, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sit down!" I growled. I waited until she had done so before I took a step back to sit on the stump.

Stephanie was shaking. She put her bottle of beer on the ground beside her feet and wrapped her arms around herself. I heard her sniff once, but otherwise she was just breathing fast.

"Now," I announced. "We will start all over. Did you enjoy the golf lessons?"

"Yes," The word was so softly spoken I could barely hear her.

"Was that a 'Yes' I heard?"

This time it was a little louder, "Yes."

"Next, have you been fucking the golf pro?"

"Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Paul, I ..."

"STOP!" I demanded. "Do not lie to me." I took a deep breath and asked my next question. "How long have you been fucking the golf pro?"

Stephanie's voice was shaking and she was stuttering so badly I could barely understand her. "Tony's been ... he's only been here ... he came over here just ... just a few times."

"Stephanie, I'm going to ask you one more time. How long have you been fucking the golf pro?"

By this time, Stephanie was crying and sobbing, rocking back and forth, putting her forehead on her knees, and then lifting her head. Talking was difficult for her, but I wasn't going to relent. "How long?"

"A couple of months, maybe three months."

"Is that once a week, twice a week, or more often than that, for three months, Stephanie?"

"Yes, no, I don't know. Something like that, yes."

"Get the hell out of my sight." I waved my arm toward the house and couldn't even think about looking at her.

I calmly finished my beer then took a shower in the wooden shower stall. I wrapped the towel around my hips, turned off the lights, and closed the workshop. I didn't bother to be quiet, if I woke Stephanie up, that was just too bad. I walked into the master bedroom and got a change of clothes from my closet.

Stephanie heard me open my dresser drawer for clean underwear, "Paul?" Her voice was full of tears but I didn't really care. "Can we talk?"

"Not tonight Steph," I answered as I went to the den. I probably wasn't going to sleep very much anyway. I could toss and turn on the couch or my recliner as easily as I could in a bed. I sure as hell wasn't going to sleep in a bed with a woman I felt was now a stranger to me. Thoughts that for several months I'd had sloppy seconds turned my stomach. I was already lying down when I thought about having oral sex with my wife during the past few months. If I wasn't already so tired, I think I would have gotten up and thrown up the beer I'd tried to use to drown my thoughts.

* * * *

Shortly after five in the morning, I was making a pot of coffee. I got the girls up and told them they had thirty minutes to be ready to leave for the gymnastic competition. I left a note for Troy with a couple of chores he needed to do and told him he could spend the night with Dillon Jerome if Dillon's parents didn't mind. When I returned to the kitchen, Stephanie was pouring herself a cup of coffee. She looked at me and smiled then opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something.

I held up my hand to stop her. My voice was low, but Stephanie could not mistake what I was telling her. "I'm taking the girls to their competition and you're not going with us. Troy has chores to do then he's spending the night with Dillon. If you can't handle them, he can help you carry your suitcases to the car before he leaves. Don't be here when I get home."

Stephanie turned and glared at me. "This is my house too, Paul."

"Maybe it's half yours, but you can't pay the bills and I can. You'd better find somewhere to live that you can afford. Leave your keys here so I don't have to get a locksmith to change all the locks."

"Paul!" Stephanie screamed.

"I need at least a week Stephanie. I'll talk to you next Saturday. If you're still here when I get home, I'll throw your clothes on the front porch and you after them."

"You can't kick me out of my own home." She may be part right, but we had purchased the house and land from the estate. Steph received money, one-fourth of the total, and she'd spent most of it on some furniture and a new car.

"Try me, Stephanie. Just give me a tiny reason to go to a divorce attorney on Monday morning and include a restraining order, because I'm just one step away from it. Take your clothes and leave. I've already told you what I'll do if you're here when I get home later."

Stephanie sobbed and burst into tears. Ten seconds later, the door to the master bedroom slammed shut.

* * * *

... to be continued.