Just Small Changes

Jane was trying to smile and act normal for the kids but it was obvious she was under some stress so after a while I went back upstairs and got all the dirty clothes from our trip from my and the kid's bags and ran a load of laundry. While I was doing this a thought came to me that if Jane and I split up that I would be doing a lot of laundry by myself. Is that really what I wanted? Hell no but it wasn't me that had been pushing us down this road of no return!

When I went back to the bedroom I noticed that Jane's purse was on the bed. I guess now is a good time to start playing detective I thought. Glancing at the door but hearing her still talking with Jim and Alice in the kitchen, I picked up her purse and emptied it out on the bed. The first thing I noticed was a prescription medicine bottle. I picked it up and looked at the label. It didn't have her name on it. Ernesto's was there big as life. The drug was something called Phentermine. There looked to be about a dozen pills left in the bottle. What the hell was this?

I quickly looked through the other stuff and didn't see anything unusual. I loaded it back in her purse except for the pills. I took those and walked down the hall to my home office and logged my computer onto the internet. Then a search was made with the keyword phentermine. No surprise here, it is a weight loss product that reduces appetite and stimulates the metabolism. You are supposed to have a doctor's prescription to get it and it can have serious side effects. Some of those are restlessness, trouble sleeping, irritability, rapid heart beat, etc. Well now I knew what part of the problem was.

I didn't know whether our marriage could be salvaged but changes were going to be made and I was the one who would make them. First I hid the pills in my closet in the pocket of a coat I never wore. Then I went back to my computer and the internet and started checking on all of our bank accounts and investments. I would be damned if I was going to let this shit continue one more day. At this point I didn't know whether Jane had actually fucked or sucked Ernesto or not. But I also found that on one crucial matter it didn't matter. That was that whether she had or not I damn sure did not trust Jane anymore.

Since she didn't have my trust, she wouldn't be controlling anything anymore or making any decisions. She obviously hadn't gotten the fact that the only reason she got to run the show and make the decisions was because I had let her. After fifteen years of marriage I think she thought it was a god given right or something. Wrong babe, wrong! You were about to find out just exactly how wrong your thinking was.

I spent another twenty minutes on the computer surfing our finances and then typing out a list of things I needed to do tomorrow. It was too late tonight to get anything done but first thing in the morning operation Take Control was going to begin. Right now I had to put on my game face and see if I could convince Jane that everything was okay and she still had the upper hand. When I walked back down the stairs this time, Jim and Alice were in front of the tv and Jane was preparing dinner. Wow, now there was a change that was good. Or at least I hoped the food would be good. Maybe I should go help her and make sure.

"Hi sweetheart, do you need any help in here? What's for supper?"

Quick startled look at me, then relief flashing across her face.

"Sure honey, you know I always love to cook with you."

She does? Brain to Zach, large field of ripe bullshit being laid here. I looked at the stove and saw ground beef being cooked in a large skillet with a little onion. One of our big pasta pots was full of water and waiting to boil. I should have guessed. Spaghetti her favorite meal to cook. She hated to chop veggies though so there wouldn't be near enough onion and no garlic or green pepper. So I got those out of the refrigerator and soon had a nice pile of all three chopped into small pieces and added to the ground beef.

Jane, still being uncertain as to what I thought, hadn't said a word while I did this but had started making a salad at the table. She still wasn't meeting my eyes and was trying to avoid me which in such a small space was pretty hard to do.

"I'm sure the kids told you but we had a great time out at the lake. We all would have enjoyed having you join us. The beds were great, the cabin was air conditioned and there was a nice pool to swim in if you didn't want to swim in the lake. We ate all our meals out and the food was great. There was even dancing and a live band at the restaurant after nine o'clock and I know how much you love to dance."

"Yes I heard all about it. I don't think the kids have ever had more fun."

Jane looked at me then and her face seemed to soften some and she gently said that she should have been there and she was sorry she hadn't. Funny thing was she didn't mention Marcia and her family which I know the kids would have told her about. No curiosity about who Marcia was and what she and I had done together? Shit that couldn't mean anything good. She must be feeling guilty as hell which means there must be something for her to feel guilty about. Shit, shit, shit! Now this just made me more determined to carry out my plan tomorrow. Who knew how long she would be repentant. In a day or two if I did nothing she would think she got away with it and things would be back the way they were. Especially if she had been on those pills for very long. If she had been on them long enough to get addicted then things were going to get very tense over the next week even if I did nothing else. And believe me I had plenty of other things planned. Buckle your seat belts the plane crash would start tomorrow.

The meal was wonderful. The food was great, the conversation fun and it was just terrific to be all eating as a family again. I now realized how much I missed this. Would we ever again be a happy loving family? I now knew I still wanted that. Marcia was incredible and despite our age difference something might develop there. But Jane and I had been together for fifteen years and already developed a lot of memories, feelings and closeness together. Two of the things we developed were right there at the table smiling and chattering as they ate. All I could do was try and put the pieces together again and pray that I was successful.

The next morning I acted like I was going to work as usual and waited until Jane had left for her job. Then I called in to my job and told my boss I was having a personal crisis and needed the rest of the week off. He was a little upset but he could hear the stress in my voice and finally agreed. Then it was over to our credit union to rearrange our finances. I opened up a separate account in just my name and arranged for my paycheck to be direct deposited into it. I also transferred all the money in our savings account into it and half the money from our joint checking account. I left enough money in the joint account to cover outstanding checks and a couple of hundred over. My IRA and money market account were in my name only so I figured they were safe for the time being but might need some attention later. I wasn't even sure Jane knew I had them since she had become so disinterested in our finances as long as there was money in the account for her to spend.

I arranged for my new separate account to have no paper checks issued. Just a debit card and all the statements would be electronic also with no paper. I then set up internet access with a new user name and password that Jane would not know. Thus was the first part of my plan put into motion. Cut off the money flow. My sweetheart loved money and loved to spend it. I now realized after looking at our records that an ever increasing amount had been flowing from her to Ernesto. I wondered how much he had been charging her for those pills?

Next I went home and disconnected the VCR from the TV and then, along with all of her tapes of her soaps, I put them up in the attic storage where she would never find them. She wouldn't go up there because she was afraid of spiders and rats and thought that there were lots of them up there. I was tempted to put the TV up there also but didn't want to punish the children for something that she had done. I did get a brilliant idea though and found that there was a little electronic timer that I could splice into the wiring and the set would automatically cut off at ten o'clock and would not work again until seven the next morning. I was actually proud of myself for coming up with that one.

The third part of my plan was to visit a lawyer who a friend knew and had set up an emergency appointment with for me. His name was John Stanford and he seemed to know what he was talking about since he had been handling divorce cases for 20 years. He immediately drew up some divorce papers which panicked me but then he reassured me that we weren't going to file yet but use them as leverage to help get Jane to do what I wanted. He said there was nothing like official looking papers being handed to a spouse to make them realize the seriousness of what they had done.

The second thing he did was draw up another set of papers to file a suit against the health club that Jane went to and that Ernesto worked at. We would file damages for their part in helping to facilitate the destruction of my marriage. John said we had a great case because the health club was a big national chain and they would most likely give us a very generous settlement out of court to keep the publicity quiet. John said just think what would happen to their membership if every husband whose wife worked out at one of their clubs found out that one of their personal trainers might be fucking around with them. I did see his point!

The fourth part of the plan was to go home and have the confrontation with Jane that she probably thought she had skated around. I would tell her everything that I had done so far and then slap the divorce papers in her hand. I would give her a few minutes to absorb that and then I was going to give her my list of conditions that she was going to have to meet for the divorce papers not to be filed. I had a feeling that was going to cause more than a few fireworks to go off.

When I got home Jane was in the shower and Jim and Alice were playing with some neighborhood kids in the back yard. I went into the bedroom to change into shorts and t-shirt and quickly went through her purse but didn't see anything unusual. Once in the kitchen, I got out a nice cold beer that I figured would help me relax a little. Then I picked up the phone and called in a pizza so we didn't have to worry with dinner. Everything was ready now and all I had to do was relax and get through the next three hours or so until the kids were in bed and then I would be the one changing our life.

Those three hours really did drag though. Time slowed down to a crawl and it seemed like I was aware of every minute that was going by. The kids loved the pizza, I had a couple of slices and drank another beer and even Jane seemed to enjoy the meal and drank a couple of beers. Finally it was the children's bedtime and I let Jane take them up and tuck them in while I went and got my paper work together.

After I heard Jane say goodnight to the kids, I called up the stairs and asked her to come down for a minute. I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when she did and I gave her what I hoped looked like a stern, serious expression and said that we needed to talk. She seemed to jerk back a little when I said that and her face seemed worried.

"Okay Zach, just let me get a beer first okay?"

"Sure honey I'll be waiting for you here and we can sit down in the living room."

She gave me such a nervous, flustered expression when she passed me and was acting so guilty that I followed a little behind her although she didn't know that. I have no idea why, perhaps some kind of intuition, but I stopped a couple of feet from the kitchen door and watched her. She got her beer out of the frig but then walked to a counter with her back to me and popped the top. I was surprised when she took a large swallow of her beer but I was shocked when I saw her reach in her pocket and pull out a little plastic pill box. Popping it open she took out a little white pill and put it in her mouth.

Oh my god, she had gotten some more of the diet pills or else she had another stash somewhere else beside her purse. Not wanting her to know that I saw her I quickly retreated into the living room and sat down in a chair with my paperwork on the coffee table. When Jane came in and sat down I started talking:

"Jane, I feel our marriage is at a crisis point. I have been very upset with the way things have been going the last month or two. You have made independent decisions that have affected our family a great deal and I never even got to have any say in them. We have always had a problem with your spending too much money and being careless as to how much we have in the bank. But what hurts worse than anything is the way you have abandoned your family and spent all of your time at the gym. It is not just me that has been hurt by this but the children as well. In addition you have acted like you want nothing to do with me at all and we have not had sex for over a month now. I have no idea if that is because you have been having an affair with Ernesto or there is some other reason. But since we never talk anymore there is no way for me to know unless I hire a private detective and have you shadowed. So to start with, have you been having an affair?"

I could tell she was trying to decide what to do and how to react. She had been acting guilty and sweet since I caught Ernesto in the house but I guess her little white pill was kicking in and giving her energy and confidence to try and bluff her way out.

"Damn you Zach", she said in a loud voice. "You don't own me you know. Just because I decide to spend a little time by myself so I can get in shape doesn't mean I am having affairs. Ernesto has helped me lose weight. You should be grateful for that. You have no right to tell me who my friends should be!"

"Oh of course Jane. I got that message from you a long time ago. I have no right to tell you what to do but you have every right to tell me what to do. Funny thing is I don't remember that being in our marriage vows. I thought marriage was supposed to be a partnership with each one caring about the other and sharing everything equally. When important decisions were made that affected the marriage I thought we were supposed to sit down and discuss it together before we took any action. Decisions like spending money when we are on a tight budget. Or joining gyms and hiring personal trainers which necessitate the other spouse having to be the primary care-keeper for the children. I'm not saying that there was anything necessarily wrong with you doing those things but that you shouldn't have done them without consulting with me your husband."

"I notice that you still didn't make a clear cut statement that you aren't fucking Ernesto but that's okay. At this point I just really don't care as much as I used to. One thing is for certain though. If you were fucking him it stops NOW! If you don't then this will be happening."

My voice had been getting louder throughout my little speech and now I thrust the divorce papers into her hand.

"Wha . . . wha . . what is this?"

"Just read them Jane. I'm going for a quick walk outside and then we can discuss them."

Wow! What a relief to get out of there, I thought, as I walked out the door and down the street. This being forceful and having your way takes a lot of energy. Still I did feel very satisfied as my tension began to ease somewhat. I couldn't believe that she had let me get out my whole speech without interrupting. This was just the first part of the confrontation but at least it was now out of the way.

It was probably only ten minutes since I'd been gone but it seemed like hours to me. Jane had moved from the living room to the kitchen table. Her eyes were red and she had obviously cried some but I could also see that she was furious also.

"Are you insane!", she screamed. "You've gone to a lawyer and filed for divorce. Because I haven't spent a lot of time with you for a month or two you want to split up forever? What about the children? This is a community property state. I will get half of what you own and custody of the children. Is that what you want?"

Yeah I had already figured she would fight using the kids. She knew how much they meant to me and that they were her best means of controlling me. John Stanford had already gone over these aspects of divorce with me. He had told me that she would probably get custody unless we could show she was really derelict as a mother and would constitute a danger to Jim and Alice. But he said I would also get very generous visitation given my closeness with them. Every other weekend, rotate holidays and a couple of afternoons at the park a week. It was not something that I looked forward to or wanted to happen but if I was committed to change in my marriage it might have to happen. Hopefully she would listen to reason but I had my doubts especially if I couldn't get her away from Ernesto and his diet pills.

"You've got it wrong Jane. I haven't filed for divorce yet, just had the papers drawn up so you would know I am serious when I tell you that there have to be changes made in our marriage. As for as custody and property split if we did divorce, I have already discussed those things with my lawyer. I think I would get a much better settlement than you think because we can prove you've practically abandoned the children as well as me these last months. But no it is NOT something I want! But it is something I will do if I have to."

"So what are these conditions? You want to keep me a prisoner here and make me serve you and the children? Is that what this is all about?"

"I am so glad you asked darling. Here is my list of conditions that have to be met for us to stay married. Actually they aren't just conditions but more of a blueprint for the way we will live from now on. It is impossible to write down all of the ways we interact but I have tried to hit the major ones. So just because something is not on the list does not mean that it is not subject to later discussion."

I then reached over and pulled the second set of papers out of a large clasp envelope and handed them to her. Then I began to read the list out loud.

1. Our finances will be separated as much as possible from now on. This means separate accounts and credit cards. I have already removed my name from our joint account and opened my separate account.

2. Monthly bills, mortgage payments, expenses of taking care of the household and the children will be assessed and split up among us. Since I make a greater income than you I will accept a 60-40 payment split. I know you will want to pay a smaller percentage but considering that you get equal benefit from living in our home I think this is fair. It would cost you far more to rent an apartment and pay your own utilities, etc.

3. We will cancel our membership at the gym and you will have no more contact with Ernesto. Neither will you continue to take any diet pills that I don't know about and aren't prescribed by a doctor.

4. The VCR is gone. No more taping soap operas and watching until late at night. The TV will be turned off and will stay off from ten at night until seven the next morning.

5. If one of us cooks a meal then the other will be responsible for complete kitchen cleanup including stove and floors.

6. Whenever one of us spends money on a household item and wants to be reimbursed, whether it be food or other goods, a receipt must be provided and the other party can only refuse if it is proven to not be a household item. A household item is one that is provided for the joint use of everyone in the house, or providing for the children in our role as parents. Therefore, laundry soap is a household item but cosmetics which only you use are not. Necessary clothes and shoes for the children are household items but clothes for each of us are not.