A Deer, and a Dear?

"John, I'm so sorry" and "Man, I'm sorry for...." They were talking over each other, and I held up my hand to stop them.

"Stop, both of you. I want you to listen to me. Are you okay with that?" They both nodded and I told them to sit down in the two visitor's chairs. They did, and I continued, "Fonderot, I hope you rot in hell for what you did in my house, in my bed, with my wife. But I have to thank you: you see, you have turned me into a philosopher these past few weeks. Lying in bed here, immobilized, damaged eye, being tortured by the doctors and nurses, I had a lot of time to think about you, the horrible thing you did to me and, God help me, the great thing you did to me. You saved my life after you destroyed it. I have been asking myself, how do those two actions balance in the universe? Does karma mean that I owe you now? Are you responsible for me now, like the Chinese belief that you are responsible for any life that you save?

"I'll tell you what I have decided. I am not going to seek any kind of revenge against you. You can walk out of this room and take comfort from my promise that I will not come after you. I won't lie in wait to break your leg or castrate you or anything else. But you will stay away from Joan as long as she is my wife. And you will stay away from me. If I see you, in a grocery store, on the sidewalk, wherever, I will kill you. I have a concealed carry permit and I will carry. If I see you, five yards or 50 yards away, whatever, I will shoot you. I will aim at that beautiful red line on your forehead, and you should know I am a pretty good shot. And I think a shot through your forehead will kill you pretty fucking dead.

"Now don't say anything. Just nod if you understand." He nodded, and I continued, "Get out of here, and hope I never see you again." He quickly left and Joan and I were left looking at each other.

"John, please, please, before you tell me whatever horrible things you are going to do to me, listen to me. I'm as sorry as I can be. I have no excuses, no reason why I cheated, except that I'm a bad person. I don't expect you will ever forget or forgive, but I hope you will always remember, no matter how bad I was, I still loved you and will always love you." She sat there, hands folded in her lap, looking as sweet and virginal as the day I met her more than 25 years ago. But that was then, and this was now.

"Joan, you fucking broke my heart. Almost literally. When I walked into our bedroom, I think my heart stopped beating. Sometimes over this last three weeks in the hospital, I wished I had died, right there in the bedroom in front of you and asshole Fonderot. Or I wished that deer had torn a bigger hole in my neck, and you would have found me dead in my truck. But you know what? My hatred for Fonderot and for you kept me going. And then I found out he, and you, saved my life. I couldn't figure out how to even think about that. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I mean, the story just sucks. I think I scared Fonderot enough, and left him with a beautiful scar, that I'm done with him. But you, what the fuck do I do with you?"

"John, please, I'll do anything I can, anything you want, anything...."

"Joan, just shut up for now. Listen to me. I will come home with you, tomorrow, I think. I need about a month of recuperation before I can go back to work. The doc says I can do that recuperating at home if I have someone to help. That someone needs to be you. Otherwise, I will have to go to a recuperation facility, and I am sick to death of being in a hospital kind of place. As angry as I am for what you did, and as difficult as it might be for the two of us to live together for the next month, I hope you can say yes to our staying together for a month."

"Oh, John, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Honey, I thought...."

"Wait, Joan, don't think this means we are okay after what you did. I am going to be working on my rehabilitation. Whatever happens between us is for the future." I did need her for another month, so now was not the time to tell her she had destroyed our marriage. That was for later.

The next day, I was discharged. Franklin and Dr Amir both stopped by my room to say good-bye and wish me luck. Joan brought me some clothes, and the hospital returned some of the clothes I had been wearing when I hit the deer. I found Fonderot's driver's license in my pants pocket. I kept it and threw the clothes away. Knowing where he lived might come in handy.

Interesting development when Joan and I got home. She ushered me down the hall to our bedroom. I balked at going in, and told her I was never going in that room again. She asked me just to look inside.

"Honey, I bought a brand-new bed, and a new mattress and sheets and everything. I got rid of all the old stuff, and, uh, uh, I have something to show you outside, in the backyard." We went outside and I saw a pile of wood.

"John, that wood is our old bed. The guys who delivered the new bed helped me break up the old bed and I poured gasoline on it this morning, before I left to get you at the hospital. I was hoping you and I could burn the old bed together, you know, as a kind of sign that we are past the horrible thing I did." I looked at her. She was holding a box of wooden matches, open for me to take one. She already had one in her hand. This was so unexpected that I just stood there for a while. Really without knowing what to think, I took a match, we both lit them, and then threw them on the gas-soaked wood. It flared up immediately and burned as we both stood there looking at it. It got hot enough that I stepped back, and accidentally bumped her. That was the first time I had touched her in at least a month. She grabbed onto me, both arms around my neck and started sobbing against my back. I let her cry for a while and then turned around.

"Joan, thank you for doing this. It does mean something, although I really don't know what. It doesn't mean we are past your betrayal, and it doesn't mean I will return to your bedroom, but it was a good thing to do."

"That's enough for now," she said. "Let's get you into the guest bedroom and settled in." I did get settled in, took a long nap, and woke up to a nice, soft-diet dinner that she had fixed.

During the next month she worked only half time at the law firm, so we were home together most of the time. And during that time, she did everything possible for me. She said she was sorry until I told her to stop, she fixed great dinners, she consulted with my physical therapist, who came every other day at first and then tapered off to once a week, she got me up and walking and doing the exercises the therapist assigned. She was the perfect wife, except of course we were sleeping in separate bedrooms and sex was not even something to discuss.

By the end of the month, I had to admit to myself that some of my anger had dissipated, partly, I also admitted to myself, because I was getting hornier by the day as my recovery progressed and I got stronger. What did I want? Just to fuck her and then walk out? Try to forgive her and reconcile? Goddam, it was time to talk with her.

"Joan, I'm going back to work next Monday," I told her on a Thursday evening after another delicious dinner. "The question for me is: do I go to work from here, and come home to a loving, trying-to-reconcile wife? Or do I just say 'fuck it' and move out?" She was not making my decision any easier by the scanty clothing she changed into when she came home from work.

"John, I hope you can see I have been doing everything I can this past month to help you recover. And I will do anything else you want: go to counselling with you, or by myself, let you beat me if you need to, not cry, well, not too much, if you want to cheat on me. Just, if you do that, not here, please. I mean, I know I did it here, but if you..."

"Joan, hush about all that. If we are going to survive together, I guess I need to know why. Why did you get involved with that asshole? And why in god's name did you bring him here?" My voice was rising as some of my anger was venting.

"I've thought about all that, especially while you were in the hospital and I couldn't even see you. You didn't know this, but your nurse Franklin did let me sneak into the ICU a few times, while you were asleep, and let me just look at you. John, that was so scary, you looked horrible, and you had all this, this equipment and tubes and machines and stuff hooked to you. And it was all my fault. But Franklin told me I had to be strong, that you would need my help when you got out of the hospital. And he was right. You did need me, this past month, and I have helped you and I love you so much and I'm so sorry and...."

"Joan, Joan, ok, I get all that. You feel guilty, and, yeah, you should. But why did you fuck asshole in the first place? And for how long? And why in our bed?"

"I wish I could say I lost my mind or had some reason that sounded sensible or anything, but the truth is I was just bored at work. Sam asked me to lunch one day. He comes by our office, well, he used to; he was our IT guy. Our office is too small to need full time IT support, and Sam works for our IT support company. He did maintenance on our computers and printers and fixed them when they needed that. So he was in and out of the office just about every week. He reported to me when he came and went and I processed payments to his company. Anyway, one day he had just finished some work and it was lunch time. I really think it was pretty innocent. I mean, he might have wanted to schmooze me a little bit, you know, get in good with me since I was his contact at the law firm, but... John, he's not smart like you, he...."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go on with the story."

"Well, we went to lunch, and it was okay, and we started doing that once very week or so, and...."

"And you never thought to share your lunch adventure with your husband?"

"John, it wasn't like that, I mean not at first, it was just lunch. But, yeah, I know what you mean. It didn't stay just lunch. We didn't want to get into trouble from anybody seeing us together, so we started going on picnics, and I guess that led to some kissing and then one day we went to a motel instead of lunch, and uh, you know, we uh, we had sex. And John, the sex was okay, but it wasn't great, it wasn't...."

"Joan, you kept doing it with him. For how long?"

"Well, it was a few months, but I felt really bad and we only did it when you were away on your crop inspection trips and...."

"And how many times in what used to be our bed?"

Oh John, that's what's so bad about this. That night was the first time he ever spent the night. He's married too and he loves his wife and she was out of town that night so it was just really bad luck that we did what we did here and you came home and...."

"Joan, you say that was the first time he spent the night here, but how many times was he in our bed during your lunchtime fucks?"

"John, the motel was expensive, and someone might see us, and picnics meant, you know, doing it on the ground, and his wife was home, so uh yeah we did use our bed a few times, but only when you were gone, and I always washed the sheets and cleaned everything before you got home."

"Wow." I was stunned by her story. Part of me was saying it was a pretty ordinary story of a cheating wife and her fuck buddy. But the bigger part of me was saying, yeah but it was my wife doing the fucking. "I need to think about all this."

"John, it's over with him. He doesn't come to our office anymore; they send someone else and...."

"Someone else you can fuck?"

"John, no, no, never again." I thought she might be telling the truth about that, at least for now, but it didn't really make any difference.

"I'm going to bed. Like I said, I need to think about this."

"John, please, remember I love you, and I am so sorry." I did go to bed and we got through the weekend.

Monday morning, Joan drove me to the repair facility, and I saw my truck for the first time since that night. I told the repair guy that he did an incredible job on it. It looked brand new. Joan left in her car to go to work, and I just sat in my truck for a while. Finally, I drove, not to my office, but back home. I walked around, went into the master bedroom for the first time since that night. I stood next to my side of the bed and thought about how I almost killed someone that night. And about Joan fucking someone else in this room. Then I drove to my lawyer's office.

EPILOGUE

The divorce went as smoothly as those things can go. Neither of us wanted the house so we eventually sold it and split the proceeds 50/50. I was stuck with some alimony for three years, but I could afford it. We both kept our retirement accounts, we split the savings 50/50, all in all pretty amicable I guess. I never saw Fonderot again; lucky for him.

Joan and I sat down with our sons and told them we had grown apart, hence the divorce. They were grown up enough that I think it didn't bother them too much.

And that's my story. Sad ending for everyone, especially for that damn deer.