A Fool No More

When true love isn't true, can there be new love that is?

© SouthernCrossfire, 2022. All rights reserved.

________________________

May 2002

I loved her with all my heart, but love can be a bumpy ride.

Anytime Jeanie started a conversation with "We need to talk," I came to know over the years that we were in for a rough time followed by great make-up sex. Sometimes it was different; there would be a very rough time and an extended period of sulking eventually followed by compromise and really great make-up sex. That was our mantra for our almost nineteen years of marriage. We loved each other, we protected Ashley, our baby girl, and, when things went sour, we made up with gusto after we worked things out between us.

Yes, I loved Jeanie with all my heart and I did everything I could for her, always wanting to go the extra mile to make her life better, doing what I could to bring her a smile or a contented sigh. Making her happy made me happy, too, but love's a two-way street.

With her temper being as hot as her fiery red hair and her mood sometimes as dark as her deep brown eyes, it was often a very uneven road, filled with potholes and sharp turns, but we kept things on track over the years, even when there weren't quite as many niceties flowing in my direction. That was Jeanie; it was her way, as loving and affectionate as could be part of the time and as moody as hell much of the rest. I understood that and lived with it...until the night of Ashley's high school graduation.

With Ashley out at a party that evening after the ceremony and me feeling nervous remembering what had happened between us following Jeanie's graduation nineteen years earlier, my wife came to me and said, "Jared, we need to talk."

This time, after the worst fight of our lives, there was no love and no make-up sex, great or otherwise; in fact, there was no more sex at all.

No, Jeanie took an unexpected turn leaving me all alone on that secluded byway. To my surprise, I found myself almost completely alone, alienated from family and friends, wondering what had happened and why it had happened to me.

Despite all that and as foolish as it was, I still loved Jeanie, my first and only love, and I knew I always would...just like I always had.

***

In early November 2003, about a year after our divorce was finalized, there was a knock on the door of my little apartment as I was studying for an exam. I'd started back to college in January of that year with plans to finally finish my long-delayed degree, but one semester and a summer course down and another semester underway, it was turning out to be more challenging than I hoped. Frequent interruptions and the monster stereo next door didn't help, and my acceptance that Jeanie was forever gone from my life had been slow and painful in coming.

I opened the door to find Jeanie, as beautiful as ever, standing there looking surprisingly contrite, holding her hands together and rubbing them nervously.

"Hi, Jared. Can we talk?"

Can, not need, I noticed.

"Hi. Yeah, come on in," I replied, so surprised and confused at her being there and the difference in those two little words that I barely got my reply out. "Ah, have a seat?"

She glanced at the old couch I'd found in a thrift store, wrinkled her nose at it, and moved over to the table next to the little kitchen. The table and chairs were second-hand, too, but looked somewhat nicer than the couch, even with its cover.

"How've you been?" she asked.

It would have been polite to say "Fine, and what about you?" or some such drivel, but Jeanie asked so I answered honestly. "I lost you, the one thing in the world that I cherished above all else. Our Ashley's away and busy at school so I get to talk to her once or maybe twice a month and to see her once in a blue moon. To make matters worse, I have a thermodynamics exam tomorrow evening after work. Jeanie, seriously, how do you think I've been?"

To my surprise, she nodded, her expression sad. "I'm sorry, Jared. It was a mistake, it was all a mistake and it was my fault. I thought I needed to find myself but with you gone, I realized it was even worse. My doctor modified my medication and that's helped, and now I want to be with you again, dear. I've missed you every day, seeing you, touching you...just spending time with you doing something...or nothing...or doing something."

Her eyebrow shot up suggestively on that, as if I didn't know what she meant after having spent nearly 21 years with her and over 19 of them married before our divorce was finalized.

She went on. "I was wrong, Jared, and now I want to make it right. I want you back. I want to try again. I want us to be, well, us, a family again, like the old days, but this time, I want us to be better."

She took my hand and put it to her cheek, holding them against each other as her eyes closed. Her voice low and sultry, she breathed, "I've missed you so much, Jared. Do you think you can forgive me? Do you think we can give it another try?"

Her lips brushed my knuckles and all the love that I'd tried to preserve for the first six months and to suppress and forget over the past six broke its shackles and burst forth out of the little niche where I'd hidden it deep inside me. My thermo exam was completely forgotten.

As crazy as it was and as hard as I'd tried to put her behind me, I knew I still loved Jeanie. Our lips met and passionate hunger growled within us, overpowering us. She was pulling off my t-shirt and shoving my sweatpants down even as I was taking off her shirt and unfastening her bra. I picked her up in my arms and carried her the few steps into my little bedroom where we made furious love for the first time in nearly 18 months, with Jeanie on her hands and knees crying out each time we slammed against each other before I buried my seed in her depths. It was too fast and furious but it was what we both needed.

A short time later, we were doing it again, slow and tender, face to face. When we came together in a lover's embrace, Jeanie whispered to me, "I love you so much, Jared, and I'm so sorry for pushing you away."

"I love you, too, sweetheart, and I always have," I replied.

***

It's funny how foolish a man can be when he really loves a woman.

When hopelessly in love, a man may go well beyond the point he typically would in order to win his lady, giving up more than common sense would ordinarily dictate. A man may let things slide that would usually raise red flags that would cause him to stop and think. When a man loves a woman but has lost her, he may even miss or ignore the warning signs if he has a chance to get her back.

Yes, wanting her back so badly, I played the fool, ignoring it all to have a chance to reconcile with Jeanie. I realized later how I'd heard but completely overlooked Jeanie's "I want, I want, I want" chant when she gave me her little "let's get back together" speech, probably because it was what I'd wanted the whole time we'd been apart.

Therefore, I forgave her and took her back, thinking that we'd survived our trial by fire and come through stronger, like steel being tempered in my material science class. Moving back into Jeanie's house, our former home, I broke the lease on my apartment despite the penalty and donated the excess furniture back to the thrift store since there was no room for it in the house and since there wasn't much of it that we'd have wanted to keep anyway.

What followed was a wonderful time and I frequently thought about how good life was, how nice it was to be a family again, how great it was to have Jeanie with me. I wondered a few times if it was too fast, if I was too forgiving, but I put those thoughts out of my mind. Things between us seemed better, almost perfect even, and I began planning to ask her to marry me again.

About that time, eight months after our reunion, Jeanie said one evening, "Jared, we need to talk."

It was out of the blue, completely unexpected. My heart raced and thoughts of times past bubbled up in my mind. But no, I told myself, this couldn't be; we'd gotten past all of that. Things were good between us now and I didn't have to fear that phrase anymore.

Therefore, trusting in my belief, I smiled and asked, "What's up, sweetheart?"

"Jared, it's not working. You need to go and we need to move on, you go your way and I'll go mine."

"What?" I exclaimed when I heard the way she said those words and saw the expression on her face. It was then that I realized what a fool I'd truly been. Memories of fights past, and our breakup fight in particular, flooded over me. This couldn't be happening, so I used one of the lovesick fool's primary tools: denial.

"No, Jeanie. Think! Things have been great since we've been back together, better than the old days. We haven't fought a single time. Well, not really fought. Right, Jeanie? Right?"

She shook her head. "True...but that's not enough. I want you to move out and go. I can't keep kidding myself."

"Jeanie, I love you. We love each other. Tell me, what's going on? We can make this better."

"No, it's over, Jared. I thought there was a chance we could make things work this time, but it...it hasn't worked out. I'm done and you need to get out."

I'm a fool for love, but I'm not a complete idiot. That was when the suspicion started; there was something more to her actions that I didn't know and she wasn't saying. It was a terrible thought: could there be someone else?

Not wanting to tip her off, I said nothing but continued with a half-hearted argument, realizing that I wouldn't want her back if there was someone else involved.

She concluded, "You can sleep in the guest room for the next night or two, but I want you out by the weekend."

As the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Yes, I'd been a lovesick idiot, a big one it seemed, giving her my all for over half my life, but I gritted my teeth and told myself in no uncertain terms that I was done. I would be a fool no more.

After a fitful night in the guest bed by myself, I was quite ashamed the next morning as I hired Dawna Hightower, a retired police officer turned private detective, to sort things out. She did so within a week as I kept purposefully ignoring Jeanie's deadline for my departure from the house. I called out of work one day to allow Miss Hightower to visit the house and do part of her investigation while Jeanie was at her work.

From the messages she was able to recover from Jeanie's personal laptop, the affair had apparently been on and off over the past couple of years, since well before our divorce; the pictures the detective found in a hidden folder on the computer and the ones she got a couple of days later told the rest of the story and made me want to retch.

I went to a private lab for STD testing immediately after Miss Hightower gave me the report and the photos; she must have had the request before because she forwarded the address for the place from her contacts list without having to look it up on the web.

Jeanie was fortunate that we didn't have to go through another divorce for I'd have gone scorched earth on her this time, fighting her tooth and nail after receiving that report. Instead of involving lawyers, I gave Jeanie a copy of it and told her that I'd share it with every last one of her relatives and friends if she wanted to fight me over anything. There was hate in her eyes when I said it, though she didn't realize it was a hollow threat.

The problem was that if I gave it to anyone other than Jeanie, the risk was too great that it might get back to Ashley. To me, she was the most important consideration, and I couldn't risk hurting her with her mother's actions and faithlessness. Ashley and Jeanie had always been quite close, so I couldn't risk destroying that, as much for me as for them. If Ashley were to discover what her mother had done because of my actions, it would probably harm them and might destroy my relationship with Ashley as well.

"Don't do it, Mr. McClelland," cautioned Miss Hightower. "It might feel good at first as you twist the knife in your wife's gut for what she did to you and to your relationship, but you'll feel the blade in your back, too, with respect to your daughter. Trust me, I've been in this business long enough to know. You'll be sorry in the long run."

Therefore, I took my investigator's advice...for the most part.

Using a photo editing program, I obscured Jeanie's face in three digital photos from her laptop and anonymously sent copies to her illicit lover's wife. The ones I sent clearly showed Tommy's face and the fact that he really had had his dick in some seemingly anonymous skank's various holes. I didn't know either the asshole or his wife but the P.I. provided their contact info in the report, so I figured Mrs. Tommy-the-Cheater should know, too, in case she wanted to do anything to protect herself.

In the days that followed, I found yet another dinky apartment and a few more pieces of used furniture to furnish it, though I did finagle some older furniture from our--no, Jeanie's--basement. Jeanie gave me an angry look when I suggested taking the things, but a raised eyebrow from me made her remember my threat that she didn't realize was just that.

"Fuck you, Jared McClelland. Just take that shit and get out."

Seeing her anger and knowing Jeanie, I made her sign a receipt for everything I took in case she later got any nasty ideas.

When it was loaded and I drove away that day, I didn't look back. "Fool no more," I declared to myself, determined that they were words I would live by.

I later learned that cheater Tommy's wife filed for divorce and took him for everything the state would allow. Jeanie and the jackass married almost as soon as the ink was dry on his divorce decree and he ended up moving in with her.

***

Yes, as much as I'd loved Jeanie and as big a fool as I'd been, I was determined not to be a punching bag. I wouldn't make the same mistake again, I told myself. However, being lonely, I thought of her from time to time, wondering "what if?" before I could think of pounding my head against a wall to knock some sense back into myself.

Unfortunately, that's how the whole situation felt to me, as if I was punishing myself for her mistakes and betrayal, but getting nowhere in the process.

With Jeanie out of my life, physically at first and later mentally, too, it took me a couple of years before I put it all behind me and could really enjoy being me again.

No, I didn't confess all to the preacher, didn't share my problems with local bartenders as I drank their establishments dry, and didn't spend countless hours with a namby-pamby shrink paying for her rent or for a sizable chunk of his new sports car. I didn't go on a binge and pick up a different woman every night or even every month either to help forget her memory.

Instead of any of that, I'd continued with my schooling, trying to finish my long-delayed undergraduate engineering degree as I worked full-time at the plant; flexible hours and an understanding boss really helped. I'd continued my studies through what I'd thought was our reconciliation and I accelerated it once Jeanie and I parted for good.

Between work and school, I didn't have much time to dwell on my past problems or think about the possibility of future relationships. My few attempted forays into dating never went past a first date.

Jeanie had been my first and only lover to that point in my life, so getting lucky on a couple of first dates during that period was a very different and pleasurable experience, but finding that neither of those women had any interest in anything more than sex for an evening was a bit disappointing to me. I see myself as a relationship type of guy, not as a Casanova or Don Juan, so by the time I finally earned my diploma, Jeanie was as far behind me as I could leave her and there was no one of interest on my radar. The troubles of recent years didn't seem quite so important anymore...for the most part, anyway.

With my degree in hand in December 2005, I was promoted at the plant from Master Machinist on the floor to Design Engineer in the production office. The bump in pay scale was good and with my tuition payments ended, I received approval for a mortgage on a small, aging bungalow on 18th Street during the summer of 2006.

Setting down the last box in my new home, I thanked two coworkers from the plant who'd helped with the move and paid them, rather generously, for their time. It had been a very hot day.

"Thanks! See you on Monday, Jared," said Pete, a long-time coworker and one of my few friends. He whispered, "Housewarming gift," as he palmed his bills back to me when we shook hands. He smiled and grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the cooler as he headed for the door.

"Yeah, thanks," agreed Mark, one of the newer guys I didn't know very well. "See ya around." Mark shoved his bills in his pocket, took a Gatorade and a water, and went out after Pete.

The door closed behind them and I looked at it, recognizing the symbolism of closing off the past and seeing it as an opportunity for a new beginning. I laughed, thinking maybe I'd learned something in one of those silly electives required for my engineering degree after all. The thought wouldn't leave my head as I cleaned a section of the kitchen cabinets and started putting dishes and pots and pans inside.

Three boxes down, I paused, realizing there was no real food in the house and that I'd have to go out for either a meal or groceries. Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I sighed and pulled out my phone. It went to voicemail a few seconds later.

"Hi, Ashley, it's Dad. Hope you're doing well and having a good summer. Ahem, I haven't heard from you since your graduation so...I was, ah, wondering if we could get together for, maybe dinner? It's probably too late for tonight, but, sometime soon? I love you, sweetheart, I miss you a lot, and I want to always be there for you when you need me. I have a new address now, too, so I'll text that to you; you'll always be welcome here, any time, okay. Call--"

BEEEP!

"--me...when you can," I concluded, talking only to myself.

She didn't call that night or any that followed, but I left her a message every week, trying each time to reach out and give her an olive branch so we could heal the rift between us. I never knew what Jeanie had told her, but things hadn't been right between my daughter and me since Jeanie and I had parted for the last time.

Yes, my past and its troubles didn't seem so important anymore...except for my daughter, and that, that hurt a lot.

The situation with her hurt every single day.

***

By late August 2006, my little house was in order but Ashley was still ignoring if not actively avoiding me, much like she had been for nearly two years. I had several vacation days accrued at work so I scheduled a four-day weekend in mid-September and went to the mountains to backpack. Some cool, crisp air, some pretty scenery, and a bit of solitude would do me some good, I hoped.

The sounds of my footsteps and breathing, my walking staff hitting the trail, and the sounds of birds and whisper of the wind through the trees soon faded into the background. The miles of trail before me and the relative peace and quiet gave me lots of time to think.

Memories of taking Ashley's Girl Scout troop camping a number of times when they were young brought a smile; Jeanie had been an assistant troop leader for several years and she and Roberta, the leader, had left all the planning for such trips and teaching of outdoor skills to me. Maybe I should have stopped there but more memories of her incessant griping at having to even go on hikes and camping trips brought a grin to my face.