An Unfaithful Wife: Brad's Story

I never believed Carol was the calculating type. I guess I was wrong; in fact I was decidedly and indubitably wrong.

I met Dr. Maynard Gilmore once; it was at one of Carol's professional activities. I liked him. I thought he was an affable trustworthy kind of man. He wasn't married, divorced I later heard, but that meant nothing at the time. After a dozen years of marriage and two kids I trusted my wife. I believed in her. I was a fool.

It wasn't like I seriously suspected any kind of infidelity, emotional or otherwise. I didn't look around for any signs. They were there. I did notice, but honest, I never suspected a thing. It turned out to be Carol's stupidity, or more precisely her carelessness, that upended everything.

So I was hitting the football circuit, either with or without the kids every Friday. Then came winter and it was basketball. Carol had been good, but something was going on. She'd gotten through football season without a giving herself away, but basketball games were seldom on Friday's. Oh there was a Friday or two, but most of the time they were late afternoon matches held on Thursdays. Somewhere along the way I kind of figured something out because Carol wasn't keeping to any kind of reliable schedule.

Carol kept her Friday's, but now often as not she was in and out on other nights. I was often home when she got in from her 'brief' visits with her colleagues.

I recall now there'd been a kid. A senior, who had to retake his Health class, his make-up was scheduled for two days a week, Mondays and Wednesday. Normally health was a three day offering. This kid got the idea he could skip Monday, and the teacher might think he only needed one hour. Well the kid started skipping Mondays. Then he got careless, he started showing up on Mondays and skipping Wednesday. The teacher got suspicious, checked the September records, and the kid got called on it. He paid with some detention and three days of Health the rest of the year.

Believe me, on the night when the shit finally hit the fan it wasn't the alcohol on her breath, it wasn't the indifference in her attitude about our long-term plans, it wasn't the blind rush to get by the kids and me when she came home from that night with her friends, it was her attire.

Carol had always been something of a 'clothes horse'. She always had to have the latest styles, the nicest blouses, the prettiest dresses. Her hair always had to have that special coif, her nails always 'just so, and her makeup just that certain special look. So why that night had she come home so 'campy'? Why was her makeup so skewed? Why was her hair so mussed? And what were those stains on her skirt and blouse?

I let it go the first time or two. Honest, I never noticed, or pretended to never notice at first, but pretty soon I got my signals right. Finally I asked her, "Carol what's with you on these nights you get home late?"

She looked at me kind of dumbfounded. I could tell she was drunk. She replied, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Look at yourself; what have you been doing? Where've you been? You look like you've been in a mud wrestling contest."

She responded, "Just with some friends."

Irritated, impatient, I asked, "Really? Like who?"

She told me. She rattled off several names, including a couple doctors, one was Maynard Gilmore.

I asked her, "Well pardon me Carol, but you don't look right. What gives?"

Like I said she was pretty drunk, not falling down, but certainly off her oats. Everyone knows alcohol impacts a person's self-control. They become more unguarded, less inhibited. She went over the line. She stood there in our living room. The kids were in bed, and she said, "For Christ's sake Brad. You know. I know you know."

I said, "No Carol I don't know," and in all honesty I didn't.

That's when she dropped the bomb, "Me and Dr. Gilmore. You know."

I did then. I felt like someone had just walked on my grave. I had to hear more, "No Carol. What do you mean you and Dr. Gilmore?"

That's when she started to cry. She sat down and said, "I'm sorry Brad."

My first reaction was this couldn't be happening. But it was. It was like in Dickens; an hour before it had been 'the best of times' but not now...

She sobbed a few times then said, "Dr. Gilmore and I. Well we. Brad I'm sorry. We're in love."

My world had just come to an end. I was locked in the lunette. The blade was descending. My head was falling in the basket. It's funny the things that fly in a person's brain at times like that, I remembered once reading after being beheaded a person retained some semblance of consciousness for up to seven seconds. Thinking back, that had been my seven seconds; imagine, seven seconds from life to something else.

I had no idea what I was supposed to say or do. Something just kind of washed over me, it was like this powerful electric current, a brief overwhelming surge, and then she, I went dead.

I knew. I just knew. It. The thing that had been us, the 'we' was over. I said, 'You're leaving me."

There I'd said it. Just like that. I'd said it, and I knew it was true. No preliminaries, no build up, no mystery, no nothing, one minute I was married, had a wife, had a family and a home, and the next...nothing, the abyss.

Looking back now I know it was a lot worse. I was a total wreck at the time, that night. I remember I never cried, or begged, or pleaded, but I remember how I felt, and it was bad, awful, but not as awful as it was going to get.

Carol sat there, hair a mess, blouse wrinkled, breath horrid, and what were certainly semen stains on her skirt, and she said, "Yes Brad I guess I am."

I remembered she tried the 'let's show some sympathy' shtick. Christ I'd seen teachers play the same game with kids year after year. It was old hat to me.

She sat there, she regained some composure, just some I say considering she was still pretty high. She said, "Brad I love you. I've always loved you. I'm just not 'in love' with you anymore."

That got me. What an old joke. Me, our marriage, it had become a cliche. I stopped being stunned and got thoroughly angry. No it wasn't anger; it was rage! It was blind fury! It was time to strike back! I remember I looked around the room and the first thing I saw was her curio cabinet. Well that had to go. As I got up and started for her precious little collection of reliquaries I shouted, "You fucking cunt bitch!"

I got to the cabinet just ahead of her. She knew what I had in mind. She was just a microsecond too late. I grabbed one of the side doors and yanked as hard as I could. It was a fragile antique, an heirloom; the damn door came right off. My hands were inside grasping at her 'Precious Moments', 'the Waterford Candlesticks', the 'Swarovski Vase', her grandmother's old knick-knacks. They were all flying everywhere. I broke every god damn thing I could reach, and I did it with malice, profound malice.

Carol was screaming and crying, pleading with me to stop, but I'd just begun. It took just a few seconds to destroy the curio, then it was on to the television, the stereo, and the pictures. I smashed everything!

I espied the dining room wall cabinet, the good china, the husband and wife dolls under the plastic dome, the special gifts, the crystal wine glasses. I charged. She followed. I pushed her away, and destroyed everything. On the wall I saw the 'picture'. Everybody has one; the picture of the happy bride and groom all decked out in their marital attire; that went across my knee. I tore the picture out and ripped it to shreds. I threw it like it was confetti. I shouted, "Hurrah! It's over!"

Then it was off to the kitchen, and the fucking trinkets she had all over the god damn kitchen, her little children's objects. I was no longer angry. I felt nothing. I didn't care. Everything had to go. I picked up one kitchen chair after another and smashed them against everything I could reach. I lunged down, pulled out the daily china and started throwing it in all directions. I broke off the goose neck faucet.

She was following me; crying, begging. She didn't get it. Every little doo-dah, every piece of furniture, every dish, every glass, they were her? I opened the refrigerator and everything inside was soon outside. The milk, the iced tea, the left-over chicken, the half and half; it all went everywhere.

I'd become a mad man! Then it all stopped.

Standing in the portal between the kitchen and the dining room were my two kids. They looked terrified. Bridget said something. I think she said, "Daddy." I collapsed on the last unbroken kitchen chair and started to bawl, I mean I blubbered like a little baby.

Carol hustled the kids back to bed and came back downstairs to the kitchen. I was still crying, but not her. No, Carol didn't cry. Carol was in full skank mode. She stood across from me and in cold blood said, "You should leave. Pack a suitcase and just get out."

I looked at her, then around the house and at the wreckage. She was right. I knew if I stayed there another minute my kids would be without a mother and I'd be in prison. I went upstairs and packed an overnight bag. I was surprised at how controlled I was. All the disbelief, the denials, the tragedy had simply disappeared. I just needed to be gone.

I moved out; first a motel room, then a small apartment near our house. I was sad, sure. I was desperately unhappy. But I was a man. I'd get beyond this. My dad had put up with a lot more. I could do it because I was my father's son.

~~v~~

As I thought to tell these things to my son, what with close to twenty years separating that night from the present I wondered, even now, how I could've been so calm in the days that followed. My son told me how scared he and Bridget were that night. He said Bridget cried for days, but I already knew all that.

Carol didn't wait, and she didn't pull any punches. Her great confession occurred on a Thursday night. She got a restraining order. She found a lawyer, a mean one. I was served the following Friday. At least, the very least, she didn't try to have me served at work.

I thought how to explain to my son the several nightmarish weeks that followed. I got a lawyer. Carol had hers and we all met at her lawyer's office. Though the animosity at that meeting was poisonous we still managed to work out a pretty fair settlement.

First the animosity:

I still wanted to know why, but she didn't have an answer. She said she'd fallen 'out of love' with me, and she needed to 'move on'.

I asked her why she hadn't come to me. I said maybe if she had we might have worked something out. I told she'd been the only woman I'd ever had, and I couldn't imagine myself ever being with another.

That's when she got me; she got me right between the eyes. I can't remember her exact words, but their impact played on my soul for years.

She said I no longer met her needs. She'd outgrown me. She told me I was boring, life with me had become tedious; I was a pathetic nobody going nowhere. She said she needed filet mignon and I was hamburger.

She really poured it on. She told me she couldn't believe I was still a virgin when we got together at the beach. She told me her boyfriend, Vernon Smithers, had already 'got her', and even later while we were dating. Jesus! Vernon Smithers? She told me she'd only taken up with me because her parents had made her break up with Vernon. She said she sort of liked me but never really loved me; that I was just somebody her parents thought was appropriate. She said I was comfortable to be with, but there'd never been any passion, not for her. That hurt, that really hurt. It was like Carol was reading my mind; she just sat there and smirked.

Carol said she couldn't believe the whole time we were in school, me in college and her in nursing training, that I hadn't done anything. I told her I hadn't. She told me she'd made it with four or five guys every year all through nursing school.

I told her I didn't believe her, but she really had me on that. She started naming the men, the dates, and the places. They all roughly seemed to coincide with the times when we'd had our brief falling outs. She told me I'd been a fool all the way down the line.

I admit it I was totally crushed, and watching her tell it I could see she was enjoying every minute of it. I supposed the revelation of just what kind of person she was turned out to be far worse for me than the actual separation and divorce.

Still I sensed there was something else going on with Carol that day in the lawyer's office. Her comments were all too pat, like they were all rehearsed. Everything she said was probably true, but I remember thinking, even while she was having her rant that it could all be 'pay back' for the house and the curio, but it could be more too. A couple time she'd take a breath and in the interim she'd say, 'you need somebody better', 'you need someone you can count on'. Yeah, I remember thinking there was more than just anger about the house, there was guilt and not just guilt about her affair with the doctor. I was just too upset at the time to see it. Carol had her demons.

But to think; all those years, all the things we'd done, the years of scrimping and saving, the talks we'd had, the dreams I thought we'd shared. None of it had meant anything to her. I had been a stop gap, a thing to be used. Coming to that meeting I thought I hated her. By the time she finished I knew better. I looked across the table at her and I felt nothing. She was dead to me. I think she saw it in my eyes.

The settlement:

I was pleasantly surprised at the settlement, at least at first. Carol wanted the house, and she got it. We'd just refinanced our mortgage. We'd put more money down, and we'd gotten the interest and payments down pretty low. Carol evinced a wry grin about the house; she'd set it all up that way just before her confession. She'd planned it that way.

Carol had always handled the money. I'd never thought to investigate or confirm what she made. Was I surprised! She actually earned just slightly less than me. Our savings we divided evenly, but what did it matter; most had already gone into the house.

She was generous with child support, and she asked for no alimony. Of course there was a price. I could've gone after her and Gilmore at work. Interesting supposition; I could have cost them their jobs. Gilmore would've suffered a small setback, but his skills were such that he would have quickly recovered. Carol on the other hand would have been scorched. But if she were scorched I would have been too. I thought to let her keep her job. Let her keep her new lover. I just wanted to get out.

She was good with the kids too. She could've really hurt me with them. With my devastation of the house and the fact that I'd pushed her she had all the ammunition she needed to destroy me. She had the proof. I knew that; she'd mailed me pictures of what I'd done.

Yeah, when it came to the kids something of the 'old Carol', the Carol I'd loved came through. I'd get every other weekend, and one school night each week. She promised not to set up roadblocks. I figured things would be tough at first because I'd need a decent place to stay, but I thought I'd eventually work that out.

There was just one more wrinkle, and it turned out to be a big one. I'd pretty much ransacked the house. Carol wanted repayment for all the personal losses she'd incurred. I agreed, and it turned out to be substantial. I agreed to it because I'd caused the physical damage.

Last, she agreed to split the legal fees. Excepting personal property and our cars all other assets, such as they were, got divided evenly.

Our Denouement:

I remembered at the close of the meeting I reached my hands across the table toward Carol. She pulled her hands back. I said, "I want to thank you."

She looked confused. She pulled back even further. She kind of looked at me in a quizzical kind of way like maybe she'd forgotten something, like were there assets somewhere she missed? She said, "What for?"

Then I said, "Carol our marriage may have been a fraud and maybe everything I thought we'd built is just ashes in the wind but I still want to thank you."

She looked surprised.

I went on, "I want to thank you for twenty of the happiest years of my life. I want to thank you for all the dreams I thought we once shared. I want to thank you for our two wonderful children."

I stopped and took a sip of water. I wasn't thinking about the kids and how we'd always be connected by them. No I thought this might be the last time I ever saw her. I concluded, "I know we're done. Our lives together are dead, but I still have my memories. Carol I'll always remember you. I loved you once and I'll always remember you as that beautiful girl who'd once made all my dreams come true."

She started to cry. I had to get up and leave.

I walked away a broken man. My wife, the woman I'd loved with all my heart had turned out to be anything but the perfect person I'd imagined. All my illusions were gone. Then it got even worse.

~~v~~

I got to see the kids, and she sure didn't interfere. What she did do was begin to fill the kids with all kinds of venom. Now I'd been stupid, out of control, and I'd torn the house apart so that was always there. Carol proceeded to turn every good thing we'd ever done into something bad. She soaked them with half-truths and quite often outright lies. They were young, only eleven and nine; it was easy for them to believe the things she said. It didn't take long, and soon they started finding reasons to not see me.

It didn't make sense. Carol was still angry, and I couldn't fathom why; she'd gotten everything she'd wanted. I not only lost my wife and my family; I was losing my kids too. Then a bunch of small mercies started to take shape.

Number one I needed a decent place to stay. I had no money with which to buy anything, but my mom had been beside me all the way. What did I know? Mom and dad had been life-long savers. Mom talked to my brother and sister and got them to understand and even help a little. Between the three of them they came up with a small down payment, and I was able to buy a second floor condominium. It had three bedrooms, one full bathroom equipped with a hot tub, and a second with a toilet and basin. Plus the condo was part of larger configuration that came with a sport's gym and a substantial outdoor pool. No it wasn't a real house, but it was damn close. My kids might find ways to keep from seeing me, but when they did it wouldn't be to some tacky rundown apartment.

Then came small mercy number two, and it was Carol who inadvertently supplied it. Just a few months after our divorce she married Dr. Gilmore. Good news? Yes! Good for me and the kids. Suddenly good old mommy had a new life; she got too busy to care for her kids. My kids started to see another side of mommy none of us knew was there, but they started to see a few new choices too. They could get regular visits from Jenny Mcfurdle, and soon from other babysitters when Carol and her new man settled on a new home, or they could opt for more time with their dastardly father. They took dastardly dad and his pool and his sports gym and of course regular visits to dad's high school.

The kids were young, but they weren't dumb. Carol, through her indifference was hurting them. I saw the pain. I was only too ready to wipe their tears away.

Then Carol gifted me with an even better, no, the best blessing. She got pregnant. So at last I thought I knew why she'd avoided getting her tubes tied. All along she'd been looking ahead, looking to trade up. Did I believe that? I wasn't sure but Dr. Gilmore wanted kids of his own, and Carol was only too happy to oblige.

So within two years of our divorce I was seeing my kids more than Carol was, and since they'd bought a new house the kids needed to change schools. Guess what? Yes! We flipped on the kids. Carol took the alternating weekends and one day a week. I got my kids all the rest of the time! My life was changing, and for the better!