Fair-Weather Friends

"Now wait a minute little girl," I interrupted angrily. "Never say that you hate your mother. She loves you and you love her. She did something wrong and I've got to figure out what to do about it."

"Dad, she cheated on you! She lied to you and to us. She doesn't deserve our love."

"What she did doesn't matter, she's your mother."

"Yeah, she's my mother but she's also your wife. Do you still love her after what she did?"

I was silent for a long time as I tried to wrap my mind around my new world. "I don't know, I'm still in shock. I need to get my emotions and thoughts under control before I say or do anything. Right now I can't think because my heart hurts so much. I don't know what to do."

"Dad, I'll always be here for you. Whatever you decide to do I'll support you. I may not agree with your decision but I'll be right beside you. I love you, Dad."

We hugged and cried and finally sat back to watch a hummingbird flit back and forth between the hollyhocks and an old oak tree, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

********

I spent the weekend with Dad and talked to Megan and Stuart on the phone. I refused to talk to Connie when they asked. I wasn't ready for her to see me, or hear me talk in the state I was in. When Monday morning came I called into work and told my boss that I had a family problem and needed a couple days off.

I spent the next three days sitting in the backyard wallowing in my sorrows. Faye never left my side. I think she was worried about what I would do.

I was sitting in the backyard thinking about the good times Connie and I had over the last 25 years. Everything wasn't perfect like in any marriage but the good times far outweighed the bad. I didn't have the details of what she did, actually I think my children knew more than I did, but I did know one thing for sure and that was I couldn't take knowing any more. Knowing the little I did was hard enough but hearing a blow by blow description would absolutely kill me. The lunch that Faye brought me sat uneaten on the table next to the roll of paper towels I used to wipe away my tears. It had been two days since my world turned upside down but I wasn't thinking any clearer now than yesterday or the day before.

"Hi Marc," the familiar voice burst my thought bubble and started the whirlwind of emotions going again.

Without turning I mumbled, "Hi Connie."

I waited without moving and watched as she pulled a chair up in front of me. I didn't know what I looked like but if I looked half as bad as she did then my next stop would be the mortuary.

"I'm sorry Marc," she said looking down at her hands. They've always been beautiful and strong hands, just like the rest of her, but now one stood discolored with a large bruise and the other had a large band-aid across the back. As I looked up into her face for the first time I saw the hideous bandage crisscrossing the middle of her face, holding the broken bones of her nose together. The large gauze bandage over one eye concealed the eyebrow and the stitches underneath. Surrounding the other eye was a hideous black and orange bruise. She looked like, what was the term Faye used, a train wreck. She used to be so beautiful and now she's so ugly. I don't know how much of my opinion of her looks was because of my broken heart or if she really was ugly.

"Marc, I came here to apologize. I know saying I'm sorry isn't enough to fix things but it's all I've got. Megan drove me here because I'm still too upset to drive. I needed to see you, talk to you, and for you to understand what I did, what I did to you, to us. Marc, I screwed up, me not you, me. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't deserve any of this. For as much as I hurt you I feel the same pain, if not more, because I was the one that did this. The pain was self-inflicted and may have destroyed something that means more to me than life itself.

Marc, I want to tell you what happened and maybe..."

"No, I don't want to hear anything from you. What I know now is tearing me up inside. If I hear any more then you would certainly kill me. Just don't say anything, please."

"But Marc, if you know what happened then maybe there is a chance that you'd forgive me. Marc, I don't want to lose you, I love you, and you need to understand why I was weak and did what I did. It started..."

"NO! DAMMIT I SAID I DIDN'T WANT TO HEAR!"

"But Marc, you've got to listen. It's the only way I can, no we can get past this, the only way we can heal and become a family again. Please Marc, just listen..."

"I SAID NO!" I got up and walked away leaving her sobbing into her black and blue hands.

"Dad, please listen to her," Megan said coming up to me as I walked toward the kitchen. "She needs you to listen and forgive her. She needs to tell you what she did and apologize so you can get past all this."

I turned and glared at my oldest daughter and spit out the words that started me on the path that ultimately would lead to my destruction. "Megan, if you think that listening to her story is going to make things all right between us then you are even more deluded than she is. If she needs to ease her conscience so badly then she can write it down in a letter and send it to me. I'm not going to sit here and listen to her bullshit excuses why she threw away a 25 year marriage and destroyed me in the process. I can't be around her. Right now I don't have it in me to forgive her."

I got in my car and sped away not knowing where I was going or when, or if, I would be back. I didn't cry as much as I drove because most of my tears were on the blocks of Dad's patio. Right now I just needed to get away and think.

********

When I came back to Dad's the next day Faye greeted me at the door with a smile and a hug. I needed that smile more than anything in the world at that moment. It told me that in all the misery of the world someone could still be happy. It gave me hope that maybe someday I could smile again. What it didn't tell me was if what I decided to do would make anybody else smile.

Dad was happy to see me too.

As we sat down to dinner I told my father and my daughter my future. "Dad, I've decided to move in here with you for a while. I need to be away from things and you need me to help with the cooking and cleaning. And trust me Dad; I've tasted enough of your cooking to know that you need someone to cook for you who knows how to do more than fry bacon and eggs. Faye, can you help me get some things from home? I can't go there while your mother's there and I need some things for work and here. You can tell everyone that I'll be living here until I figure out a more permanent solution. For now just say your mother and I have separated. Don't go into details, just leave it at that."

"Okay Dad. I'll go back tonight and get what you want. Just make me a list. Do you want me to say anything to Mom?"

"Just tell her I'll be living here and not to call me. When I'm ready I'll call her."

I gave her my list and spent the evening talking to Dad about our new living arrangements. I could see by the expression on his face that he was pleased to have me back home but distressed as to the reason. He never mentioned Connie or the events of the last few days. We even did something we haven't done in years, we played checkers. He won of course.

When Faye returned with my stuff I was surprised to see the car so full.

"I brought my stuff too," she said firmly. "I'll take the guest bedroom and be here until school starts again." She had a firm, hard expression on her face as she helped unload our belongings. Later on that night I asked her what happened.

Faye's face twisted up as she started talking. "Can you believe that sister of mine? She actually said that you were acting childish and that you should come home and make up to Mom. And Stuart was just as bad. In effect, he said that everyone cheats on the one they love at some time or another in their lives. It's no big deal, he said. He said you should just forgive Mom and go out and get your own girlfriend on the side. Can you believe those two? Assholes!"

"Now Faye..."

"Dad, I'm not in the mood to hear it. You didn't do anything wrong and here you sit in Grandpa's house and everybody thinks you're the bad guy. Mom's the one who screwed up. She doesn't deserve to be forgiven. That's one of the reasons I'm here. Those three think that you're wrong for not crawling back and apologizing. I couldn't live with all that and put my stuff in the car when I got yours."

Faye was steaming. I knew there was no way that she could be convinced otherwise once she had set her mind on something so I just sat quietly and let her anger burn out.

********

For the next two months I tried to make my life as normal as I could. I went to work every day, I helped out around the house, and even taught Faye how to make a mean vegetable lasagna. Every couple days I would get a phone call from either Megan or Stuart asking when I was coming home. In my mind's eye I could see Connie standing behind them listening for my answer. I told them that I was home with Dad and that I didn't want to talk to Connie or hear anything about her. Once or twice they tried to say something anyway but I just hung up on them.

One day Stuart showed up at the door and said he had to tell me something important. We went out back and sat on the patio so he could say what he had to say.

"Dad, you need to come back home now. It's been two months and Mom's worse now than ever. I need to go back to school in a couple weeks and I can't leave Megan to be the only one taking care of Mom. There's no telling what she might do when one of us isn't there with her. She cries all the time, she doesn't sleep, and she doesn't eat. She's lost a lot of weight. Some of your friends have come to visit and they're just as worried as we are. She doesn't do anything but sit at home and mope. We've tried to get her to go out to eat or shopping but she just starts crying again.

Dad, I think you've punished her enough. You need to get over your little snit and come home. She's sorry, you're hurt, she's hurt, now get over it and come home."

I just sat there looking at my son. This is the man that I coached at baseball and soccer and helped get his Eagle Scout badge in Boy Scouts. But he's changed. He's no longer the son that made me proud with his grades and life choices. His values have shifted somewhere along the line. He thinks that what his mother did is okay, and if it's okay for her then it will set the precedent that says it's okay for him too. I've always told my children that promises were very important and had to be taken seriously. I've always tried to instill good moral values in him, both by word and by example. No, I think Stuart was now nuttier than a fruit cake.

"Stuart, you're a man now so I can say what I'm about to say to you, man to man. Get the fuck out of my house! How dare you come here and accuse me of being immature. I wasn't the one who screwed up. If you support what your mother did then you've changed, and not for the better. So go home and take care of your mother. I'll be here until I decide to not be. Now get out of here before I throw your ass out."

I got up and went inside. A few minutes later I heard his car drive off.

********

Faye went back to school the last week of August. I didn't hear from Megan or Stuart so I assumed that Stuart went back to school and Megan was shuttling back and forth between her new husband and Connie. They didn't call to say anything to me. It was now just Dad and me.

In the middle of September I got a letter from Connie. I started to read it but had to put it back in the envelope and hide it in my dresser. My emotions were too raw. I told Megan that if Connie wanted to assuage her conscience then she should put everything in a letter and send it to me. Now that I had it I couldn't read it. The wound was still open. Instead I stuck my head in the sand and went on with my life, what there was of it.

Faye called every couple days to check on my, and of course Dad's, well being. She said that she had talked to Megan and Stuart and they were doing the same thing for their mother. She was planning to come to visit for my birthday at the end of October and was hoping that I had made a decision on the future of things. Sitting in limbo wasn't doing anyone any good. I told her that we would talk when I had made a decision.

On October 30^th I turned 50, quite a milestone in any person's life. Faye showed up in the morning and said she had plans to take me and Dad out for a great big Italian dinner. She wanted to show me what real lasagna tasted like. I smiled at her little jab at my cooking. I'm sure that smile was the first one in months.

We got back from the restaurant late and I wheeled Dad into his bedroom and made sure he was comfortably in bed before coming back out to Faye. I handed her a beer and we sat in the living room talking.

"So Dad, can you tell me what you've decided?" Faye never believed in taking the indirect approach.

Beginning with a heavy sigh I started. "I've decided that I don't know everything, including why she did what she did, but my being obstinate and not talking to her isn't going to get anything resolved. I finally got around to reading her letter and I'm not sure I believe everything she wrote. It may be the truth but I don't see how anyone could have been that stupid. And since it went on for as long as it did I feel that reconciliation is highly improbable. But I plan to sit down with her and talk things out. Maybe we can talk through our problems but then maybe not. I've at least got to give her a chance to say what she wants to say and for her to hear how I feel. If I still don't believe her then there isn't any recourse but to file for divorce. I've been just as miserable without her as you say she's been without me. Well, I'm going to do whatever it takes to move forward, whatever forward is for us. As much as it will hurt me I'm going to get with her and start figuring out where we stand. Tomorrow I'll call her and..."

Faye's cell phone interrupted my planned speech. I wasn't finished yet but I let her answer it anyway.

"It's Megan," she said looking down at the phone's display. "I'll take it outside."

She got up and walked out into the cold night. Five minutes later she came in with the biggest saucer shaped eyes and ghost-like pallor I'd ever seen. She looked at me, the floor, the picture over the mantle, her cell phone, and then flung herself in my arms sobbing uncontrollably.

She cried into my shoulder as I held her tightly, waiting for whatever caused her turmoil to pass. Minutes later she pulled back and sniffed away the tears, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and looked me right in the eyes as she said. "Dad, Mom's dead. Megan came home tonight and found her in the bathtub. It looks like she swallowed the bottle of pills the doctor gave her to help her sleep. Megan didn't tell me anything else."

Everything in the world ceased to exist. I heard what she said but my mind wasn't working. Death didn't register. I couldn't understand. I couldn't see or hear or feel. Connie was dead? I... I...

********

Making the arrangements to bury the only woman I'd ever loved, the woman that meant more to me than anything for the last 25 years, the mother of my children, yet the woman who had a lover behind my back, was a Herculean task. Whenever I was with my children I tried to appear stoic and in control, but they all knew I was barely holding it together. At night I sat in the backyard of my house and looked at the swing set that hadn't been used in 15 years and thought about Megan, Stuart, and Faye growing up and running around like a pack of wild animals, chased by their mother. I looked at the azalea bushes Connie and I planted after moving in and thought about the good times, the cook outs, the gathering of friends, and the times we made love under the stars. Just knowing that she was in my life made me feel warm and comfortable, now I felt cold and alone. I also needed to sort out a lot of unresolved feelings.

The biggest unresolved issue was the extent of my responsibility for Connie's ingesting those sleeping pills. I didn't put them in her hand and force her swallow them but I sure as hell helped to create her depressed emotional state by refusing to talk to her. I was hurt and wanted her to hurt too. I loved her so much and she did probably the one thing in our marriage that could have destroyed me the quickest, once I found out. She was my wife, my love, and I loved her more than anything else in the world. Giving herself to someone else destroyed me. And now I may have destroyed her. I never wanted her to die; I just wanted her to feel what I was feeling. Maybe she did and couldn't live with herself, now I'll never know for sure. All I know for sure is that she did something wrong and destroyed our marriage and I did something equally as wrong and destroyed her. We were both wrong. May God have mercy on our souls.

Tomorrow would be Connie's funeral and the last time I'd ever see her. I had to keep my emotions in check. I had to see the faces of all our friends and family. I had to say goodbye. I had to not break down.

I turned when I heard the front door slam and seconds later a car roaring off down the street. Megan was walking toward me from the back door.

"Dad? Are you okay?" Megan whispered as she sat in the lawn chair across from me.

"No, not really. "

We sat quietly gathering our thoughts listening to the rustling of the fallen leaves in the night breeze.

Megan looked over at me and said, "You know that all this wouldn't have happened if you had just come home and forgiven her. She made a mistake. I'm sure you made mistakes that she forgave you for. She said she couldn't go on living without you. It was your pride that killed her."

I just sat there with my mouth open. My own daughter blamed me for my wife's death. I don't know how many times I said it or thought it but I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't the one having the affair. I didn't lie to my friends and family for six months. I didn't swallow a bottle of sleeping pills to ease my guilt.

"And Dad tomorrow is going to be a long, hard day. Everybody's invited to the house afterwards and there will probably be a lot of people here. You don't have to do a thing, you don't even have to be here if you don't want. Stuart and some of Mom's friends are going to help me with the food and stuff so there won't be anything for you to worry about."

Now Megan didn't even want me to come to the after funeral gathering? What the hell's going on? Maybe I was just so emotional and stressed out that I misunderstood what she was saying. One thing I was sure of and that was I didn't want to get into a confrontation with my daughter on the eve of her mother's funeral. I stood up and went into the house and down to the family room where I'd been sleeping.

********

I put all of my bedding in the laundry hamper and put on my suit and tie. The kids were all dressed and waiting in the living room when I got upstairs. My Dad looked tired. Faye came over and straightened my tie just like her mother had thousands of times before. I kissed her on the forehead and took her hand and went out to the waiting limousine. Faye held my hand the entire time. She didn't say a word to anyone or me but sat with her head down.

When we got to the funeral home there were a lot of our friends milling around in the foyer. When the crowd saw us coming in, the throng parted and we walked toward the viewing room. All eyes were looking at me but as I passed our friends and neighbors I noticed something quite odd. I didn't see pity in the eyes of those looking at me; most wouldn't even make eye contact. Instead there was an expression of disdain, almost contempt on most of their faces. I nodded to a couple and they turned away to talk to someone else. As I passed my boss from work and his wife he held out his hand and shook mine telling me how very sorry he felt. Our friends standing on each side of him looked at him with the same strange, contemptuous expression they gave me. He was the only one to say anything to me. The kids were getting expressions of sympathy from those I'd already walked past. I didn't understand what was going on; after all I didn't have a lot of experience with funerals. The only one I was directly involved with was that of my mother and this was nothing like hers.