February Sucks: Same Old Me (3of4)

"Okay, those are two different conversations."

"All... right. I guess I suppose that's fair. But it doesn't change the fact that both are true."

"Look over the papers from L.W. You'll see how this is going to work."

"Seriously, Jim... you can stay here tonight... please?" She batted her eyelashes.

Oh, no.

Oh, HELL no.

"Linda... There is no way on earth I'm sleeping in this house tonight. There is no way on earth I'm sleeping in that bed tonight. And even if I were, there is no way on earth, heaven, hell, or any other plane of existence that I'm going to lay a finger on you. Emotions aside, woman, it's just not fucking SAFE for me to even think about being with you again."

"What... what do you mean?"

"Haven't you even thought about Sexually Transmitted Diseases? The Asshole is a famous serial seducer! He makes Casanova look like an amateur. How many dozens or even hundreds of sex partners has he been through? Do you even know? And let's not kid ourselves, you did NOT make him wear a condom, did you? You had your diaphragm in when we went to dinner. That might be fine to prevent pregnancy, but it does bupkis for STDs. You need to go to a clinic and get yourself tested."

Linda blushed.

"Must you embarrass me like that, Jim? Marc is an athlete, he has to be clean, I'm sure of it."

"Yeah, I'm sure the Asshole would have said that, if you'd thought to ask. But you didn't, did you? Shit. You're smarter than this, Linda. That's exactly how these things get passed around. You can have something for years and display no symptoms at all. You know that. Jesus. Weren't you paying attention in eighth grade health class?"

She had the decency to look at least a little bit ashamed.

"Fuck. Now that I'm thinking of it, Dee, too. How many anonymous one-night stands has she had with how many men? You're on the hook for all that as well. You've been exposed to god knows how many thousands of disgusting people who fuck tens of thousands of other strangers. So, no. No, Linda. I'm not getting anywhere near you. Not now, not tonight, not this week or this month or any time in the foreseeable future. The thought of it still just makes me sick, and I don't want to have anything to do with that potentially disease-infested pussy of yours. Shame on you."

I guess nothing takes the edge off your hottest sexual fantasies like the specter of gonorrhea or AIDS or something. Linda was still crying when I left.

***

The next day was a busy one. I slept halfway decently at the Suites, and put in an appearance at work the next morning. At ten-thirty, long after Linda would be at work and the kids would be at daycare, I made my way to my house with all that stuff I'd ordered. After a few hours, our queen-sized bed was gone from our shared bedroom and replaced with a room divider featuring our new medieval arming sword, bisecting the space right down the middle, and a pair of twin beds, one on each side. New sheets and pillows and everything as well. Our respective dressers and nightstands and things were divided between my side and hers, never again to mingle. I'd hung the framed print of the Dali painting on the wall opposite the divider.

Linda would figure it out.

They were all surprised to find me already at the house when they got home. I'd stayed and made spaghetti as a kind of a peace offering. The kids were only about a zillionth of a bit less excited than they were last time. If they maintained this level of enthusiasm, they might even still have a smattering of respect for me by the time they were teenagers. The babble was incessant: Charlie. Frozen. Wendy's. Love you all the way to the Moon and back again. Then to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune... and all the way back home again. Can we get a puppy? Pleeeeeeeease?

Linda, on the other hand, was puzzled, but unwilling to talk in front of the kids. Was I home? Was this for good? Were we going to be okay after all? The nightly routine did not give her a clue. I said nothing and did my damndest to act normal. The pj's and toothbrushing, the movie and the stories all went like they always did, and every raised eyebrow and inquisitive, hopeful look from Linda was met by a blank poker face from me. At one point, she must have gone into our room for something and came back with a look of confusion and fury on her face.

She did her best to hide it from the kids, but failed.

"Mommy, why are you mad?" asked Emma, as we were trying to usher her to bed. We'd just put Tommy down.

"I'm. Not. Mad."

"Yeah you are," she said, wide-eyed. "Why?"

"It's nothing. It's nothing you did. I'm mad at your Father. And we're going to talk about it. But it's not your fault. It's nothing to do with you. Okay? We still love you. Everything's going to be fine."

Emma didn't believe her. Neither did I. But she went to bed quietly anyway. I was certain she wouldn't actually sleep for a while yet.

"Not in the house. Outside," I said. We made our way to the little patio out back through the kitchen door.

"What the hell did you do to our room?!?!? Where the hell is our BED?!?!?" Linda was beside herself with fury.

"I did what I said. I told you there would be changes."

"You had NO RIGHT to do that without even so much as talking to me!"

"I had no...? Jesus, Linda. You had No Right to walk out on our marriage while your slut girlfriends helped you! I had no right? YOU had no right. I guess that's just how things work between us now. Each of us make decisions that affect our marriage and family WITHOUT consulting each other. You were the one who started it."

"That's not the same! That had nothing to do with you!"

"Nothing to do with...? FUCK. The single most traumatic thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life had nothing to do with me. The fact that MY WIFE chose to wipe her ass with our marriage right in fucking front of me without so much as BLINKING had nothing to do with me? Fuck You, Linda. Fuck. You."

I turned to walk around the house to get to my car, but Linda grabbed my arm and yanked me backwards with all her strength and all her weight behind it.

"NO. Fuck YOU, you DON'T get to run away from me again! You're going to TALK to me, damn you!"

She had a point about me running away. And I'd told myself I was done running.

"Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's get clear about one goddamn thing. Do you have any idea why I've been running away?"

"Because you're a coward."

"Yeah. You're right. It's not just because I can't fucking deal with you. I AM a coward. I'm fucking terrified. You know what I'm so scared of? I'm afraid of losing my shit and getting violent. I've never hit a woman. I've never hit ANYone in anger, especially not women. The first time I ever really wanted to was when I wanted to slap the SHIT out of Dee when she told me what you were up to with the Asshole. It was all I could to not hurt her. And now, with you all... like this... FUCK. It's all I can do to keep myself from letting loose and doing something there's no coming back from. I could never live with having done that. So. Back. The. FUCK. Off!"

Linda dropped my arm and took a step back, terrified.

"God. Who ARE you? You've never spoken to me like that before."

"Yeah. Well. We're encountering an awful lot of 'Firsts' together, aren't we? At least, it seems that way to me. I have no idea how much you've actually been slutting around before this. And I have no idea who YOU are any more than you have no idea who I am."

"I never... you never... It was..." she hung her head. "My mom hit me."

"What?"

"When I went to pick up the kids, that Sunday. You'd taken them to Nana and Pe-Pop's. I had to drive three hours each way to go get them. Thanks for that, by the way. When I got there, my mom slapped me right across the face. Hard. Without a word. She's never done anything like that before. She never raised her hand to me the whole time I was growing up. I never even got spanked. I was shocked, more than anything. It hurt, it really hurt. My face was red, where she hit me. It lasted hours. I could see it in the little mirrors in the car. But the fact that she did it at all, that hurt even worse. And what she said, too."

"What did she say?"

"She said 'I know that must have hurt, but you'll get over it and you'll forgive me. You have to. You've got no choice.' Then she turned her back on me and walked away. She went into the house and Daddy came out with the kids. They came running over to me with their little suitcases, full of questions about why you were mad and Nana and Pe-Pop were mad and who 'Asshole boyfriend' was. God. And Daddy didn't say a word. He just looked at me like I was something he'd scrape off his shoe. I was always Daddy's Girl. I always had him wrapped around my finger, he'd do anything for me, even if I was being a brat. But as soon as he launched Emma and Tommy at me, he turned his back on me, too. He went in and slammed the door. He made sure I heard him turn the deadbolt. I can't believe I went all the way out there and they were giving me the silent treatment. That hurt worse than if they'd yelled at me. I was prepared for their yelling, kind of, but I wasn't ready for THAT. I didn't know what to say to them anyway. I never thought you'd tell."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because it was embarrassing! You didn't have to embarrass me like that! God, you've never said one word about sex to my PARENTS. Why would you?"

I just glared at her.

"Say Something!"

"I wanted you to feel ashamed. You weren't. You still aren't. You're literally shameless. You think you did the greatest thing ever. You proved something to yourself about what kind of woman you are. Well, you ought to know that kind of thing swings both ways."

I realized what I'd said after I said it. I guess I decided to make it hurt.

"Huh. Swings both ways. I guess you do that too, now."

"I told you. It wasn't like that. With Dee... that was just for show."

"Yeah. You're sleeping with TWO other people outside the marriage, now, and you're still telling yourself that neither one counts. God. How can you be so delusional?"

"I'm not sleeping with them."

"You did sleep with them. You mean, you're not doing it right this minute, is that what you mean?"

"No, no, no, it was just that one time."

"It was the second time with the Asshole. That I know of. And I don't know how many actual fucks there were between those two occasions. I'm guessing it was at least six or seven."

She blushed and would not meet my eyes.

"More?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not really. I don't even want to know. Once was too much."

She said nothing.

"I know you were a Daddy's Girl. You kept him under your thumb, your whole life. He made himself your slave, and you figured you'd have the same kind of thing with me. You always acted like I had no choice but to put up with your ridiculous bullshit. You'd always get your way, you could get away with whatever you wanted. Nobody ever told you there were limits, did they? I mean, as far as your Daddy and then your Husband were concerned? Shit. I should have known better. I should have told you. I should have SHOWN you. But no, I was always happy to go along with what you wanted because I love you... but for fuck's sake, you abused the privilege and became a monster. You've killed our marriage with it."

"No... no, that's not true. You can't believe that. We're still married! You love me! You just said so!"

"I do love you. There's the love that we feel, and there's the choices we make. They don't always match. They SHOULDN'T always match. If they did, we'd be at the mercy of every stray feeling that flickers across our hearts. We'd be helpless to make any kind of decisions at all. Well, I can still decide what to do with myself. The right thing for me to do, now, is to have some fucking self-respect, because I'm not getting any respect from you. I don't think I ever will. I'm afraid I never did."

"That's not true either! I respect you!"

"The fuck you do. You treat me with complete disregard. Through this whole thing, it's all been about what YOU want. You want to run off and fuck the football player. You want me to wait for you at home till you're done. You want me to get over my silly hurt feelings and forgive you and forget about it. You want to stay married. And you want to do it again and have a threesome and have ALL MY FRIENDS agree it's best not to let dumb ol' Jim know. It's all about You You You. Did you ever think about me ONCE in all of that? Haven't you ever thought about US? No, you've just taken me for granted the whole time. Well. I hate to break it to you, Linda, but you might want to consider that maybe the world doesn't always revolve around YOU."

"I'm not like that. I'm NOT!"

"YES YOU ARE. God. Janice told my mom that she had a plan to 'slap some sense' into you. I didn't know she meant it literally. I'm glad she did so I didn't have to. It might have done you some good if she'd hit you years ago."

"Wait... what? How do you know... You mean your mom talked to my mom about what she was going to do?"

"Yes. I talk to people. People talk to each other. I've been doing nothing BUT talking to people for three weeks now. How the fuck do you think I put it all together? Did you really believe that I'd never learn anything you didn't LET me know?" She looked stricken. "Don't worry, your friends in the Married Slut Club didn't roll on you. I could read between the lines and fill in the parts that were missing. I can do that because I'm not dumb, Linda. Once I knew what I was looking for, once I was willing to see you for what you truly are, it was easy."

She looked at her feet, scuffling one toe across the concrete in front of her.

"I want my bed back. I want OUR bed back, with you in it."

"Again with the 'I Want, I Want.' What did I just say about this marriage NOT being only about what YOU want? Jesus. You demanded that I stay and talk to you, but you won't even listen to what I have to say? What's the fucking point? Okay. You know what this is all about? This isn't about what YOU want. This isn't about what I want, either. This isn't about your so-called 'mistakes' that you've carefully planned and lied to me about and that you're STILL making and ENJOY SO MUCH. It isn't about my hurt feelings or wounded pride or male ego. The only thing that matters now are those two children in that house. That's it. That's all that matters. They are the ONLY thing that matters. And I'm trying to find a way to make it work for them. I only care about what they need, while you've still got your head up your ass."

"They need YOU! They need their father! And you ran away for three weeks, leaving me to be a single parent this whole time while you were off feeling sorry for yourself."

"You know what they DON'T need, Linda? They don't need a selfish, inconsiderate, spoiled BRAT of a mother. They don't need a mother who's a COMPLETE SLUT. That's what they don't need. If Emma is gonna grow up to be like you, I might as well just shoot myself right now! I don't want to live to see it!"

She said nothing. She was breathing heavily, I could hear it, but she wasn't crying this time. Finally, she responded in a small voice, like a child's.

"Is that what you think of me? That I'm selfish and inconsiderate? That I'm a spoiled brat? That I'm a slut?"

I just let her digest her own words in the silence that hung between us.

"I... I guess I can see why you'd think that about me. I have been selfish. And yes, I've been inconsiderate, too. And... well. I just thought... god, that wasn't fair of me at all, was it?"

"Still isn't."

"I know. I was hoping... I was counting on you to accept it. I really thought you were that extraordinary."

"I'm human. I can only take so much. And you've shown me extraordinary disrespect. You planned this whole thing. You schemed and plotted with your friends and you just HAD to go be a whore. If it wasn't LaValliere, it would have been someone else, eventually. There are lots of arrogant assholes who just take what they want, who get off on stealing married pussy, and you'd already decided to put yourself out there for it."

I was staring off into space as I spoke.

"Even if you thought I was 'extraordinary,' I was never the priority, was I? Neither was our marriage or our family. That was kind of the point, wasn't it? Throwing it all aside with total abandon? Total Freedom? We all came in a distant second to Linda Getting What Linda Wants. So, yes, I have every reason, EVERY reason, to be like this, or worse."

"I... I can understand that. I knew you'd be upset. I just thought... God, I keep saying the same things. I just thought you'd get over it and we could go back to being a family. I keep repeating it to myself, trying to convince myself of it."

We were quiet for a while. I started again.

"When your mom hit you? What do you think she was trying to say?"

"Oh, it was obvious. She wanted to make it clear what I'd done to you. Going off with Marc, that was a slap in the face to you. Expecting forgiveness didn't make it okay for me to do it. And then, when she demanded that I'd get over myself and forgive her like it was my responsibility? Because I owed it to her? I did that to you, too. It was arrogant. It was presumptuous. God, it was so, so... cold. It changed our relationship."

"Your mom's a smart person."

"She took a big risk. I don't know how I'll be able to get past her hitting me. At least she was trying to help. She didn't do it because she felt like it or wanted to. It had to have been hard for her. I can forgive her because of that. But I don't have any right to demand forgiveness from you because I was just being selfish and thoughtless."

She said it. I didn't.

"Dad's silence was worse. He was letting me know you were right not to talk to me. I'm the kind of person who's not worth being talked to."

She started crying again.

"I'm talking to you now," I said.

"Thank you. That means more to me than I can even say."

"We still have the kids."

"Yes."

"You don't get to use them as tools, you understand that? They're not weapons. You don't get to use them as leverage to keep me. You don't get to threaten to take them away from me, either. That's not fair to anybody, especially them."

"I.... I know that."

"Good."

"Speaking of weapons, what is up with that sword? Why is that in our bedroom?"

"Ah. Well, it's a message. An allegory."

"Then use a picture of a sword or something. I don't think it's safe."

"It's A Sword," I said, lowering my voice and filling it with the sound of gravel. "It's Not Meant To Be Safe."

"There are children in the house."

"It's Educational."

"What if they hurt themselves?"

"Then That Will Be An Important Lesson."

Linda goggled at me for a moment, then came to her senses. "Wait. Is this some nerd thing? You're quoting some nerd thing at me, aren't you?"

"Terry Pratchett. Yeah. I've been waiting my whole life for an occasion to say that."

"I hope you've enjoyed yourself."

"Not really, no. I'm still pretty fucking miserable."

"Then... don't be. Okay, honey? Just let it go. Just come home. Just... be here and let everything be like it was."

God help me, that almost worked.

I stood there for I don't know how long.

"Jim?"

"Let everything be like it was. What WAS it? What did we have? It certainly wasn't what I thought, was it? If what happened was even possible to begin with... no. I don't want to live in a situation where you think I'm some dumb sucker you can walk all over while you go out and fuck whoever you please. That's how you've seen me for a long time, maybe even longer than we've been married. So, No Thank You. Not going back to that."

"That's not what I mean. We had things pretty good, didn't we?

"As far as I knew, yes. But I never knew the truth. I wasn't allowed to. You didn't think I deserved to know the real deal. I didn't know you and Dee had formed a cheat-on-your-dumb-husband quilting circle. I didn't know you'd been dreaming of running around on me while I was starry-eyed in love with you. I had no idea that you had any of this in you. I never imagined you'd do a three-way, let alone one where I wasn't included and was never supposed to know about. So, what the hell was it that we had, Linda? What is it that I'm supposed to want to go back to? Ignorance? The fantasy life that you never shared with me? The stuff you get up to with your friends when I'm not looking? Why should I want to go back to that? It was all a lie."