Obtuse

Kate and Pat are in college, and this fall my daughter, Tina, got her fondest wish to attend the Daunton School in Westchester, New York. It is a single-sex boarding school very heavy in the performing arts, not what you expect from the daughter of a shy introverted math nerd. But then Tina was always the odd one out of my daughters, and maybe that is why despite my best efforts not to have favorites, my youngest daughter is the closest to my heart. I miss her so, and that may be why I distracted myself that morning by trying to figure out why Mary got so dressed up?

Fridays I have no class just office hours where students get to inflict their anxiety onto their professors. You end up being a counselor more than a teacher. This is something I have always felt uncomfortable about.

I called in and took the day off; then I headed to what these New York City people call midtown, Madison Ave. at 34th street. Mary's law firm rents six floors in a skyscraper on Madison between 34th street and 35th street. I found a seat in the window of a coffee shop just across the street from her building entrance. It was just after 10:00 a.m., and I had breakfast, scrambled eggs, bacon, and rye toast. I nursed my food and coffee until just after noon when I called Mary's office on my cell.

Janet, her secretary, told me I had just missed her. She had gone to lunch and was not expected back until after 2 p.m. Just then, I saw Mary exit the building in the company of a tall black man. Her arm was through his, and she was leaning into him in a very familiar manner. They walked out onto Madison and turned the corner a 35th Street. I got up and followed them down 35th street. They cut over to Fifth Ave and then entered the Gideon Hotel, a small boutique hotel that serviced the Madison Avenue firms and some airlines.

Mary and the black man were so wrapped up in each other that they did not notice me following them inside. They headed across the art-deco lobby toward the elevators. His arm was now around her waist and his hand on her ass. As the elevator door closed, I saw them come together in a kiss. I watched as the elevator went to the twelveth floor. I took a seat at the bar just off the lobby and waited. I got a small over-priced beer and sat stewing. I knew what was going on upstairs; I just didn't know why. I thought I had a good marriage. I loved Mary even after twenty-plus years and in every important way more than ever.

I tried to think of all the reasons for her behavior from approaching menopause to possible neglect by me, but I was kidding myself. Mary was up in a room on the twelveth floor with another man because she wanted to be there, and there was nothing I could do about it. One hour became two and then just about two-thirty they emerged from the elevator. A Porter followed with the black man's baggage. They headed for the main lobby doors. I guess, at that moment, the anger in me snapped. I got up and followed them out.

The Porter was putting the bags in the back of a cab as I emerged through the hotel doors. Mary had turned to kiss this guy passionately on the lips. As I came out the door, she apparently caught a glimpse of me and pushed herself away, giving a little cry. The black guy turned to look. Seeing a very angry man approaching, he put himself between Mary and me. He probably thought to protect her. I must have looked ready to kill. It was a mistake on his part.

My left found his midsection and was quickly followed by a hard right to the head. Fortunately, for him, Mary screamed "JASON DON'T" as I threw the second punch, and that brought me back to my senses somewhat. I pulled the punch just knocking him to the pavement instead of killing him. Mary dropped to her knees to help him as she did her too-short skirt slid up. There were no stocking tops. Her legs were bare. If I need further proof of what went on up on the twelfth floor, I saw it, and it hurt me. I could literally feel the pain as if I had been hit. I turned and began to walk away. I was the one standing, but I had clearly been the one defeated.

Mary yelled for me to stop. Several bystanders tried to intervene, but I flung them off and walked away up Fifth Ave. When I got to 38th. street, I descended into the subway. There was only one safe place that I could retreat to. I realized I had been crying, and the tears had wet my cheeks. I took my handkerchief and tried to clean my face, as I did my cell phone rang. It was Mary calling. All it did was make me sad. I couldn't speak to her. The call went to voice mail, but the phone immediately began to ring again. I stood on the train platform with the phone alternately ring with a call or chirping with a voice message. The subway is not crowded in the middle of the afternoon, but neither is it deserted. People stared at the man who was crying with a ringing phone. I gave up and turned the phone off.

That time of day, it took me about an hour to reach Morningside Heights and my office off 112th Street and Broadway. Once on the University grounds, I regained some feeling of normality. The familiar surrounding seemed to draw me in and say things would get better. I had lost my marriage and had no idea what I would tell my children, my mother, our friends — Twenty-One years gone in a heartbeat. I might even be arrested. I had assaulted that low life my unfaithful wife had spent the better part of the afternoon with. But as the stately building enveloped me, I could feel my resolve hardening.

I was going to hold my head up and end twenty-plus years of marriage like a man. My office phone was ringing as I entered. I didn't pick it up. It was almost four p.m., and I was expecting no calls. The call should have gone to voice mail, but when I checked the call buffer was full. I had twenty-seven messages, the first from a student, the second from the University Administration reminding me of a faculty meeting both received early morning and twenty-five from Mary that afternoon. She had called and left messages until space ran out. I deleted them all without listening. As I did my email pinged on my computer which I just leave on in the office. It was Mary, of course.

To: jasonsweeney@Univ.ed

Jason: You have totally misunderstood what you saw. We have been married for almost twenty-one years. I deserve a chance to explain and defend myself. You owe me that!!!

Please come home and let me explain. I'm innocent. The man I was with Frank Patterson is a work associate. He is not seriously hurt, and he understands. Everything will be alright if you just come home.

I love you.

Mary

My reply was brief.

To: MarySingleton@HTCSlaw.com

They were pretty stockings, does your lover have them?

Your former husband,

Jason.

Before I sent this, I blocked her. Any additional lies, she wished to tell me would sit in my junk mail, until I cleared the box. On the odd chance, I pulled up Mary's firm's website on the computer. I began looking through the attorney listings. Eventually, I found him. Frank Patterson worked out of the Chicago office. He was a junior partner. Patterson was a 2003 Yale Law graduate. I made him about thirty-five. He was about five, or more, years younger than me. His picture showed a very handsome guy who looked very sure of himself. It raised a lot of questions for me. Mary had been traveling to Chicago for the last six months. Was that not all business or any business at all? They had been very familiar, and it was obviously not their first time together. I could have spent hours in speculation but decided to distract myself with work.

About eight o'clock, there was a knock on my door.

It was Nancy, my friend and my boss.

"Ok, Beefcake, what's going on? Your wife called me to say you need to go home immediately. She is waiting for you," Nancy said.

"Ain't gonna happen," I said.

"Can I ask why?"

"Caught her coming out of another man's hotel room," I said.

"Mmm, I see the problem, but how does hiding help?" She said.

"I am not hiding. The marriage is over. I'm working. If I never see that bitch again, that will be a good thing," I said.

"Boy, I knew you had a temper, but I had no idea how bad it is. Look given my history, I'm the worst person to be giving advice, but I would take the time you need to calm down, and then talk to her. I know she is a good woman, and maybe she has an explanation. At any rate, if you need a place, Betty and I would be happy to put you up," she said.

What you need to know about Nancy is that her longest relationship has been with Betty, her current significant other. Nancy is promiscuous. She cheated on every partner, she ever had including Betty, who has thrown her out at least twice that I know of for cheating.

"Thank you, but I would like to stay here for a few days if that is alright?" I said.

"Ok, but if you do not have a place by Monday, you will be coming home with Betty and me," she said.

After Nancy left, I tried to take stock. I had no money. All my salary went into our joint account. Mary signed the checks. I had no checkbook. I was sure that the first thing Mary would do, was shut down my credit cards, which were all in her name anyway. I had let myself become her dependent because I trusted her. Trusting her, I now realized, was a colossal mistake.

One of my oddities is that when I'm sad, I seem to work better. I'm currently writing a book. In academia, it is publish or perish. I spent the next four hours working intensely on my book and ignoring the phone when it rang.

Just before midnight, I received a text from my daughter Kate.

Dad! What is going on? Mom says you won't come home or answer your phone. She is near hysterical. I have never known her this way. You need to go to her now!

Kate.

I answered,

Sorry, Kate.

I will always love you and your sisters. I will always be there for you. Just please stay out of this.

Your mother is dead to me. We will be getting a divorced. I will not ask you to take sides. Just please never speak to me of that woman again.

Your loving father.

From Kate:

Dad, what is going on? You can't expect to tell me you are divorcing my mother and give no explanation. I'm a big girl. I can take it, no matter what.

Please, Please, give me some explanation.

Dear Kate:

So sorry, but your mother broke her wedding vows. If you want to know more, you must ask her.

Love you always

DAD.

Love you too. Always, always, forever.

Kate.

After that, I did not hear from Kate or anyone else for several days.

****

Chapter Two

Mary: Girl Gets Boy

Hugo began as a tropical wave then became a tropical depression off the Cape Verde Islands becoming a rare category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. It devastated the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico before hitting South Carolina, and it kept going all the way to Lake Erie. It was the most destructive hurricane to hit the United States until that time, which was September 1989, six months prior to my seventeenth birthday. I was a carefree underachieving junior in high school. I had no idea what Hugo would mean to me. I lived in Connecticut far from the wind, rain, storm surge, and inland floods.

I came home that afternoon after cheerleader practice to find my mother crying in the kitchen. My first thought was that she had finally discovered my father's philandering, but she merely indicated the local paper's headline.

"Hugo Worst Storm, 34 Dead in US --- 10 Billion in Damages." Suntimes September 23, 1989

There are those who will tell you that I'm a girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth. If I was, it was plate silver. My mother was a De Voe. A rich old family, but she was born when my Grandmother was forty-five. By the time my mother was ten, Grand Mama De Voe had early-onset Alzheimer. Her father was an alcoholic which left her to the care of her thirty-year-old brother, Jackson Chamberlin De Voe, who was a financial genius of sorts. However, he was a socially deficient man who had difficulty with the simplest personal interactions. When she was 18, my father, Robert Singleton, appeared on the scene. I guess he was smitten at once. He was then no more than a glorified insurance salesman having started life as just another poor boy from East New York.

Dad was smart, ambitious, and doing pretty well. Being a man who will not take no for an answer, he was a great salesman. I guess for my mom, just having Dad come into her life, was like someone drew the curtains and let the sunlight in. It was a while before she learned my father had a few flaws. He was an inveterate gambler in additional to being a womanizer. I did not understand how bad things were until the day Hugo turned my world upside down.

My father was in his study the drapes drawn against the waning afternoon sun. The room was lit only by a single low watt desk lamp. Dad was nursing a whiskey an unusual drink in a house where hard liquor was frowned upon, a legacy of my mother's upbringing or lack thereof.

"Dad, are we broke?" I asked

He just smiled and put his finger to his lips. And that was the way he played it. We weren't broke unless people knew we were. That was when I learned the difference between insurance and reinsurance. Insurance companies are big powerful institutions selling to the public monitored by state agencies with cash and securities in reserve for the payment of claims. The laws and the system are slanted their way, and they rely on spreading the risk far and wide.

Reinsurance is how the insurers lay off the risks that are too big and can't be completely spread around. The reinsurers don't sell to the public. They are, therefore, less regulated. They sell to the insurers, and they don't pay unless the loss is very large, but the risk is large too. They are small companies and often more profitable. However, whereas the insurer will only fail if it breaks the rules, cheats, gets stupid, or just grossly incompetent. The reverse is true for the reinsurer, which is at the mercy of every business risk and what are clearly the acts of a cruel god, called Disaster. Hugo was the minion of that god.

Big, powerful, and merciless Hugo swept inland and caused catastrophic damage to all manner of businesses, persons, and governments, which were insured by insurers who would come looking to reinsurers like my dad, Roger Singleton. How he got the money to cover his losses, I will never know, but a dark shadow had enveloped what had been until then my bright home. It left me very affected. Mom stopped crying and put a smile on her face, and my younger siblings John only ten and Susan just six never noticed that their world almost came undone. My mother was strong, far stronger than I had ever known. She lived on the edge of the smoking volcano and ignored the ash and heat. I am not that strong.

I took a serious look at my life. I realized I had been living in the illusion that my life would always be safe and comfortable. I was a poor student and up until then had no ambition. What I wanted now was that safe and protected feeling that I had lost. I had always been attracted to boys who like my father exuded confidence and bravado. I had lost my virginity to the school's star basketball player just after I turned sixteen.

Tito Jefferson was a very tall and good-looking black boy. It lasted six weeks. I enjoyed the sex. I was on the pill. The next boy lasted a little longer before we broke up. I slept with him, as well. My current steady was a tennis player a bit older at nineteen. I had not gone to bed with him yet. I was no slut who just dropped her pants at the first opportunity. A guy needed to work for it and show the proper respect. The problem was that I saw none of them as a life partner or more important someone to turn to in time of need. I decided that I needed to learn to stand on my own and provide for myself.

I'm by nature a planner, so I worked out my plan. I would get into a good college. Ivy League was out for now because of my poor grades, but I would turn things around. I would go to a State U and then on the basis of my college grades a law school, Ivy League if possible. From then on, grades were everything. Once I made my mind up, I stuck judiciously to the plan. There were some glitches along the way.

When I carefully plotted out fulfilling my college math requirement, I studied the syllabus. You could take Math 1, a very hard course. You could take Statistics, not as hard but a challenge, or Math Principles, known to the well-informed as math for dummies, a simple choice but one with a trap. Math for dummies was not going to look impressive on a transcript, and the instructor was a very low-grader. So the trap was an easy course, but a hard A. On the other hand, one of the instructors of Math 1, dear old lecherous Professor Hoffman, was a notoriously easy grader. He was particularly good to pretty girls with nice legs and short skirts. My goal was not to avoid work. I was out to achieve. My choice was Math 1 hard work in a short skirt and a solid A.

As Bobby Burns said, "the best-laid plans oftentimes go astray." In this case, my planning was undone by an ill Professor Hoffman, and an egotistical bitch of a female replacement named Laura Parker. She was absolutely the last instructor I would choose for any course. She was not just a poor grader; she was a notoriously bad instructor — Smart yes, talented no.

As I sat plotting what to do now, Laura proceeded to attempt to humiliate her students by demanding a solution to an apparently impossible problem. What were my choices, drop Math 1 and take dummies math being doubly dammed with a drop on my record and a possible B in the replacement or try to get past Laura? As I contemplated this, she called on the handsome boy slouching in the back row.

I had noticed him when he came in. He had the devil's own blond good looks on his tall, athletic frame, but he was painfully shy and just not the dark alpha male type I favored. I had seen him around campus the last few days and figured rightly that he was a frosh straight out of high school without a clue. He walked up to the board at the front of the classroom with that awkward but graceful movement he had. I know this is a contradiction, but he was so shy he was awkward. Yet his body had this natural grace of movement. When he started to speak out came this lovely clear, tenor voice. We sat there mesmerized while he quietly explained how he was solving the problem. He put Laura back on her heels figuratively and literally as she leaned away from him as if he was on fire.

The bitch was about five-five, but she was in five-inch platforms at least three years out of style. He was still tall enough to look down on her, and the more she talked in that high squeaky voice of hers, the more stupid she was making herself look. It was obviously not his intention, but the subject clearly came just so much easier to him. You didn't need to be told that you were in the presence of a true math prodigy. He had the added knack of being able to explain clearly his thinking.

I made up my mind to stay close to this guy, anyway I could, until the end of the semester. Our second class saw me sitting next to him so close I was all, but in his lap, that's when I discovered three things. First, what happened in the last class was no fluke. He was the smartest person you would ever know, but two he was obtuse no other word fit. He was uncomprehending of the world around him. He was baffled by the opposite sex. And finally, he had the most beautiful blue eyes.

I thought of the Carlyle Simon lyric "the sky is the color of blue you never even seen in the eyes of your lover" and knew she was wrong. I saw that blue in his eyes. Of course, he was not my lover and could never be. He was just not my type, but still, those eyes went right to the center of my soul.