Splashdown Ch. 07

Kathy didn't seem to get it. "Come on Kath, schoolgirls are masters of this: "I don't like Cindy because she got more attention at Betty's party. I'll show her: I'll sleep with her boyfriend.""

Kathy sighed, "Yeah, that sort of thing happened occasionally."

"Kathy, Peggy was targeted because of me: because she was my wife. I doubt they were interested in me personally, but some dossier showed she was marred to an analyst and well ... there you go. It was me."

"Gary, you can't blame yourself."

"I'm trying not to, but it's like a cop's wife being murdered because the gangsters couldn't get to the cop. Actually, they didn't want me per se, I was just a gateway to my employer. Peggy and I weren't that important; pricking my agency's pride was. But this still happened to Peggy, she must deal with it and so do I. Maybe they don't care about us as individuals, but there's nothing that could be more personal to us.

"And that brings up the second thing. Peggy does take responsibility, she will take the blame for everything she did to me, and she won't let anyone take her perceived "philandering" off her plate. She'll say no matter what they did to her that she was still involved, that she either chose to do it, or chose to not stop herself from doing it. She'll say she put herself in the situation to be compromised. She'll say she did more underhanded things to her husband on her own before she returned to earth, than she did under their power after.

"I'm really not sure what this does, it may be a relief for her to know she was targeted and drugged. I think that takes the sexual infidelity off her shoulders. But she'll still be beside herself that she was involved in this. She certainly remembers some part of it, that will be hard to deal with. She will carry tremendous guilt for her own actions and for harming me.

"Now she'll find out that it was because of me. Wow. That throws in more complication for both of us.

"Think of it, Kathy. I have to find a way to deal with her unfaithfulness, but I never did see her as responsible for her anticipated affair. I thought she would fall based on her biology. For Peggy, finding out her biology was used against her doesn't really mollify a not guilty verdict. The problem, and I think it's huge, is that she threw me over months before blastoff."

Kathy gasped at my interpretation.

"Peggy's caught in a tornado. Imagine cheating on your husband only to find you are not responsible for it. Imagine getting that cosmic pass on what you believe is the worst thing you've ever done, only to find it doesn't mitigate a thing because your husband doesn't think the worst thing you've ever done to him is cheating with another man. All I see are twists in the dynamic again.

Kathy looked at me with intelligent yet non comprehending eyes.

"It's terribly convoluted. Let me make it muddier. Here's another angle. My wife was attacked and raped because she was married to me. It's not directly my fault, but if I had a different job, or if she married someone else, her heartbreak and travail never occur.

"Or let's look at this angle, whether Peggy was drugged or not she has memories of being with him. I know she was probably into it; the drugs would ensure that. Even though you were drugged you have to deal with those terrible memories. And you have to find a way to look at yourself in the mirror and your husband who you mistreated for a year before you cheated, whether drugs instigated the cheating or not."

Kathy's eyes were large and round, her face was blank. She was seeing it unfold. No matter which direction we headed in the situation grimly folded in on itself.

I needed her to see how messy things were, "Let's look at the drug interaction just for poor Peggy. Pretend you're a good person yet somehow someone takes control of your body, and you are made to kill. Everyone finds out it wasn't your fault, no one blames you. Except you still remember the killing. You saw the murder; you know your body perpetrated it. You know you aren't a murderer, yet you still did it. You remember committing a murder, you watched another die at your hands, and you still have to deal with it. That's the scenario Peggy will contend with.

"Then you find out this evil thing that was done to you was because of your spouse. You're living this hell inside your own skull and it's all because of another person. Human psychology is twisted. Instead of blaming the perpetrator we often blame the thing or person we are most aware of. In this case me, though I didn't want any parts of it either. Peggy may harbor resentment towards me because she has to contend withal this filth because of me. This reverses the flow of responsibility. She didn't betray me, although she committed the acts that haunt me. Instead, I caused her pain. Now she may want a concession instead of being recalcitrant. As a bonus butt plug, we both have memories of her cheating that we each have to deal with. Except now we can assign blame to each other.

"And that's not even the kicker! The issues collide because I see her behavior before the launch as her fault and the main problem we must deal with, not her eventual adultery. I see her expected infidelity was a hideous side effect, not the main event. At the same time that I'm looking at Peg's prior behavior she was always going to put more emphasis on the physical infidelity. Now that part isn't her fault. In fact, it isn't adultery, it's rape. That's something I need to support her on. But I've been waiting for a year to address her behavior before the launch. So instead of my "forgiving" her "tryst" I'm ignoring her rape. She's going to need support for that, there's no question. But I still need her attitude towards me prior to the launch addressed. We can't put both issues at the top of the list of what we have to deal with."

Kathy was nodding her head, still connecting the dots, amazed there were so many of the damn things to connect. But she still wasn't there yet. I made sure she was listening as I tried to tie it up for her.

"It's sort of like I had a heart attack, and it hasn't been treated, but once at the hospital we find Peg has been poisoned. We must treat the poison right now. But that doesn't take away the fact that I may still need immediate bypass surgery. The hospital can only perform one service. I'm going to choose her, but I'm still dying here. And we went there because I was already dying -- because we had chosen Peg first so many times. We'll treat Peg because that's what's right, but things have actually gotten worse. See?"

"Dear heavens. Yeah, I see. How did things get this messed up. I'm wishing for the good old days. There were only two and half million parts there that could fail. This is so twisted, it's making my stomach ache. I can't see which direction to start in, they all seem bad.

"I presume from my chat with Peg that she is unaware she was raped. She didn't suffer injury, she wasn't physically forced, her own conclusion is that she wanted it on some level, because her body did so badly. It's a huge shock to do something so out of character. Especially in context of what she had already done to our marriage. Is she ready for another shock, one so quickly on the heels of the other, one that makes her a terrible victim? If it changes her perspective on events, will it also change her perception of the context to which it's hideously linked?

"Now that her "fault" at screwing around has been removed, will Peggy understand that I still have to deal with another man simply being with my wife. Will she appreciate that I still expect her to deal with how she chose against me before the flight? Will she believe that I always saw that as the greater infraction?

"Here's the biggie: Will she not even apologize for her prior behavior because she believes the main infraction was the physical adultery that has been mitigated? Instead working through why she threw me away in the first place, will she just blame me because she was drugged into enjoying ecstasy while on ecstasy?

"Because of her husband's job her once in a lifetime most wonderful moment was tarnished. How will she deal with that? Who supports who? Understanding a thing, feeling it, and dealing with the feelings are all different things.

"It comes down to if Peggy will work with me to repair our love in good faith or see this as some sort of match with me as her opponent. So, does this new information make things more or less muddy?"

I looked up at Kathy. "And none of that addresses the central question that existed before this whole mess materialized."