Splashdown Ch. 09

"I do feel a bit stepped on, like Tokyo."

Peg laughed a small laugh despite of her situation. She smiled at me as I told her, "Then my astronaut wife, I think we'll be here at least a little while. Look, I don't want to think about the future. I can't. Every time I do it's different than I thought, expected, and wanted, and I become very angry. I really wanted the future we planned."

Peg reached out taking my hand in hers.

"Peg, I really don't want to dwell on this last year, or the last week in Russia: I want to survive today. I'll help you do that too. I'm not happy. I'm not turned on. I don't feel like, "thank goodness Peg's home or she's mine again, or any of that. I just know I've loved you, so I have to get you back on your feet. Okay?"

"Are you leaving then?"

I let my head roll back, hadn't I just said I didn't want to think about the future? "I've no idea. Please don't see that as a yes. My honest preference would be to get over all this and love you more than I ever did!"

Peg raised up looking at me incredulously.

"Peg, I have no idea how to get there from here. You're right, this last year has been incredibly fucked up, I don't see any positives. And Peg, I don't know that you love me. I'm not sure you ever have, not true love, being honest, it doesn't seem like it. That lack of belief colors everything in my life and must be answered before I can make any decision. It's exhausting. I just want some rest. I don't have any direction to go in: and I can't get motivated to do anything specific. Doing nothing is right out the window. I simply must find a direction first.

"If only I could stop hanging on to the notion that maybe despite everything, you do love me." Emotions danced across her features. As her mouth opened, I cautioned, "Don't say a damn thing, not a word, you don't know. If you call what you did to me love, then there's no hope for you. I put more store on actions. Your actions painted a clear, and very ugly, story."

"Kathy hates me," Peg stated sadly.

I thought that an odd comment, so I answered with an odd comment of my own, "Good. Then I don't have to."

Neither of us was much amused by my joke, though Peggy was very appreciative of the sentiment.

"Do you have your job?" Peggy was as somber as I'd ever seen her.

"Sure, for now, as it is, except it sure isn't what it used to be."

"Because I was up there with the Russians?"

"Yep, and only Russians, which never happened before. They are trying to figure that out. I'm not in the loop anymore. I don't know if you were set up because of me, or more specifically your husband's employer, though it seems likely. I'm sure my old company is looking at that: or the idea that you've been milking me for info and are a Russian operative. Though that's not likely as this fiasco would clumsily unveil your mole status. They won't find any leak from me. But they could sure enough find a planted leak manufactured by either the bad guys or the good to serve various ends. They would know it was fake but might just use it to drum me out anyway, as they surely think I'm a liability now."

"Oh God honey. I'm sorry!" Peg's eyes widened as she stood reflexively. She'd not expected her actions to visit more pain upon me.

"Yeah, the real sticking point will be that I was engaged in a chess match and the bad guys won. They've not been winning, not against me anyway, they're in disarray over there. However, they reduced me to a pawn. So, this is embarrassing on a number of levels."

"Like your wife being their whore."

I tried to give her a reassuring shrug while explaining the cold hard facts of my life, "Yeah, that conclusion would be a biggie personally, but I don't get to decide that job wise: someone else will. They need to decide if you are, ahem, in bed with them secrets-wise ... not just literally."

I could tell Peg felt punched in the stomach. I was never one for low blows or cheap shots, certainly not aimed at her. Then again, she had to know the words fit. She surely said a prayer of thanks that I hadn't delivered worse, considering how she knew I must feel knowing my cronies and teammates were not only discussing my wife cheating on me, but fucking a member of the enemy's armed services. She knew that must crush me on every level. In fact, she realized I was probably doing a real number on myself going over the same facts the same way the way I would at work, while having no way to verify or throw away any suspicion. It was vitally important to Peggy that she put me first now.

"If it doesn't work out to return to your job, what will you do?"

"Something a lot less fun. Though with a lot less pressure too. Who knows? Why borrow tomorrow's worries? It's out of my hands."

"You were masterful at hands on. I've taken everything, just everything, out of your hands. I took your whole world away from you." Peggy stopped, looking at me in confused wonderment, "Gary, I don't know why you don't hate me."

* * * * *

Though that week went rather hard, it was better than I expected. Despite her words I felt Peggy had been too ready to throw in the towel on us, which painted all of her previous actions in a much nastier color. Specifically, that she did all those things because she really had thrown me away. She listed her misdeeds against me time after time making them sound insurmountable. Did she want to make me leave? She was certainly throwing herself down, making herself into a red carpet for me to use on my way out the door. It seemed she was convinced I should go, that she had given me every reason to.

Once she realized I didn't hate her, and actually wanted to reconcile, her entire tone changed. She still had to vent at herself for a few days, quickly getting the worst out of her system, realizing it was time not spent on rebuilding us. She focused on having been dismissive of me prior to the flight. It seemed there might be a path leading to us back together. That energized both of us to keep wading through the muck.

This had the wonderful effect of stopping the maelstrom: no longer were we out of control and headed for the bottom. However, we were still adrift and in search of direction, but it was a much better place to be. We could see and work together to figure out what was needed. It felt good to have it all on the table. It's amazing what two people dedicated to the same goal and helping each other can accomplish.

On the Friday of that second week I got a call. It was my work!

Peg prayed, "Please he loves that job! And he's a credit to it. No good is served until he's reinstated." She hoped my being back at work doing the things I seemed born to do would make things smoother at home. Peg thought my being back at home somewhere, even work, was good as we were still working to rebuild our shattered "home" with each other.

She saw me stiffen then stand straight as my conversation swiftly progressed. She heard my end.

"I will write up a letter and submit it Monday, will that do? Sir, uh, I have never been in this situation so I don't know the procedures, can I thank you personally on Monday or is it not wise for you to be seen with ... ah, understood sir."

Peg sat up, that sounded good.

"Let me assure you that I love the service. I sincerely want to thank you for the opportunity! It was fun and it felt ... meaningful. You will never know how much I appreciate the people I worked with. Thank you."

Peg tensed: that hadn't sounded good. Then she heard "worked", past tense. She watched me lower the phone and my thumb pressed the call "off" button. It was a work phone, I looked at it awkwardly. We both realized I'd been carrying it with me almost constantly. It wasn't just an old habit: I'd used it as a talisman of sorts to ward away the permanence of my less-than-ideal employment circumstance. It connected me to a reality that was not happy but needed, and I needed to feel needed. While I had it, even though exiled, I belonged. Now there was no going back. Worse, it felt that not only was the bridge to the happy place burned, but the happier place on the other side had also been destroyed in the flames. It felt very much that my past, complete with every wonder, and meaning too, was gone and the best parts of me along with it.

To her credit Peg understood every little bit of it, she could read the thoughts in my head again. Though she could not fathom my complete sense of loss, even of myself. I wondered why, hadn't she described feeling similarly under the drugs?

Peg was rooted to the sofa her eyes dilated and focused on me, her mouth turned down at the corners. Her thoughts were transparent: she had destroyed my career, 'They could not leave a man in a position of sensitive data whose wife had an affair with an enemy officer.' She'd literally fucked up my entire life now. She'd taken my wife, best friend, lover, and career from me.

"Oh my God, Gary! Gary, I'm so sorry, I... I..."

It scared her I was so in control. My emotions weren't raging, I had them in control. That's how I was in a sudden emergency. It was patently obvious that I had no direction though. I knew I had to do something: I should do something; I just had no idea what to do. I was a ship without sails or rudder.

I spoke to calm my wife, "Nope, stop it, Peggy. It's wise on their part and expected on mine. I wouldn't take chances either. It was a fait accompli, as soon as you went up."

"You knew that and still supported me?" Her eyes bulged.

"Different worlds. I was in love with a woman who had a chance to live her dream."

"My dream wrecked yours. Now I've wrecked your whole life." One of her hands had a strangle hold on the other.

Peggy, suppose you were more my dream than the service."

She blushed and her eyes filled with tears, "I've wrecked both." She was quiet then, considering something.

"Look Peg, if I left you and went back to work for them - if they let me stay, if it's this bad they never would trust me again. So, my efficacy was over anyway, we just didn't know until now. In fact, we still don't."

Now I was considering something. My mind was in overdrive with nothing specific to chew on. That's not good.

"Want to do you mean, Gary?"

Peg saw me turning something over in my mind. I was just thinking out loud. "I don't know if I'm a loose end they want to go away. I don't think I am. Frankly, I don't know that much."

"What are you going to do?" Peg was very nervous that I had put some equation together in my mind which soured me. She didn't know why but her blood had suddenly gone cold.

"I'm going to find out."

"How?"

"By taking a walk in the park."

"I'll go with you," Peg was growing frantic. She obviously didn't think I should be alone and didn't want me out of her sight.

"No, that's what I'm trying to avoid." I saw her face contort, "No, don't take it that way: it's not a chastisement."

"What then?"

"I don't want to "take you with me" quite this way. Listen Peg, I want something of you. If I get hit by a car or killed in a mugging, it's not an accident. I'm begging you: if you ever loved me, you don't say a thing! Not a thing: understand. If I stay here, they might feel they need to account for both of us, I don't want that. Forgive me, but I think they think of you as a pawn or a bimbo, but not a serious player. So, you aren't really worth the trouble. And working for NASA, a sudden accident after returning from a successful space flight, that's press they don't want.

I looked at her poignantly, "I don't think I'm worth trouble either, I really don't. Still, if I'm wrong, I make it work out by just taking a walk right now. Got it?"

Her voice became very low, almost breathy, "S-So you go out saving my life? Oh Gary, that's not right at all. That should be reversed. I've cost you everything: your wife betrayed you. She's able to have the children you worried about after going into space, but why would you want them with her? Your job, a very important one, and one you loved is gone now too. And now your very life?"

"Peggy, imagine for a moment the melodramatic is true. Look at what you've given me: I get to go out the hero." I gave her a wry smile. She didn't appreciate my humor. Actually, it would've been a nice way out, as well as an elegant solution.

"Gary, while so true, that's not what I want." Her eyes were huge again, filled with all sorts of emotion.

"Look Baby, if it goes that way your accidental streak of hurting me will have come to an end!"

"Don't make light of this Gary! What do you think they really think of you?"

"I don't think they will kill me. Frankly, they probably see me as a man so compromised in his personal life that he can't lead. They figure the people I work with will never respect me again. They see me as a ... cuckold to the Russians, a huge internal liability, and an embarrassment."

When I used the "C" word Peggy gasped and nearly keeled over. Isn't it odd we can be obsessed with a thing, and still come to see it in a new light we should've seen all along?

"Peg, they mustn't be embarrassed. Embarrassment is the life blood of my, damn, ex profession."

"Oh my God, Gary ..."

"No discussion, and hopefully I see you in a couple hours, okay?"

"Gary, I love you. And I know you haven't been able to say the words, but from what you're doing I know you still love me too. Thank you, Gary. I don't deserve it." Peg had her arms wrapped around herself with absolutely huge tears rolling down her cheeks.

I walked out the door with Peg thinking I was the finest man she would ever meet. I found out her thoughts later: "Oh Gary, because of me part of you has to be praying for death. It's the only way you'll have a shred of dignity. I'm a whore and a pariah, how you must suffer for still loving me."

At the moment I didn't know how far she carried her self-loathing and my hero worship, though her basic thoughts were pretty transparent. They always had been, which is how I knew I was a distant second to her orbital flight.

A couple of hours later our roles were reversed as I came back in the door. I was crestfallen: it had finally hit me. I had a great job where the bad guys were well defined, and we could go get them. I was good at it. When we weren't doing that, I got to reverse engineer some really interesting hardware. When not doing either of the two, I got to plan out all manner of neat strategies and activities. I was the less exciting real-world flesh and blood side of an action movie hero.

After a couple hours in the park expecting a stabbing pain of some sort followed by numb darkness, all I got was malaise. No dramatic end, no blaze of glory, no drama; I was stuck being just a sad pathetic failure. I'd failed at everything. No more action hero, no more special job. I wasn't even worth more dead than alive. I had no value. And I didn't feel like I had much on the "home" side of the work/home ledger either, there was no It's a Wonderful Life to change my attitude about. Damn it, I already had the best attitude of anyone involved in the whole rotten mess.

I didn't have a wife that had lied to me all our marriage, or who stopped loving me, I just wasn't as important to her as her job. Add in that she'd also physically cheated on me, and that for some godforsaken reason I still had to be emotionally stabilizing to her, there didn't seem to be any sort of an advantage in my union. From a ledger standpoint I'd be better off alone.

That the guy she cheated with meant nothing to her somehow didn't put wind in my sails either. That put yellow highlighter over words I'm not that important to her. It seemed pretty much everything was more important than me, which certainly explained my continuing losing streak at home and now the office.

I stood still as the other side of the coin turned up. Not only did I no longer have "my" job; I had now entered the ranks of the unemployed. Shit.

I'd walked around the park, staying away from background or possible collateral damage for a couple of hours, making myself a ridiculously easy target. The result was drilled into my head: I wasn't important enough to kill. There was a recurring theme here.

I was nothing. I had no purpose, no meaning, and no direction. There may have been a handful of people who professed to care for me, but my own wife had never found a comparison I didn't come out of the short side of. I could sum up my life with a simple sarcastic remark, "nice job, loser!"

As I stood alone in the park, I came to the nauseating conclusion I had nothing left to keep me from returning to the dung heap of a life I no longer had confidence in, or enthusiasm for.

My wife was happy to see me. Peg was both relieved and crying, but I knew the truth: I was only on her front page because she was stuck with me now that she had time off from her job. Hell, she lied to me, devalued me, emasculated me, and cheated on me, and SHE was stuck with ME! Holy cripes!

* * * * *

I found a few ways to entertain myself. I had money squirreled away, I was not wealthy by any means, but I didn't have to rush out and find a job. Day trading intrigued me. I found I wasn't half bad. I was making money, but there was no cash and no paycheck in it, just electronic numbers on an electronic page. So, it was just as I said: amusing. Amusing was a blessing where I was in life.

My wife would come in the room and sort of walk around me. Peg had grown stronger in her battle against self-loathing. You see I'd given her purpose: she had to make sure I wasn't going to do away with myself due to what she termed her "utter destruction of my life". I had no intentions of killing myself, however her fear of such behavior kept her out of my way, or at least my direct path.

Peg was never overt in her observation of me. She thought she'd messed things up for me too much to take a direct role in my new affairs. It was more fun to think she was missing the obvious path of just asking because she was too busy planning how to surreptitiously spy on my well-being, or lack thereof.

The most amusing part was that Peggy was terrible at it! She'd turn her head in a direction that held no discernable object of interest, trying to disguise her surveillance by looking at me out the corner of her eyes. From the cloak and dagger standpoint of blending into the background she might as well have lit herself on fire.

For example: we would both be sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation when, for whatever reason, she would decide she didn't want me to know she was watching me. Damn it, she was already watching me while we spoke, she didn't understand she already had the dream position: surveillance in plain sight!

Peggy would lock her eyes on me, then turn her head as far as she could while keeping me in peripheral vision. Her face would end up pointed at a dark corner in the middle of a closed cupboard. Which simply made one curious as to what the hell she could possibly be looking at. Worse, I could easily see her eyes still looking at me. Peggy was an awful spy! In some inexplicable way it proved to me she was not devious, which strangely helped me on some deep level.

Except her constantly watching me was creepy. I was too down to be annoyed. I mean what was I going to get caught at; masturbating? My dick still didn't work all the time, especially when I was depressed, which was often when I was around her. Thus, I was nothing but a toadstool. I wanted to use my Leslie Nielsen imitation to respond to Peg's watching of me: "Nothing happening here. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along."

Once she realized that my mind no longer automatically connected her to her adultery, my wayward wife started wearing less and less. She tried to jump me later the night I came back from my embarrassingly dramatic cloak and dagger walk in the park.