Stepping in the River, Twice Ch. 03

No, I didn't try and find Jenny, nor did I think about running away from Margo. I drove to what once was our home and wondered how things could go so wrong so fast. I did wonder how long Margo had been having an affair with her boss and how I'd missed the signs and symptoms. I missed the signs and symptoms because I hadn't seen any and Margo had so masterfully gone back to fucking me silly. Like the silly rabbit she had learned the art of fucking hard and fast only to suddenly stop all movement and simply use her vaginal muscles to squeeze and hold me firmly imbedded in the depths of her beautiful pussy.

A half hour after getting home I heard Margo's car park in the driveway. Yes, I was a little surprised, wondering why she decided to come home at all. I no longer had any expectations of her? Why was she home?

"Matthew? Matthew, where are you?" Was Stan that casual an affair that she thought she could simply come home, drop to her knees and then expects everything to be A-OK.

I was sitting on the back porch watching the grass grow when she came in. This means I was licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself.

"There you are. You need to know I quit my job then called Martha, Stan's wife, to tell her about how Stan had occasionally been getting into my pants." Occasionally? What the fuck does casual fucking mean? Was confessing to Stan's wife supposed to make things all better? Margo was far too casual about her affair with her boss. She was making it sound like it was no-big-deal as she tried to downplay her infidelity. Occasionally was as close to a confession as she'd ever give me.

"I told her I'd testify if she needed me to, should she divorce Stan, that is. Then I hurried home hoping to find you, to convince of my love for you, and explain my need for you! Oh, Matthew, please, please, please help me make things up to you! I am so sorry this all happened but can explain. You see, it all started . . ."

I'd raised my hand to stop her from rambling on and on like a person suffering from ADHD. Margo did stop and stood there looking at me her eyes questioning and head tilted to the side. I looked at her incredulously knowing she had no idea how her occasional dalliance damaged what she and I had shared. Then I began to wonder how many dalliances she'd had over the years and thought there was nothing wrong with what she'd done.

"Matthew, please let me explain! I did it for us, you need to believe me. There was never a moment with Stan I enjoyed, never. He was never a threat to you, especially where sex is concerned!" I did it for us was salt in the wound bull shit. Was she doing it for money? It wasn't my manhood that felt threatened. It was the attack on me, born out of a misguided desire for, what? It certainly wasn't love.

"No need to explain anything Margo. No need. I don't think I give a shit any more, let alone believe you. There is nothing casual about fucking around on someone you say you love and supposedly care about. I have no desire to revive what we once shared, especially since it must have died a long time ago. I just never realized our marriage was leaving with the evening tide. So, please, don't waste your time trying to explain something that is moot to begin with. Okay?"

"Matthew, are you giving up on our marriage?" Sure, put it all back onto me. It wasn't going to work that way.

"Giving up? Let me ask you Margo, how many times will I need to sleep with another woman to balance the scales? How often will I look across the breakfast table and wonder what happened to the Margo I married? How am I ever going to convince myself you gave yourself to your arrogant over-weight boss then came home to tell me you loved me and only me? As I said Margo I don't need the details of your affairs or reasons why you felt it necessary to fuck other men. The only thing I'd like to know if why?" As human beings we always want to know why someone did what they did, or didn't do. It asked for a subjective response that could be fiction or fact. I think I just wanted to know what she would say in a curiously sick way.

"Matthew, the only explanation, and this is going to sound self-serving, is that occasionally being with other men helped me appreciate and stay passionate with you. You have always been the one to please me in ways no one else ever has. So, I guess you could say the occasional dalliance was done for you and our marriage. We always were the ones to benefit. It made our marriage stronger and helped me sustain my passion for you." Margo looked at me square in the eye when she spoke these words telling me she believed what she was saying. I knew it was also a rationale answer to my question. She actually believed what she was saying, which floored me.

"Here is the kink in your explanation Margo. You were the only one who directly benefitted from your affairs. It may have helped you explain your passion, but it was at the expense of keeping your affairs clandestine, in other words, secrete. As soon as I knew what you were doing my love for you began to whither. My respect for you began to slip. . In reality you needed a way to test me by having other lesser affairs to remind you about how good you had it with me."

Then the reality hit me hard, very hard. Margo had never needed to test me because she knew I was faithful and loved her beyond reason. I was her safe place to go when she needed love. Testing me was simply a way to put things back on me, to make me question my self-worth. I'd been duped by someone I loved. Testing me was Margo's "cover".

"Matthew that isn't true! I have always loved you first!" Then she loved others second, third and fourth?

"It really doesn't matter Margo because now that I know what you have been doing I am going to give you cart blanch permission to be with anyone you want anytime. You just will not have me to come home to for passionate love at the end of your day. Now that I know how little faith you have had in me, well, your punishment is to not have me at all."

"Matthew, what does that mean, for our marriage?"

"It means our marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper. It means I will no longer be available to hold you at the end of the day. I will no longer be available for long juicy kisses as we lay in bed snuggling after making love. It also means we will no longer be having sex of any kind. It means we may be living together but we will no longer be planning vacations together or going out Friday nights or meeting with friends for barbecues and ballgames."

"Are you divorcing me?" Margo seemed fearful this was the expected outcome of the marriage. It was, however, a logical action step.

.

"Not today, Margo. Not today." I stood up and stretched the stretch of a weary man who still loved this woman but was no longer going to be available to confirm, at the end of the day, that I am a worthy husband who can meet her needs for passion. Besides that, marriage is one of the Seven Sacraments so I saw no good reason to break yet another covenant.

Okay, so I was being hypocritical. I was guilty of adultery also and was sure I would meet other women to fill Margo's once very capable role. Jenny had shown me that passion does exist elsewhere. Shit, it should never be a "role" to please your spouse; it should be an obligation we do out of genuine love.

"Not today? Does this mean there is hope we may one day put this all behind us?" Did Margo really believe there was a chance to put this all behind us? No, that is the wrong question. Did I want to believe our marriage could possibly make it?

"I won't promise you anything. I won't ask you for anything except to pay your share of the expenses. You are free to file for divorce and move on with your life at any time. I only ask that you not bring your lovers into our home and I will respect you in the same way." It occurred to me that what I was doing would be hard on me as well.

I did not move out of our bedroom and neither did Margo. At first it was strange to slide into bed with someone and offer them no more than a "goodnight, sleep well" before turning out the light. We became housemates who had a fairly positive history, until she decided to "test" me one Friday. Now our marriage was faced with the test-of-all tests. How things ended I could not tell but I was not optimistic. Hoping would not make things right.

Margo quickly found work at another Real Estate office and seemed to throw herself into her work, which was a good thing. The real estate market was beginning to pick up and many of her old clients sought her out and followed her so building up her business wasn't too difficult. Her job required her to work almost every weekend, when I was off, to do open houses for her listed homes.

We were in a relationship that revolved around our work, sleeping and eating. I was polite when around Margo but indifferent. Without the affection once shared as man and wife, as lovers, my ability to tolerate being around her became a challenge and probably doomed from the start. The existentialist would say we were creating our own hell which was our punishment for living a life of sin was to be forced to live with one another. In the back of my mind I believed I was punishing Margo when in reality I had put myself in a sort of purgatory. Margo is not stupid, even if she had become an adulterous bitch, so she began to do things to taunt and tease me.

It only took a few days of no touching-kissing-sex for Margo to begin to do things to tempt me. She began wearing sexy shear nighties to bed after taking a shower and making sure she smelled delicious. When home she would dress provocatively, not trashy, but provocatively. She would wear soft pastel blouses without bras, unbuttoned nearly to her navel then Margo would find a way to bend over me when at the table to make sure I got a good look at her naked upper torso, her beautiful tits.

I knew what she was doing. She knew I knew what she was doing. She did her best to be a sexual tease trying to break through my armor, my indifference. My indifference was, however, strong. I wore it with firm civility. I was also able to fortify my resolve by conjuring up the image of her kissing her boss, Stan, or the imagined image of his fat ass fucking Margot with perverted glory.

Then it became easy to not fall to Margo's temptations. It wasn't just the temptations of her body I learned to resist. Margo did her best to be home for evening meals she would prepare with great care. Even when having to work an evening she went out of her way to pre-prepare a meal, such as meat loaf with carrots and asparagus that could be put in the oven to finish browning. It was clear Margo had begun her campaign to prove she was a good wife who loved her husband and was willing to do anything to demonstrate her love and faithfulness.

It was maybe 3 weeks after I'd begun to simply "live" in our home without showing any signs of affection that Margo raised the stakes, at least from her vantage, in her campaign to win my love and confidence. Dressed in baggy shorts, a lose fitting halter top and a thigh length plain white pressed apron, Margo leaned across the dinner table, looked me in the eye, and said, "Matthew, you know I only belong to you. These tits belong to you." Her hands went to provocatively lift them high on her chest. "This ass will never have anyone's cock there but yours and this mouth will never suck anyone's cock but yours. " Margo was growing into a servant temptress doing everything to tempt me.

Yes, I wanted to believe her. Wanting to believe, believing and knowing the truth are all different from one another.

My problem with her statement was simple. I just didn't believe what she was saying even if she believed her words to be true. I knew how sex had been important for our marriage. Sex had been, at least for me, how I demonstrated my love for my wife. Margo had never held anything back making sure we spent many hours each week, sometimes in a single day, fucking each other until we couldn't walk. In my mind I was finding it hard to believe Margo was not getting her sexual needs met somehow, some way, apart from the time we spent living as "house mates." It was the silent cynic in me who now knew Margo had already gone outside of our marriage to verify how good a lover I was or was not. She had already admitted to setting up "tests" to verify my commitment to our marriage.

I also had no idea what was fact and truth. Because I wanted to believe Margo and distrusted her there was little chance of me discovering the truth? I was afraid the truth would end the possibility of ever reconciling my love for Margo. They call this being fucked-up.

It was in the fourth week of my self-imposed no affection or sex living arrangement that a few things began to change, at least for me. I started going to church Sunday mornings to the 7:30AM Mass. Rather than linger in bed with Margo, as we had done for years, almost always ending in wonderful morning sex, I began to fortify my resolve by going to church. Mass at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, especially at that early in the morning, is quiet, peaceful and emotional. I was learning to see the power of prayer. At the same time it was a time to lose myself in the way the sun came through the stained glass windows.

Okay, so there were other benefits to attending early Mass on Sunday morning and they came in the form of sanctified bait. Sanctified bait? Yes, the kind of temptation that sits alone in the second from the front pew, her long black hair neatly tied behind her perfectly shaped head adorned with a perfect nose and deep dark eyes. The sanctified bait was oriental, I was guessing of Vietnamese or Chinese heritage. So I started going to Mass to see this mysteriously beautiful woman, to watch her out of the corner of my eye. Without consciously thinking about it I was beginning to formulate a way to meet her, which, in a parish as big as the Cathedral's, is not always easy.

The second week I attended Mass Father Riley announced there would be a raffle held following Mass to benefit the homeless and that coffee and pastries would be served. On a whim I decided to contribute to the fundraiser and have a much-needed cup of church coffee. Armed with a cup of coffee served in a small Styrofoam cup I stood at a small table purchasing 5 one dollar raffle tickets.

"My name is Phuong To (pronounced, Fong Toe). You are?" The voice was angelic, but did not come from an Angel. It was the mysterious Asian woman I'd vainly tried to watch while in Mass the last two weeks.

"Matthew. Matthew Bassler." The first words greeting between two strangers often decides whether any further communication occurs.

"So you are named after one of the Apostles?" I'd turned to look into the eyes of the woman I'd been watching from a corner of the Cathedral.

"Please call me Matt. I can assure you I am no Saint." I was pocketing my five raffle tickets not really caring about winning anything. I figured meeting Phuong was more than I could have hoped for.

"Well Mr. Matt it was nice to meet the man who finds me a distraction to prayer." So she had noticed how shamefully I'd watched her during Mass. "Maybe I will see you here again next week?" I would make every effort to be in church the next week.

"Yes, I will look for you next week." There was no smart-ass follow up or attempt to take her out for coffee. Maybe meeting someone in church was okay after all, I didn't know. "I am from Vietnam. Good bye Matt." I watched Phuong walk out of the Cathedral and wondered how she'd known I was wondering where she was from. Was I that transparent?

The next week I almost did not make it to Mass, having forgotten to set my alarm so walked into Mass just after the Priest and Eucharistic Ministers had processed into the Cathedral. Things with Margo were also beginning to move away from the let's-see-how-long-he-can-hold-out to one of increased tension and frustration. Margo was becoming more-and-more agitated and less communicative. I was beginning to believe she might be checking up on me to see if I was seeing someone for sexual release. At that point I didn't really care what she did.

"Matt, where are you going so early on a Sunday morning?" Margo had rolled over in bed, raising herself up on one elbow to ask her question.

I was in the process of trying to dress quietly and get out the door to make it to the Cathedral before 7:30AM Mass started.

"Mass. I started attending again a couple of weeks ago. You are welcome to join me if you want?" Margo had never been very religious so I never really expected her to attend with me. Yet, for just a moment, I wondered if she might anyway.

"Matthew, are you sure you wouldn't rather come back to bed?" Margo had pulled the two thin spaghetti straps off of her shoulders letting the baby doll nightie to fall exposing both of her beautiful breasts. Yes, Margo, still my wife was doing her best to tempt me.

"I don't want to be late Margo." I smiled as Margo lay back on the bed making no attempt to cover her exposed breasts. I didn't want to be late, not because I was in a hurry to pray but because I was hoping to see Phuong.

As I quietly walked into Church, just after the processional hymn, I had a feeling, an unformed thought that Margo might check up on me. It was a kind of premonition that at first caused me to look around the Cathedral to see if the feeling might be true. Then I shrugged telling myself it didn't matter if she did follow me to church, I had not been inappropriate with regard to Phuong or anyone else. I was, however, giving into something called concupiscence. I was letting myself be tempted, which was shameful and indication my relationship with Margo was failing to meet basic needs. I still had not crossed the line but had been tempted by a pretty face.

I sat through the Mass and did not see Phuong until walking up to the Altar to receive Holy Communion. That was when I saw her, almost peripherally, sitting in a pew that had been blocked by one of the Cathedral's support pillars. My hands folded in supplication I walked back to where I had been sitting, a slight smile on my face. I was strangely happy to simply know Phuong had been at Mass. My smile did not disappear as I looked to the back of the Cathedral, past the Baptismal Font, to where the closed doors to the vestibule were. In one of the glass windows was a face, a single face, peering into the church.

Keeping my head slightly bowed and hands folded in respect I walked back to where I'd been sitting, alone. Seeing Margo's face through the windows into the vestibule told me she had not believed me when I said I was going to early Sunday Mass. Seeing she told me she probably had always needed to check up on me, not because I ever gave her any reason to doubt or suspect me, but because of her own actions that had been filled with deceit and infidelity.

When Mass ended and the Priest had processed out of the church I stayed sitting in my inconspicuous pew thinking. I wasn't even looking around to see if Phuong was exiting the Cathedral. I sat in contemplation wondering where my marriage had gone in such a short time. I was having one of those personal conversations with God as I looked for a little light to give me direction and maybe a little hope.

I'd been sitting for not more than three or four minutes and most of the sparse parishioners had ambled out when I felt rather than saw her sit down next to me.

"Why isn't your wife with you?" Phuong was more insightful than I'd thought or I was just more transparent than believed.

"I don't really know." I continued to hold my gaze on the front of the Church. My life with Margo needed resolution before I chased after Jenny or the mysterious Phuong To.

"So you come to Mass to punish yourself or are you seeking answers?" Punish myself? Ah, for my indiscretion with the beautiful, once innocent Jenny? Was I then trying to punish Margo for not having had faith in me? Jesus, who am I to be judging what others do or don't do?!