The Fall and Rise of David Beckman Ch. 04

"Bill told me that he tried to give you a chance to discuss what you were working on with him but you blew him off. He said that he would try to keep and eye on things but there was only so much he could do unless you asked him to get involved. When you turned the contract in and Bill found out that you hadn't done a careful enough check on Clinton Products' financial situation, he told me that there was nothing he could do. He had to tell Mike. Bill said he thought he could control the situation but Mike got so angry that nothing Bill said would change Mike's mind about firing you.

"That's when things really hit bottom. You started drinking too much and just hanging around the house. You still wouldn't admit that any of this was your fault. I felt bad for you but I was also running out of patience. I wanted you to get help but you wouldn't listen. On top of that, everyday Bill was after me to meet him for a drink. I continued to refuse him but I was feeling starved for companionship. You were no longer giving me what I needed and I was feeling pretty depressed myself.

"Then, on the Monday after you were fired, my boss told me about that class in LA and said that he wanted me to go. I felt guilty about going away when you were doing so poorly but I also felt that I needed to get away for my own sanity. So, that afternoon I registered for the class and made my airline and hotel reservations. When I got home that night, you were in a foul mood so I didn't tell you about the class. Things didn't change so I kept putting off telling you about the class until last Wednesday. I was thinking about canceling the class and staying home because I knew you would be upset when I told you about it. I talked to Bill that afternoon and I told him about the class and that I hadn't told you yet and that I was thinking of not going. Bill told me that I had to go to the class. He said that I couldn't let your situation take away an opportunity like that. He also told me that I had to tell you about it that night. I shouldn't put if off any longer because it wouldn't get any easier. So that evening I told you about the class.

"The next day Bill called and asked if I told you about the trip. I told him I did and he asked how you took the news. I told him better than expected but you weren't very supportive. Bill told me that I had done the right thing and that getting away for a week would be good for me."

Erica was saying that she had not agreed to meet Bill in LA. The knot in my stomach eased a little. Erica had already sworn that she didn't have an affair with him and now she was saying she had never planned to have an affair with him. Should I believe her? Could I believe her?

"By Sunday, my thinking was pretty clouded," Erica said. "I knew I was going to LA for the class but I also knew that I was using the class as a reason to get away from you for a few days. The problem was that our marriage was in turmoil and I could see it getting worse but you didn't seem to see anything beyond the perceived wrongs that were done to you at BDS.

"By Sunday night, I was wishing that I was already in LA just so I could forget about our problems for a while. That's when you asked me to cancel the trip and I blew up at you and I called you a loser. The blow up wasn't just because you asked me to cancel my trip; it was a combination of everything I was going through. After the blow up, I went and soaked in the tub. That's when it hit me that I had called you a loser. I felt terrible about that. Then I started to think about why I was so mad at you. At first, I told myself that it was all your fault. But I knew better. I realized that just because I could see that what happened to you was not a conspiracy didn't mean that you could easily see that. Right or wrong you believed the world was against you and then the one person you did trust turned against you. When you needed me most, I called you a loser.

"By the time I finished my bath, I knew what I had to do. I had to show you that I loved you and that I was on your side and that everything would be all right. After we made love Sunday night, I really did believe that everything was going to be all right.

"When I left for that airport, I had the feeling that you were in better spirits and that made me happy. I was really looking forward to coming home Friday so that I could continue to help you get out of your depression.

"On the flight out to LA, I decided that I would get in touch with Bill when I got back home and tell him that I wanted him to stop calling me. I finally realized that it was inappropriate for us to be talking behind your back. The problem was that when I walked into the hotel I found Bill waiting for me in the lobby.

"I asked him what he was doing there and he said that he thought that we needed to meet so that we could talk about us. He waited for me to register and then followed me up to my room. I told him several times that there was no us and that he should not have come to LA. I told him that I wanted him to stay away from me and leave me alone.

"When I got to the room my immediate need was to go pee. I hadn't had a chance to go before I left the airport, so by the time I got to my room I was desperate. Bill asked me if I would just talk to him for a few minutes so I let him come into the room while I ran to the bathroom.

"When I came out of the bathroom, Bill was lying on the bed with a drink in his hand. He had already opened the mini-bar and had poured us both a drink. He patted the bed next to him and told me to sit down and relax while we talked. I told him to leave. I was starting to get angry because he made no move to get off the bed. I suggested that we go down to the bar for a drink and talk there. I told him I was very uncomfortable with his being in my room. Bill said he just wanted to talk and asked me to sit down again and that is when the phone rang.

"I said, 'No,' to him as I was picking up the phone. I heard your voice on the phone and then that idiot Bill said 'Who is it?' I was praying you didn't hear him. When you said you were in the hotel and would be up to the room in a couple of minutes, I was both scared and happy. That gave me a way to get rid of Bill but I worried that when you got off the elevator that you might see Bill leaving my room so as soon as you hung up I started screaming at Bill to leave. I needn't have yelled at him. As soon as I said you were on you way up, I could see the fear in his face. He ran out of the room. After that, all of my time was spent trying to locate you."

"Is that everything?" I asked.

"Yes and it is the truth."

I sat staring at Erica for a minute. I wasn't really waiting for her to say anything more; I was trying to understand what I had just heard and figure out what to do next. I never expected Erica to come home so soon. I was expecting her to stay in LA at least until Friday and I wasn't sure if I would see her even after she came back from LA. I felt so hurt and so angry that I was already planning to talk to a lawyer about a divorce. I never expected that I would be sitting there Tuesday night listening to Erica as she explained things from her point of view. I wasn't ready for this and I didn't know how to react. Erica's story had a ring of truth to it but I wasn't ready to just accept what she was telling me. I was still angry and although I tried not to show it I think Erica could feel it in my response to her story.

"Would you mind if I summarize what you've told me to make sure I understand?" I asked but did not wait for an answer.

"You didn't tell me that Bill was your lover in college because you thought it would make me uncomfortable. How do you think it makes me feel to find it out now? Then you never told me that Bill was calling you everyday because the two of you thought I was having some kind of a mental breakdown and you weren't sure how I would feel about you talking to him. Then when I told you how important the Clinton Products' deal was for me and that I didn't want anyone else from BDS to even know about it, you told Bill because you thought I was no longer competent to do my job. So when I got fired, you thought I was crazy, incompetent, and a loser and the only person you could talk to about my problem was the man who was trying to get in your pants. Have I got it right so far?"

When Erica didn't respond right away, I continued.

"I find it interesting that the person that you said you loved was telling you that someone was messing with his work but rather than believe him you turned to the guy that was trying to rekindle an old romance with you for information about your husband's job performance. Then when I got fired, it was Bill's doing. He is the one who came up with the evidence of my incompetence. Don't you see a pattern beginning to develop?"

"It wasn't like that at all. You are twisting things around," Erica said.

"Let me finish," I said. "Let's see now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the class in Los Angeles. You were not sure if you should go or not until you talked to your special friend who tells you that you have to go to LA, even though you both know that it will upset me. Surprise, surprise, you find Billy Boy waiting for you at your hotel in LA. Are you sure he had your best interests at heart when he told you that you should go to the class? It doesn't sound that way to me but then I am just paranoid, right?" "I swear that I had no idea that he was going to be in LA," Erica said. "The only thing I did wrong in LA was letting him into my room in the first place. I didn't want him to follow me into my room but he did."

"I don't think you tried hard enough."

"David, you're not being fair," Erica said. "I wasn't expecting him to be waiting in the lobby for me when I arrived. I was shocked and surprised and didn't know how to handle the situation. You have to believe me that I was not going to have an affair with him. His being in my room was not something I planned nor wanted."

"Could you have said that before Sunday night with such conviction? Probably not. Anyway, what happened Sunday night? You had some sort of an epiphany. You realized that a faithful, loving wife doesn't turn against her mentally ill husband, right? In sickness and in health, isn't that how it goes? So that night you made the difficult decision to sacrifice your happiness for your mentally unbalanced husband?"

"David, you have to understand what I was going through at the time. You were acting so strange and Bill was being so supportive. I couldn't help but turn to him but I never had any intention of having an affair with him. I can't help but wonder why you can only see the negatives in everything I have told you. I am trying to help you and I want to be with you but I don't know what else I can do," Erica said.

"Let me tell you how things could have gone much better. All you had to do is believe me when I told you someone was messing with my contracts. If you had done that, in time I would have been able to show you the evidence that proved I was right. But you chose to believe I was suffering from some sort of paranoia and that I needed professional help. But instead of believing me, you went against me and joined forces with Bill Nelson, even betraying me by telling him about my work with Clinton Products. You helped him get me fired," I said.

"Bill didn't get you fired; he just found the mistake you made. He had no choice but to show it to Mike," Erica said.

"See, there you go taking Bill's side again without even asking me why I would accuse him of being the reason I was fired."

Looking at Erica I could see that she was about out of patience with me. She was so sure that she had done the right things that she knew I had to be crazy to be carrying on the way I was. I was about to change her view of the world.

"Did you ever, even once, think that I might not be crazy and that the things I was saying might be true?"

I could tell from her expression that I was right. That possibility had never entered her mind.

"Remember when I told you that someone had to be messing with my contracts after I turned them in but I couldn't explain how anyone would have that opportunity?" I asked and then handed Erica the memo I got from Tom Jenson.

Erica read the memo twice and then asked, "What does this mean?"

"It means that the last person to see any of my contracts before they got mailed to my customers was your friend, Bill," I said.

"I don't understand. Why would he do that?"

"I believe that he wanted to make me look incompetent. I am not sure why but I believe it had something to do with you."

"Why would this have anything to do with me?"

"Think about it," I said. "Bill was already my boss so there was no business reason to do this to me. We had been friends until we ran into Bill and Diane in the mall. It was about that time that my troubles at work started. The only thing I can figure is that he wanted to make me look bad in your eyes."

Erica was shaking her head, not in denial but in bewilderment. I think she was starting to get the picture but still wasn't sure if this was just a delusion caused by my mental state.

"Bill's plan was working. He had you on the phone everyday talking to him but he still couldn't get you to go out with him so he took things to another level. He was waiting for me to get involved in something important hoping that he could find a way to make it look like I fucked up big time. So what did you do? You handed him Clinton Products."

At that point, I told Erica about my call to George Harris and what I found out and that I pulled up the actual WSJ articles on the Internet and that they were indeed three years old.

"Your boyfriend changed the date on the article and used it to get me fired. Bill knew that Mike would never bother to follow up to see if what he said was true or not. I have to hand it to him, Billy Boy's plan to get you into bed almost worked. If you hadn't got a case of guilty conscience about the way you had treated me you probably would have ended up in bed with him. What do you think of your old lover now?"

Erica's big brown eyes filled with tears and they started running down her cheek. She looked broken. Without saying a word she got up off the sofa and ran to the bedroom and closed the door.

*****

For the next hour, I sat thinking about everything Erica had said. I thought about my behavior over the last few months and I could see why Erica would have been concerned. I was drinking a lot and I guess I did sound paranoid when I ranted about someone messing with my contracts when it didn't seem possible that anyone could have. Yes, my behavior was erratic and once Bill had put the idea in her head that I might be having some sort of a breakdown my behavior fit Erica's perception. The rest of the problem seemed to build from there.

I considered what might have happened if Erica had believed me when I told her that my problems were being caused by someone else. If she had sided with me, would Bill have given up? Maybe, but if he didn't, how far would he have gone to try and put a wedge between Erica and me?

I realized that thinking about what might have happened wasn't going to get me to a resolution of my problem. I had to deal with what did happen. Erica had made the initial mistake when she let Bill convince her that I was having mental problems. I tried to see things from Erica's point of view and I came to the conclusion that everything Erica had done she had done because she had trusted Bill. He had gained her trust when he told her that he and I were friends and that he wanted to help me. After that, he manipulated her into thinking I had become incompetent and was having a breakdown and I didn't exactly help myself with my behavior.

I thought about Sunday night and the way Erica had made love to me. I thought about how she kept telling me she loved me and then I thought about Monday morning and how she again told me she loved me and that everything was going to be all right. I believed her when she said that.

I thought about how Erica had taken a red eye flight to get back to me rather than staying with Bill. She didn't know then that I knew he was there. It seems she chose me over him. She might have been lying when she told me that when I called she was telling Bill to leave her room and that she was not going to try and stir up a long dead romance with him. I was still kicking that thought around in my head when I heard the bedroom door open.

Erica came back into the family room and sat on the sofa with me. She had dried her eyes and was no longer crying.

"I'm sorry I ran off like that," she said, "but when I realized what a fool I have been I just had to be alone for a while. I can't imagine how I let myself get led astray like that. I had never doubted you before so I don't know why it was so easy for me to believe that you were wrong about what was happening to you. I am sorry for doubting you. I am sorry for not just telling you about Bill the day we ran into him in the mall.

"You were right, I didn't try hard enough to stop Bill from coming into my room in LA but you have to believe that I had no intention of letting him stay nor was I ever going to have an affair with him. After Sunday night, all I wanted to do was get through the week of training and get back home to you. It's true that I made that decision based on my thinking that you were ill and needed me to stand by you but I only made that decision because I love you. I can see how all of this might leave doubts in your mind but I don't know what I can do to erase those doubts. What do we do now? How do we recover from this mess?"

"I hope that in time we should be able to get through this. I may have been a little overly harsh to you today but you have to realize how close we came to losing it all. The last thing I expected when I came home tonight was to find you sleeping on the sofa. I wasn't able to grasp the significance of that until just a few minutes ago," I said.

"What is the significance of my coming home? What else would I have done?

"I fully expected that you would stay in LA for the week and that you would have been with Bill the whole time. I was planning on calling a lawyer tomorrow to start the process to get a divorce. I also planned on seeing a real estate agent to put the house on the market. When I walked in and found you on the sofa, it confused me. I finally realized that your love brought you home to me," I said.

Erica put her arms around me and put her head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and we held each other for a while and then Erica pulled away.

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"I think we need to take it slow and build back the trust we had. I have to convince you that I am not crazy and you have to convince me that you don't have any lingering feelings for Bill," I said.

"I know that you are not crazy. That is, I do now. As for Bill, I never had any real feelings for him, I mean not since college. It was just that I thought that he was someone I could trust and could turn to for help while you were going through your problems. He clouded my judgment but I always knew there was nothing Bill had that I wanted. When I saw him at the hotel, I felt no attraction to him. I was more irritated by him than anything else. He just would not accept it when I told him I didn't want to be with him," Erica said.

"I think I believe you. I want to believe you," I said.

"Now that you know what Bill did to get you fired, are you going to see Mike and explain it to him. I'm sure once he knows what happened he'll give you back your job."

"I tried to do that Monday. He wouldn't see me," I said. "You have to keep trying. You can't let Bill get away with this. Mike should fire him and give you the sales manager position," Erica said.