The Teacher's Husband

Dad just nodded his head. "He kept saying that he was not leaving her side. He wouldn't abandon her like her 'asshole husband'." My father glanced my way with an apologetic look. "His words; not mine."

"Well, isn't that just fuckin' dandy," I said.

"I tried to encourage him to get the fuck out, but Emily and your mother wanted him around. Honestly, I don't think Kate did, but she was a basket case so I don't know what was going on in her mind. In the last conversation I had with your mother, I told her the son-of-a-bitch needed to leave or else I would."

"What'd she say?" I asked.

"' Don't make me choose between Emily's family and you. You might not like how it goes for you.'"

"Fuck me," I sighed. "I always suspected she liked Emily's family better than her own but to come right out with it..."

"The next day I moved into one of the condos the firm keeps for clients. I also had Terry Carr refer me to a divorce attorney. I didn't feel right using yours."

After that, we sat and sipped our bourbon and smoked our cigars, contemplating our futures in silence. Two marriages blown up due to infidelity; one directly and one as collateral damage.

++++

I agreed to meet with Kate at her parent's house. My condition for the meeting was that it would be just the two of us. No parents. And definitely no dipshit.

Kate had always been a beauty. Tall, lean, and fit. Blonde and lightly tanned. She had always looked at least a decade younger than her forty-two years and this incident had not changed that. My heart jumped into my throat when she opened the door to my knock. Both of her parent's cars as well as my mother's car were not present when I drove up. I had made a recon of the area a couple of hours before our meeting time and had seen all three vehicles in the driveway. I had also noted the same vehicle that her lover had driven to our house a few weeks ago. It was parked in the street two houses down from her parent's house. Two hours later, at our appointed meeting time, I had circled the block and saw his Mustang two streets over from Don and Emily's house. My mother's car was parked behind him and there were two people in his car. Just fuckin' dandy.

"Hi baby," Kate said while opening her arms and moving towards me for a hug.

"Stop Kate. I don't want a hug from you." I stepped into the living room and made my way towards an armchair. I usually sat on the sofa with Kate when we visited but I did not want to give her the opportunity to sit beside me. She sighed and sat on the sofa facing me.

"Baby, we have to get through this. We have too much love between us to throw it all away just because I made a stupid mistake."

"Mistake? Getting engaged to another man while you are still married to me is what you call a mistake?" I shook my head. "I'm here to discuss the next steps in our divorce. Terry Carr tells me you haven't given him the name of your attorney.

"That's because I don't want a divorce. I want you. I think that we can save our marriage. Correction, I know we can save our marriage. I love you and I know you love me. We can do anything we set our minds to."

"What about your fiancée? Don't you think he might have something to say about that?" I asked wryly.

"He's not my fiancée. Yes, I had an affair with him. It was wrong and I regret it. I like him, but I am not in love with him. I love only you."

"Are you still seeing him?"

Kate did not look me in the eyes. She focused on her hands and started twisting her wedding ring set. "He's stopped by to check up on me."

"How often? Once? Twice? Daily? Every day, all day?" Kate had tears in her eyes and was becoming visibly emotional.

"You left me!" she cried out. "You drove off and left me crying in our front yard. He was there for me when you weren't."

"So let me get this straight; You went to him because you were upset that I left you. And the reason that I left you was because you cheated on me with him." It was like the old joke about the kid on trial for killing his parents asking the judge to have mercy on a poor orphan.

"Yes, but it's over with him. I am not seeing him now," she said.

"So, if I get in my car and drive around the neighborhood, I won't see him two streets over sitting in his car with my mother?"

Kate's eyes grew wide as she realized that I wasn't buying her bullshit. I stood and said, "Kate, get an attorney and give him Terry's information. You can get married to dipshit and I can get on with my life. We'll see each other at weddings and funerals and eventually, we'll be out of each other's life forever. You'll just be someone I used to be married to."

She looked at me in horror. She had grown pale as paper. "No! No! I can't...Never see you...Kate started sobbing. She wrapped her arms around her upper body and started rocking back and forth, chanting, "No. No. No. No."

I stood and looked sadly at my soon-to-be ex-wife. I shook my head and left the house. I drove two streets over, pulled next to Dipshit's car, and rolled down my window. His window was already down. I looked across him to my mother as she looked back with undisguised hostility. "I just left Kate and she's a mess. You might want to go check on her. I'm done with y'all."

I headed home.

++++

Nothing is ever easy so I did not expect the divorce to be either. Kate got an attorney. A vicious pit bull by the name of Donna Kay Rafferty. DKR as she was known in the media was well known for securing the largest divorce settlement in Texas history when Dallas society maven Pauline Pickett (nee French) sued her husband, oilman Danny Pickett, Junior for divorce, and walked away with a 270-million-dollar settlement. Everyone and their brother had warned Junior about Pauline because everyone and their brother had taken Pauline for a test drive at one time or another. But Junior wasn't his old man. Senior was known to wear a leather belt with a hole in the right front from where he had been gut shot in a bar fight. He not only didn't go down and stay down; he beat to death with a pool cue the guy who shot him. Senior was smart and tough, all things that Junior was not. But Senior had died in a plane crash a half dozen years back, leaving Junior his oil company.

I knew that I was in for a battle.

First, they demanded marriage counseling. I refused. The marriage wasn't broken, my wife was. That got me nowhere except for a court-mandated ten sessions for which I had to pay. I did get to choose the counselor but that was a small comfort.

Dennis Lampier advertised himself as a marriage counselor specializing in infidelity trauma. His online reviews were glowing and he was on the court's approved list. My initial phone interview with him went well. It was not until me and Kate were sitting in front of him that I realized that this was probably going to go sideways.

"Mr. and Mrs. Conroy, what are you looking to achieve out of these counseling sessions?" I made a mental note to add to my list of demands that Kate go back to her maiden name.

"I made a mistake. I had an affair with another man. I feel horrible about it and want to find a way to get past my mistake and use it to build a better, stronger marriage."

I looked at her in disbelief. "She's still seeing the jackass. She's engaged to him, for fuck's sake!"

Dennis admonished me, "We try to avoid shouting or profanity in these sessions. Please be calm and respectful of each other. Kate, is this true? Are you really engaged to another man while telling us you're trying to save this marriage?"

"It's true Brian has asked me to marry him. I told him no; I want to save my marriage."

I looked at Lampier. "Would you say that this is textbook monkey-branching?"

"Why would you ask that," he replied.

"She won't commit to her boyfriend unless she knows for sure that our marriage is beyond saving. But she won't commit to her marriage unless I commit to being her husband. It's monkey branching at its most basic."

Kate chose that moment to speak up. "If you promise to stay married to me I'll tell him I can't marry him. I'll give back the ring."

I just stared at her for a minute. "The fact that we are even talking about whether or not you accepted a marriage proposal from another man tells me how bad this marriage is. When was the last time you fu-, had sex with him? Kate began twisting her wedding ring. At that point, I knew that this was going to be a complete goat-fuck.

"I don't remember," she said.

"Come on Kate; nobody believes that. You're a smart woman. You have your doctorate. You know exactly how many times you had sex with him. When Kate? When was the last time you had sex with him?"

"This morning," she said softly, tears rolling down her face. "I'm so sorry, Pete. It was this morning."

I stood, nodded once to the therapist, and walked out the door. I knew that this was going to get ugly and it did.

In an effort to get me to see reason, they went after everything I owned. The business. The patents. Everything.

At this point, I just wanted out. The girls had started college in Austin. I had moved them into their dorm, much to their mother's dismay. I declined her request to join us. She appealed to the twins and they too, said no. They had no sympathy for her and wanted as little to do with their mother as possible. I had blocked my mother so I had no idea if she tried to reach out to me and didn't care.

My parent's divorce was finalized well before mine. My mother had a good job as a CPA so spousal maintenance was not a consideration. My father signed over the house to her and since it was paid off long ago, she had minimal expenses. She agreed to not touch his law partnership and they parted ways. My dad felt that he could no longer be in practice with Don Franks so he exercised an option that forced Don to either buy him out or disband the law practice. Don bought him out and my father moved to Austin and became of counsel to Bonham, McLeod, & Garcia; the oldest law firm in Texas.

Eventually, Kate and DKR ran out of ways to drag the divorce out. I signed over the house to Kate. I sold my business for a pittance (basically the value of the land, building, and equipment) and gave Kate half the proceeds. Kate also received half ownership of my patents. I took a step further and agreed to sign over the patents to her in full with the agreement that this ended things and she would sign the papers. Every roadblock that they threw my way, I acquiesced to. There would be no further attempts to extract additional money or property from me.

This was it.

Finito.

Done.

The divorce was finalized three months later.

++++

By the time the divorce was finalized, I too had moved to Austin. I purchased a condo on Lake Travis within walking distance of a number of restaurants and shops. The twins visited several times a week for dinner and frequently brought their friends. They made frequent use of the condo complex swimming pool and on any given weekend there was any number of bikini-clad coeds going in and out of my condo. I was amazed at how many helpful young men lived in Austin. Every weekend I received offers to help with any and all projects that I may need done around the condo. Of course, the fact that there would likely be a half dozen, skimpily attired coeds around had nothing to do with it.

Six months after the divorce was finalized the twins, me and my father were having a glass of wine on the deck of my condo. I had grilled kabobs and made a rice pilaf along with a salad for dinner. I could tell that something was bothering the girls and finally just came out and asked them what was wrong.

"Mom called this morning," Taylor said.

"Oh? How is your mother doing these days?" I asked.

"She found out that the patents you assigned to her were almost worthless. It seems some new start-up named PTK, Inc. has patents that render the old patents obsolete. Every company that was licensing them is allowing their old licenses to sunset so they can license the new patents."

No one had ever heard of PTK, Inc. It's just an amazing coincidence that the first letters of Peter, Taylor, and Kendal make up the name of PTK, Inc. They both smirked at me. I just raised my wine glass in salute to having two very bright daughters.

"But that's not why she called," Kendal said. She had tears in her eyes. "She's getting married next Saturday and wants us to come to the wedding."

I slowly shook my head. "Who didn't see that coming?" I asked into the night. I did not get an answer.

My daughters had wished their mother good luck with her upcoming nuptials but explained that they would not be attending. They did not approve and did not wish to have any sort of relationship with her new husband. They said that Kate was sad but she understood.

"Mom takes full responsibility for blowing up her marriage. She knows it was the biggest mistake of her life. Except Pop-Pop here," she said with a nod to their grandfather, "our grandparents have enabled her or egged her on. I can't figure out why they have such hostility to you."

My father finally spoke up. "It's because you turned your back on their little princess. Don't get me wrong, I love Kate, or at least I did before all this went down. But she's always been spoiled. First by her parents, and I'm including your mother in that group. Then by you. She never learned how to adult. She's always had someone looking out for her. I'm worried about her. She should not be getting married. At least not this soon. And not to this guy."

But of course, the wedding went on. As the daughter of a prominent Fort Worth attorney, the wedding made the society pages. What was not mentioned was the bride's first husband. Or two college-age daughters.

Also not mentioned was the bride's suicide attempt on her wedding night.

++++

On Saturday night, while Kate was marrying Dipshit. I had settled in on my deck for the evening with a bottle of Garrison Brothers Small Batch bourbon and a cigar. I was in a melancholy mood and had brought my guitar out on the deck with me. I seldom played the guitar and only sang in the car or the shower, but when I am feeling down, the guitar inevitably comes out along with the bourbon. I had not touched the guitar in over a year and had stumbled a bit trying to play the opening to Guy Clark's "LA Freeway." It's a song that at one time I could play in my sleep, but struggled with now. I had just played the song non-stop with no (or at least minimal) mistakes when my phone started vibrating. And ringing. And vibrating. So multiple calls came through all at once from the twins and my father. I declined my dad and answered Taylor's call.

"Dad, have you heard?" she asked with no hello or preliminaries.

"Heard what?"

"Hang on; Kendal was leaving you a voicemail." I could hear Taylor call out to her sister; "K, I have Dad on the phone." Then to me, "Dad, I'm putting you on speaker. Okay, we're both here. Mom tried to kill herself tonight." I could hear Kendal sobbing in the background and Taylor trying to keep herself together.

"What happened?"

"She took a whole bottle of sleeping pills and lay down in the bathtub. This was during her wedding reception. She snuck out, went to her room, and tried to kill herself. Emily and Mom went looking for her and made housekeeping go into the room to do a welfare check, otherwise, she would be dead."

I exhaled slowly. I knew that Kate was derailing her life by her actions, but this was bad. This was very bad.

"It's a good thing she has family close by to help her get through this. Sucks for her new husband." I was sad for my ex-wife but as the saying goes, not my monkeys, not my circus. Or the Texas version, not by cows, not my pasture.

"Can we drive up with you?" they asked. "Are you going tonight or in the morning?"

"Uh,.." I was caught off guard by their question. "I don't plan on going up there at all. I don't wish your mother any ill will, but she fired me from the job of being her husband. If y'all don't want to drive, I'll pay for your plane tickets and take you to the airport. I'm sure one of the grandparents can pick you up."

They were not happy about that and made their feeling known.

+++

The next morning found the four of us on I35 headed north towards Dallas. I was surprised that my dad wanted to come. He said that he wouldn't have missed the shitshow.

I dropped my dad off at the Hilton so he could get us checked in and I drove the girls to the hospital.

The receptionist directed us to the waiting room and the first person I saw was Dipshit sitting by himself staring morosely at the floor. My mother saw me and approached with fire in her eyes.

"This is on you!" she said. "All you had to do..." was as far as she got before my daughters were in her face.

"You need to back the fuck up you crazy old bitch!" Taylor said.

"Yeah, back off Mimi," Kendal said. "This is all on Mom. She lied and cheated on our dad. She got engaged; ENGAGED, to the man she was cheating with. She continued to see him while faking a reconciliation with Daddy and then she ends up marrying the ASSHOLE. And then tries to kill herself. So, tell us, my dear sweet grandmother; how is any of this bullshit our dad's fault?"

My mother seemed to collapse in on herself as she sat and started sobbing. Emily sat next to her and they cried in each other's arms.

Don put his hand on my shoulder.

"None of this is your fault, Pete. Everything that has gone wrong is either her fault or our fault. We should have shut this asshole down the first time he came around after you and the girls left. It's to our shame that we let him stick around."

Dipshit glared balefully at us as we discussed him.

"What's going to happen to her?" I asked Frank.

"We'll take her home and get her some help. She's in desperate need of therapy."

"I'll take her home with me," Dipshit stood up and faced us. "She's my wife."

"Go fuck yourself," I said. "She may decide to go to you one day, but today is not that day."

Don interjected himself between us. He explained that Kate was going home to her mother where she could be looked after. If Kate wanted to continue to be married, then she could make that decision when her mental health improved.

Dipshit didn't like that answer and stormed off.

Shortly after this, my daughters were allowed to see their mother. They came back to the waiting room after fifteen minutes and hugged me while crying softly.

"Mom wants to see you, Daddy," Kendal said.

My mother, Emily, and Don all looked at me with hope in their eyes.

"Please, Pete," Don said. "It'll be good for her."

I shook my head sadly. "I can't do that. I'm not a relative and I'm not a friend. I'm just someone that she used to be married to."

The three of them started crying as my statement hung in the air.

I turned and walked out of the hospital. Four days later we were back in Austin.

+++

Before we left Fort Worth, I had a discussion with Don about what happened after I moved to Austin.

When Kate and Dipshit found out the patents that I had signed over to them were worthless, their plans quickly unwound. Kate had envisioned that her lifestyle would change little. Dipshit had thought that he had hit the jackpot. A gorgeous wife and a thriving manufacturing company were his golden ticket to a life that he had only dreamed about. He would quit teaching and run his wife's company.

First, they found out I sold my company for pennies on the dollar. Since I sold it to the employees, there was nothing they could do. Then they found out my patents were being replaced by newer patents that were in no way based on the old patents so there was no infringement.

They were going to have to keep grinding it out as school teachers. This was a bigger deal for Dipshit. Kate felt that she deserved every bad thing that happened to her. She was ashamed of her cheating. She was ashamed that she lied and deceived me. She was ashamed that she fought the divorce and caused me more pain and suffering.