Too Late to Say Goodbye

"Why serve in Heaven, when you can rule in Hell?" he asked. "You have your own company that you could be running right now. You would run the company. Hell, you would own the company. I know we don't get along but according to my doctors, I'll be dead in a year. I'll leave everything to you. Your hoidy-toidy brothers don't care what happens as long as they get their fucking allowance. Neither of them has so much as set foot in the place in over ten years. It's all yours Mark."

He lasted far longer than the doctors ever thought. He lasted for three years. He was actually around to see the birth of his granddaughter. I learned a lot from my dad in those three years. I learned that the company had lost a lot of money only once in its entire history. And that was due to my dad having to pay my step mom a lump sum payment for their divorce. After that, my dad never trusted anyone again. That was the reason that the company was part of a family trust. It meant that it couldn't be considered community property for any of us so in the event of a divorce, neither my wife when I got one, or either of my brother's wives, could get so much as a nickel from the company.

He also taught me the value of creative accounting. On the books, my dad made two hundred dollars a week. If you look at dollars and cents, my dad lived a lifestyle more consistent with someone who made over a hundred thousand dollars a year. There were several discretionary accounts in the company budget that he could draw on for anything including mortgage payments or anything he wanted to buy. But after that one divorce he'd gone through, he was never going to give a woman a quarter if he could avoid it. So even if his next wife got half of his income, she'd only get a hundred dollars a week. I later learned the value of that.

But that day, when I pulled up in front of Lori's apartment building, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that she lived in a place that run-down. I'd been running our company for about three months then. I'd only made two large purchases. One was my house. The other was my car. I'd bought the first of a series of Mustangs back then. I was afraid to park my car in front of her building and leave it.

Luckily, I didn't have to. Lori was sitting outside on a bench beside the door to the building, crying her eyes out when I pulled up. She had one small suitcase and she left it beside the bench while she ran over to me crying.

Todd was still in their apartment. He stuck his head out the window and yelled down to me. "You can keep her this time. She's fucking useless any way. Ever since we met, she's done nothing but sit on her ass waiting for me to make it big so she could sponge off of me. Who needs a woman who's only there when she needs you? Fuck her." Then he laughed. "That is if you can fuck her. I've been with her since she was nineteen and we've only had sex two or three times." Then he closed the window and until recently, I have never seen him again since then.

On the drive to my office, I listened to Lori's horror story. She had been working every available shift she could. She'd just come off of two double shifts in a row. Of the previous twenty four hours, she'd worked sixteen of them. She had come into their apartment to find Todd screwing a fat blond woman with no front teeth. During the confrontation, Todd had told her that she was stupid for expecting him to change overnight. He was still doing the same things he'd done in college. He didn't think he had to stop until they got married which was still a few months away.

He was convinced that he'd done nothing wrong and in fact, had saved them money by doing it in their apartment instead of wasting the money on a motel room that they couldn't afford. While all of that was going on, his toothless blond had pulled a robe around herself and was reading one of Lori's bridal magazines. Lori got realty upset when she noticed that it was her own robe. That was when she'd thrown a few things into a suitcase and called me.

I had to go back to work, so I bought us lunch which we ate in my office. I asked Lori what she wanted to do. I told her that I'd be there with her to do anything she needed. She still didn't want to go back to Missouri even though I offered to pay for a flight for her.

She decided that she just wanted to stay away from Todd for a week or so and then she was going to give him an ultimatum. He either cleaned up his act or they were history. History had never been one of my best subjects in school, but I was looking forward to it then.

We ate our lunch in my office and I gave Lori my credit card and my secretary and sent them to the mall to buy her whatever she needed. I moved her into my guest room and she never left. It was as if we'd never been apart. Somehow, she just never got around to going back to Todd. A few weeks later, I introduced her to my brothers and my step mom at a family gathering.

My step mom told me I shouldn't let Lori get away. "She's the one you should marry," she said.

"Mom, " I said, thinking about Todd. "Lori is..."

"Just waiting for you to ask me," she said, shocking the shit out of me. But I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I dropped down on one knee.

"Lori, I don't have a ring yet, but if you say yes, we'll go first thing in the morning and pick out any ring you want. Will you..."

"Yes!" she screamed before I could even finish. Things moved at a pace that was entirely too rapid after that. My step mom and Lori, with help from my brother's wives, started planning the wedding. The next day she called and explained things to her mother. Her mom and dad flew out the next weekend to meet me and find out why their chosen son in law wasn't marrying Lori.

Her dad went to talk to Todd and when he came back, took me aside and gave me his blessing. No further words were ever spoken about Todd, but I gather he'd done something to really piss Lori's dad off.

For the next twenty something odd years, I'd really thought that I'd succeeded in my pledge to make Lori the happiest woman on earth. But apparently I hadn't.

The drive to Michigan was far shorter than I'd thought. I guess my Mustang ate up the miles as I thought about my life. I did glance at my digital speedometer a couple of times and have to pull back on the speed.

I found a motel close to Dearborn and settled in for a few hours of sleep before I went to the car show.

I'd set my alarm for 8 a.m. and when I heard the ringing coming from my phone I thought it was time for me to wake up. It wasn't. It was only seven and the ringing was my phone.

"Hello," I said, hoarsely. The lack of sleep and the abundance of pain and shock made my voice sound far wearier than I felt.

"I guess you sound like I feel," she said. "Have you calmed down enough that we can talk?"

"Lori, I don't want to talk to you," I said. "For more than twenty five years, I've given you everything I could. There hasn't ever been anything you asked for that I've said no to. I loved you so much, I just wanted us to have a perfect life and..."

"And we have," she said, "And Mark, it's been longer than that. We've been married for twenty-five years, but when you think about it we were together for another two years before that. So if you love me so much why can't we continue to have our perfect life? And Honey, it has been a perfect life. I'm the happiest, luckiest woman on earth, just like you promised. So why can't you just forgive me this once and get back to that."

"Because it was all a fucking lie," I spat. "I heard you and Katey talking yesterday. Whoever you were fucking, it wasn't just some one-time thing. It wasn't idle curiosity or a drunken indiscretion. This was a long time, ongoing, preplanned affair. That means there was some degree of emotional involvement going on, so although I loved you as much as I've always told you, you didn't feel the same way about me. I'm sure to you this all sounds like I'm jealous or whining, but it's hard having your teeth kicked in by the one person you loved and trusted above everyone else."

"But it isn't..." she began.

"But it is," I snapped. "The best thing for you to do Lori, is to do what I told you. Just pack your stuff and get out of my house. Be gone by the time I get home tomorrow. From there we can do all of our talking through the lawyers."

"Mark, what the hell are you talking about?" she snapped. "We've been together for almost thirty years. This isn't worth getting a divorce over. I'll stop and we'll work our way through this. It'll take time. But things will go back to normal."

"That was the stupidest thing you could have said," I told her.

"What?" she asked.

"When you said, "I'll stop," it let me know that this shit is still going on now," I said angrily. "Lori, don't stop. He can have you. Just get the fuck out of my life. In two years I'll be fifty. I don't have any time to waste on lying, cheating whores. I need to find someone to spend the rest of my life with." Before she could say anything else, I hung up the phone.

Since I was up, going back to sleep wasn't an option. I was also angrier than I'd been before she called. When the phone rang again, I was smart enough to look at the screen before I answered it. I let it go to voice mail and then went into the phone's setting and blocked Lori's phone.

I got to the show relatively early. There were already a bunch of cars there and I once I pulled into my assigned spot I started doing the pre-show rituals that everyone else did. I pulled out tire cleaner and tire gel as well as a quick detailer spray and started to wipe down and polish every inch of my car's shiny black and chrome exterior.

After I was done, I walked through the exhibition area and took pictures of a lot of the cars I liked. I smiled at a lot of people but avoided them. Normally, Lori and I would have long conversations with people about our cars and what we were going to do to them. Lori would also talk to some of the wives about girl things. This time I avoided actual conversations because I just wasn't into it.

I did run into a few people that I knew or had met in previous years at that same show. Things were going great until someone asked me where my wife was. I just smiled and said "at home," without elaborating or telling them why.

It was really hard to be polite with casual acquaintances when I was running around with a Lori size hole in my heart. I spent the entire time that I was there walking around and looking at things I might want to do to modify my car. I tried to avoid talking to people as much as I could.

In my mind, I kept thinking that as long as I didn't talk to anyone they'd never know how big a fool I was. I had dinner in my motel room alone and decided to spend another night there. Normally, Lori and I would have driven home immediately after the show. But this time I was in no hurry to get home.

I left early the next morning. I took my time and pulled into my driveway around mid afternoon. To my surprise, Lori's car was still there. My son in law's car was there as well. There was also a rental car. I thought I understood what was going on. I figured that Lori had assumed that I wanted to keep her Cadillac so she'd rented a car. I figured that my son in law was there because he wanted to talk about my daughter's cheating.

From the second I stepped inside the house I realized that I was wrong. Not only was Katey there with Eric, but Lori's parents, who were in their late seventies were there as well. Everyone she could think of was there to prop Lori up.

She was sitting on the sofa with Katey on one side of her and her mother on the other. It seemed as though they were trying to calm her down. "It's going to be okay, Lori," he mother was saying as I walked in.

She looked towards me even before I shut the door.

"Why are you still here?" I asked. Everyone looked around as if they were shocked by the lack of warmth in my tone.

"Look," I said. "You can keep your car. Unlike you I keep my word. So when I gave you the car, it became yours. I'll keep up the payments, but you're going to need to get your own insurance."

"Mark," said my father in law. "We all need to sit down and work this out. The two of you are too happy to split up over a misunderstanding. Ever since I met you, you've been the perfect son in law and a very reasonable man. Over the years, I've always been so glad that she married you instead of that God damned football playing loser she..."

"Dad, I wish right now that she had actually married Todd," I said. "That way I'd have found someone else to spend my life with and I wouldn't be going through this."

"Come on Mark," he smiled. "Every married couple goes through problems. Lori's mom and I almost split up several times over stupid things. There was one time that I went to Vegas and lost my whole pay check and we almost lost the house. Your problem is nothing compared to that."

"So you're telling me that Lori having an affair that has apparently lasted for years is nothing?" I said.

"What?" he asked. "I thought that..."

"Yep," I said. "Your daughter, the one that I've loved and supported for the past twenty five years or so has been having sex with another guy for a long time. I found out yesterday, when she was counseling Katey about how stupid it was for her to do it." Katey's face went white as a sheet.

"Katey, he's lying isn't he?" asked Eric. Katey looked away.

My mother and father in law were both speechless. Lori started crying even louder. It seemed as if she hadn't told her parents. Eric and Katey were loudly arguing. I went upstairs to put my things away.

Lori came up the stairs then. "Are you happy now?" she asked. "You've told my parents your warped view of what's going on. So now my own parents think I'm a whore, too. And you've also ruined your own daughter's marriage as well."

"Look," I said. "The only view I could give your parents is the one I have. You refused to give me any other information on your affair. Not that I want any. I just want you out of my life. And as far as Katey is concerned, I told her that if she didn't tell Eric, I would. I guess she thought I was joking, because it sure looked to me like she hadn't told him."

I walked back down the stairs and out of the house. I calmly opened the garage and pulled my cart of car wash supplies out. I started getting ready to wash my car.

"Son, are you sure this is the time to wash your car?" asked my father in law.

"No matter what else happens, I'm going to work tomorrow," I said. "I have road dust and dirt all over my car. It's too nice a car to leave it dirty."

"But you have to work things out with Lori," he said.

"Nope, things are worked out," I said. "We're done!"

"Just like that?" he asked.

"Just like that," I said. "I tried talking to her. I asked her who the guy was and she wouldn't even tell me that. It seems like protecting him is more important than protecting what I thought was a good marriage. Besides that you have to look at it from my standpoint. Lori was my dream woman. I really thought that I'd hit the jackpot with her. I put everything I had into our marriage only to discover that she's apparently been cheating on me for a long assed time. This wasn't a one-time thing. And when she called me yesterday, I found out that apparently she hasn't stopped. There's nothing here to save. Take her with you when you leave. I'm done wasting my time on her."

"Look, Mark, I'm a lawyer," he said. "I'm really pissed at Lori too. But I do know one thing. I know that my daughter loves you very much. There has to be some way that we can work this out. I've advised her not to leave until she's ordered to by the court. For over twenty years this has been her home. I know you owned it before the two of you got together so the courts will probably let you keep it, but until she's ordered to by the courts, it's not in her best interest to leave. There's also the fact that if the two of you are here together it give you a better chance to work things out."

"I'm also going to try to block the divorce. I'm going to ask the court for counseling. They'll order you to appear in the counseling sessions so that will force the two of you to talk and to work things out."

"There's no way they can make me accept a woman who cheated on me," I said.

"No but she's already agreed to stop, so maybe we can begin trying to work this out," he said.

"Give it your best shot," I said. Then I turned on the hose and started washing my car. Eric left in a huff a few moments after that. Katey came out of the house with tears in her eyes and stood glaring at me.

"How could you?" she asked. I didn't answer, I just continued washing my car. Then I waxed it and cleaned the tires and polished my chrome rims. It seemed like everyone was there in the driveway watching me wash my car.

Then I went back inside the house and packed another suitcase. Lori came over to me. "I'm not leaving," she said. "My dad told me that a good lawyer would advise me to stay in the house. So you're stuck with me, unless you're going to try to physically throw me out. When can we talk?"

"We can't," I said. "And I'm not stupid enough to get physical with you. I'll let the courts remove you from my house. But until then, I'm living somewhere else."

"But, Honey you can't do that," she cried. "We have to fix this."

"It can't be fixed," I said.

"You mean you don't want to fix it," she retorted.

"I'm also not the one who fucked up," I said. "This will eventually all come out. I'll have my lawyer contact your dad as soon as I get one. It will probably be tomorrow. I'll have him call your dad."

"I don't want a..." she began.

"We've been through that," I said.

I actually wasn't nearly as cold or as calm as I seemed. I was really a ball of conflicting emotions and pain. I just didn't want to let any of them know exactly how badly she'd hurt me.

As I drove away from the house, fate intervened. I got a phone call that made me reconsider some of my choices. The call was from a neighbor. He didn't live in the same neighborhood as my home, but he lived down the road from a cabin on the nearby lake that my family had owned for more than thirty years.

He was just calling to remind me that the grass at the cabin was so tall that it was a fire hazard. He wondered if I wanted to pay him to cut it. I told him to go ahead and do it and I'd come up and pay him for doing it the next day.

He told me it was no bother and I could just drop a check in the mail, but I assured him that I was on my way up there at that moment. I couldn't cut the grass myself because I hadn't brought my mower since I was driving my car and it wouldn't fit.

I actually had intended to check into a motel until the whole thing settled and I got Lori out of my house but this seemed like a better idea, especially if she intended to stay in my house until I could legally force her out.

The cabin, though smaller, had all of the amenities of a normal house including cable TV. I just had to call the company to start the service back up. There was even internet service which I could start using as soon as the cable was turned back on. It was the perfect solution.

Of course, there was the problem of the distance. The cabin was forty five minutes away from my house. That meant an hour long commute to and from work every day, but shit, I liked driving my car anyway.

The next morning, after checking the shop floor and making sure that everyone was doing their jobs, I called my lawyer. He only handled business law, but I figured he could refer me to a divorce specialist. The guy he referred me to, was willing to take my case. He suggested drawing up two different sets of papers. The first he'd write up the way I wanted them. I'd file for infidelity and offer Lori nothing. She could keep her car and her personal items and just get the fuck out of my life. I would also sue her paramour for everything we could get. Both of those options were legal in our state.