Welcomed to the Garden

It was just another day in my shitty life. Went to work. Went home. Ate a cardboard frozen pizza and drank a beer. All because my ex-wife couldn't keep her legs closed.

I didn't invite the snake into my personal Garden of Eden, but I most certainly welcomed it in once it was there.

I am a man... just a stupid, innocent man. I fell for a pretty face. Shit, I practically gave my wife to her. I never saw it coming.

I saw the moving men unloading the truck and was pleased that the empty home next to ours had finally sold. It was very depressing to continually see the darkened empty home next door, especially since the previous owners, the Robertsons, were such a lively family. They had three teenage children and the whole family was active. Other families' children just gravitated to the house, and there was always a lot of noise and laughter coming from the place.

Both my wife and I occasionally peeked out our side windows and watch the furniture get moved in. We watched as a tall, attractive, 30-something woman directed the move. It quickly became apparent that she was a singleton, with no family at all besides herself.

My wife waited two days before approaching the new neighbor with a bottle of white wine and fresh, homemade cinnamon roles. She returned about two hours later, slightly buzzed, with an empty plate. At the time, I could tell she was already in love with Shellane Murphy. Looking back on things with the benefit of time, I was probably on the money, although I hadn't a clue how on target I was.

"Oh my God, Max, she's so beautiful and sexy and smart. You're going to love her when you meet her... just don't love her too much," Astrid giggled.

"That could never happen, babe," I answered. "You know I'm a one-woman man."

"That's my good... Saint Bernard. Loyal and trustworthy," Astrid said.

I went and introduced myself to Shellane two days later when I saw her about to mow her yard. I was also about to mow as well, but before I did I walked over, stuck out my big meaty hand and welcomed her to the neighborhood.

She took my outstretched paw and gave it a solid grip. I was impressed. I was also impressed with her look. I guessed her to be late 30s, like Astrid and myself, and she was probably about 5-8, 125 well-proportioned pounds. She had shoulder-length red hair, radiant green eyes and an hourglass figure topped with large breasts.

I wondered to myself how long it would take before the single guys in the neighborhood would be beating a path to her door.

I went back home and mowed the yard. After I finished, I grabbed a cold beer and went out to the front porch to relax. Astrid was sitting on our porch swing, reading one of her Clive Cussler novels. The woman is an absolute Cussler freak.

"I met the new neighbor before I mowed. She is really an attractive woman. Wonder who's going to be the first guy in the neighborhood to ask her for a date," I said.

When I didn't get an immediate answer, I glanced over at my wife, who seemed to be flushing red. Her brow was furrowed and she had a look on her face I couldn't read.

"None of those jokers are good enough for her!" Astrid snapped.

I was surprised at her vehemence. I didn't think my comment was going to be a fire starter. I figured discretion truly was the better part of valor and didn't respond, sucking down some beer instead.

I work construction and help coach my daughter's AAU soccer team in the summer. MaryJane, MJ for short, has her mother's looks but my body type, being tall for her age and wide across her shoulders. She's also got my take no shit from anybody attitude, which occasionally gets her in trouble. Since she inherited that from me, I know how to put the brakes on her when I have to, which has saved both of us several times as she was growing up. Astrid has always been quick to criticize me when MJ gets too full of herself.

"Damn, Maxwell, she gets that attitude from you. You need to contain her now before she gets going down the wrong road," Astrid has said at least a dozen times in the last few years.

In addition to the tone in her voice, I can always tell when Astrid is pissed at me because she calls me by my full given name. She picked up that from my mother, who has been doing that to me for all of my 38 years. Astrid and my mom are thick as thieves, and there are times where I'm pretty sure my mother loves her more than me. The one thing I'm sure of is that I don't want to get the two of them mad at me at the same time.

Astrid and Shellane grew closer as friends the longer Shellane lived next door. Whether they were at our house or Shellane's, it seemed like they were almost constantly together when they weren't working. I didn't have any problem with their friendship, because Shellane was very friendly to me as well and was certainly easy on the eyes. She was the de facto fourth member of our family.

It was about a year after Shellane moved next door that I got my first feeling that something wasn't quite right in my marriage. I golfed once a month with three friends, and was gone from the house from about six in the morning until about three as we would eat lunch at the club and have a few beers after hitting the little white ball around the course.

When I got back to the house, Astrid wasn't home, which wasn't a big deal, except I noticed that the laundry hadn't been done and Astrid hadn't done her usual shopping. Since her car was home, I figured she and Shellane were doing something and time must have gotten away from her. Not a big deal, except for her reaction to me when she walked in the door about 30 minutes later. Silly me, I was just making conversation.

"Busy day? You and Shellane have a good time?" I asked innocently.

"You checking up on me?" she snapped back at me. "Since when do I have to account for my time to you?"

She never made eye contact with me during this little exchange, and then turned on her heel and walked out of the room. MJ, who was sitting in the room with me, looked at me in shock.

"Whoa! What was that, Dad?" MJ rasped. "Did I miss something real parental there?"

"I have no freakin' idea, baby. I'm as much in the dark as you are. Where's my seeing-eye dog?" I said.

Things didn't thaw too much in the Warnock home during the next two weeks. Astrid spent much of her home time with Shellane, almost neglecting MJ and me. Then came our street's annual block party, a 12-hour affair that featured about a dozen grills working and everyone chipping in with salads and snacks, as well. We rented a bounce house and basketball free throw game and there must have been a dozen Frisbees in the air all day long until it got dark.

As usual, I manned one of the grills with my specialty of barbecue short ribs. I spent much of the first six hours at the grill, leaving only for a few minutes to grab another beer or go for a bathroom break. My daughter and others came over to talk for a bit throughout the day, although my wife never quite made it over to me. I did notice that she spent much of the day almost joined at the hip with Shellane, and I might have been mistaken, but at one point I thought I saw Shellane's hand work its way into the back pocket of Astrid's tight short-shorts.

Additionally, several times during the day I was pretty sure I saw several of the women glancing at Astrid and Shellane and then talking in hushed tones. The whispering women stopped talking and moved apart when they saw me looking in their direction.

I didn't get a chance to really mingle until after the dinner hour, but when I finally started circulating, I had several of the other husbands ask me how I was coping with the relationship between Astrid and Shellane.

"Are you getting your share of that?" asked Dave Baldwin, a neighbor for more than 10 years, while we were sitting at a table stuffing our faces.

Dave was a big goofy guy who was probably the biggest yenta in the neighborhood among the husbands. He usually had the scoop on everything, which many of us found irritating, but for the most part he was harmless and wasn't malicious.

There were six of us sitting at a table and it got quiet when Dave asked me the question. He obviously knew something I didn't, so I bluffed my answer to hopefully get him to shut up.

"Damn, Dave, nobody needs to know that I'm doing both of them every night. That's supposed to be our secret, buddy," I said with a big exaggerated wink.

Everybody but Dave laughed uproariously. Dave just looked at me perplexed.

A few minutes later I grabbed Dave by the back of his neck, gave a strong squeeze and practically dragged him off to an out of the way spot.

"Not cool, Dave, outing me in front of everybody," I hissed at him. "If you know something, stop making an ass out of both of us and speak to me."

"How... could... you... not know?" he asked, looking at me like I was the world's biggest idiot. "Everybody knows what's going on! Even Old Man Lassiter knows, and he's half-dead.

"Everybody's just assumed that you were cool with it because you guys had a trio or something going."

I put my hand out to steady myself on Dave's beefy shoulder. I must have looked as bad as I looked, because when I looked at Dave's face all I could see was abject pity. I never knew the man even had that emotion.

"Oh fuck. I'm sorry, man," he whispered.

After a period of silence that felt like hours but was probably only seconds, I asked the neighborhood gossip to tell me everything he knew... and everything he suspected. Fifteen minutes later, I knew my life would never be the same.

After swearing Dave to silence under penalty of telling his wife about the new $300 fly rod he bought without her knowledge, I spent the rest of the party drinking a large quantity of margaritas. Everyone thought I was the life of the party. I even went so far as to get up and dance with the teens, which I know embarrassed the living shit out of my daughter. Still, no one would have guessed that my heart was ripped out and stomped on earlier in the day.

I woke up the next morning with an epic hangover. Astrid and MJ were watching TV in the family room when I staggered in with a cup of coffee.

"Hey, it's Mr. Goodtime! Wasn't sure you were going to wake up until tomorrow," my daughter gibed.

"Ssshhh! Not quite so loud. Who's the visitor?" I said, nodding in the direction of Astrid.

MJ followed my nod and looked at her mother. I knew that, like me, she knew Astrid hadn't been spending a lot of time at home, but I wondered if she was as clueless as I was about the affair. We would have to have that discussion real soon.

"Oh, that's Mom," she said glibly. "You remember her, don't you? You married her about 15 years ago. Got a beautiful, genius child."

I grinned, which was incredibly challenging given my condition. I could see the look of disgust on Astrid's face. My daughter was jumping into the same bucket of shit that I was already in, even if neither one of us would be able to figure out how I got there.

"I'm going over to Shell's place," Astrid sneered as she rose from her chair.

"Right. Of course you are," MJ responded.

"I don't have to take attitude from my 13-year-old daughter," Astrid bitched. "Talk to your daughter, Maxwell, before I backhand her."

"That will be your last day, Astrid," I said quietly.

"Then talk to her," she said as she left.

"That was... uh, interesting," MJ said.

To say the conversation that followed was bizarre would be an understatement. Like me, MJ sensed something was going on with her mother, but when I told her what Dave had said, she was floored. I felt a little better that it wasn't just me.

"Wow. So Mom's bi," she said. "How trendy. Who knew? Certainly not you, apparently."

"Nope. Didn't have a clue until good old Dave told me what apparently everybody else in the world knew... except for the both of us," I explained. "She and Shellane were pretty blatant yesterday at the block party, and Dave came right out and asked me if all three of us were in some sort of arrangement. She was apparently a little more circumspect around us, at least until yesterday."

"You mean you didn't know your own wife was bi?" she said incredulously.

"You didn't know your own mother was bi?" I asked, mocking her tone.

"Okay, you've got me there," she said, dropping her eyes to the floor.

She looked determined when she raised her eyes back to me.

"So what's the plan, Dad? Subtlety, guerilla warfare, attack straight on?"

"More intelligence gathering, baby. Then attack straight on," I said. "I wouldn't put up with her having an affair with another man. I'm not going to put up with her having an affair with a woman. It's not who I am."

"Can I go with you?"

"Of course, baby. In this state, you're old enough to decide whom you want to live with. But I'm not staying here. Too close to her."

"Can we at least stay in town until I graduate?"

"Absolutely."

I spent much of Sunday researching family law attorneys in our area. Monday morning I made an appointment, and Thursday I met with Lauren Kennedy face to face. By Tuesday of the following week, she had papers ready to serve my darling wife. That was done later that day at the bank where she worked as she was leaving the building on her lunch hour.

"You couldn't wait until I got home to have me served. You just had to embarrass me at work, didn't you?" Astrid yelled at me over the phone just a few minutes after being served.

"Just trying to spread the embarrassment level around. What goes around, comes around," I responded.

"Well, it took you long enough," she rasped before ending the call.

I noted to myself as I hung up that she never apologized, nor said anything about not wanting a divorce. I supposed that should make things easier in the long run.

I had called MJ to warn her about her mother being served so she could be sure to keep her head down. She was in her bedroom when I got home, but quickly came out to give me a welcome home hug and kiss. She gave me the raised eyebrow look as we separated. I just grinned back in return.

Dinner was eerily quiet. MJ tried to converse a little, but when that went nowhere, she was smart enough to quickly finish her meal and head back to her room. Astrid and I then finished our meals in silence and agreed to adjourn to the family room to have a much-needed discussion. I poured two glasses of wine while she cleared the dinner dishes.

"I guess this is the part where I'd normally apologize for not providing you something in our marriage, but it's pretty obvious to me that there's nothing I could provide you. How long have you known you were bisexual? Did you know before we were married?"

"I didn't plan this," Astrid said. "I had no idea... I am bi... I like women, too. She's beautiful... and sexy. You know that. It just happened..."

"Again and again and again," I interrupted as she scowled at me. "How come MJ and I are the last to find out? It would have been nice not to have everyone in the neighborhood looking at us with pity or ridicule."

She dropped her eyes to the carpet as she blushed profusely.

"Do you know how humiliating it was for me when Dave asked me during the party if the three of us were in some sort of love triangle? He did it at a table full of neighbors..."

"I'm really sorry, Max. I didn't realize we weren't exactly being discreet when you and MJ weren't around," Astrid said.

"So MJ knows now, too. God, I'd bet she's pissed as hell at me. A woman."

"No, she feels almost the same as me. The woman thing doesn't matter near as much as the fact that you cheated on me. You broke your vows... you remember taking those vows 15 years ago? Doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. You made vows with me," I said.

"And these last several weeks you've not only trashed your vows, but you've completely dishonored your family..."

Just then the doorbell rang. Surprise. Astrid answered the door and came back with Shellane. Shellane was following behind, holding onto one of Astrid's hands. They sat down together on the sofa while I remained in my La-Z-Boy.

"I-I'm sorry, Max. Really. We should have done this better. We really didn't plan this," Shellane said.

"That at least is obvious," I replied. "But I've got to tell you, Shell, that if you were a man I'd be out of this chair pounding you senseless. The only reason I'm still sitting here is because I was taught to never hit a woman. But I'm rethinking that real hard right now.

"You knew Astrid was a married woman. When things started getting... tense, you... you both should have backed up and taken a long look at things. You two have blown up my marriage and our family. I love you, Astrid. We deserved better."

"You're right," Astrid whispered.

At least we had a civilized divorce. I bought a smaller house on the other side of town and MJ moved in with me. Astrid had liberal visitation. It took MJ a while to warm back up to her mother, but she eventually did, and she and Shellane even developed somewhat of a warm relationship.

"They're really sort of cute together, Dad," MJ told me one day. "They're almost like a couple of teenagers. They play kissy-face and they touch and hug each other a lot when they don't think I can see. Ooh, I guess I shouldn't have said that."

I wasn't exactly smiling and I knew MJ felt bad, probably because she felt like she was betraying me. I didn't want her to feel like she needed to take sides.

"It's okay, baby, as long as they don't do anything in front of you that you wouldn't do in front of them. Got it?" I said. "And I don't need nor want to hear anything about their relationship. She's your mother, and always will be, but she's no longer my wife. She cheated on me. End of story."

"Got it, Dad.

"When are you going to find somebody?"

"Not really looking right now, kid. Might take me a while to have enough guts to get back on the horse."

I guess I didn't get back on the horse fast enough to make MJ happy, because she gave me a push. She had made the high school girls' varsity soccer team, and as usual, I was able to make most of her games. I was sitting by myself watching during the third game of the season when I felt somebody sit down next to me on the metal bleachers. By the perfume I could smell, I knew it was a woman, but I ignored her for the next few minutes.

"Yeah, your daughter said you'd probably ignore me," said a voice that sounded remarkably like Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks.

Intrigued by the sound, I turned to my left to look at the owner of said voice... and instantly lost my ability to speak. Woo! This woman was seriously hot... and she was talking to me.

"Um... ahh... I."

Son of a bitch! I was 15 years old again. The little brain started to get hard, and the big brain completely stopped working.

"Wow. MJ has you down cold. First she predicted you'd ignore me, then you'd clam up like a virgin on a first date," that voice said.

I know I blushed. I took a couple of really deep breaths.

"Come on, Max. You can do this," I thought as I sat there.

"You are absolutely stunning. Where on earth did you come from?" I said aloud, while inwardly I was kicking myself.

I was guessing she was a couple of years older than myself, 45 at the most, but that was only because I figured her to be another player's parent. Otherwise, my guess would have been 35 at the most. Her raven hair was done up in a high ponytail, and she wore only the slightest bit of makeup on her lightly-tanned face. As it was a fairly warm day in late August, she wore a Glenn soccermom T-shirt that she filled out well, and her short, tight jean shorts showed off a pair of athletic legs.

And just at that point, I noticed she was watching my appraisal... smooth move, Romeo.

"Are you always this obvious, or is this just for me?" she asked somewhat sarcastically. "And for the record, I came from the parking lot, just like everybody else."