WHEN WERE MARRIED - BOOK ONE - THE LONG FALL

FOUR LITTLE WORDS Part 8

        

"And to answer what I think your real question is, I've never seen her jerkin off a guy or rubbing his dick. I've never seen her out of control to where it looked like some guy could talk her into leaving the party with him. I can't say for sure she hasn't done anything wrong, but I've never seen her do anything you'd divorce her over. And that's what we're talking about here, right?"

She reached out to grab my hand again and squeezed.

"She is a very beautiful woman, and very hot. Trust me when I say that she's like most hot women. She could have a different man every night without doing more than giving them the right kind of smile. And if she was doing that, I don't think there's any way you wouldn't have found out by now. Maybe she's cheating on you, but if she is, she's being very careful and selective, and I really don't think she is. Just an impression."

I leaned back in my chair and let out a deep breath. I couldn't eat a bite because I had no appetite.

"But what you're telling me is she is a very hot woman who has guys throw themselves at her every time I'm not around, and I'm a dull, sexually unattractive, old man who doesn't excite women. Something seem out of kilter about that picture?"

"People don't stay together just for sex. They stay together for love and companionship and their kids. You guys have built a life together. You think she'd throw that away just for sex?"

"Women do it every day, Cheryl. So do men. It may be only sex, but it's the glue that holds marriages together. And we don't have it anymore."

She just looked at me sadly. I guess there's a limit to how encouraging you can be when you're facing a really shitty situation.

For the rest of the afternoon I waded through the common litany of treachery, stupidity, violence, lust, and lawbreaking that is the lot of any prosecutor and tried not to think about what I'd face when I got home. That was the part that was really beginning to hit me hard. My job is stressful. There's too much violence and filth and ruined lives to deal with every day. Home had always been my refuge, where I could be assured of the love of my wife and children and convince myself every night that the world I lived and worked in was not the real world. And now that refuge, that dream of love and loyalty had started to develop cracks.

I got home at 6:30, not real late for me. A lot of nights I'd be tied up until 8 or 9 and Debbie almost always left a dinner in the fridge or microwave for me when I got home. Sometimes she was home. Other times she'd be out at some meeting or other. There were always a lot of meetings, some business, some more social, but it's all part of the office political game you have to play in any institution. I'd accepted it and even when she came home at 12 or 1, sometimes 2 a.m., it hadn't bothered me. Drinking went on, but it had never bothered me.

I've handled enough cases of infidelity leading to murder or mayhem to know the signs. She had never been exceptionally secretive – taking quick showers or concealing her undergarments or trying to hide her body – or exceptionally sexy, wanting to fuck me when she walked in. I had never checked up on her, it had never occurred to me to, but had inadvertently found out many times from other people that she was where she had said she was supposed to be, and doing what she had said she was doing. And when she was doing things that didn't make me real happy, it was only nights out with friends without telling me about them. I'd never had any indication those nights had led to her breaking the boundaries of our marriage.

What hurt worse than anything else was the unbidden suspicion that now colored the way I thought about her. Where was she now, and who was she with, and how would I know she was telling the truth if she told me? I felt the anger in me growing again. The stupid bitch! All she had to do was laugh off the mis-statement of the last night, make a joke of it, and I would have forgotten about it. Even if she was cheating on me, I'd be fat, happy and ignorant.

Tonight she was out and both the kids were out as well. That was no surprise. I looked around. She usually left a note on the fridge or microwave letting me know where she was if she had to go out. There was nothing. I stood there and just listened. Nothing is as silent as an empty house that usually is filled with the noise of talk, laughter, television shows and radio broadcast songs.

I went to the liquor cabinet and brought out a bottle of Goldschlager. I had never heard of Goldschlager until a few years ago when a friend of Bill Jr.'s had smuggled one into a party for pre-teens. I found it, confiscated it, tried it and found that I loved it. So I always kept a bottle in the cabinet. Of course, it usually takes me three to six months to go through a bottle, but it's great for an occasional drink.

I sipped and walked through the house, making a detour by the two-car garage. Her 2004 Nissan 350Z was parked and cold to the touch. Wherever she was, somebody had come and picked her up.

Eventually I found myself in the big easy chair across from the couch and cattycornered from the Big Screen Television from Hell. I punched it on and settled back into my cocoon with cable news of all the terrible things happening around the world and tried my best to forget about Debbie and where she was and who she was with.

At 9:30 p.m. Bill Jr. – whom we had called BJ since he was a toddler - blew in through the front door, alternatively talking and texting on his cell phone. I called his name a couple of times and when he continued upstairs toward his room I bellowed, "BJ, come here. Now."

He gave me a startled look as if he hadn't even known I was there. After a moment he said into his cellphone, "Gotta go. Old man wants me. Talk to you later." Then he texted a few words and clicked off. Then he looked at me, without moving away from the staircase.

"What?"

His tone irritated me, but he was a teenager.

"Just wanted to talk to you for a sec. You know where your mom is?"

He glanced at me for a second then shifted his gaze back to the staircase. It was obvious he had more important things to do.

"Haven't seen her. That's not unusual, though. She's out a lot."

He gave me a look with the arrogance and worldly wise contempt that only a 14-year-old can muster and said, "She's your wife. Why don't you know where she is?"

I could have done what my old man would have done at that point and popped him upside the head, but my old man had been a 6-2 inch, 240 pound coal miner from West Virginia and he had lived in a simpler time. Bill Jr., or BJ as we and almost everyone called him, was almost as tall as me and sure as hell, if I left any marks Social Services would be out by the next day, I'd be arrested and my mug shot would be plastered on the front of the TU with a headline saying, "Top SA Assistant Arrested For Child Abuse."

So I just shrugged and said, "You got your homework done?"

He was going to turn around and ignore me when I said, "Walk up those stairs without answering that question and you're under house arrest for two weeks."

He stopped and turned in mid-step and looked at me as if I were some grotesque bug that had crawled out from under a rock.

"You're not going to-"

"Try me," I said, using the tone I wield when informing an opposing attorney that the deal I was offering was going to be off the table in 30 seconds.

"Mom won't-"

"What Mom says doesn't count for shit, and you can tell her I said that. You answer my question or forget about running with your friends for two weeks. And if I have to come home early for two weeks, I will."

He took a deep breath. "I got 20 pages to read in English and two pages of problems in Algebra."

"Alright, get upstairs and start on it."

He turned around but he said just loudly enough that I could hear but he could plausibly deny, "God, what a dick. No wonder Mom stays out so much."

He turned around to look at me slyly and I just grinned at him. I think that's what really pissed him off.