Firsts
The pool was calm and warm. The evening air was cool and the moon shone through the pine trees along the back of the yard. I held my breath and dove under the water. I could see the shimmering of the floodlight mounted on the back of the house. Under the water, everything was quiet, serene. It was like being in another world and for a few seconds I imagined that I was a mermaid, gliding through the ocean.
My reverie was broken as I came out of the water with my head back to slick my hair out of my face. It was a quiet evening and I was feeling happy about my decision. I’d finally decided to go back to school, but I was going to go to IU instead of Ball State. I’d been studying, no attending, no enrolled at Ball State University for two years and I wasn’t getting anywhere. My honors courses were over and my scholarship had gone bust. I suppose I didn’t apply myself the way I should have, because I really hadn’t achieved my potential. I knew that my parents were disappointed in my performance there. It was time to do something different.
Moving back home to Rising Sun wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t have been particularly welcomed and I can’t imagine that I would’ve been happy with that decision either. No, Dylan and Becky were right. Transferring to IU was the right thing to do and the timing was right. Nothing held me in Muncie anymore. The Photographer and I were over and he’d been gone a whole year anyway. My friends and I partied more than we studied and that wasn’t destined to change. A new start was just what I needed.
I was still reeling from the break up with The Photographer, but spending time with Dylan was helping ease the pain. Up to this point, I’d never been so in love with and so wrapped up in anyone the way I was with The Photographer. I dreamed about him, saw him in any tall, dark guy and yearned for him in a way that I was too disgusted to admit. Nearly every guy that I hooked up with after him was compared to him. None lived up to the image of him that I carried so deeply ingrained in my heart and head. I was a mess.
I did my share of sleeping around that summer of 1986. It was truly a wild summer. Looking back, it was quite sickening and I even hate to put the words on paper, but the amount of drinking, smoking and fucking was just out of control. And, oh my, what delicious fun. Everyone should have a summer like that, except my children, of course.
I had nearly driven my friends crazy that summer as I obsessed over The Photographer. My best friend Beth and I went out nearly every night as I tried to chase him out of my mind. The heart was another matter. As I drank and danced and had sex with those other guys, he was there. Beth was such a great friend. She listened to me and never judged me as I tried to work through the hurt. We had so much fun that summer, but underneath, she knew that I was thinking about him and would have given it all up in a blink to have been with him. Yuck, I was that kind of a friend. I would have dropped my girlfriend for a guy. No THAT guy. But I didn’t get the chance and Beth and I were able to sail through that summer in a tanned haze of sun, and sex.
Toward the middle of the summer, I hooked up with Dylan. He tagged along with Beth and me, at our request, as we went out for Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati treat. During the ride home, he worked up the nerve to ask me out and I accepted. After that, we started to see each other and he was instrumental in my decision to change schools. He went to IU and the idea of already having the guy thing worked out was quite appealing.
In all of Rising Sun, Dylan was the best of the datable guys. He was funny and intelligent and he seemed more worldly than most of the guys I knew. Sadly, he was a raging fan of Ronald Reagan and had more in common with Alex Keaton than I would have liked to admit. He dreamed of flying fighter jets. And he had that ambition before the movie Top Gun came out and took the country by storm. But I could overlook all that. He was fun to be with and he looked good. Besides, my obsession with The Photographer was still lurking near the surface. I was excited to be in a new relationship, but was in no way ready to banish all thoughts of him, to give up the hope that we’d get back together and Dylan seemed happy to just “date.”
Back in high school, we dated, but briefly. Our date consisted of going to a dance together. I was a sophomore with a driver’s license and he was a freshman. We had a good time and closed the evening with an extended kissing session in the front seat of my white Mercury Bobcat. That was all there was to it, shortly after, I started seeing a guy that I ended up dating for two years.
This time, we were a little older and more experienced. Things moved quickly. Our first official date ended in a sweaty session on an old blanket in the weeds next to his long, gravel driveway.
I spent a lot of time in the pool that summer. Once Dylan came onto the scene, it seemed that time sped up and the summer was coming to a quick end. One afternoon he joined me in the pool. My parents were at work and my brother was gone. After swimming for a bit, we climbed out of the pool and lay on a blanket in the yard. As I lay there with the sun making my skin prickle, Dylan traced my body with his fingertips. I kept my eyes closed and soaked up the sensation. No one had ever touched me like that – it was almost surreal. Then he stopped. I opened my eyes and looked at him. His eyes were hazel like mine. He held my gaze for a few seconds before he closed his eyes and moaned softly.
I raised myself up from the blanket and held out my hand. He followed me inside where we fumblingly stripped off one another’s swimsuits. He stood there pressing against me as he kissed me deeply. He ran his fingers through my damp hair and touched my face. I could feel how much he wanted to be inside me and I was ready, but I wanted to prolong the buildup, wait for just the right moment.
Thinking back on it now, I can’t help but smile. It was good. Very good. Snatches of the time stay with me as clear as it happened yesterday. I can see us lying in my bed in my tiny dorm room shortly after we moved back to school for the year. We fucked more than once that night, but the thing I remember most was when Dylan rolled over onto his side and squeezed me against him and said “I love you, Liza.” I can still feel the intensity of the moment and the pure joy that I felt when he said that.
Dream guy or not, it didn’t last. Chalk it up to bad karma, bad timing or bad behavior. It didn’t last and that’s too bad because we might have been wonderful together. Years later, we rediscovered each other. Much time had passed and many things had changed for us both. We were married to other people and had children. We’d both lived in other places and traveled some outside the country. When we first spoke after all that time, we discovered that in some ways our lives had been parallel.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Stories My Mother Should Never Read Part Two
Seconds
Dylan and his now ex-wife got married in the same chapel on the Indiana University campus that saw the union of The Honey and me. Each of us married in August, me in 1988, Dylan in 1989. We followed our spouses who had “the jobs” and had been reasonably happy to do so for a while. The Honey and I were living in Chicago with two kids and Dylan had just moved back to Rising Sun after living in Tokyo with his wife and daughter.
It was odd to me that Dylan would move back to Rising Sun after having been away. But he seemed to have a plan. He’d gotten his law degree and his wife was in the military. He was going to set up his practice as she finished her tour of duty, then she was to move to good old R.S., too.
I as working for a very large membership organization at the time and was feeling stymied in my ability to move up the hierarchy. The Honey was managing a retail store and working long, long hours. I was restless and Dylan was at loose ends, as well.
As we renewed our friendship, we discovered that we had some unfinished business. When we stopped seeing each other back in college, we’d never really officially “broken up.” We just slowed down and then gave out. Dylan was going through fraternity rush and stood me up one night to go to a frat function. That was it for me. Back then I could afford to be picky about how I was treated. My options were wide open.
As we talked on the phone long distance, we discovered that there was still a spark of interest there, but we knew that we couldn’t act on it. We were both married, if not necessarily happy, and our spouses didn’t deserve to be hurt. We decided that I could be the Elaine to his Jerry. We’d have to find a role for my husband and his wife, but that would work itself out eventually.
The more we talked, the more I wanted to be that mermaid in the pool again. But the pool was gone, the house I grew up in sold. I had responsibilities and people who counted on me to do the right thing. Dylan was busy getting his law practice established and shuttling back and forth to Illinois to see his wife and daughter who’d moved back stateside. We kept up the marathon phone sessions and that was enough.
Back then, though we’ve never really talked about it, my husband could feel that I was slipping away. The more I pulled away, the tighter he held on. He was doing his best to make me happy, but that was nearly impossible in those days. I was struggling with a desire to recapture my past. A feeling from my past. That moment of pure joy when I was squeezed and heard the words “I love you, Liza.”
About four months into the rekindled relationship, Dylan told me that his wife had signed up for another tour of duty without discussing it with him first. She admitted that she didn’t want to move to Rising Sun and didn’t see herself playing the happy wifey to the town’s hot, young attorney. I was sick with envy. At the time my family was drowning in debt and never had any disposable income, I would have done anything to be married to a guy with good credit, a clear future and a leg up the economic ladder.
But, I reasoned, he was hers to give up. Now he was fair game. And he wanted me. Problem was he liked my husband too much to hurt him. What would be the right thing to do? I dawdled. I hemmed and hawed. I played phone sex games with him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then he started having sex with his divorce clients.
Then he met someone who became more than casual sex. She was an old friend of his soon to be ex-wife’s. An old roommate to be exact. They began to date. But, wait, I missed a step. Back up….
In the summer of 1997, I gave in to pressure from my mother and Dylan, I suppose, and applied for a job back in good old R.S. I got the job and had to decide if I wanted to go back. I’d be giving up a good, no a great job, at the leading membership organization in the country. It was a huge risk. I, of course, did my thinking with my stupid, stupid heart. If ever there was a time when I should have listened to what was in my head, it was then. Ah, wicked hindsight.
So I upended our lives and moved to my old hometown. It was a fun, fun time with Dylan. We lived like we were in college again. There were no spouses. There were no kids. There was no house to clean since I was living with my parents. Only jobs and hanging out. We were Jerry and Elaine. It was fabulous. It was short-lived.
Back to Dylan and his soon to be ex-wife’s old roommate. They saw each other at a baseball game, a restaurant, I don’t recall. But they started to date and it moved quickly into serious territory. And I was happy for them. Really. I was off the hook. I wasn’t going to cross the line that was coming so close now. I was pulled back to the safety of my marriage. And soon The Honey and the kids would be moving to R.S., too, and we’d be a happy, sophisticated quartet of friends slumming in the small town.
Jump ahead. My family moved back to Chicago, me with them. The old hometown job turned out to be a disaster and our house hadn’t sold. It was easy to flee back to the big city. Dylan and his girlfriend stayed together for a little while. His wife filed for a divorce. He kept fucking his divorce clients like a giddy teenager who’d just discovered sex. He’d call The Honey and me and tell us about his escapades. We were all in on the joke.
The world kept turning. We drifted in and out of each other’s lives. Sometimes we were on, other times, we’d go long, long stretches between chats. I had another baby. He gained custody of his daughter so that his wife could pursue her military career unencumbered. He called about his girlfriends. The Honey and I knew things were getting serious between him and his girl of the month when he took out of town trips with them. Then he did the big thing that we still talk about from time to time….he took one girlfriend to New York City and proposed.
The Honey and I were shocked by this news. Dylan was supposed to be a newly confirmed bachelor. Freshly minted d-i-v-o-r-c-e-d meat. It was common knowledge that he was waiting out our marriage so that he could have another go with me. How could he have possibly gotten so swept up in the romance of New York City that he’d go and do something like propose? I was silently crushed. I liked the idea of having someone want me from afar.
The engagement, too, turned out to be short-lived. Not long after Dylan’s new fiancee moved in and the wedding plans became real, he was calling in panic. What had he done? He wanted out. Fortunately for him, he had a habit of hooking up with women who didn’t need to be told twice. He stood me up once and that was it for me. As soon as she picked up the bad vibes from Dylan, his fiancée packed her bags, returned the ring and split. I admired her resolve. No pussyfooting around for that girl. Dylan went back to fucking his clients and calling to give The Honey and me the gruesome details.
Dylan and his now ex-wife got married in the same chapel on the Indiana University campus that saw the union of The Honey and me. Each of us married in August, me in 1988, Dylan in 1989. We followed our spouses who had “the jobs” and had been reasonably happy to do so for a while. The Honey and I were living in Chicago with two kids and Dylan had just moved back to Rising Sun after living in Tokyo with his wife and daughter.
It was odd to me that Dylan would move back to Rising Sun after having been away. But he seemed to have a plan. He’d gotten his law degree and his wife was in the military. He was going to set up his practice as she finished her tour of duty, then she was to move to good old R.S., too.
I as working for a very large membership organization at the time and was feeling stymied in my ability to move up the hierarchy. The Honey was managing a retail store and working long, long hours. I was restless and Dylan was at loose ends, as well.
As we renewed our friendship, we discovered that we had some unfinished business. When we stopped seeing each other back in college, we’d never really officially “broken up.” We just slowed down and then gave out. Dylan was going through fraternity rush and stood me up one night to go to a frat function. That was it for me. Back then I could afford to be picky about how I was treated. My options were wide open.
As we talked on the phone long distance, we discovered that there was still a spark of interest there, but we knew that we couldn’t act on it. We were both married, if not necessarily happy, and our spouses didn’t deserve to be hurt. We decided that I could be the Elaine to his Jerry. We’d have to find a role for my husband and his wife, but that would work itself out eventually.
The more we talked, the more I wanted to be that mermaid in the pool again. But the pool was gone, the house I grew up in sold. I had responsibilities and people who counted on me to do the right thing. Dylan was busy getting his law practice established and shuttling back and forth to Illinois to see his wife and daughter who’d moved back stateside. We kept up the marathon phone sessions and that was enough.
Back then, though we’ve never really talked about it, my husband could feel that I was slipping away. The more I pulled away, the tighter he held on. He was doing his best to make me happy, but that was nearly impossible in those days. I was struggling with a desire to recapture my past. A feeling from my past. That moment of pure joy when I was squeezed and heard the words “I love you, Liza.”
About four months into the rekindled relationship, Dylan told me that his wife had signed up for another tour of duty without discussing it with him first. She admitted that she didn’t want to move to Rising Sun and didn’t see herself playing the happy wifey to the town’s hot, young attorney. I was sick with envy. At the time my family was drowning in debt and never had any disposable income, I would have done anything to be married to a guy with good credit, a clear future and a leg up the economic ladder.
But, I reasoned, he was hers to give up. Now he was fair game. And he wanted me. Problem was he liked my husband too much to hurt him. What would be the right thing to do? I dawdled. I hemmed and hawed. I played phone sex games with him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then he started having sex with his divorce clients.
Then he met someone who became more than casual sex. She was an old friend of his soon to be ex-wife’s. An old roommate to be exact. They began to date. But, wait, I missed a step. Back up….
In the summer of 1997, I gave in to pressure from my mother and Dylan, I suppose, and applied for a job back in good old R.S. I got the job and had to decide if I wanted to go back. I’d be giving up a good, no a great job, at the leading membership organization in the country. It was a huge risk. I, of course, did my thinking with my stupid, stupid heart. If ever there was a time when I should have listened to what was in my head, it was then. Ah, wicked hindsight.
So I upended our lives and moved to my old hometown. It was a fun, fun time with Dylan. We lived like we were in college again. There were no spouses. There were no kids. There was no house to clean since I was living with my parents. Only jobs and hanging out. We were Jerry and Elaine. It was fabulous. It was short-lived.
Back to Dylan and his soon to be ex-wife’s old roommate. They saw each other at a baseball game, a restaurant, I don’t recall. But they started to date and it moved quickly into serious territory. And I was happy for them. Really. I was off the hook. I wasn’t going to cross the line that was coming so close now. I was pulled back to the safety of my marriage. And soon The Honey and the kids would be moving to R.S., too, and we’d be a happy, sophisticated quartet of friends slumming in the small town.
Jump ahead. My family moved back to Chicago, me with them. The old hometown job turned out to be a disaster and our house hadn’t sold. It was easy to flee back to the big city. Dylan and his girlfriend stayed together for a little while. His wife filed for a divorce. He kept fucking his divorce clients like a giddy teenager who’d just discovered sex. He’d call The Honey and me and tell us about his escapades. We were all in on the joke.
The world kept turning. We drifted in and out of each other’s lives. Sometimes we were on, other times, we’d go long, long stretches between chats. I had another baby. He gained custody of his daughter so that his wife could pursue her military career unencumbered. He called about his girlfriends. The Honey and I knew things were getting serious between him and his girl of the month when he took out of town trips with them. Then he did the big thing that we still talk about from time to time….he took one girlfriend to New York City and proposed.
The Honey and I were shocked by this news. Dylan was supposed to be a newly confirmed bachelor. Freshly minted d-i-v-o-r-c-e-d meat. It was common knowledge that he was waiting out our marriage so that he could have another go with me. How could he have possibly gotten so swept up in the romance of New York City that he’d go and do something like propose? I was silently crushed. I liked the idea of having someone want me from afar.
The engagement, too, turned out to be short-lived. Not long after Dylan’s new fiancee moved in and the wedding plans became real, he was calling in panic. What had he done? He wanted out. Fortunately for him, he had a habit of hooking up with women who didn’t need to be told twice. He stood me up once and that was it for me. As soon as she picked up the bad vibes from Dylan, his fiancée packed her bags, returned the ring and split. I admired her resolve. No pussyfooting around for that girl. Dylan went back to fucking his clients and calling to give The Honey and me the gruesome details.
Stories My Mother Should Never Read Part Three
Thirds
On my end things were falling apart. I was walking around angry most of the time because life wasn’t turning out the way I’d pictured it. The Honey and I were now the proud parents of three kids, our credit finally hit rock bottom, and I’d had to finally go back to work at a local association. We spoke to Dylan from time to time, but a long time passed and we didn’t see him. He continued to date a string of women, with one in particular popping up more often. He claimed it wasn’t serious, just steady. He confided that he was still waiting out my marriage, but I took it as an old joke now.
The Honey and I were reaching a breaking point. I was so restless and, looking back, impossible to live with. I was looking for a change, but knew I couldn’t strike out on my own. No money, no prospects, three kids, a bankruptcy and a mediocre job. The Honey was putting up with me, but barely.
Inside, I was still the same silly, insecure girl I’d always been. I thought that finding someone else would be my ticket out of my unhappy marriage. Then, and only then, would ALL my problems disappear.
At my new job, I found that someone rather quickly. He was older than me and lonely. He, too, was restless, in what he described as a boring marriage, asking the age old question ‘is this all there is?’ He had an impressive background, an Ivy League education, a good job, a big house in an expensive suburb, lots of money (compared to me, at least) and would likely earn much more than The Honey ever could. His credit was excellent as I discovered later and he found me wildly attractive. He was clearly in a midlife crisis. He called me his new red sports car.
An innocent flirtation turned into a quick kiss that exploded into a full frontal assault on my senses. My heart raced at the thought of him. I was in a constant state of excitement. When I was with him, I wasn’t anybody’s mommy. He had the advantage of newness, novelty. And my darling husband of twelve years had the stink of mundane, every day life all over him. The Honey never had a chance. The affair blazed through the summer and into early autumn. The Honey knew that something was up and tried his best to romance me. At one point, he “broke into” my car and left a couple of potted Stargazer lilies on the seat with a little love note. We had Stargazer lilies in the centerpiece at our wedding. I was an avid gardener and should have rushed home and kissed him hard for the romantic gesture. Instead I called him up and berated him for trying to make me feel bad about how things were going. I accused my husband of trying to pressure me into being happy with him. It makes me sick now to think of it.
As autumn wore on, we had the big talk. We’d taken a trip with his family to his nephew’s wedding in Mississippi. We were miserable. The kids were really too young for a trip on an Amtrak train and the whole time we were so uncomfortable that we resorted to being overly polite with one another. Then, in a moment when we were alone, we had a big, ugly argument that put things into perspective. We decided to return home early and rented a car for the trip rather than try to put on happy faces and climb aboard the train for the trip home. The ten hour ride home was silent, save for when we spoke to the kids.
That autumn plodded on to a sad close. In November, the kids and I moved out of our home and into a townhouse purchased just for me by Mr. Ivy League. The move took place exactly one week after The Honey was laid off from his job at a computer software company. He told me later that he never felt more like George Costanza.
I missed something. There was a step, an encounter of sorts that should have clued me into the fact that Mr. Ivy League wasn’t going to be The Answer. Midsummer, our company took a trip to Florida. Before that, and even though I was already into the affair with Mr. Ivy League, I was renewing my flirtation with Dylan. Our phone calls became more frequent, and not all were reported to The Honey, as I’d done in the past. In my mind, my marriage was over, so there was no need to narrow the field to just Mr. Ivy League, right?
Dylan and I planned a short rendezvous while I was in Florida. Mr. Ivy Leagues’ wife and kids were going to be there, so I anticipated some downtime. Dylan was going to be in the area and was more than willing to make the drive to Orlando. Well, the trip was worth it, I guess. We had a great time together. I loved the extra thrill of cheating on the guy with whom I was cheating on my husband. Looking back now, not my best moment, but boy did I feel powerful then. Three men wanted me. That was more than I could have asked for. The euphoria of that little trip didn’t last long. Sometime in the midst of the romp with Dylan, I had an awakening of sorts. I think he felt me slip away at that point. It was a quite a sex moment for the old girl. Three guys, each at their appointed time, within a twenty-four hour stretch. For pity's sake, why don't I ask them to pay for it - in cash?
After I left The Honey and the affair with Mr. Ivy League was playing itself out, Dylan and I spoke on the phone more than usual. He was hurt that now that I’d finally gotten myself free of The Honey, I’d already gotten involved with someone else. But I also think that he was relieved. If I were free, without any prospects, would I show up on his doorstep expecting him to make good on his promise of waiting out my marriage? What a nightmare that would have been for him.
The holidays were strange for our family. I overcompensated by buying too many gifts for the children. They have reminded me of it ever since. On Christmas eve, they went with The Honey to his family’s traditional party. They spent the night with him in our house. I was alone. I can’t remember if Mr. Ivy League stopped by or not, but it seems he did.
I don’t remember who initiated the call, but at some point after the family get together, The Honey and I spoke on the phone. We were missing each other and the comfort of the family. He invited me over. At 1am on Christmas morning, I, wearing only my pajamas under a coat, drove our old Toyota MR2 the 20 miles to our house. The Honey and I fucked like crazy that night, while trying to be careful not to wake the kids. What would they have thought to find me back at home in our bed?
On New Year’s Eve, I had the kids. They went to bed around midnight and I was, once again, alone. I remember thinking ‘so this is what it’s like to be the other woman…’ At that point, I’d quit my job so not only was I the other woman, I was also a kept woman. Sadly, though, the person doing the keeping was stingy and controlling. Wish I’d known that before I left my husband for Mr. Ivy League. What good was good credit when you can’t have anything because it’s his money? True, he’d purchased the townhouse for me, for us, eventually. He was even magnanimous enough to let my kids live there with me (what choice did he have?), but that generosity was starting to wear thin. I noticed that he was starting to drop hints about the kids going back to live with The Honey.
“Don’t you think it might be better for your kids to live in their old house? Where they’re familiar with things?”
“What are you saying?”
“I was just thinking about how they’re adjusting….”
As the affair soured, I began to really examine the situation and discovered that I’d missed a vital piece of information about Ivy League.
I still remember the day that he finally convinced me to let him buy me a place to live. It really hadn’t taken much convincing. Over the course of our affair, we had many, many lunches together. Some ended up with me dropping him in the street a couple of blocks from the office so that he could walk the rest of the way back. His pretense for getting out of the office was that he was taking a walk. Good thing. That might have explained why he still looked sweaty. Anyway, many of the lunches ended up at my house between the sheets. Nearly every time we visited my sweet little house on the corner of Prospect and Circle, he commented on how small it was. Or how atrocious the carpeting was, or how the doors didn’t fit the frames and didn’t shut properly……Then one day, he took me by his house, a very large, brick four bedroom on a winding street of a tony suburb. “This is how you should live,” he’d whispered in my ear. “This is what you deserve, not that…..”
It reminded me of something that Dylan had said to me, shortly after he’d bought a new Volvo. I was driving a used Ford Escort. We were joking about it on the phone and he was telling me about his new car. He was so excited and proud of his new status symbol. He was really showing those rubes that we’d grown up with who was boss now. I think I said something like “must be nice…” when he became serious.
“I would never let you drive a Ford Escort,” he said, making it quite clear just how far my choice of auto was beneath his standards. No, strike that. He was deriding the fact that the Escort was the best that The Honey could do for me.
After Mr. Ivy League convinced me, and I convinced myself, that a future with him was more in keeping with the bounty I deserved, he put me to work searching for just the right house. First he threw out the names of suburbs that The Honey and I could never have afforded. I began to search in earnest using the internet. I was amazed at how many wonderful places he could afford. If The Honey and I were househunting, our choices would have been severely limited by our financial situation. That would have been a chore. But with Mr. Ivy League, a world of domestic possibilities awaited me. I was quickly becoming addicted to internet real estate porn.
Finally, it became time to start going out and looking at places. We made up lies and took the day off together to go out looking with a real estate agent. It was a giddy day as we pretended that what we were up to us clean, honest, good. We masqueraded as already divorced people who were looking to move in together. The real estate agent, a lovely woman who was completely onto us, took us to some really beautiful homes. Mr. Ivy League had decided that it would be best for me if we went with a townhouse so that I wouldn’t have to do yard maintenance. I insisted that I’d rather have a house with a yard because I loved gardening and was going to miss my beautiful yard surrounding the little house at Prospect and Circle. Couldn’t we look at houses, too?
Like most arguments, he won that one and we continued to parade through some truly beautiful townhouses. Even without the gardening space, I would have been happy to live in any one of them, but Mr. Ivy League found something wrong with all of them. I continued to search the internet and work with our lovely real estate agent, who was by now starting to drop hints to me about being sure about what I was doing.
One day, the agent called me at the office and asked me if we could get out right away to come see a townhouse that was going to sell quickly. The real estate market was very hot in that area, so Mr. Ivy League agreed to sneak off and go look with me. He seemed unusually excited about seeing this place. I thought that it was because we were taking a real risk leaving the office in the middle of the day.
As we toured the house, Mr. I.L.’s excitement grew. I wasn’t really that happy with this place. It was, by far, the worst that we’d seen. It was in an older development and this particular unit hadn’t been updated since it was originally built in 1980. Where the other places that we’d toured had hardwood floors, wood cabinets, finished basements and Jacuzzi tubs, this place had a dark, cramped kitchen with old fixtures, ugly, old carpet, hideous metal doors, an unfinished basement and no tub in the master bath.
I knew as I came down the stairs that this was the place where I’d be ensconced as Ms. Other Woman. I could feel it.
As Mr. Ivy League did the paperwork with the agent, I looked around the grounds. It wasn’t shabby, but it certainly didn’t feel like home. The back windows looked out on a pretty pond with weeping willows. The kids would like that.
As we drove back to the office, Mr. I.L. was nearly bouncing in his seat. He couldn’t contain himself anymore and confessed that this place was perfect. Perfect! Could I believe that he’d actually made an offer on a house in the same development where he bought his first home twenty years before? What kind of odds could have led to that? This place was just like his old house. It hadn’t even been updated! How cool! He was going to start over and this time….blah, blah, blah.
It wasn’t until we stood, a couple of months later, in the upstairs master bath that I realized what was going on. Something had been nagging at the back of my mind, but I was too afraid, too ashamed to put words to it. I was a do-over.
That night brought the whole thing to a grinding halt. Things had been building. When the kids and I had first moved into the townhouse, Mr. I.L. had declared that he would not come there when the kids were there with me. That soon transformed into he would not be there when the kids were awake. This quickly (I’m talking days here) evolved into ‘I’ll just be your friend stopping by. The kids won’t know that there’s anything else going on…’ Once that happened, he began to come over quite regularly and the more often he did, the more he started to mention how the kids might do better with their dad in the old house.
Looking back, Mr. I.L. was under an enormous strain. He’d taken me and my kids on as boarders in a house that he purchased outside his wife’s knowledge. He was trying to be a good father to his two daughters, while maintaining some pretense with his wife. They were in the midst of planning a major blowout of a Bat Mitzvah for their eldest daughter. Now, these folks ran in some serious money social circles and the pressure to finance a top-notch party was clearly on Mr. Ivy League’s mind. I’m sure he spent plenty of nights staring at the ceiling wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
Meanwhile, my new job (he’d insisted that I leave the place where we worked together – even though it was in my field and he could have done his finance job in any number of industries) was a bomb and he suggested I quit. He’d take care of me. Besides, what kind of man (my husband, for example) would make a woman with small children work?
But as the Bat Mitzvah bills came due, he began to pinch those pennies. I was asking for grocery money and getting kisses instead. He suggested that The Honey pay more since the kids were his. The Honey was unemployed, too, back then. It didn’t take long for some of my bills to be late. The holidays came and I spent too much money on gifts. I was scrounging through coat pockets for change. I constantly had to tell my kids “there’s no money” when they asked for something. We weren’t starving, but we were living on soup and peanut butter and jelly. Then the furnace broke down. A nice man with a gentle face came to fix it and showed me what to do in the future if it shut down. Then he handed me a bill for $300 and stood waiting while I, with shaking hands, wrote him a rubber check. When I next spoke to Mr. I.L., he told me to ask The Honey to cover it.
The night after the Bat Mitzvah, the kids were at The Honey’s and Mr. I.L. came over for a visit. He told me all about the party, the wonderful, expensive food, the giveaways, the music, the booze, the celebrity guests. My stomach growled as he described the Chateaubriand. That night, as he fucked me, I clinched my teeth and thought about what a horrible person I was. I was getting everything I deserved.
Shortly after that, the money loosened up some and he decided that I needed a computer and a desk to put it on. We went out shopping and he got the computer he’d been wanting. Then we went to an office supply store and bought the least expensive desk we could find. “You’re handy,” he said. “You can put it together.” While he went to work at the office that we once both enjoyed going to, I stayed home with my kids, counted my pennies and hoped that I wouldn’t get too many bounced check fees from my most recent mailing of bills. Oh, yeah. I started to put together that desk.
As soon as the desk was put together, Mr. I.L. came by and put the computer together. He was like a kid with a new toy. When he wasn’t around, I surfed the internet, looking for another job.
Come to think of it, that desk was pivotal in my deciding that this guy wasn’t for me. The night he’d come over so that we could go shopping for the desk had started out well enough. He’d moved beyond worrying about what my kids thought. In fact, he’d become quite fond of my youngest daughter who was only a year and a half. I suppose she was young enough that he could pretend that she was his. Maybe some day he’d have some influence over her. The other two, not so much.
It was a cold evening in January. The kids and I were getting ready to go, gathering up coats. Mr. Ivy League came in the back door and started hallooing through the house, noting that a lot of lights were on in empty rooms. I was mildly offended, but let it pass in front of the kids. Who did he think he was?
We took my car and set off for the furniture stores. Every desk I liked was too expensive. The kids were getting tired and I was ready to go home. We made one last stop at an office supply store. I agreed to the cheap, build it yourself desk and we got in line to pay. My son, who was five, began to whine about wanting candy. I told him no. He continued to whine and bump against me. Mr. Ivy League picked him up and held him tightly. I can still remember my son’s eyes pleading with me to get this stranger to put him down.
“Okay. He’s going to be calm now,” I started. Mr. I.L. held on to him.
“Please put him down.” Now my son was jerking and getting ready to kick. Mr. Ivy League just kept holding him and laughed. “I won’t put him down until he says sorry.”
“Put him down.”
It was then that I knew that this would not be somebody that I’d be sharing my life with. Like a neon sign blinking the word “Control Freak” over his head, I saw Mr. Ivy League for what he was.
The best part of the whole affair was the break up. Really. I’d told The Honey about the incident with our son and he insisted that Mr. Ivy League not come around when the kids were home. I realized that this thing could escalate into something truly ugly if I didn’t take action quickly. I reached my breaking point on the phone with Mr. I.L. one afternoon. I told him what The Honey had said and he announced that the kids were going to have to go. He wasn’t ready to be a father to someone else’s kids.
“Fine, but we’re a package deal. I’ll be leaving too.” From there it just got nastier. Mr. Ivy League, Mr. Good Credit, Mr. Generosity, Mr. Mid-Life Crisis, Mr. Do-Over called me a bitch and declared that I’d better not take anything that he’d purchased.
That evening I packed. The next day, The Honey and his brother-in-law came to the townhouse with a U-Haul and loaded it up. We had a good time deciding what to take and what not to. In retrospect, I should have taken a lot more. But I just wanted out – quickly. And I was a little afraid of this guy. He had money and knew people. I didn’t know what he could do to me. What a dope I was and for so many reasons. If I ever knew of anyone in that situation, I’d advise them to pick the place clean. Take everything.
A man with a wife, two kids, a big house in the suburbs and a reputation to protect wasn’t going to come after me for some IKEA furniture and Martha Stewart cookware. My whole world was blown apart, exposed. Everyone, the family, the friends, the husband, the PTO mothers, everyone knew about my screw up. I didn’t have a reputation to lose. I just had a reputation. But Mr. Ivy League still had to go to the office where he’d diddled the help. He was the one who was afraid. I know that now.
On my end things were falling apart. I was walking around angry most of the time because life wasn’t turning out the way I’d pictured it. The Honey and I were now the proud parents of three kids, our credit finally hit rock bottom, and I’d had to finally go back to work at a local association. We spoke to Dylan from time to time, but a long time passed and we didn’t see him. He continued to date a string of women, with one in particular popping up more often. He claimed it wasn’t serious, just steady. He confided that he was still waiting out my marriage, but I took it as an old joke now.
The Honey and I were reaching a breaking point. I was so restless and, looking back, impossible to live with. I was looking for a change, but knew I couldn’t strike out on my own. No money, no prospects, three kids, a bankruptcy and a mediocre job. The Honey was putting up with me, but barely.
Inside, I was still the same silly, insecure girl I’d always been. I thought that finding someone else would be my ticket out of my unhappy marriage. Then, and only then, would ALL my problems disappear.
At my new job, I found that someone rather quickly. He was older than me and lonely. He, too, was restless, in what he described as a boring marriage, asking the age old question ‘is this all there is?’ He had an impressive background, an Ivy League education, a good job, a big house in an expensive suburb, lots of money (compared to me, at least) and would likely earn much more than The Honey ever could. His credit was excellent as I discovered later and he found me wildly attractive. He was clearly in a midlife crisis. He called me his new red sports car.
An innocent flirtation turned into a quick kiss that exploded into a full frontal assault on my senses. My heart raced at the thought of him. I was in a constant state of excitement. When I was with him, I wasn’t anybody’s mommy. He had the advantage of newness, novelty. And my darling husband of twelve years had the stink of mundane, every day life all over him. The Honey never had a chance. The affair blazed through the summer and into early autumn. The Honey knew that something was up and tried his best to romance me. At one point, he “broke into” my car and left a couple of potted Stargazer lilies on the seat with a little love note. We had Stargazer lilies in the centerpiece at our wedding. I was an avid gardener and should have rushed home and kissed him hard for the romantic gesture. Instead I called him up and berated him for trying to make me feel bad about how things were going. I accused my husband of trying to pressure me into being happy with him. It makes me sick now to think of it.
As autumn wore on, we had the big talk. We’d taken a trip with his family to his nephew’s wedding in Mississippi. We were miserable. The kids were really too young for a trip on an Amtrak train and the whole time we were so uncomfortable that we resorted to being overly polite with one another. Then, in a moment when we were alone, we had a big, ugly argument that put things into perspective. We decided to return home early and rented a car for the trip rather than try to put on happy faces and climb aboard the train for the trip home. The ten hour ride home was silent, save for when we spoke to the kids.
That autumn plodded on to a sad close. In November, the kids and I moved out of our home and into a townhouse purchased just for me by Mr. Ivy League. The move took place exactly one week after The Honey was laid off from his job at a computer software company. He told me later that he never felt more like George Costanza.
I missed something. There was a step, an encounter of sorts that should have clued me into the fact that Mr. Ivy League wasn’t going to be The Answer. Midsummer, our company took a trip to Florida. Before that, and even though I was already into the affair with Mr. Ivy League, I was renewing my flirtation with Dylan. Our phone calls became more frequent, and not all were reported to The Honey, as I’d done in the past. In my mind, my marriage was over, so there was no need to narrow the field to just Mr. Ivy League, right?
Dylan and I planned a short rendezvous while I was in Florida. Mr. Ivy Leagues’ wife and kids were going to be there, so I anticipated some downtime. Dylan was going to be in the area and was more than willing to make the drive to Orlando. Well, the trip was worth it, I guess. We had a great time together. I loved the extra thrill of cheating on the guy with whom I was cheating on my husband. Looking back now, not my best moment, but boy did I feel powerful then. Three men wanted me. That was more than I could have asked for. The euphoria of that little trip didn’t last long. Sometime in the midst of the romp with Dylan, I had an awakening of sorts. I think he felt me slip away at that point. It was a quite a sex moment for the old girl. Three guys, each at their appointed time, within a twenty-four hour stretch. For pity's sake, why don't I ask them to pay for it - in cash?
After I left The Honey and the affair with Mr. Ivy League was playing itself out, Dylan and I spoke on the phone more than usual. He was hurt that now that I’d finally gotten myself free of The Honey, I’d already gotten involved with someone else. But I also think that he was relieved. If I were free, without any prospects, would I show up on his doorstep expecting him to make good on his promise of waiting out my marriage? What a nightmare that would have been for him.
The holidays were strange for our family. I overcompensated by buying too many gifts for the children. They have reminded me of it ever since. On Christmas eve, they went with The Honey to his family’s traditional party. They spent the night with him in our house. I was alone. I can’t remember if Mr. Ivy League stopped by or not, but it seems he did.
I don’t remember who initiated the call, but at some point after the family get together, The Honey and I spoke on the phone. We were missing each other and the comfort of the family. He invited me over. At 1am on Christmas morning, I, wearing only my pajamas under a coat, drove our old Toyota MR2 the 20 miles to our house. The Honey and I fucked like crazy that night, while trying to be careful not to wake the kids. What would they have thought to find me back at home in our bed?
On New Year’s Eve, I had the kids. They went to bed around midnight and I was, once again, alone. I remember thinking ‘so this is what it’s like to be the other woman…’ At that point, I’d quit my job so not only was I the other woman, I was also a kept woman. Sadly, though, the person doing the keeping was stingy and controlling. Wish I’d known that before I left my husband for Mr. Ivy League. What good was good credit when you can’t have anything because it’s his money? True, he’d purchased the townhouse for me, for us, eventually. He was even magnanimous enough to let my kids live there with me (what choice did he have?), but that generosity was starting to wear thin. I noticed that he was starting to drop hints about the kids going back to live with The Honey.
“Don’t you think it might be better for your kids to live in their old house? Where they’re familiar with things?”
“What are you saying?”
“I was just thinking about how they’re adjusting….”
As the affair soured, I began to really examine the situation and discovered that I’d missed a vital piece of information about Ivy League.
I still remember the day that he finally convinced me to let him buy me a place to live. It really hadn’t taken much convincing. Over the course of our affair, we had many, many lunches together. Some ended up with me dropping him in the street a couple of blocks from the office so that he could walk the rest of the way back. His pretense for getting out of the office was that he was taking a walk. Good thing. That might have explained why he still looked sweaty. Anyway, many of the lunches ended up at my house between the sheets. Nearly every time we visited my sweet little house on the corner of Prospect and Circle, he commented on how small it was. Or how atrocious the carpeting was, or how the doors didn’t fit the frames and didn’t shut properly……Then one day, he took me by his house, a very large, brick four bedroom on a winding street of a tony suburb. “This is how you should live,” he’d whispered in my ear. “This is what you deserve, not that…..”
It reminded me of something that Dylan had said to me, shortly after he’d bought a new Volvo. I was driving a used Ford Escort. We were joking about it on the phone and he was telling me about his new car. He was so excited and proud of his new status symbol. He was really showing those rubes that we’d grown up with who was boss now. I think I said something like “must be nice…” when he became serious.
“I would never let you drive a Ford Escort,” he said, making it quite clear just how far my choice of auto was beneath his standards. No, strike that. He was deriding the fact that the Escort was the best that The Honey could do for me.
After Mr. Ivy League convinced me, and I convinced myself, that a future with him was more in keeping with the bounty I deserved, he put me to work searching for just the right house. First he threw out the names of suburbs that The Honey and I could never have afforded. I began to search in earnest using the internet. I was amazed at how many wonderful places he could afford. If The Honey and I were househunting, our choices would have been severely limited by our financial situation. That would have been a chore. But with Mr. Ivy League, a world of domestic possibilities awaited me. I was quickly becoming addicted to internet real estate porn.
Finally, it became time to start going out and looking at places. We made up lies and took the day off together to go out looking with a real estate agent. It was a giddy day as we pretended that what we were up to us clean, honest, good. We masqueraded as already divorced people who were looking to move in together. The real estate agent, a lovely woman who was completely onto us, took us to some really beautiful homes. Mr. Ivy League had decided that it would be best for me if we went with a townhouse so that I wouldn’t have to do yard maintenance. I insisted that I’d rather have a house with a yard because I loved gardening and was going to miss my beautiful yard surrounding the little house at Prospect and Circle. Couldn’t we look at houses, too?
Like most arguments, he won that one and we continued to parade through some truly beautiful townhouses. Even without the gardening space, I would have been happy to live in any one of them, but Mr. Ivy League found something wrong with all of them. I continued to search the internet and work with our lovely real estate agent, who was by now starting to drop hints to me about being sure about what I was doing.
One day, the agent called me at the office and asked me if we could get out right away to come see a townhouse that was going to sell quickly. The real estate market was very hot in that area, so Mr. Ivy League agreed to sneak off and go look with me. He seemed unusually excited about seeing this place. I thought that it was because we were taking a real risk leaving the office in the middle of the day.
As we toured the house, Mr. I.L.’s excitement grew. I wasn’t really that happy with this place. It was, by far, the worst that we’d seen. It was in an older development and this particular unit hadn’t been updated since it was originally built in 1980. Where the other places that we’d toured had hardwood floors, wood cabinets, finished basements and Jacuzzi tubs, this place had a dark, cramped kitchen with old fixtures, ugly, old carpet, hideous metal doors, an unfinished basement and no tub in the master bath.
I knew as I came down the stairs that this was the place where I’d be ensconced as Ms. Other Woman. I could feel it.
As Mr. Ivy League did the paperwork with the agent, I looked around the grounds. It wasn’t shabby, but it certainly didn’t feel like home. The back windows looked out on a pretty pond with weeping willows. The kids would like that.
As we drove back to the office, Mr. I.L. was nearly bouncing in his seat. He couldn’t contain himself anymore and confessed that this place was perfect. Perfect! Could I believe that he’d actually made an offer on a house in the same development where he bought his first home twenty years before? What kind of odds could have led to that? This place was just like his old house. It hadn’t even been updated! How cool! He was going to start over and this time….blah, blah, blah.
It wasn’t until we stood, a couple of months later, in the upstairs master bath that I realized what was going on. Something had been nagging at the back of my mind, but I was too afraid, too ashamed to put words to it. I was a do-over.
That night brought the whole thing to a grinding halt. Things had been building. When the kids and I had first moved into the townhouse, Mr. I.L. had declared that he would not come there when the kids were there with me. That soon transformed into he would not be there when the kids were awake. This quickly (I’m talking days here) evolved into ‘I’ll just be your friend stopping by. The kids won’t know that there’s anything else going on…’ Once that happened, he began to come over quite regularly and the more often he did, the more he started to mention how the kids might do better with their dad in the old house.
Looking back, Mr. I.L. was under an enormous strain. He’d taken me and my kids on as boarders in a house that he purchased outside his wife’s knowledge. He was trying to be a good father to his two daughters, while maintaining some pretense with his wife. They were in the midst of planning a major blowout of a Bat Mitzvah for their eldest daughter. Now, these folks ran in some serious money social circles and the pressure to finance a top-notch party was clearly on Mr. Ivy League’s mind. I’m sure he spent plenty of nights staring at the ceiling wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
Meanwhile, my new job (he’d insisted that I leave the place where we worked together – even though it was in my field and he could have done his finance job in any number of industries) was a bomb and he suggested I quit. He’d take care of me. Besides, what kind of man (my husband, for example) would make a woman with small children work?
But as the Bat Mitzvah bills came due, he began to pinch those pennies. I was asking for grocery money and getting kisses instead. He suggested that The Honey pay more since the kids were his. The Honey was unemployed, too, back then. It didn’t take long for some of my bills to be late. The holidays came and I spent too much money on gifts. I was scrounging through coat pockets for change. I constantly had to tell my kids “there’s no money” when they asked for something. We weren’t starving, but we were living on soup and peanut butter and jelly. Then the furnace broke down. A nice man with a gentle face came to fix it and showed me what to do in the future if it shut down. Then he handed me a bill for $300 and stood waiting while I, with shaking hands, wrote him a rubber check. When I next spoke to Mr. I.L., he told me to ask The Honey to cover it.
The night after the Bat Mitzvah, the kids were at The Honey’s and Mr. I.L. came over for a visit. He told me all about the party, the wonderful, expensive food, the giveaways, the music, the booze, the celebrity guests. My stomach growled as he described the Chateaubriand. That night, as he fucked me, I clinched my teeth and thought about what a horrible person I was. I was getting everything I deserved.
Shortly after that, the money loosened up some and he decided that I needed a computer and a desk to put it on. We went out shopping and he got the computer he’d been wanting. Then we went to an office supply store and bought the least expensive desk we could find. “You’re handy,” he said. “You can put it together.” While he went to work at the office that we once both enjoyed going to, I stayed home with my kids, counted my pennies and hoped that I wouldn’t get too many bounced check fees from my most recent mailing of bills. Oh, yeah. I started to put together that desk.
As soon as the desk was put together, Mr. I.L. came by and put the computer together. He was like a kid with a new toy. When he wasn’t around, I surfed the internet, looking for another job.
Come to think of it, that desk was pivotal in my deciding that this guy wasn’t for me. The night he’d come over so that we could go shopping for the desk had started out well enough. He’d moved beyond worrying about what my kids thought. In fact, he’d become quite fond of my youngest daughter who was only a year and a half. I suppose she was young enough that he could pretend that she was his. Maybe some day he’d have some influence over her. The other two, not so much.
It was a cold evening in January. The kids and I were getting ready to go, gathering up coats. Mr. Ivy League came in the back door and started hallooing through the house, noting that a lot of lights were on in empty rooms. I was mildly offended, but let it pass in front of the kids. Who did he think he was?
We took my car and set off for the furniture stores. Every desk I liked was too expensive. The kids were getting tired and I was ready to go home. We made one last stop at an office supply store. I agreed to the cheap, build it yourself desk and we got in line to pay. My son, who was five, began to whine about wanting candy. I told him no. He continued to whine and bump against me. Mr. Ivy League picked him up and held him tightly. I can still remember my son’s eyes pleading with me to get this stranger to put him down.
“Okay. He’s going to be calm now,” I started. Mr. I.L. held on to him.
“Please put him down.” Now my son was jerking and getting ready to kick. Mr. Ivy League just kept holding him and laughed. “I won’t put him down until he says sorry.”
“Put him down.”
It was then that I knew that this would not be somebody that I’d be sharing my life with. Like a neon sign blinking the word “Control Freak” over his head, I saw Mr. Ivy League for what he was.
The best part of the whole affair was the break up. Really. I’d told The Honey about the incident with our son and he insisted that Mr. Ivy League not come around when the kids were home. I realized that this thing could escalate into something truly ugly if I didn’t take action quickly. I reached my breaking point on the phone with Mr. I.L. one afternoon. I told him what The Honey had said and he announced that the kids were going to have to go. He wasn’t ready to be a father to someone else’s kids.
“Fine, but we’re a package deal. I’ll be leaving too.” From there it just got nastier. Mr. Ivy League, Mr. Good Credit, Mr. Generosity, Mr. Mid-Life Crisis, Mr. Do-Over called me a bitch and declared that I’d better not take anything that he’d purchased.
That evening I packed. The next day, The Honey and his brother-in-law came to the townhouse with a U-Haul and loaded it up. We had a good time deciding what to take and what not to. In retrospect, I should have taken a lot more. But I just wanted out – quickly. And I was a little afraid of this guy. He had money and knew people. I didn’t know what he could do to me. What a dope I was and for so many reasons. If I ever knew of anyone in that situation, I’d advise them to pick the place clean. Take everything.
A man with a wife, two kids, a big house in the suburbs and a reputation to protect wasn’t going to come after me for some IKEA furniture and Martha Stewart cookware. My whole world was blown apart, exposed. Everyone, the family, the friends, the husband, the PTO mothers, everyone knew about my screw up. I didn’t have a reputation to lose. I just had a reputation. But Mr. Ivy League still had to go to the office where he’d diddled the help. He was the one who was afraid. I know that now.
Stories My Mother Should Never Read Part Four
Having so completely hurt The Honey, shaken the children's world to its core, quit my job and wrecked our finances further, I found myself trying to sort out the messes I'd made. The kids moved back into our house with The Honey. I went to live with a friend for a couple of weeks.
The Honey had just been hired in a business development position with another software company and he was going to be making more than he'd ever earned so that was a plus for him. I still didn't know what I was going to do and my friend wasn't going to let me mooch off her forever so I needed to figure out something fast. Another friend loaned me a little money, but it was running out and I was near panic.
The Honey had to go on a business trip to the Bahamas and he asked me to stay in the house with the kids. We celebrated the most bizarre second birthday for our youngest by having a little family dinner at our old dining room table before wishing The Honey a safe trip. Then he was gone and I was in my old house with the kids after a couple of months of not being there. The Honey had painted a few of the rooms while he was laid off from work and he'd moved some things around. It was so strange to be there as a guest, a nanny of sorts. The kids and I made the best of it and tried to settle into a routine until The Honey returned.
I'll never forget the night he got back. We chatted for a little while and then it was time for me to say goodbye and make the long drive to my friend's house. I kissed the kids, chatted with The Honey for a few more minutes then headed to my car. I kept hoping that he'd call me back, but he didn't. I cried most of the drive back to my friend's house as I berated myself for the number of mistakes I'd made which had led to this. The Honey was putting out signals that he was considering taking me back, but I couldn't be certain. I knew that he still wanted me around, but in what capacity?
Some men might have used me for sex and kept me around to care for the kids when he needed a helping hand, but never, never take me back. The Honey isn't that kind of man. At some point he realized that he loved me, wanted to be with me, wanted to have our family put back together and he asked me what I thought of it. I agreed to therapy and a policy of absolute honesty. No more flings or flirtations. No more lying. No more blaming him for my mistakes.
Later we'd learned enough about ourselves by paying strangers to listen to us talk that we were able to revisit the conditions of the reconciliation. We decided that the reconciliation would be a two-way street, that we'd both made mistakes and that complete honesty about our wants and needs was going to be a hard, but necessary task. I kept waiting for the great retribution to rain down upon my head. It never did.
At this point in the story, I should explain what was going on with Dylan who was dating a woman named Terri. True to form, when I could have turned to him and given him what he claimed he wanted - me - he declined, but not in so many words. He was stung that I'd hooked up with someone else when I finally decided to end my marriage to The Honey, but we still talked quite frequently. Then one day, when I knew that I wasn't going to stay with Mr. Ivy League, I called Dylan and told him the whole sordid mess. I told him that I was going to leave him and that I didn't know what I was going to do. I waited in silence for him to say "come here, be with me, finally." But the words didn't come. He said something noncommital like "that's too bad, what are you going to do?" things like that. But the invitation to come and make his life complete, the thing that he'd said time and again when I was married, never came. Crushed, I hung up the phone.
As The Honey and I sorted out our lives, which seemed in a constant state of flux, we found ourselves happier than ever. We were rock bottom broke. The Honey got laid off a second time when the tech-bubble burst in early 2001. Neither of us were working. The Honey made a decision to go back to school for his teaching degree and I looked for work. Meanwhile, living uninsured and only on The Honey's unemployment checks, we learned creative ways to have fun and we managed to get by. We were even able to take a trip to New Jersey to attend The Honey's brother's wedding. On the way home, we took a little detour and visited D.C. for an afternoon, got lost and had a blast. The dynamic in the family had changed and it was good for all of us. The tension between The Honey and me was gone and the money stresses had become so overwhelming that they didn't get to us anymore. We'd crested the wave, I suppose and whatever happened, happened. We hoped, I guess, that we'd seen the worst.
It was a wonderful summer. We'd purchased family passes to the local pool before The Honey got laid off from his second job so we took advantage of them everyday. We hung poolside, reading books, watching the kids, chatting with friends. I got a job working part-time in the local grocery store's deli while I continued to look for a job in my field.
I stopped talking to Dylan and the next thing I heard about him from my mother made me realize that it had been months since we'd talked. At some point, that might have been enoough to trigger a call to him, but not this time. I was sure that as The Honey and I rebuilt our life together, the last thing we needed was that wicked complication.
As the thin, tanned, restful summer came to a close, I found a job in association management and went to work again. The Honey started his school work toward his Masters in Education. His first day in class was to supposed to be September 11, 2001. Instead we were home together, staring at the television, not believing what we were seeing.
For a while things settled into a routine of work, school, kids, house. I wasn't wild about my new job and found another one later that autumn. This one suited me better and I became friends with the hottest man in the place. Knowing my tendencies, this could have meant trouble so I was enormously relieved to discover that he was gay. Things went on steadily for some time, but being me, that wouldn't last. This time, though, I wasn't going to damage the marriage. I knew that The Honey and I shared similar tastes in some things and I was tired of talking about them instead of doing something about them. What I didn't know at the time was The Honey was feeling the same way.
The Honey had just been hired in a business development position with another software company and he was going to be making more than he'd ever earned so that was a plus for him. I still didn't know what I was going to do and my friend wasn't going to let me mooch off her forever so I needed to figure out something fast. Another friend loaned me a little money, but it was running out and I was near panic.
The Honey had to go on a business trip to the Bahamas and he asked me to stay in the house with the kids. We celebrated the most bizarre second birthday for our youngest by having a little family dinner at our old dining room table before wishing The Honey a safe trip. Then he was gone and I was in my old house with the kids after a couple of months of not being there. The Honey had painted a few of the rooms while he was laid off from work and he'd moved some things around. It was so strange to be there as a guest, a nanny of sorts. The kids and I made the best of it and tried to settle into a routine until The Honey returned.
I'll never forget the night he got back. We chatted for a little while and then it was time for me to say goodbye and make the long drive to my friend's house. I kissed the kids, chatted with The Honey for a few more minutes then headed to my car. I kept hoping that he'd call me back, but he didn't. I cried most of the drive back to my friend's house as I berated myself for the number of mistakes I'd made which had led to this. The Honey was putting out signals that he was considering taking me back, but I couldn't be certain. I knew that he still wanted me around, but in what capacity?
Some men might have used me for sex and kept me around to care for the kids when he needed a helping hand, but never, never take me back. The Honey isn't that kind of man. At some point he realized that he loved me, wanted to be with me, wanted to have our family put back together and he asked me what I thought of it. I agreed to therapy and a policy of absolute honesty. No more flings or flirtations. No more lying. No more blaming him for my mistakes.
Later we'd learned enough about ourselves by paying strangers to listen to us talk that we were able to revisit the conditions of the reconciliation. We decided that the reconciliation would be a two-way street, that we'd both made mistakes and that complete honesty about our wants and needs was going to be a hard, but necessary task. I kept waiting for the great retribution to rain down upon my head. It never did.
At this point in the story, I should explain what was going on with Dylan who was dating a woman named Terri. True to form, when I could have turned to him and given him what he claimed he wanted - me - he declined, but not in so many words. He was stung that I'd hooked up with someone else when I finally decided to end my marriage to The Honey, but we still talked quite frequently. Then one day, when I knew that I wasn't going to stay with Mr. Ivy League, I called Dylan and told him the whole sordid mess. I told him that I was going to leave him and that I didn't know what I was going to do. I waited in silence for him to say "come here, be with me, finally." But the words didn't come. He said something noncommital like "that's too bad, what are you going to do?" things like that. But the invitation to come and make his life complete, the thing that he'd said time and again when I was married, never came. Crushed, I hung up the phone.
As The Honey and I sorted out our lives, which seemed in a constant state of flux, we found ourselves happier than ever. We were rock bottom broke. The Honey got laid off a second time when the tech-bubble burst in early 2001. Neither of us were working. The Honey made a decision to go back to school for his teaching degree and I looked for work. Meanwhile, living uninsured and only on The Honey's unemployment checks, we learned creative ways to have fun and we managed to get by. We were even able to take a trip to New Jersey to attend The Honey's brother's wedding. On the way home, we took a little detour and visited D.C. for an afternoon, got lost and had a blast. The dynamic in the family had changed and it was good for all of us. The tension between The Honey and me was gone and the money stresses had become so overwhelming that they didn't get to us anymore. We'd crested the wave, I suppose and whatever happened, happened. We hoped, I guess, that we'd seen the worst.
It was a wonderful summer. We'd purchased family passes to the local pool before The Honey got laid off from his second job so we took advantage of them everyday. We hung poolside, reading books, watching the kids, chatting with friends. I got a job working part-time in the local grocery store's deli while I continued to look for a job in my field.
I stopped talking to Dylan and the next thing I heard about him from my mother made me realize that it had been months since we'd talked. At some point, that might have been enoough to trigger a call to him, but not this time. I was sure that as The Honey and I rebuilt our life together, the last thing we needed was that wicked complication.
As the thin, tanned, restful summer came to a close, I found a job in association management and went to work again. The Honey started his school work toward his Masters in Education. His first day in class was to supposed to be September 11, 2001. Instead we were home together, staring at the television, not believing what we were seeing.
For a while things settled into a routine of work, school, kids, house. I wasn't wild about my new job and found another one later that autumn. This one suited me better and I became friends with the hottest man in the place. Knowing my tendencies, this could have meant trouble so I was enormously relieved to discover that he was gay. Things went on steadily for some time, but being me, that wouldn't last. This time, though, I wasn't going to damage the marriage. I knew that The Honey and I shared similar tastes in some things and I was tired of talking about them instead of doing something about them. What I didn't know at the time was The Honey was feeling the same way.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Why Stop Licking the Curtains?
When I decided to write about home life, I thought about what it means to be the wife/mom in this household. As a child of the 60s, 70s and 80s, my cultural icons and references come largely from television and movies. I thought about what I've heard and seen regarding writing. These things come to mind...
Billy Crystal's character in Throw Mama from the Train telling his writing class "A writer writes always."
Some snooty magazine editor telling Carol Brady "Tell it like it is Mrs. Brady, tell it like it is...."
So, Stop Licking the Curtains.
It comes from something I've said on more than one occasion to our most skittish cat Ivy. This cat likes and licks, for no apparent to the human eye reason, textiles, particularly curtains. I can't figure it out. We feed her good cat food. Her water bowl is usually replete with clean, filtered water....oh, well.
One of my brilliant, repeat lines is the yelling of the word "Quiet" in a very LOUD voice. Darling, really. I'm sure I'd be so proud if someone caught that on video and played it back for me. But who thinks of that in the heat of the moment? It's not uncommon that I'm whizzing down the road, a passle of youth in the back seat of the car (gave up the minivan finally when gas hit $3 a gallon) when the cellphone rings. It's a work call. "Quiet!" I bellow, pause, answer the phone in my professional voice. Bad.
Or how about this. "Here, puke into this envelope!" No, I don't have some evil ex-husband who deserves sick hate mail. Someone is making pre-hurl sounds in the backseat and I don't have a plastic bag handy. I've never been one of those good moms who are prepared for any situation. Unprepared.
Then there's my famous sigh. It's so bad, apparently, that The Boy prefaces bad news with "Please don't make the 'huhhhhhh' sound when I tell you this." Ill-tempered and impatient.
And yes, I drop the f-bomb regularly in front of my children. I use it as noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Mother of the Year.
I observe my friends and their parenting skills and think "why can't I be like that?" But I'm not fooling myself. I can't do it. And some days, not all, but some, I think my kids like it that way. Because when it comes down to it, they know they're loved. No, it's not the Disneyfied, sheltered, make-believe love. It's the loud, brash, my job is to help you become independent kind of love that will hopefully make them strong, sensible, happy adults. And if not, their therapists will have plenty to work with.
Billy Crystal's character in Throw Mama from the Train telling his writing class "A writer writes always."
Some snooty magazine editor telling Carol Brady "Tell it like it is Mrs. Brady, tell it like it is...."
So, Stop Licking the Curtains.
It comes from something I've said on more than one occasion to our most skittish cat Ivy. This cat likes and licks, for no apparent to the human eye reason, textiles, particularly curtains. I can't figure it out. We feed her good cat food. Her water bowl is usually replete with clean, filtered water....oh, well.
One of my brilliant, repeat lines is the yelling of the word "Quiet" in a very LOUD voice. Darling, really. I'm sure I'd be so proud if someone caught that on video and played it back for me. But who thinks of that in the heat of the moment? It's not uncommon that I'm whizzing down the road, a passle of youth in the back seat of the car (gave up the minivan finally when gas hit $3 a gallon) when the cellphone rings. It's a work call. "Quiet!" I bellow, pause, answer the phone in my professional voice. Bad.
Or how about this. "Here, puke into this envelope!" No, I don't have some evil ex-husband who deserves sick hate mail. Someone is making pre-hurl sounds in the backseat and I don't have a plastic bag handy. I've never been one of those good moms who are prepared for any situation. Unprepared.
Then there's my famous sigh. It's so bad, apparently, that The Boy prefaces bad news with "Please don't make the 'huhhhhhh' sound when I tell you this." Ill-tempered and impatient.
And yes, I drop the f-bomb regularly in front of my children. I use it as noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Mother of the Year.
I observe my friends and their parenting skills and think "why can't I be like that?" But I'm not fooling myself. I can't do it. And some days, not all, but some, I think my kids like it that way. Because when it comes down to it, they know they're loved. No, it's not the Disneyfied, sheltered, make-believe love. It's the loud, brash, my job is to help you become independent kind of love that will hopefully make them strong, sensible, happy adults. And if not, their therapists will have plenty to work with.
And What Did You Do with Your Christmas?
The Boy:
I fired my gun 1,257 times,
Shot down 12 airplanes
Destroyed 2 support vehicles
Have a hit ratio of 156 (bullets hit the target)
Died 8 times.
Killed 27 people, not including myself.
Shot down 12 airplanes
Destroyed 2 support vehicles
Have a hit ratio of 156 (bullets hit the target)
Died 8 times.
Killed 27 people, not including myself.
May this ever be the closest he gets to war.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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