The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  As my mind drifted away it was oddly comforting to realize that politics was still everywhere, even in God's holiest city, Arabs were still killing Jews, robbers were still hitting banks, teens were still doing incredibly stupid things, and the world continued to spin, even if my world had crashed and burned.

  I came to instantly alert and wide awake the next morning. I knew where I was and what had led me to this unfamiliar room. I lay there for a few minutes because for one of the few times in my life, there was absolutely nothing I had to do. I didn't have to wake the kids, take anybody to church, run any errands, buy groceries.

  I was absolutely free and I remembered that great old rock and roll line from the 70s, 'Me and Bobby McGee,': "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." It was still a great line when I'd heard it in the 90s. Damn, Janis had nailed that one.

  I knew the feeling. I was absolutely empty, absolutely alone for the first time in more than 20 years, and absolutely free. I wished that I wanted to go somewhere, or do anything. I thought about calling somebody.

  But I realized I didn't have any friends. I had colleagues, guys I worked with, but nobody I went out drinking with. Well, there was one. Two actually. But they were both probably far away, somewhere here or abroad. And they had their own lives. They didn’t need me crying on their shoulders.

  As Debbie had said, all I did was work, come home and watch TV and enjoy my family. Any friends we did have were Debbie's friends from the University. And I'd feel odd as hell about calling any of them.

  There was my mother and stepfather. They lived a little further south in a suburb of Orlando in the center of the state. But damned if I wanted to hear the sympathy and pity in either of their voices when I told them I'd split from Debbie. Nor did I want to explain why I had.

  Eventually I showered, shaved and went out and grabbed a breakfast sandwich meal from Burger King, rode around the downtown, sat on a Riverwalk bench watching Sunday boaters cruising along the St. Johns, and felt like the only person on earth. I thought about calling Cheryl, but I'd be imposing. I thought she had just met a new guy and I'd be a definite third wheel.

  Somehow the clock wound slowly around until 9 p.m. I'd had a steak at a downtown steakhouse, called a couple of lower level SAs who were going to be leads on the cases the next morning to make sure they were ready for the openings, and then went back to the condo to watch – what else – cable news.

  At 9:15 p.m. my cell rang. I always keep it charged and I always keep it with me. It's the first rule for cops or prosecutors. You always have to be available, 24/7.

  I almost didn't take the call when I saw Debbie's ID pop up, but I did and said, "Hello."

  "You son of a bitch."

  "Well, hello. I love you too."

  It sounded like she was gasping for air, fighting to find the right words to attack me with.

  "You no good crazy bastard...goddamn it...how could you...how could you pull a stunt like that where Bill and Kelly would see...bad enough you show me how crazy you are but they're kids...what is wrong with you."

  "Slow down and take a deep breath, honey. Don't have a stroke."

  "You are one sick son of a bitch...what...don't you have any decency...what are the kids supposed to think?"

  "I gather you're talking about my ring?"

  "Yes, you go crazy because of a few words I said and call me a slut and then when I go see my parents for a few days, you leave me...you move your clothes and stuff out and leave your bloody wedding ring out where everybody can see it...how could you? I'm going to have you committed, Bill. You have lost your mind."

  "Did you read the note?"

  She almost lost it and streamed into the cell phone so shrilly I had to hold it away from my ear.

  "You bastard...asshole...motherfucker... I don't even know who you are."

  "That's okay. I don't know who you are either. But did you read the note?"

  "You think that was funny? 'this should make it easier for you' As if I'm the one who wants out of this marriage and not you."

  "I'm not the one who spent the night away from home without letting me know where she was. I'm not the one who picked up the kids to spend the weekend with your parents without giving me a heads up. I'm not the one who was kissing on a "friend" the other night when he drove you home, no matter what cock and bull story you fed your parents."

  I didn't know why I didn't rub her nose in the damning e-mails I'd found. I knew she'd go crazy accusing me of spying on her and not trusting her if she knew I'd bugged her laptop. But more than that, I hadn't gotten what I'd thought was one honest word out of her lying mouth in nearly a week. I'd found out that the woman I thought I had known was some stranger. Let her hang herself with her lies, lies of omission if not flat out lies.

  Maybe it was the prosecutor in me. There was nothing sweeter than catching a hostile witness or a defendant in a lie, when you'd let him or her run it out and tangle themselves in a web they could never talk themselves out of. How in the hell had it wound up with my trying to trap my own wife in her web of lies.

  I almost hung up. It almost would be better to walk away, just forget the woman I'd loved for half my life than wind up proving to my own satisfaction that she was a lying, traitorous slut bitch; an unfaithful wife which was the worst name I could hang on any woman.

  But dammit, she wouldn't stop lying.

  "I shouldn't have stayed away without calling you. I'm sorry. I was so angry at you. But about that kiss.... Dad said you told him that story. It never happened, Bill. Douglas was nice enough to drive me home. I never touched him, never kissed him. It was all taking place in that sick mind of yours.

  "What's happened to you? I've been angry enough to call you crazy, but you're scaring me now. First you go crazy because I twist some words, then you accuse me of cheating on you, then you imagine you saw me kissing a sweet young man who would never even think of touching me. That's not – that's not rational, Bill."

  I almost called Douglas "Lance" but that would give away the game. I wondered if that was a pet name referring to his "lance" that he wanted to bury in her.

  "So this guy, Doug, how close a friend is he?"

  There was a long silence.

  "Doug is an assistant prof in the business department. He came in about a year ago. I have to meet with him because they assigned me as his mentor. They partner all new staff with experienced professors. We've had a few lunches together. A few times I've danced with him at events, but I don't think you were at any of them. You know how you hate most parties and events like that. Even if you'd been there, I'd still have been dancing with him. You hate dancing and he's pretty good.

  "He's a nice boy, but that's all. I'm more than 10 years older than him, for God's sake. And I have never kissed him."

  "Is he a good friend?"

  "Bill! He's a friend. We talk sometimes and we've worked on projects together. But he's no more of a friend than a half dozen other male and female professors on the staff. Are you going to start obsessing about Doug now?"

  "No, not if you say he's a casual friend. But why did you wear that blouse that shows off your tits and a skirt so short he had to see your pubic hairs – sorry he could if you still had any – to the meeting that night? Not really professor type nightwear, is it?"

  Another long silence.

  "You – okay, it was a little revealing. But, Bill, I'm not 75. Only 39. I'm still a young woman. It's not – not that I want men to ogle me, but...dammit, I've got a great set of boobs and great legs, according to most guys, and once in awhile I like to show them off. I don't flash guys. I don't have affairs. But I'm not dead."

  "You've never worn that outfit to any event I attended."

  "Oh, God, Bill, do we have to talk about this?"

  "Why not, Debbie? Don't all the self-help books say couples have to be honest with each other? That they should talk out their problems. If I'm paranoid and obsessively jealous with no reason in reality, why can't you answer a simple
question? Why do you wear revealing clothes that show off that great body of yours – when I'm not around?"

  "Can't we talk about this when you come home?"

  "I'm not sure I will be coming home."

  A very long silence.

  "Why the hell am I bending over backwards trying to hold you when you obviously don't care if we continue as a marriage and a couple. You want to know the truth about why I dress up for other men and not for my loving husband? Because unless you're naked and rubbing my tits, I might as well be part of the furniture.

  "You don't notice what I wear, or when I change my hair style, or get a new bra. You don't kiss me on the back of the neck when you come in from work and try to feel my tits. You don't grab me in the middle of the day when the kids are gone and try to seduce me. You haven't taken me out and got me drunk to get into my pants in ten years. You haven't worked to get a piece of ass from me since we were first married.

  "I wear those clothes for other men because I want to remember what it was like to be desired by men, or any man. Is that honest enough for you?"

  This time, for the first time in days, I thought she was being honest. And what did that say about me? Suddenly, I had nothing to say.

  "I'm sorry, Deb. I'm sorry for everything. "

  I know she didn't understand what I was saying because she didn't know I'd had a secret look into her heart and soul and the secrets she was keeping from me. She didn't know I was apologizing for letting myself get old before my time, for not retaining the passion of our early years, for letting myself become more involved in my work than my wife's life. I was apologizing for letting her love slip away until she now belonged more to another man than she belonged to me.

  "So, are you coming home?"

  Why wouldn't I? Because she was still more in love with another man than she was in love with me? Because I still had no chance in a competition with Lance to win her love, or sexual devotion?

  "No, Deb. I'm not. I'm not – it's not that I'm angry with you. But, I just feel like, maybe, we need some time apart."

  After a long time, she said, "Alright, Bill. But someday, someday, you are going to regret this. You will hate yourself for what you're doing right now."

  "Maybe. Kiss the kids for me."

  "They're a little too old for that, but you probably haven't noticed that. And it should be you."

  She hung up.

  I turned off the TV and lay back looking at the ceiling bathed in moonlight from a picture window on a balcony looking out over the St. Johns. She might never know it, but I already regretted the hell out of everything that had happened in the last week. But, I corrected myself. It hadn't been going on for a week. This shit, this rot in my life and our marriage had been going on for six months according to the emails I'd read, and if I was honest, the decay went back a lot further than that.

  Monday came as it always did. There were no big cases. Just cases; murder, manslaughter; and a Navy guy from the Jax Navy base separating from his wife who in a fit of rage at her had taken their little eight month old daughter who wouldn't stop crying and shaken her until her brain hemorrhaged in her skull. But his parents were loaded and they had spent money to buy a Cracker Jack legal whiz kid from New York to teach the hicks down in North Florida a few new legal tricks.

  There was a separated first-of-three trials of scum bag drug dealing brothers who had been trying to teach a competitor to stay off their turf by spraying his Northside home with bullets and managed to kill an eight-year-old boy who had thrown himself down on his two younger siblings to save them and gotten a bullet in the brain for his bravery.

  That was almost a waste. They were all going to the gas chamber, sometimes called the death chamber because Florida had never had a real gas chamber. We used lethal injection after the old faithful electric chair was retired.

  All three scumbags knew they were going to die in the death chamber; we knew it, their attorneys knew it, the little boy's family knew it, their own scumbag family knew it, but we had to go through the motions three times to make sure the little boy got a small measure of justice.

  Not really that unusual a week. But motions had to be made, jury selection had to begin, witnesses had to be coddled or have their spines stiffened. As usual, the days would be endless and the nights brief pit stops to get enough rest to keep going the next day. I didn't do a lot of courtroom theatrics. My job was to make sure everything ran smoothly.

  Sometime during the day, between two crises of earth shattering importance which would be completely forgotten by the next day, Cheryl trapped me in my office.

  "They tell me you're staying on the River? You moved out on Debbie? And your kids?"

  "Shit happens."

  She closed the door behind me.

  "Bill, what is going on?"

  "Too much to tell you about in the middle of a busy day, and there's a lot of stuff I couldn't tell you anyway. There's no separation. I just wanted – some time away. Give us both a chance to get a chance to breath."

  "You know that a lot of times when you move out, you never move back?"

  "I don't know if that will happen."

  "You should have said, that will never happen to us."

  When I didn't answer she just shook her head.

  "God, I hate seeing another marriage go down the tubes. Don't do this, Bill. I don't know what you're thinking, but don't walk out on your marriage without fighting for it. Jesus, you're a pit bull in the courtroom. I've never seen you give up on anything. Don't let her go, don't let them go, without a fight."

  "You can't have a marriage without two people who want to stay married. And that's all, Cheryl. Open the door and get out of here."

  We got into initial jury selections in all three trials. The New York whiz kid played enough tricks to please Mom and Dad paying the freight for their son's defense. I thought it was money wasted, but hey, he was their son. If I'd raised a scumbag like him, I'd probably fight just as hard.

  It was just another Monday full of surprises and unexpected problems and unhappy witnesses and irritable judges who really did need to keep rolls of toilet paper, as Somerset Maugham once suggested, beside them to remind themselves that they weren't really little tin gods, only men and women who had a temporary powerful position.

  At 7 p.m. I was getting ready to call it a day when my cell rang. I keep it on buzz during the day, but I've got a loud buzz so I always know when it's ringing.

  "Bill, what in the ever loving hell is wrong with you?"

  "I'm not sure I know how to answer that question, Roy. In what regard?"

  "Debbie called this morning and said you've moved out of the house. And left your wedding ring behind. How can you see to walk around with your head stuck so far up your ass?"

  I couldn't help laughing.

  "That's a great mental image Roy. Thanks, I needed a laugh about now. If you're serious with your question, I haven't moved out. I just took some things so I could spend a few days away from Debbie. Things have been getting...too tense. I'm afraid I might say something I don't want to say to her. You know, the kind of thing you can't take back or get past. So I'm just giving us some breathing space."

  He was quiet for a moment and then in a calmer tone, he said, "Bill, I've known you for 20 years. I'll admit, I haven't thought you were the best husband or father in the world. You've let yourself go physically, and when you're married to a woman that looks like Debbie, that's a stupid thing to do. I've thought plenty of times that you spend too much time in that damned office and too little time with Deb or the kids.

  "A marriage isn't a house where you stop off from time to time to eat meals or get your clothes washed, or ....spend time in bed. You can't set a marriage on auto pilot and forget about it. I'm older than you, Bill, and I know what I'm talking about. You have to WORK to make a marriage last. That's the only real problem I have with you. I think you gave up on your marriage years ago."

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. Finally I said, "I can
't deny there's some truth to what you're saying. Part of it is my fault. I know that now. But, there's other stuff..."

  "What, what the hell are you talking about? Something happened last week and its blown things up in your house? What was it?"

  "I- I'm sorry. It's.... can't talk about it. It just – kind of brought things to a head. And made me realize I have to think about things."

  "Alright, you don't want to talk about it. I love Debbie and the kids. I even like you, although I think you're being an asshole right now. I'm asking you as a personal favor, Bill, go home. Go home tonight. Living in two places can't make anything better. Can you do that for me? I can't remember ever asking you for any kind of favor."

  I thought about it. I still had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that we had passed some point of no return and there was no going back. But I still found myself at 8:30 p.m. walking back into the home I'd left with no intention of ever returning.

  I could hear BJ’s stereo blasting out of his room and as usual Kelly was probably still out. As I walked past the den Debbie came to the door. . She wore shorts and a light blouse over a bra. From the look on her face she wasn't expecting me. She took one look at the briefcase I held and another expression crossed her face.

  "Is this just a pit stop? You're leaving everything at the River?"

  "I wanted to come home for a night. Is that alright?"

  "Why? Why do you want to spend the night with a slut who's cheating on you and showing herself off to other men? I didn't think you'd have any use for me or the kids anymore."

  "This is my house as much as yours, but I'll ask you again. Is it all right if I spend the night here? In our bed?"

  She turned and walked back into the den. Over her shoulder she said, "Like you said, it's your house too. You want to spend the night, knock yourself out. I don't know if I'll be in the bed, but you're welcome to it. Oh, and there's no food for you. I didn't expect you."