by Su Meck
We came back from Ocean City a week before Kassidy was to start her junior year of high school. And then Jim was in the hospital the entire Labor Day weekend, with inexplicable and excruciating stomach pain and no definitive diagnosis. He was released from the hospital that Tuesday, the day before my classes at Montgomery College were scheduled to start. That night, I sat on Kassidy’s bed and cried. I couldn’t do it. What was I thinking? What if I forgot how to read? What was I supposed to do? Despite my Fast Track class during the summer, I was certain that I was doomed to fail as a college student. I found myself asking Kassidy a million questions, like a scared kid.
“What if I don’t understand something?”
“Ask your teacher questions.”
“What am I supposed to write down? What if I don’t know the words and can’t spell them?”
“Whatever you think is important, write down . . . just sound the words out and write down whatever the teacher writes on the board. If they take the time to write something on the board, write that down in your notebook because it’s probably important.”
“What if I can’t see the board?”
“Sit up front.”
“What if I can’t find my classrooms?”
“Mom, we just went there this afternoon, and found all your classrooms. We wrote down directions to each class in your new day planner.”
“I’m not going. I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Yes, Mom, you can. You’re going!”
“What am I supposed to wear?”
“Whatever you want. Be comfortable.”
“What if the classroom is too hot or too cold?”
“Take a sweatshirt, and put it on if you’re cold.”
“Should I wear it, or keep it in my backpack?”
“Why don’t you just see how you feel in the morning . . .”
The following morning, I threw up twice before leaving the house. But the important thing was that I did leave the house.
That first semester was incredibly difficult. I had trouble keeping up with all the required reading; I had problems deciphering the notes I took in class. I had questions, but was afraid to speak up in class or talk to the professors during their office hours. I didn’t know how to study for tests and quizzes, and I didn’t know how to write essays, let alone research papers. I spent hours at home reading assigned chapters over and over again, sometimes the same chapter ten times or more, until I could vaguely understand the ideas and concepts being explained. I battled diligently to work out math problems. Kassidy tried to help me, but part of the problem with math initially was I didn’t know my times tables very well, so I spent a lot of time (and paper) adding up numbers instead of multiplying them.
Because I was spending so much time trying to keep up with my schoolwork, a lot of my housework and my usual errands fell by the wayside. The dogs were ignored, and often didn’t get walked. Many evenings I didn’t cook dinner and Kassidy and Jim ended up having to fend for themselves. I wasn’t always able to keep up with the laundry and grocery shopping. Jim was incredibly supportive at first. He called me his “little student,” and politely listened to me yammer on and on about my classes and professors. But his supportiveness quickly wore off after a few weeks of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. And one night he lost it! “Would it be too much trouble for you to occasionally get off your fat ass and go to the store so we have something to eat in this house? Even if you choose to not eat, I need to.” Or words to that effect.
Later that week, I heard him on the phone with a surgeon. He had decided to have a surgical procedure for diverticulitis, a disease of the colon, at the end of October, the same week as my midterms. I called my parents in tears. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to school and take care of Jim and Kassidy. I had only been in school a few weeks and I was utterly defeated. I was tired and worried. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I was failing as a mother and as a wife and was failing as a student. Dad and Mom told me to settle down. Of course I couldn’t do everything! Why was I even trying? They told me my priority should be going to school, and they told me again how proud they were of me for trying. Then they offered to come up during the week of my midterms and help out with me, or with Kassidy, or with Jim, or the dogs.
Knowing my cavalry was coming helped relieve some of my anxiousness for the time being. But I was still nervous whenever Jim was around. I tried my hardest to be done with as much schoolwork as I could by the time he came home in the evenings. I made a point to study for just a couple of hours on the weekends. I skipped a couple days of classes in order to run errands and get the grocery shopping done. But with this new schedule of mine, I was falling further and further behind in my classes, and midterms were looming.
On a Saturday morning late in September, everything fell apart for good. I don’t remember exactly what the catalyst was, but kaboom, I exploded. Jim was sitting on his “big man” chair, Kassidy was sitting on the sofa, and I was pacing back and forth across the family room just ranting and raving about everything that I had kept inside for weeks since starting school. I was trying, if perhaps not very clearly, to explain how hard school was for me, and how unfair it was of Jim to pick the week of my midterms to have elective surgery. Why couldn’t he have the operation the following week? Or the following month? I was unhappy that Benjamin was so far away. Why did Jim have to travel so much? Why did he have to work all the time? Everything just poured out randomly. There was no apparent order to my rant, and no real point or purpose. It was just a lot of bottled-up emotion that had to get out.
When I was finished, I stared at Jim. He had been quiet while I had been exploding all over the family room, and now he just said, “If that’s really how you feel, I guess we’re done.” He said it with such a tone of finality. “What? Done?” I was beginning to panic again just that quickly. “Do you mean done with this conversation?” “No, Su. We’re done done. Finished. I had no idea about how unhappy you were with your life with me. I can go and move in with Patrick while we figure this all out.” And he walked out of the room. I fell into the elephant chair, exhausted and confused by what had just happened. Kassidy was still sitting on the couch.
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, darlin’.”
“Mommy, do you want to watch some Gilmore Girls?”
“Sure. That would be great.”
The next eighteen hours are a blur. I think there were a lot of phone calls back and forth. Jim called Benjamin and Patrick. Kassidy called Benjamin and Patrick. Benjamin called Kassidy. Benjamin called me. Patrick called Jim. Benjamin, I think, was the one who convinced Jim to settle down and not make any hasty decisions. I think it was Benjamin who also mentioned to Jim that marriage counseling might be an intelligent next step for the two of us to consider.
When Kassidy and I got home from church the next day, Jim called me into the library and said he wanted to show me something he found on the Internet. Instead of going through our health insurance list to find a marriage counselor, he had found a program online. He had been researching it all morning and it looked legit. What did I think? “Sure, why not? How does it work?” Jim pulled up a kind of online questionnaire, and told me that we needed to start with that before we could get any of the other materials. I sat down on a chair next to him in front of his computer. Kassidy was doing homework on her computer just a few feet away.
The questionnaire was set up so we could answer each question independently and then see the other person’s answers when we were both done. The questions started out painless enough. What is your partner’s favorite color? What is your partner’s favorite food? What is your partner’s favorite song? Favorite book? Favorite movie? Eventually, they got more personal. How often do you and your partner have sex? How often do you get together with your family? With your in-laws? When was the last time you and your partner went on a date together? Went on a vacation together? Do
you and your partner have the same level of education? Do you and your partner both work outside the home? There seemed to be about a million questions. The very last one was “Have you ever had an affair?” I was happy to be done with my questions, and I was hungry. Jim was done, too, and he asked, “Do you want to do this now?” I looked confused, and he explained that we were supposed to go through each question and talk about them. Jesus Christ! Really? This was going to take forever, and I wasn’t sure what could be gained from this exercise. (Silly me!)
We went through the questions one by one. Some we laughed about. (What was the worst present your partner ever bought you? Jim bought me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas one year.) Some we reminisced about. I began to think maybe this was a good idea after all.
When we got to the last question, I showed him my “no.” Of course I had never had an affair! Then he showed me his answer, and my world as I knew it ended. He had written “yes.” I sat there staring at that word. Yes. I was no longer hungry.
20
What If
—Coldplay
On the outside I was calm, cool, and collected. On the inside I was screaming! And I continued to scream for about two or three weeks. I went to class, took notes, asked questions, and screamed on the inside. At home I did laundry, walked the dogs, cooked meals, and screamed on the inside. I attempted to interact with Kassidy the same as always, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Jim. I avoided even looking at him.
At some point, I called my parents again. I can remember sitting on the bench outside the theater building at Montgomery College. I told them what I knew. They told me I could come to Roanoke if I wanted to. Or they could come up to Maryland if I needed them. They said they loved me and that everything would be okay. But how was everything supposed to be okay? How on earth could I get the screaming in my head to stop?
I knew I had to talk to Jim eventually. So I did. One evening I asked simply, “Who was she?”
“Who was who?”
“The woman you had an affair with.”
Sigh. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I met her online.”
“So you haven’t actually met her? Just online?”
“No. I met up with her when I was on one of my trips to California. She doesn’t live too far from Benjamin.”
That was how it all started: a simple conversation that proved how stupid, naive, and too damn trusting I had been for so many years. I am staring at the words on the computer screen now. That conversation was just the beginning of what I was to eventually learn about my marriage. Jim ultimately admitted to several affairs that had dated back a decade and a half. And he would tell me more about this affair, which was still going on. And he would tell me the real reason he hadn’t gone to Ocean City with Kassidy and me in August: He had flown his lover to D.C. and he had taken her to the ultrafancy Swann House bed-and-breakfast in DuPont Circle. There had been no urgent project that had suddenly come up for Jim at work, after all.
I was to learn where much of our money had really gone for the past fifteen years or so: various strip clubs as far away as Thailand and Canada and as close as Crystal City, Virginia. Strip clubs on Jim’s way to visit his family during the holidays. Strip clubs where he went every Thanksgiving when he was in Atlanta. Strip clubs where he offered to take Benjamin and Patrick to the one and only time they went with him to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. Strip clubs where he would pay several hundreds of dollars for lap dances and group sex in hot tubs. Jim would peruse websites of strip clubs in the various cities he would be traveling to for work, and choose clubs with features, activities, events (and, of course, women) that appealed to him. He would then visit those establishments regularly and pay thousands of dollars to the strippers and dancers that he had handpicked via the Internet. It was so easy! I learned about another woman with whom he had carried on an affair. He paid for vacations, hotels, restaurants, gifts, and plane flights. We were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt because of years of Jim’s “creative playtime.” I did not have a dime to show for the years I had worked. He had spent it all, and then some. He had maxed out more than thirty credit cards, some of which had my name, and in turn my credit, linked to them.
Once I became aware of what Jim had been doing all along, I had to know everything. I asked him a considerable number of specific questions about people and places—business trips, money spent, and lies told. And I insisted he answer each and every one. I was beyond angry and beyond hurt, but I still had to know everything. I wanted desperately to understand how and why he had engineered such a double life for himself. I began to refer to every bit of information that he told me as a shoe as in “waiting for another shoe to drop.” Within just a few weeks, I was waist-deep in shoes. After a few months, I was completely immersed. I could no longer breathe because I was buried alive in shoes.
Many of the names of people and some of the places sounded familiar to me. Of course they did. These were the people and places of his nighttime rages and abuse. He relived his expensive, degenerate, and brutal fantasy life with me in our own bed. Lucky me! I had to do something to hurt him. I angrily made a hasty decision and impulsively dug up every single piece of jewelry he had ever given to me, including my wedding ring. I found a pawnshop in Gaithersburg, and I made Jim drive me there. I sold everything for $350, and told him that I would never wear a wedding ring again.
21
Bridge Over Troubled Water
—Simon and Garfunkel
I wanted to hurt Jim like he was hurting me, but I didn’t know how. I was feeling a kind of intense pain that was both physical and emotional and it never seemed to let up, even for a minute. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I thought that if only I could get even—if I could somehow manage to cause him similar shame and discomfort—I would feel better. I tried hard to convince myself that I didn’t care about anything Jim thought; I didn’t want to give a damn about any of his feelings. The notion I had had to impulsively sell all my jewelry, for a mere fraction of what it all was worth, in order to upset and outrage Jim, while at the same time helping to make me feel better, turned out to be not such a good plan. And it didn’t work anyway. Jim didn’t seem the least bit affected by what I’d done and I certainly didn’t feel any better. Especially later, when it really hit home how deeply in debt we honestly were, I wished I hadn’t been quite so rash.
For years Jim and I had been unknowingly going through cycles. Jim remembers realizing that for most of the time he and I truly existed on “opposite ends of the earth” and he often wondered if he just wanted to be done with me. He talks about how he felt so alone. Jim: “The differences between us had built up so much; created too vast a distance.” He would often think about wanting to move out and get his own place. He says now that at any time he could have easily “left me holding the bag” and gone anywhere he wanted. For good. He frequently held that threat over my head. During the lowest points of these cycles, Jim would move his stuff downstairs to the guest bedroom and bathroom, and we would basically try to avoid each other as best as we could.
But this time when he moved downstairs, it was different. I realize now that this was the first time I knew that my marriage to Jim might not be forever. I had always thought that Jim and I were married. Period. And wasn’t marriage supposed to be “forever”? But now there was a very real possibility that he could leave me and never look back. I was terrified, angry, and hurt. Plus, having Kassidy around made the hostility we had toward each other all the more awkward.
But Jim says that he eventually thought, “If I was going to try to make it work with somebody, why not try—one last time—to see if it would work with you and me?” Eventually, Jim moved his stuff back upstairs. The crisis, as far as Jim was concerned, seemed to be over, or at least manageable.
Because of that, over time there was the slightest feeling of a truce. Several weeks, and then months, passed,
and eventually Jim and I started talking superficially about household matters: Do you want me to get you anything from the grocery store? Or: If you give me the slip, I’ll pick up the dry cleaning on my way in from work. Or: The washing machine is making a funny noise; can you take a look at it? We started walking the dogs together again in the evenings. During those walks Jim would talk to me about people and incidents at work or relay stories he had heard on public radio during his commute. I would tell him about my classes, pass on conversations I may have had with the boys, and tell stories about Kassidy’s day. It was an uncomfortable situation, to say the least, but on the other hand, our long shared history couldn’t be avoided. Our years of inside jokes, our recognizable quirks and mannerisms, the looks we could give each other sometimes and know exactly what the other person was thinking; all of these things, and more, were impossible to ignore. We started to laugh together again. Although much of what we found funny was in a very black humor sort of way—inappropriate stuff directly having to do with our current situation. We watched movies in the family room together and afterward we would talk about them. I had never before realized exactly how many movies dealt with cheating spouses, strip clubs, and lying.
But regardless of how things looked, my rage continued to be right under the surface. I often took out my anger and frustrations on my unsuspecting people in classes that I subbed at the gym. The littlest things would set me off. If Jim was a half hour late from work, I would think the worst: that he was obviously in bed with someone else. As much as I tried to relax and move forward, I could not. I was constantly grinding my teeth together. I insisted on being on high-alert status all the time in regard to Jim’s every word and action. I questioned everything he said or did. I was furious with myself for being so incredibly naive for so many years. For me, forgiveness was not an option and I vowed to myself to never be so trusting ever again. Especially where Jim was concerned.
I can remember a time early the following spring. I was out weeding the beds in front of our house and listening to my iPod. (I hate weeding—hate gardening of any kind, really—but this was before I had a really great way to procrastinate and be by myself, i.e., Facebook). My iPod was on shuffle, and songs kept coming up that forced me to think about Jim and me. The good stuff and the bad stuff. I listened closely to the lyrics of songs like Jack Johnson’s “Better Together,” Postal Service’s cover of John Lennon’s “Grow Old With Me,” Sting’s “Perfect Love Gone Wrong,” Journey’s “Separate Ways,” Styx’s “The Grand Illusion,” 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” and so many others—one right after the other—for hours as I weeded. I was so angry and confused, but all this music somehow made me feel better. At that moment I just wanted to crawl into a hole with my iPod and do nothing but listen to music for the rest of my life. To hell with anything or anyone else!
