The Baby Shower

by Tasha Blue et al.

  “What in the hell are you doing in here?” she screamed at him. “I demand an answer! I didn’t invite you in here! You think you can just barge right into my room whenever you want to? Now look what you’ve made me do!” she shrieked, waving her hand behind her at Enrique, who was scurrying off of the bed and searching for his clothes that were scattered haphazardly across the huge room.

  “You wouldn’t get me the car I needed, and that meant that I had to be left all alone, that meant that I had to go without any love, without any affection at all, and your neglect subjected me to so much loneliness that I couldn’t bear it! What kind of a lousy husband are you, anyway? Never touching me, never wanting me, always working… you’re married to your job!

  “You take off from the house in the middle of the night going god knows where to do god knows what, and here I am, all alone, day in, day out, while you’re busy with everything else but your own wife, and now look what I’ve had to resort to! Letting this filthy yard man have his way with me, because you weren’t around to protect me, to love me and want me, to fulfill your husbandly duties to me! How could you leave me all alone like that! Look what your neglect has made me do! Look what I’ve been reduced to! Scrounging for love like a beggar!

  “I’ve had to search for someone, anyone at all who would make me feel like I was worth anything at all, because you made me feel worthless! Treating me with so much disregard the way you always do! You’re despicable! You have the unmitigated gall to call yourself my husband? What husband leaves his wife to wilt away like some flower on a forgotten windowsill? You’re such a hateful bastard! This is all your fault! Totally your fault! I never would have had to sink so low as to let this garbage touch my pristine body if you weren’t always ignoring me! If you weren’t always gone! You cold hearted selfish bastard! If you had only given me the car I asked you for to begin with, none of this ever would have happened!

  “But all you can think of is yourself, all you care about is yourself, and you never give me a single thought, not even a moment! I’ve been so isolated! So alone! There was nothing else I could do!”

  She yelled at him and wailed bitterly as she stood there before him, nude, the gardener’s semen running down her thighs, as he found the last of his clothes and vanished.

  Kevin looked at her and raised his chin slightly, saying in a mild tone, “Clean yourself off, and then come down to my office. We need to have a conversation.” Then he turned and walked away from her, feeling as though his heart had been ripped from his chest. He headed down the winding stairs to his office. He poured himself a strong drink and sat down at his desk, putting his head in his hands for a long moment and letting a deep sigh flow from him. Then he took another long pull off of his whiskey and looked at the door, waiting for her.

  Chapter4

  Kevin waited in his office and sipped his drink. He had just found his wife riding the gardener with heated abandon in her bed, and the only thing he could focus on was his drink. The gardener left and Kevin had solemnly instructed his wife to clean herself up and come down to his office for a conversation.

  It was the first time he had been aware of her sleeping with someone else, but from the look of it, he suspected that it was not the first time it had happened. He promised himself that he would not let anger or jealousy rule the conversation. He would listen to her and give her as much benefit of the doubt as he could conjure up.

  He waited patiently, and he began to wonder if she was taking her time to get to him because she felt ashamed and didn’t want to face him, like a scolded child, or if she was disregarding him yet again, and dawdling because she felt like treating him with disdain.

  He wondered for the better part of an hour before the office door opened and she strutted in, her skin-tight blouse and pants leaving nothing to the imagination. Her hair was long and loose and fell around her beautiful face in a dark cloud.

  Kevin looked at his wife. “Would you like a drink?” he asked politely. She did not meet his gaze, but she nodded. He poured her a tumbler of whiskey and handed it to her, then sat opposite her on the sofa. As he looked at her, he thought that she did indeed look like a spoiled child.

  “Ellen, explain to me why you have sunk to the depths of infidelity,” he said quietly to her. He was so hurt and devastated inside that he had no idea where to begin with her, but he thought that an explanation was probably the best place to start.

  She slumped her shoulders and silently looked away from him. She bit her lip and scowled and then she turned and glared directly at him. “If I have sunk as low as you say, then it’s only because of you. It’s because you neglect me, you leave me alone all the time, you never pay attention to me and couldn’t care less about me. I was driven to it. What else could I do? I’m a woman who has needs! You have no interest in seeing to those needs. You are too busy with your company, too busy in your office and rushing around in the middle of the night to tend to your wife, to give me any love and affection. You’ve left me no choice! None! You can’t expect me to sit around up in my room alone like some prisoner in a white tower! It’s completely your fault because you are a cold,” she leaned closer to him, punching the words at him, “heartless bastard.”

  He listened to her without expression or reaction, absorbing what she had said. “How many times have you done it, Ellen?” He didn’t want to know, but he found that he was compelled to ask.

  “What makes you think that I’ve had to resort to that more than once?” she asked, suspicious of his motives.

  “It’s painfully obvious that this is not your first affair. You would be more emotionally wracked than you are right now if it was your first. It seems that you are more disappointed about being caught than having been reduced to finding love in your own bed rather than in your husband’s.” He maintained his calm, cool and collected tone, and it became clear that his doing so was irritating her and ruffling her feathers.

  “Of course I’m disappointed that I was caught! What kind of a thing is that to say to me? Do you think it wouldn’t bother me to be caught? Do you think I don’t care if you see me in the arms of another man? I didn’t want to do it to begin with, but you have left me no choice! Yes, I’m upset that you caught me, but not nearly as upset as I am that I had to resort to it in the first place!” She snapped at him, crossing her arms and legs tightly in front of her.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m going to ask you again. How many other times has this happened?”

  She tapped her foot and looked away from him. “Just a couple of other times,” she replied sullenly.

  “When did those times occur?” he asked, continuing his calm tone and manner, and seeing that it was unnerving her completely. He hadn’t meant to unnerve her, but he didn’t want to have an emotional confrontation with her, either.

  Ellen lifted her chin and sniffed quietly. “Recently.”

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Who was your lover the other times?”

  She continued to look away, completely put out that she was being questioned in the manner that she was. “It was only ever the gardener. He was here, it just kind of happened.” She shrugged her shoulders at him.

  “Who instigated it?” Kevin asked, holding his eyes on her face as he read more of the truth there than she was willing to speak to him.

  “Well, he did, of course. I would never start something like that. He was always coming on to me and he just wouldn’t quit, and finally I couldn’t fight him off anymore and I surrendered.” Her expression looked as though he had wrestled her to the ground until she agreed to sleep with him as a last resort.

  “You do realize he will no longer be employed here,” Kevin stated, matter-of-factly.

  She gaped and looked at him in frustration and irritation. “Well, where else is he supposed to work? You can’t just kick him out like that! We need him around here!”

  He was quiet a moment, taking a deep breath before responding, “He was temporary help, he can find wo
rk anywhere he likes, and we have other groundskeepers who will be able to fulfill the requirements of their positions without bedding the wife of their employer.” His anger was beginning to surface.

  She hissed a sigh and scowled again.

  “Ellen, I need to know how you feel about our marriage. I need to know if you want to call it quits with us. If you aren’t devoted to staying married and committed to creating a solid future with me, then we need to talk about dissolving our relationship.” He leaned back and watched her.

  Shock registered over her face and she finally turned to look at him fully. “Divorce? You can’t be serious? Over a little thing like that? Whatever for?” Her body language changed completely and she turned herself to face him and leaned closer to him.

  He looked down into the glass of whiskey in his hands, turning the glass slightly, and then lifting it to his lips to feel the burning liquid run over his tongue, warming him and soothing him before he looked at her and answered her.

  “Ellen, every marriage goes through highs and lows, and this particular low that we are in has lasted for quite a long time. I do not believe that it is a low within a cycle any longer, but rather a habit with us.

  “You don’t seem to want to be intimate with me; you would rather find comfort in the arms of a stranger, a temporary employee, than in the bed of your husband.

  “I have to know what you want out of our marriage, and I have to know if you intend to make the marriage work, or not. It takes two, and if we are going to make it through this, we both have to work at making it a strong partnership and we have to work at it together. That’s what a marriage is; a partnership where both people make the marriage and the commitment to each other the biggest priority of their lives.

  “I need to know if you can do that. I need to know how important this marriage and our future together is to you.”

  She pouted slightly and lowered her chin as she looked at him while he spoke to her.

  “Ellen, I’m willing to put forth the effort with you. I made a commitment when we got married, when we said our vows to each other. I meant every word I said, and when I took you as my wife, I intended to be your husband and love you with all that is in me for the rest of my life.

  “I meant it, you and me together forever. Now, we are going through a rough patch and I can only suppose that the hard times will continue as long as we are not both working together to make this marriage a success. I will give you more time together with me, if that’s what you really want. I will give you any love and affection you need, if that’s what you want.

  “But if you want to go out on your own, if you want to sleep with other men, and if you want your freedom and independence, then I need to know now, because that kind of situation doesn’t make a good marriage.

  “If your freedom is what you want, then we don’t need to be together, pretending to be married, and committed to each other. The best thing we can do for one another is to be honest and fair with each other and either cut off what is broken or work together to build it back up and make it strong and whole again. That choice is entirely up to you.”

  She leaned forward onto her knees and looked imploringly at him. “But Kevin, I don’t want a divorce, I don’t want to end what we have. I want to stay here with you as your wife. I just made a mistake! Do you understand that? I just slipped up, but I can commit myself to you. I can make you my priority and do this together.

  “You can’t sit there and tell me that the decision is all mine if you just finished telling me that our marriage is a partnership. If this is a partnership then the decision is half yours too, and you need to tell me what you want as well. You can’t leave this whole thing up to me like that.” She bit her lower lip and looked at him with wide dark eyes. “What do you want to do, Kevin?”

  He took a deep breath and looked into his glass, and for a moment, he was honest with himself in his heart. He wanted Marina and Maddie. He wanted to stand up and walk out of the house and go to his girls and be with them for the rest of his life.

  His thoughts returned to the woman in front of him, who was wearing the ring that he placed on her hand when he told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He made that choice; he was the one who decided that they should marry. He bought the ring, and he fell on his knees and asked her to spend her life with him. She could easily have married just about anyone else, but he asked her and she accepted him, and now she was asking him what he really wanted.

  He knew he could not have what he really wanted. His morality and sense of devotion and commitment would not let him have it. He had to admit to himself that he had more than most people had; he had a wife, he had a child, and he hadn’t been unfaithful in his commitment to his wife in order to create a legacy. He wasn’t open and honest about it, but he had not lied and he did not cheat on her.

  Kevin knew that to him, his word was the most important thing about him; his code, his honor, his commitment and the measure of his ethical fortitude. He had to keep his promise to Ellen. He pushed the thoughts of Marina and Maddie out of his mind and looked up at his wife.

  “Of course I want to make it work with you; you are my wife, and I have promised myself to you for all of our lives. You are my priority. If you are willing to make this work, we will not talk about a divorce again, and we will work on rebuilding our marriage. What would you say to that?” he asked, with just a hint of weariness in his voice.

  She stood up slowly, watching him like a cat, and walked over to him, then sat beside him on the couch. “Kevin,” she said, leaning her arm on the back of the sofa and facing his side, “what if we did try to rebuild this. Sort of refresh our marriage and start over again. What if we went on a honeymoon together, and focused on loving each other, and making this a strong marriage. I really don’t want to lose you.”

  She leaned close to him and lifted her arm from the back of the sofa to run her fingers through his dark brown hair. “Can we do that, baby? Can we take a long trip and go somewhere? We can fall in love all over again and make it work… we can rediscover all the things about each other that we really love. Let’s do that, okay?” she said with pure sweetness.

  Kevin felt like his soul was tearing in two. “It really isn’t a very good time for me to leave right now, perhaps we could work on this close to the house… you know, sort of stay here at home and work on it together. What do you think about that?” he asked hopefully as a pit of fear, worry, concern and dread formed in his stomach and began to spin. His daughter was brand new. He wanted to be as near to her as he could be, as often as he could be.

  She drew her eyebrows down in frustration and pouted again, pushing her red lips out in protest. “But Kevin! You just said you wanted to do everything you could to make this work! I ask you for this one thing, to put us first, to make us a priority and to come away with me so it will be just the two of us and we can leave business behind, we can leave the house behind, we can focus on just each other, and you tell me no!

  “That’s not building together; that’s keeping things exactly as they are! Come on, honey, please do your part! Take me somewhere nice so we can really start to rebuild this marriage! I don’t want to lose you!” She placed her hand on his thigh and began to move it up slowly toward his groin. He placed his hand over hers and stopped her.

  “I just have a lot going on here right now and it would be very difficult to leave. Perhaps if we left in a month or so… you know, I could wrap up what I’m working on now and then leave with less on my mind. I could focus on you more. Could you give me more time before we agree to go anywhere?” he asked, the pit inside him swirling darkly and pulling at him with clawed fingers. Maddie’s tiny face was lodged in his thoughts. He couldn’t stand the idea of being away from her so soon, and for any length of time.

  Ellen leaned very close to his ear and pressed her body up against his. “Kevin, you are the one who wants to fix our broken marriage. You are the one who just said that you would do anything to
make it right, that you would spend more time with me, make me feel loved and give me affection.

  “This is what I want. I want you with me, away from home on a second honeymoon. I want it now. Do this for me. Let’s fix our marriage. Take me away on a long romantic trip and really try to do this. Okay? For me? Come on. Let’s leave tomorrow, okay?” she pleaded with a sultry velvet voice.

  He knew there was no way out of it. She would not let it go, and she was right; he had made all those promises and he had agreed to put her first and try to rebuild their marriage. He was shocked that she wanted to remain married to him, but he thought that perhaps she was right and she had just made a mistake with her infidelity. He shook his head and covered his face with his hands for a moment as she raked her fingers back and forth through his hair.

  There was no way out of it for him. He sighed deeply and looked at her. “Can you give me a day, please? I would ask for one day so that I can get everything I can wrapped up here before we leave. Would that be alright?”