by R. Rodriguez
I stood up with a purpose. I wasn’t going to let this be my way of life. Dario had to go immediately. I gathered his precious phone from its hiding place and called my father. Lucian was out of the question. He had kept his distance as I’d asked him to do when Dario moved back.
Dad made a four hour drive from Carbondale in what seemed like two and ordered Dario to leave our home immediately with all of his belongings or else he would call the cops. He even helped him pack to make sure.
Mercifully, my children had slept through the whole ordeal. They were too small to notice his absence the following day. In the end, I gave Dario his phone back in return for his promise never to come back again.
“Oh, Grace. Dear Grace.” My dad gulped a sob. “How did you come to be in this guy’s hands?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know,” I sobbed.
“You need to get out of this, Grace. I tell you. You need to get out.” My dad stayed with me. He went back home only when he saw that I was in good enough shape to take care of our kids.
Dario’s promise to stay away only lasted two weeks. He sauntered into my living room, drunk, after one of his games, imploring that I let him move back home. Swearing that Deborah was one of his soccer students and nothing more…begging for my forgiveness for having lost control.
“I don’t know what happened to me, Grace. I swear. It will never happen again,” he swore.
I refused to take him back, so he brought in the big guns. His parents.
I had never met Dario’s parents before this. I had been introduced to them by phone, but had only chatted with them briefly. His parents traveled from Argentina at his insistence to try to convince me to forgive him and to vouch for him not being a violent person as he had demonstrated.
Having grown up in a house where pretense was all too important, I recognized this trait in his parents, so I wasn’t too keen on taking their word for it. They disliked our way of living immediately without taking into consideration that I alone was doing my best to get ahead in life.
I crumbled under the pressure of their suggestions to try things again with Dario for our children’s sake. It actually didn’t take a lot of coaxing from their part. I was desperate to offer the very best to my kids and at the time I thought the best was to raise them with their two parents together.
From that day on Dario’s parents’ presence was to be felt across the distance as if they lived right with us. They took it upon themselves to have my children live as they thought they should live. They arranged private music lessons for the kids and expensive vacations for us that were impossible to reject since they always made and paid arrangements before telling us. They went as far as to buy us, well Dario, a house in the nearby suburb of Aurora which was more in tune with how he grew up.
Chapter 16: Appearances
Who knew that living in a gated resort style community would do wonders to Dario’s demeanor? He actually appeared to shape up, getting a permanent coaching position with the University of Chicago. During that year we lived in apparent peace. I was relieved to be able to have a normal relationship that I could be proud of. Now, when I saw Lucian, it wasn’t because I needed him, but because I wanted to spend time with him.
Just when I let my guard down and started believing that what I had with Dario could have a chance, he showed me just how miserable life could be. The weeds of his addictions were too deeply rooted. He began to treat me like an outsider. Like I wasn’t his wife. Withdrawing his affection without reason.
I tried to talk to him about what was going on, but he refused to talk about it. He claimed that I was looking for things that weren’t there. That there was nothing wrong with him and nothing wrong with us.
I decided that I wouldn’t stand much more of his cold indifference. Soon, I would go and get a divorce even if I had to sell my limited collection of jewelry to do it. It was the only source of extra cash I could acquire. It took both of our salaries to keep up with the bills in our new more expensive house.
Two more weeks progressed with no change in his treatment, or lack thereof, of me and instead of keeping quiet and just doing as I’d planned; I mistakenly gave into the compulsion to ask something of him that he was not willing to give. An explanation.
“I shouldn’t have to be begging my husband for affection, Dario! Do you see nothing wrong with that?!” I pointed out to Dario after he ignored me for yet another day in favor of his recent favorite activity, surfing the internet. I was, in the flesh, a perfect example of an internet widow.
“Exactly. You said it perfectly, Grace. So, why do you do it?” Dario’s hard freezing gaze held my unbelieving eyes. He tried to be inconspicuous as he closed the laptop, pretending to give me his full attention. I noticed he left a small slit open, though, obviously leaving it on standby to get back to it as soon as I left the room.
I was used to such assertions, but didn’t he always recant and come crawling back? Surely, he didn’t mean it. But his defiant stance and most importantly, his actions said that he did. By now, I was a master at denial in regards to Dario, so I ignored him and pressed ahead.
Instead, I spent endless days researching the internet that he so loved for explanations to what was happening to us. Maybe if I found the answers there, he wouldn’t be so averse to taking the advice that would help us. I concluded that he was bipolar. That maybe I had a borderline personality. That he was an emotionally distant man. That maybe he was autistic and many other theories, regarding him and me, as well. This caused me to take on the role of psychologist, which was not my role to take on.
“This is passive aggressive behavior, is what this is! You really hate my guts, don’t you? What did I ever do to you to deserve this?!” I pressed on.
Dario simply flopped down on the sofa unceremoniously and turned on the television to his favorite sports channel, never answering my questions.
His interactions with me were just one escape after another. There was no real facing up to anything.
“Why do you do this?!” My face felt hot. My chest constricted with desperation. Still there was no response from Dario. He seemed like a stubborn child refusing to give into a parent’s request. I, of course, was the evil parent. This had been the role I had been delegated to unwillingly.
More than a month passed by and an all too familiar heartbeat accosted me when the harsh light of his computer summoned my attention late one night. He had left it unattended while he used the bathroom and I saw it flashing. My palms started sweating. I felt dizzy and I experienced tunnel vision. I no longer saw Dario as the answer to my questions. I saw it. It had to have the answers.
I breathed heavily, anesthetized by my already made decision. My head turned as if in slow motion toward my husband who had returned to the living room and my keen mind caught his nervous glimpse at the computer.
Dario never noticed when I turned abruptly on my heels and left the room. I’d be patient. Just like I had been a couple of years before when I found out his first infidelity.
I lay awake as the weight of Dario’s body dented his side of the bed. He didn’t even check to see if I was sleeping. He didn’t care. He had no reason to suspect that I had anything up my sleeve. Grace, the early bird. Grace, the boring one who was so predictable, so dependable. He didn’t know that patience was another one of the qualities I had developed through the tortured years with him.
Soon enough, I heard his shallow snore. He wouldn’t wake up even if the roof fell on him. I slipped out of the bed quietly, my bare feet sinking silently on the carpet. I closed the door carefully and almost tip toed down the stairs. The kids had been fast asleep for a while.
I stepped into the living room. Dario had left the side table lamp on. I looked around for his lap top, but it was nowhere to be seen.
I kept searching for it, flustered, trying to think where he had hidden it. Dario was a master at hiding things, but I had proved to be a master at finding them before, so I had to try my hand at it.
/> Foyer closet? I pondered. No, too obvious. His car? No… It could get damaged and he wouldn’t take the trouble to go out in the cold after he was all cozied up inside. Then it dawned on me. It had to be fairly close to him, like his cell phone had been before. I headed up the stairs again.
I opened the door to our bedroom an inch at a time to soften the creak it had and held my breath for a minute. I tiptoed to our walk in closet and closed the door behind me. No, he hadn’t been to the closet. He had just plopped down on the bed after brushing his teeth. Wait! He had paused by the bed before.
My heart stopped as I realized what I would have to do. I sauntered over to Dario’s side of the bed in the dark. I hovered over him waiting, in case he woke up suddenly and I waited. After what seemed like an eternity, I stooped to look under the bed. It was almost impossible to make anything out. Only, the dim light of our alarm clock offered some illumination.
I employed my hands to help me out in the task, all the while peering over the bed in case I got caught. I finally felt it. As hard and as cold as Dario’s treatment of me.
I gripped it strongly with both hands and lifted it slightly above the carpet to pull it out from under the bed. My heart beat wildly as I snuck into our bathroom, the perfect investigation room, it seemed, with Dario’s precious computer.
I flicked on the light and sat on the cold surface of the toilet lid. I made sure I turned the volume all the way down before turning the machine on. I felt the subtle vibrations of it coming to life and waited impatiently as it went through all of the usual motions.
Dario’s desktop finally popped up and I pondered what my next move would be. I had to be quick. I looked in the picture files. Nothing there. His documents. Nothing there either. Received files. Nothing either.
I logged onto the internet in the hopes of his browsing history coming on, but there was also nothing. After viewing his settings, I realized that his history would’ve been wiped out as soon as he exited his last session.
I leaned back frustrated and discouraged. I closed my eyes for a minute. I decided to go to the search tool as a last resort. Surely, that would show me something, if anything.
There it was, the little dog that dug around until it came up with whatever you wanted to find in your computer. I hoped he helped me out tonight.
“D.a.r.i.o.” I punched in. No results.
“e.m.a.i.l.s.” No matches.
“m.e.s.s.a.g.e.s.” My search was futile. I kept punching in any possible keywords that might turn something up, but nothing worked.
I breathed heavily and kneaded the creases on my frowning head.
“Might as well try the magic code. It worked before,” I said under my breath.
6.9.6.9.
I hit the keys and up came a myriad of explanations for Dario’s coldness.
Dario was involved in a world of his own in which his emotions were too involved and there was no room for real people or me, anyway.
Up popped about sixty internet nicknames of women, obviously who were connected to him through instant messaging, emails and— who knows if they had met in person? Some were from the greater Chicago area; some were from other states, some from other countries.
He had galleries upon galleries of adult pictures of all variations and videos saved from sights of the same nature. A whole collection of goodies that could keep a person’s interest for a few hundred years. At first the words jumbled together and I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but the components of certain sights registered.
Something flicked in my head. It was an image of a few seemingly effeminate men that I had seen on Dario’s messenger once. They looked so to me, but I wasn’t sure. Dario had denied anything of the sort.
“They’re new friends from back home,” he asserted.
I remembered how irate he had become when I remarked how cool it was that he had gay friends since I always thought he was homophobic.
In any case, the pages had been viewed recently according to the search, one of them, as recent as two hours before. I clicked on that one and almost dropped the computer. His picture galleries weren’t of regular friends. They were very explicit and of a different nature. There was image after image of the same thing, videos even. Video calls of Dario and his new “friends” that he forgot to erase or kept for other purposes. There was no mistaking what I was seeing.
My whole body started shaking. I refused to believe it. What was taking Dario’s affection from me. What meant more to him than being with his wife. I dropped the computer to the floor. It fell with a loud clack.
Dario didn’t wake up even then. I always envied his sleep. He could sleep through anything even after the ugliest fight. I had been reduced to taking natural sleeping pills to get some shut eye.
I stood up and flung the bathroom door open. I stared at Dario’s sleeping face. The unperturbed face of an angel, or a demon. A demon who had taken my pride, my heart, my innocence. My very spirit.
My first impulse was to jump on him and cause as much physical pain as he had inflicted on me emotionally, but I didn’t. I calmly went to my purse. I dug out my pen drive, and plugged it into the still working computer.
After downloading all the evidence on it, I hid it behind one of my drawers in the closet. I meant to use it to separate myself completely from Dario. I wouldn’t live this life anymore. As I set to turn off Dario’s partner in crime, he woke up.
I wasn’t planning to confront him about it tonight. I was too shocked to utter a word, but Dario jumped at me as soon as he saw what I had in my possession. I let him snatch the lap top away. He shut it forcefully and squared himself in front of me.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? Snooping around again! You are sick!” he shouted, practically spitting in my face.
His words were like a slap to my face. Anger crept up in my chest and I let all out.
“You are the sick one, Dario. Since when is Big Macho Dario into guys?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “You have been keeping me next to you under the pretense of having a wife, but I’m more of financer and domestic worker than a wife.”
“No one has put a gun to your head,” he said calmly.
“Now I understand completely! I understand why you don’t want me anymore! I don’t have the right equipment,” I said just as calmly.
Dario’s veins seemed to bulge out of his neck and his eyes seemed to spin wildly around the room. He flung the computer on the bed and grabbed two fistfuls of my hair pulling me back into the bathroom. He slammed my head on the bathroom sink. I heard a slight crack, but I couldn’t be sure if it was my skull or the sink that he had broken.
Pounding pain reverberated in my head and I saw Dario’s transformed face really far away even though his spit on my lips told me he was closer than life.
“I don’t want you because I don’t love you. You disgust me. You don’t turn me on. I’m just not interested in you, period. What part of not interested don’t you understand?!!” He wound my hair tighter in his death grip and pushed me hard on the floor.
“That’s why you’ll end up alone… you’re crazy. No man can stand a woman who messes up so effing much. You just mess everything up. If you would just stay shut. If you just let things be, maybe I’ll come around. It’s not when you say. You just want to talk, talk, talk. You’ll drive anybody crazy!”
I cried defeated onto the carpet as I heard his rampage. I knew what he was telling me wasn’t true. I had something good once. Other people loved me, too, but I was too afraid to speak.
“Dario, please,” I croaked meekly. “I didn’t mean anything. Just leave, please.”
“You leave! I’m not leaving my house. My parents bought this house for me. This is my house! You’re the one who has to leave,” he spat at me.
I stayed on the carpet. I knew enough not to rile him up further.
“If you ever cared for me, Dario, please. For Cody and Sarah. Just leave us, alone. I won’t bother you anymore,” I implored.
Dario grabbed me by the arm and shoved me out of the bedroom. I stumbled, trying not to fall, and heard the door slam behind me.
I hoped the kids wouldn’t wake up from all the yelling. They didn’t. I could never be sure if it was because they were heavy sleepers or because they were too scared to come out of their rooms.
I sank down in front of our door and wept quietly.
“Shut the hell up! I’m tired of your crying!” Dario kicked the door.
I let my tears roll down my face in forced silence. I had been at this place so many times that I felt exhausted. I calmed the turmoil and the hurt I felt by closing my eyes and thinking about nothing. Nothing that had just happened really happened, I told myself over and over again. Especially his words. Normal, good people didn’t act the way Dario did. Loving husbands didn’t trample all over their loving wives’ hearts.
I was beautiful, intelligent, industrious, a fighter. Everybody else who knew me told me so. Everybody except Dario. I used to see it in myself. I used to believe all of this. I wasn’t sure anymore.
I slowly stood up and went to complete my calming routine. I pulled some sheets, a pillow and a comforter from the hallway closet and set up my temporary bed on my sofa.
I walked to my secret drawer in the library and retrieved the old forgotten bible my grandmother had given me when I left home at seventeen. I sat in utter and complete silence on the sofa, not wanting to believe that this was happening to me again, but in a sense not surprised at all. Dario’s changing affections had become a part of my life, kind of like the change of seasons.
I stared at the wall in front of me and opened my bible to seek guidance.
Immediately, I received revealing words,
Break up your fallowed ground, and sow not among thorns.
Chapter 17: Letting Go
Lucian…If I had followed the right path, if I had planted my seed in fertile ground, I’d be reaping the right fruit. If I had held on to Lucian I would be having an entirely different life, now. I’d be happy, prospering, in peace.
