My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  The problem was, twenty years of emotional exhaustion kept my mouth clamped shut. I had seen too much shadow in our garden, even when I tried to view shadows as proof of sunlight. I was forced mute now by having lived with a partner who invited drama and crisis into our life like a junkie for the adrenalin created by senseless risk. If total freedom from work responsibilities, two million dollars’ worth of resources, and a wife encouraging him to follow his heart no matter where it aimed was not enough to make a man happy, this man of mine would never be happy. And I just didn’t want to live with someone whom I could never make happy. Just once, I wanted to wake to someone who considered my contributions to our life a gift rather than a dreadful bore.

  The question now was: what would I do for the cold winter of my life after Mark?

  Living in the country was a dream we had both shared, but for me this dream was designed for a couple. I couldn’t imagine living in that quiet village without land to tend and animals to care for. I couldn’t imagine being stuck in a small town without financial security to keep my children safe from the downward spiral of classless ignorance and mental atrophy. I couldn’t imagine living where everyone knew everyone else’s business as I tried to go gracefully through the painful process of severing two lives so intricately entangled from twenty years of raising kids, building a business, making money and going bankrupt, building homes, and sharing dreams. I couldn’t even imagine finding someone else with whom to pursue this dream as a new couple, because moving to the country had been our dream, Mark’s and mine, together. This life was a dream designed through years of joint experiences as a couple, joint experiences that formed our attitudes and desires. Living in Blue Ridge was the end result of all we had learned. The life I had so long imagined with him, a life of creativity and art and discovery, a life of simplicity and connection in the place we dreamed of moving to for years, would never feel the same with anyone new because the rewards of forging that free, artistic life in this time and place would not have been earned authentically.

  Blue Ridge once represented love to me–my love for nature and my love for Mark. If he wanted a divorce, I had just lost both. Blue Ridge now represented nothing more than loss, loneliness, failed dreams, and gross self-indulgence on the part of a husband who, in the end, not only had broken every promise ever spoken to me, but clearly made those promises knowing all along that he was going to do what he wanted rather than what we agreed. I stared at the garden of my life and could see nothing at the moment but complete crop failure.

  I took stock of our situation. Mark didn’t want us living in the same home another day. He offered to leave and get his own apartment, but I couldn’t possibly handle the upkeep of that monstrosity of a house alone, and since he had control of our money, I couldn’t afford to move out myself. I also knew, just as he thought nothing of leaving me with babies to feed while he went on a grand chase after Tony Robbins, Mark would spend any and all of our last resources to set himself up in a new place with no consideration for his children’s or my survival. It would be every man out for himself. I just couldn’t trust him to not make matters worse for everyone.

  Mark had spent the last two years building his real estate business and, despite the challenges of the real estate market, made six figures that year, thanks to a lucrative listing received from a friend. Not enough to support a million dollar mortgage, but certainly enough to live comfortably on his own. I had a fledgling dance studio that, at best, might make a few hundred dollars weekly a year hence, if I could manage the impossible and hold out without income long enough for the business to turn around. To survive, I would have to fire my older daughter who was working with me. Denver was counting on this job as her one means to live independently and she still hoped to escape Blue Ridge someday. I couldn’t bear to let her down, and even if I did, the business would never make enough to support someone my age with retirement and other pending life demands looming, such as the responsibility of raising my younger daughter, sending her to college, helping my son in college, saving for retirement, and so forth.

  I was up against a wall. I knew that only one of us who would listen to the wisdom of logic. At fifty-one, how many working years did I have left that I could dare waste in a dead-end proposition simply because I refused to accept the futility of the situation? Even loving nature and animals and the gentle soul-stroking of the country as I did, I had no choice but to move back to a place where I had a fighting chance to reclaim a purposeful life, parent effectively, and not become a financial burden on others. And if Mark felt we couldn’t share one home (and we couldn’t afford two), I had no choice but to live someplace free, which in this case, meant moving home to my parents at the ripe old age of fifty-one. The humiliation of admitting how far I’d fallen now made every choice painful, but I couldn’t see any other solution. I called my parents, expecting an “I told you so” speech. What I received instead was compassion, love, and sincere sorrow over all that I’d lost. Of course they offered to help, without judgment and with a generosity of spirit I didn’t deserve. Their support was the truest example of love I’d witnessed in years as they reminded me, once again, of the kind of parent I hoped to be myself.

  I carefully explained my plans to Mark for my future “garden,” going through my thought processes, sharing my fears, and offering my practical contemplations. I still believed our mutual survival was a problem we had to solve together. I got nothing from Mark but agreement that leaving Blue Ridge was best for me, and an offer to help me pack.

  So it was that I found myself driving down the highway, back to Florida to get assistance from my parents so I could survive the short term and plant whatever crop I could on my own. I was all alone, driving a big cargo truck, larger than any I’d ever handled. Mark and Kent had packed it with my books, my clothes, a leftover couch from our basement, a chair, and a TV. I had a new cellphone with twenty-five dollars’ worth of minutes that Mark had purchased as a concession when he took my cell phone from me so he wouldn’t have to pay my bills. I had enough cash, borrowed from my sister, to pay for fuel at the truck stops when I wrestled the big rig into them. As I drove down the lonesome highway, my belly churned around the pizza that had been our last shared meal together as a family. I thought over the sad arrangements we’d made.

  Mark claimed he didn’t have the means to support me anymore and it wasn’t his problem to help me find a place to live or a way to support myself, so he would not be sharing any money he made from this point on.

  “You’re tough. You’ll land on your feet. You always do,” he said, almost as though he hated me for my strength when, in fact, that had been the trait that had kept our heads above water for twenty years.

  He promised to send Neva to me when school was out because by then, surely, I would have a place to live. Kent was going off to college, and Denver, at twenty-five, was ready to be self-sufficient.

  Together, we decided to offer Denver ownership of the dance studio. Mark felt he could cancel the lease if she didn’t want to take over, in which case I’d take the teaching materials with me to begin anew. I could have sorely used the resources, but Denver liked the idea of being her own boss and picking up a turnkey business, so along with her boyfriend, she decided to try to make a go of the school. I believed offering her the business was a way of showing her my faith in her potential and I liked that we were giving her an opportunity to claim some direction in life.

  She would later blame me for her choice to take over when the reality of just how hard running a business can be came to light. I had hoped her experiences might give her insight into just how hard I’d worked in my life to build a dance school business. Perhaps that would help her to better understand my commitment to supporting the family, but instead, giving her the studio created a wedge of resentment that would take years to chip away. We didn’t speak for over three years.

  The loss of my daughter’s love and her lack of empathy hurt m
uch more than the loss of my marriage, because I just didn’t see it coming. Every adult knows marriages are fragile and can deteriorate, but I never dreamed the bond between me and my children could be broken, even temporarily. Denver, more than the other two, always seemed most connected to me. As Mark’s stepchild, and a young woman with a bit more innate practicality in her worldview than the others, she’d always been less inclined to excuse Mark’s less-than-admirable qualities and she saw things as they really are. But she aligned with him now, adding more weight to the burden on my broken heart.

  I drove through the night by myself in that big truck, shaking with sadness and blinded by tears. The temptation to just ease that big wheel to the left and end all my troubles came and made itself at home for a moment before leaving. I knew deep inside that I had no other course than to keep moving boldly towards a new life, even if I didn’t want a new life.

  Middle-aged, with no home and less than a hundred dollars to my name, I didn’t even know where to start to rebuild. I had no car, no credit, no savings, no retirement, and no career to fall back on. Mark had changed all the credit cards to his name when he took over finances, so he alone had access to credit to help survive the coming months. He had put my car in his name, too, so I had to leave it behind along with the two cash-purchased cars he claimed were his alone and that he needed for work. Mark kept most all of the money we had in the bank claiming he needed every cent we had to keep afloat while the house was for sale. There was an additional five grand in debt still owed for the new studio, but Denver agreed to pay that bill in exchange for the business. But the business didn’t have much promise in my estimation, and every family member was destitute now. Which of us would make the payments if she couldn’t?

  Too sad to argue any point, I slipped away quietly, demanding nothing, in a state of stupor as I focused hazily on what my children were now going to live without. The last thing Mark did as I left, was ask for my wedding ring.

  “I want to sell it for the gold. I could use the cash,” he said, with a callousness that made my heart shatter in ways it would never be put together quite as whole again.

  I looked at the solid gold chain hanging around his neck, worth three times what he paid for my ring, and for the first time in my marriage I said a flat out “No” to the man I loved. He had taken enough, and I decided that one last shred of dignity was mine to retain.

  Months later, I was still struggling with my attempt at my new garden, digging out rocks that were sharp, ugly, and painful to handle. Divorce is never easy, and the pain of a life ripped apart creeps into every fiber of your being, coloring behaviors and actions in the worst of ways. Mark and I had twenty years of resentment and history to wade through. Just as Mark had claimed he wanted to live a simple life in a simple log cabin while he spent over two million dollars on one complex building project, he now claimed he wanted a mutual friendship while secretly planning a surprise lawsuit that would damage both of our chances for financial and emotional recovery. My naïve dream that we could part as friends crumbled further with every act of cruelty he committed.

  With help from my family in Florida, I opened another small dance and yoga studio and began the arduous process of building a new business from scratch with zero resources. I expected my former reputation to give me a fair head start in the process, but despite my strong reputation and massive experience, not a single dancer from the past enrolled. My fresh-start studio was laden with bills and debt from the beginning, and I had no students to lighten the load. Life with Mark clearly had not humbled me enough. Fate decided I needed the experience of feeling obsolete and unworthy in the dance world to learn the lessons of humility, too.

  Still, I did everything I could to set up a life so that when Neva joined me as Mark had promised, I’d be prepared to care for her in the way she deserved. I kept telling myself there was no place to go but up. I didn’t have the fortitude to wake up and carve a new life for myself in my depressed state, but you could bet I’d do whatever I had to do for my children.

  Then Mark broadsided me with the custody case. I was accused variously of abandonment, being an unfit mother, an adulteress, and emotionally unstable. These unfair accusations had a way of shocking me out of my grief, but since I was in Florida, he had the home court advantage, and in his zeal to create a scenario where he was the victim and I was the enemy, my children were given a distorted perception about what had happened and why. Suddenly they stopped speaking to me. They stopped calling. Resentment poured out of them in words and deeds.

  I couldn’t afford the legal battle, financially or emotionally, and losing intimate contact with my children ripped every last ounce of fight in me away. We had finally sold that monstrosity of a house, and also the second half-house, both at pathetic prices, but this last stroke of luck did leave us with a modest sum in an escrow account awaiting the final divorce decree. I proposed the money be divided equally. Mark wanted more. He sued for alimony, too.

  Financial desperation was crippling everyone in the family, and just as Mark had been willing to lose everything we had in order to retain his self-perception as a magnificent designer, he now seemed willing to risk everything we had to prove another point: that he was somehow the wronged spouse and the better person. The legal bills were escalating, eating up the cash so quickly that soon we would be in debt beyond the escrow amount. Weak from my wounded heart, and having just discovered Neva was living on food stamps and was now showing extreme signs of emotional instability, I finally cracked.

  In my ultimate act of exhausted love, I gave in and let the last vestige of life in our erstwhile relationship slip underwater and drown. I was simply too tired to face one more Mark-induced crisis. Twenty years of watching him burn through our resources in the pursuit of personal aggrandizement made it all too clear that if I didn’t stop the madness, we would have nothing left at the end of the battle to divide. My youngest child needed more than either of us was providing at this time, and something had to be done to instigate change. The only way I could be a responsible parent now was to minimize the emotional and financial damage this divorce was causing so my child at least could have food and shelter and a chance to balance her emotional upheaval. And I needed to buck up and get life back on track so I could be someone my kids could count on, and fast.

  I had one last heart-to-heart with Mark, swallowing all the pride my gut could stomach, as I apologized for any and all offenses he perceived from me. I offered to give up alimony, any earned settlement to balance the investment we’d made in his new career or tools, and custody of my daughter—all things my lawyer insisted were a mistake to forego—if he would just lay down his sword and quit spending the money on a lawsuit.

  Mark was so used to getting his way through petulant behavior that he wasn’t the least bit surprised by my surrender.

  “I sure miss having money,” he said with a charismatic grin, cheerfully signing the papers my lawyer had drawn up and acting as if we were best friends again. “I hope this goes through quickly.”

  I drove home from the signing, feeling a strange, sickly combination of relief and grief. Sometimes when you win, you lose, and for me, breaking the gridlock was both. I needed my share of the settlement to start paying back my family for the help they had offered during those first miserable months. Mark said he needed his in order to follow the plan laid out by his debt manager to get life back on track. Certainly his plan would create better, more stable circumstances for our daughter, which was my primary concern.

  I had dearly wanted to fight to the end no matter the cost, tempted to just let him ruin us both to prove he was his own worst enemy, and certainly mine. But my job had always been to lessen the damage Mark innocently created and to wait out the pendulum swings of his personality with gritted teeth and dogged determination. We were simply living true to the dynamic of our relationship from the beginning. Ruminating about the injustice of the situation, I thought o
f how Mark had asked me for my ring back. Of course, it never occurred to me to ask him to return his. Didn’t that say it all?

  On the day our divorce was final, Mark was at the lawyer’s office within the hour, anxiously demanding his settlement check even before I had been notified the marriage was officially over. Apparently, he had jumped the gun on his next remodeling project, a cabin on four acres that his new girlfriend had bought, and he was already deep in the throes of debt. From the moment he knew money was forthcoming, he enthusiastically allocated all he could into remodeling that house (for Neva’s sake, he insisted) and the small workshop on the property (for his sake; to house the thousands of dollars’ worth of tools he had insisted on keeping).

  His veering from the practical plan to pay off debt and stabilize life didn’t surprise me, but his sudden alliance with the new woman did. Being the first and only woman he had ever dated in his life, I found it odd he didn’t feel a need to shop around or gain more relationship experience before settling. She also happened to be a student of mine whom, while we were married, he had adamantly claimed was not at all his type physically. Weeks before we came to our compromise, I had voiced concerns about his new alliance and he promised me that under no circumstance would he move in with her if I gave him custody. I’d agreed to let him raise Neva because I trusted him to live true to this agreement.

  His breaking yet another promise to me was frustrating, but the fact that he had offered Neva no voice in the matter nor given her advance notice that they would be moving in with another woman showed such a lack of sensitivity to our children’s need for time and patience to adapt to our family’s devastation that I almost had an anxiety attack. For the first time in my life, I actually sought counseling to cope. Had I really turned over the care of our children to a man who put his wants over everyone else’s needs, no matter how serious the circumstances?