A Wifes Regrets

My wife of twenty-three years was busily packing a few of her most cherished items in plastic storage boxes humming to herself like she was doing a casual spring cleaning. I in turn was standing in the doorway of our family room watching Amanda with tears flowing down my face. Despair and a sense of total powerlessness rippled through my soul knowing she was minutes away from the sudden abandonment of our life together.

Part of me already hated her for the betrayal she had so unemotionally informed me just hours ago. But truthfully, part of me also hated myself for breaking down like I did, and even now with me silently crying. I guess a real man like her lover, Mike Jericho, would have acted out in some other fashion. But he wasn't the one being betrayed, he was the man my wife was going to live with and give her heart to in California.

Standing there, with Amanda seemingly oblivious to my presence, I ran the events of the past few months through my head trying to make sense of everything.

It had started about six months prior with Amanda's employer, a national insurance company, hiring Jericho as an efficiency consultant. He supposedly was the best in restructuring companies by cutting waste and the usual other business-related bullshit. Jericho's contract with Amanda's employer had him there for six to nine months.

Amanda, as a department head, was tasked to work closely with him to make the reorganization as smooth and quickly as possible. That's where things now obviously went to shit.

Before this asshole Jericho showed up my wife had never given me the slightest hint that she would ever be unfaithful. She was the type of wife who got semi-hurt if I casually looked at another woman while we were out in public. She would then make her usual comment about how I was the love of her life and couldn't begin to imagine being with another man. Jericho must truly be one amazing man because it only took a few months to get my wife into his bed willingly spreading her legs for him.

This day had started as usual with me making reservations at Amanda's favorite restaurant, which I was going to surprise her with that evening. Instead, I got a call from her after lunch asking me to return home as something important needed to be discussed.

Of course, I rushed home to find her unnaturally calm sitting on the couch. My first thought was that something had happened to our kids. Sally, our oldest, was a college student in New York City and Kevin was in the army stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.

"Please sit down, Bruce," she said. "I have some difficult news to tell you."

"Are the kids okay?" I asked immediately as I sat next to her.

"Yes, they're fine. It's about you and me and something that I never expected to happen."

Like some surprise attack, Amanda admitted she was in love with another man and was leaving me that day. She also told me flat out it was Mike Jericho, someone she had mentioned only a few times in passing since he had arrived.

I'd met the guy once when I had to pick Amanda up from work because her car was in the shop. Standing in the lobby watching Jericho interact with others, it took less than a minute to realize he was the type who believed his shit didn't stink. True, he was a handsome man who looked like he was in his mid thirties.

The flashy clothes he was wearing, complete with the rings on his fingers and a gold Rolex on his wrist, along with his greasy charm and good looks could get him anything he wanted.

Never in a million years would believe my wife would fall for that shit. Especially since she was older than him. She was forty-two, and though she was gorgeous, I was confident she was immune from his charms. Why would a younger handsome guy be interested in my older wife?

Apparently, I was wrong.

Amanda tried to explain it this way, when she began working with Jericho she felt an instant connection that only got deeper as the days and weeks passed. That she was sorry for how this happened and that I had been a wonderful husband but she knew it was time to start a new phase of her life.

"I can't believe you're seriously doing this Amanda," I said watching her secure the lids on the storage boxes. "This is crazy, you don't know Jericho and while I accept that things between us may have gotten stale, I can't believe you're going to throw away our life together like this." I said in a hurt voice. "You don't know anything about him."

"Mike has completely explained his past to me," my wife replied with a strange look I had never seen before. Amanda used to look at me with a special soft smile and a glint in her eyes that told me that she loved me.

Amanda now looked at me with a combination of cold indifference and annoyance. In an afternoon of blows to my soul, I think this was the worst. I knew then that there was no hope, she was in some form of love with another man.

"Bruce," she said, "please try to understand and be happy for me. I found a man that matches my passion and lust for life."

"Are you fucking serious, Amanda!" I yelled back my body shaking from the insane words coming out of her mouth.

It was at that moment Amanda rushed over and grabbed both of my hands and pulled me close. I wasn't foolish enough to believe she had suddenly come to her senses, but then again I didn't pull away.

"Bruce, I've made my choice. You're going to have to let me go." She said, then releasing my hands and turning back to the two boxes she had packed. Amanda attempted to lift them herself off a table, a difficult task but she got them to the floor and on the hand truck we kept for such tasks.

Realizing that she was done with me as both a husband and person, I allowed her to maneuver the boxes out the front door on her own and over to her SUV. After popping the rear hatch I saw two large travel cases in the back, which had to contain the clothes she was taking to start her new life.

When Amanda explained the situation about her leaving with Jericho she told me that in the coming divorce, I would get the house and both cars. Amanda also added that she had told her lawyer not to pursue alimony. My stomach clenched because the way Amanda made those statements it was like she was trying to pass those things off like a grand consolation prize.

All Amanda wanted in the divorce was half of our joint savings, a sum that came to sixty-five thousand dollars. She was leaving behind the three-thousand-square-foot home we had lived in for fifteen years. A house that she had obsessed over from everything to the foundation up to the roof. Every item in the house, from the fixtures to the paint on the walls, to the make of the furniture and appliances was chosen by her. She loved that house in a way I often couldn't understand.

Given all the time and effort she put into its creation and development, I couldn't help but wonder if Amanda had suffered a brain injury that had altered her personality.

"Bruce, Along with the divorce papers, I've left contact information on the desk in your office in case something happens to the kids." She said getting into her car. "Tell the kids I'll be in touch in a few weeks."

"Screw you, Amanda," I said with anger building. "I will not be relegated to some messenger between you and our kids. You're going to have to explain your actions to them personally. And I know our kids, they will not accept Jericho in their lives and they might cut you out completely."

That statement seemed to pierce the thick affair fog for a moment crashing the beautiful delusion that had consumed her. Of course, she quickly shook it off got in her car, and cranked it up. Just when I thought Amanda would just drive away, she rolled down her window.

"Bruce," she said, "I'll have a driver return my car. You can keep it, give it to one of the kids, or sell it. I won't need it where I'm going." With that, she rolled up the window, pulled out of the driveway, and drove away.

It was then that the neighbors learned what had just transpired because I collapsed on the ground sobbing uncontrollably.

Luckily for me, one of my oldest friends was a lawyer who could handle divorces. Robert Carter and I went back to our days playing high school football. He was the person I called a couple of hours after Amanda had driven off to begin her fairy tale come true. This took place after a few neighbors found me lying on the driveway and carried me back into the house.

In the following days, Robert found Amanda's lawyer, whom her new lover was paying for, easy to work with since she had laid out to him that this was to be an uncontested divorce. Amanda had already transferred the sixty-five thousand in our joint savings to another account. And with her attorney, signed away any claim to alimony and the house, and her car which was returned the following day.

All I had to do was wait from thirty to ninety days for the divorce to make its way through the bureaucracy. Robert assured me though that my wait would more than likely be around the one-month mark.

I don't remember much of the following weeks. Luckily my boss and coworkers at the engineering firm I worked for knew what happened with my marriage and took care of the few unfinished assignments I had at the time. Once they were squared away my boss even used a little-known company hardship policy to get me an extended leave of absence.

My kids, Sally and Kevin, had thrown their full support behind me once they learned of what their mother had done. They both desperately wanted to return home but the demands of their own adult lives made that impossible.

As far as Amanda contacting them, you would think a mother who was suddenly leaving their father after more than two decades of marriage would have called her kids to try and explain. But no when I reached the kids after talking with Robert, I found out they hadn't received any communication from their mother in several weeks.

Goddamn, that Mike Jericho must have one magic dick.

After talking with Robert and the kids, I pretty much shut down after that, refusing to leave the house or talk to anyone else.

A few weeks later some sense of self-awareness finally crept back the morning after Robert called to tell me it was time to sign the papers. Of course that would have required me to be presentable in public. So I stumbled into the master bathroom, where Amanda had taken a full month to decide on the decor and proper fixtures, and looked at myself in the mirror.

For the first time, I saw a thin, hollowed-eyed stranger with a thick unkempt beard full of gray. Thinking back at that moment, I couldn't remember the last time I had a real meal. I lost at least thirty pounds since Amanda left and honestly looked so close to death that it scared me. I became so mad then at how I had been used and betrayed I did something totally out of character for me. I punched the mirror with my fist. The glass shattered all over the sink, and my right hand was badly cut with blood going everywhere.

It took a visit to the emergency room and a few stitches to finally clear my head. I still had enough time afterward to get cleaned up and go to Robert's office.

Robert looked on with some concern as I went to pick up the divorce papers in his firm's conference room. Who would have thought that a hardened divorce attorney who had gone through his marital nightmare could still have empathy for a stupid client who still loved his errant wife?

"Well Bruce, you are officially divorced," Robert said in a way that was supposed to bring me some relief.

"Yay me," I said with spite.

"Bruce," he said standing up bringing an end to our meeting, "I know this sucks, but I've got to say you came away from this divorce mostly unscathed. Losing just sixty-five thousand dollars in the settlement, given your shared wealth, is a win in anyone's book. With this state's divorce laws, I've known cheating wives that have taken almost everything from their former husbands."

I stayed silent, taking no comfort in Robert's words as I stood up to shake his hand and leave. It was then that I caught sight of the pretty paralegal entering the room, a blonde somewhere in her twenties looking at me visibly overwhelmed with pity. A more dynamic and smarter version of me probably could have milked her emotions for a rebound pity fuck. But in truth, that talent for me never existed, I was no Jericho.

Having Jericho take my wife and live rent-free in my head was almost too much to bear.

I walked out to my car wondering just what in the hell I would do now. My wife and kids held all the meaning in my life. The kids were grown and out on their own, so Amanda had become my purpose. I fucking cried after getting in the car oblivious if anyone saw me break down.

At some point, I guess a self-preservation instinct kicked in and I regained my composure. It was the last time I cried over Amanda.

A couple of weeks later I'm back at work trying to rebuild my life. I think the worst thing was the looks that the others gave me. There were several variations, I was mostly looked at with deep pity. But there were a few looks of suspicion with some whispering there had to be a reason why Amanda threw away what on the surface looked like a perfect marriage.

The real hell for me was when I returned to the house we shared. Amanda's ghost was everywhere given all the time and effort she had done to create what for her was the perfect home. It was so overwhelming I had dreams each night of her returning to me begging for forgiveness. It was obvious what my next move would be.

Just a few days later a moving van rented by a used furniture dealer backed into the driveway. I sold him, at a bargain price just to spite Amanda's metaphorical ghost, almost every item in the house that wasn't bolted down. When he and his workers left there was only a bed for me, the large screen television, the basic kitchen appliances, a couch, and my recliner.

The house was so empty, that any sound echoed through it like a cave.

I wasn't done yet. Even when the kids were living with us Amanda's creation was insanely too large for a family of four. I had no intention of living in it alone any longer than I had to. I called a real estate agent the next day.

A few weeks later I found a nice patio home for sale and snapped it up immediately. The big house was also listed at a bargain price and bought by a family with four young kids. Seeing the wonder in the eyes of the mom and dad as they walked through the empty rooms of their new home brought me my first joy in months.

A little over four months had passed since Amanda destroyed my world and I was developing a new normal for my life. Especially heartening was that both Sally and Kevin had in no uncertain terms cut their mother out of their lives. Apparently, Amanda and Jericho went on a two-week long cruise after arriving in California and she didn't try to contact the kids until well after it was over.

It was a little after the six-month point of Amanda leaving that I got a phone call from an unknown number. It was late in the day and I had just cooked a frozen pizza and popped the top on a beer when the phone buzzed. I declined the call and went back to the movie I was watching. At some point, it occurred to me to look up the area code and I laughed when I learned it was the one from the San Francisco area. I figured it was probably from a telemarketer but I found it comforting how much I didn't care one way or the other if it was Amanda trying to make contact.

A few months later I got a call from Amanda's sister, correctly named Karen because she was one, informing me that Amanda had tried to contact me. I instantly thought back to the unknown call from the San Francisco area.

"Well Karen," I said, "I'll take your word for it but I haven't received any call from her. And frankly, our marriage ended on really bad terms so I don't have any desire to talk with her. Plus, according to your sister's own words Jericho is her true soulmate. If it involves the kids, whatever relationship she can rebuild with them is on her. Not only will I not help my ex-wife with anything, I don't know if I would piss on Amanda if I saw her on fire."

Karen and I only tolerated each other at the best of times, so not surprisingly she hung up without saying another word. Though, I couldn't help but ponder what might have gone wrong between Amanda and Jericho.

If Amanda had run headfirst into some form of reality with her lover, she was going to be in a world of trouble for someone to save her. My former father-in-law and mother-in-law were dead and Amanda's sister and her husband were taking care of his aging parents. And even if Sally and Kevin were speaking to their mother, neither had anyway for her to live with them.

Oh well, I thought to myself as I took a sip of my beer, Amanda should have sixty-five thousand dollars to cushion any return to the real world. I did realize that I hadn't mentioned to Karen that I had sold the house and everything in it.

It was a month later when the final shoe dropped. I was sitting in the office I shared with another engineer when the phone on my desk rang.

"Hello this is Bruce Evans, can I help you," I said, not paying attention to the number on the screen.

"Yes Mr. Evans," a female said, "I'm Dr. Sylvia Altman calling from Sacramento Regional Hospital and I need to inform you that your wife, Amanda Evans is my patient. She was in a car accident a couple of days ago and has just regained consciousness. Her Illinois driver's license records have you listed as her next of kin."

Needless to say, Dr. Altman was taken aback when I chuckled. "Yeah Dr. Altman, we've been divorced for almost a year. My ex-wife should have updated her emergency contact information. She's in a relationship with a man named Mike Jericho, he's the one you should contact."

"That's just it," Dr. Altman sighed, "with Ms. Evans unconscious, the police ran the license plate on the car and contacted Mr. Jericho. He has disavowed any responsibility for Ms. Evans and has stated they were not in a long-term, committed relationship."

"Oh wow, I don't know what to tell you, doctor. As I stated, she and I are divorced and the breakup of our marriage for me was unexpected and brutal. I don't see how I can be of help to Amanda. Not to get petty, but she burned our bridges thoroughly and the last thing she said to me was her certainty that she and Jericho were meant for each other."

"Yes," Dr. Altman began, "Mr. Jericho has gone as far as to have his lawyer make it clear to the hospital that he wants no further contact from Ms. Evans."

"Dr. Altman, Amanda has money, she got sixty-five thousand dollars out of the divorce," I responded now knowing where this was going.

"Ms. Evans says that money is gone and that she doesn't have any medical insurance. Mr. Evans, your ex-wife has repeatedly asked about you and has some idea you'll help her."

"I'll be on the first flight I can get," I said to the doctor, not believing the words coming out of my mouth."

"Do you want to speak with Ms. Evans?" The doctor asked. "She still has a long recovery ahead of her but your ex-wife wants to speak with you." She said, obviously relieved that someone would come to her injured patient.

"No,' I replied. "I need to speak with my lawyer before talking to her." Dr. Altman didn't push the point and I believed she fully understood the nature of how our relationship ended.

We talked for several more minutes getting some of the details about how the car wreck happened. What I began to understand was that Jericho and she were fighting with Amanda fleeing his residence in one of his cars. My ex-wife was never a good driver and being in control of some high-end vehicle on unfamiliar roads in bad weather explained everything to me. What Dr. Altman only alluded to was that after examining Amanda, she had evidence of physical abuse on the part of Jericho against her.