This is a story about deception and infidelity. The woman is wretched. The guy is damaged. Their situation is infuriating. If you require the element of reconciliation, revenge, BTB retribution etc., please read no further: you won't find it here.
Abbie's Juicy Journal
The way the fight started was the subject of dispute for a long time afterwards. I was a high school freshman, playing forward on my school's junior varsity team. I was always pretty tall, about 6'2 (188 cm) and I was aggressive on the basketball court. We were winning against our most hated rival, the rich kids of Locust Valley High, when someone threw an elbow at one of my teammates. I don't think I threw the first punch, but I was suddenly in the middle of that brawl and, in my memory, I can still feel an otherworldly darkness overcoming me. I can recall my hand curling into a hard ball of bare knuckles and the animal motion with which I swung my fist into the face of the kid who stood before me. The memory is now a blur, but as I was pulled back by my coach and a referee, I can vividly recall the sight of him lying on that polished wooden floor in a pool of blood. I had broken his nose and he had suffered a really bad concussion when he spun violently to the ground.
Even though I didn't start the fight, I had caused the most damage so the blame for what had happened fell upon me. The kid had to be hospitalized, and it was not certain whether he'd sustained any permanent motor damage. An assault charge was threatened, but in the end, no legal action was taken. I was kicked off the team and sternly lectured about my violent behavior. I took it very much to heart.
Since that time, I've thought of myself as a pacifist. I've never been in a physical fight since then and I go to great lengths to avoid serious argument or any kind of confrontation. I know some people think I'm spineless and pathetic and though it's unpleasant to know that some people think I'm a wimp, I've found it easier to go through life blameless, with as little adrenaline as possible in my blood.
All of that changed last year.
I came upon the notebook purely by accident. For the second time that month, my wife had lost the key to our post office box. Abigail had begun working on a new Netflix series, "Zombies Rule the Earth," at the beginning of February, and she called from the set to ask if I could find it. It was a Friday evening, three weeks after she'd joined the crew of that show, and since they hadn't gotten started until noon, she was on her 5pm "lunch break." We both worked in film and tv production: she as a make-up artist, me as a production manager, so we were accustomed to each other's long hours and asymmetrical work schedules.
I was between shows and had been out of work for about six weeks. It was unusual for me to be idle so long, but to be a freelancer in the film industry is to accept the possibility of dry spells, so although finances would be tight, we assured ourselves that we could ride it out. I hadn't had much of a break during the past several years and our bank account was in decent shape, even though we had some steep and worrisome monthly obligations. Abbie had recently bought a new BMW and the car payment was absurdly high. I had ventured a cautious word when she bought it, but Abbie insisted that for all the hours she spent working, she deserved to have something really nice. Of course, I agreed. Then there was the mortgage. We'd bought our house just before the last big bubble, so even though the valuation had increased, our monthly note was probably a little more than we should wisely pay. Abbie really wanted that house, and I went along with her. It is a great place, after all.
Our finances were tight, but Abbie was making pretty good money on her show. We'd be OK for a while until, we were sure, I'd be working again and we'd have two good incomes.
I walked upstairs to our bedroom, one of two in that small but charming hillside home. The house, a 1920's era Spanish-style two-story building, was in a cul-de-sac in the hills in Northeast L.A. We enjoyed fixing it up together, usually finding that our choices for decoration and furnishing were very well aligned, even if she came up with most of the design ideas. It was just one more thing of many that we shared as a couple. Our marriage, I believed, was an ideal partnership.
I held the phone to my ear as I mounted the stairs. "Look on the top of the dresser," she directed, "or maybe on the bathroom counter. "I really need you to find it and I'm sure it's in either of those places. Unless... maybe I left it in that blue sweatshirt pocket which is somewhere in the dresser. By the way, good dinner here on the set tonight. I'm loving the caterer on this show. They do a great salmon..."
We'd been married four years and together for over six. We'd met and had begun dating almost seven years ago when we were both working on a low-budget feature film. My first glimpse of Abbie was at one of the cast and crew lunches. We were sitting at a row of tables under a tent set up by the caterers on a location in Malibu Canyon. Abbie was chattering away with a couple of girls in the costume department with her back to me. I couldn't see her face, but my eyes were caught by her beautiful mane of long auburn red hair. I got up, walked over to the coffee table, just to sneak a look and, when I saw her, I was immediately smitten.
She was smiling at something her friends had said, a wide open, toothy smile that seemed to light up the world around her. Her eyes were a bright, cerulean blue and her skin was clear and creamy white, not pasty, but a shade that reminded me of a Botticelli painting. She finished her lunch and rose from the table, and I watched her tall, slender body move with an easy grace. My heartbeat quickened and I immediately fell into a deep crush. I felt as if I were on a quest, chasing her throughout the five weeks of that shoot. She didn't make it easy. She turned down my first two dinner invitations, and she was just a little bit meaner to me than she had to be to when she did it, but by the time the show had wrapped,
she had turned the tables and asked me out on a date. Very soon, we were a couple.
Our rapport had grown quickly. Early on, we found that we were finishing each other's sentences and laughing at private jokes that only we could understand. It was a joy to discover the things we had in common, the books we both loved, the music we listened to, our love for classic movies. We cooked together, for ourselves and for our friends, and I learned how to stay out of her way as we moved our respective dishes around the stove in our first apartment. I was a considerate partner in the kitchen and, she said, a considerate partner in bed. I was always careful to attend to her needs first. And as good as were as lovers, we were even better together as friends.
"I love how easy it is for us to just be together," Abbie told me in those early days. "We never seem to argue. You're like a zero-drama person."
We were married two years after that, four years ago as of last June. Going into the marriage, we knew we'd have to work around each other's unpredictable work schedules, but that's the business we had both chosen and we were determined to figure it out. We loved our jobs. We were good at them, and they paid well. We tried to get shows that filmed somewhere in the L.A. area to avoid long separations. I was grateful that Abbie's current show would keep her in town for the whole five months of shooting. We'd have most weekends together and she'd be able to take on at least some of the dog walking duties for Masha, the labradoodle puppy she had found for us.
"Don't wait up for me," Abbie told me as I searched for her key. I had the phone on speaker as I rummaged through the drawer. "I'll try not to wake you when I get home but, you know, Masha's going to bark. If you find the key, just leave it on top of the dresser and I'll get to the post office tomorrow. Love you," she said, and she clicked off her phone.
Resuming my search for the key, I double-checked the bathroom counter, moved some books and some of her little terra cotta Buddha figures around the top of the dresser. No luck. I pulled open the top drawer where she kept her sweatshirts. I drew out an old sweater and that intricately knitted top she bought two years ago on a vacation trip to Ireland. The sweatshirt was folded neatly just to one side of it. It was that purple hoodie she liked so much. I held it to my face as I pulled it out. It smelled like her: a little sweet, a little salty, a little bit of musk. I loved the way that Abbie smells.
Sure enough, I felt the outline of her mailbox key in her sweatshirt pocket. I placed it upon the dresser, folded the hoodie and tucked it back into her drawer.
That's when I came upon the notebook.
It was a red spiral-bound notebook with lined, three-holed paper, the kind of three-subject pad you used in school. Out of idle curiosity, I opened it somewhere toward the front pages and saw that it was filled with Abbie's handwriting. I didn't know that my wife kept a journal, and I felt a little hesitant about invading her privacy. I paused for a moment, but curiosity got the better of me and, sitting on the floor beside the dresser, I flipped through a few pages, skimming past entries from last fall and holidays that just went by until I came to and entry for February, just a few weeks ago, when Abbie had begun work on this new show.
The date was scrawled at the top of the page. I began to read my wife's neatly rounded handwriting below it.
"February 2
