On Tuesday October 16, I was a happily married man of 23 years. Two kids, one a college junior and one a sophomore. I had a job writing software for an on-line marketing firm; Jenna worked as Assistant to the Superintendant of Schools in Parma, Ohio, two towns over.
On Wednesday October 17, I was a deeply worried married man—virtually sure my wife was having an affair and wondering what I was going to do about it.
On Friday October 19, I was 400 miles away, driving south, and trying to figure out what the hell the rest of my life was going to be like. Not to mention angry—really, really angry.
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My wife Jenna was blessed with very large breasts; and if I'm being honest, they were certainly part of what first attracted me to her, a million years ago when we were both sophomores at Ohio State. She'd gotten a little heavier over the years (who hasn't?) but she was still a very sexy woman.
However, while big breasts may be a treat for a woman's husband, they're not so much fun for the woman herself, as I had long ago come to learn. Jenna had to shop very carefully to find just the right bra, with sufficient support to minimize the strain on her back; and by the end of the day she was usually desperate to take the damn thing off. Early in our marriage, in the years before the kids when we had lots of privacy, it was almost a daily ritual when she got home for her to pull off her blouse and bra, with a sigh of relief, and let me rub lotion on her back, trying to soothe the angry red lines that showed where her bra had been.
Sometimes that had led to a very nice romp in bed—more often it didn't. But I was always sympathetic to Jenna's discomfort, and always aware of those lines on her back.
So on Tuesday October 16, when I happened to get off work early, it was quite a shock to see her nearly smooth back. I was in the bedroom changing into some outdoor clothes, preparing to spend a few minutes raking the backyard before it got too dark. Jenna was pleasantly surprised to see me home already, and we chatted about nothing of importance while we both changed.
With no particular ceremony she stripped off her top and bra as usual—virtually no lines. There was no way she'd been wearing the bra more than an hour or so; certainly not all day.
"Hey babe," I said casually, "did you stop off at the YMCA and swim today?" Jenna loved to swim, and went to the pool at least every week or two, although not usually on a weekday.
She turned and looked at me oddly. "No honey—what made you say that? Does my hair look wet to you?"
Recovering quickly, I improvised. "No, sorry, stupid question I guess." I gave her an embarrassed-looking shrug.
"It was just that I called you mid-afternoon and Emily said you weren't around." This was a lie—I hadn't called at all—but it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
At that she colored slightly. "Oh, well, I just—there was—Chloe told me a couple of days ago about a sale at Pottery Barn, so I went over to see if I could find something for the Reiners' daughter's wedding present next month. Turns out there wasn't anything quite right, but it was nice to get out of the office for once. It felt like playing hooky!"
Jenna had pulled it together quickly—I guess her improvisation skills were as good as mine!—but something was just...off.
As I worked up a sweat, getting the leaves into piles and then into bags before it got too dark to see, I felt more and more concerned. Had Jenna told me she'd gone clothes shopping, that might have provided a plausible explanation—though why would she have taken off her bra, unless she was trying on lingerie?
But in any case, no one strips down at Pottery Barn! So where had she been, with whom—and why the fuck had her bra been off?
I stumbled through the typical mental Rolodex of "cheating warning signs" and came up pretty much empty. Our sex life was neither hotter nor colder lately, she hadn't seemed more distant, or dressing sexier, or staying out later, or having secret phone calls (that I knew about).
So when I went back inside we had our normal dinner, chatting about the kids and a bit about Thanksgiving plans; then we watched the idiot box for a while and went to bed.
And in the morning, after a perfectly typical breakfast, I grabbed my travel cup, gave Jenna a kiss, and headed for the garage. Where—before getting into my car and heading for the office—I stashed a little recorder under the front seat of her Prius. It was pretty low-tech, but it would record for 10 hours, so I could hear any cell-phone conversations she had both on the way to work and on the way home.
And, I reflected grimly, any she had while driving off during the day for some time with her fuck-buddy!
On the basis of not very much evidence I was already fearing the worst.
***************
On Wednesday night, with my antennae all the way up, I noticed that Jenna seemed nervous—a little. Just SLIGHTLY concerned, a little more solicitous than usual. Her hug and kiss when I came into the kitchen were a bit warmer than I would have expected, and she seemed to be glancing over at me an awful lot as she finished getting dinner ready and I set the table.
It was very subtle—nothing that you would have noticed, unless it was coming from the woman you'd lived with for 8500 days, give or take a few. Jenna was worried about something, and it clearly had to do with me. And her way of handling it was to be a little nicer, a little more attentive. And more affectionate, though it was almost comical how she kept trying not to overdo it. A stray hug in passing, or a hand on my shoulder as she brought dessert to the table, but nothing so obvious it might raise my suspicions.
She clearly didn't want me to say, "wow, Jenna, you sure are touchy-feely tonight—anything special going on?" So she was treading a fine line; and watching her do it gave my own anxiety another boost.
We had another apparently "normal" evening—cleaning up the kitchen, reading in the living room, checking our phones for a half hour. And after we went to bed; after I waited until I was sure Jenna was asleep; after I quietly got up, retrieved my recorder from her car, and took it into my study to listen to it; after that, my marriage ended.
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She had called him on her way to work. From her cell, or perhaps even from some other phone she kept hidden in her car, I had no idea. I could only hear her side of the conversation, but it was more than enough.
"Hey baby, it's me."
"Yeah," with a little chuckle, "me too. I was still tingling all last evening—hard not to break out into a big smile right in front of him."
"Yes, of course...yes, hey listen for a minute."
"No, I—well, I don't know yet how serious it is. But that's why I'm bringing it up. Mike was strange last night; he asked me if I'd been swimming at the Y, which seemed like an awfully random question. And then he said he'd called me at work and I was out—so I had to make up some bullshit about going shopping for a wedding present."
"No, no, I think he bought it. But things are just a little...I don't know, weird right now. Strained. Like, I don't know, we're both watching each other a little bit, you know?
"No...no, listen baby, no. I'm not saying that. You think I'm going to let go of that big log you keep shoving in me?" Another little chuckle. Listening, late at night in my quiet house, I clenched my fists.
"No, I think...wait, Teddy, will you listen? It's just a matter of being smart, baby. I'm going to take a couple of weeks to be a good girl—just to make sure everything is status quo at home.
"You'll just have to soothe the log yourself for a while, babe" (with another little giggle). "And I'll maybe let my fingers do the walking, until I know everything is okay with Mike."
"Yeah, of course! Me too. But I think a couple of weeks should do it. He loves me, and we still get along just as well as we always did. So listen—this is the start of radio silence, okay? 'Don't call me, I'll call you', as the saying goes."
"Uh-huh, and I feel just the same. And when we DO get together again: nuclear explosion! I'm gonna leave you feeling like a tractor-trailer ran over you—in a good way!" Here she let out a belly-laugh, a sound of complete delight.
I could have fucking killed her, in that moment. I sat stock still, thinking about going back into the bedroom and strangling her. Would I wake her up first, so she would know what I was doing and why? Or would I just grab her around the throat and tighten, so she'd have no time to understand why the life was being choked out of her?
