Condescension

Condescension

This is my response to a familiar theme here.

There is no sex in this story.

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I was sitting with my lawyer. "This for real?" She was looking over the divorce papers.

"I got served two days ago. It sure felt real."

She was shaking her head and reading in apparent disbelief.

"And you just found out when?"

"I came home the day before I was served. She had a suitcase by the door, and she was sitting at the table waiting for me."

"And you didn't know anything about it? You just came home, and she hit you with it?"

"I walked in the apartment, she called me over to the table, and before I had the chance to take my coat off, she tells me to sit down. Then she tells me she's leaving me, and she wants a divorce."

"Then what?"

"Then nothing. She stands up. I say, 'Wait a minute! You can't just drop something like that on me and walk away! Why are you doing this?'"

"What did she say to that?"

"Nothing. That's when I caught some motion in my peripheral vision. I turned and there's a suit standing in the kitchen door."

"What did the suit say?"

"He never spoke to me. He just looks at my wife and says, 'You ready, babe?' She nods, he picks up her suitcase, and they walk out the door."

"Then what?"

"Then nothing. He had a car parked below our apartment."

"What kind, not that it really matters?"

"Something German, I think. I'm not big into expensive cars, but I can tell you it did look expensive."

She was nodding again like she'd heard it all before, but she kept looking back and forth through the paperwork.

"Then what happened?"

"Then nothing happened. She left with him and when I finally got my head together, I looked around the apartment. Her clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics were gone. Pretty much everything else was still there."

She was still shaking her head. "You don't see divorce petitions like this too often. She's asking to enforce the prenup. She's basically admitting that she cheated. All she wants is what she brought into the marriage. There's mention of a trust that's hers. She wants her car that she says she bought. You keep your retirement account and whatever's in the bank."

"Huh!" I snorted.

My lawyer looked up. "Enlighten me."

"We've been married four years and out of college for five. I'm a teacher. My retirement account isn't much and our savings can't compare to her trust."

"How big is her trust?"

"A few million, I think. I've never actually seen it."

"She has a million-dollar trust, and you don't even know how much is there?"

I paused to find the words. It wasn't hard to explain, but people seemed not to understand it when I've told them. "My father was a very successful businessman, but my parents didn't believe in showing it. They felt it was more important to live within society than to use their money to set themselves apart from it. I had a good life growing up, but it wasn't life in a mansion if you know what I mean. We didn't have our own pool, but we did belong to the community pool down the street. We didn't take exotic vacations to Europe or the Bahamas, but we went to the beach every summer. My father drove an ordinary car. He wore a suit to work, but it wasn't Armani. Mom had some nice jewelry, but nothing that would make her a target on the street. They just weren't into that sort of thing."

"They sound like good people."

"They were. They died in a car crash while I was still in college. I miss them to this day."

She looked at me for a moment and asked, "Then what did you do?"

"I went to live with my cousins. I continued in college, and I met Diane."

"So Diane never met your parents?"

"No."

"Did she meet your cousins?"

"Oh, yeah. She met the cousins, my aunt, and my uncle. I guess she basically rubbed them the wrong way. They never said anything negative about her, but they never said anything positive, either."

My lawyer was nodding again.

"What's her family like?"

"Oh, they have money, and they want everyone to know it. As far as they were concerned, I didn't have any, and they treated me like some kind of gold-digging trailer trash."

"What's your wife's maiden name?"

"Parkinson."

She looked up with surprise written across her face, but that quickly disappeared, and her professional mask made its return. "Her father wouldn't happen to be Jeffrey Parkinson, would it?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's him. Business tycoon, captain of industry, man of wealth."

Her brain was turning a mile a minute. I could practically hear it humming. "There's mention here about your inheritance? What's that like?"

"Well, I don't normally like to talk about it. I was their only heir when my parents died. I wasn't prepared to run dad's business, so I let his lawyer handle the sale of the company and it all went into a trust that he set up for me. I figure it will be there for me when I need it, but for now I'm just a working teacher trying to get his career going."

"Can you tell me how much is in the trust now?"

"I think it's about fifty million."

"And you work as a teacher?"

Yeah, I'd heard this before. "I figure the money is there so that I can do the work that gives me a feeling of accomplishment. It's not there so I can sit on my ass, or buy a yacht, or any of that. It just gives me the security to do whatever gives me a sense of satisfaction."

"And teaching gives you satisfaction." It was more a statement than a question.

"Yeah. I had some great teachers and I figure this is one way to pay it back."

My lawyer sat back in her chair. She seemed to be taking the measure of me. "Does Diane know how much is in the trust?"

I had to think about it. "She knows it exists. I don't know if I've ever told her an amount. She insisted that we keep our finances separate and we do separate tax returns every year, so she had no reason to see the numbers."

"So as far as she's concerned, you're a teacher with a small inheritance. Is that right?"

I hadn't really thought about it that way. "Now that you say it, I suppose it's true."

"My recommendation is that you sign this today before she changes her mind."

Her words knocked the wind out of me.

"Let me be honest with you. The law is all about money and precious little else. When children are involved, there are all kinds of other considerations, but without kids it's all about the money. I know a little about your father-in-law, Mr. Jeffrey Parkinson. He's built a house of cards and all it's going to take is the slightest breeze to bring them all down. My relatives down in Texas would say, 'He's all hat and no cattle.' Near as I can tell, he has everything leveraged to the max. The big question is, 'Do you want her back?'"

What an interesting question. I thought about how her family treated me and the way she treated me when we were with them. That was strike one. I always knew she cared far too much about money even to the point that she jealously guarded her trust fund. That was strike two. Then there was the suit and the way she left with him. That was a big strike three! I made my decision and shook my head. "No."

"Then my advice is we sign this thing right now. I could study your trust if you really wanted me to, but so long as she's leaving it to you, I suggest that you keep what is yours and let her have what is hers, and you get on with your life."

I took a deep breath and exhaled. She was right. I'd married poorly and it was time to face that reality.

She called her secretary into the office and asked for her to bring her notary stamp. I signed, my lawyer witnessed, and her secretary notarized it.

"I'll get these back to her lawyer today. Her lawyer did a good job. This thing's tighter than a mouse's sphincter. She can't come back at you later to get her hands on your trust."

I must have looked confused, so she explained. "Daniel, her life is smoke and mirrors. When her father's wanna-be empire collapses, her world is going to change and not in a good way. You want to be far away from her when that happens. I've never met your wife, but she sounds like someone who uses people, and you don't want her using you any longer."

I just nodded. She was right. It was a painful lesson to learn, and I'd learned it the hard way, but I'd learned it none the less.

"Go visit your cousins. A little distance will give you a new perspective on things."

She wasn't wrong. Diane left me on the last day of school, and I was served on the first day of my summer vacation. I figured this was why my trust existed, so I used enough of it to pay my expenses that summer and spent my time with my relatives. They needed help on the farm, and I needed the distraction. It was, in every sense, a time for returning home and it was over that summer that I finally gained a perspective on my life. I knew now that all the pieces fit together except one and that was my soon to be ex-wife. I had always been just an addition on the side of her real life and now I was free to rebuild my life the way I wanted it. I returned to town a week before the start of the new school year to find my apartment stuffy and my divorce final. I had no idea what Diane was doing, and I didn't care.

It was maybe a year and a half later when I learned that Diane's father's business had collapsed. The economy had taken a downturn and revenue dipped with it. It was a surprisingly small blip in the overall economy, but apparently what I was told was true. The banks called in a loan, and he didn't have the resources to pay. That led to a domino effect where one loan after another was called in until he wound up selling off his company. He kept his house and most of the trappings he cherished, but everyone new and that just about killed him. Most of his employees kept their jobs, although there were cuts in management. The suit was one of them. Too bad, so sad.

My lawyer was wrong about one thing - Diane never came back looking for that second bite at the apple. In my mind, I imagined that her father was trying to get his hands on her trust fund to shore up his business, but as foul as they were I doubt even he would stoop to that. I suppose she never figured out that my own trust was worth anything and I wasn't inclined to tell her.

Whenever I think back to Diane and our marriage, and it's no longer often, I wonder what our lives would be like if she and her family had not been so condescending toward me and my family. She never understood that life is not about money, but that the purpose of money is to help us live a fuller life. She was so concerned about preserving what she had and keeping it from me that she never appreciated all that I had to offer. Well, water under the bridge as they say. Life goes on, and for me at least, life is good.