COURTING DISASTER
Molly Barton, my wife of twenty-three years, was looking at me with no expression on her lovely face. As we were about finished with dinner she had casually said, "I have a date for Friday."
I looked at her, hoping she didn't mean what I thought she did mean.
"What do you mean, a date?"
"I'm going to dinner and dancing with someone."
I stared at her. As I said, she had no expression.
She and I were empty nesters, forty-four. She was a good-looking woman. I was okay myself, if I do say so. I'm Thomas Barton, a lawyer. I'm 5'10", 165 pounds, in good shape. I have a law practice.
Molly is 5' 8" and weighs, maybe, 135 pounds. Light brown hair, nice figure, pretty face. She has her own real estate firm, and it's doing well.
We have three children, Mary and Anne, twins, twenty-two, and Jill, twenty, and still in college.
My staring seemed to get through to her.
She said, "It's only a date. I'll be home by eleven. No sex. I need the excitement to rev me up."
"Rev you up for whom?"
"You. My husband. I'll come home to you and the sex will be hot."
I gave her a sad smile. "Are you serious? Or is this some sort of joke." I knew it wasn't a joke.
"Tom, no joke. Remember when we were courting? That was such fun. Getting to know each other. It was such a fun time. I want....." She stopped. Of course, our courting had ended in sex and marriage.
I said, "You want to get courted by a new man. Who?"
"I think you need not know that."
"I'll have to know, eventually. This is Wednesday. I have a lot to do, and it'll be easier if I know who you're dating. Maybe you'd also let me know how far this has gone."
"Tom, I love you. I only need some excitement in my life."
"We do have sex, Molly. Obviously not exciting enough for you. But I seem to recall you having a good time Monday night."
"I'm not going to have sex with him."
"Who? I expect it's Willie from work, right?" Willie was a newish employee of her firm, a salesman. He was in his thirties, handsome, big, blond, and always seemed to me to be flirty with Molly. He was also married with three young children.
Molly was shaken by me naming him. She started to get up from the table.
I said, "What does Brenda think about the date?" Brenda was his wife.
She sat back down. She said, "Please leave her out of it. She's out of town."
"She'll find out, you know."
"Not if you don't....."
"Molly, I love you. I've loved you for all these years. If you stop this silliness, we can go to counselling and maybe save the marriage."
She shrieked, "What? Save the marriage!!"
I was still calm. "If you go on a date with Willie, we will be divorced. And, please believe me, there'll be no hot sex after. No make-up sex. We will never have sex again. I promise this to you. I mean it as much as I meant my wedding vow, to be faithful to you."
She fled the room to our bedroom, stalking off up the stairs.
I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I went to my small office, off the living room. I fired up the computer there, accessed a standard divorce petition. No fault, and one that alleged adultery. I filled out the no fault one, which took an hour or more. No stirring from upstairs.
I printed the petition, signed it, and ran it through the machine to make a copy suitable for filing electronically. It's a wonder these days, how easy it is to do things that would have taken days when I was starting in the law.
My firm did mostly real estate settlements, commercial, and residential, but the residential only for Molly's firm. I'd probably lose that business when we split -- if we split. I hoped, fervently hoped, that she'd drop this, and we wouldn't split. But I knew her to be a stubborn person, set on getting her way.
I wondered if she'd already had sex, or dates with Willie. I called our friend Jane Clark, who worked in Molly's office. She was a beauty, divorced four years from a philandering husband. She was thirty-four, reddish brown hair cut short, brown eyes. She was slim, except up top. Great legs. We flirted some. Molly didn't seem to mind. They were besties.
"Hi Jane, it's Tom."
"Tom......I don't want to talk about it."
"I need to know how far it's gone, Jane. You're not only her friend, but mine, too."
"They have a date. I assume she announced that tonight."
"Yep. We disagreed about the propriety of it. As you may have guessed. You've been expecting my call, I assume. Have the two of you discussed what you would say."
"Tom, I just want to steer clear. She's not planning to have sex with him tonight."
"I'd like to know how far they've gone. I'll tell you this. No matter if she has sex with him or not, if she goes out on a date with him, I will leave her."
"Oh, Tom. You can't mean that. It's...it's only a...."
"Yeah? Only what? You can't even think of something benign to call it. It's an open betrayal. It broadcasts her dissatisfaction with me to the world. I offered to go to counselling if she called it off."
"What did she say?"
"She fled upstairs, and I haven't seen her since. I spent the time writing a divorce petition. I could file it in ten minutes. I haven't decided yet. If she relents and agrees to counselling, I'll wait. But if she says she's going ahead. That's it."
"Let me call her. Or, better yet, it's only Wednesday. I'll talk to her at work."
"What else I know, Jane, is that snake Willie won't get off clean. Does his wife know?"
"Oh, Tom. Don't do that. He has young kids."
"He needs to keep to his family and not destroy mine. Before Friday, his wife will know all I know. Maybe they have an agreement."
"Tom. Just wait until tomorrow evening. Please."
"Okay. But even if they don't go, it'll be because of threats from me. Now I consider, I believe it may be time to act."
I hung up. She called back. "Give me tomorrow. Tomorrow, please."
I waited. I slept in the guest room. Saw nothing of my 'wife.'
MOLLY
Jane came to me first thing at work Thursday. She knew about the date. She knew that I had a sort of crush on Willie. We'd been out to lunch three times in the last month. Long lunches, with some necking in the car after the last one.
I kind of lied to Tom, telling him that it was just because I felt like I needed excitement. The 'courting' riff was foolish. I shouldn't have said it. But that's what it was. I was being courted by Willie. Two married family people, doing a courting ritual. Willie's wife was out of town for a week, and his kids were with her mother. His house would be empty, and I knew he wanted to get me there. And I knew what he wanted if we got there. What
would
happen if we got there.