Four Pieces

Marie was upstairs dressing. It was midmorning Saturday and she was headed out for her weekly shopping fun. For as long as Tom had known her, Marie had loved to shop. She didn't have to buy anything to have fun and Marie was always good with money. She just loved to shop, to try things on, and see what was new; except now Tom knew that she wasn't going shopping. She hadn't been shopping in six months. She was going to meet HIM.

She came down the stairs smiling, reached for her purse, and walked toward the door. Marie looked over at her husband sitting in the living room and said, "Are you going to have some fun today, dear? Don't just cut the lawn. Do something you enjoy!"

Tom wouldn't be having any fun that day. For several weeks he'd been living in a fog with the same thoughts going 'round and 'round in his head and always the same question. "Why?" All Tom could say to Marie as she walked out the door was, "Goodbye, Marie." She didn't seem to hear him at all, or she didn't understand.

Tom waited about ten minutes for Marie's car to clear the neighborhood. Then he picked up the phone and he made the call. For the next ten minutes he just sat there and was lost in his own thoughts.

Marie was one of those women who got excited over everything. She had a restless heart and was always looking for the next new thing. She would breeze into a room, talk with everyone, and always make the right impression. Marie was a people person, or so she thought. In her mind, Marie was always doing her most for everyone, but she never stopped long enough to look deeply into another person's thoughts and she thought that no one could see into hers. Tom was the quiet one, the observant one. He noticed everything and he understood what he saw. Six months ago he'd noticed a change in his wife's demeanor. It was just the little things. He would notice her sitting quietly by herself with her mind far away. She spent a little more time away from him than usual - not far away, just in another room doing something else. He had asked her about it and she said that she was fine, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.

It went on for weeks until Tom did the first of several things that he thought he would never do. Tom hired a private investigator. He thought of them as his spy team and he wanted them to fail. Tom knew they could do a better job than he could hope to do and they ran less risk of getting caught. His spies had no difficulty at all. Several times each week she would leave her office and have lunch with HIM. It seemed innocent enough, if a bit much. There was very little touching and nothing inappropriate in public. If it stopped there, Tom would be ok. It didn't. On Saturdays, instead of shopping, she would go to a hotel in town and spend several hours in a room with HIM. His spies got photographs of her coming and going the first week they were on the case and it wasn't long before they managed to get video of her inside the hotel room. A husband should never be asked to watch images of his wife with another man. Knowing it was bad enough, but seeing it made it unavoidably real.

His spy team got Tom records from the hotel. They had been there every Saturday for six months except for the few weekends when Tom was out of town. Tom didn't want to know, but he told himself that he had to know. The question had him in its grip. He told Marie he had to go out of town to a company lab for a long weekend of tests on a new product the company was bringing out. She kissed him goodbye; he looked at her and thought of Judas. His spies had loaded the house with their cameras and recorders. Air conditioning ducts were a great place to hide a spy camera and the recorder in the garage was never noticed. He had to know. He wished he hadn't.

And then there was HIM. Tom had considered HIM to be one of his closest friends for over a decade. He'd had HIM over to their home uncountably many times. They had sat together drinking beer and watching the game. Tom and Marie knew his wife. They went to the baptisms of his kids. He ate Tom's food. He shook Tom's hand. He fucked Tom's wife.

In all this time, Tom had not once thought about the wife. Four people would be torn apart by the betrayal of the two. Tom liked the wife. She was kind and funny. She was devoted to their kids. She would find out. These things never stay secret; their circle of friends was too small. The lies and betrayal of two people would tear 4 people apart, create 4 pieces from what was once whole.

Tom was jolted back to the world by a knock at the door. His brother and two of his friends were there with the truck. Tom paused for a moment to remind himself that he still had true friends. These friends lived by a code. It wasn't written down on paper. They never needed to be reminded. It was written on their souls. These were men who spoke the truth, lived the truth, and kept their word. These were men who knew your character was defined by what you did when no one was watching and you knew you wouldn't get caught.

It didn't take long. They packed his tools from his basement workshop. That was the heavy lifting. Tom always had a project going. He liked to fix things, but for the first time he was realizing that some things could not be fixed. After that they made short work of throwing clothes into bags while books and a few personal items that were truly his own went into boxes. Tom took his bureau and a few chairs. He left the bed. The spy team had done their job. This bedroom would never again be his sanctuary, his respite from the world. That bed would never again be the place where he slept next to his love, finding peace on the worst of days, creating joy at the end of the day. That bed would never again be his. They had seen to that while Tom was away.

Once the truck was packed his friends headed off to Tom's new place. He had rented a small apartment above a two-car garage about a mile from work. It wasn't much, but it was all that he would need. There was only one last thing for Tom to do.

Marie came home with a smile on her face. She always thought she hid it well. She didn't. She looked like a woman with a secret. Marie stopped as she walked past the living room and thought, "What has he done with that chair? Where is the table? What is he up to now?" She called into the basement, but there was no answer. As she walked past the dining room she noticed the little pile of odd objects on the table and walked over to investigate. The first thing she saw was the DVD with the words "Watch Me" written on it. Then she noticed the small black bowl that she normally kept on the sideboard. It held his ring. "What's going on?" she thought. Last she noticed the torn pieces of paper. As she moved them about and put each piece into place she saw it and she knew. He knew. He had taken their marriage certificate from the safety deposit box and tore it into four pieces. Now, too late, she heard those last words of his as she walked out the door this morning. "Goodbye, Marie." Now she heard them. Now she understood.