Golf Lessons

Thank you, Erik Thread for your editing skills and suggestions.

This is part two of a three part story. The story is finished. Chapters are posted on the site about every day, which means the entire story will have been posted before the first part appears on the list of new stories. People seldom step outside of their personality. They may successfully hide some of their personality from even those who know them well, yet still they remain true to that personality.

Even though the girls wanted to check on their mother, I explained that she wasn't feeling well and we didn't have time to waste. Instead of taking time for breakfast, I stopped at a drive-thru fast food restaurant for bacon and egg sandwiches, which was really a treat. They didn't often get fast food breakfast. I was not enjoying the thoughts about what my wife was doing in the afternoons that prevented her from being at home preparing supper, which was why we so often had take-out food for supper.

Both girls had a good day. Cindy got some very good scores, but still didn't finish in the top ten, which was her goal. Lulu did very well on her floor exercise, but her other routines had pretty blatant mistakes.

The three of us had a long conversation on the way home. Cindy said she had talked to her mother about it before, but felt Stephanie was pushing her to stay in gymnastics. Lulu seemed to think she was taking gymnastics because Cindy did.

Both of them agreed that they should consider the years they had spent taking gymnastics was good exercise, but they might do just as well joining some other kind of activity. The older they got, the coach grew less tolerant of even minor mistakes. Lulu admitted that she and a couple of the other girls in her class cry because they couldn't meet the coach's demands.

Cindy seemed relieved when I suggested she give some serious thought to whether she really wanted to go to the summer camp she was scheduled to attend in three weeks. Lulu said she would rather go to church camp, but Mom had said she couldn't do both. Neither of them wanted to go to cheerleading camp. They didn't feel they were popular enough to be elected as cheerleaders and they didn't like the way the more popular girls excluded them from their group.

I saved any mention about a problem their mother and I might be involved with until we were almost home. I didn't go into detail, but both girls had heard their mother screaming at me earlier that morning. I simply said that Stephanie and I felt a week or so apart might give us a chance to calm down. She had her cell phone and I was sure she would be happy to know how well each of them had done at their competition.

Cindy and Lulu were so tired by the time we got home, they were only interested in a sandwich for supper, a hasty bath, and their beds. Cindy said she was so tired she didn't even have the energy to call her mom.

All day, I had ignored calls to my cell phone. There were several calls from Stephanie, but I erased them without listening to anything she wanted to say. I returned her younger sister's call, assuming that was probably where Stephanie had gone.

"Tina, its Paul, you called?"

"Good Lord, Paul, what's going on?"

"You'll have to ask Steph. I told her I didn't want to talk to her for a week until I'd calmed down."

"She told me the same thing. She's been trying to call you all day."

Repeating myself, I said, "I don't want to talk about it. You'll have to ask her why."

"Well, are you still going to have the 4th of July barbecue at your house?"

"Oh, well, I'm not sure. Let me think about that. Tell you what; I'll let you know in a few days. How's that?"

"Okay. If you decide you can't do it, we can have it here again this year. In fact, why don't we just plan on doing it here, anyway?"

"Tina, give me a couple of days, okay? Better yet, I'll call you next Sunday morning and give you a definite decision. That's not too late, is it?"

"No, it will still give me three weeks to get ready."

"Is Steph handy? I'd like to tell her something."

Stephanie's voice was very different from what it was earlier in the day and it appeared she had finally stopped crying. "Paul?"

"Stephanie, don't call me. I told you I'd talk to you next Saturday night. I expect you to have some kind of an explanation, without tears or theatrics. Good-bye."

When I finally walked into our bedroom, it looked empty. I couldn't really put my finger on anything that was missing I just knew things were gone. The bathroom was the most difficult. All of Steph's shampoos, rinses, and soaps were gone. The shelf above the sink where she kept her cosmetics was almost bare. I took a shower as fast as I could and went to bed.

* * * *

By Monday, I could think straight and my stomach had stopped hurting. I had allowed the children to skip church on Sunday morning. I didn't want to risk Stephanie trapping me in front of a group of people who might hear what I would tell my wife.

Mid-morning Monday, I took an hour off work to go by the bank. I had my name removed from our joint accounts and moved most of the money in the checking account and all of the savings to new accounts which had only my signature. That included the automatic debit of the mortgage payment on the house and the other payment on the land.

I also asked for a six month print out of every check and debit from the checking account. I'd spent some time on our computer trying to figure out the bank balance, but Stephanie wasn't very good about noting to whom a check was written. She used abbreviations or left the payee blank. I had to assume the amounts were correct because they always balanced with the paper statements in the drawer, but copies of the checks were not attached to the statements. I couldn't determine where some of my income was going. My mental calculations showed that each month the balance was between two and three hundred less than I thought it should be. For almost a year, I'd been asking Stephanie if she was paying extra principal on the bank loans, but she had been telling me there wasn't enough to make extra payments.

I called the two credit card companies and argued until they finally relented when I agreed to transfer the balances to new accounts in my name. What I was doing might not have an effect on our credit report, but I was trying to send a message to my wife.

I had always been proud that Stephanie wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. It never bothered me that she didn't have an income because I felt comfortable with her pride that her full-time job was taking care of our home, our children, and me. However, if I was going to devote my time and energy working for our family and my wife, and make a good home for us to live in, I expected the same from her. The only time I was not working at my job, or at home, Stephanie was with me. We seldom went out at night. I did not stop on the way home for a drink with the boys. I did not go to lunch with the gang. I took a lunchbox with me every day. The money I saved went to extra things for our family.

We didn't drive new cars, we ate healthy meals, and we had a lot to show for our efforts. We might have take-out meals two nights a week but that was because Steph said there wasn't enough time to take the children to all of their functions and cook a large meal. I felt we had at least as much, if not more than, her sisters or her brother, all three of whom lived in double income homes. Her sisters had two children each and her brother had one son. All five of those children spent their days in daycare facilities, or after school programs, which meant they were with babysitters for more of their waking hours than they were with a parent.

I really loved my wife. I may not have told her as often as she wanted to hear it, but she had to know that so much of what I did was to make her happy. I'd heard her tell her sisters or a friend how happy she was or how great our marriage was. I wasn't overbearing, most of the decisions made for our family were the result of a discussion and an agreement between both of us. Sometimes the children helped make those decisions, similar to the discussion the girls and I'd had Saturday.

Cindy would be a junior in high school next year. She already understood how important good grades were. She'd been taught that college was a necessity and much easier with a scholarship. Troy would be a sophomore and understood that a sports scholarship might be a possibility, but good grades would earn him a better scholarship than he could get from sports, even if he managed to get through high school without a sports-ending injury.

There was no way I could understand what Stephanie had done, or why she had done it. As much as I could, I concentrated on my job during the day. I worked around heavy machinery, tall stacks of merchandise, and sharp farm implements. Inattention to my surroundings was dangerous.

In the evenings, I went over the print-outs from the bank. I had to know where all of my income went. If I was going to do what was best for my family, I needed a budget and from the weekend's examination of the bank statements, I'd learned there was very little wiggle room. The only extra expenses I could find that Stephanie had managed to put into our budget, which I knew nothing about, were her on-going golf lessons and the things she paid for in the golf pro shop. However, this included a rather expensive set of golf clubs and some clothing. There was also at least one monthly expense to one of the local women's lingerie shops, but I'd never seen her in anything other than the modest underwear she had always worn. All of this explained why there was nothing extra to pay on the bank loans.

I could not understand what Stephanie had done. I know she had mentioned that she had no excitement in her life. I really didn't think golf lessons and sexy panties could give her that much excitement. Did she believe she had to flaunt her body to attract a man, or had he encouraged her to be that kind of person? For myself, I always preferred her wearing absolutely nothing when she allowed me to stroke every inch of her luscious body. She knew it, too. All she needed to do was walk out of the bathroom wearing nothing more than her skin and I was instantly erect ready to satisfy her until she and I were both exhausted.

At night now, I was miserable. One night I was so angry with Stephanie I wanted to do something that would hurt her as much as I was hurting. The next night I missed her so much I had all sorts of arguments with myself trying to convince me that I could live with what she had done to us and to our family. The following night I drank the rest of the beer in the small refrigerator in the shop. I didn't refill the beer supply. Alcohol wasn't going to solve anything, and I didn't want to compound the problems I already had.

The kids helped me keep up with everything at home. They did their homework and regular chores and then helped start some kind of meal for our supper. We weren't eating as well as when Steph was there to prepare meals, but we weren't starving, either. I was careful to let them know the reason their mother wasn't at home was a personal problem between her and me. They hadn't done anything to cause the problem. I was just giving Mom and me a chance to cool down before we talked about a solution. I don't think they were overly concerned. They knew where she was and could call her anytime they liked, and they were busy with the last week of school.

I thought about calling our pastor, but he would only hear my side of the story and tell me I had to talk to Steph before we could begin to find a solution. I considered going to a lawyer, but I really didn't know one and I didn't feel I was ready for that. If we decided a divorce was best, lawyers and their fees were something I would tackle when that time came. I considered going to see my brother's wife. Gail was a counselor, but her specialty was alcohol and substance abuse. I wasn't ready to talk about what Steph had done and I hadn't heard her side of the story yet.

Basically, I did nothing but worry, until Thursday night after the kids went to bed. Friday would be their final day of school before their summer vacation. The girls were going to end-of-school slumber parties on Saturday night. I'd called Charles Jerome to make sure Troy could spend that night with Dillon. I didn't want the conversation between Stephanie and me interrupted.

Unlike Stephanie, I hardly ever sat down at the computer unless I was going to send an email to my brother. I'm not the best typist, but I do better than hunt and peck. I should have had a good spell checker for all of my school work. My poor spelling skills were probably the reason my handwriting was so sloppy. Half the time I wrote something, I couldn't read it a few days later. I wanted this typed so there would be no doubt what I was thinking. After making some mistakes, I found something that approximated the marriage vows Stephanie and I had said at our wedding. By trial and error, I got it copied to an email message because I wasn't familiar with creating a document in any other program.

After each of the phrases, I inserted what each one of them meant to me and explained how I felt I had honored that vow, or failed to do so. Then I changed the color of the type to show how well I felt Stephanie had kept her vows to me, or failed to do so. It took me a long time, but I finally saved the message and went to bed a little after midnight. For the first night since I'd told Steph to leave, I slept until the alarm.

Friday night as soon as supper was over, I returned to my email message and read the whole thing. Then I added anything I'd thought of during the day. The last thing I did before I went to bed was print the message. It was five pages long. I wasn't showing myself as a faultless, shining angel, I knew I had some faults, but I wasn't that bad, either. Stephanie was a good person, a wonderful mother, and an interesting and captivating companion. Yet I saw some things that I did not like. I didn't realize how strongly I felt about those marriage vows. I knew they almost brought me to tears when I attended a wedding. I wasn't sure if they were as important to my wife. I was hoping to discover how she felt the next evening.

* * * *

The three Saturdays each month I work, are the longest, hardest days of the month. The only good thing about working on a Saturday, aside from the overtime pay, was having Sunday and Monday off. During the hottest part of the year, the warehouse felt like an oven with temperatures hovering near triple digits. It had taken several years, but I'd finally convinced the owner that some kind of air movement would help. An extra set of doors on the back end of the building was helping some, but it was still taking a lot of time to create an open isle down the center of the warehouse. I'd mounted thermometers on the support posts to keep track of how well my efforts were working. The owner, Brad Wilson, had even begun to check the thermometers when he walked through the warehouse to the employee's parking lot, on his way to lunch.

Friday, when Brad returned from lunch, he stopped me as he was walking through the warehouse. "I need to talk to you, Paul."

"Now or later?" I asked.

"We might as well do it now. I need to leave early today."

I followed Brad through the warehouse and the back of the store to his office. As he walked by his secretary bookkeeper, he told her not to transfer any calls for a while.

Brad's office was almost cold in comparison to where I'd been working all day. My shirt was slightly damp and the cold air felt good. Brad told me to sit down and make myself comfortable. He poured us a cup of coffee with both of us grimacing at how strong it was.

I wasn't sure what was coming, so I just waited for Brad to say what was on his mind. "You know I learn something new every day. Teachers are paid for a full year but their contracts usually start with the new school term."

I wasn't sure what Brad was trying to tell me, so I just sat and listened. He took a deep breath and said, "Spike stopped by before he left last night. His wife isn't going to apply for a position with the school next year. Congratulations, Paul. If you want it, when school starts, the position of Warehouse Manager is yours."

"Wow," I exclaimed. I took a deep breath and nodded, "You're damn right I want it."

"That's a pretty good increase in your pay."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And a better distribution of weekend work, I hope."

"That will sort of make you number two around here." He waited a minute for me to process that information, and then he said, "Spike was never interested, but I wanted to know if you would agree to spend some of your time, between now and then, working in the front?"

"I don't know, Brad. I've never done that before."

"I think you can handle it. I also think it will help you in the warehouse. To prove how much confidence I have, I'm offering to increase your pay for the time you work out front. That, plus what you will earn as Warehouse Manager will eventually give you about a twenty-five percent raise."

Thinking about how much the extra income would mean to my family, I told Brad, "I can't afford to pass up an offer like that. What days do I need to work the front?"

"Let's start with Friday and Saturday. It will give you Sunday and any other day you choose as your days off. That also means you need to have confidence in your number two."

He and I grinned. We both knew I wasn't going to select anyone but his son as my assistant. The young man was a recent college graduate, but was working his way through every department, in expectation he would some day be the owner of the business. Not only was he the owner's son, he was dependable and the one we called on when we had a special order to put together quickly or a situation that needed a little extra attention. He seemed to carry, inside his head, an accurate map of every item in the warehouse. He'd already beat me a couple of times when we were looking for an item we needed to load in a customer's vehicle sitting at the rear loading dock.

I didn't need to say anything before Brad advised me, "Just don't make it easy for him, Paul. He needs to know this business, not slide through because he's my son."

"I hear you, sir. Thanks for your confidence in me, but he really is the best person for the job."

"I'm glad to know that. I think its best we keep this under our hats for the time being. We'll let everyone think you're just checking out how much you like working inside the store."

I nodded and stood when, in his gruff manner indicating our meeting was ended, Brad said, "Get out of here, we've both got work to do."

* * * *

I had very little time to think about my promotion until I was driving home that evening. I suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The extra income was the solution to what I really wanted to do. I took the first opportunity I found to turn around and drive to the hardware store. When I turned into my driveway, I drove my truck into the shed we always used as a garage and unloaded the plumbing supplies I'd purchased on my way home. I stopped for a minute to look around at everything we had, shaking my head again at Stephanie's dissatisfaction with our lives.

While I took my shower and found something for supper, I was finally beginning to smile. I was ready for the confrontation with my wife. I would let her explain what she had done, but I was going to tell her a few things, too.

When Steph drove into the driveway, I was sitting on my old tree stump drinking a can of soft drink. I'd just read my five pages and didn't want to change a single word. I was beginning to think I might keep the small volunteer tree that was growing from one of the roots of the old tree. I could fill the core of the stump with cement and keep it from rotting as fast. I might even shape the top of it to make a little more comfortable seat. After a couple of years, I'd have a little shade from the new growth.