It’s a Place of Beauty

The beautiful things of life are oftentimes birthed out of great bitterness.

The morning sunlight glistened off the smooth surface of West Grand Lake with the early morning chilled air hanging still and motionless. It was the dead calm of an early October morning when most of the seasonal campers and cottage dwellers had long returned to their distant residences and towns. The only souls for miles around in this naked stretch of Maine woods and water were the hardy year round inhabitants and a few passing through from Indian Township to the east.

The oar sliced into the water almost silently pushing my canoe toward the lake shore where comfortable warmth awaited me in the cottage I now called home. The three room camp with a sleeping loft was being warmed with an old Dover woodstove with a copper kettle of hot water at the ready for steaming tea. It is a simple life and a far cry from the complexities of my former existence.

My grandfather built this camp long before I was born and when he passed away a few years ago he left it to me in his will. When I was a young boy I spent my summers here learning every crook and cranny of West Grand, its tributaries including the stretches of the "Stream" down into Big Lake. This is serious fishing and hunting country, rugged and remote yet accessible for those with a yearning for 'Down East".

As I pushed closer to the shore I could make out her figure bundled up against an unfamiliar cold, at least cold in comparison to the warm bask of her Low country in South Carolina. It was 40 degrees colder than the 65 degree warmth of her southern comfort and I knew that underneath the layers of inadequate clothing she stood there shivering trying to stay warm. She never understood my affinity for flannel.

As the aluminum bottom grounded onto the gravel and I stepped onto the firm shore, I looked up at her with as much coldness as my worn and emotionally spent mind could gin up into a façade of displeasure. She looked good and I looked otherwise.

"Darrell, we need to talk."

I hadn't talked to her in almost a year now and the truth was I was not ready to talk to her. For that matter I didn't know that I ever wanted to talk to her again in this lifetime or the next. I had my life and I was living it as I wished and doing well. I looked up at her and nodded toward the cottage.

The smell of baked beans and coffee hung in the air when we entered and after I stoked the woodstove, two mugs of coffee were placed on my kitchen table.

"You hungry?" I asked her.

"No thanks, I grabbed a quick bite at the store out on the highway before driving in." she replied.

"That's good. I'm surprised he was open that early."

Early's General Store was open at 4:30AM during the season but after the kids went back to school and the cottages began emptying out he usually didn't open until 6AM, except for deer season in November. I looked my ex-wife over as she sat there, wondering what in hell could she ever want to talk about after all we went through.

"Theresa, why are you here?"

She fumbled with her spoon adding a bit of sugar to her black coffee and looked up into my eyes. There was a time when the two of us could have read minds with just a stare. This was a different time, a different era all together.

"The divorce, I didn't go through with it." She barely whispered her reply.

I looked at her closely and walked over to the stove and fixed a plate of beans and ham.

"What do you mean? It's already done. We both signed almost a year ago. It was a fait accompli back in May."

"Darrell, no, I never filed the papers. I had my lawyer give three sets to me and I've held onto them since." She answered while gazing out the window and turning back to me.

"I couldn't actually do it."

The beans in my mouth toyed with my tongue as I contemplated what she was saying. I swallowed hard. A year ago we were flaming bridges and tearing down foundations and scorching the earth with brazen torches. I ended up leaving with my truck and a duffle bag of belongings to places far away with a storage unit crammed with what was left of 20 years of bliss. A job as a communications director for a company in Charleston SC was walked away from and replaced with a wayfarer's thirst for freelance writing.

I looked at her with a bit of incredulity and resignation. She couldn't actually do it, she said. How in fucks sake could somebody not do what they had already done in spades through the destruction of two marriages and the alienation of her daughter's feelings toward her father? I think for the first time in years I was speechless.

I scooped the contents of my plate into the garbage and rinsed it in the sink. I still had not replied to Theresa's revelation and didn't know how to if I wanted to. I grabbed my coat and walked out of the cottage and jumped into my Dodge truck. She had not moved from the table even when I turned the ignition over. As I sat there with the motor running I tried to think back on the events that brought us here and I couldn't persuade myself to drive away.

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I met Theresa nearly 20 years ago when we were both young twentysomethings trying to make it big in Atlanta. I had just taken a job with the corporate HR team at GPI in center city and Theresa was working for a public relations firm across the street. We ran into each other, literally, during lunch and after apologizing, we ended up eating together. From there, we moved on to dating and a year later we were married. We were normal people living relatively normal lives. After a couple years, she got pregnant, even after all the precautions and we added a little girl named Kelsey to the mix. Before Kelsey started school, we moved to Theresa's hometown, Charleston SC and both of us took on good jobs and continued living the so called American dream.

Of course we had our conflicts and our disagreements. She was a southern girl and I knew that when I married her although I always harbored a subtle desire to someday return to Maine and live life the way it's supposed to be, as my grandfather used to say. That never happened and I never begrudged her for it. We both loved living in Charleston and we lived it gregariously.

By the time Kelsey started high school, the changes started to happen. I can say that now looking back but at the time everything was still within the realm of normality. Both of us changed jobs. I stayed with my company but moved into communications. Theresa went to work for an upstart marketing company and began traveling a bit more and after a short while was promoted to an assistant VP slot working for their business development director. Now, she was on the road every other week and the changes were obvious.

She began dressing up more with increased cleavage, more revealing clothing, wearing perfume more frequently. The client meetings and dinners were with increasing frequency and late nights became the norm. I had no idea what was going on when she was on the road.

At the same time, I was being burdened with my own workloads and pressures of a company that was being reorganized and going through difficult times. I just didn't pay attention to what was going on around me. We still had our downtimes together. We still had great sex when she was around. It was just that she wasn't around much and because I was so myopic in my own work world I never noticed until it was too late.

It was too late the night I came home and found her sitting at the kitchen table with a blackened eye and bloody lip. Before I could run to her she held up her hand.

"It's not what you think or maybe it is but sit down, Darrell."

I looked at her and took a seat. She looked fucked up, drunk and bleary eyed. Not taking her eyes off me, she pushed a manila envelope in my direction.

"I'm getting a divorce."

There wasn't any discussion or argument or anything like that. It was a simple statement. The envelope contained four sets of papers, each a copy for the dissolution of marriage and spelled out her terms. To be plain speaking I was flabbergasted. She rose from the table, took her purse and walked out the door. Before I could react or stop her, she was getting into a car I had not seen before driven by a man I had. She was riding away with her boss, James Riley.

This all took place in a matter of moments. I had walked in, saw her, sat down, she made her statement and then rode off into the night with somebody new. I don't think 3 minutes had passed and the car must have pulled in right behind me, for Christ's sake. I sat down on the couch trying to take stock of what had just happened.

It is a difficult feeling to explain, almost stuck between a death in the family and being robbed. I couldn't wrap my hands around it for the longest time and what seemed worse of all was that there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. I wandered around the house trying to assess the emotional damage and began to notice things. Some of her clothing was gone along with a lot of her personal effects. Several of my daughter's belongings were also gone. Kelsey had moved out as well. She was only 17 but old enough to make those kinds of choices.

I immediately called Kelsey on my cell and it went to voice mail. After leaving her a message to call me and trying again, I returned to the kitchen and picked up the papers and read through them. She was taking me to the cleaners or at least intended to. She wanted 70% equity in the house, 2/3 of our savings for her and Kelsey and half of my 401K and retirement along with $1,500/week alimony. I threw the papers back onto the table and poured a tumbler of rum, no Coke. I repeated that a few more times and my next thought was of how bright it was.

I was lying on the grass in my back yard peering up into the morning sun and still covered in dew. After pulling myself up and stumbling back inside the house I made my way to the shower and just stood there with the water cascading on me. I remembered enough of the previous night to know my wife had left me taking my daughter with her apparently. I called my office as soon as I located my phone and took a personal day after explaining the situation to my boss. She understood of the situation having divorced her own cheating husband a couple years earlier.

As I sat at the table I reviewed the papers again and ended up bloodying my knuckles on the door frame to the kitchen. I think I resolved right there to not take this lying down. I was going to fight it and the next thing I did was call my attorney only to find out that Theresa had already had a consultation with him so he couldn't take the case. He did point me in the right direction and I met later that afternoon with another attorney who basically laid it all out in plain English.

"You are going to end up with an equitable distribution. She makes more than you so there will be no alimony. She will get half the savings and 50% of the equity. Since she has her own 401K and pension, she will not get a claim on yours. However, if your daughter chooses to live with her mother there is nothing you can do about that. Besides, she will be 18 by the time this is all settled anyway."

So that is what I settled on and he counter offered my wife and set up a conference for all parties. Unfortunately, Theresa refused through her attorney to meet with me and shortly after I received a restraining order against me preventing me from contacting Theresa or Kelsey in any manner.

A couple weeks later, Theresa's attorney provided an amended suit agreeing to the terms we submitted and on my attorneys advice I signed all four copies. I agreed to have Theresa come into the house with my attorney present to remove any additional belongings that were hers. I chose to make myself scarce when she did, especially since I had the restraining order against me. In six months I would be divorced with no real explanation for why other than my suspicions of her adultery.

Those suspicions were realized a couple months after I signed while I was getting ready to show the house to a prospective buyer. I answered a knock at the door and when I answered an attractive woman stood there with a package in her hands. I greeted her and inquired who she was.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Carson, my name is Melissa Riley and I wanted to have a short discussion with you concerning your wife and my husband, James Riley?"

I looked at her for a while before inviting her in. I offered her coffee and she graciously accepted. After we were seated I opened the discussion.

"Ms. Riley, before you begin, I should tell you that my wife and I are divorcing and we haven't spoken a word to each other since she told me she was filing for divorce. I also haven't spoken to or seen my daughter either and to tell you the truth I have absolutely no idea why. So if you can shed light on that predicament, I'm all ears."

I looked at her expectantly without reason.

"Mr. Carson, I am also divorcing my husband because of his adultery with your wife, Theresa Carson. I arrived home unexpected one afternoon; I believe the same day your wife informed you of your divorce. I found my husband having sex with your wife in my bed. Well, I'm sorry to admit that I lost my temper and struck her several times in anger before he could stop me."

I smiled at that remembering the black eye and bruised lip.

"Well, I turned to my husband and told him to be out of the house before I returned and I left to stay with my sister for several days in Summerville. When I returned the following week he had removed his personal belongings and left a forwarding address. I filed for divorce the next day although he has yet to agree to terms. He is trying to fight it although there is no hope he will succeed. Our children are grown now and quite frankly, this was not his first adultery and I'm sure it will not be his last."

She handed me a package and told me that it contained a DVD of her security recordings edited to show that the two of them had entered and used her home on several occasions over the course of a month, as far back as the disk memory would allow. He had confessed to her that the affair had been going on for the past year and Theresa worked for him.

"Does he know that you have these recordings?" I asked.

"Oh no and neither does your wife. I have filed under irreconcilable differences. I see no point in dragging adultery into court. The house was my parents and he has no claim on it or on the inheritance I received from them. I live on Sullivan's Island and have all my life. He leaves with whatever is his and will pay alimony to boot. I am of independent means. No, I just want it done and over with. But, I also want you to have the evidence. He told me the two of you were divorcing but he is not living with her. He broke that off in hopes of convincing me to stay with him. Slim chance of that I assure you."

I thanked her for the package and we finished our conversation and said our goodbyes. When Melissa Riley left I stood there thinking how foolish illicit lovers can be. Did my wife think there was some grand life to be had elsewhere with a man who was fucking around on his own wife?

Apparently she did and now those dominos are falling. I found a bit of perverse pleasure in her ill will but it didn't answer any questions I still had as to why and why has my own daughter chosen such sides in this battle.

The week after Melissa Riley's visit, I received an offer on the house that met with the lawyers' approval for equity settlements and we closed on it the following month. Since it was paid for, the house provided a good equity payout for both of us although unlike the esteemed Ms. Riley of Sullivan's Island, I still had to work for a living. Theresa's share went into an escrow account along with other finances and I returned to my work world and what was left of my regular life.

One of my long held hobbies had been writing freelance for a few obscure publications, mostly to do with outdoor living and recreation. I had also edited several works on the side although neither provided any substantial and reliable income. I certainly needed my day job to say the least. All of that changed in the following March.

"Mother Nature" magazine published an online article I had written a few months earlier and contacted me about writing a regular column for their monthly issue. It wasn't a large payday but it was $500 a month for the next 12 months if I agreed to do it. The first column would make it in their April issue if I could get it to them in the next two weeks. I did just that and two weeks after it appeared I received another three inquiries, one for a monthly and two for quarterly issues. So far in total I had $850 in monthlies and $1,000 for quarterlies. That was when I made what to most was probably a foolish decision.

I had put my share of the house equity into an account and left it there. It was close to $250K. I had 20 years of savings that came close to that after Theresa took her share and the 401K and retirement could just stay put until I could draw on it. If I didn't pour the capital gain on another property, I'd have to pay taxes on it so I did just that, on land adjacent to my inherited cottage on West Grand Lake. I was able to purchase Lake Frontage on both sides of my cottage with $200K and I planned on using the remaining $50K to fix up the old cottage to my liking.

It was a lot harder to give my two week notice than I thought it would be. I had made some good friends over the years in the workplace and a number of them had been there when I needed it over the past several months. A small number were familiar with the circumstances and one of them was interested in subletting the small apartment I took when the house sold. I gave her most of the furniture I had kept from the house and a bunch of bric-a-brac that Theresa had left behind.

In return, she gave me the best fuck I had enjoyed in a long time. It wasn't a planned thing, of course. We had opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio to celebrate her taking over the lease and half way through the second bottle she peeled her britches off and pulled her blouse up over her head. My shorts were quickly to my ankles and she started me off with an amazing blowjob. For a 44 year old guy, I felt like 25 and with the whole world at my step. She did more for my esteem than any therapist could imagine.

I left for my trip north the next day after receiving an invite back for seconds from my sensual heroine. I didn't say no but I also didn't know when I would be back. I gave her a key to my storage locker and told her if there was anything in there she needed to go ahead and use it. It was paid up for two years.

My Dad's cousin lived in the area and he had been looking after the cottage when I wasn't there. Theresa and I had been going to it every year for a week since we got married so I knew it was in good shape. Nonetheless, it was good to have family look after it.

It took me three days to get there driving at a tourists pace. I stopped at a couple interesting places along the way and by the time I arrived at West Grand my truck and trailer were full. The place was in great shape with the propane tanks recently filled once mud season dried up. Somebody had dumped a couple cord of unsplit firewood on the backside and my Dad had a couple loads of gravel hauled in on the road. It was basically ready for me to move in.

It is 5 miles of driving off Rt. 1, mostly on gravel and the cottage has a diesel generator for power, wood for heat and hot water with an outhouse a short walk out back. There is a propane stove and refrigerator and gas lights that work just as well as electric. I even had satellite internet installed a couple years ago although it's not the fastest connection around. Part of my upgrade was installing enough solar power to support my outside world connections without having to run the generator.