To any BTB reader, save some time, go ahead and skip to the bottom, give me a single star, say your angry piece. The bitch will hurt, but the poor bastard will not seek to destroy her.
As I turned on to my street and approached my house, I saw it. Max's pickup was parked right behind my wife's car. My heart sank. The end was finally here. I had entertained a tiny spark that my wife, Lynn, would come to her senses. But that spark was about to be extinguished.
Three months before, Lynn's sister, Laurie, passed away. She had only been diagnosed with aggressive cancer six weeks earlier, and it devoured her life too quickly. Laurie and her husband Max were very close to Lynn. I liked Laurie, but I had always found Max annoying. We had spent many weekends together and even the occasional vacation together. Even our kids got along well. So, I put on a mask to pretend I enjoyed time with Max. Sometimes he was tolerable, but too often my toleration was forced.
Max was charming and confident with women. When he spoke to a woman, he exuded success. To me, he sounded like a braggart. He loved to talk about how much money he made, the nice things he got his wife, that his home was bigger and his cars were more expensive than ours. What I saw as arrogance, women saw as power and confidence.
But I knew better. The engineering firm Max was a partner in was a client; I knew how much money he really made. While our incomes varied every year, he really didn't make much more than I did. When Max and I talked about money, I would talk about successful or unsuccessful investments, and he would talk about moving debt to credit cards with lower interest rates or refinancing his home mortgage to pay off credit card debt. His better lifestyle was the result of spending money he didn't have. And while I was retiring at 60, with a retirement income matching what I made during my most productive years, he was still working at nearly 70.
Max also enjoyed making fun of me whenever he thought it would get a laugh. He would tease me about making less money than him, the fact that I was two inches shorter than him, the ugly car I drove. Once, when he teased me about my height, I responded with a comment on his growing pot belly and bald spot. He turned red, said fuck you, and walked out of the room, drawing the anger of both Laurie and Lynn for me ruining the evening.
We all took Laurie's passing very hard. We all tried to be there for Max, especially Lynn. She took it on herself to cook every evening meal for him, cooking it at our home and bringing it to him each evening. Not an onerous task, Max and Laurie's home was less than a mile from ours.
But after a while, taking meals to Max took longer and longer. At first, it delayed our own meal together by no more than half an hour. Then an hour. After a month, we would be eating our dinner at half past eight o'clock, a full hour and half past our normal time. Dinner was the time where Lynn and I had our most satisfying conversations of the day, by this later hour, Lynn was tired, and not conversational. When I pointed that out, she would become annoyed and tell me that Max needed her, he was all alone and depressed and I was being selfish. I'd say I also needed her and was mostly alone and not happy. It landed on deaf ears.
Soon Lynn's return was delayed until nine o'clock. I was eating supper without her and Lynn was cooking and eating supper with Max. Her late return meant that we had little time to talk. Too often she would head straight to the shower and then to bed with hardly a word for me.
At one point I suggested going over with her and we could all have supper with Max. She looked less than thrilled with the idea, but shrugged her shoulders and said, "yeah, sure, if you want" as if the suggestion wasn't helpful.
The next evening, we did that. I tried to start a conversation, but it would die with little response from Max, and silence from Lynn. All conversations were between Max and Lynn, Lynn avoided talking to me at all. After the meal, and a quick clean-up of the dishes, I announced that I was tired, and we needed to get home. Lynn said that she would stay with Max a little longer and be along later. I shot her a nasty look at that, and she snapped, "don't give me that look, I'll be along when I'm along!"
Max just smirked at me.
At 60, Lynn was still a good-looking woman. I had thought our 35-year marriage was solid. We had two very loving daughters who lived nearby and who visited often with their husbands and our three young grandchildren. We had a good sex life. Lynn enjoyed nice things, and I did my best to provide them. We had a nice house; I had a good income with some prestige in the community as a partner in a respected law firm.
Maybe it was because Lynn and I were getting ready to retire, Lynn from her teaching job, me from the law firm. I hadn't picked up on any stress about it, but I knew such things could be stressful. She had been excited by the vacation I had set up for the fall, where we would take a month driving around the UK, then take a cruise from England to the States as the cruise lines repositioned their ships in the Fall. We used to talk endlessly about the places we wanted to visit, but now the topic only came up when I brought it up and resulted in her grunts of disinterest.
I tried to resuscitate marriage. I tried to engage her on anything. I suggested a night out for us, or a weekend trip, only to be met with a "that sounds nice, but not now, but maybe soon." I calmly tried to be confrontational. "Sweetie, I'm scared. You're spending too much time with Max. If it's not already too late, please come back to me."
Her response was that I was being overly dramatic, and that I resented her act of compassion.
Things finally came to a head. My firm arranged a retirement dinner for me at a nice restaurant at a posh hotel. We had reserved a room at the restaurant and the whole office would be there. I had been reminding Lynn about the event often as the date approached, and she assured me that she would be ready, even though her usual preparations for such events were always filled with a flurry of activity involving shopping that wasn't occurring this time around. Friday morning before the dinner I reminded Lynn of the party and she responded with a very flat, "no, I don't think I want to go."
"No, dear, you have to go, this is a big deal for me."
Her response was harsh, "I don't HAVE to do anything. I'm sure you will have a good time, but it is just going to be the same old boring stuff we've done before."
"Except this time, it will be about me. That does matter to you, doesn't it?"
"I am not going! Just tell everyone I'm not feeling well, no big deal."
"Lynn, I need you to go. It is very important to me. My friends and colleagues will be there, it will hurt me very much if you aren't there."
"Stop it. I'm not going, that's final, so stop whining!"
That night was another late one for her, not returning until nearly ten. I tried to engage her again in conversation, but she clearly didn't want to talk. I asked her to reconsider the dinner, and she snapped at me, "not that again, how many times do I have to say no!" She slammed the door to the bathroom and started the shower, no doubt to wash evidence of her cheating with Max.
The next morning, I made breakfast, and when she finally got up, I tried again to engage, but she was cold. Finally, I forced the conversation. "
Lynn, tomorrow night is important to me, allow me the illusion of still having a loving wife, please."
"Oh, get over yourself. A few more weeks, you'll retire, and these people will be out of your life. It is just not that important."
"Dear, let me be clear, you are choosing Max, over me. This is the last nail in the coffin. This will be the end of our marriage."
"Are you trying to blackmail me? It won't work, I'm still not going."
Then, in a voice of quiet anger I said, "you spend more time with Max than with me. You buy his groceries; you cook and clean for him. I know there is more, because even when we are in the same bed, I am alone. I can't ignore anymore that you are betraying our marriage. Why do you even bother to come home at night?"
She turned, red faced, and barked out, "Okay, well then I won't come home, and you can go fuck yourself!"
"Well, if I do, it will be the first time I have been fucked in five months!"
She responded with an angry stare. She then got up, went up to her room and ten minutes later she came downstairs, walking silently past me with an overnight bag heading to her car.
By six that evening, as I got ready to leave, I checked my phone for the last time. There was no response. I left for the dinner.
At the dinner, all my colleagues were there, as well as my daughters and their husbands. My daughters asked me where Mom was, and I told them simply that she didn't want to come. They were shocked and asked why. I told them that they needed to ask her. Susan, my oldest, pulled out her cell and dialed her mother. The phone went to voice mail and Susan spoke excitedly, "Mom, why aren't you here? Dad says you didn't want to come to his retirement dinner. I don't understand. What is going on. Call me." There would be no call back.
After the meal, the senior partners rose to roast me, and each of them had a portion of their bit reserved for the praise of my wife, Lynn, but in her absence, I was asked to pass it on to her. I did my best to laugh at the jokes and smile and promised to tell Lynn of the praise she received. When it came to my turn, I thanked everyone for coming and said something about each person in attendance, teasing some with the same type of gentle humor that I had been teased with. I talked about my 30 years with the firm, how satisfying it was for me, the support and comradeship from everyone. Then as I spoke about how much more I was looking forward to retirement, my voice broke. Everyone thought it was about leaving the firm.
Finally, I expressed thanks for the kind words for my wife, but added in a breaking voice, "I am sorry that she could not come tonight, but she decided she'd rather spend the night with her lover than with me."
There were gasps, loudest from my own daughters. I hadn't planned to say that, but when the time came to say a piece for Lynn, I was overwhelmed. As I finished, I called out, "you all have a great evening" and walked to the door. Walking out of the restaurant put me in the lobby of the hotel. I went in the hotel bar to catch my breath. Both daughters followed me out.
"What the hell, Dad, Mom has a lover!?!" asked Susan.
"Yeah, she is with Uncle Max. Mom has been staying with Max every evening until very late. She barely talks to me. When I begged her to come tonight, she refused, saying she was going to start living with Max."
"This can't be happening," said Sally. They then tried to call their Mom and again, no answer.
After a while, I said, "girls, if you don't mind, I need some alone time. I'm going to get a drink or two. I'll take an Uber home." The girls protested saying I shouldn't be alone, but I insisted.
I ordered a whiskey and was feeling sorry for myself when I noticed someone standing next to my table. It was Carol. Carol was an attorney at the firm. We were both hired at the same time and over the years became good friends, sharing gossip on everyone in the firm. Ten years ago, Carol had gone through a divorce. We spent time together with her venting and me listening.
Carol opened with, "Patrick, I am so sorry to hear about Lynn."
