Author's note: I seem to be getting some really good ideas lately from recently posted stories. This one comes from DG Hear's story "Stay At Home Dad." I liked the concept of the threat to a heretofore-strong marriage between a rich girl and a poor boy, and decided to take that concept in a little different direction.
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I was sitting in the dark, on my back deck, staring out into the black night. The moon hadn't come up yet, and the darkness of the night suited my mood.
Out there, I could hear the sounds of the crickets, the neighbors' dogs, the light breeze in the trees. It provided background noise for the troubling questions I had to face that night.
For the first time in my 13-year marriage, I had to seriously consider the possibility that my wife was having an affair. The very thought made my stomach turn, because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if she was, we were through.
And I love my wife. I've loved her from the first time I saw her, and my love for her has only grown stronger. She's been my friend, my lover, my rock of support, a good wife and a great mother to our three children.
But I was not going to stay married to a cheater, especially if she was cheating with whom I suspected. Loyalty and trust mean too much to me, and once they are lost, they can never be regained. And a marriage without loyalty and trust is no marriage at all.
The thing was, I had no proof, nothing concrete to suggest that Dee Dee was cheating, just a lot of unsettling things, which by themselves didn't mean much, but added together ...
I guess I should start at the beginning, and explain how I came to the crossroads of my life.
To begin with, I'll admit it. I married into money.
I didn't intend to, but by the time I found out that the Dee Dee had a rich daddy and a socialite mother, we were madly in love.
Deirdre McGough – that's Dee Dee – is the youngest child, and only daughter, of the president and CEO of a large, nationally known publishing company.
Dee Dee went to a private high school, then to a private college and when she graduated with a business degree, she landed a job with a Fortune 500 company that is headquartered here in the city where I was born and raised, and where I'll probably live the rest of my life.
She was an excellent student and got the job on merit, but it probably didn't hurt that she was Malcolm McGough's baby girl.
At any rate, she had every opportunity to be a first-class snob, but she was blessed with a housekeeper in her youth, a salty black woman named Georgia who taught her down-to-earth values. That's the only reason I can think of for why Dee Dee gave me the time of day in the first place, then said yes when I asked her for a date.
My name is Doug Manning and I am about as far removed from Dee Dee's world as you can get. I'm the oldest child, and only son, of a long-haul trucker and my mom was – and still is – the dispatcher for the same company my dad worked for.
Just about the first thing my dad taught me was the working of an internal combustion engine and I soaked up everything he taught me.
Engines of every sort fascinated me, but especially car engines, and from the time I was 8 years old, my only ambition was to be the best auto mechanic on the planet and to own my own shop.
Daddy always tried to talk me out of that ambition, pointing to the fact that I was quite smart, made good grades, was an upstanding citizen and that I could have a future as an engineer. And by the time I got to my junior year of high school, he'd about talked me into going to college.
But that was before he was involved in an awful traffic accident that left a woman and her two children dead, and left him paralyzed from the chest down.
The investigators said there was nothing he could have done. It happened in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, the woman had lost control on a two-lane highway and had swerved into his path.
That didn't do anything to ease Daddy's guilt, however, nor did it do anything to ease the financial burden on our family.
At any rate, any plans I may have had for college flew out the window when Daddy became disabled. My grades and my ACT scores were good, but not good enough to interest colleges in scholarship money, and besides, I felt like I needed to go to work full-time to support Mom and my two sisters.
I wanted them to go to college, because I knew that's what they needed. I knew I could make a good living with my hands, but for them to get ahead in life, college was a must.
We were able to get enough in grants to pay for their tuition and books, they were close enough to the state university that they could live at home and commute and I was more than happy to help them financially with spending money for gas, clothes and other extras.
When Daddy got hurt, I had been working part-time for Mr. Johnson, who owned what everyone said was the best auto repair shop in the city. Whatever Daddy didn't teach me about engines – which wasn't much – I learned from Mr. Johnson.
After I graduated from high school, I went to work full-time for Mr. Johnson, and stayed with him for the next three years. After that, though, I felt like I needed to make a little more in salary, needed some continuing training that he couldn't provide and needed more in benefits than he could offer.
By then, he was starting to get a little older, his business had stagnated a little and he just couldn't afford that for me. I understood, and didn't hold it against him, and he understood that I needed more than he could give me. So with his blessing, I went to work for a national chain.
I had been with that company for almost four years when I met Dee Dee. I like to think it was fate that brought us together, because the circumstances were quite unusual.
At this time, I was almost 25 and had never had a really serious girlfriend. Oh, I'd had relationships, many of them sexual, but none that had developed into "the one."
Daddy took to drinking heavily after his accident, and that just put an added burden on Mom. He drank because he had nothing to do and he drank because of the intense guilt he felt about the accident.
He wasn't a violent drunk, but he was a very morose drunk, and I'm ashamed to say that it was almost a blessing for my mom when he wheeled himself out of the house to go drinking.
By then I had moved into a place of my own, but I was still close enough that I could come at a moment's notice, and I was often called to gather up my father after he'd passed out drunk at the bar he frequented.
The house where I was raised was three blocks from a main drag, and there was a tavern on one corner and a liquor store on the other. That became his little world. It broke my heart, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
The upshot was that Mom needed some time to herself on occasion, some time when she could go out and enjoy herself without worrying about Daddy.
Believe it or not, one of Mom's great interests is classical music. Now I don't know Shostakovich from Sid Vicious, and I couldn't tell Beethoven from the Beatles, but Mom sure can, and she's passionate about it.
As a result, one of our few extravagances was a membership to the city's symphony orchestra, and I routinely accompanied Mom to concerts. She had her one cocktail gown that she always wore, I had my one good suit that I would wear, and for a few hours we would forget about our troubles and pretend we were part of the city's high society.
We picked our spots to attend, because there were times when Mom was just too tired to go out or it was a night when Daddy was in a bad way, but whenever a major guest artist performed with the symphony, we were there.
That was especially true when Itzhak Perlman came to town. Like I said, I don't know a lot about classical music, but I know a virtuoso performer when I hear one and if there is a better violinist than Perlman, I haven't heard him.
So we got all dressed up, went to a very nice restaurant for dinner, like we always did, then went to the symphony. We were loitering in the lobby before the performance, when I happened to turn my head and there she was.
I just stared at her for several seconds, and to this day I don't know what it was about her that arrested my attention. Dee Dee is very pretty, but she's not so gorgeous as to make an otherwise rational adult stop in his tracks the way I did.
I think it was her smile, her eyes, the way she carried herself. She's a little taller than average with straight blonde hair the color of flax. She's slim, with her breasts and butt perfectly proportioned.
I guess she felt me staring at her, because she turned toward me and our eyes locked. I think in that one moment something clicked, because she smiled at me and kind of blushed, then the guy she was with said something and she looked away.
But just before they disappeared up the stairs to their seats, she turned her head, looked back at me and smiled again.
It didn't take me long to locate where she was in the arena. They were in the section to our left and below us about three rows. I hardly remember the concert, because I just kept gazing at her – and studying the man she was with.
He was a tall, imperious-looking gent who appeared to be around 30. He was handsome, but he exuded a palpable air of privilege and arrogance, and it didn't appear that they were terribly intimate, didn't give off the appearance of being a couple.
At the intermission, I accompanied Mom back to the lobby, so she could use the restroom and we could get some refreshments. I picked up two flutes of champagne and had turned to wait for Mom when I saw her again.
She was just standing off by herself, frowning while her date chatted several feet away with someone else. A lack of confidence has never been a problem for me, so I casually walked over to speak.
"Hi," I said. "You don't look like you're having a very good time."
"Oh, I'm all right," she said, then she gave me her megawatt smile when she saw who I was. "I'm just waiting for the program to resume."
"You know, if I was out with a girl as pretty as you, I think I'd be paying her a little more attention," I said, nodding toward her date.
"You'd think," she said. "But you're one to talk. Looks to me like you're neglecting someone as well, or maybe you're just a double-fisted drinker."
"Oh, I'm here with my mother," I said. "I go to these concerts with her because my dad's disabled and can't get out."
"That's sweet," she said. "I like a man who honors his mother and father."
"So are you two a couple?" I asked.
"Henry? Good gracious, no," she said. "We work together and we've dated a few times, but this is probably the last time. He is SO self-absorbed."
"Well, then," I said as I drained my glass, set it down and held out my free hand. "I'm Doug, Doug Manning."
"Dee Dee McGough," she said and she held my hand just a fraction of a second longer than normal when we shook in greeting.