The Toy Box

Preface:

My wife and I were driving south on one of the highways that connect our home with one of our married children when we passed by one of the community funeral homes. Now it's not normally a busy thoroughfare, and it wasn't that day either, but the parking lot at the home was burgeoning with freshly washed cars and that was not normal.

I asked my wife if she knew of anyone who'd passed lately. She replied that she hadn't, but judging by the number of cars we both sort of assumed it was most likely a younger person. Anyway as we drove by

I think we both recognized a few of the cars.

My wife glanced in my direction and commented, "You know sweetie they should advertise."

I was somewhat surprised by her remark so I asked, "Advertise; whatever do you mean?'

She said, "Oh they could out up a marque something like, 'now showing Ellen Scarborough'."

Ellen was older friend of my wife's very elderly mother, and she'd recently passed. We'd gone to her viewing; not at that particular home though. I said to my sweet wife and mother of my children, "Sugar plum that was a little tacky don't you think?"

Quite seriously she looked over at me and said, "No not at all. Few people get or read the papers these days. I'm sure there are many times a friend or distant relative passes and they're missed by people who'd like to pay their last respects, a sign would be a welcomed and informative piece."

I still thought it odd and replied, "It still sounds a little morbid, maybe a little mercenary too."

My ever-loving life's partner smiled broadly like she'd just made a copyrightable or patentable discovery and replied, "No not at all," then she added, "They could post a sign saying 'now showing...' and beneath they could even have a somewhat smaller neon asserting 'coming soon...'."

I saw we were approaching our 'turn off' and I pointed to somebody's errant goat balanced rather comfortably atop the barbed wire cap of a chain link fence. Neither of us commented as we knew the goat was our youngest daughter's latest 4H project.

~~v~~

Introduction:

Now this story is a little different. I have no idea how to describe it except that it does involve infidelity so it is appropriate for the genre. Beyond that there are the customary admonitions; it might seem to run a little wordy at times, and if there are any political or religious references they're strictly for the story and have no real meaning. It is of course intended to be fiction so if the reader recognizes anyone it is pure chance. Also, though it is March there are no zombies, banshees, fairies, 'little people', werewolves, vampires, leprechauns or goblins within.

I hope you enjoy it.

One more warning; I've been said to be verbose. You don't like wordy stop now.

"The Toy Box"

by

carvohi.

(This story is told in three parts, but all in one sitting.)

Part One: Glenn's Story

Now I want to start out with a few fundamentals. First, I'm not a prejudiced kind of guy, and the fact that my marriage was ruined by three black men was to me only incidental, but how they might have come to view things is their problem. I mean whether or not what I did about what they did might have affected their jobs, their health, or their sense of well-being, well that only goes.

That takes me to my second point. I'm someone who has a tendency to take no prisoners; if it happens it happens. This would even be so with something simple or trivial or even with something as deep and emotional as a long term relationship such as my now defunct marriage. I mean I loved my wife, she cheated, I fixed things, and I've moved on.

Third, when I move on I move; I pick up the pieces and find new things to do. I can't sit around and cry over spilt milk.

Fourth, I'm not a vengeful person, if someone hurts me I've found the best thing to do is scram. As a rule I won't try to get even; especially if I feel the opportunity costs are too great, but I'll weigh those costs very carefully.

Fifth, I'm a methodical man; I take things as I see them, take them apart, analyze what I see, and make the needed changes. I'll proceed from there.

So let's get to the belly of the beast. I'll take this as chronologically as possible, no gimmicks, no tricks, no sleight of hand. Don't expect any surprise endings. And last, my sex life is my own private affair; so don't expect a lot of that in this sad little tale.

My name is Glenn Koch, and my former wife was named Jeannie Koch. Now that things have gone south I can't imagine she kept her married name. I certainly hope she didn't, but that's her business.

I've been thinking seriously about remarrying; yes, there's another woman whom I'd like to share my name with. At the moment she seems pretty satisfied about it. I'll tell everyone about her later.

~~v~~

My first wife and I got married in June 1986. It was the perfect traditional Catholic wedding with all the appropriate aspects one would expect.

I found work right out of high school as a carpenter, and within a short time I was promoted to something akin to a job boss. Get that; I'm a High school boy, no college here so don't expect a lot of fancy talk.

OK, well we got started. After a few years I went out on my own, and by the time I was thirty I had my own business building houses, and before I knew it I was building small to mid-sized apartment complexes around the county. Face it I've been good at what I do. I've been smart with the money and with who I choose to employ, and I've been lucky.

As I said, we married and pretty soon, just a year later our first baby came along. Her name is Angela, and she's always been the angel in my life. Even now, though I seldom see her anymore, I think about her every day. I suppose losing her affection has been one of the bigger regrets in this whole sick mess.

Our second child came along two years after that. We named him Travis, and though he's my son and I love him, I never quite made the connection with him I made with my girl. I don't know who to blame for that, but since I've taken the heat for most everything else, I'll assume responsibility for that as well. In all honesty I can take some blame for Travis: I'll try to explain that later too.

Well from 1986 until things completely fell apart around 2011 I worked my ever loving ass off. For all that time, through thick and thin I was able to keep food on the table, and money in the bank.

Recessions and depressions came and went; I was still able to keep going. I even made good money during the hard times between 2007 and 2010. I was so successful that my ever loving, now ever cheating, wife was able to stay home and enjoy the good things of life.

Here's where things started to go wrong, and I mean really wrong. Angela graduated from high school and went off to college in 2006, and Travis joined her a year later. Who'd a figured the asshole had picked up enough college credit in high school to skip right to college. Their departure left Jeannie home alone in a big house with basically not a lot to do. That's when she came to me and asked if she could get a job; you know, something to fill in the hours. I, being a good husband, told her to go ahead. Jeannie went out, went to school and got her license to sell real estate. She found a position with a nationally known agency and pretty soon she was on her way.

At first I thought Jeannie was a natural. She was bringing home the money like there was no tomorrow. The agency she had aligned herself with sold across all the counties. There were, I think, eleven active sales persons, three of whom were black men.

Of course, there were some serious down times caused by the Great Recession, but Jeannie still seemed to be ahead of the curve, or at least I thought she was ahead of the curve because I thought she was selling houses. I found out in the end it wasn't houses she'd put out on the market.

Real estate agents I found out worked odd hours. They worked weekends, evenings, and in all kinds of odd and unusual circumstances. Then with the market plunge those hours tended to go up a little. I didn't pay much attention to any of this because my efforts to keep things moving had caused me to put in more and more time too.

Hindsight they say is an exact science, and with sexual affairs nothing could be closer to the truth. Being the loyal husband I missed all the warning signs; the gradual erosion of our sex life, her loss of interest in our personal affairs, the increase in my wife's tendency to be indifferent regarding her chores around the house, her changes in hair styles, the styles and kinds of clothing she wore, and her overall increased laxity regarding everything we'd built over the years.

It was my fault too. I guess I just didn't pay enough attention to her.

I suppose, looking back, the biggest outright fright I got came at one of her fall offices parties. Their supervisor had rented a room at the restaurant in one of the downtown Holiday Inns.

This was supposed to be some sort of motivational thing; spouses had been invited. At first she encouraged me to go, but then she changed her mind asserting it would be a waste of time for me.

Now what with some of the other things that had been going on that comment was, I imagine, my first real red flag. I told her I intended to go. After first trying to dissuade me, she turned around and said it would be fun to have me there.

That party was an eye opener. Most of the agents and all the ancillary staff were good people; all quiet and friendly and such. But there were these three black agents who sort of hung together; something of a clique you might say. They were all three big stocky men, if they worked for me they'd have been doing heavy duty bulk work, hauling and carrying and what. They were, by far, the best dressed in the group, and they sat apart pretty much the whole evening with their wives at their own table.

They were generally cordial with everyone, but they seemed especially familiar with my wife. There was nothing particularly bad about their behavior, but they raised my hackles a few times. All three of them made a point of dancing with my wife three or four times, and when I accidentally ended up with their group, along with my wife, I found out they'd given Jeannie a special 'pet' name. They called her 'Miss Fancy'. They said the name came from the fancy little dresses and slack outfits she wore to work.

I didn't like the name they'd tagged her with, and honestly, every time they referred to her as 'Miss Fancy' she sort of laughed in a silly kind of way. I didn't like it, and instinctively knew I'd found the source of my emerging unease.

Later the next day I brought it up with her, but she reacted most rudely saying I was out of line, it was just a fun name, and that I knew nothing about the real estate business. At first I thought it was odd she would talk back to me that way, but I put that aside. I could correct her later. What really got me was how she could be so wrong. I worked in construction. I worked with lawyers who managed settlements for me. I worked around a few real estate agents, and I knew 'real' real estate agents didn't go around handing out pet names to colleagues unless something else was going on. She knew all this.

From then on I decided to keep a closer check on my 'Miss Fancy'. I started keeping up with her e-mail messages, her telephone contacts, her travel times, and the places she said she'd be. I periodically checked the mileage on her car and compared it to the places she said she'd be. It wasn't too hard to do any of this, but it didn't reveal much. I suppose I could have gone the electronic surveillance route and bought the little listening devices, the homing tools for her car, and all that crap, but I wasn't that kind of person. If she was going to do something, she'd do it, and I wouldn't really be able to stop her. Still, 'Miss Fancy'?

In the end, it happened just the way it seems to happen in all these sordid little stories, quite by accident. It was a Sunday. We'd gone; or rather I'd gone to mass the night before. Jeannie got up and said she had a couple open houses she had to attend to and that she wouldn't be home until much later that night. She said not to wait dinner, but go ahead and take care of food after whatever fashion I chose. She said she'd get something out at one of the diners. I told her not to buy a lot of junk and to stay away from too much caffeine. We kissed and she left.

That gave me the whole day to do pretty much what I wanted. As it was, two of our bedrooms had some pretty nice furniture we'd bought a few years earlier, but one of my elderly great aunts had 'passed' and she'd left us some pretty wonderful old things, antiques and such. I knew Jeanie loved some of the stuff and had been after me to get it out. Well obviously it had been put away someplace, and to be able to keep all this added crap we'd rented a unit at the nearby 'Annie's Lockers'. It was in our storage unit where we'd stored the stuff.

Maybe an hour after Jeannie left for her open houses I pulled out to go to the storage unit to get a look at what we had. I got there, found our unit, unlocked it, and went about uncovering some pretty nice old tables, love seats, and a couple old spinning wheels. There were several boxes filled with old doilies, table cloths, and coverlets of all types. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm pretty anal about old things like that.

When I opened the unit I saw Jeannie must have been in and out of several times since my last visit. Things were piled all over the place. That pissed me off a little; I figured I'd have to say something later that night. She knows I like tidy and orderly. I went about restoring things.

This was a large unit, and as I started tidying I noticed some oddities way back in the back. There was a curtain or something back behind a tall stack of cardboard boxes. I walked back and checked and guess what I found. I found hanging just neatly as one could please the dress that Jeannie had on when she left earlier that day. Beneath the dress hanging so neatly I found a plastic storage box. I was unfamiliar with it. I opened it. As soon as I opened it I knew my marriage was over.

~~v~~

There in that plastic container was my wife's secret treasure trove. I searched through it. I found a couple slinky little teddies, a grotesquely cheap little French maid's outfit, a harem girl costume, what looked like a slave girl outfit replete with plastic manacles, and an assortment of bras, panties, bustiers, and other odd shit. One of the pairs of panties, an especially frilly little piece had the word 'Fancy' written right where it would have covered her ass.

Two things immediately jumped out at me. Once, a few weeks earlier Jeannie had come home with what looked like rope marks around her wrists. She offered some sort of stupid explanation about having been caught between a washing machine and clothes drier and one of her clients had pulled her out and in the pulling had twisted her wrists thus causing the abrasions. Well one look at the slave girl outfit and the cheap phony chains proved the lie to that. Her black boyfriends must have chained her up during one of their play times. Of course the panties with the name Fancy gave it all away. She was 'Miss Fancy' all right.

My wife had been playing the whore, the sex toy with her three black colleagues. Now what was I going to do about it?

We'd been married over twenty years, and during those years I'd had several opportunities to see how grown men behaved when they found out their loving wives had cheated on them. I'd heard all the sad stories, I'd listened to all the tears and anger I could stomach. I'd dealt with the self-pity, the drunkenness, and the absenteeism, and I'd never had any sympathy for them. Wow! What a difference a trip to the storage unit could make.

Of course, I sat there a few minutes and gave in to the brutal tragedy that was in front of me, but I made up my mind I wasn't going to be one those whiney whimpering limp dicked losers. I'd already lost; there wasn't much sense in denying it. My marriage and my life as I knew it was over. It sucked, but there wasn't a God damned thing I could do to fix it. I knew who I was. I didn't know what she'd done; it didn't matter. I could never forget this. I could never forgive her. I certainly could never stay married to her. Whatever my wife wanted it certainly wasn't me and it absolutely wasn't our marriage.

I took the pretty dress she'd left the house in, and all her toys and loaded them in the back of my truck. I drove home, carried all her goodies in the house and took them in the living room and sat them on the coffee table. I'd come back to fix these things right a little later.

I went up in the attic, got my suitcases, that was my two suitor, my overnight bag, my cosmetic bag, and my other light bags and packed everything in them I'd need for the next few days. The rest I carried out to the truck for storage down at one of the trailers I had for the work sites.

Once I had everything I needed I pulled out all our financial records. Since this was Sunday I knew I'd be busy Monday clearing all this up for the imminent divorce.

Then I went downstairs and back to the living room. I took the nice dress she'd worn and laid it on the sofa. The rest I folded neatly on the coffee table. I'm sure most men would have waited around for the usual confrontation; you know the customary, 'why'd you do it', 'aren't you sorry', 'were they better', 'what did I do wrong', and on and on and on. Like I said I'd heard all this shit from three or four guys who'd gone through it. One thing I wasn't was a masochist. I was already torn up. My life was already in ruins. I knew could never get past this. Why bother make a bad situation worse?

I did write her a short note. I figured twenty-two years deserved maybe twenty words or so. Here's what I left her in the note.

Jeannie:

"I found your toys; they're pretty self-explanatory. You'll need a lawyer. Mine will be in touch. You can explain things to the kids. Our marriage? Honestly, it was a good ride. Now it's over.

Good bye,

Glenn

Ok, it was more than twenty words, but I think it got the message across. I wanted it to be as clinical as possible, completely free of any anger or sadness. I just didn't want her to know how badly I really felt. I remembered the old TV comment, 'Never let them see you sweat.' My guess was she would've probably been divorcing me pretty soon anyway. It was best to get it over with and move on.

I carried my suitcases out to my truck, loaded everything up, and drove off into the sunset. Well not exactly the sunset; I drove to the nearest Marriott and got a room.

That's what I did. What I wanted to do was go back to the house. Get out a sledge hammer and smash up everything we owned, no everything she owned. I'd been pretty good to her over the years. I'd bought her a lot of expensive shit. She was the proud owner of some awfully beautiful Baccarat, Nambe, and Waterford crystal. She had no idea how much some of the things cost. Most of it was stuffed in this massive Mahogany Curio Cabinet I'd bought her for one of our anniversaries. Some of the stuff was so expensive I'd been downright embarrassed buying it. I remember I bought her a $1,900.00 Waterford fruit bowl for our twentieth anniversary. I'd checked it and ordered it off the Internet. They'd delivered it to a jeweler's in our town. I'd stopped off from work in my overalls to get it. The salespeople looked at me like I was Jedd Clampett. I know they checked with the bank when I flipped out my credit card. What I'd give to go back home now, take a hammer, and smash the damn thing to pieces. 'Miss Fancy' my ass.