I'd been brooding about my marriage even before the photo came. Things with Shannon just hadn't been right, for about maybe six weeks. The last few days had been especially tense—and I was pretty sure her damn sister Nita was right in the middle of it.
And then I got the photo.
****
I was out of town on a job, a bigger one than usual. The main chilling unit at Purdue University went down, and their crew couldn't fix it. Frazier HVAC, the company I work for, has two high-level engineers who handle emergencies like this, and it was my week on call, so I'd driven the four hours to West Lafayette on Tuesday and I was still there on Thursday. Around 9:00 pm we finally got the problem solved; I grabbed dinner at a campus place and was in my hotel room by around 10 or so, thoroughly wiped out. I sent Shannon a quick text, said I was going to sleep, we'd finish up testing the system the next morning and I'd see her on Friday around dinnertime.
I took a quick shower and was getting ready for bed, with ESPN on the background, when I noticed a text from Roland Bruton, my best friend at Frazier. It said, "sorry about this—took this tonight at the Casa Ole. Give me a call if you want to talk," and there was a photo attached.
It was of a couple in a restaurant at a table for two. They were leaning forward towards one another, their elbows on the table, their four hands clasped together between them, their eyes focused intently on each other. The woman was my wife Shannon; the guy was Eric Chesterton, one of her co-workers at the OSU Library.
I'd never liked Eric, who was a kind of nerdy, namby-pamby guy, but I certainly hadn't suspected him of fucking my wife. For that matter I'd been worried about me and Shannon lately, but never dreamed she'd been screwing some other guy.
I knew if I just sat there I'd only get more and more furious, so I turned off the TV and called Roland.
"Hey Ben," he said. "Sorry to mess up your Thursday night."
"Yeah, and here I was partying up a storm in West Lafayette." I paused.
"Well, shit, Roland—I guess you should tell me what you saw."
He said, "Emily and I went out for an early dinner, and we were just about finished when we saw them—they were on the other side of the restaurant. She spotted them first and said, 'oh damn, Ro, that isn't Shannon, is it?'
"So I looked, watched a minute, and then shot that picture. They didn't kiss or anything, didn't feed each other off their plates or anything disgusting like that—they were just serious, intent on each other, like in the photo."
He sighed. "I'm really sorry, Ben."
"Did you see them leave? Any idea if they went off together, or where?"
He said, "we watched from our car in the parking lot for a few minutes, but they didn't come out. Finally we just left, and I texted you the photo. Sorry we didn't wait. But it looked like they'd just gotten their drinks, hadn't even eaten yet, so it was gonna be a while."
There was a silence. I guess he had no idea what to say to me any more than I did to him. Finally he said, "I know this sucks, man. Emily wanted me to say she sends you a big hug. She's fucking furious at Shannon."
"Me too. Though it kinda hasn't sunk in yet—I'm pretty sure I'll be spitting blood in a few hours."
"Did the Purdue job get finished? When can you come home?"
"Yeah, we're testing it in the morning, and then I'll drive back. Four hours in the car to cool down and remind myself not to beat her to death with a socket wrench."
He chuckled. There was no way in hell I'd ever hit Shannon, and Roland knew it.
"Listen, man, I—well, Emily and I were talking. This may be premature, but—if you need a place to crash, we've got a guest room and it's all yours. You know the rugrats would love having you around."
"Thanks, Roland. Much appreciated. I have no idea what I'll do, but I'll keep it in mind. It just hasn't sunk in yet, you know?"
We talked quietly for a couple more minutes and then I got off the phone. I turned off the light, lay down and was out almost instantly.
****
No marriage is perfect, right? I loved the hell out of Shannon, and had treated her the best I could for seven years (three of them dating, four of them married), but there are always issues. From what I've read, the two biggies are money and sex. Lucky for us, we were fine on those. Neither of us was a spendthrift, and sex was still as important to both of us as it had been our first few months together. Definitely more routine now, not so surprising or intense—but Shannon reached for me nearly as much as I did her, and I never felt she was tired of me or bored with what we did in bed.
No, for us it wasn't money or sex—it was Nita. She was 35, which made her about four years older than me and Shannon, and she was a bossy, stuck-up, insincere pain in the ass. For that matter her husband Alex was no day at the beach either—he was a pretty-boy lawyer who thought his shit didn't stink—but at least I didn't have to see him as much.
Shannon adored her big sister, and Nita was at our house constantly. Full of advice on how we should do things. "Oh, Shannon, it would make much more sense to put the dishes in THAT cabinet, and move the spices over HERE." "Is Ben really still cooking on a GAS grill? Charcoal is so much better for the flavor of the meat!" "Girl, that green chair (my favorite chair in the living room) has GOT to go. It's just so trailer-park!"
You get the idea. It drove me nuts that Shannon would never tell her to take a hike. But I guess that's how it is with little and big sisters, at least sometimes.
The worst—and I'm sparing you the long catalogue of Nita's other sins—was the way she ran me down, always behind my back. When I was in the room she was sickly sweet, going on and on about how good I was to Shannon, how thoughtful, how wonderfully handy I was around the house, poor Alex couldn't even change a lightbulb, etc.
But I'd heard her, more than once, putting me down when she thought I was somewhere else. Once she was having coffee with Shannon in our kitchen, and I quietly came in the back door from a run.
"Shannon, you know I love you, baby. But Ben is...well, he's just a bit crude. Nowhere near as handsome as Christopher, or even Tom. He's got a college education, so what is he doing working with his hands? Honestly, you could have done so much better!"
I couldn't fucking believe it! And we'd been married nearly two years at the time! Nita is still bringing up Shannon's old boyfriends?
Another time I overheard her say, literally: "you're certainly not going to have children with him, are you?"
And five minutes later there she was, smiling into my face and saying, "hey, Ben, Shan and I were just gossiping about what a great husband she has!" Fucking bitch.
As you can imagine, Shannon and I had had our share of arguments about it. She reassured me, but she never did anything to stop it. "Baby, Nita's not that bad, really—she's fond of you! I just let it go in one ear and out the other."
" 'You're certainly not going to have children with him'? How can you let her talk like that?" I was pacing the bedroom, furious. I seriously thought I was going to lose my mind.
"Honey, she's just blowing off steam. She loves you, she just likes to...I don't know, stir things up. It doesn't mean a thing."
That fight was one of our worst. I spat out a few choice words, stormed out of the house and was gone for six hours, mostly spent bitching to my friend Rafael, the bartender at Bob's. When I got home at midnight, she was asleep in our bed, turned away from me. We didn't say much more than "good morning" and "is there any more coffee?" for a couple of days, and then things gradually warmed up.
But we never resolved it. I knew Shannon loved me; but I couldn't understand why she wouldn't stand up to her fucking sister for once, and tell her to stop running me down. All I could do is avoid Nita as much as possible, finding reasons to be out of the house when she was coming over. That and discussing her with Shannon as little as possible.
Like I said, the last few weeks before my West Lafayette trip had been particularly tense. For whatever reason, Nita had been around more than ever—it seemed like nearly every fucking day she and Shannon were talking urgently in the kitchen when I came in from work. And whether for that reason or some other, Shan was cooler with me, more distant.
She knew better than to bring up her sister to me, so I had no idea what was up with Nita. But it seemed like Shannon had drawn into herself, or at least away from me. Things were civil, but who the hell wants to be "civil" with his wife? She seemed wary around me, and sex had dwindled down to nearly nothing. Shannon hadn't done more than give me a routine hug in weeks, and the atmosphere was so weird that I'd almost given up approaching her. I guess we'd had a couple of routine fucks, maybe 4-5 in the last month.
I'm not the best guy in the world for deep conversations, but I did try once or twice. "Honey, is something bothering you? Do we need to sit down and talk about something?" You know, that sort of question.
Oh no, things were okay; some changes at work she was a little concerned about; one or two things with Nita; but nothing we needed to spend time on. Thanks for asking though, sweetie! And a bright, fake smile, and a kiss on the cheek. That was all I got.
It had been going on for long enough that I was seriously thinking about calling my Aunt Gwen for a long talk. She was my mom's younger sister, and she'd helped raise me after my dad died and my mom got so sick. She lived in Seattle now, but we talked on the phone a lot. If there was anyone who could help me figure out what was up with Shannon, it would be Gwen. I decided to give her a call on the weekend, after I got back from Purdue.
And then Roland sent me the photo.
****
On Friday morning I managed to put the whole steaming pile of shit aside, and focus on work. Test the system, make sure it was handling the load, and get the hell out of Dodge. We got it all checked out by about 1:00, the Purdue guys took me out for a quick lunch, and then I was on the road for home.
All my questions were the obvious ones, and I wrestled with them for 200 miles. Were they fucking already, or just headed that way? Was it something I had done? Did she love him, or was this just a little fun with a new swinging dick? (And why THAT guy, for Chrissakes? A dweeby asshole like Eric Chesterton?) Was there any way I could forgive whatever had gone on, or were we done? And was Nita right in the middle of this somehow—egging her sister on, maybe?
As I approached Columbus in the Friday afternoon rush hour I didn't have a single answer; but I knew I wasn't ready to go home and face her. Briefly considering Roland's kind offer of his guest room, I decided instead on a nice anonymous room at a Motel 6, a steak and some beer at an Outback, and one more night to myself.
With some satisfaction I sent Shannon the least affectionate text message I could:
"Nearly finished, should be home tomorrow sometime". No "love", no heart emoji. Not a fucking thing beyond the minimum, so she knew I wasn't dead. She texted back "ok honey, miss you! [heart heart]" Yeah, sure she did—fuck her!
Around 9:30, just for the hell of it, I drove back to our street and slowly by our house, just looking to see if a strange car was parked nearby. I didn't see anything special; the house was dark except for our bedroom, and as far as I could tell through the curtains it looked like the TV was on. I went back to the Motel 6 and went to bed.
