Was It Worth It?

Sue came home a little later that day than I expected. I was working on the computer I keep in the spare bedroom that I had turned into a workroom for me. Our daughter was out with one of her girl friends, as was usual. She seemed to spend most of her time with them. Or at least it seemed that she tried to stay away whenever she knew my wife and I were going to be home at the same time. Or maybe it was just when her mother was going to be home, as infrequently as that was.

I could tell that Sue was tense as soon as she walked into the room. She is a very attractive woman, but she has never really been able to hide her emotions very well from me. She hadn't had many emotions to hide from me recently. Or, more accurately, she hadn't had much emotion around me at all. I knew she had felt plenty of emotions with others.

Sue sat down for a few minutes. There had been no warm, loving greeting from a wife who had been away for three days on business. No asking how I was, what I had been doing while she was gone. No information from her about her trip, how the business was, how the flight had been. Perhaps most importantly, no questions about how her thirteen-year-old daughter was either.

"Casey, have you got a minute to talk with me?" Her voice was soft and quiet. I nodded, and turned away from the computer. Things were perhaps moving along a little faster than I thought they would!

"I, uh, I don't know how to say this any way other than to just come out and say it. I want a divorce!" Her voice was still quiet, but a little hardness had slipped in as if she was forcing herself a little. I sat still and looked at her for a few minutes.

"OK." With that, I turned back to my computer and started looking over the landscape design that one of the designers had turned out. It was actually pretty good, but since we live in central Ohio, Bruce should have thought about that when he laid out the design for the trees at the south end of the house. The evergreens he had put by the driveway could cause snow to blow and drift across it if the wind was right. I knew I was going to have to change that part of it.

She still hadn't moved from the comfortable chair she was sitting in. Her face showed her shock, and her mouth was hanging open when I looked away from the screen and glanced at her. It was a most unbecoming look for such an attractive woman. Sue was thirty-seven and looked much younger; she was a hard charging and very successful young businesswoman and looked the part.

She had always taken great care in her appearance and in the clothes she wore. Here she was, having just supposedly gotten off a plane and rushed home to her loving family after a flight back from Dallas, and she looked as if she had just taken a shower, fixed her makeup and gotten dressed. Which I knew was exactly what had happened!

"What? What did you just say?"

I turned and calmly looked at her again. "I'm sorry, I thought I was pretty clear. You want a divorce. My reply was 'OK'."

"But..." Sue paused, unable to get anything else out. She was obviously having a problem understanding English. Since it was the language she had been speaking all of her life, it was a little confusing to me. Especially since I knew very well that she was very smart and well educated.

"Look, I remember that talk we had a long time ago. Remember, just before we got married? We agreed that if either of us decided that we didn't want our marriage to continue, we would sit down and talk to each other. Even if the other wasn't happy about it, or didn't want it to happen, we wouldn't try to hold onto something that was not working anymore. So, if you want a divorce, OK."

With that, I turned back to the computer screen. It only took a few minutes due to the landscape design software that I had built over the years of running a landscape business for me to move the trees to a more appropriate location. Bruce must have turned off some of the features I had built into the program. Normally, it would have taken into account the prevailing winds in the location for the different seasons, and warned him about the placement of the trees. When I looked up again, Sue was no longer in her seat.

When I finished up with the design, I uploaded it to the office computer via the VPN we used. After shutting the HP workstation down, I went into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. It wasn't unusual for me to drink coffee this time of day. Sue was always a little horrified. She always told me that if she drank caffeine after five o'clock, she would be up all night.

Apparently, that wasn't her main concern right now. To my surprise, she was sitting in the kitchen at the table with a cup of the coffee I had made in her hands. I had brought my cup from the office, so I filled it up again and leaned against the granite counter top to look at her.

"Careful, you'll be up all night if you drink that. You might want to think twice about it, unless of course you didn't get much sleep last night and drinking coffee will just help you stay up till you go to bed tonight. Oh, yeah, we really ought to be thinking about that I guess. Were you planning on sleeping here, or did you have somewhere else in mind? If you want to sleep here, I guess the spare room will be all right. There are probably still sheets and blankets on the bed, I guess." With that, I took my coffee with me and went to my bedroom that I no longer was sharing with her. As I walked out, her mouth was hanging open again and her head turned and watched me walk through the room, but she didn't say a word.

She left soon after without saying anything. While I had been in the shower she had gathered some of her clothes from her closet, but hadn't bothered to come into the bathroom. The reality was, she didn't have many of her personal items there anyway. She traveled so much that she always seemed to have most of her makeup and all the other things that women have in a bathroom packed up and in a bag. I had noticed that she hadn't brought any of her bags in the house when she arrived that afternoon, so she still had most everything she apparently wanted.

When I finished dressing and walked through the house, I did notice a few things missing. The "Central Ohio Young Business Woman of the Year -- 2003" award was gone, along with several other awards and plaques of hers, and there were some of the pictures of Louise, our daughter gone. I noticed that none of the pictures she had taken had me in them. I wasn't really surprised.

Louise called about half an hour later, and I assured her that her mother had been there and had left. She told me she would be home as soon as Lacey's mom could bring her. She asked what I wanted to eat and I told her that maybe we would go out tonight, if she felt like it. She thought for a few seconds and then agreed that might be a good idea. I chuckled as I hung up. Since her mother traveled so much, for the last few years Louise had picked up a lot of the cooking chores. It didn't surprise me that she thought eating out was a good idea!

We left to go eat almost as soon as Louise got home. There was a lot to talk about and a lot of things to handle in the next few weeks. Most of what I said, Louise agreed with but she did think that maybe I should talk to her mother again, whether or not she deserved it or not. I assured her that I would talk to her soon, and we went home.

The next morning I stopped by the office to make sure that Bruce realized why I had changed his design. He looked at it and agreed with me, and when we checked his workstation we realized that my program had several of the design modifiers turned off. After that, I let Denise know that I would be gone for a while.

She was the pretty young assistant in her early twenties that Keith and I had hired. At first, Keith had wanted to hire her just so we could look at her as she walked around the office! She was that good looking! I had held off at first, but we hadn't been able to find anyone with the qualifications she had. To our surprise, she had turned out to be ideal in the job. Oh, she still looked unbelievably sexy as she worked, but she had turned out to be a no nonsense office manager. She didn't allow anything out of line and would politely put anyone who tried in his place! Some of the guys in the work crews would occasionally try something but if they persisted she had no qualms about shooting them down in flames.

"Mr. Edwards, is everything alright? I mean, you look a little, I don't know, upset?" I had tried to convince Denise for three years to use my first name, but she insisted on being a little formal in the office. I assured her that everything was fine, but she looked at me for a few seconds when I told her that I would be at my lawyer's office. She ended up just nodding her head.

Everything went smoothly at the lawyers. I wasn't particularly close to John Evans, but he had always been quietly effect in the past. I was pretty sure that he would be now. He agreed to get the paperwork over to my wife. He asked if I wanted it sent to her at work, and I agreed. I realized that I had no interest in knowing if she was staying in a hotel room or with someone else.

Over the next few days things with Louise settled down. It became obvious to her that her mother wasn't coming back and she began to be more comfortable staying in the house. She even felt good enough about it that for the first time in a long time, she and her friends stopped by and spent an evening. I enjoyed their company but made sure that I gave them their privacy while making it very clear that I was in the house.

It was almost a week later that I got a call from Sue's lawyer. He politely requested a meeting, and I told him to contact John and set it up. He did tell me that Sue was more than a little upset over some of what was in the paperwork she had received, but I didn't have much to say other than telling him to talk to John.

I admit to being a little surprised when Louise told me that her mother had only tried to talk to her on her cell phone a couple of times. Louise had started to not answer her phone if she didn't recognize the number. We sat down and had a long talk about it, and I encouraged her to talk to her mother if she felt like it. It was pretty obvious that she didn't.

Finally, the day of the meeting came. It was set up in her lawyer's office for a Tuesday afternoon, and I swung by to pick up John on the way. I sure as hell didn't want to be spending any time with Sue and her lawyer without John there! We walked into the conference room and my lovely wife was sitting there waiting on us. She didn't look quite as business like as she normally did, but I could see very little emotion on her face.

Her lawyer started. "There are several of the conditions that are totally unacceptable! First is the matter of the underage child. There is no way that my client is willing to allow her daughter to stay with her father, especially if he is asking for child support! Secondly, there is the matter of financial settlement. Although it is clear that she is has a larger income than Mr. Edwards, it is not really appropriate for her to provide such a large settlement to her husband!" He didn't get much farther.

Even though John had tried to talk me out of saying too much, I had managed to convince him that if he just let me say my piece, there would be no arguments left when we all left the office. He didn't know much of the background information, but as I was paying him he agreed to do things my way.

"Sue, do you really want to fight about any of this in public? Even in front of our lawyers? Wouldn't you just rather settle this and go on? Despite everything, I don't particularly enjoy this kind of thing."

She looked at me, surprise and disdain on her face. It was the first real emotion I had seen from her that day. "What the hell are you talking about? Are you crazy or something? Do you really think that I owe you half of the money I've made during the time we've been married? I went out and busted my ass to be a success, while you've done nothing but sit on your ass and play at running that joke of a 'landscape' business you inherited from your dad! For the last five years, I've made six figures while you don't even make enough to pay for that house we live in! Oh, yeah, I forgot, your parents gave you that, too! What the hell have you done to make you think you deserve either me or my money, you sorry prick!"

I sat and let her anger and hatred spill over me. I had accepted the way she felt months before, but it still was a shock to me even if I tried my best not to respond. Once again I found myself wondering what had happened to the wonderful young woman I had met and married. My over riding emotion was sadness that she was so changed, so different. Even so, I had promised Louise that I would try my best to make things as clean and painless as possible. I had to try.

"OK, if it's the money that's the biggest issue with you, I'll forget about taking what I think is my fair share of your worth, even though it was gained while we were married and while I was helping to support you." I could feel John's stunned gaze as I gave up what would undoubtedly be a considerable amount of money. "Is that acceptable to you?"

Her lawyer appeared to be just as surprised as John. He and my soon to be ex-wife huddled together. She was now looking at me with the same look of arrogance and contempt that I had first noticed about seven months ago. I hoped that she would be willing to accept what I was offering, but being the hard charging young business star that she was, I was pretty sure she wouldn't.

Her contempt for me had probably been there for a lot longer, but I had first noticed it when she had sneered at the Ohio University Alumni invitation to a get together last fall.

"Oh my God, I didn't realize that a country school like that even had an Alumni association! And do they send them out to just anyone?" She had graduated from a Ivy league school, and had done so in three years. It had been expected of her, as all of her family was very smart and hard working. She had inherited the best and the worst of her family's traits.

We had met when her family had hired my dad's company to take care of their yard. They lived in Dublin, a nice suburb of Columbus that was a large customer base for our business. We had met and fallen in love. I was several years older than her, and completely different than most of the men that she new. I had never felt the need to brag or tell everyone everything about myself. When I had tried to tell my fiancé about my degrees from OU, she had appeared to be not interested and began telling me about how wonderful Brown University had been. It should have been a sign, but I was too in love with her to see the signs. After they whispered for a few minutes, her lawyer started to talk again. "My client is glad that you agree that you have no rights to her personal worth, even though it was in fact earned while the two of you were married. However..." He was going to say more but I interrupted him.

"That's very nice of her to agree. However, if I'm going to give up any claims to half of her earnings, my lawyer feels it only fair that she also agree to give up any and all rights to any share of my worth. Since she feels it is so negligible, I presume it won't be much of an issue?" John was looking at me again, but being a lawyer he had a very good poker face and none of his surprise showed.

The two of them again conferred quietly, and Sue's poisonous contempt and arrogance took charge of her as I had hoped that it would. Her lawyer argued with her for a long time, but she overruled him.

"As far as the child support and my having custody, Sue, do you really want to have Louise around all the time? Do you want to try the 'loving mother' act again? Or is this just about the money again?" I could see the anger as it built in her face.

"Fuck you, you sorry bastard! Just because I have to go out and earn a living while you spend all your time with our daughter doesn't make you any better than me!" She was spraying moisture on the table she was so angry. "What makes you think you're any better parent than I am? Just because you give in to her and let her do what she wants?"

I sighed. Apparently, she wasn't going to give in. She wanted to rub my nose in her victory and make me pay for it. This type of attitude had paid off for her in her business career; most people she dealt with saw only the pretty, attractive young woman and not the nasty viper she had become.

"All, right, if you want it this way, you can have it this way. I only promised our daughter that I would try. Shall I list the reasons why I should have custody?"

"Number one. You left home almost a month ago. When was the last time you talked to your daughter, the one that you love so much that you want to have with you all the time?" Sue's face, for the first time, showed some concern. "Well, since you don't seem to remember, let me refresh your memory. It was four day before you left on your 'trip to Dallas'. The one that you didn't really go on. Remember that? No, I can tell from the look on your face that you don't. Your daughter was trying to tell you about the play at school she was going to be in, and ask you if you were going to be able to go. To be honest, she didn't really want you there, but her counselor wanted her to ask you."

Sue was looking just a little uncomfortable. I wasn't sure if it was the realization that I knew she had not really gone to Dallas or what I was saying about Louise.

"Oh, that's right, you don't know about Louise having a counselor, do you? Why the hell would you know, right? When was the last time you had any interest in anything that wasn't about you? Would you like to know why she is seeing a counselor?" She just sat and stared at me. She didn't look nearly as confident and arrogant as she had only a few minutes before.

"I'll take your silence as a yes. Well, about three months ago, she came home early from school. She wasn't feeling very well, and the school had learned over the years not to bother to call you, so they called me instead. I told her to have them drop you off at home and that I would take off early to make sure she was all right. You were supposed to be gone off on another of your all-important 'business trips', so she assumed that she was the only one in the house. She opened the back door and dropped her books of on the kitchen table. She went up to her room to take a nap, when she gets a surprise as she walks by our bedroom door." I was watching Sue's face and it was obvious that she was afraid of what I was going to say. Her hand rose from the table as if to try to stop me, her mouth was open but she wasn't able to say anything.

"I can see that you've got a pretty good clue as to what she saw. Yes, oh yes, in her parents bedroom, on our bed, she gets her first sex education show. I never did get too much out of her, and I didn't want to push her to get any details from her, but it was pretty clear that you and your wonderful boss had decided to celebrate something. She did say that you were face down on the bed, with your ass up in the air and that he was behind you attacking you. At least, that's what she thought until she could hear what you were saying between your moans and screams." I knew I didn't have to go into any more detail. There were tears running down her face and pain and embarrassment had replaced the arrogance on her face. Her lawyer looked more than a little sick.

"That was about the time that she started to avoid you, but you probably didn't notice, did you? You were so busy being a 'success' that you didn't even notice that you had already failed in the most important job you would ever have. So many 'important' business dinners to attend, so much networking to do; no time for a family! You didn't even notice when your thirteen-year-old daughter stopped talking to you!!"