It was just another day in my shitty life. Went to work. Went home. Ate a cardboard frozen pizza and drank a beer. All because my ex-wife couldn't keep her legs closed.
I didn't invite the snake into my personal Garden of Eden, but I most certainly welcomed it in once it was there.
I am a man... just a stupid, innocent man. I fell for a pretty face. Shit, I practically gave my wife to her. I never saw it coming.
I saw the moving men unloading the truck and was pleased that the empty home next to ours had finally sold. It was very depressing to continually see the darkened empty home next door, especially since the previous owners, the Robertsons, were such a lively family. They had three teenage children and the whole family was active. Other families' children just gravitated to the house, and there was always a lot of noise and laughter coming from the place.
Both my wife and I occasionally peeked out our side windows and watch the furniture get moved in. We watched as a tall, attractive, 30-something woman directed the move. It quickly became apparent that she was a singleton, with no family at all besides herself.
My wife waited two days before approaching the new neighbor with a bottle of white wine and fresh, homemade cinnamon roles. She returned about two hours later, slightly buzzed, with an empty plate. At the time, I could tell she was already in love with Shellane Murphy. Looking back on things with the benefit of time, I was probably on the money, although I hadn't a clue how on target I was.
"Oh my God, Max, she's so beautiful and sexy and smart. You're going to love her when you meet her... just don't love her too much," Astrid giggled.
"That could never happen, babe," I answered. "You know I'm a one-woman man."
"That's my good... Saint Bernard. Loyal and trustworthy," Astrid said.
I went and introduced myself to Shellane two days later when I saw her about to mow her yard. I was also about to mow as well, but before I did I walked over, stuck out my big meaty hand and welcomed her to the neighborhood.
She took my outstretched paw and gave it a solid grip. I was impressed. I was also impressed with her look. I guessed her to be late 30s, like Astrid and myself, and she was probably about 5-8, 125 well-proportioned pounds. She had shoulder-length red hair, radiant green eyes and an hourglass figure topped with large breasts.
I wondered to myself how long it would take before the single guys in the neighborhood would be beating a path to her door.
I went back home and mowed the yard. After I finished, I grabbed a cold beer and went out to the front porch to relax. Astrid was sitting on our porch swing, reading one of her Clive Cussler novels. The woman is an absolute Cussler freak.
"I met the new neighbor before I mowed. She is really an attractive woman. Wonder who's going to be the first guy in the neighborhood to ask her for a date," I said.
When I didn't get an immediate answer, I glanced over at my wife, who seemed to be flushing red. Her brow was furrowed and she had a look on her face I couldn't read.
"None of those jokers are good enough for her!" Astrid snapped.
I was surprised at her vehemence. I didn't think my comment was going to be a fire starter. I figured discretion truly was the better part of valor and didn't respond, sucking down some beer instead.
I work construction and help coach my daughter's AAU soccer team in the summer. MaryJane, MJ for short, has her mother's looks but my body type, being tall for her age and wide across her shoulders. She's also got my take no shit from anybody attitude, which occasionally gets her in trouble. Since she inherited that from me, I know how to put the brakes on her when I have to, which has saved both of us several times as she was growing up. Astrid has always been quick to criticize me when MJ gets too full of herself.
"Damn, Maxwell, she gets that attitude from you. You need to contain her now before she gets going down the wrong road," Astrid has said at least a dozen times in the last few years.
In addition to the tone in her voice, I can always tell when Astrid is pissed at me because she calls me by my full given name. She picked up that from my mother, who has been doing that to me for all of my 38 years. Astrid and my mom are thick as thieves, and there are times where I'm pretty sure my mother loves her more than me. The one thing I'm sure of is that I don't want to get the two of them mad at me at the same time.
Astrid and Shellane grew closer as friends the longer Shellane lived next door. Whether they were at our house or Shellane's, it seemed like they were almost constantly together when they weren't working. I didn't have any problem with their friendship, because Shellane was very friendly to me as well and was certainly easy on the eyes. She was the de facto fourth member of our family.
It was about a year after Shellane moved next door that I got my first feeling that something wasn't quite right in my marriage. I golfed once a month with three friends, and was gone from the house from about six in the morning until about three as we would eat lunch at the club and have a few beers after hitting the little white ball around the course.
When I got back to the house, Astrid wasn't home, which wasn't a big deal, except I noticed that the laundry hadn't been done and Astrid hadn't done her usual shopping. Since her car was home, I figured she and Shellane were doing something and time must have gotten away from her. Not a big deal, except for her reaction to me when she walked in the door about 30 minutes later. Silly me, I was just making conversation.
"Busy day? You and Shellane have a good time?" I asked innocently.
"You checking up on me?" she snapped back at me. "Since when do I have to account for my time to you?"
She never made eye contact with me during this little exchange, and then turned on her heel and walked out of the room. MJ, who was sitting in the room with me, looked at me in shock.
"Whoa! What was that, Dad?" MJ rasped. "Did I miss something real parental there?"
"I have no freakin' idea, baby. I'm as much in the dark as you are. Where's my seeing-eye dog?" I said.
Things didn't thaw too much in the Warnock home during the next two weeks. Astrid spent much of her home time with Shellane, almost neglecting MJ and me. Then came our street's annual block party, a 12-hour affair that featured about a dozen grills working and everyone chipping in with salads and snacks, as well. We rented a bounce house and basketball free throw game and there must have been a dozen Frisbees in the air all day long until it got dark.
As usual, I manned one of the grills with my specialty of barbecue short ribs. I spent much of the first six hours at the grill, leaving only for a few minutes to grab another beer or go for a bathroom break. My daughter and others came over to talk for a bit throughout the day, although my wife never quite made it over to me. I did notice that she spent much of the day almost joined at the hip with Shellane, and I might have been mistaken, but at one point I thought I saw Shellane's hand work its way into the back pocket of Astrid's tight short-shorts.
Additionally, several times during the day I was pretty sure I saw several of the women glancing at Astrid and Shellane and then talking in hushed tones. The whispering women stopped talking and moved apart when they saw me looking in their direction.
I didn't get a chance to really mingle until after the dinner hour, but when I finally started circulating, I had several of the other husbands ask me how I was coping with the relationship between Astrid and Shellane.
"Are you getting your share of that?" asked Dave Baldwin, a neighbor for more than 10 years, while we were sitting at a table stuffing our faces.
Dave was a big goofy guy who was probably the biggest yenta in the neighborhood among the husbands. He usually had the scoop on everything, which many of us found irritating, but for the most part he was harmless and wasn't malicious.
There were six of us sitting at a table and it got quiet when Dave asked me the question. He obviously knew something I didn't, so I bluffed my answer to hopefully get him to shut up.
"Damn, Dave, nobody needs to know that I'm doing both of them every night. That's supposed to be our secret, buddy," I said with a big exaggerated wink.
Everybody but Dave laughed uproariously. Dave just looked at me perplexed.
A few minutes later I grabbed Dave by the back of his neck, gave a strong squeeze and practically dragged him off to an out of the way spot.
"Not cool, Dave, outing me in front of everybody," I hissed at him. "If you know something, stop making an ass out of both of us and speak to me."
"How... could... you... not know?" he asked, looking at me like I was the world's biggest idiot. "
Everybody
knows what's going on! Even Old Man Lassiter knows, and he's half-dead.
"Everybody's just assumed that you were cool with it because you guys had a trio or something going."
I put my hand out to steady myself on Dave's beefy shoulder. I must have looked as bad as I looked, because when I looked at Dave's face all I could see was abject pity. I never knew the man even had that emotion.
"Oh fuck. I'm sorry, man," he whispered.
After a period of silence that felt like hours but was probably only seconds, I asked the neighborhood gossip to tell me everything he knew... and everything he suspected. Fifteen minutes later, I knew my life would never be the same.
After swearing Dave to silence under penalty of telling his wife about the new $300 fly rod he bought without her knowledge, I spent the rest of the party drinking a large quantity of margaritas. Everyone thought I was the life of the party. I even went so far as to get up and dance with the teens, which I know embarrassed the living shit out of my daughter. Still, no one would have guessed that my heart was ripped out and stomped on earlier in the day.
I woke up the next morning with an epic hangover. Astrid and MJ were watching TV in the family room when I staggered in with a cup of coffee.
"Hey, it's Mr. Goodtime! Wasn't sure you were going to wake up until tomorrow," my daughter gibed.
"Ssshhh! Not quite so loud. Who's the visitor?" I said, nodding in the direction of Astrid.
MJ followed my nod and looked at her mother. I knew that, like me, she knew Astrid hadn't been spending a lot of time at home, but I wondered if she was as clueless as I was about the affair. We would have to have that discussion real soon.
"Oh, that's Mom," she said glibly. "You remember her, don't you? You married her about 15 years ago. Got a beautiful, genius child."
I grinned, which was incredibly challenging given my condition. I could see the look of disgust on Astrid's face. My daughter was jumping into the same bucket of shit that I was already in, even if neither one of us would be able to figure out how I got there.
"I'm going over to Shell's place," Astrid sneered as she rose from her chair.
"Right. Of course you are," MJ responded.
"I don't have to take attitude from my 13-year-old daughter," Astrid bitched. "Talk to your daughter, Maxwell, before I backhand her."
