Family Ties 16

Ray McCallum wasn't the biggest guy to play basketball, but he was one of the best to lace up sneakers in Indiana High School history. At just 5-9, he had led his team, the Muncie Central Bearcats, to the Indiana High School Athletic Association title in 1978, and it looked like he was on the way to doing it a second straight time in late winter 1979.

For the uninitiated, high school basketball was king in Indiana in those years, and there were few Friday and Saturday nights when a high school gym wasn't packed when the local team was playing. Muncie Central had won four state titles heading into the season, and the faithful were hoping McCallum and Co. could make it five.

I was a young sportswriter for the Muncie Star Press in 1979, with boys' basketball as one of my beats. I was one of two full-time sports writers at the paper, and covering boys' basketball was the cherry assignment. I had worked at the paper for four years, and this was my third year doing boys' hoop. At 25, I wasn't too much older than the players I was covering.

I grew up on Long Island, and while I never played ball in high school, I spent a lot of time playing ball on the outdoor courts in the town in which I grew up. Those of us who spent a good part of our teenage years playing on those courts got a lot more time playing than the varsity squad guys, although we didn't have the benefit--or handicap--of having professional coaching. Yeah, we didn't do the drills or organized lifting the varsity squadders did, but they didn't play games for two or three hours every day after school from September through April, when a lot of the guys switched over to playing baseball.

The varsity guys did join us in the summer for the after-dinner games in late July through when school started in September, as the evenings were a little cooler, but even then, they didn't dominate. The star player was still the star player, but the rest of the guys were just regular guys on the outdoor courts. They often got pissed at the rest of us because they weren't accorded what they felt was proper respect, but fuck them, they weren't any better than the rest of us.

I could somewhat relate to most of the Muncie kids playing ball, especially when they found out I grew up playing on the courts in New York.

Throughout the winter I was gone almost every Friday and Saturday night for five to six hours, depending upon if it was a home or away game. It was just the way it was if you were a sports writer in Indiana at that time.

My wife of three years knew what she was getting into when she married me. She worked as an admin for a law firm in Muncie. We met our senior years in college at Iowa State University in Ames, IA, then when she got her job in Muncie, I spent several months sending resumes to nearby newspapers before landing at the Star Press about three months later. We lived together for a year before getting married.

Traci knew and I thought understood that small city newspaper reporters had weird hours and were never going to be at the top of the pay scale. It was a steady job, though, in a field I truly loved.

For her part, Traci worked regular 8-to-5 hours and made better money than I did. We didn't have my money and her money. It was all

our

money. We were a team, or so I thought.

Traci admitted to me it wasn't always easy. Most of the time, she stayed home and watched television, she said, but every now and then, she and her friends went out to eat, drink and occasionally dance. She always told me when she was going and almost always beat me home. I trusted her, the same way she trusted me when I was out working.

It was a Saturday night and I was on the road for about an hour to cover an away game. The junior varsity game usually started about 75 minutes before the varsity, but due to a flu bug the host junior varsity team was unable to take the floor, truly an amazing development in Indiana. Because the JV was cancelled and there was already a good crowd in the gym, the two schools agreed to start the varsity game about 30 minutes early, another amazing development.

McCallum played his usual great game and Muncie Central was an easy winner. I got my quotes from both coaches, put my stats together and headed out the door. I got back to the office early and practically ran through my story because the win was so lopsided. I was figuratively dancing in my shoes because I was going to get home about 90 minutes earlier than usual. I have to admit I was thinking of some rare post-game sex, something that didn't usually happen for me.

I was literally humming a happy tune as I was about to pull into my driveway, but when I looked left to make the turn I spotted a white Lincoln in the middle of the drive. Perplexed, I backed my Ford Pinto down the block a few hundred yards, parked in front of a neighbor's house and sat and watched.

"Son of a bitch motherfucker!" I yelled to no one as 15 minutes later my front door opened and Jason Lafforge stepped out onto the stoop before leaning back in to give my wife a quick peck on the lips. I only saw Traci briefly--I'm sure she was trying to stay out of sight--but I could see she was wearing a short, shear pink robe that I had never seen before. I literally wretched twice; fortunately nothing came up.

Lafforge was one of the partners of Goldberg Lafforge and Statham, the firm at which Traci had worked for the past four years. I wondered how long the affair had been going on.

I jumped out of my car and ran to my front door after Lafforge pulled out of my driveway. As I stepped into the house, Traci called out from the kitchen, "Forget something, Honey?"

"Yup, I forgot where I put my trustworthy wife!" I called out from the entryway.

I heard the shattering of a glass on the kitchen floor, then a stage-whispered, "Oh shit!" and sobbing.

"What the fuck are you crying about?" I yelled at her when I got to the kitchen. "You're not the one who just found out your spouse has been cheating with a scum-sucking attorney!"

She was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with pieces of a shattered wine glass around her feet, cum leaking down her thighs from underneath her short robe.

"You piece of shit! How long has this been going on?!" I shouted.

She seemed rooted to the spot on which she stood, and had apparently gone mute.

"Ah fuck. It's just glass, you bitch. I'll get the God-damned Shop Vac."

I went to the utility closet, got the Shop Vac and sucked up the shards after picking up the big pieces. Traci started to leave the room, probably to go upstairs and shower.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going, Slut?!" I yelled. "Sit your cheating ass down at the table."

"I-I-I..." she stuttered, then sat down.

I noticed she was still leaking his cum.

"How long has this been going on, Slut?" I asked as I pulled a beer out of the refrigerator.

She studied her folded hands on the table for a good 30 seconds.

"Four months," she practically whispered. "Whenever you go to a road game, or on girls' nights out. Wh-wh-why are you home so early tonight?"

"Wh-wh-why were you fucking this guy?" I asked in mock imitation of her stupid-ass question.

"It was good sex," she answered. "Jason's handsome and we kinda have a thing for each other. We were going to see how it played out before telling you."

"And I messed that up by showing up early because a fucking JV basketball game was cancelled. How fucking rude of me.

"Now go upstairs and take a shower... after you clean the cum you dripped off the damned floor."

When I heard the shower running, I went upstairs to survey the damage. She hadn't had time to clean up the mess she and her fuckbuddy made of our marital bed. I grabbed some stuff out of my closet and drawers and went into our guest bedroom. There was no way I was ever sleeping in that bed again.

I heard Traci moving around our bedroom before poking her head into the guestroom. Before she could say anything, I yelled out, "Leave me the fuck alone. We'll talk tomorrow, Slut."

She quickly jumped back out of the room. Surprisingly, I slept like a brick.

By the time I got downstairs Sunday morning after showering, Traci had prepared a sumptuous breakfast of Belgian waffles and bacon. When I walked into the kitchen, she put a hot cup of coffee next to each of our plates. I assumed she was ready to talk.

"So have you pulled yourself together yet, Dan?" she asked.

Wait. What? Have I pulled myself together? I wasn't the one cheating.

"Oh, I'm together, Babe. You're the one that better be talking... and quick," I answered.

"Well... I'm not really sure what you're thinking. Divorce? I don't think that's the first thing we have to talk about. I think we have some other options."

I was incredulous! If my mouth wasn't hanging wide open, I would have been shocked.

"Actually I see three options for this, Babe," I said, seeing her break into a slight smile. "Divorce, divorce and, of course, divorce."

Her smile faded.

"Did I ever deny you any love, or anything in the bedroom? If you hadn't come home early, you still wouldn't know, and it would be, 'Ignorance is bliss.' Can't we just go back to that, at least for a while, so we can all see how this works out? Then we can all have an adult conversation, instead of yelling and screaming like savages."

"Oh, pardon me, I guess I'm just not as refined as your fucking lawyer. We low-level journalists can't help ourselves. Hell, we've just recently learned how to eat with utensils."

"Jee-sus, you're such a puss, Dan. How about growing a pair of balls?" Traci said around a bite of French toast.

"You do realize you're not helping your cause here, Traci," I responded. "You cheat and yet you think you've earned the right to be a smart-ass.

"So when did you stop respecting me, Traci? Married four years and I'm not enough for you?"

Nothing really got settled, but only because family attorneys don't work on Sundays. I don't think Traci really had any clue as to how I felt, because not only didn't she apologize for cheating, she didn't even apologize for hurting me. Surely

that

would have been the first thing she could have at least done.

Work on Monday was a godsend. I did take 10 minutes to fill in my boss on what was happening, and I asked if he knew a good family attorney. He had divorced about 10 years earlier, so of course he knew a good family attorney. Surprisingly, he recommended the attorney his wife used.

"She cooked my attorney's ass. Are you kidding? The next time I get divorced, I'm using her," he said, only half in jest.

Still, I knew there was only so much that she could really do. Indiana was now a no-fault state, and beside, we just didn't have much to split. We were more than upside-down in the house. At the least, though, I knew Julie-Anne Howard wasn't going to take shit from whichever attorney Jason Lafforge picked from his firm to represent Traci.

I spent the day doing my usual, which included taking a couple of photos. The Star Press was a mid-sized paper, and every now and then both of our regular photographers were booked or out on an accident or fire when another photo assignment came up. In addition to my writing duties, I was also the swing photographer, something I really enjoyed. Worth Anderson, the paper's top photographer, spent a couple of hours showing me all things photo one day, and I had picked up a used Pentax Spotmatic that I kept with me all the time for both work and personal use. The camera looked like it had been used to fend off attackers, but it was like a Timex watch. It "took a licking but kept on clicking" to corrupt the Timex mantra. The new-fangled "automatic" cameras were just coming into play, but the Spotmatic was completely manual. Additionally, the camera's light meter was broken, but Worth taught me a system to figure outdoor exposures without a light meter, and I got pretty good at it.

Two weeks later Traci was served divorce papers at work. I knew when I went in the door that night that there was going to be hell to pay. What I didn't expect was that Lafforge would be in the house with Traci when I got home. I spotted his Lincoln in the middle of the driveway, so I had to park my Pinto on the street instead of my spot in the garage as usual. I figured he did it just to piss me off; it worked.

"Just fuck you, Dan! Just fuck you!" Traci screamed at me when I got all the way in the house and closed the front door.

"Well, Dickbreath, I'd say it was good to see you, but why lie?" I said to Lafforge, who grimaced but said nothing. "Last time I saw you, you were running down Traci's legs."

I grabbed a beer from the fridge as Traci continued to harangue me, then her lover figured he'd get in his two cents worth.

"If you think you're funny, you're not!" he shouted at me as he came toward me menacingly.

I sized him up as he moved. We were about the same height and weight, but I worked out two to three times a week and he looked like the heaviest thing he lifted was his briefcase. I also knew that a good defense was to beat the piss out of him as quickly as possible, so I put the beer on the kitchen counter and turned to face him, making my hands into fists.

"Think hard about this, Fuckhead! I work for a living. If you force me to hit you, I'm not going to stop until you're on the ground not moving. And then for the first time in my life, I'm going to have to hit a woman... just to protect myself, of course."

Traci's eyes got wide as she took a step back. Fuckhead pulled up immediately.

"That's much more sensible, children," I said smugly. "Now, unless you've got something lawyerly to say, you need to leave. I still owe you."

"He's here with me. This is still half my house," Traci said as she mustered up some courage.

"No doubt about that, Traci, at least for a while longer. But I can't guarantee that he won't get on my nerves. And if that happens, all bets are off."

I don't have any idea what kind of arrangements Traci and Lafforge made, but since I didn't agree to be their willing cuckold, the divorce was final in six months, five months after Ray McCallum led Muncie Central to a second straight hoop title. I moved into a small apartment in Muncie.

You just can't turn off love like you can electricity, so I have to admit that while I hated what Traci had done, I still loved her somewhat. I also missed having someone to come home to every night.

I learned to cook for myself in the ensuing months because I couldn't afford to eat out on a regular basis and I got tired of eating Pop-Tarts at every meal. I never got used to being alone, though, and after about two months I went to a nearby animal shelter and rescued what the shelter workers said was a 2-year-old German Shepherd mix that was turned in by its previous owners when the family's husband lost his job. The dog was potty-trained, beautiful and seemed smart, and if I didn't take him he would have been put down in 16 more days. The shelter held on to animals for 60 days, but when they were full the animals that were there the longest were euthanized.

The dog's name was Leo, and he quickly became my best friend and almost constant companion. It was great to come home to someone who was always happy to see me at the end of the day, whether it was a good day or a bad day, whether it was a regular day or a long one.

Muncie was a pretty decently sized city, sitting about halfway between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. Between the three cities, there was always plenty to do and explore. I even dipped my toe back into the dating scene. Some of those dates resulted in me bringing a young lady back to my apartment, which irritated Leo because on the nights I had a woman with me, Leo couldn't sleep in his usual spot at the end of my bed. I loved the pup, but the rules were simple: when I had a partner, he was on the floor next to the bed, no matter how much he whined and whimpered.

One of Leo's favorite activities was going to the nearby park to play catch. I had a good arm in my day, and even though I was 27, I could still heave it a long way. Leo would head off doing his best impression of a greyhound a hundred yards away, snatch up the old tennis ball and then hightail it back to me. He could do that two dozen times before finally getting tired. My arm would practically be falling off the next day. I really loved that dog.

Because it gets hot in Indiana in the summer, I took Leo to the park early on a beautiful Saturday morning, and we played our usual game of fetch. About 15 throws in, a young woman and a girl started walking across the field about 20 yards in front of me, apparently unaware that Leo was scampering back toward me at full speed, soggy ball in mouth. He was charging right at me, only seeing me, when he got to within five yards of the woman and child, and he must have suddenly seen the two. He quickly veered a bit to the right and when he passed by the walkers about a foot away, he startled the woman, who suddenly pulled up short, stumbled and fell down.

I felt like shit when I saw it happen, and I rushed over to the fallen woman while Leo followed behind, trying to give me his ball to throw again. She looked more shocked than injured, but I apologized about four times in two minutes while helping her up.

I took her by her right elbow, and while lifting her to her feet looked into the most beautiful pair of green eyes I had ever seen. She then shook her head to clear her thoughts, I guess, making her thick brown hair flip then flop before settling into bangs down to her eyebrows in front, closely framing her face and falling down to her shoulders. She looked up into my eyes and we shared a moment before the girl with her came up and asked if she was okay.

"I-I-I'm good, I think," the woman answered. "What was that blur that ran past me?"

By this time, Leo had come up to the three of us, dropped his ball and sat down. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he had a guilty look on his face.

"I'm sorry, miss. That was my dog streaking past you. He's pretty fast, and he gets kind of single-minded when we play fetch," I said.

She looked past my hip and saw Leo doing his best "good dog" routine.

"It's a good thing you're cute, or I'd really be pissed," she said to Leo, who gave her his patented goofy grin in return.

"How about I take you two over to the ice cream shop across the street to make it up to you?" I asked.

"Wait a minute. Are you using this dog to scope out women?" she said, frowning at first before her green eyes lit up and her mouth curled up into a huge smile.

I relaxed at that, and looked sideways at Leo.

"That's a great plan," I said. "I wish I would have been smart enough to think of it before this."

I bought ice cream cones for the three of us. The woman introduced herself as Kim, and the girl as her kid sister, Elvira. Upon a second look, Elvira looked like a miniature version of her older sister, except with long red hair and light freckles.

We sat down on a park bench and talked for about 15 minutes before Kim said the pair needed to go. I asked for her phone number. Elvira giggled. Kim took a pen out of her purse and wrote the digits on my hand.

I played it cool and waited a day before I called her.

"What took you so long?" she joked, I hoped.

Kim Hale was a 23-year-old bank teller. She had graduated from Michigan State University a year before with a degree in finance. She still lived at home with her parents and her sister. Although she was 14 when her sister was born as an "oops child," the pair were extremely close, Kim said, and often hung out together. I compared it to the relationship Leo and I had.

I told Kim that I was divorced on our first date, but I didn't tell her the full story until our third date. She teared up as I told her the details, and for a minute I thought I blew it, but it turned out she was a very empathetic person and was actually getting emotional thinking about the pain I endured.