Dealing with Jessie Pt. 02

Gary took the proposals to his lawyer, a nice guy, someone who should have received the same papers he'd gotten. The lawyer looked them over and then put it pretty clearly, "Mr. McGowan she wants to go to war. She wants to hurt you, destroy you if she can. I've seen it before, this is what happens when love turns to hate."

He said, "If we refused and fought we'd lose. Accept everything she's offered, it's as good as anyone could expect." He added, "I know her lawyer, she hates men, and she likes nothing more than crushing hapless men under the heels of her thigh high boots, she's a pitiless bitch. Take the offer."

He concluded, "Pride's got nothing to do with it; everyone gets their nose rubbed in it at least once in their life, in the long run it won't matter. Take what she's offering and move on."

Gary thought it over; he hated the idea of giving in. He wanted to fight. He wanted to make her spend some of her precious money, force her into a long drawn out emotion filled fight, something that would eat up some of her oh so valuable time. In the end he agreed with his lawyer; take the pain, get her out of his life, and move on.

Procedurally the divorce went according to plan; deadlines were set, final sign offs agreed to, and an end date, six months forward determined. The purpose for divorce was to be irreconcilable differences; any mention of any other reason and she'd trash the agreement, force it into court, and bankrupt him. The inference was obvious; there was to be no mention of infidelity.

Then in the midst of all that was happening he got a devastating call from Dorothy. "Dad," she said, "you really hurt our mom."

"Why, what did I do," he asked?

"The stuff you took," she said, "you didn't take any of the things mom bought you. She got so mad she threw everything that was yours out. Worse, mom knows everything. All the stuff she bought you, and then you didn't take any pictures, not even any pictures of us girls. Gosh dad, I think she wanted you take everything. Melanie thinks she might've wanted you to leave a note or a letter or something. You know something she could use as an excuse so she could call you or maybe for one of us to tell you to call her. Dad she cried and cried. Maybe she might've changed her mind. Katy thinks she wanted an excuse to not, you know, do a divorce."

Gary listened to his oldest daughter. Had he made a mistake? Should he have taken everything? Should he have left a note? He heard Dorothy finish.

"Dad, mom's a real mess. We're scared."

~~~V~~~

Back at the night of the gala Jessie had at first fled the scene, but she was no quitter, not her. In the quiet of the Hampton Inn she'd considered and reconsidered her plans. She loved Gary desperately, but he was such a loser. She cursed herself for giving in to Snyder's blandishments and veiled threats. She was as good as Snyder; why had she let herself be so drawn in?

Then there was that other Gary. Who did he think he was? A school teacher! A middle school teacher. At a public school yet! He'd lost all ambition; hell, he never had any! She recalled his college grades, the grades from his graduate studies, his stupid Master's paper; all of it mediocre. She remembered helping out, proofreading his paper. What a stupid idea; tracing the Lunar Synodic Cycle to see if it had any impact on student misconduct. What a joke! Of course it didn't. Where did he get such a stupid idea? Where did it get him? Nowhere!

She remembered every word he said the night of the dance. He called her a whore! What did he know? He went on and made a lot of stupid threats like going to her office, facing down Snyder, threatening to call her out on the morals part of her work contract. Was he crazy? She'd show him.

Then he left; he really left. He could've stayed and put up a fight. And when he left he didn't take any of the things she'd gotten him. He knew how long she'd fretted over some of those suits she'd bought him, and that onyx ring had cost a lot of money! His leaving, and the way he left was nothing short of a repudiation of everything they'd once had. How could he?

He pissed her off. She once suggested they hire a maid so he could go on and do some Ph. D. work. He could've quit teaching altogether. He could have gone into accounting! Not him, he wanted to be around the girls. Didn't he think she didn't want to be around them too? Sure, but she had ambition, she wanted to succeed, she wanted that fucking partnership. She vowed she'd get it too, she just didn't think she'd end up fucking the biggest schmuck in the office. She didn't think the stupid dick would get her panties.

Fuck it! Who cared? She'd get the god damn partnership, abide by that stupid bet, and if she had to cut bait on twenty years of happiness to do it, well - so be it. Oh Jesus God she hated it, hated everything. Why did all this have to happen? She had a life, a family, a home, a real home, and she was blowing it all up. It was all Gary's fault!

She remembered growing up; sure her parents loved her, they almost never told her, but she knew they did. Why did they expect so much? Why couldn't she be like the other kids, have sleep overs, go to parties, wear neat clothes, date boys, do fun things. Nothing she did was ever good enough. She showed them though. She'd get that partnership. She'd shown them all; especially that no account Gary. Who does he think he is?

~~~V~~~

Gary tried to go on with his life, and he suffered. He had unexplained headaches, persistent stomach problems, chest pains, an omnipresent malaise, and indescribable feelings of loneliness. He had a sadness he could neither define nor fully accept.

He felt so alone; it was like he had no one. He'd been OK with his in-laws, but Jessie was their daughter, they took her side. It never mattered, he never offered any explanations, and neither did she, except to say he was worthless and lazy. Maybe he was. His mother stayed neutral; she was afraid Jessie might cut her off from her granddaughters. Gary understood and accepted that. His mother didn't know what happened, and he didn't tell her so she leaned toward blaming him. He couldn't tell her; she might blab to the girls and he didn't want that. No matter how much he despised Jessie, she was still their mother.

He was lucky with the girls. Dorothy said she thought she figured it out. She told her sisters their mom was so obsessive she was borderline psychotic. She thought everyone should wait, that she might still come around. Gary agreed. What the hell?

He really missed the girls. He used to see them every day, but with the separation contact was very limited. He missed their carping and moaning, their fighting over clothes, and their insistence he be there right away whenever they needed something, anything. He felt like a part of his body had been cut off.

What had really happened? Jessie had been caught, but she'd denied it, and then she'd destroyed her family to protect her position at work. Mom was mom, and dad was dad, and the girls needed and wanted both, but their mother wanted that partnership. What had Oliver North said, "Shit happens."

Gary thought about dating, but honestly, it was pointless, he loved his soon to be ex-wife, and he missed his old life so much he just wasn't interested in any new relationships. He lost all interest in sex; there weren't even any dishonorable discharges. Why bother? He had his daughters, they were his life. If he could just see them!

That wasn't completely true. There were women at his work, two in fact. He thought about one of them from time to time.

Gary had made a mistake, his closest friend at work was a guy named Bob Bradley. Bob figured out something was wrong, and Gary felt like he had to tell someone. Bob had always been discreet about other things so Gary was sure he could trust him.

Bob and Gary shared one or two rounds of conversation. Regrettably they did it at a bar Bob frequented, a place littered with the detritus of other failed marriages. Gary never realized how much misery was out there. Many of the poor slobs he met had not only lost all their material possessions, but they'd lost any sense of self-respect too. For some everything revolved around fantasies of revenge, but for most there was just regret.

The angry ones dominated the conversations, and when it came to what he should do Gary got an ear full. Suggestions included tracking down the offending parties, buying some type of automatic weapon, invading their space, and scoring as many fatalities as possible before being stopped. It was strange; they were normal men, but they'd been caught up in an environment they couldn't accept. He had to admit, part of him cried out for revenge, but a bigger part argued for restraint. He remembered he had three daughters, three angels, and he had too many good memories of a life once filled with a woman's love. Besides, he believed, like Dorothy, Jessie was sick, she needed help, and he felt that responsibility might ultimately fall on him. How stupid - teachers and their rescue mentality.

He and Jessie, and later Dorothy, used to go canoeing. They'd taken lessons and learned about something called a "death wheel". On several local rivers there were what is called weirs; low maybe three or four foot high waterfalls, to the unsuspecting they were gentle little things. However, if one capsized going over something like that it was easy to be caught up in the continuous cycle of the falling water, a gentle but inescapable rise to the surface only to be pulled under again, over and over until one finally drowned. Gary felt his life had become a death wheel.

A couple of the guys at the bar knew who he was, and one remembered his wife. The comments they made about him being a school teacher gave him an unsettled feeling; they were either intimidated, he guessed figuring he was either too smart for them, or they were politely disparaging, figuring school teachers weren't very smart.

None of the men at that bar were lawyers, and that gave him pause; how did people like lawyers or doctors feel about school teachers, particularly public school teachers? Did they look down their noses; teachers wouldn't know, teachers generally only talked to other teachers. He wondered just how disparaging some of Jessie's colleagues were. He was sure they wouldn't be as blatant as these guys, but he bet in their own friendly, and certainly professional manner, Jessie's lawyer friends knew how to put someone like him in his place, especially behind his back.

Gary tried to be discreet; he didn't want anyone to think he was gay when he looked over the guys at the bar. None of them were what he would have called physical specimens; there were quite a few pot bellies, only one or two looked all that physically fit. He checked himself out and from a physical stand point; he realized sitting at that bar he was where he belonged, and that reminded him of Jessie's fellow lawyers. Excepting the older partners who were either scrawny or downright fat none of Jessie's male colleagues looked overweight; no, they all looked good, some very good.

So all day long Jessie got to look at young looking and physically attractive men, only to come home to look at him, Gary, a little too fat, a tad too short, a little out of shape, and probably wearing a stained shirt and crumpled pants fixing meatloaf or some other fattening meal. To her he guessed after twenty years he did look and act like a wimp, a loser, and all those other things she'd called him. That didn't justify it though, he'd always done what he had to do, and he'd always been there. Maybe he was being self-justifying, but he grew up without a father, he knew what that meant.

He gave his childhood a quick reflective glimpse. He remembered things like the time he got interested in scouting. There was a father and son night; imagine being the only boy without a dad on a night like that. He never did become a scout; it was just one of many things. So maybe he'd never be a principal, a Ph.D., or an Indian chief, but he was always a dad, he was always there for that.

One of the men at the bar who knew who his was had a comment. "You know," he said, "I've seen your wife. I mean she's not that great, but I can't see her with you."

Gary asked, "What do you mean by that?"

He answered, "She looked kind of classy. You know, not hot, but way out of your league."

What could he say? "Yeah, I guess so," but he'd stopped listening, he'd turned to some other guy who was pissed off that New England might be in the Super Bowl again.

Gary guessed it was true; Jessie had worked hard and gone on to the big leagues, while he still languished in the minors. Was he that big a loser? Maybe, maybe not, but that turned out to be his last visit to the bar.

What troubled Gary as much as anything was what he thought was Jessie's loss of perspective, or for want of a better word, her loss of connectedness. He wondered if that was even a word. Ever since he'd known her she'd been high strung, a tightly knotted cord. The least thing could throw her for a loop, a low test grade on a meaningless elective, the least stain or blemish on an article of clothing. Once she threw out a perfectly good white blouse because she saw a stain. After she left he got it out of the trash washed the stain completely out and put it back. She came home, saw it, and threw it out again. She'd made up her mind, and no matter what, that blouse no longer had any value. He realized somewhere along the way he'd become like that blouse.

Next time, Gary vowed he wouldn't let it happen again; then he vowed there'd never be a "next time". Millions of men lived alone, so did millions of women. Did he need Jessie? NO! Did she need him? He guessed she'd find out, otherwise she could always hire a maid.

Back to Bob, one of the things Gary learned with teachers was that they were terrible gossips. He found the best way to source out a gossip was to plant some nonsensical story with just one teacher. If it got out, he knew who not to trust. Bob had always been trustworthy, but this time word got out, and pretty soon everyone was giving him those sad, "we're so sorry" looks.

There was one woman at school, a science teacher; she was new to teaching, but at thirty-one not real young, she said teaching was her second career. She'd had a few discipline problems at the start of the year, and her department head, being a worthless piece of stupid shit hadn't provided any help so Gary quietly offered his two cents. After a few false starts she'd gotten her classes pretty much under control.

One of the rat-shit wrong things that happened in his district was the backward way class assignments were apportioned. Always the principal had the final say, but department heads had input. Gary always took the best and worst possible classes, and divvied up the rest based on teacher talent, attendance, and cooperativeness. Their science department head always took the best for herself, and shared out the rest of the best with her cronies. So the newest science teachers always got the dregs. That was what had happened to Carolyn Campaneris.

Poor Carolyn, while he was helping her they'd had a few afterschool conversations. He told her about his wife and three girls. She told him about her mother and how her father had disappeared. From the way she talked he figured she never ever had much of a life. Her mom was a sickly person whose husband, after what Carolyn described as a heroic effort, had given up and flown the coop when she was fifteen. From then on it had been Carolyn taking care of mom, living on government assistance, finishing high school, working as a teller at a bank, and going to college at night.

Gary liked Carolyn. She was an attractive woman, petite, maybe 5'2", short brown hair, brown eyes, nice shape, pretty legs, tiny feet, kind of pert, chirpy looking little breasts. Sometimes when they talked he found himself thinking about what it might be like to kiss her. She had a pretty heart shaped face and a devastatingly beautiful tiny heart shaped mouth with cherry red lips.

Before December he never tried to take advantage, but after that winter gala, and the subsequent January and February weeks of loneliness he did think about Carolyn. He never said anything; his girls came first, and stupidly, he was still holding out that Jessie might wake up. He wasn't looking for reconciliation, only a loose rapprochement that would make life easier for the kids.

Back at Gary's old home the girls were having problems with their mother; she had her career, and her affairs. The girls told him she brought men home from time to time, but they never stayed the night. He was sure Jessie knew the girls were keeping him informed. Dorothy was his font of knowledge; she'd become quite the investigator. She'd hacked into her mom's IPhone. She'd activated her own GPS applications and was able to keep track of every place Jessie went, and presumable with who, and she made sure he knew. Even better, Dorothy was in regular communication with one of Jessie's subordinates, a secretary who kept her up to date on everything. Jessie it seemed was running round and round in circles; the harder she worked the more the partners gave her.

According to Dorothy Jessie was working harder than ever at the office. The established partners had delayed the selection of new partners and it had wrought havoc with Jessie's well-being. She was putting in more hours, raking in more money, and, according to Dorothy's friend, making more enemies than ever.

Gary tried a couple times to call and then text her. Every time Jessie's lawyer sent him a certified letter, a warning, any further attempts to try to communicate with her client and there would be serious repercussions. He backed off.

Meanwhile, after weeks of suffering in a small apartment he'd put a down payment on another house, a tidy little four bedroom split foyer in the outer suburbs. He bought some new firearms and intended to use them in the fall. Tools? Lathes, saws, a table saw, hammers, pliers, axes, even a chain saw, they were all easily bought.

He'd lost Daisy, she was still alive, but nowhere near him so he acquired another lab through animal rescue; he hoped he'd be able to get it ready for hunting in the fall. Gary's mother only worked part time anymore so she came out during the week and helped with the new house. Aside from the loneliness things had started to shape up.

Once Gary got the house, he had a downstairs office built, and furnished it with the same leathers as the one in their old home. Upstairs he furnished the largest bedroom along the same model as the old home, the other bedrooms he left to the girls. Each girl got a room, and each one got to decide how they wanted it to look. Melanie told him the whole thing really put her mom off. Melanie thought it was funny.

With the new house he had a place for the girls to stay on "his weekends", and with the pram, sailboat, and the new motorboat he bought there were plenty of things for the girls to do. He didn't interfere though; if they wanted to bring girlfriends or boyfriends out that was even better. Dorothy said when Jessie found that out she really got pissed. Gary had to correct her language.

He'd never been the type to feel like he needed to get even, but the idea that every other weekend Jessie was home all alone in their old home, sleeping in that great big old house she had to have, made him feel a little better. She wasn't always alone though; the girls said she brought over a "friend" once in a while. The girls said they didn't think she was sleeping with any of them, but all three made comments about how handsome the guys were, how they couldn't keep their hands off her, and how she let them touch her. About that, the sleeping thing, as time wore on it seemed to matter less and less. She was free of him, if she wanted to play the tramp that was her business.