My Ex-Wife Visits

What had happened, why was she here? I couldn't read it yet, but I did have one clue: there was something not quite right about her son.

Wednesday, June 28, 1978:

"What the fuck, Joannie?" I was raging mad. It had been pouring down rain in the morning, and I had been sent home from my construction job. We had been building houses, and the ones on which I had been working were simply too wet to do anything, and nothing was yet under roof. Joannie had come in from her summer session classes; she was going to finish her MSW in August. I was bored, but I was also horny, and started in on Joan pretty much as soon as she walked into the apartment. She resisted a bit at first, but not a lot, and I was persistent. Normally I'd eat her really nice, furry pussy first, making sure that I got her off before we started to actually fuck.

"I don't want you to eat me, just go ahead and fuck me," she told me. That was unusual, but I figured that she must've been at least a little bit horny, because she had to be wet enough already for her to want me to just put it in.

That was when I found out; I hadn't been the first one in there today. Maybe she had figured that enough time had passed that I wouldn't feel sloppy seconds, but the sensation is unmistakable; as soon as you feel it, you know.

I had stopped, as soon as I was balls deep, and realized what had happened, but Joannie crossed her legs behind my butt, crossed her arms behind my neck, and said, almost breathlessly, "Fuck me, fuck me hard, fuck me now."

I don't know, maybe I was just plain stupid, but yeah, I started fucking her, fuckling her hard, and was soon slamming into her, my pubic bone smacking her clit, as I was practically trying to pound her through the mattress.

Then she made another move, one she had done before, though not all that often. She unwrapped her legs from around me, and then pulled them together, inside of mine, her thighs squeezed together tightly, as she was trying to get my cock to put even more pressure both inside her pussy and on her clit; she had her hips pushed up hard, pushing her mound forward, working on getting every bit of stimulation she could. It wasn't long, quicker than usual actually, before she started to shudder, and was then lost in her climax. I swear, I thought that she was trying to break my dick off!

At that point, I stopped holding back, and emptied myself inside her. That, too, occurred faster than usual.

As I pushed myself off to the side, and onto the bed beside her, my mind cleared up from the post-orgasmic stupor that so often hit, and I started thinking again about what had just happened. I'd gotten sloppy seconds, and no, there was no way I was somehow mistaking the feeling; Joannie hadn't allowed me to eat her, because she at least didn't want me eating some other guys cum out of her pussy. Small fucking favors, I thought.

I guess that I was just staring at her, trying to bore a hole through her skull with my eyes, when Joannie smiled at me as sweetly as she ever had and whispered, in that husky voice she has, "Man, that was so fucking awesome! I love you so much, Carl."

Well, I wasn't going to get sweet talked like that, something she knew damned well how to do to me. "Not this time, Joan. Who the Hell have you been fucking, and why the fuck did you do it?"

She hesitated for a few seconds, I guess trying to get her words right. "Don't worry, Carl, it was just sex. It's not like it really meant anything to me."

"What the fuck, Joannie, it can't just not mean anything. This isn't like, 'Oh, I stopped to play in a pick-up volleyball game in Woodland Park,' or something."

"Why not? Why can't it be like joining in a pick-up volleyball game? It was fun, that's all it was."

Well, with that, I just stormed the fuck out.

Tuesday, December 26, 1978:

It was December of 1978, December 19th to be exact, when I met Donna. Joannie and I were getting divorced, because I wasn't going to put up with her shit anymore. I tried to hold things together after her little stunt, but it quickly became clear: she was screwing around, pretty much looking to replace me, because, I guess, she wasn't going to live on some farm in Powell County. Donna was a 2+2 registered nurse, having gotten her Associate's Degree from Lexington Technical Institute, UK's Lexington 'community college,' and was now working on her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at UK's College of Nursing.

Me? I had been working on another house, when one of the roofers dropped a whole roll of tarpaper off the edge, and it hit me in the left shoulder. Since I was at ground level, and it was a two-story house, it had a lot of force behind it, and in a way, I was lucky: if it had hit me in the head, they'd have called the coroner instead of an ambulance.

So, I wound up on the fifth floor, the Orthopedic wing of the University Hospital. Donna worked the evening shift, 3 PM to 11:30 PM, which was really all that a 2+2 nursing student could do. And she was cute!

Of course, let's face it: all nurses are cute, but Donna was exceptionally so. She was kind of a munchkin, barely five feet tall, and she was nice and slender, but she was also stronger than she looked. Even so, I guessed that she might have been assigned my care more frequently because while I was 6'2 and a solid 220 lb, I wasn't the kind of patient that the staff would have to lift and tug on. I was recovering from surgery on my shoulder, where they'd had to repair the broken humerus and get the ball back into the socket joint. At least it was my left arm, not my right; I'm right-handed.

Joannie had filed for divorce in October. Unwilling to put up with her shit, I had moved out, crashing at a friend's house, but at least she came to visit me at the hospital, once, the day after Christmas. She'd found a new boyfriend, name of Jimmy Riggins, and she thought that it had promise. Naturally, she said that she still loved me, but it was just too bad that we couldn't make it work. I was polite enough to her, but the only part of her visit that made me feel good was when she told me that Tigger, her cat, had pissed on Riggins' pants when he left them on the floor the first night he slept over.

Good for Tigger, I thought, still looking out for his daddy!

That visit was the only time Donna and Joannie had ever seen each other. Donna didn't stay on my side of the room much - it was a double, not single room - but I guess that Joan knew me too well. "She's pretty," Joannie told me with a big smile on her face, obviously knowing that I had noticed Donna as more than just a nurse. "You going to ask her out?"

"Joannie, she's a nurse, and she sees dozens of guys every week. She's not going to be interested in dating a patient."

"Her ring finger's bare, and you had big enough balls to ask me out right out of the blue."

"Yeah, I guess that I did."

Saturday, March 31, 1979:

Today would have been our sixth wedding anniversary. Instead, I was riding in my truck with Joannie, having helped her pick something up that her sister had in her house off of Alexandria Drive. I had flirted with Donna, asked her out, and our first date was on Saturday, January 20th, the day after my divorce was final. The first time we slept together was the 27th, the next Saturday, and by the Saturday after that, February 3rd, I was moving my stuff in. It was in the same apartment building where Joannie and I had first lived, on Lyndhurst Place, though not the same apartment.

At any rate, I was the only guy with a pickup truck, a 1972 Chevrolet C-10, that Joannie knew, and she called and asked me to pick up this dresser from her sister's house for her. It was still a bit ginger lifting things, and I definitely favored my right arm doing so, but her brother-in-law, Joannie and her sister Joyce and I got it loaded in. I suppose that this Jimmy Riggins should have been there to help, but I really didn't want to see him. Still, that meant that I was going to have to move this, with just Joannie to help, into the new apartment where she and the asshole slept.

We were stopped at the red light at the intersection of Versailles Road - and in Kentucky, that's pronounced 'Ver-sales,' not 'ver-sai' as in France - and Oxford Circle, where this really ugly Protestant-of-some-denomination church sat. This where Joyce and her husband went, and Joannie said, "That looks like a nice place to get married."

I didn't think so, not at all, but I was being polite. "Is that where you and Riggins are getting married?"

"I was thinking about us getting married there."

Whoa! Where the fuck did that come from?

"I don't think so, Joannie."

"Why not? I still love you, and I know you still love me."

"Yeah, sure, but we already fucked that one up, didn't we? I've got Donna and you've got Riggins, and I think that's where we both should be."

Fortunately, there was another guy at the apartment building, so I got some help moving the dresser into Joannie's new apartment, which, thank God, was on the first floor. After I brought in the mirror, and reinstalled it on the dresser, Joannie gave me that look, the one I'd seen so many times. If I had wanted to take her to bed, in her and Riggins' bed, I could have done it, right there and then. In her not too thick blouse, with her little unbound A-cups - last time I knew, she didn't even own a bra - and the puffy nipples I loved so much, and the really nicely fitting Levi's she was wearing, yeah, I was really tempted. I hadn't forgotten just how awesome sex with Joannie could be.

But I didn't touch her. I excused myself as politely and quickly as I could, and I never touched her. Donna knew where I was, but she was working this weekend, so she couldn't be there to 'protect' me from my ex-wife.

That was the last time I ever saw Joan.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014:

At least, that was the last time I saw her before today. It was strange, meeting an old lover, an ex-wife, that I hadn't seen since she was just shy of her 27^th birthday, now being 62 years old. Donna, always the superb hostess, asked if Joan and Alex would like some lemonade, and Joan said yes, for both of them. That was another clue: Joan spoke for her son, as though he didn't speak.

I asked her how she had been, and she said that she had been fine, but I could tell that wasn't 100% truthful. It was essentially a lot of small talk, even after Donna arrived back outside with two additional lemonades. Jimmy Riggins had passed away a year ago, and Joannie and Alex were alone. It turned out that Alex could speak, but he was developmentally disabled; he could walk and talk and was physically normal and capable, but he had the mental capacity of a first grader. Alex would never be able to care for himself.

And that was the crux of the matter. "Carl," Joan began, fear in her voice as she said what she had to say, afraid of the worst possible answer, "Alex and I have nowhere to go. I've had to care for him since he was born, so I never earned enough work credits to qualify for Social Security on my own. I can get half of Jimmy's Social Security, but that isn't much, barely $700 a month. We get $1900 a month in Social Security Disability for Alex, but we can't live on $2600 a month, no one can. We never owned a home, and apartment rents are so high around Tuscaloosa" - that was where she and her family had wound up - "and we just can't keep the house we rented. We're going to be evicted.

"Joyce can't help me, and Jimmy and I never had any other children, so I have no help there. I'm at my wit's end, and if the roof hasn't fallen in quite yet, I know that it will soon."

Maybe I should have had a harder edge to my voice, but I couldn't. "Just what do you want me to do about it, Joan?"

"Please, please," she said, with her eyes wet, though no tears yet running down her cheeks, "I knew that you had this huge farmhouse, and I know I've no right to ask, but can you please give us a place to stay."

That was when the dam really burst, with tears running down her cheeks, sobbing almost uncontrollably. Whatever Alex's mental capabilities, he did understand that his mother was crying, and he moved to comfort her, in just as childlike a manner as his given mental age allowed.

"You two just stay here," Donna said, in almost a whisper. "We'll be back in a few minutes."

As long as the weather was decent, Donna and I had our serious discussions outside, walking over our land. While we had a lot under cultivation, there was almost five acres of well-kept lawns, with thick, rich grass and plenty of shade trees interspersed among the sunny areas. The creek was maybe 200 yards away, and it was always a nice place to walk down to, and that was where we usually headed for these discussions.

I really needed my wife at that moment. The obvious answer, "No!" meant kicking Joan and her handicapped son out into a cold, cruel world, and we had both seen too much of how the cold, cruel world could treat people. This area was filled with poverty, and people who had turned to drugs as a temporary escape from life; the drugs only made things worse, as they got hooked on them, and made themselves even poorer yet.

Donna was the one who spoke first. "Carl, what are we going to do? We can't just turn them out. You heard her, she's not even a Kentucky resident, she'd get no help from the state, and I guess that she's got nowhere to turn to in Alabama."

"Donna, this isn't just some stranger we're talking about, this is my ex, we have a history together. Could we really have her under our roof? And a disabled adult? How do we care for him? What can he even do?"

"I know, I know, but I'm not sure that we have much choice. I'll call the social worker at the hospital; maybe she can give us some help here."

"I don't know, Donna, it sounds like she's already maxed out the welfare help that she can get. I guess that maybe they're eligible for food stamps, and probably Medicaid, but this is a real blow.

"And where could we put them? There are the kids' old rooms, but do you really want my ex-wife sleeping down the hall every time we want to make love? Do you want to have to keep quiet again, so that a first grader doesn't hear us?

"And finally, do you want my ex-wife staying with us, with me, in our home, on the days when you're off working 12½ hours at the hospital?"

"No, Carl, I don't want that, but I'm trying to figure out what else we can do, and I've got nothing."

"I could clean out the old log cabin."

"Carl, there's no electricity there, no running water, and just a fireplace for heat. No way we could trust a physical adult with a first-grader's mind not to burn the place down."

Donna and I must have talked for an hour, trying to figure out what to do, as the sun was sinking down to the notch between the hills. Finally, we started heading back to the house, the sun having set, holding hands.

"Carl, did you see how she was looking at you? After all these years, she's still in love with you, at least some."

"What, Donna, no, that can't be right. She was married to what's-his-name for what, 33 years or so? She's just desperate, is all."

"You men are just so freaking clueless! Carl, women can see things that you guys just can't. We can't turn her out, but we're going to have to be careful, you're going to have to be careful."

"Well, she won't want to stay long, anyway. It was because I was determined to come back to this farm that she really wanted out in the first place. She wants the city lights."

"Gee, husband, you can be so dumb at times! It was a twenty-something hottie with no kids who wanted the city lights and the city life. She's sixty-something now, with a child she'll have to care for until her dying day. That'll change a woman's perspective."

We slightly altered our path back to the house, taking us past the old barn and where Joannie had parked her car. The streetlight mounted on the front of the barn had come on, thanks to the darkness sensor, and there was just enough light to see into the cabin of the car; the back seat was filled with stuff, as though Joannie had brought everything they owned with them. At least it was only a one day drive up here from Tuscaloosa, so they hadn't had to sleep in the car.

I could see Joannie sitting with her son, on the porch. I guess that she was reassuring her son, but I have no flaming idea how a 62-year-old mother does that for an adult son trapped with a six-year-old's mind. Even from here, I could see her eyes dart over to Donna and me, like a convicted criminal staring at the judge, awaiting the sentence to be handed down. She had thrown herself on my mercy and Donna's charity.

"Let's get what you need out of your car and upstairs," Donna said when we got to the porch, before I had a chance to say anything. A look of utter relief flooded Joannie's face, but it was quickly tempered with caution; she knew that Alex and she had a place to stay tonight, but that's all she knew.

Joannie opened the trunk, while Donna pulled things out of the back seat. Alex seemed at least to be capable of carrying things and taking instruction on where to put them, and soon Donna was leading Alex and Joan back up to the house, while I was extricating a large trunk from the boot of the car.

My wife was helping my ex-wife and her son move into our house; what could possibly go wrong?

One thing about the farmhouse: it was big! My great-grandfather had started it, and my grandfather added on, and because families had lots of children, and three, sometimes four, generations might be living under one roof, a lot of space was needed. There were six bedrooms on the second floor, and the attic had been finished as well, and could sleep more people. My grandfather had added rudimentary indoor plumbing sometime around the 1930s, and there was one bathroom for the second floor. Fortunately, as my construction and remodeling business had taken off, I was able to update that plumbing, though that meant an awkward corner where I brought up water and waste lines up through an interior wall; I don't do plumbing in an exterior wall where winter can ruin things. I would have loved to add an en suite bathroom for what passed as the master bedroom, but it wasn't much bigger than the other bedrooms in the house, and there just wasn't enough room. I had been able to add a half-bath on the first floor, which eliminated the need for the old outhouse, though I never tore that down.

Donna put Joan in Kenny Joe's old bedroom, which was about as far from our own as could be. Donna might have forgotten that had also been my bedroom growing up, and that Joannie and I had slept together, in that room, when we visited here after we got married. While the mattress and box springs were newer, the old double bed frame was the same one we had used, and the old-fashioned circa 1940s dresser and chest of drawers were the same as well. I'm sure that Joan realized just what room this was, even though it had been repainted a different color, but at least she didn't smirk or say anything stupid in front of my wife.

Alex was put in the bedroom next door, where our daughter Gail had been, and my sister Emily before her. That room still had the old wallpaper, and a single bed. Joan showed her son where the bathroom was; at least six-year-olds are (normally) potty trained, and it didn't seem like this was beyond Alex's capabilities.

It was a little after 9:30 when we got everything settled in, and, luckily enough, Joan and Alex were tired after their day-long drive, so it was clearly bedtime for both. Donna wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow, but it was her on-call day, so retiring early was on tap for us as well. Breakfast would be served at seven, and unless Donna got called in, we could all talk more over biscuits and gravy in the morning.