Susan's Diary

Looking back, looking ahead...

Then came Thursday, September fifteenth. The Frederick fair was the next week, and Susan and I always took a day off to go. The Frederick Fair was very much like most of the state fairs everywhere only it wasn't a state fair. We always had a good time. I signed up to take off on that Tuesday, the twentieth. Ever since I could remember we'd always gone on Tuesdays. Tuesdays were senior days, and even though her parents were dead Tuesdays had still been our day of choice. Susan's parents had lived in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, just a short trip to Frederick. I'm talking about Frederick, Maryland. We lived outside Pittsburgh, and the trip usually took the whole day.

Anyway, I took off, and checked around on my calendar. Being Thursday I thought I'd stay a little later and get some things done so I'd be ready for Friday. There weren't any meetings for Friday, but next week's Wednesday and Thursday calendars were full.

So I stayed late, and got to thinking, 'Why not do some research. Why not look up this Robert Schuster?' I did, and found out a few things. He did work for a publishing company, Harper-Collins. He had an office at their New York headquarters, but he traveled promoting selected works in targeted markets. I couldn't find too much more, except information where I could get in touch with him. I didn't think I needed to bother with that. I'd found out he was a real person, and he'd represented himself correctly to my wife. Later on the way home from work I thought about maybe finding a way to meet the guy. I meant to meet the guy only if I had the time and then only if it wouldn't seem intrusive.

When I got home that night I told Susan I'd taken off the next Tuesday so we could go to the fair. She kind of surprised me, she replied, "Oh gee, that's not good. I have a library meeting scheduled. How about Wednesday or Thursday?" I told her I was pretty sure they were bad since I had meetings of my own. We both knew Friday was out, Samantha was a cheer leader, and there was most certainly a game. We dare not leave Gregg and Samantha home alone all day and most of the night on a night like that. They might kill each other. So this year's trip to the fair was going to be cancelled, it hadn't been the first time and probably wouldn't be the last, though being a city boy it was one of the few times I got to feel rustic. I knew I'd live.

Later that Thursday night Susan came to bed in a negligee. She wanted to fool around, and we did.

----------

Things got pretty hectic around my office the next several days, and I almost completely forgot about Susan's little book. In fact I didn't get back to it until near the middle of October. There was so much in there, and so much of it was really mundane stuff about her work, her sister, and her community meetings. Plus a lot of it was just kind of haphazardly jotted down and hard to read. I skimmed all around the summer months and didn't find much of anything. There were, however, some troubling comments in September, one was dated the sixteenth. I checked my IPhone, and recalled that was the Friday after Susan's unexpected seduction and debauch. Here was what she'd jotted down,

"Felt bad for Jeremy, he always enjoyed the Frederick Fair, he got to put on his 'farmer role' and amble around like one of the boys. I never bothered to tell him how out of place he looked; imagine, an accountant playing 'Farmer in the Dell'. I gave him a little loving that night. Maybe it was guilt, couldn't say, but I just couldn't get into it. Thought about Bob, how lonely he must feel."

'Shit', I thought, 'I thought she'd done something. Had she been faking? I hadn't thought so, and that Bob, how'd he get in there?' Then it dawned on me, we weren't a couple anymore; we'd become a threesome, there was me, there was Susan, and now there was Bob. Maybe I better look a little deeper?

That had been her Friday the sixteenth notes. I looked further. Nothing much for a couple weeks. She'd noted they'd met someplace on the Tuesday we would've gone to the fair, but all her notes had been about that new writer, nothing about her or him.

Then I found something, Halloween was on a Monday, but our neighborhood was doing the trick or treating on the Friday before. Susan and I had the candy ready, mostly snickers bars. We'd shared duty when our kids were young, me in the car and her walking them to the doors. Gregg always wore a Batman costume or some derivative thereof, while Samantha either had on an Ariel or some Cinderella thing. I always thought she looked adorable. We had pictures of her mother; they looked so much alike.

That Halloween treat night, October, 28, 2011 Susan said she needed to see her sister, and it was important. I couldn't argue, she and her sister were very close, and I had my suspicions that Roxanne, her sister, had been having some problems, just what I didn't know, but I knew they were serious. I told Susan to go on and I'd handle the candy.

Two days later I checked the loose-leaf and there it was; it was dated Sunday, October thirtieth, it was like reading something out of "True Confessions", or some other woman's rag. I couldn't believe what she wrote,

"I told Bob I thought I was falling in love with him. He said he was falling in love with me too. We held hands."

I was dumbstruck!

There wasn't anything else until that Wednesday; imagine just a couple days later, and they'd met again, on Wednesday, in the afternoon, at a restaurant. She didn't mention the restaurant, but she did say "our restaurant". Our restaurant! She must have taken the afternoon off. What she wrote was downright devastating,

"Saw Bob again. He wants to go someplace. I told him no, not yet anyway. I told him I was married. I told him Jeremy was a wonderful man. I admitted I didn't love him anymore, but I owed him. I just couldn't betray him. Bob understood."

That had been Wednesday, November the fifth. She'd left another entry on Friday, and it destroyed me,

"God I don't know what to do. Bob called this morning. He told me he loves me again. He said he was tired of the platonic thing. He couldn't help it; he said what we had was either real or it wasn't. He needed to make it real. He said he'd do anything, but he couldn't go on the way things were."

Then she wrote,

"I love him. I love him. I love him!!!!!!!"

I couldn't believe all the exclamation points.

That night when we all ate supper Susan was super solicitous; she couldn't do enough for me. I took it all in stride. Besides we were pretty much forced to listen to Samantha's rant about her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend as it were. Samantha had been dating a boy who'd been off and on attending the community college. I liked the kid, but he was nearly twenty and still hadn't made up his mind about what he wanted to do. Samantha, as was her custom, had at first fallen head over heels, but after a while she grew bored. She said the kid wasn't very smart, couldn't see a waterfall unless he was under it. She'd done everything but trip him down a flight of stairs to get him to see she was tired of him.

I asked why didn't she just come out and tell him? She said she didn't want to hurt his feelings. I glanced over at Susan; she had a very understanding look. I realized that was her problem too. For some reason at first I couldn't fathom that Susan had moved on, but she had. Bob had shown up, laid on the charm, and she was ready to leave. That was the first time I felt like crying. I did later. I went out to the shed where I kept the mowers and such, took a lawn chair, sure it was cold, but I sat down behind that shed, and I let em roll.

It was a Friday. I went inside and told Susan I wanted to go fishing. I had the weekend, and considering the way business was running I might not get another break. She asked where I was going. I told her a place I knew in Ohio that had a large lake. I told her I'd leave that night, and be gone all weekend. She gave me a complacent, or was it a condescending smile and said. "OK."

I packed up my fishing gear, threw it in the back of my SUV, and took off. Of course I had no intention of going fishing. I needed to get away. I had to think things through. I drove around Pittsburgh and finally found a room. The Steelers were home that weekend and they were playing a division rival so the best hotels were pretty all much booked up. I did find something, and settled in. I had to sort things out.

I got in the room, took a hot shower, and looked myself over in the tall body length mirror that hung from one of the closet doors. I'd never been a great athlete, but I knew I'd never been ashamed of anything. I played football, defensive back, in high school, intercepted a pass or two, lost a chance or two too. I'd always liked to hunt and fish, got a few deer back in high school and college. Played some baseball, enjoyed swimming, and though I liked it I was too bulky for organized lacrosse.

Staring at my image in that mirror, even though I never lifted weights much, I thought I had a pretty good physique for a forty year old. Stomach might have been a little firmer, but there was no Dunlop's there. Biceps looked good, shoulders broad, good leg definition; I thought I was a pretty good catch. Susan didn't know what she had.

Then I thought about the other things. I remembered when each of Susan's parents died I just couldn't bring myself to feel very much. Susan, Roxanne, and Samantha cried their eyes out, even Gregg cried, but I just couldn't get into it. I remembered how cool they were when they found out Susan was pregnant, and I especially remembered how it was my parents who'd stepped in on Susan's behalf.

I guess that was when it caught up with me. Susan had a habit of saying I had a laconic nature, nothing rattled me, I never got excited one way or the other when something big happened. At work some of my colleagues said I was like ice at some of the meetings. Mom and dad always said I was different, but they never quite explained what they meant.

Was I that emotionless? I sat there and stared at my naked body. Susan stopped loving me. Maybe she never loved me. Maybe the past eighteen years had been about gratitude. If that was so, why wasn't I crying? I loved the living shit out of her. I always had. In college other guys occasionally made cracks about Susan's 'so called' promiscuity. One guy called her a whore; I didn't let that pass. Now she'd written in a damn book, her damn secret book, that she loved somebody else, that maybe she never loved me, not like a man should love a woman, not like husband and wife.

I guess that did it. I broke down. I started crying, and off and on I cried all night long.

The next morning I went downstairs to get the free breakfast, but instead took my bathing suit and went down the hallway to their small swimming pool. I used my room card, opened the glass door, and jumped in the water. It was freezing cold, but I didn't care. I paddled about and thought some more. What was I going to do? One time I got to the deeper end, all of five feet, tried to drop to the bottom, breathed out and did, and started to breathe in the water. What if I made myself drown? If I did, it would look like an accident. Susan would cash in my insurance, pay off the house, and be free to marry her "One true love". I almost did it. I almost took my own life, but at the last moment I leaped up. Gasping and choking and coughing I managed to free my lungs of the deadly heavily chlorinated water. No, I had children, what kind of example would my suicide leave? There had to be another way.

I went back upstairs, got a shower, got dressed, and went back down. Breakfast was over so I went out, found a Denny's, and ordered two fried eggs over medium, a stack of pancakes, two sausage patties, and some hash browns.

So Susan loved somebody else. She'd never ever really loved me. I'd been the loving loyal stooge who'd carried her water for nearly twenty years. She'd written that she hadn't even been sure I was Samantha's father! Did I need a woman like that? I did, I needed her. I loved her so much. I felt like crying all over again right there in the Denny's. How was that for being laconic! I was ready to cry in public! Would an emotionless, stiff upper lipped bastard do anything like?

I remembered when Samantha was young, and later Gregg, and I used to read to them. Samantha especially liked hearing fairy tales. There was one that came to my mind while sitting there at Denny's.

Hans Christian Anderson had written something called the "The Steadfast Tin Soldier". I remembered it well. Maybe it was me? There was this tin soldier, an incomplete toy. There'd been twenty of them and they'd all been made from an old spoon, but one, because of a lack of tin only had one leg. The one legged tin soldier fell in love with a paper ballerina, another of the many toys the boy owned and played with. But a mean goblin had engineered his disappearance. He'd fallen out a window, experienced a series of frightening adventures until being swallowed by a fish that was caught and, by luck, sold back to the same house he'd originally come from. Yet in a fit of tantrum the little boy threw the poor little tin soldier in the fire. Just then a gust of wind blew the paper ballerina into the same fire, and as the paper ballerina burned up the tearful tin soldier slowly melted away. Both just disappeared and died. All was lost.

Why had I thought of that particular fairytale? I didn't know, but I did it again, I started to cry. Right there in Denny's I started to cry.

I finally got it together, paid my bill, and left. What was I going to do? I thought about my choices. I could go after that Bob Schuster and threaten him or beat him up. I threw that idea out; that just wasn't me. I could pretend nothing was wrong. I could play dumb. No, I couldn't do that, it would eat away at me worse than any cancer. I could confront her. I could tell her I'd been reading her little book. On the face of it that sounded like a good idea, but I knew it wouldn't solve anything. When it came down to it, there was really only one thing I could do that might save any of the dignity that I had left. Dignity that I seemed to have lost with the discovery of my wife's true feelings. I had to divorce her.

So I'd made up my mind. I'd divorce my wife. First, I'd secretly go back through her little pamphlet, her little fairytale and make absolutely positively sure I was right, then I'd find a way to bring divorce to the table, bring it to the table in a way everyone would at least pretend to understand.

So fishing trip completed. I went back home filled with grim resolve.

~V~

Once back home Sunday night Susan was warmer and more loving than ever. Never an aggressive lover, she knew just how to softly pull me in. It was a wonderful evening filed with tender emotion, I experienced that immense joy only a terrific woman could deliver, and I experienced it repeatedly. I was sated, but I also knew in my heart of hearts she'd experience none of the same emotions. Sure I knew she'd been fulfilled, at least on one level, but that wanton unrestrained exultant torrent of fire I knew she was capable of never even remotely occurred. I wondered, 'Was she showing me how much she loved me? Or was it pity, and most depressing, I knew there was someone else in the room.'

The next morning I thanked her and reminded her how much I loved her. She told me she was glad I was happy. She did not mention the word love.

So for me the game was up. It was just a question of when and how. I decided to wait until after the holidays. As it related to the holidays that included Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

Thanksgiving we spent at my parents. Susan followed the prescription; she was the loving wife, the doting mother, and the, oh so considerate daughter-in-law. I watched the charade with hidden bitterness. How could she not be considerate toward the people, my parents, who, at some cost to themselves had sustained her college career and provided a babysitter when her parents had remained invisible? It broke my heart, because one day soon I'd have to tell my parents the truth about Susan and what my plans were.

Christmas came and went. Samantha got her clothes, Gregg got his clothes, a new tennis racket, more electronic stuff, and the promise of a car in the not too distant future. I got clothes. Susan got clothes, and one more last special gift from me. I wanted it to be special. Susan had been born in May so her birth stone was the emerald, but I recalled her first introduction to Schuster was in January so I combined the two by having a special necklace made; a two carat central Emerald surrounded by five smaller Garnets.

Susan said she loved it, but she asked my why the garnets. I told her it was for a special occasion and one day I'd tell her. I smiled when I said it so I was confident she didn't have a clue as to the real reason.

Of course the holidays were filled with parties, there was her office party, my office party, a party with our church friends, my family had a party, and there was one party made up of close friends plus some relatives like her sister. Throughout the entire season I kept my own secret log of times when Susan disappeared. Her disappearances became pretty predictable, either Tuesday afternoons or an occasional Thursday evening. Her reasons were just as predictable, her sister's problems, and of course the rather frequent "community" meetings, meetings I knew never existed. In order to preserve my own sanity I kept my distance from her 'notebook'. I knew I'd have to make at least one last check, but I wasn't quite ready for that torment.

~V~

At last the holidays were over. My first stop was to see my parents. I knew it would be bad, but I guess I didn't know just how bad. I told them everything, her newly discovered true love, her repeated visits and commiserative conversations with him, her log book and all the revelations therein including her uncertainty about Samantha's parentage and her great respect but lack of love for me. It broke their hearts; my mother cried, my father cried too. I told them to avoid any contact with Susan until I had broken the knot. I also insisted they keep all knowledge of what was happening from my siblings. I emphasized they especially keep everything from my sister; with her hot temper who knew what might happen?

With my parents informed and locked away, my next chore was to examine Susan's book one last time. When I got to her bureau one afternoon when she was gone I found it was gone. 'What had happened,' I wondered? I found out soon enough; she simply moved to her jewelry box where I found it nestled just below her Christmas gift. 'Had she figured anything out?' I wondered, 'Did she know?' There was only one way to find out. I opened the book one last time.

Reading what she wrote was a bittersweet experience. There were three entries worth reading; one on November 26th, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a second on December thirtieth, and one last one on New Year's Day. This is what I read,

On November thirtieth:

"I felt so sad for Bob; it was Thanksgiving and he had no one. I went to his Pittsburgh apartment to see him. I made a point to be light and upbeat. I told him over and over how much I cared for him. I must have said I loved him fifty times. He broke down and cried once. Once he tried to take me in his arms, but I was firm. I told him no matter how much I loved him I could never break my marriage vows. It was awful, seeing him wilt like he did. He understood though. I wasn't sure I did. I thought later after I left him maybe one time wouldn't have mattered?

December thirtieth:

I went to Bob's house again. He was dressed in pajamas and a lounge jacket. I knew right away what he was up to so I didn't stay long. I wanted to stay. I wanted to take him in my arms and join him in bed. I told him I thought about him all the time. I didn't tell him that I'd slept with my husband just the night before. About that, I felt so guilty. I wanted to confess. Sometimes I think Jeremy would be better off if I told him how I really felt. If I could just get the courage and just say "Jeremy I've found someone else. I want a divorce. But I know how much Jeremy needs me, and there's the kids. They'd never understand, especially Samantha"