Tribute Tales: I Screamed...

"Please do." His smile faded. "Please do." He looked uncomfortable for a minute, and then said, "You're still sure about this?"

"I really am."

"Then good luck. We'll see you in February."

That night, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I slept.

The last few days before Christmas passed slowly. I moped around the house when Sherrie was there, and I enjoyed my time alone when she wasn't. I thought a few times about that story, but didn't reach any conclusions. After I was put on leave, Sherrie began to look worse and worse. I'm sure she was losing weight. I made it a point to match her, and maintain my "most miserable person" award-winning performance. I saw less and less of her. She wasn't avoiding me, just withdrawing. She would sit at the kitchen table for hours, not saying a thing. Sometimes I forgot she was even there.

The day before Christmas, Sherrie asked me if I wanted to cancel the trip to her folks'. We hadn't seen them since the blow-up, so I think she was looking for an excuse not to go. I insisted.

When we got there, it was a solemn affair. The small talk was painfully limited, especially since the subject of jobs had become taboo. Finally, as Marva was serving dessert, I figured it was time.

"Sherrie," I said suddenly, "I'm sick of this. I can't not say this any more. I know about your affair. I know you cheated on me for months and months, and I don't think it matters that it's over. You took everything we had and ruined it. I think we should get divorced."

When Marva dropped the pie on the floor, it really worked well for me, dramatically speaking. Edward looked like I'd just crapped on his plate, and Sherrie was staring at me with her hand over her mouth.

"No," she whispered. "Oh, god, please, no!"

"I couldn't agree more. I've been feeling exactly the same way ever since I found out. You just...you ruined everything, Sherrie."

"Please," she said. "I'm so sorry. I've been so sorry. Watching you hurt so much has been killing me. Give me a chance, and I'll..."

"No."

"Baby, please!"

"No!"

She broke down into heaving sobs. Her parents were looking on like little kids watching a car accident. I figured the time was right for the final phase of my plan.

"Listen," I said in a softer voice. "Listen. Maybe...maybe we CAN get past this. I don't know. But I will need you to do something for me, if we're even going to have a chance."

"Anything!"

"I know your lover was a man from work. Whatever you took from me was given to him like a trophy. I won't stand for that. I can't." I looked over at her two parents apologetically, like I was ashamed of what I was about to say. "I need you to ruin him. Destroy his career. Bring everything out into the open."

She stared at me, mouth moving but no words issuing forth.

"Is there a problem?"

She winced. "I'll do anything to save our marriage, but...please...don't make me do that." She glanced nervously at her mother. "He has a wife and kids."

I slammed my fist down on the table. "And how dare he have that! How dare he, after what he's done to me." I took a deep breath. "Do you even know how I learned about your affair?" She shook her head. I was gambling here, but I was feeling confident. "He told me. Your fucking lover told me. He called me at work and told me all about it. He showed me pictures, because he wanted me to leave you. He thought you two were going to ride off into the sunset together. HE SHOWED ME PICTURES, Sherrie!"

The gamble paid off. She looked horrified. "I...I told him to stay out of it. I told him I wanted to save my marriage."

"It doesn't look like he gave two shits about what you wanted," I said. "Why should you care about what he wants?"

She put her head down on the table. "I'll do it. I'll do it Monday. I'll..."

"You'll file a sexual harassment complaint, and when they interview you you'll tell them everything. You'll even lie a little, if that's what it takes to destroy him."

She was crying. "Yes. Yes. I'll do it. Oh, god."

I looked at her parents, both of them sagging like propped up sacks of flour. I felt bad for making them watch their daughter promise to lie about a man, and ruin his life, because it would serve her own selfish needs. But it was, after all, a part of the plan.

"I think we should be going," I said.

The next few weeks were a blur. I began looking for a new place to stay, and asked Sherrie to sleep at her folks' house until I could get moved out. I promised her that I wasn't moving out for good (yes, I was), but that I needed to be away from her for a while.

Meanwhile, the mess created by her filing a complaint at work didn't end with her lover getting fired. Sherrie was apologetic about her failure to accomplish that. What she didn't get was that I didn't care. I just wanted the two of them to be unable to rekindle their little flame after I'd gone. I wanted her to be left alone with her shittiness. I also wanted the affair documented in a very legal way, and in effect the filing of the complaint was her admission. As an added bonus, apparently he took that as a sign of even more terrible things to come and took the risk of admitting the whole thing to his wife. How do I know? Because Sherrie told me he showed up at work with a black eye and angrily told her he was getting divorced because of her.

Finally everything was resolved when, on the day that I had arranged for her to be served with divorce papers, I had a revelation. I called my boss and updated him on everything that had happened.

"That sounds like you got what you wanted," he said.

"That's just it," I practically shouted into the phone. "I really didn't. But it's helped me figure out the story. I know what it means!"

"I'm listening."

"Okay," I licked my lips. "Imagine two people. Men, women, doesn't matter. Both of them have a long-term spouse that is cheating on them."

"Okay."

"Now, one of them finds out and seeks revenge. Lucky them, they get it. One hundred percent success. The other doesn't. It doesn't matter why...maybe they don't find out until their partner leaves them for the lover, or maybe they aim for forgiveness and reconcile after much difficulty. Either way, one gets revenge, the other does not."

"Still following you."

"The person who gets blindsided, or the person who forgives, is going to be left with a very real sense that justice was not done. Even if they do forgive, some part of them will always crave the catharsis of revenge. We do this to ourselves all the time. We want to believe the world is fair, and even if we don't want the people we love to suffer, we want the universe to show its impartiality. 'I've been HURT,' we say. 'What will be done about this?' So this person will be driven to write, or read, revenge stories, and any other type will frustrate them. They feel neutered, defeated, in some strange but significant way, and they will want the fantasy of control...of vengeance."

"So we're all just mean fuckers? Is that what you're saying? And some of us happen to contain it better than others?"

"No. I don't mean to say that you spend your whole life wishing your wife would suffer because she won't let you have a football room. And I don't think she fantasizes about punishing you because you never take a turn cleaning the toilet. I'm saying that part of being truly, powerfully hurt by someone you trust is feeling angry. And the person who never gets to effectively express that anger, while they may find a way to bury or live with it, will generally seek out the fantasy of having done so."

"Oh, I see," He said. "But YOU got your revenge..."

"Right. And the person who does so knows it for what it is. It's a con. Does it feel good? Yes. Does it help you move on? Sure. Does it solve anything, or make it so you sleep better at night? No. Will it make it easier to trust again? No. Does it undo what was done to you? Hell no. It's a salve, but not really a healing event."

"So what does the person who gets revenge want?"

"The person who gets their revenge, whose real life reaction was tough and vengeful, will find THEIR catharsis in tales about reconciliation. It's not about wishing they'd taken the other person back. Instead, they reach out for fictional tales about how powerful and eternal love can be...so powerful that it can even survive infidelity. They need this because they can no longer believe that infidelity is something that 'happens to other people.' It will never not be a risk again, in their minds, but they still want to love again someday. So they want to be reassured that their future love can be stronger than whatever terrible things may happen. That doesn't mean that they'll react to infidelity differently in the future...it's just their way of trying to prove to themselves that they still believe in love."

"So the beaten cuckold craves revenge stories, and the avenging angel needs to know that the future can still be bright. Is that it?"

"Not always, and that's a dramatic version, but I think that it has some truth. It helped me that the reconciliation story was able to include the conversations that I didn't get to have...that I might never get to have. It was loaded over with imagined exchanges with my wife. Because I couldn't ask her those questions or tell her those things in real life, I had to put them there. In real life I felt I had to devote myself to getting the revenge I wanted. That was important to me. But you know something? The day I finished my story...the day I wrote that they lived happily every after? That was the first night I was able to sleep since catching her with him."

"So you're having regrets?"

"Not at all. Not at all."

"Interesting. But tell me, which of these stories would someone who hasn't had a cheating spouse in their past prefer? Because I found your story...well, I didn't like it much."

"It depends on the person, I guess. I imagine most people would want the revenge story because it closely fits that eternal conflict-triumph-resolution pattern of storytelling."

"Huh. You've been thinking a lot about this."

"I guess I have. I didn't even know it."

"Okay, wait. What about those stories online where the idea of a woman lording her affairs over her husband is clearly meant to be a turn-on?"

"I have no idea. I suppose that's just a whole other thing." I laughed. "I hope it is."

"Well, thanks for the update, Mark. What are you up to now?"

"The divorce papers were served today, so I'll probably turn off my phone and watch TV."

"Ahh, the life of the bachelor."

"There it is."

"So you're still okay coming back to work next week?"

"I think I am, yeah. My lawyer says I might as well."

"Good. And Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"About what you said....about the stories and all. Did your story help you? Do you still believe in love?"

I looked out the window of my new apartment, and from where I stood I imagined that I could see an entire world of people ready to do good things for one another. "You know," I said, "I really do."