Waking Up With a Monster

Rachel didn't like the idea at all. "Don't have sex with her," she told me once again. "And this time I get to say that for real."

I just shook my head.

I was still thinking about that when I pulled up in the driveway. I used the old key that I still had and walked in to find Katherine on her knees in our living room. She was giving her lawyer a blow job and both of them were naked. They flew away from each other as if they were on fire when they noticed me. I just started laughing and continued to take pictures on my iPhone.

"Mark, this isn't what it looks like," wailed Katherine.

"I'm pretty sure it is what it looks like," I smiled. "It looks like my divorce will be granted a lot sooner than I thought. It also looks like your lawyer may lose his license or at least be in trouble."

I laughed and started to leave. "What's so funny?" asked the lawyer.

"Katherine has been telling me for weeks that I should stop by for dinner, any time I wanted," I said. "She kept telling me that if I did, I'd either leave in a really happy mood, or I wouldn't leave at all. And she was right. I'm happy as hell right now."

Almost as soon as I drove away my phone started ringing. I was getting calls from both of them. The call from the lawyer was the one that intrigued me the most.

"Look, Mark, I can call you Mark right?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure that there's a way that we can both walk away happy here. What exactly is it that you want?"

"I want what I always wanted," I said. "I want a fair divorce and my freedom. I don't want to hurt Katherine. I don't want her broke and unhappy. I just want her out of my life; or at least as much as possible. And I want that as soon as possible."

"Okay, I'll help you get it," he said. "I'll talk to her tonight. We can appear before a judge in two weeks or less."

"And..." I said.

"What and?" he asked.

"And, you take care of my legal fees, the court costs and don't charge Katherine a dime," I said. "In exchange for that, I delete the photos I took and never mention it to the Bar Association or anyone else."

"I'll do my best," he said. "But I have to tell you. Your wife is crazy. She seems to think that she's going to get you back and the two of you are going to live happily ever after."

"That is no longer my problem," I said. "It's yours. You told me two weeks."

Katherine on the other hand was crying and screaming. "Mark, it wasn't my fault," she whined. "I've been so lonely without you. And you don't ever call me or come over to visit. It was only going to be sex. And it wasn't even that. You can't throw me away over a stupid blowjob!"

"Katherine, for a long time I've loved you more than anything," I said. "But I can't trust you anymore. Maybe we should try to start over again. Maybe we should try just being friends. Let's have a friendly divorce. We'll visit each other and watch over our daughter and just let the future take care of itself."

"Do you promise that we'll be friends?" she asked.

"I swear it on a stack of bibles," I said.

I returned to Rachel's apartment or, "Home," as we called it. She was anxious to find out how things had gone. I told her everything.

"Mark, for a while I thought Katherine was crazy, but I can understand some of her motives. Maybe not the cheating, but trying to do anything I had to do to keep you. That is something I would do," she said. "But, that's enough talking about Katherine. It's time for my favorite part of the day."

"And what part would that be?" I teased.

"You know, the dinner and massage part," she smirked.

* * * * * *

Katherine

"Mother, things were already bad enough; why did you do that?" asked Lila. "I really wanted to believe you when you said that it hadn't happened in a long time. Then Daddy found out that it had only been two years. And now he walked in on you and your lawyer? Even you have to admit that there's no hope, now."

"Don't say that Lila," I spat. "Your father and I are just going through a rough patch. We WILL get through this. I've agreed to his stupid divorce, because he promised me that we would still be friends afterwards. And once he starts talking to me, I'll start inviting him over. For the first few times I won't push anything, I'll just be happy to spend time with him. After that I'll start ramping things up until we start having sex. And your father isn't the kind of man who'll just sleep with anyone. To him, having sex with someone means an emotional attachment. And from there we'll be back together."

"You've got it all worked out, huh, Mom?" she asked. Her voice sounded really sarcastic. "Mom, let's look at this hypothetically. Suppose, just suppose, that Daddy found someone else? What if he found someone, who's really pretty, loves him as much as you do and knew how to keep her legs closed?"

I slammed the phone down as soon as she said it. I couldn't talk to that stupid girl anymore. Ever since she was born, she always took her Father's side in everything. There was clearly something wrong with her. It was almost as if she had only one parent. Since this whole problem had arisen, she barely ever spoke to me. And then it was only if I called her and she chose to answer. Most of the time when I called her it went to voice mail. I was sure that she only spoke to me to provide information to her father. I was also sure that it had been her who told her father that I'd had sex with that old idiot down the street.

I was steaming as I sat there staring at the phone. None of them understood. And Lila's crack about keeping my legs closed only underscored the point. They all seemed to have the idea that I was some kind of round heeled slut. They had the impression that I was just constantly fucking any guy who looked at me sideways.

The fact was that Mark and I had been together for a little more than twenty years and during that time there had only been five...or six men. There'd been seven, if you included the lawyer, and Mark had stopped anything from actually happening there.

The only reason that the thing with the lawyer had happened was because the guy was running out of steam. He's been telling me to go ahead and settle. He was sure that Mark's lawyer was about to put an end to our delaying tactics. The guy had already asked for a mediator and had been keeping records and copies of all of our demands. We'd been headed for a resolution of the situation anyway. I had failed. Mark was still as angry at me as he had been in the beginning. I'd been sure that loneliness and lack of sex would have made Mark give in and give me another chance by now. He was obviously angrier at me than I had ever imagined.

I realized then that Mark loved me far more than I had ever given him credit for. Mark being that angry at me for having purely recreational sex a few times over our long marriage only proved that he didn't want to share me with anyone. That was what I had to explain to him. Mark was being unfair. For the past 18 years, I had been forced to share my husband with another woman who clearly was not on my side.

And having to share Mark with Lila was far worse. Sure I had sex with a few guys, but it was only sex. Except for Dean, with whom I'd had a long term affair, I couldn't remember any of those guys by name; let alone what they looked like. It was only sex. It was just something to make me feel like I mattered.

Mark on the other hand had a longtime emotional affair in front of my face, in our own home. I was constantly pushed to the side or put in second place. From the first moment she drew breath, it was clear where his heart lay.

If she cried, Mark was at her side. If she was happy and smiling and making all of those unintelligible little gurgling sounds, my husband was videotaping it. From the second that she exited my womb, I'd realized that I had made a huge mistake. That, more than anything else, was the reason that we had never had any other children. It was bad enough having Lila. What if the next one had been a boy? I would have become little more than the cook.

Before Lila was born, I alone held all of Mark's love and attention. It was wrong of him to deny me a few stupid little incidents. But now I realized why he was so angry. Mark still loved me. Lila was the enemy here. She had probably done all of those things over the years to push me away from her dad. Although there wasn't any sexual attraction between the two of them, she wanted him all too herself.

I understood it all too well now. Her crack about a woman who was pretty and loved him as much as I do and knew how to keep her legs closed was obviously about Lila herself. Daughter or not, if she was trying to take my man, she would lose.

I really hadn't paid any attention to what I would actually end up with in the divorce until that day. Then I realized that I was screwed. My lawyer had informed me that our state was a no fault state. That meant that no matter whose fault the divorce was, our assets would be split 50/50. That meant that I really had to get aggressive. We were going to have to either come to terms quickly or I would probably lose our home.

The fact that my name wasn't on the mortgage didn't matter. The house was 50% mine. In order to keep it I would either have to pay half of the value of our equity in the house to Mark. Or get him to hold off on selling it long enough to get the two of us back together.

Another factor was that in our state, alimony or spousal support only lasted for two years. And even then it wasn't a lot of money. I could expect to receive 30 to 40 percent of Mark's salary for twenty four months. Mark made a little over 50 thousand a year. That meant that I either had to try to make it on 20 thousand dollars a year, or get a job.

That brought up another interesting fact. Even if I waived the alimony to try to buy the house from Mark, it would only amount to forty grand at most. Our house was worth a hundred and sixty thousand dollars and was nearly paid off. Selling it would get me eighty grand. So to keep it I'd need twice my alimony. We had another twenty or thirty thousand in savings accounts. Mark's pension was worth another fifty or sixty at this point. I wasn't sure that the judge or mediator would allow me any of Mark's pension. My lawyer had told me that most of the judges don't give a cheating spouse future earnings or investments, in our state.

But even if I was given a portion of Mark's pension and I took a loan out against it. I would be in deep shit financially. Just getting to keep the house would take every dime I had or could scrounge up. I would have no money for living expenses or upkeep on the house. I also had my car, car insurance, household bills, food, clothing and health insurance to think about and there were several other things that I had probably left off of my list.

It all boiled down to simple economics. If I lost Mark, I lost my house as well. If I lost Mark, at some point, I would also be returning to the work force.

I got dressed and went to see my lawyer. He looked at me as if I was evil personified. I just smiled. He put a stack of papers in front of me and left me alone to read them.

The first page was simply a bunch of legal jargon that spoke about how our marriage had been irrevocably broken. As I read it, I wanted to scream that it wasn't true. But I remained silent. I knew that what I was going through was only a part of the process I had to go through to get my husband back.

The second page was worse. It talked about how the failure of the marriage was equal and blame was assigned to neither party. But I knew that was a lie. The fault had been outside forces that pushed us apart.

One of the biggest of those forces had been the monster I pushed from my womb. My postpartum depression had caused me to have the affair with Dean that had later on come back to ruin my life.

After I had gotten over that a series of smaller but intense depressions had led to others. But now, I was over all of that. I had to be stronger and more focused to get Mark back. This was supposed to be the beginning of the best time of our lives. And it would have been except for the fact that yet again Lila got in the way. If we hadn't had to drive her up to school, we'd never have met Dean's daughter and I'd still be with Mark.

The third page was brutal. I would receive a third of Mark's salary for two years. I would also get half of our savings and investments and half the value of the house. I would get none of Mark's pension. But Mark had to continue footing the bill for Lila's education. I guess that was something. In my heart, I knew that it would all be temporary. Yet in the eyes of the law in only ninety days it would be as if my marriage to Mark had never been.

I signed the papers. It felt as if I was signing my life away. I rushed out of the office and went home. I sank into a depression. For more than a week, I never left the house. I didn't call anyone or speak to anyone. I felt awful. Then I realized that the reason I had given in on the divorce was so Mark and I could start over again. Mark was the one person who had to be feeling at least as bad as I was and probably worse. I decided to try to be strong for Mark.

I tried calling him a few times but he never returned my phone calls. I had been such a fool. As bad as things were for me, they had to be far worse for him. I had after all made the mistakes that ended our marriage. He like me had to have been suffering and feeling like a failure. I called the one person that Mark would never shut him-self off from.

"Hello Mother," she said answering the phone. Her voice had all of the warmth that she'd have given a telemarketer or a Jehova's Witness. I remembered our last phone call, weeks before and had to remind myself that slamming the phone down on the ungrateful little bitch would serve no purpose.

"Lila, I called because we have something in common," I said. "We both love your father. And we both want to see him happy. You have to help me get him out of his depression, so..."

She suddenly burst into laughter as if I had just told her the funniest joke she had ever heard.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Daddy isn't depressed," she said. "He's fine. In fact he's probably happier than he's been in a long time. I'm pretty sure he'll be even happier once the old house is on the market and he has the down payment for his new house."

Once again, Lila had gotten to me. How the hell could Mark be happy? She had to be lying. She was yanking my chain as some sort of revenge for me hurting Mark. I decided that the best possible course of action would be to just ignore her.

"Lila, ask your father to call me when he has time. You're right, we do need to talk about selling the house," I said. I had, of course, been lying again. I had no intention of selling my house unless I had to.

"Okay, Mother, I'm sure he'll get right to that," she said sarcastically. I don't know why I even wasted my breath talking to her. I should have known that she would never help me. But at least I knew that she would tell him.

Strangely enough, it wasn't my daughter who alerted me to my real problem. It was the person I least expected. About an hour after I got off the phone with Lila, my phone rang, I thought at first that it was Mark. I was much more shocked when I realized that I was talking to a woman.

"Your husband has already replaced you," she said. For some reason, although I didn't know who I was speaking to, I believed her.

"Who the hell is this?" I asked.

"It's Brina," she said exasperatedly. "I could understand it when you didn't recognize me the first time. It had been about eighteen years since we spoke. But this time it's only been a couple of months. But I still love you, so I'm going help you anyway."

"What do you mean help me?" I asked.

"I assume that you still want Mark back?" she said. "So warning you that he has a new woman in his life should be helpful. After all, you can't get rid of her if you don't know that she exists."

"How do you know that she exists?" I asked.

"The two of them have driven up here to visit Lila, for the past three weekends," she said. "Hasn't Lila mentioned it to you?"

"From what I understand, you made a play for my husband yourself, Brina," I said.

"Okay, I took a shot," she said. "But at that point in time, he was still hung up on you. This bimbo is a little higher level of competition. He loves you. The two of you have been together forever. That makes sense. But seeing some bimbo that I've never heard of just swoop in and scoop him up pisses me off. And I tried to get Lila on our side, but you know her and her daddy. If he's happy, she's happy; fuck everyone else's feelings."

"So what does this bitch look like and do you know what her name is?" I asked.

"She's shorter than any of us. She's about five foot one. She has blond hair. She's kind of petite, with big boobs. She's older than me, but younger than you. I'd peg her somewhere in her thirties. And the two of them are practically shooting sparks from their eyes when they look at each other. I swear I could see little hearts coming from her, like in the comic books whenever she looks at him. It really pissed me off. Lila wouldn't even tell me her name. She said it was none of my business," said Brina.

"I'll talk to you later Brina," I said tersely. "I owe you one."

I had ended the phone call because I was so angry I could barely compose myself enough to speak. At that moment I wanted to strangle Lila. On the rare occasions that she bothered to speak to me she had never mentioned even once that her father was seeing someone. She had told me just a few moments before that he was happy, but she hadn't given me the slightest clue of why. I had never expected Mark to settle down and sink into a depression without me. But I did think he'd wait until our divorce was final in less than three months to even begin dating.

And for the first time since I'd met him, Mark had lied to me. He had told me that we would be friends after the divorce. I think he knew that I interpreted that as meaning that we would probably date and have a good chance to get back together.

I smiled just thinking about it. Whoever this woman was, she had pissed off the wrong person. It was probably one of those whorish nurses at the hospital who'd decided that she was tired of working and wanted a man with a paycheck instead of having to earn her own income. Not only would I put her in her place, I'd get Mark back as well.

I was almost looking forward to the battle. I started to make my plans even as I thought about it. I had twenty years of accumulated knowledge into what made Mark tick. I knew his likes and dislikes as well as I knew my own. She didn't stand a chance.

I needed to get my hair cut and restyled. I was only going to trim it though. I'd been wearing it short for the past few years, but I was going to grow it out because Mark liked me with long hair. Just as I started thinking about other things I could do the doorbell rang.

I went to answer it and saw a young couple standing on the front porch. Actually, he was standing on the porch she was looking around the front yard and then tried to look over the fence.

"Hi," he said, as soon as I opened the door. He was a very polite young man. I liked him immediately.

"I know the house isn't officially on the market yet, but my real estate guy told me that it would be in a matter of days. I was wondering if we could look around a bit and perhaps make you an offer and avoid all the trouble of you taking other bids and having a lot of people tramping through. We've driven through this neighborhood for a long time and have always loved your house and..."

I slammed the door in his face. I called my lawyer and told him what had happened.