July was mostly nondescript. But August was tough. Things at work had become immensely challenging. I was coming up against the one-year anniversary of the "I think we should divorce because I found text messages and you're a lying, cheating bastard" week. And while I didn't think that the anniversary would have that much meaning, as it turned out, it did. I was experiencing something like muscle memory - as we started to enter that week, I couldn't stop myself remembering what I was doing on those days or how things had played out.
I tried, I really tried, not to wallow. But it was truly like part of me was remembering it without my will. All I could do was ride along.
So one night during this exact week, almost a year to the day when we decided to divorce, and at the end of a particularly shiteous month – which I had told D all about, in a misguided effort to find comfort in the old familiar – he was dropping off Little One from yet another 2-3 hour stay at his apartment. After making small talk for a while, he looked at me anxiously and said, "I have something to ask you."
After the week I had at work, and the 2/3 glass of wine I’d already consumed, I looked at him with no reaction and said, "Okay, what?"
Now, I have to tell you – on the way home from work on this same day, a Friday, I had thought to myself two things: 1) I was very appreciative that D had been kind that week, and had listened to me about work and about a few other difficult things that had happened that same month, and 2) I had a very, very strong suspicion he would be asking me for something, because he knew my defenses were down.
This is what I had come to expect from D. It wasn’t a matter of lowered expectations, it was simply having learned to expect the worst from him.
And in this case, boy, was I right.
"I wanted to know if you could provide Sally with copies of the emails that you received from that anonymous emailer," he said. With a straight face.
My heart began to pound, but I showed no emotion. I could feel that old adrenaline rush begin in my chest and spread like hot lava to my extremities. I looked him calmly in the eye, steadying myself on the one piece of furniture nearby. "I’m not sure," I replied evenly. "Why would she need them?"
D became more uncomfortable, and started speaking quickly. "Her lawyer asked for them, it’s something legal, I don’t know, there’s something going on with mediation, it’s because of the divorce," he replied, rapid-fire. I didn't do it, the check is in the mail, it wasn’t me, is what this sounded like.
So, Sally the bellydancer wants something else from me. Interesting.
In this moment, I was so tired, I tried to approach indifference. I wasn't thinking clearly when I said, "I will have to see if I still have them. They're on my work account, so they might have been archived or deleted. I just changed computers, recently, too, so they might not be there."
This was, in part, true. I did have them in text – i.e. I had copied them into a word document – but I was not about to do that bellydancer any favors, especially when it was her anonymous emailer husband who had helped me in so many ways during the divorce.
He looked slightly disappointed, but said, "Oh, okay."
Me, tired, still hoping to fend off this latest request with kindness: "I’ll check my work computer on Monday," I said. I had no intention of doing so; I had copies of everything. But I just wanted to make this go away.
"You can’t check it from home or anything...?" he replied. To his credit, he was being cordial, but he had finally pushed me past my position on Indifference Corner. Now, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
"Look, D," I said politely. "This is a big ask you’re making here. I am happy to investigate whether I have them, as a favor to you, but that’s it."
"Okay, I understand, thank you," he said. But that wasn't enough for me. I had to keep going; now I was getting riled up.
"Great timing, by the way," I couldn’t help but throw in. He looked at me questioningly. "You know, there’s nothing more I like after a tough week like this than to get requests from Sally." Yep, I had jaywalked from Indifference Corner over to Sarcasm Street.
He was as chagrined as he knows how to be. "Oh. Crap. I’m sorry, you’re right. Geez."
He was being surprisingly non-confrontational, and that made me nervous.
Which is why his next requests were out-of-this-world batshit crazy, given what I had just said to him.
"By the way," he said, "Sally would like to meet up with you sometime soon to talk about Little One, and them spending time together when I have Little One," he said.
Now, this was not a surprise, as it was something we’d talked about before. I'd been doing my best to fend off her involvement with Little One by pushing off the inevitable. I hated thinking about her spending time with Little One. And D knew this. Again, I had to applaud him for his timing. Idiot.
"I understand," I said evenly, and slightly condescendingly. "I think it will be good for her and I to meet, since I have some rather big concerns about her character, given what happened last year. I mean, I do feel like I need to understand how much of that duplicity she was responsible for." To be honest, at this moment I wasn’t even sure that I did, but I knew this would a) make him squirm, and b) put off the discussion with her even longer.
He started to looked cornered and slightly defensive. "She doesn’t want to talk about that," he said quickly, and firmly.
Now, you have to understand my reaction. SHE doesn’t want to talk about THAT? Seriously? The woman who was texting my husband – sexting, I guess they call it – who was having intimate relations in my house with him, who made our divorce the shitstorm it became, whose husband was so pissed that he brought ME into HER divorce – really, SHE doesn’t want to talk about THAT?
You don’t say.
"Really," I stated, managing to keep most of the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Nope, she doesn’t,” he replied, completely serious. “She wants to focus on the now, and on her interactions with Little One, and with reassuring you that she will be a positive presence in Little One’s life.”
“Well.” I started to say something, then changed direction. “D, while I can understand why she might not want to have that conversation, I believe it’s important, since it informs me on who she is, what her level of responsibility is, what her character is. I don’t see how we can get away from talking about that.”
“Well, that’s not what she wants to talk about,” he replied.
Having walked up Sarcasm Street, I was now firmly on Victory Lane. “You know, that’s so interesting to me,” I replied. (We were having this entire discussion in polite, how’s the weather, modulated voices, with Little One playing in the room. It was at moments like this that I realized how far we’d come.) “It’s so interesting to me because, on the one hand, she wants me to provide her with documentation which led me to understand how you two were fluttering around behind my back, and on the other hand, she doesn’t want to discuss what those documents told me or what they mean.” I looked him in the eye. “You can see where that presents a rather distinct disconnect for me.”
He blinked. Like, his whole body blinked, not just his eyes. I had him, and he knew it.
And then, I finally realized, without any doubt: he’s been lying to Sally this whole time.
It was him, lying to both of us last year, and she really isn’t the villain after all. Dumb asses, all of us.
He remained silent, only nodding in agreement. So I asked him, “How much was she involved in all the lying and irresponsibility last year? How much does she know?”
His response was indirect, but told me everything. “She doesn’t know that you haven’t wanted her to see Little One.”
Oh my god, I thought. His whole relationship with her really IS predicated on lies. Oh, man, is she in for a ride. He had told her only that she couldn’t spend time with Little One because it wasn’t working time-wise, or because it was “too soon for Little One to see him with someone else.”
He had not told her that he had agreed, last November, in writing, to not have her anywhere near Little One until he and I had renegotiated a new understanding.
Wow. One wonders what else she didn’t know.
“I had a feeling that was the case,” I replied. On the outside, I was stoic. “So, like I said, I’m happy to have that talk with her, but it’s going to HAVE to involve some discussion of what happened last year. I’m not out to get you – I’m not out for vengeance. But it’s important for me to distinguish who she is, because right now I still have some pretty grave reservations about her, given her behavior last fall.”
He nodded, saying only, “I understand.” We then discussed a bit of why he wanted this conversation to happen, and how her kids would be involved with time spent with Little One. At one point, he actually said the words, “I have no desire to be around her kids at all. It’s just not going to happen.” I asked him if that was because of her own divorce proceedings, and he replied, “No, not really, sort of.” Yeeeeaah, okay.
Finally, I laid out what I needed as succinctly as I could: “If you, and Sally, want to spend time together with Little One, you need to create a structure for that time. And that structure has to be a responsible one, and it has to be adhered to. I want the both of you to understand this going in, and I want you to both be completely transparent with me about the time that is spent with Little One, what happens, who’s there, and have absolutely no lying about any element of it." D had started to tear up, but I had to keep going. I was almost done. "Last year only taught me that the two of you together are irresponsible, hurtful, and duplicitous. So I’d like you both to work to change that perception for me. Good?”
He nodded, as now he was crying in that way he does when he’s made to remember the bad things he’s done.
I was stunned that he had asked for the emails, even more that he thought he could get away with telling me that Sally didn’t want to “talk about what happened last year and wanted to focus on the now.” Sadly, however stunned I was, I was not surprised.
Of course, you have to understand by now, I’m no sucker. All I could think after he left was, Sure, buddy, I’ll send her those emails. I’ll just give her the URL to this blog and let her find them. And a myriad of other new discoveries.
You may have noticed that I didn’t exactly say “no” to him when he asked me for those emails. I waited to do that, a few days later, as if I had gone to work, checked my Outlook, and discovered, “Aw, shucks, I really don’t have those pieces of evidence anymore. Oops, sorry, bellydancer!”
What I did was, I casually told him, one night when he was dropping off Little One, “I don’t have those emails anymore.” He looked startled, then composed himself enough to say, “Oh, okay. Thanks for checking.”
Can you believe that this was NOT the last time he’d go and ask me for those emails?
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