40. The Final Fight?

I heard D's truck coming up the hill, bringing my Little One home, and I felt safe. So when he brought Little One inside, and refused to make eye contact with me, I said, "Okay, Little One, say goodbye to Daddy." "Bye, Daddy," she said from the other side of the room. I turned to D, and smiled politely.

"You can get the fuck out now," I said quietly, smiling an all-too-evil smile. (It felt really good to do it, but even then I knew it was not the kind of behavior I'd be proud of. It also jump-started his defensive reflex, ensuring that we were in for a fight.)

And - if you've been reading this blog for a while now, this will come as no shock! - he actually looked surprised.

"What do you mean?"

"Goodbye," I said, trying to close the door. I closed it, with him still standing right there. Essentially, I closed it in his face. He waited about 10 seconds before starting to knock.

I swung the door open. "What?" I asked.

"What the fuck was that?" he said. We were still trying to speak in hushed tones, hoping that Little One couldn't hear us from her place in the other room.

"What the fuck was THAT? What the fuck was THAT?" I repeated, aghast. "What the hell did you do today? You brought Sally into Little One's life within three hours of our conversation where I TOLD you how upset I was about this, and you didn't tell me ahead of time? What, were you going to tell me about it later? Or maybe you were never going to tell me. You do that best, don't you? Never tell me things until I have to find them out from other people. Or - and this is even advanced for you! - until I drive by the fucking playground and your car is parked right in front of it. THAT's where you chose to have Sally come play with Little One? In the playground that you KNOW I drive past on my way home every single fucking time I get my haircut?"

He was blinking like a deer in headlights. "Get OUT," I said as ferociously as I could muster.

I closed the door again, almost slamming it. 5 seconds, then the knocking began again. I swung the door back open, and didn't say anything, just crossed my arms, watching him.

He sputtered for a moment and I let him. Then he started yelling about custody and lawyers. He was going to fight me for full custody of Little One, he said. "Good luck with that," I replied. He was going to get his dad to help him pay for a lawyer. "Are you going to fucking bury me?" I asked. He balked, and stopped talking. I could tell he remembered the last time he'd used that phrase against me, roughly a year prior to this conversation. "Please," I said horribly, "please give me something I can tell a judge about. Come on, please?" My voice dripped with disdainful sarcasm.

[Sidebar. When I think about this conversation now, the thing I'm struck by is how unafraid of him I was at this point. I no longer had the fear I'd had a year, or even 6 months, before this. And that lack of fear emboldened me, as did the knowledge that D really, truly didn't give a shit anymore about what I thought - not until he got caught doing something he shouldn't. Was I overly controlling? Maybe. But in this moment, all I knew was that I wasn't afraid of him anymore. And that is part of why what happened next, happened. End sidebar.

I was baiting him so badly. I regret it now. But right then? It felt good. Really good. And then I kept talking. "You want a fight?" I said. "I gotta tell you, I'm good for one. In fact, after what you did today? I'm ready for all kinds of fun stuff. All you and Sally do when you're together is lie, cheat, and manipulate. Are you proud of yourself? Is this how you want to be perceived?"

I was speaking rapidly, harshly. I was speaking in tones that I never, ever speak in. I was speaking in ways that my Little One simply could not process, and did not equate with her mother.

So she walked over to us, standing in the doorway, and - physically - put herself between D and I. Ironically, she stood in exactly the same place that I'd stood all those months and months ago, when I'd tried to keep D from driving drunk, right where he had grabbed my shirt and pushed me down, right before the police had come and taken him away.

She didn't look at D. She looked at me. "Mommy," she said, firmly. "Stop yelling! Why are you so angry? Don't be angry."

Aside from feeling like the shittiest parent in the world at that moment, it was also not lost on me that she didn't bother to tell her father the same thing. (Later, I would come to process this as, it was much more of an odd event for me to behave this aggressively than it was for him, and so she focused her need for stability on me. Later, I would feel okay about that. In this moment? Not so much.)

So I looked at her. "You know what, honey?" I replied. "You are absolutely right. I shouldn't be yelling. I'm sorry."

She pointed her sweet little finger at me. "No more fighting," she said to me.

I smiled. "No more fighting." She walked away, back to her toys.

I looked at D, who was now fighting back tears. "I'm so sorry," he said. And then he just let it all out, tears, fears, and all.

Among the things conveyed in this conversation:

- He "missed me every day" and that he would get mad at himself and Sally for how they treated me, and it was starting to affect their relationship. I replied, "I appreciate that." Inside, part of me felt sad. Another part was elated; another? Just pissed.

- He wished now he'd been able to ask for time away from our relationship (a separation) rather than plow our way right to divorce. (You could have asked, D. I wouldn't have given it to you.)

- I told him that he hadn't been a cheater or a liar until Sally came along. He realized that there was a pattern there, and that it undermined my ability to trust him to take care of Little One when Sally was around. He knew it had to stop. (So he said.)

- I will always be the mother of your child, I told him. No matter how long his relationship with Sally or anyone else lasted, he needed to carve out some new, respectful way of treating me in this area because I WILL ALWAYS BE AROUND. Sally or whoever else may not be. (This part, sadly, is true. And while D being in my life for the next couple of decades feels very much like a jail sentence, I am cautiously optimistic that it will continue to feel better than it has.)

- I knew that Sally had two kids, and I proposed that he integrate Sally into Little One's life as "someone's mommy," not as "Daddy's special friend" or some such crap, because Little One had no context for romantic relationships. Mommies and daddies and kids, though, she got. He agreed, but it took a while to get to the point where he'd listen to me about "what's best for Little One and how that may be different from what's best for D." That part was hard for him, because he said he has no other friends besides Sally, and when he has Little One he wants to do fun stuff, but doesn't know where to go, and Sally could help him, etc. You get the idea. (Essentially, he needed his new sugar momma to help him figure out where to take his own kid.)

- I also told him that if he wanted this to work, he and Sally had to stop going around me and start working WITH me. All they'd done is go behind my back to get their way. They had to make me a part of what happened to Little One when she's with him, and he agreed to that too, by providing information on what they'll be doing and whether Sally would be there.

- He told me he nearly crapped his pants when he looked up and saw me standing behind Sally at the playground. (I had figured as much, but he had a good poker face.)

- I asked him how Sally manages when he shows his temper. He said, without irony, "She does it differently than you do. She comes from a history of abuse in her family, and she has a different perspective." (There's so much there, I don't even know where to begin.) What that did tell me, though, was that she hadn't really seen his temper yet. Otherwise his reaction would have been much different. It also told me that there is much yet to play out here. But I would continue trying really hard to disassociate myself from that and just have it be about Little One, not be about wishing them ill.

- Sally had had to move out of her house (her husband was living in it), the divorce was still going really badly, and she'd been living in a one-bedroom apartment and would likely have to file for bankruptcy. (I will admit that this made me feel better. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.)

- I told him I lied to him about having the emails that he'd asked me for. I explained that the reason I had lied was a) I didn't want to argue about it and b) I didn't want to get involved in their divorce the way they'd gotten involved in ours.

- I told him to be careful about integrating Sally too much into his time with Little One, since I had concerns about the long-term health of a relationship that started the way theirs did. He actually seemed to understand this point, though I doubt it'll make a difference since it's probably just once a week that Sally and Little One would overlap, and hey, it's D we're talking about here.

- And last but not least, he planned on moving in with Sally sometime next spring or summer.

So.

At the end of the conversation, we hugged. It was a very cathartic talk, and I heard a lot that actually made me feel better. (I promise you that 50% of what I typed above - things that D told me - are simply lies that he told me, and himself, in the moment, to make the conflict go away, and to keep himself from looking like a total shit-head cad. But lies or not, him saying them still felt pretty good.)

Little One overheard all of it. At the time, I was so entrenched in that moment, I didn't really think it would matter. Looking back, I wish I hadn't taken that risk, though it does seem like she remembers nothing about this night.

Seeing Sally in person, too, and understanding her situation a bit better, forced me to humanize her, and that process quickly stripped away some of the superhuman qualities (bellydancer! cheater! liar! husband stealer! family killer!) that I had ascribed to her. She simply became...human, and damaged. I didn't feel kindly towards her, but I maybe felt slightly more indifferent than I had before. I certainly wasn't going to thank her for getting me out of my marriage. But even though her presence had helped me in some ways, it still...hurt.

And so I found myself, once again, in a situation where D's irresponsible behavior, and me finding out about it through circuitous means, had tipped the power balance in the relationship back in my favor. This time around, it didn't matter nearly as much as it had the last time. But at least I knew that he and Sally would be more responsible going forward, in paying attention to what they needed to do to (once again!) earn my trust.

We have not fought since this night, which was 7 months ago.

But after this fight, things started looking up. I still had the trip to Disneyland to look forward to, and that started the ball rolling towards other events. As did an unexpected Facebook exchange with someone who was keenly interested in D's past.

All in good time.