Sunday 12th May 2019
It had been a long nine days.
A very long nine days.
The last nine days had marked the crescendo of a two-year period that had turned our marriage upside down. I’m one of those people who enjoys classical music but doesn’t know all the technical terms. But the last two years reminded me of one of those classical pieces which starts incredibly slowly and builds, bit by bit, through various levels of drama until a noisy and unbearable climax assails the audience that has been ratcheted tighter and tighter until surely something will give.
Think 1812 Overture, with its several soaring sweeps of strings and horns whisking you higher and higher, until finally the cannon booms out to mark the ultimate journey’s destination.
Sitting alone swirling my glass of malt, the parallel seemed complete. The obvious parallel, the deafening boom of the cannon was an apt description of the dramatic situation that these last nine days had brought us to. After two years of slow but accelerating build-up, and the less obvious parallel, a tale told me by a distant music teacher of a brand new multi-million-dollar concert hall that had opened with the 1812, and the use of a real cannon at the death. And how the blast from the real cannon, even firing blanks, had caused an end-to-end crack in the fabric of the proud new hall.
Even in my hour of crisis, the irony of this thought made me smile. Was the hall and that crack the true and final picture of my marriage? A hall and a marriage undermined by something that had seemed so exciting and novel at the time. As the tune and the cannon played out in part of my mind, the rest of my mind was occupied by memories from two summers ago.
Until that fateful summer day, Jill's and my marriage had been one where a stranger’s view from the outside would have accurately discerned the internal goings-on. But more and more these last two years, judging our marriage by such outward appearances would have led to deeply misleading conclusions. It was as if the old adage ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ had been invented for Jill and me, to describe the slowly unwinding twists and turns that had brought us to this moment of truth.
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Saturday July 22nd 2017
I had to smile. It was a sight I’d grown used to over many years of marriage to Jill. It was a hot summer’s day and we’d thrown a neighborhood BBQ and pool party. Jill was dressed in a fairly standard bikini, and there were plenty of other women at the party. But nonetheless, the wolves were gathering.
I smiled to myself. It was nothing that Jill couldn’t easily handle. Nothing she wasn’t used to and hadn’t been used to since her high school years, and no doubt even before that. A forty-four-year-old mother of three, she’d not lost it. Not even slightly. Pretty face plus great body plus a kind, fun-loving, and warm personality. Since I’d known her, barely a party had gone by without some guy or another hitting on her.
And today was no exception; today Jill had excelled herself. Although that’s a little harsh and unfair, because she’d done nothing to attract the attention of the three men currently paying court to her. It was just nature’s way. Three single, available guys trying it on with the most desirable and sexiest woman at the party.
Never mind that her ring finger sported three levels of evidence of her love and commitment to another man. And maybe I couldn’t blame them. We weren’t part of it, but like many a bored suburban community, our little piece of McMansion heaven boasted at least two wife-swapping and swinging circles that Jill and I knew about. We’d never been tempted to join, but we had several friends who were current or past members of these groups. In such a community and hotbed, I guess I couldn’t bring myself to gainsay any of the three wolves currently laying siege to my bikini-clad wife.
I’ve always been a keen student of human psychology, and knowing that none of these three Romeos had a chance with my wonderful wife, I livened the boring task of flipping burgers with keeping a quiet eye on the three rutting males. mentally running a book as to who was ahead, happy in the knowledge that they were just also-rans who stood no chance versus the form book favorite: yours truly, the Burger Kid.
First out of the blocks was Craig, an Australian thoroughbred with strong form. Six-one, the youngest in the field at a mere twenty-seven years old, he was the classic ‘heart-breaker’ barman. Blond of locks with a surfer’s body, I knew for a fact that since he’d arrived as barman at the local country club he’d slept with many a local woman. Including at least five of the women at our pool party, the split being two single and three married. Whenever Jill and I were at the country club, he never missed a chance to flirt with my wife. And I was as sure, as a man can be, that he’d love to add my sexy wife to his roll call of American wives bedded. Jill always gave as good as she got, and I had little doubt that this just sharpened Craig’s desire to one day bed my wife.
As the four of them laughed and joked, Craig’s wisecracks and macho posturing were well matched by the second of the rutting stags: Byron, our new neighbor. Altogether more quiet and thoughtful than the noisy Australian barman, Byron was six-six and taught Physical Ed at the local high school, from which our three had graduated not so long ago. Any professional career he might have had was cut short by injury, but there was not one single ounce of bitterness or regret in him. When he talked about the teams he coached or the sporting laggards he gently coaxed and encouraged, he came alive with an energy and kindness that was positively hypnotic.
If Jill hadn’t been happily married and in love with the Burger Kid, I think I’d have fancied his chances of seducing my good lady. He was eleven years younger than Jill, but if she’d not been happily and contentedly tethered to me, my gut told me that Byron’s enthusiastic idealism, and twenty-four-carat commitment to his wards, would have been a magnet to the loving core of my Jill.
While I felt sure Byron’s genuineness and generosity of spirit would have trumped Craig’s showy bravado, so the dark horse in the BBQ pack was Callan. A year older than Jill, definitely the old man in the field, he was a newcomer to the field as a result of a broken heart from a wife who’d recently run off with another guy. He was a dark horse by reference to his history. He and Jill had dated for the two years before she and I had met, only breaking it off when Callan had ended it to date, and then marry, the woman who’d recently broken his heart. As our own relationship had developed, after a respectable and appropriate time, Jill had opened up to me about how she’d loved Callan before he’d broken her heart. The four of us had lived in the same neighborhood and even been friends with no seeming problems or aftertaste, but with Callan now a single man again sometimes my worry glands did overtime, considering whether his change in status might be a distant cloud on the horizon.
