The Slightly Mad Cuckquean: Chapter Ten

There are times when I wonder if I have done my children a disservice by teaching them to believe in the good in people, to choose love and trust. It was what I was taught, but I am only now beginning to understand that, in choosing love and trust, you leave yourself wide open to great disappointment and almost unbearable pain.

This is what it means to change then, to transform. Sometimes transformation isn’t a thing of beauty, of wonder, but rather, a reversal. A turning. A tainting.

I am filled with self-loathing that I chose love and trust, that I opened my heart and believed in those I loved with everything I’ve got, only to be horribly let down. I have horrible judgment. I did this to myself. I broke my own heart. I am the worst kind of fool. They were right to call me stupid.

I am transforming, though. Becoming more like them. Where once I was soft, I am becoming hard. Once, I looked kindly on my fellow man, now I see through eyes that know what he is capable of. He is capable of hurting me. I lock doors behind me. I lock the bathroom door behind me when I shower. I carry my car keys between my fingers, ready to gouge out the eyes of any who dare confront me. I trust no one now. I don’t know if I ever will again.

When I found my husband’s pajama bottoms in Brunhilda’s bed, I let him know. He denied everything, of course. He denied knowing how they got there, what their presence implied. I asked him if he loved her and he laughed at me. He yelled. He got angry. He said he loved me, would never cheat on me, he was happy in his marriage. He refused to take a polygraph. He said he’d take three polygraphs. He said she meant nothing to him, less than nothing.

He never said he didn’t love her.

In the beginning, when I found the things I did, I would ask for answers. Everything I found would disappear. If I asked him about his online searches, his search bar would be cleared out. When I found his amazon.com searches, those got cleared out. When I found the bills and charges for the gifts he had given her, the bills disappeared. Gradually, I learned to keep my mouth shut. Still, his iPad disappeared. He no longer keeps any mail at the house. His spare set of keys is missing. The briefcase that he always kept in his car isn’t there anymore. He has stopped carrying his phone altogether. He says he doesn’t need these things, these things only lead to trouble. Ironically, he no longer trusts me.

My obsession with my phone has grown to the point where I feel anxious without it, wondering what I have missed, what I am still missing. I search my mobile browser endlessly, looking for a sign that things have ended between them for good.

My stomach turned when I learned how they really felt about me, when I learned of their contempt and growing revulsion for me. They made fun of everything I did, everything I said, everything I was. They had discussed even the most private, personal things about me, things that I had never even found the courage to discuss about myself. I was flayed, laid bare, and found wanting. I was decimated.

All this time, all the fun we had, all the love and affection and good times we had shared, was it all just a lie? Had they both despised me the whole time? Had they felt this contempt for me throughout all of it? Lied to me endlessly, and about everything?

Brunhilda didn’t know, but I had promised my husband once that I would never leave him. I had told him many times before that I was determined to make this marriage work, that I felt this was my last chance for happiness, and that I had meant every word of my wedding vows. If he asked me to leave though . . . I would go.

He has never asked me to leave. I don’t know that he ever will. The conversations have taken a sudden turn.

My phone tells me that my husband has decided to stay in his marriage, after all. He was wrong in choosing Brunhilda, he has a duty to stay. His family wouldn’t approve of what he was planning. She has angered and disappointed him by exposing their secret affair to me after she left town, hurting me so badly, leaving him here alone to deal with the fallout. He knows now that she could never be “the one”, that she is utterly heartless. She is not his friend. He is better off staying home, staying with me, the naïve, trusting fool who loves him.

My phone tells me that Brunhilda is coming back, is coming home to look into his eyes, to remind him of what he is missing, to remind him of the one he really loves and needs. Will he pick her up at the airport? He will.

I read in my mobile browser that over the past few months, living in Dallas, she has embraced everything country. She likes cowboys now. Her music tastes have changed. One day not long after reading this, I get into my side of my husband’s car to find the air vents have been turned away, the seat adjusted for longer legs. My husband turns on the radio and it is tuned to a country station. My husband doesn’t listen to country, but when I ask him why it is tuned there, he just laughs and changes the channel.

Now Brunhilda is the angry one. It is her turn to feel betrayed. My phone reads

“You never meant a word of it, did you

You never meant a single thing you said

You lied to me

You used me

She wants revenge, tear you apart

You have no idea what I’m capable of

You have no idea who you’re dealing with

You have no idea what lengths I will go to

She wants revenge, tear you apart”

A few nights later, I come home after work and pour my nightly cocktail. I decided I would sit on the porch in the afternoon air, and watch the birds come to our birdbath, the butterfly’s feast on the salvia, the armadillo snuffle along the ground in search of food. I would throw off the workday in my once-upon-a-time paradise and wait for the stranger who has become my husband.

I sit down in my chair on the patio and nearly fall out of it, nearly crack my head open on the travertine tiles of our pool surround. When I get up to investigate, I notice that the swivel rocker is wobbly, and I look beneath it to discover it has come unscrewed, the nuts and bolts lying on the ground below it. I think nothing of it. When Hub gets home shortly afterward, he is able to fix it easily.

Later that night, as I am preparing for bed, I look at my new, much flatter stomach in the bathroom mirror. I run my hands over myself, thinking how absurdly easy it was to lose this weight. I didn’t work for it, didn’t even realize it was coming off. Eating has simply become a chore, just another thing to do to get through the day.

The next morning I would wake up to find three long scratches cut into that much flatter stomach of mine, along with two small red bumps. This is all so familiar. This used to happen all the time, when Brunhilda was around. But she is gone now, right? She has moved away.

Immediately I grab my phone – but this time, I call my detective friend.

Todd Manning is a former star police detective who retired to be his own boss. He has been recommended to me by my former mentor and I trust him implicitly. When I tell him what’s happening to me, he doesn’t equivocate: Get out the house now, he tells me, right now! He has seen this sort of thing before. It sounds to him like someone is testing my wakefulness, seeing how far they can go without disturbing me. He tells me that the scratches and bumps sound like someone is trying to inject me with something. I need to leave now and not worry about my stuff. I can come back later with a police escort. I thank Todd and hang up.

I don’t leave, of course. Instead, I turn back to my phone.

It’s all there.

I find their searches for the sleeping pills, their questions and concerns about side effects, my dizziness. They have searched for other drugs which have the side effect of drowsiness, putting you out and under. The searches then become about looking for household items that could kill you, odorless, tasteless poisons that aren’t easily detectable. Searches for how to give another person an injection, a proper shot. And this

“I cut her sometimes”

The day after I find these scratches and bumps on my stomach, my husband would call me into our closet and ask me why I had moved our personal items and camera off the top shelf in the closet and then stacked them neatly in the middle of the closet floor. I hadn’t.

I know my husband can see the fear on my face now, can feel me trembling when he holds me to him. He looks frightened now, too. He calls the locksmith and later that day, has all the locks changed.

The next morning, I am surprised at how relieved I am. I’ve gotten through the night with no incidents. I sit sipping my coffee alone in the dark on the patio, and hear something scuffling through the leaves on the side of the house. After living here for a while, you begin to learn the difference between the sounds of the squirrels and the armadillos, the raccoons and the cats. They all have their own way of moving through the leaves and brush of our wooded acreage. This sound is different, though. This is the sound of an animal with a long stride - a human being. I slowly get up and begin moving back toward the house, peering back through the darkness to see who is out there. I hear someone running toward the patio door, just as I bolt the house door closed. The house is very dark, but I tear off blindly toward the bedroom where my husband lies, still sleeping. He wakes with a start when I jump on the bed, hysterical now. He is immediately calm, hugs me to him, tells me that I shouldn’t be scared, that he will protect me. He gets up and throws on pants, goes outside with a flashlight, only to find an armadillo and a few squirrels lurking in the bushes. But I know there was someone out there. My husband does, too. That evening, my phone reads

“I had the locks changed on all the doors today”

If you hurt her, I’ll kill you

If you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down”

The tide has turned. My husband defends me now. Finally, he shows his true colors.

But I have begun to notice that there is a new, unfamiliar voice on my phone browser now, clamoring for attention, insistent.

“I’ve watched you for two months now

I watched you change

I don’t think you’re fat at all

I think you’re actually rather beautiful

I don’t really want to do this job now

I don’t like to kill beautiful things”

Something tells me I am being introduced to Brunhilda’s friend, the former CIA assassin, who just happens to owe her money.

Stay tuned for Chapter Eleven: Playing Cat and Mouse When You’re the Cheese