The Slightly Mad Cuckquean: Chapter Twelve

There is no escaping this. Each day begins and ends the same way. Two strangers living together, each unsure of the other, not quite able to trust, not quite able to let go. Waiting.

I remember how it used to be.

He sparked something in me with his writing, first. I was supposed to be the pro, but he was the one with the magic. He could write a love letter like you wouldn’t believe. He could crack you up with a sentence written just the right way. He could make you cry. He was a clever lad. We had a lovely first date.

While I raised my children alone, I didn’t date. There were too many potential child molesters, drunks, womanizers, what mama used to call “the riff-raff”. I waited patiently for the companion who would be at my side into my old age, believing like one of my friends did, that the love I was meant to have would come to me late in life. It did, and right on time, too. I love it when dreams come true, don’t you? Nightmares, not so much. But we’ll get to that later.

My son was 19, and had moved away to live near friends in another state. My daughter was about to graduate high school, but she had pretty much left home. She had school, a job, her license and a car, and an entourage of friends. Besides, her father had just moved back to town with his new family, so she was catching up with him, too. She was never home. I was ready to see what was out there in the world for me.

From the first date, I understood that Hub was an odd man. Odd to me, anyway, used as I was to being among marketers and salesmen, sometimes slick and sometimes sleazy. I had finally met what seemed to me a genuinely decent man. This was as far from a player as you could get. But he still loved women. Apparently, he found some of them irresistible.

If an easy woman is called a sl*t, what do we call an easy man? Why is there no derogatory term for that, other than “player”? Implying that it’s some sort of competitive sport, like curling, only you’re curling up in other beds indiscriminately, giving it away like a dollar whore. Rutting like a pig, just for the sake of rutting with a new and different piece of rump roast. Oh, the humanity! Yes, there should be a better name for easy men, men who cheapen themselves.

Hub is a reserved man most of the time, calm and quiet, yet he can get excited about things and talk for hours. He has a mesmerizing voice, deep and masculine. He accuses me of not listening to him often, but I sometimes lose track of what he’s saying only because I get lost in the music of how he says it. I compare his voice to our Corinthian bells that hang out back on the patio. These chimes are made of dark green aluminum tubes, long and heavy, and it takes a big wind to make them sound, but when they do, you can’t help but stop everything and just listen. No thinking, no talking, just listening. It is a soothing sound and beautiful to hear and my husband’s voice is like that. Brunhilda loved Hub’s voice, too. She told me so more than once. She would say it like a girl in a 50’s movie would say, “Gee, he’s dreamy”. Who does that? Brun did that.

Anyway, on that first date with the man I would marry, we went to one of my favorite Italian restaurants. The food is good, prices reasonable, service excellent. The ambience there is golden. I would save up for weeks in the early, lean days to go to that restaurant, and the kids loved the little balls of dough they would hand out instead of crayons. They would shape and decorate those balls of dough instead of climbing the walls like they wanted to, so it worked for us, and we always had a good time there, the three of us.

I had a great time with Hub there, too. He didn’t seem to feel a need to entertain me and I appreciated that more than I can say. He simply wanted to talk. He wanted to know me. I could tell he found me attractive and he could tell I was intrigued by him, too. He seemed comfortable with himself but was a little shy, too. Not at all overbearing – at the time. Later, I would learn about his iron will and quirkiness, but I would love him anyway.

For the first time in my adult life, I would let another person make the rules. I would give up the reins, just hand them over, and with a sigh of relief, too. For so long, I had to be so strong and responsible, acting as both mother and father to my children, working long hours just to bring home the bacon and popsicles. I had been successful, too, although it was scary the whole time. I thought it must be for men, too, but it seemed easier for them somehow. Maybe it’s a physiological difference between the genders, or maybe guys are just better actors.

My life with Hub in the lead was beautiful, easy and golden, full of joy and laughter and friends and work and family and travel and art, so many happy things. Brunhilda thought so, too, and decided she wanted it all.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Gaslight with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, you will know how I feel now with regard to Brunhilda and Hub. You would know why I call myself slightly mad, why I have begun to question my own sanity. There are times when I wonder if CIA will be my Joseph Cotton, if he has come to save me from the evil doppelgangers who have replaced my husband and friend, and who are trying to drive me insane. But no, CIA has a job to do, doesn’t he?

The thing is, I know what I have seen with my own eyes. I know what I have heard with my own ears, and I know what I believe to be true. All of these things that I’ve seen and heard, everything I suspect is true - is everything that Hub and Brunhilda adamantly deny is real. Never happened. Can you even imagine?

Take anyone you trust, take your own mother, for example. Let’s say, in preparing to cross a street together with your mother, a horrible car accident suddenly plays out right before your eyes. Let’s say there is smoke and the smell of gasoline and people are screaming, and there are dead and wounded bodies strewn across the street. You look to your mother, horrified, and say “I can’t believe that just happened.” Your mother turns to you, smiles sweetly, and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear. Nothing happened.”

Now imagine, you take her into the street to show her the wreckage, walk amongst the dead, the shredded metal, smell the blood, hear the screams – and your mother calmly steps over the bodies, covering her ears, still insisting that you are imagining things. Then, let’s say your dad comes along and tells you the same thing. Would that give you pause? Would you begin having doubts about yourself? Would you doubt them, would you doubt their sanity? Your own?

Would you ever be able to trust them again, trust yourself again?

I know it sounds insane, I knew it when I would try to explain to my small circle of friends what was happening to me. When I would tell them that my computers and phones had alternately revealed the tawdry details of my husband’s affair with my best friend, but also that they had drugged me, cut me, wanted to kill me, chickened out, and hired an indebted former assassin to do it, instead? Yes, I know how crazy it sounds.

What I couldn’t explain was why I believed what my computer and phone was telling me.

It’s all in the details, isn’t it?

The private details.

Now that my phone was telling me that my family might be in danger, I had decided to take action. The computer that someone had tried to hammer to death – no, Hub assures me that it wasn’t him, even though he was the only other person in the house. Or, was he? – is still alive, although long gone from the house. I have stored it at my workplace, where is sits hidden away, still plugged into a power source, its ruined screen safe from prying eyes, hammering hands. I contacted some of my old graphics artist buddies, asked them to lead me to a Mac guy, someone who knew his stuff.

Ray was recommended to me because he had made Macs his living, knew them inside and out. He owned a small shop in a strip mall, littered with computer husks and accouterment. He charged outrageous hourly rates, but he did indeed know his stuff. He was the one who explained to me about the software that was available now for computers and smartphones, software that would allow another to take control of your devices, hear every word you say within 50 feet, spew whatever information they wanted you to see or know, reveal to them every move you made, on either device. Big Brother, hearing and seeing every move you make.

I have asked Ray to take my computer and phone apart, find out what is in there, where it came from, whom it leads to. He will do his best for me, but it’s going to take time and money. I don’t care, because I am finally doing something to put an end to all this.

And just like that, everything transforms once again.

The pawn and prey has become the predator.

Stay Tuned for Chapter Thirteen: Talk to the Hand, It's Around My Husband's Gun