Three is a crowd: Shouldn’t David be celebrating right about now?

(Continued from last issue)

David and Diane have been married for years; then there is Julie, the young secretary whose axis collides with the couple’s in ways none of them saw coming.

JULIE

I had already fallen asleep when I was awoken by a sound at the front door.

Thinking someone was trying to break in, I jerked up in bed, heart pounding, furiously trying to remember if I had locked the bedroom door, too frozen in fear to get up and check.

Seconds ticked by, and then there was that sound again, but I realized it was not the sound of someone breaking in but, rather, the sound of a key in the lock. Only one other person had a key to the apartment – David, and now more puzzled than scared, I was able to get out of bed, and quietly moved to the bedroom door.

Turns out I had not locked it after all, and opening it, I slowly peered round it, and there was David, taking off his shoes. Careful not to wake Junior, I quickly stepped into the hallway, then hurried over to him.

“David! You almost gave me a heart attack! What happened?” I asked in concern, alarmed at his disheveled appearance, and the vacant look in his eyes that I could see now that I was next to him.

“Diane asked for a divorce,” he answered simply, his voice dead, with no emotion.

“What!” I exclaimed, and then scared of sounding overly delighted, quickly changed my tone, and went on with a forced slight reprimand.

“I told you not to fight with her.”

“I didn’t fight with her; I told her to stay away from you and the site, and she asked for a divorce,” he shrugged.

I was sure there was a lot more to the story, but now was not the time to push for details.

“Would you like a drink?” I quietly offered instead. For the first time since he had arrived, his expression relaxed, and he smiled at me softly.

“Thanks; a beer would be nice if we’ve got one,” he nodded.

“We do,” I answered, and getting up from the arm rest of the chair I had perched on, headed to the kitchen.

DAVID

Even though things between us were pretty bad, Diane asking for a divorce had thrown me for a loop, and unsure of how to respond, I had decided to step away from the situation, and going back to the apartment had felt like the most natural thing to do.

One would have thought that with the rocky state of our marriage, I would not be surprised by Diane’s request, and that with how great things were between Julie and I, I would be happy, even relieved by it; but I was not.

Diane was not just my wife, she was the mother of my children, the daughter-in-law of my parents, her parents were my in-laws, and happy, or not, altogether, we were a family.

A divorce was not just a dissolution of our marriage, it was also an unweaving of all those other bonds too, and I did not know how to do that – or if I even wanted to.

Besides, there was a certain status and position that came with being a ‘married’, or ‘family’ man; society, and even business associates and clients, tended to view married men as being mature, responsible, and reliable, and as a result, afforded them a certain degree of respect that I had grown accustomed to commanding, and was not prepared to give up.

However, it was not just these superficial aspects of a divorce that bothered me, the truth was far simpler, but ran a lot deeper; I was upset that Diane had asked for a divorce, simply because I had thought that she would always want to be married to me.

True, I had not exactly been a model husband of late, but I had genuinely believed that in spite of that, being my wife, raising our children together, and being part of our family, mattered more to her than the problems of our marriage, and were enough to make her want to stay married to me.

The realization that they didn’t, stung, and in a twisted way, hurt my pride, not just as a husband, but as a man.

Of course, I had Julie, and she was great, and everything I wanted in a woman, but she was not my wife, and crude as it might sound, I knew I would always have her – the way I had thought I would always have Diane. Maybe I was being selfish, maybe I just wanted it all.

DIANE

David did not return until the wee hours of the next morning, just in time to change for work, and take the children to school as usual.

He did not say anything to me when he arrived, and I focused on getting the children ready, and did not speak to him either.

That was probably for the best, as I had tossed and turned for the rest of the previous night after he had left, thinking of all the things I had to say to him, and I was scared that if I started to say them now, I would never stop.

For starters, I would ask him at what point our marital vows had started to mean so little to him? So much for ‘forsaking all others’! I thought to myself wryly. Next, I would ask how he could put this whore, with no class or status, above me and our family?

So, she had given him a son? Big deal; I had given him a son and two daughters, long before she had had their bastard! And how about the rest of our families? What about the promises he had made to my father when he asked for my hand in marriage?

How about those vows? How about the home and family we had built together over all these years; how could he so easily walk away from all of that?

The thought of my parents only caused me more stress; I had no doubt that even though it was David who had not just fooled around, but had had a child outside our marriage, and had now gone on to put his whore in charge of his biggest project to date – a project that I was effectively banned from – they would still blame me for the collapse of our marriage, especially once they heard that it was me who had asked for a divorce – not that David had put up any objection.

I wish he had; if only he had walked in that morning, said he was sorry, promised to do better, and asked me to change my mind, I would have told him I already had, and that I had spoken in the heat of the moment and did not really mean it.

But he did not, and so I did not, and in the end, it was just another thing left unsaid.

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