Chapter 4

The Cousin/Best Friend

I know it is the cliché of all cliches, but it became a cliché because it happens so often. I came home from work early one night and found out the truth about the woman I had married. I normally didn't get home from work until one in the morning, but on that particular night I had cut my arm pretty bad while trying to solve a problem with one of the stamping machines. I had gone to the clinic and they put four stitches in my arm, gave me some pain pills and told me to go home.

It was ten after eight when I got to the house and pulled into the drive. I saw my cousin Herb's car parked out front on the street, but I didn't think anything of it. Besides being my cousin Herb was also my best friend and had been since we were ten. Herb was always at the house. He and Helen liked each other and got along well and I knew that on a lot of nights when he didn't have a date or was at loose ends he would drop by the house and keep Helen and the girls company.

He played games with the girls and after they were packed off to bed he and Helen would play cribbage or gin until I came home. Thinking of the girls made me smile. I usually didn't get to put them to bed except on weekends and sitting with them and reading their favorite stories to them until they fell asleep was to me one of life's little pleasures.

I walked into the house and found all three girls sitting in front of the TV set. Mary was the first one to see me and she jumped up off the couch and ran to me. "Daddy, daddy, you're home." Normally I would have picked her up and swung her around, but with four stitches in the arm I didn't think that would be a good thing so I set her down and gave her a hug with my good arm. By then the other two had noticed me and came running over. After a minute of hugs and kisses I asked:

"Where's your mom and Uncle Herb?"

"In the back playing."

I took that to mean they were in the kitchen playing cards. I let the girls go back to the TV and I headed for the back of the house where the kitchen was. When I got there I found it was empty and that left me a little confused. The house was a single story and didn't have a basement or a garage and I'd walked through the dining room on my way to the kitchen so all that was left were the three bedrooms. Why in the hell would Helen and Herb be there? I went back into the dining room and turned left to go down the hall that led to the bedrooms and I noticed that the doors to the girl's bedrooms were open and the door to my bedroom was closed.

It still hadn't occurred to me to think bad thoughts, why would it? My loving wife and my best friend Herb? Why would I think bad thoughts about them? I checked both of the girl's bedrooms and no one was so I went to my bedroom. My hand was on the doorknob when I heard the faint, "Oh god yes, fuck me." I leaned forward and put my ear against the door and heard, "Harder damn it, fuck me harder."

I might have been a loving and trusting husband up to that point, but I wasn't a stupid one and I wasn't going to go into denial and try to tell myself that it was something other than what it seemed to be and that there was a perfectly logical explanation for what I'd just heard. My heart suddenly went cold as an iceberg and I stepped back from the door. I was going to kick the damn thing in and then I was going to go in there and do some hurting. My rage was overcome by a small voice in the back of my head that was saying:

"Your girls, don't upset the girls" and that cut through the rage like a sharp knife and I turned and went back to the living room. I told the girls it was bedtime and Marlene (age 3) and Nancy (4) got off the couch and I walked them to their room. Mary, being the oldest at five, a fact that she never let the other two forget, had her own bedroom and also had the privilege of staying up until the other two were put to bed.

I tucked the two girls in and then read to them until they started nodding off and then I went and got Mary. As I tucked her in I asked:

"Do mom and Herb play a lot?"

"All the time. Whenever he is here."

"Is he here a lot?"

"Almost every night."

I read to her until she fell asleep and then I went back to my bedroom and put my ear to the door. They were still at it. "Yes baby, oh yes, hard, just like that, hard."

I went out to the kitchen, got myself a beer and sat down to nurse it. I wanted to give the girls plenty of time to fall asleep before I went after Herb and Helen. I finished the beer and got up to get another, but before I got to the fridge I was grabbed by what I can only call morbid curiosity. I moved down the hall and put my ear against the door again.

"Jesus Helen, you have a fantastic mouth on you. That's it baby, suck it, get it hard."

For some strange reason that even now, thirty years later, I don't understand that pissed me off more than the fact they were fucking. As I listened to what was going on in what used to be my bedroom I wondered what I had done wrong to cause this to happen. At that point in time I knew nothing of what else had been going on over the past seven years and I thought the thing with Herb was the first time. I wracked my brain trying to think of what I could possibly have done to cause her to do what she was doing and I wondered what I could do - what it would take - to make things right between us.

I stood there in the hallway outside my bedroom door and was actually working on taking the blame before a voice in the back of my head snarled, "Dipshit!" at me and brought me back to reality. The reality was that Helen was fucking another man and it didn't matter if she was doing it because I did something to piss her off. It was still wrong! And that she was doing it with our children just down the hall was unforgivable.