Chapter 4

Billy let slip that Theresa was in contact with Ellen, and that she was okay. I had started back to work, needing to unsnarl the mess that had resulted from me staying home and doing absolutely nothing. I had gone over to Norwich to see whether I was over my strange attraction to Cindy, and it seemed like I was. When I told her that my wife had found out about our little trip to New York, Cindy seemed genuinely sorry about it. I was sitting at home one evening about two weeks after Ellen left when I got a phone call from her father, asking me if it would be okay for him to come over and pick up Ellen's car and purse and some of her things. I told him it would be all right and he said he'd come right over. Tom and his wife came over and Mrs. DePaul got Ellen's purse and car keys and drove off without saying a word to me.

"I don't want to seem like I'm lecturing Jackie, but you sure make my life more difficult when you live down to Flo's expectations of you. My wife can be irritating enough without me having to listen all day, every day, to her reciting chapter and verse about what a big mistake I made in allowing you and Ellen to develop your relationship."

"I'm sorry too Tom. I don't envy you a bit. It's a sorry mess I've gotten us all into and I'm regretting it more every day. Please tell Ellen that I'd rather she come over and shoot me just like she promised. I deserve it, and she'd be doing me a favor by putting me out of my misery. Tell her if she doesn't hurry up and do it, I might just do it myself." He looked at me, probably trying to see if I was serious about shooting myself or not. I had really thought about doing it. I felt bad about Joan, and about doing such a dumb thing, and getting caught, and about my mother's reaction to my infidelity. I had always promised myself that I'd be so different than my father, and I was as bad, if not worse than he was. One of the things that kept me from doing it was that it felt like a cowardly thing for me to do. I was still smarting about some of my father's comments in the past over my decision to not volunteer for the military service. Tom had packed up some of Ellen's things, and he stopped and gave me a pat on the shoulder on his way out with her bag.

"Jackie, things often seem worse than they are. You should just hold tight and let Ellen work through her pain and anger. If she wasn't in love with you, I don't think she'd have gotten this upset. I doubt that she'll let you off easy, but I expect she'll give you some way to wiggle out of your predicament. You hang in there and leave the punishing to your wife. They're the experts at it anyway."

Ellen spent over $7,000.00 from our checking account over the next month. I was getting calls from the bank and having to authorize the transfer over of funds from other accounts every couple days to keep the checking account solvent. My MasterCharge bill came in and it totaled another $3,000.00, all charged in a two week period, mostly in New York City. I paid it off and tried to figure out just how far I'd allow her to take it. The money wasn't as important to me as I'd have thought it would be. It hurt, but not so bad that I thought it was unfair punishment.

I had Ray get one of his real estate lady friends to put up a for sale sign on our house, and pretend that it was on the market. I knew that Ellen loved the house, but I was starting to think that I didn't want to live there anymore. I wanted to see if she'd react to the sign going up. After another week without hearing from her, I packed some of my things and rented a room over by Billy's farm. I called Tom and told him I was moving out of the house and that Ellen could either move back in until it sold, or else let it stay empty. I told him I was leaving it unlocked and my keys would be on the living room coffee table. I purposely didn't tell him where I'd be staying, or give him any way to get in touch with me. I had put in a change of address at the post office that would forward all my mail to Mr. Bennett's office.

I let Ray and Billy know where I was staying, but only after they promised they wouldn't give out the information. It was easier for me just living in one room. It was an impersonal and neutral territory for me, with nothing there to remind me of how I'd screwed everything up. I'd get up every morning and take care of the things that needed tending to. I ate out every day and had my laundry done at a little Chinese laundry less than a mile from my rooming house.

Billy was keeping me filled in with some of the family stuff. I didn't ask, but he kept me up to date on my parents, and Janos and Annie and their kids. I spoke to Ray about every other day on the telephone. Lenny was another one that I saw pretty often. He was starting to have a lot of pain with arthritis in his hands and back troubles. We were all worried about him because he was still a young man with three little children and a wife to support. The thing about Lenny was that he always stayed sweet and helpful. He would never think to take sides against someone, no matter how wrong they were. He was aware of what I'd done, but he always tried to keep me cheered up and hopeful about how things would work out in the end. He asked me several times if I was all right for money. I had no doubt that he'd have loaned me whatever he had if I'd asked.

I was over at Billy's one morning, getting a load for my truck, when I could have sworn I saw Ellen watching me from Theresa's big kitchen window. I wanted so much to run right into the house and see her up close, but my every instinct told me not to do it. Driving away from Billy's ten minutes later, my hands were shaking so bad I had to pull the truck over until I'd calmed down enough to be able to drive safely. In the time that Ellen and I had been apart, I'd probably lost twenty pounds or more. My face was getting gaunt, and my pallor was turning gray. I knew I looked sick or something.

I talked to Billy the next day and he confirmed that Ellen had been at his house the day before. He said that Theresa had called her to come over and see how bad I was looking. It seemed, after talking with Billy, that people were starting to worry that I wasn't taking care of myself. They thought I wasn't eating enough, or getting as much rest as I needed. They were right, but it was mostly because I wasn't hungry and because I had too much on my mind to just fall asleep like I used to do.

I was up in New Haven, finishing up a delivery, when I stopped off to get a milkshake. Before leaving the restaurant, I went in to use their restroom. As I was taking a leak, I happened to look down and noticed that I was pissing something that looked a lot like blood. I'm no doctor, but I knew that wasn't very good. I drove myself over to a hospital and went into the emergency room to talk to someone about it. While I was waiting to be seen, I started getting these sharp pains in my lower back, on my left side. They were intense, and started coming in waves until I must have feinted or something. The next thing I remember, I'm waking up and a nurse is telling me that they had removed my left kidney. She said it was something like hydro-nephritis, or nephrosis, and said it looked like it had been congenital. Apparently, my kidney had just burst at some point while I was sitting in the waiting room. She told me that I was lucky to be alive.

When I got the medical bill, I wasn't sure about how lucky I'd really been. It came to almost $63,000.00, and I was self insured. In one fell swoop, almost half my savings were wiped out. I wound up spending a total of ten days in the hospital, with them running tests to make sure that my other kidney was functioning smoothly. My doctor told me that my other kidney was enlarged to twice the normal size. He told me that this was normal and probably meant it had been doing all or most of the kidney functioning since I was a baby. He said I had a normal life expectancy, if I took reasonable care of myself, and didn't over stress the remaining kidney.

With the operation, I'd lost another forty five pounds, and weighed one hundred and forty three pounds. I was still about six feet four, so you can imagine how thin I'd become. I had gotten a chance to phone Billy after my third day in the hospital. He called my parents and they drove up to see me with Annie and Ray the next day. My mother took one look at me laying in my hospital bed and broke out crying. She was a nurse, and used to seeing people in bad shape. Her crying like that wasn't cheering me up at all.

I'd been in the hospital for a week, and was anxious to get released and to get back to work. I was in a kind of mini shock from the costs of my stay there. A nurse brought me one of those portable phones on a cart that they plug into the wall near your bed. She plugged it in and talked to the operator and had my call transferred to that phone. It was Ellen.

"Jackie?"

"Hello." I recognized her voice right off. Usually with long distance calls that wasn't so easy to do. "Ellen?"

"Your mother told me to call you. She said you were in pretty bad shape. Is that true? Are you going to die?"

"Shit, I hope not. For the kind of money they're charging me, I'd be really pissed if I died after paying so much. They took out a kidney and now they're just running some tests on the other one. As far as they told me, it seems to be working pretty good. I'm supposed to be getting released in a few more days."

"Your mother told me you really look terrible. She says you weigh like a hundred pounds now. She says that I'm to blame."

"That's not true. I'm to blame. It was congenital, so maybe her and my dad are to blame too. Bad genes or something. Besides, I weigh like one fifty now and the doctor says I'll gain the weight right back in the next couple of months. Mom is just trying to meddle in our problems is all. She is upset about what I did. Did she tell you she punched me and knocked me down?"

"No, she didn't tell me, but Theresa did. You deserved it too. And a lot worse. I saw you right before you got sick, and I knew something was the matter with you. You looked so skinny and pathetic. I almost started feeling sorry for you."

"There's no need. I feel sorry enough for me all by myself. I can't even start to tell you how sorry I feel Ellen. For what I did. I wish I hadn't, but I did. Look, I have to go. Thanks for calling me. You take care of yourself, goodbye." I put down the phone and wished that she'd never called me. Just hearing her voice was painful to me. Somewhere in there was the pain of Joan's death while I was out cheating on Ellen. Mostly though it was hearing Ellen's voice and realizing what I had lost by my own stupidity and selfishness. I didn't tell her that I loved her because she always told me that our actions speak louder than our words. My actions spoke volumes about my self centeredness, not about any love.