Chapter 2: Shit Happens

I haven't always been like this, you know. I used to be a nice guy. I had a nice job and a nice house in the suburbs and a nice wife and two nice kids and two nice cars; all that perfect family shit. I worked in the "Big Smoke", aka Toronto. I had a pretty good office with a window that had a partial view of the lake and a private parking spot. I worked for Primexal, a national electrical hardware manufacturer and I was Product Development Manager. It was decent job that usually required us to find new developments at our competitors and make our own version of them. I think we spent about fifty cents on our own ideas and god knows how many millions on stealing other people's.

My name is Geoffrey Matheson and my wife is, or was, Joyce Matheson. We have two kids. Rick is 28 and has a wife and three kids of his own and last I heard, he was in Europe somewhere working for an engineering outfit in the oil and gas pipeline business. Kirsten is 24 and is still single, but living with some fuckup in a hippy commune somewhere in B.C. I haven't talked to her in about a year. I'm kind of what they call estranged from the kids. But that's not what caused me to become what I am today. What caused that happened on a Sunday afternoon two years and four months ago.

My wife had gone back to work several years ago when the kids were old enough to look after themselves and she wanted something more to do than vacuum and laundry. I couldn't complain. It would bring some more income into the house and we could use it for luxuries like vacations or maybe even a cottage near Georgian Bay. She had done very well with an insurance outfit and had risen to middle management and I was quite impressed with how far she had come in a fairly short period.

One day, she came home from work and said the company was sending her and about a dozen of her other female managers to a retreat for a week. She said it was one of those touchy-feely self actualization things that big companies with too much money do to make sure they look like they are politically correct. A fuckin' waste of time I thought, but I nodded my head and said all the right things and I could tell she was looking forward to it, so what the hell, let 'em spend their money if that's what they think will make them look good.

She left on Monday morning and was due back on Sunday afternoon. She and two of her fellow office friends had taken her car to somewhere north of Barrie to a retreat or a resort; I wasn't clear on which. She left a phone number for emergencies, but nothing came up that I couldn't handle, so I never needed it. Sunday afternoon I was in the basement tinkering with an old Sunbeam toaster that I was hoping I could resurrect when I heard the garage door go up. I tidied up the bench, turned off the light and headed upstairs.

When I got there, Joyce wasn't in the kitchen and as I turned up the hall, she came out of the back bedroom, still wearing her sneakers. She never wore sneakers in the house.

"Hi. How was the retreat?" I asked walking toward her to embrace her. Unexpectedly, she held out her hands to ward me off and I noticed she was as white as a sheet.

"Joyce... what's wrong. You look terrible." I said with a knot in my stomach.

"Geoff... we have to talk. Let's go into the kitchen. I need a glass of water." she said in a serious voice, but at no time looking right at me.

"Joyce... are you all right? What's the trouble?" I was getting quite worried because I had never seen her like this before.

Joyce poured herself a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table, still not looking at me. I sat down opposite to her and waited for her to tell me what she obviously wanted to tell me.

"Geoff... something happened to me this week. Something very important. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it has changed my life." she began slowly.

"Joyce..." She stopped me before I got started.

"Geoff... please let me do this. Please don't interrupt. It's hard enough to explain it to myself much less to you." She was speaking in a low and obviously nervous tone. I knew immediately that this wasn't going to be good news.

"Geoff, I learned that I need to change my life if I want to be someone that I'm happy with. If I want to be a whole person. I can't do that the way my life is now. I have to make a complete break from that." She paused and then for the first time, she looked directly at me. "Geoff, I want a divorce. I need a divorce. I have to make a clean break."

"What?" I must have raised my voice because she jumped and he eyes went wide. She looked frightened.

"What the hell are talking about Joyce? A divorce? Why? What possible reason could you have for wanting a divorce?" I said with an intense interest in her answer.

"I don't think you'll understand it, Geoff. I'm sure you won't. It isn't anything you did or didn't do. It's about me. It's about me trying to be a more complete person." At least she was looking at me now.

"What the hell does that mean? Have you got a boyfriend or some guy on the side? Have you?" I demanded.