Chapter 6: Hard Times

I knew it was a mistake but I couldn't help myself. I emailed her at her old email address, assuming that she would have kept it for business continuity.

I wrote:

"Mary: Nicole and Peter just spilled the beans. Don't blame them. It was a heavy secret to keep and they did a good job for four months. I don't know that my opinion or concern means anything to you, but I'm sorry that things didn't work out between you and Richard. I know you and I know that even if you couldn't tell me, he meant something to you. You're not the sort of woman that would throw away a life for a momentary thrill.

Peter told me that he doesn't think you're happy. He's a pretty smart man - gets that from me, I guess. If he's right, I just wanted to tell you that you are welcome to email me – anytime - about anything. We've always been able to talk about anything.

We're not together, I've accepted that. We will have separate lives from this point on, but we were friends, as well as lovers and husband and wife. Despite everything that's happened, I still consider myself your friend. There are no strings or conditions. E-mail me if you want to talk about anything,

Hugh."

I never received a reply. I really didn't expect one. It was just something I felt I had to do.

Life went on. I went on "Plenty of Fish" because the idea of getting involved with someone from the bank or the banking community or someone I might have to rub shoulders with seemed less and less like a great idea. An online meeting place for singles seemed like a better idea. I could meet and date and flame out and not have to face unhappy, or disappointed or rejected women on a daily basis. It seemed like a perfect way of life.

I met some nice, intriguing women on the Fish market, as some called it. Some were desperate for husbands, some just wanted a great fuck after being told by their husbands or significant others that they were dogs in the bedroom.

I stayed away from the husband hunters, but I convinced a few ladies who might not have been as curvy or slender as they had been decades ago, that in the right hands they could still burn up the sheet, and there were a few ladies that never wound up in my bed, but became friends.

These were ladies I could talk to, exchange jokes online and go to the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Jacksonville for a local production of a Broadway play and maybe drinks later with no expectation of orgasms afterward.

Business went on as it always had, but there were disquieting rumbles on the national stage and the mortgage market and the homebuilding sector quivered as the first shocks of an approaching earthquake began to be felt. Something bad was coming.

Gail and Coffee, and wiser heads than mine, met and started hunkering down for the coming storm. Bad things were indeed coming, even if the majority of the banking industry and the business community continued to whistle past the graveyard, but Gail was as hard headed as her grandfather had ever been. She had learned at his knee and she was ready to do whatever was necessary to keep the Hunt brand alive for another generation.

Me, I was the hatchet man, the muscle. I closed banks on the bubble. I called in loans that were already dead but not buried, foreclosed, presided over the sale and liquidation of companies that either had always been bad ideas or had become bad ideas. I closed out investments and in every case went for cash over stock and other options.

I spent a lot of time closing weak banks, firing people and buying new banks, consolidating positions and firing people. I fired a lot of people that year. I told middle-aged men that their positions had become redundant and they would have to go out into a hostile world and make a new life for themselves. A few of them didn't make it past the day I had told them they were out. One dropped dead with a heart attack walking out of what had been his office. Two committed suicide in ways they thought might not invalidate large life insurance policies for their families. One guy got away with it, one didn't.

It was not a warm and fuzzy period, either in my personal life or business. However business, even the banking business, is not the dry ledgers and green eyeshade picture people on the outside have - it is kill or die, survival of the fittest, done wearing suits and ties. It is still nature, red in tooth and claw.

Another Christmas came and went, 2008; a new President, a new world in a lot of ways.

Peter asked me, "Is there anybody special in your life, Dad?"

"No, I've got a decent social life. There are ladies who are good friends. They make me laugh."

"Getting any action?"

"Enough.'

"Details?"

"Pervert."

"He is one, isn't he?" said Marlena with a smile as she came up behind Peter and rested her head against his chest. Then she grinned and said, "Thank God."

I just looked at my son and he looked back at me as he kissed the top of his wife's head and I felt better about the two of them. I thought he had gotten past the wound of his mother's infidelity and I was glad somebody had.

Nicole asked me the same question, more genteelly.

"Are you happy Dad? Is there anybody, special?"

"Yes and no. I have friends, I go out. I'm not alone. I've got my work, the people at the bank, a job that takes up about 60 hours of my week. It's not a bad life.

"Honestly?"

"Honestly. It's not as good as the life I had with your mother, but it's as good as a life can be without her. Really, I'm looking at 60, I'm not going to remarry, not raise any more kids. The real part of my life – you guys – is behind me. I'm ready to be a doting grandpa. Don't worry about me, Nicole. I'm alright."

She didn't say anything, but I could tell she wanted me to ask.

"How is your mother?"

"Not good."

"Physically?"

"Partly, she's lost weight. She looks older. She's never looked her age. She's starting to look her age."

"She's had a rough couple of years, baby."

"Rougher than you?"

"Maybe! Remember, I was the innocent party. Breaking somebody's heart, cheating on them, leading two lives, it can't be easy. Then we broke up. Then she broke up with her new guy and, has she had anybody in the year since then?"'

"She's gone on dates, I know that, but nobody serious."

There was a part of me that was happy hearing that. I wanted her to hurt but I put myself in her shoes. If it had been me ten years ago and I had been the one who'd cheated on her for nearly a year, and I'd had to face her and confess what I'd done, it probably would have killed me.

It's easy to be the innocent party. If all the blame and guilt and shame had been mine, especially if I still had any feeling for her, it would have torn me up. If she was human, she had to have guilt over what she had done to a man that loved her.

"I don't know what I can do, baby. I sent her an email awhile back, letting her know that I still considered us friends and that she could always talk to me. I never heard back from her."

"Is that true, Dad? Do you still think of her as a friend, after everything that's happened?"

"Yeah, we were always friends as well as lovers. There was never anybody else I could talk over anything with as easily as I could with her. I valued her advice, her intelligence. She could always make me laugh, no matter how bad the day had been. If we hadn't been married, hadn't been lovers, I think we would have been good friends. There was just something - we clicked. I don't know how to describe it better than that."

"Could you be her friend again, Dad?"

"She doesn't want my friendship, baby, or my love. It can't get any clearer than that."

"She needs a friend, Dad, she needs you. She will never tell you or let you know, but she's dying, dying inside. She's not the woman we've always known. Could you try to contact her, for me and Peter. I know it will be hard for you but, you can do anything.

You remember when I was little? You told me there would never be anything I could ask that you wouldn't do, and there was never anything I asked that you didn't do. I really thought that if I asked you to grab the moon and bring it to me, somehow you'd do it."

" ... and I would have, but this..."

I looked into her eyes and saw her mother and knew that I'd never be able to deny her anything, even when I knew it was impossible.

"I'll try to talk to her, Baby. I'll do my best."

I emailed her the next week and found that she'd changed her email address. It came back no such email address on her server. I got the number of the McDaniels' San Francisco office and called and asked to speak to Ms. Mary Meadows.

"Can I tell her who's calling, sir?"

"Hugh Davidson."

"Please hold."

After a LONG hold, the pleasant voice came back on the phone and said, "I'm sorry, Ms. Meadows is out of the office."

"Well, could I leave a message on her voice mail?"

Another long silence.

"I'm sorry sir, but her voice mail box is completely full."

"Well, could I leave a message with you?"

"I'm very sorry, but I have four calls holding. Could you call again later?"

She was unavailable 10 minutes after her office opened, 10 minutes before lunch, 30 minutes after lunch and a half hour before the close of business. Repeat this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Add to that her voice mail box was always full or on the fritz. Naturally they couldn't release her email address as it was contrary to company policy.

I tried for two weeks before, finally, a frazzled, once friendly, voice said, "I'm sorry you're having so many problems sir, but this is a business office. I hate to be rude so please excuse me, but your calling has become somewhat of a problem. We have people calling on business matters and we really can't afford to be besieged by personal calls for our staff."

"How do you know it's personal? I've never told you why I'm calling. It could be business."

After another long silence, "I'm so sorry, sir, but you're putting me in a very ... awkward ... position. Please?"

I knew I was. She was just a secretary/receptionist, following her boss' orders, which were to shut me out completely. Mary wouldn't give an inch, wouldn't even let me explain why I was calling. I remembered what she had told Matt Henry, no contact, no messages. She didn't even want to breath the same air that I was breathing. She didn't want to be in the same city.

I could have flown to San Francisco and walked into the front door of the main McDaniels office, but I knew I'd never get past the phalanx of secretaries, staffers and security she would throw up to ward me off. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. It took a day to reach critical mass.

It wasn't enough that she had destroyed my world, broken my heart, left me alone in the moonlight with ghosts and shadows while she first fucked Richard Kelly and then her unknown boyfriends. She couldn't even show the common decency to acknowledge my existence. It was as if, for her, I had already died.

So the next day, amidst my anger and distress, for just a few minutes I let out the demons. I emailed a message to the general communications URL for the McDaniels San Francisco office. Right then I didn't care how many secretaries, flunkies or co-workers saw it.

"Ms. Meadows – Mary, or, should I say, You Bitch! This is your ex-husband, the man who loved and cherished you for 36 years before you decided to turn into a slut and fuck some younger man. In case you've forgotten, I am the man who never cheated on you.

I apologize for trying to call and talk to you. Obviously the thought of hearing my voice is so distasteful that you bullied a receptionist to lie to me repeatedly. You didn't have the simple decency to come on the phone yourself and tell me you didn't want to talk to me.

Why am I surprised? That you have no decency should not have come as a surprise. I made myself believe that you were a decent woman for 36 years, but that was always a lie, wasn't it? A lie because you have always been a cheating slut. I just never let myself see it.

I was too blinded by love, which I'm sure you don't understand because I am certain that you have never had a moment's love for me in all our years together.

I look back and remember that you belonged to another man when you sucked my dick and let me fuck you. You were cheating on a man you had planned to marry. Because you were cheating with me, I made myself believe it was simply an overwhelming passion that led you to my bed, but our marriage started with an act of betrayal on your part.

I assume, am fairly certain, being the cold blooded bitch that you are that you made a conscious decision that you'd have a better, more profitable life with me than your former fiancé. You knew I came from money and you made a bet that riding my coattails would lead you to a comfortable life, which it did, for more than 30 years. There was never anything you wanted that I didn't give you willingly. I gave you two children you loved, unless you were lying about that too.

Looking back, I can't help but wonder if Richard Kelly was the first man you sucked and fucked while pretending to be my loving wife. I was such an idiot. I knew you were gone so much of the time, that you were a sexual dynamo, and I really believed that you were celibate all those long nights you spent away from me.

Now I really do believe, and this isn't just anger and spite, that you were cheating on me for so many years. I think your story of resisting Richard for months was bullshit. I think that very first night you sucked his dick and let him have what you had promised to me alone.

I think you are a liar and a cheat. I think you are a selfish, cold-hearted bitch, in every sense of that word. Looking back, even if it had cost me Peter and Nicole, I wish that you had decided that your Harvard fiancée was a better long term bet than me. I wish you had never pretended to fall in love with me. I wish that I had had the chance to meet a loving, kind and true woman to make my wife. I wish I had not wasted the larger portion of my life being devoted to a woman who existed only in my imagination.