Collateral Damage Pt. 02

With a deliberate casualness I opened the envelope and pulled out half a dozen sheets of paper. They were photographs, printed off a digital camera or cell phone, taken in what appeared to be a massage room in a gym. There, in all his arrogant glory was Devin Tinian, sweaty and smug and smiling into the camera, as he took his latest conquest from behind.

But, it wasn't Devin that caught my attention. It was the woman, situated in front and under him while leaning against a massage table, her elbows holding her up a half foot off the surface. She was naked, wearing only a thin film of sweat, her breasts hanging down freely, partially obscured by her arms and her long brown hair tied in a ponytail falling off to one side of her perfectly recognizable face. Her eyes were closed and she wore an inscrutable expression, a cross between a grimace and a sad smile and the vision of her struck me like a knife to the chest.

It was Rosie.

--@--

I honestly don't remember much of what happened for quite some time after I'd seen the pictures. I know I didn't say anything immediately and I do remember Teri looking at me triumphantly for a moment and then becoming suddenly nervous when she saw my expression. I know she abruptly gathered up her things and left quickly after that, leaving me to sit, not moving or thinking or, perhaps, not even breathing much for quite some time, staring numbly at the offending photos.

But, I don't remember picking up the prints, leaving the office, walking to my car or even the drive home. I have no idea if I went straight home or not. If someone had told me I'd run a dozen red lights or that I'd stopped at an intersection for a half hour I'd have believed them.

My recollections only started again when I found myself sitting in my car, parked in my driveway nearly 2 hours after Teri had dumped the pictures on me. My fists and my teeth were clenched tight and my eyes were stinging and unfocused, apparently from unnoticed tears. I numbly got out of the car and made it to the house and through the front door, staggering like a zombie though the entry hall to our living room couch. I flopped on the couch and stared at the large grandfather clock that was ticking out the only noise in the otherwise silent room. I felt like my family, my marriage and my happiness had all been given a death sentence, and I was just waiting for the execution.

Time ticked by-it could have been a few minutes or even a few hours-until Rosie came home with the boys, who, thankfully, ran out to play without noticing that I was home.

Rosie normally came home with a lot of energy, but she'd talked about a rough time at work lately, and hadn't been in a very good mood, so it wasn't a surprise that she didn't call out for me in her usual excited tones . Instead, she entered the house quietly, slowly and I could barely make out the sounds of her opening the closet door to put her coat away and hear her walk to the den where my computer was set up, evidently looking for me. I heard her call my name softly and then a little louder but I didn't answer, unsure if I even wanted to talk to her at this point. She checked the bedroom and knocked on the door of the bathroom, still calling out my name without result until she came into the living room and finally noticed me, lying with eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Grant? Are you ok?"

I still didn't answer and she approached me quickly and her maternal fever-checking-reflex took over as she put her hand to my head. Her touch somehow brought her betrayal into clear focus to me and I roughly pushed her hand away as I sat up, looking at her harshly.

"Don't touch me Rosie."

She fell back a few steps as her mouth fell open and her eyes narrowed in puzzlement and concern. She looked at me for a few moments, apparently too surprised or worried to ask any questions. I looked back, quietly fuming, nostrils flaring, trying my best to burn a whole in her forehead with my gaze. It must have been clear I wasn't going to speak and, so, finally her mouth started to move.

"What...what's wrong Grant? Are you...are you ok?"

I answered with a bitter, angry, hiss, my mouth barely opening, my teeth clenched together.

"No, Rosie I'm not ok. I'm not ok at all and I probably never will be."

She moved toward me again, her arms starting to open as if to give me a hug when I raised my hand and stopped her short with another declaration.

"I said don't touch me Rosie. I don't want you ever touching me again."

Her eyes started to well up with tears and she began to nervously shake her head. I wasn't sure, but I think it was that moment that she began to worry that somehow I knew about her affair.

"Grant...Grant I'm sorry..."

I snorted bitterly, sarcastically, shaking my head in disbelief while she continued on.

"...sorry for whatever...whatever I've done to make you so...so angry and upset. What...what have I...what have I done?"

With abrupt, angry movements, I lifted the manila folder and reached inside, pulling out several of the photographs.

"I think you know what you've done." I said as I balled up the first copy and threw it at her, striking her midsection before falling to the floor. She looked down at the wad of paper with fear in her eyes and then more tears. She didn't move to pick it up, looking at it fearfully, like it was a poisonous snake.

"You're just a lying, cheating bitch..." Another wad, another throw, this time striking her in the chest. "...who couldn't keep her legs closed..." A wad to the face. "...for the first guy that made the moves on her."

Her look had turned into one of abject horror, sorrow and disbelief, tears running down her face while her chin wrinkled up with her already swollen lips pressed together. Somehow her discomfort made me even angrier and I picked up the last photo, one of Devin smiling at the camera , fully penetrated into Rosie from behind while she clenched the sheet on the massage table, her eyes shut and her expression, again, inscrutable. I stood and held the picture up, less than a foot from her face, spitting my words out like bullets.

"Or maybe he wasn't the first guy...maybe he was just the most recent one of many..."

Rosie screamed as she looked at the picture and fell to her knees, sobbing and choking.

"No...no...no...no...oh God...no..."

Looking at her, I felt a brief surge of compassion, but I fought off the urge to comfort her and easily replaced the tender feelings with the anger and disgust that her infidelity had created. I moved away from her and, without saying anything, walked purposefully to the bedroom, pulled down a suitcase and started throwing clothes into it.

When it was almost full, she appeared at the doorway, still crying, still only marginally coherent.

"Grant...please...Grant...no...please, no..."

I continued to pack wordlessly, filled the suitcase and an overnight bag and then brushed by her to gather a few things from the bathroom. She tried to reach for me, but I firmly pushed her away and she started sobbing even louder. Within a few minutes, I was at front door, getting my coat out of the closet before leaving. She'd followed me out and braced herself at the front door, blocking my exit.

I looked at her shaking my head slowly and bitterly spit out a single word.

"Move."

"No...please Grant...no...you can't do this..."

"Oh yes, Rosie, I most certainly can. I can do this just like you could cheat on me with that asshole."

She started babbling and I shouted over her.

"Grant...I'm sorry...I...I don't understand how I let it happen, I love you and I never intended..."

"You let it happen because you wanted to fuck someone other than your husband and you ended up fucking both of us."

"...to cheat on you...I was just trying...trying to comfort him and...and...and, things just got...out of hand."

We both paused a moment, breathing quickly and deeply. Her earnestness and dejection more than matched by my anger.

"Comfort him? That looked like a hell of a lot of very personal comfort you were giving him."

"Oh, please Grant...please...he was so, so very sad because of his wife, she'd passed away a few months ago and he was so sad and he told me I was the only one...the only one he could talk to. And...and I gave him a hug and then...then I don't know how I let it happen, but I didn't...I didn't plan on it."

"Wait...that asshole told you his wife just died?"

She looked at me, puzzled.

"Well, yes. She was the love of his life and she...she had some sort of cancer and she...she died very quickly and he...he...he couldn't..."

I laughed mirthlessly.

"God Rosie. You're not only a cheater, but you're dumb as fuck. I know the guy who screwed you, in fact, I work with him. His name is Devin Tinian and, just so you know, he nailed you so that bitch Teri Leigh could rub it in my face. He's never been married you dumb ass. He made all that shit up to get you to spread your legs and now you're just another notch on his conquest belt."

Rosie's mouth fell open and she was stood there, her arms limp to her sides, shaking her head slowly. She could only weakly get out another plea for me to stop as I pushed past her through the door and to my car.

--@--

That night was the worst of my life. I checked into a dingy motel, unpacked my bags and without pulling down the covers, collapsed headfirst onto the lumpy, musty smelling bed. My mind obsessively and chaotically played back the pictures of my wife with Devin and my body responded with extreme nausea and a deep chest pain that I recognized as a kind of anxiety reaction. I tried to sleep, but there was no chance that would come, and I spent the night torturing myself with Rosie's betrayal, literally going through most of the stages of grief like there's been a death, feeling denial and anger and even bargaining with God, but never, somehow, anything approaching acceptance.

By the next morning, a Saturday, I'd settled on anger and decided the first person to face it would be Devin. I wanted a piece of his flesh and I would have been happy to remove it with my own teeth.

I knew I couldn't assault him at work and I didn't want to break into his place, so I figured I'd have to get to him outside, maybe in his apartment's parking lot. I figured he'd be out on the town on Saturday night, so I bought a throw away cell phone, and called him around 10 o'clock, pretending to be a neighbor. I told him water was pouring out from under his door.

Within 30 minutes he barreled into the parking lot, driving a beaten up old Ford. He parked haphazardly and jumped out of his car, jogging across the lot to his apartment building. I was waiting by the main entrance and when he reached for the door, I moved quickly out of the shadows, grabbed his right wrist with one hand, his left shoulder with the other and spun him around so his back struck the wall with a thud. I let him see my face clearly for a second and then smashed my forehead into his mouth and hit him in the gut as hard as I could. He doubled over and went to the ground and I knelt by him and grabbed him by the hair to yank his head up while I snarled.

"You fucking little shit. You think you could tap my wife and I'd just laugh it off? MY WIFE?"

He was grunting in pain and he licked his bloody lips and started to talk.

"Look, man..."

His voice enraged me and slammed my knee into his face and pounded his ribs a couple of times. He grunted again, taking in air in agonizing gasps.

"Oh, God..."

"You think God is going to help a shit like you? I should probably just castrate you. Fucking put you out of business forever."

"Shit man, I didn't want to do I, but I had to. She was going to screw me over if I didn't."

I was about to hit him again, but that statement caught me a little by surprise. I took a knee beside him and caught his eye, trying to tell if he was lying.

"What do you mean she was going to screw you over? Are you talking about Teri? What?"

He looked up at me in the dim lamplight, dazed eyes barely focusing, a little rivulet of blood trickling down over his lips from his nose.

"Yes, that bitch Teri. Said she was going to have my job if I didn't play ball. She showed me some reports that talked about what a crappy worker I was and that she had it in her to make sure I wouldn't get any kind of employment anywhere. She even said she had some evidence that they'd found drugs in my locker."

"Did she?"

He looked a little sheepishly at me and shrugged his shoulders.

"It's possible."

"So you shit all over my marriage because you were afraid of her? Or was there something more? Did she offer you more ass, or what?"

He gave me an angry look.

"I fucking can't stand that bitch. In fact, I've been trying to figure out how to beat the shit out of her myself without getting pinched, but I know she'd nail me if I did. I'm pretty sure she'd nail you too if you tried to get even. She's a fucking schemer and the cunt's got all her bases covered."

I gave him a dubious look. He continued to talk, blood and spittle occasionally spraying from his mouth while he spoke.

"Look, man. I'm sorry about all this shit, but I didn't know what the hell to do. I've been trying to get the hell out of Illinois and I finally got a job lined up with a branch in San Diego and she was going to ruin it for me."

He stopped and wiped his mouth, looked at me again and his expression took on an element of anger in place of some of the fear.

"I'm sorry about your wife, I guess I didn't really think about what she was going to do with the pictures, but shit man, you totally fucked me over in the first place by telling Teri you knew I tapped her ass. Seriously man, as far as I can tell, you started this whole shit-storm. Maybe you should think about that before you pound on me, huh?"

I looked at him carefully and thought about what he said, reluctantly admitting to myself that he was right. If I hadn't tacitly threatened Teri about her tryst with Devin, she never would have used him to set up Rosie. I felt a sudden sense of extreme frustration and shame.

I reassessed Devin in light of what I'd just realized and considered his part in this whole farce. He wasn't really good or bad. He was just an amoral actor, a young kid that could fuck anyone he wanted, so he did. And if someone wanted to steer him in a certain direction, to bed a specific woman for whatever reason, he wasn't going to say no. Beating him up any more wasn't going to help me gain satisfaction. I needed a time machine for that.

I eyed him for a couple of moments more before speaking.

"All right, fine, I'm done, now, OK?"

He shrugged.

"So, I won't be expecting any more trouble from you since you're leaving town, right?"

He nodded numbly.

"You leaving right away?"

"As soon as I can." He answered with a hint of disgust. "I want out of this fucking asylum."

True to his word, less than a week later he'd quit work and I never saw him again and assumed he'd moved to California. As far as I know, he never told anybody that I beat him up. I think maybe he figured he deserved it, at least a little.

--@--

Within a week after leaving, I found an apartment near work and tried to settle in. I saw a lawyer and got a message through to Rosie that I was looking into a legal separation. She tried talking with me on and off for the first few days, calling me, texting me any number of times, but I aggressively avoided her. It wasn't just because I wanted her to suffer. I was having a tough time coping and I feared that the sound of her voice might make things worse, especially when the conversation was over.

But, I was desperate to see the boys and needed to get some more of my clothes so, eventually, I had do some basic communicating. When I finally called, I tried to keep things cold and professional, but the sound of her voice, vulnerable and soft, made my heart beat so hard I thought it would push through my chest. Somehow, through force of will, I managed to keep my voice and actions in check, arranging a visitation schedule for the boys and picking up my things without letting on too much that I was hurting. I barely spoke to her when I picked up my stuff and she just stood in the living room after sadly greeting me at the door, morose and silent, a study in dejection. I didn't take too long and I didn't dare linger because I wanted to keep my anger intact, undiluted by any feelings of compassion or love.

At work I never let on to anyone that Rosie and I were having problems and I avoided Teri at all costs. I'd thought long and hard about how I could get back at her, considering everything from violence to falsifying records to get her fired, but I knew that Devin was right when he said Teri was hoping that I'd retaliate and that she'd be prepared to fry me over any attempt to get even. After considering all the possibilities, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and opted to simply ignore her, which wasn't particularly easy given the sense of extreme frustration I felt. In the end, I was borderline successful, barely tolerating her smug smile and quite literally biting my tongue anytime I had to interact with her about anything.

--@--

I got the boys the first weekend after we sorted out the visitation schedule. I picked them up after school and brought them to my apartment and because it was new and different, they thought it was the greatest thing they'd seen, somehow making it out to be some sort of an upscale clubhouse than an actual second home. I wanted them to look forward to seeing me, so I didn't do much to dissuade them of that impression and told them we'd always try and have a lot of fun whenever they were over.

We went to a pizza place that night, rented a Disney movie and played some X-Box. The boys were all smiles and I had a great time until I was tucking them in and Sam, my 8 year old, asked me when I'd be coming home.

"Sam, I...uh...I am home." I stuttered out. "Your Mom and I, well, we've decided to live in two different places, so now you have two homes. Two places to stay."

Sam looked at me thoughtfully.

"Dad, I don't think Mom likes it this way."

"Well, bud, I'm not sure I like it this way either, but it sort of has to be like this. I have this place and I live here and your Mom has her place and she lives there and you and Tommy get to live in both places."

"I think it would be better if we all lived at both places. Can't you stay at home during the week and we could all come here to have fun on the weekends?"

I tried to explain to him that Rosie and I just couldn't live together any more, but the conversation kept moving in the kind of verbal circles innocent 8 year olds tend to construct out of the half truths and euphemisms adults feed them when they don't want to expose them to the ugly side of life. In the end, I had to tell him it was just something I wouldn't be able to explain completely, kissed him on the forehead and told him to get to sleep.

I went to bed that night thinking about how terribly unfair the mistakes parents make can be to their innocent children.

The next morning I was woken up by the doorbell followed by a loud knock. I pulled my robe on and stumbled through the hall to the living room, pausing in front of the door to ask who was there.

"Police officers, Mr. Simmons. We'd like to ask you some questions."

When the Police are at your door, a thousand things go through your mind. Did you pay remember to pay the parking tickets? Would they go this far to check out your cache of pirated DVDs? But I quickly dismissed these possibilities and decided their visit must be about the divorce, maybe a restraining order or something similar.

I cracked the door and peered outside and there stood two genuine looking cops, sporting neutral expressions, one on the short and pudgy side with his arms folded across his chest and a somewhat taller and more muscular one with his hands on his hips.