The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund (9 page)

I thought of my childhood friend Natasha in Boston who had gone through this, but she had no kids. I had baggage. Not just baggage, Vuitton trunks of baggage: what will probably be a messy divorce, a kid, and the clichéd anger of a woman scorned. I opened my e-mail account and looked back to find Natasha's e-mail detailing her meltdown. A choice excerpt:

“It's like they say, Holly: Infidelity isn't the cause of a split, it's a symptom something is wrong.”

Of course all I could think of was
When Harry Met Sally
and Billy Crystal's response to the same line: “Yeah, well, that symptom is fucking my wife.” I had no idea what was wrong with our marriage. We had occasional sexual dry spells compared to how we used to be, sure, but nothing was “wrong.” I read on.

“I guess subconsciously I knew divorce was coming. . . . I could smell it in the marriage. Cliff started plotting and planning, I could just sense it. And you're living and sleeping with your enemy. It is like a bad movie-of-the-week on Lifetime. You check his wallet for receipts belonging to a secret credit card. You watch his fingers as he checks his cell voice mail to figure out his password. . . . You check his voice mail with the password and hear girls calling. . . . I wanted to catch him cheating, so I had a girlfriend of mine call him and ask him out. Cassie called him and pretended she was a one-night hookup who was calling for more action. He bit. I flipped.”

But the strange thing was, I never felt like I was sleeping with the enemy. I had confessed a few months back to my father that I sometimes felt a growing void between Tim and me, but it had since passed.

“You and Mom had good moments and bad moments, right?”

“I'm not going to lie to you,” my dad had said. “Not really. It was always wonderful. The whole marriage. That's not to say there weren't times we were tired or maybe had disagreements here and there, sure. But it was never work with Mom. I hear people say marriage is work, but Mom never made it feel that way.”

I heard his voice drift off. Even though it had been seven years since she'd passed away, I knew his voice could crack at any moment. My father was such a sensitive, kind, and gentle man that I knew when he lost her that in some ways, he'd never recover. I know people can deify those they've buried and that my dad was still and always would be in love with her, but after thirty years, I had assumed that, like all marriages, theirs had had peaks and valleys.

And while I knew some of our valleys were definitely deeper within the last year as what I thought was Tim's work had intensified, I never, ever clued in about the plotting—the CDs, the affairs, the fake phone calls, bogus business trips, and lame alibis. I was the dumbest, most clueless woman on the planet, or Tim deserved an Academy effing Award. Either way, I had been duped. As someone who always thought she was so damn smart, that realization made me cry the most that night.

—Rita Rudner

 

 

 

T
he next day, I awoke dreading the confrontation. In anticipation of Tim's arrival home, I got my hair done and looked like a million bucks. Okay, maybe a thousand. Pesos. But in my fractured and weary state, it was the best I could do, and I needed to feel put together to face off with the man who I thought was my partner but was in fact a complete and total stranger.

I had been distracted all day, running errands in zoned-out autopilot mode, grocery shopping and making dinner with Miles, and after tuck-in and bedtime, I waited. He was probably jamming in one more shag pre-return home. Via the Brooklyn Bridge, not LaGuardia. As I sat there, flipping through the daily pile of catalogs, I felt newly distant from the shiny smiling families who wore matching pajamas, each page marked at the bottom with a 1-800 number you could call to order up their synchronized sleepwear and a slice of their familial bliss. For some reason, even if the stuff was not my taste, or was even outwardly hideous, I loved getting in bed at the end of the day with catalogs.

Once in a while I'd order something, but usually it was the bedtime equivalent of the morning's snooze button—a way to wind down slowly and zone out in front of monogrammed towels or key fobs or knapsacks, toted by perfect all-American children and their carpooling parents. I wondered if as a single mom I'd find the same brainless bliss in those colorful pages, or if I'd chuck the catalog into the trash. I turned the page and found a picture with the dad kissing the mom's head while she cuddled with the two kids, all four swathed in matchy-matchy huggable fleece.

Tim hadn't cuddled me like that in a while, I supposed, but when did that stop? Here you are, a team, and then you just have completely separate lives? I know fatigue and travel and busy schedules all accelerate the slow drifting apart, but when I looked back it seemed like a blink-of-an-eye mutation. This is the man who fathered my child, kissed my belly as it grew swollen with a flesh union of our marriage, and watched our son come out of my vagina. I know it sounds gross and graphic, but that's what marriage is: the real deal. Unedited. The stuff after the sunset: the screaming baby at 3:00 a.m. It's bonding through not just the rush of cheek-flushing romance but the viscerally human times, the ugly, the sick—the things beyond the white wedding—the stuff that starts Monday morning. The sharp betrayal gutted me so thoroughly that I threw up a little in my mouth when I heard the jingle of Tim's keys outside the front door.

He walked in, complete with rolling T. Anthony suitcase, and found me on the couch.

“Hiiiii, honey!”

Normally, I would have leaped up and hugged him, his cute floppy hair a welcome sight after a few lonely nights. I always marveled over how gorgeous he was, especially when he returned home from a trip and I had missed him.

A meek “hi” was all I could muster, shakily.

He unzipped his bag and pulled out a teddy bear wearing a Chicago Cubs jersey for Miles.
Such genius planning
, I thought. He always came back with various city-emblazoned souvenirs.

“Milesie asleep?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm,” I answered.

“What's wrong?”

Where to begin? I couldn't look at Tim, so I looked at the huge brown eyes of the teddy bear.

“So, what, do you have your assistant order the local teddy bear online and ship it so that you have a gift to bring home?”

“Holly, what are you talking about?”

“Come on, Tim. That's what all the culprits on
Murder She Wrote
and
Law & Order
say when they are first confronted. Don't say, ‘
What are you talking about?
' Don't insult me. I may have been an idiot for however long, but I've caught on now.”

His faux-incredulous smile suddenly flattened. Aha! He knew I knew. And now he'd beg for mercy. He'd think of not coming home to Miles and a real home with food in the fridge and hand towels in the powder room and catalogs!

“Listen, Holly . . . we have to talk.” Nota bene: any sentence that begins with “listen” or “look” equals chiming death knell for your relationship.

“About how you're cheating on me?” My heart rate spiked, waiting for him to greet my accusation with a laugh, proclaiming its falsity.
It was all my imagination!
Or
It meant nothing!
Or
It was the first and only time and it was a huge mistake and I totally regret it!

I was met not with these protestations but rather a long exhale. Another bad sign.

“How did you know?” was all he could ask, soberly.

So there it was. No denials, no sweeping it under the rug. That weirdly pissed me off even more.

“How did I know? I FUCKING SAW YOU, that's how! You were making out! On the STREET, no less! With that trashy whore, after EVERYTHING I have done for you, given you! How the hell could you betray me like this?” I screamed. I stood up and looked at him, channeling my rage into a laser beam shined into his eyes as I squinted my own. “You HUMILIATED ME with that tart. I am THE MOTHER OF YOUR CHILD! How could you do this?” I stunned even myself that there were no tears accompanying my diatribe; the only moisture was anger-infused perspiration and possible burst blood vessels in my face.

Tim was breathing heavier but maintained control.

“Holly. Calm down.”

“DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN! You faked a business trip? How many times did you do that? There are twenty major league baseball bears in Miles's room. Is each one a different slut you nailed?”

“AVERY IS NOT A SLUT!” he yelled back, forcefully.

Wow.

Somehow, even though Kiki had guessed Tim had a mistress, I still felt like anyone outside the marriage was some disposable pair of legs. But she wasn't. She was Avery.

“Oh, gee, I'm so sorry to insult your HOME-WRECKING WHORE!”

“Holly, stop it.”

“You come in here and DEFEND that SLUT YOU PERSONALLY GAVE A STREP THROAT CULTURE TO ON THE STREET?!”

“I know you can't understand, Holly, but I'm sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I love her.”

Hiroshima.

I never. Ever. Expected to hear those words.

At that point, quite simply, I crumbled. Burning, lava-like thick tears cascaded out, flooding my face as I wailed like a child. Tim tried to comfort me, but I slapped his arm away “GET OUT!” I screamed, shaking.

Tim looked at me sadly. Part of me did want him out that nanosecond, but the other half wanted him to run to me on bended knee and beg forgiveness. To sob and fight for his family. But his mouth simply turned down into an apologetic frown.

“Sorry, Holl,” he said simply, and obeyed my instructions to turn and leave.

I cried myself to sleep that night. And many, many, many nights afterward.

 

 

 

T
he following weeks were a Kleenex marathon of hermit dwelling. I met with Kiki's divorce lawyer and filed the paperwork, if a
Night of the Living Dead
drone can fill out forms. I made the painful phone calls, which were gasp-inducing to all, who proclaimed “NO! You guys?” and “Everything seemed so perfect,” and of course, “WHY?” I wanted to be a lady about the whole thing and not sling the mud of Tim's indiscretions, but from my wounded tone, people gleaned the dirty details and accurately sniffed the scent of another woman.

After dropping the bomb on my cute Dad, who was quiet, clearly dismayed, but supportive, it was the call to my maid of honor, Jeannie, that was the hardest. She had been there the fateful night we met, winking at me behind Tim's back, holding her white wine and smiling; she knew we would get married.

And now she was as in shock as I had been; when I told her, she promptly burst into tears.

“I don't believe this! Oh, Holl . . . I'm so upset. That asshole!” I heard her sniffle and pull tissues from a box. “I would have expected that from his loser friend Mark Webb, but never Tim!” Jeannie had had the pleasure of getting hit on by a shitfaced (or as Sherry Von would say, “overserved”) Mark at our wedding. He was, along with all six of Tim's Wall Street groomsmen, so trashed that he was doing the Tom-Cruise-in-
Risky-Business
run-and-slide-on-knees move across the dance floor at our wedding reception—albeit in tux in lieu of boxers. Clearly, as it is always all about him, our wedding reception may as well have been his living room, the way he was carrying on, front and center. When his fifth slide actually knocked down Lauren, one of my other bridesmaids, Tim told him it might be time to head home.

“You know,” I told Jeannie as I twisted the curly phone wire around my finger, which still bore my wedding ring, “I secretly thought that after Mark's behavior at our wedding, he and Tim would grow apart. That through the years we'd pull the feeding tube on that friendship. But they're still best friends, and I can't help but blame Mark a bit—he's such a louse, such a bad influence.”

“Honey,” Jeannie said soberly. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him hump it.”

“True enough.” I laughed, eyes welling anew with fresh hot tears.

“But still, that whole world Tim rolls with, it's this Boys Club in finance. They're all the same. Dirty jokes, booze, and obviously women on the side. It's the hedge fund culture. The I-can-get-away-with-anything money. I thought I got a good one, but they're all the same.”

“I'm so sad, sweetie.” I heard Jeannie's voice break. I was touched she was so traumatized on my behalf, but it killed me to hear her cry for me. “I'm just so appalled. I mean, even if he begs you to take him back, you won't, will you?”

Obviously the fantasy was comforting. He'd wake up, wonder what the hell he was smoking, and bolt back, hysterically imploring me to forgive and forget.

“We have Miles. I don't know.”

“Hey, I have three kids. And after that whole Governor Spitzer debacle, I told William in no uncertain terms that if he ever pulled that shit, I'd be out the door.”

“You don't know till you live it, I guess,” I replied, zoning into space. My skin was tight and itchy from the streams of tears, and while both Jeannie and Kiki were indignant, thrusting the girl-power mantras in my direction, I felt only weak and scared and alone. The only way I could even get myself to breathe was to have a melodramatic emotional seal-off à la Princess Butter-cup:
I shall never love again.