The Sweetest Revenge (5 page)

“
But I do have a job myself,”
I protested. “I don’t really need that much in alimony.”

“
Amy, you’re your own worst
enemy,” Wesley said. “Do you have any idea how much money Jim is
making? Believe me, we’re gonna find out, but it’s a lot more
than you think it is, I assure you.”

I stared at Wesley. This was
getting ugly. But why shouldn’t it get ugly? Jim had been having an
affair. He had brought her to our house, the home we had created
together. Why shouldn’t he pay the price?

“
Okay, Wesley,” I said. “You
do what you think needs to be done.”

“
First of all,” Wesley said.
“We’re going to serve Jim with divorce papers. Where did you say
he’s living?”

I realized I had no idea where
Jim was. “I don’t know,” I said.

“
Then we’ll serve him at his
office,” Wesley said gleefully.

I felt stunned by everything. I
really had expected Jim to contact me. I guess I thought we’d work
out some kind of agreement. Or Jim would beg me back and I’d
consider it. I wasn’t expecting that I’d serve him with papers at
his office. But what else could I do?

“
Okay,” I said standing up.
“Let me know how that goes.”

I stumbled out of the bank
building and drove back to the university. Things were starting to
feel very real. I was divorcing my husband of fifteen years. I was
really going to do it.

Chapter
Seven

I didn’t hear from Wesley until
Friday.

“
We served him,” he said
triumphantly. Wesley was ready for the fight. I’m not sure I was
ready for it.

“
What do we do next?” I
asked.

“
Let’s see how he responds
and we’ll go from there,” Wesley said. “He may ask for
mediation or he may wait for us to make our demands.”

When I got back home at the end
of the day, I fell onto the couch in the den and cried. I couldn’t
believe that Jim hadn’t called me, especially after being served
with the divorce papers. Did he think he was going to win this? Did
he not care about me at all anymore? Was he so enamored with Kimberly
that he was just letting everything go? I was devastated by his lack
of attention. But I refused to try to contact him.

That weekend, I moved through
each room of the house, looking at the antique furniture Jim and I
had bought together over our years, the paintings, the folk art. We
had done that together! For our home together!

There was the primitive green
cupboard with wood peeking through the color against the den wall.
Jim had retrofitted it to hold our television. The Star of Bethlehem
quilt we had bought in Cobb County on a lazy weekend in the country
hung over the open door of the cupboard. The coffee table was made
out of an old wooden wagon covered with slats of recycled barn wood.
The mantle on the fireplace had been removed from an old house in the
country and polished and waxed in a rich honey color.

The built-in bookcases contained
Jim’s favorites—mostly science fiction by Asimov and Clarke and
Bradbury—and mine, classics by the Bronte sisters, Fitzgerald,
Hemmingway, and Faulkner. Earthen-colored pieces of ceramics filled
in the empty spaces, pieces that had been collected by us on our many
crafts fair forays.

I walked into the living room,
which was more formal than the den. It was really what they used to
call a sitting room. Jim and I had discovered a mahogany tilt-top
table at an antiques shop one weekend, and it sat beside the floral
covered couch. Several paintings of landscapes by local artists hung
on the walls. The sitting room led to the dining room, which was less
formal with a rustic family-style table. I kept lemons in the wooden
trough-like container that sat in the center. I noticed then that the
lemons had dried to brown husks. I couldn’t remember the last time
I had paid attention to the dining room.

I moved into the kitchen, which I
mentioned before had been refurbished with new cabinets and granite
countertops. Midnight was eating dry cat food from her bowl. I opened
the cabinet and found a can of tuna. I opened it and drained the
water for Midnight. The cat was already waiting when I put the bowl
down. I ate the tuna straight from the can.

After my tour of the house and
our collected belongings, I realized that I didn’t want to stay
there. It felt like a tomb.

When I checked my cell phone the
next morning, I had a missed call from Jim. I hit the call back
button immediately.

“
I can’t believe you got that
shark,” Jim said.

I was taken aback for a second.
Just a second.

“
You always told me if you need
a lawyer you should get the best available in that field,” I said
calmly. “So that’s what I did.”

Jim didn’t say anything. I held
the phone to my ear. Finally, I said, “Jim?”

“
I thought we could handle
things peacefully,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be
acrimonious.”

“
Really?” I said. “Why
wouldn’t it be acrimonious considering you’ve been having an
affair AND brought your mistress to OUR house!” I was yelling by
the end of that sentence.

“
Look, Amy,” Jim said. “I
know that what I’ve done is not right, the way I’ve handled
things. I shouldn’t have brought her there. She just wanted to see
where I lived and, well, one thing led to another. I know it was
wrong.”

“
You were begging my
forgiveness two weeks ago. What’s happened so that you’re not
begging my forgiveness anymore? Have you made a commitment to your
mistress?”

“
I wish you’d stop using that
word,” Jim said.

“
It’s the right word,” I
said indignantly.

“
Okay,” he said wearily.

“
Well, answer my question,” I
said. “Why aren’t you begging me to take you back anymore?”

“
Because I realized that I
could never make things up to you. That what I did was so damaging
that we could never be the same. I decided to let you divorce me like
you want to do.”

“
And,” I said, “Kimberly
has opened her arms to you and you’ve decided to go into them.”

Jim didn’t say anything again.
The longer he was silent, the madder I got.

“
Well?” I said. “Is that
right?”

“
I don’t know,” Jim said.

“
Then you can deal with
Wesley,” I said before I ended the call.

Jim called back but I didn’t
answer. He called several times over the weekend, but I refused to
answer. His voice mail pleas for me to call him back were ignored. I
was going to let Wesley get me everything he could and stick Jim with
my legal fees in the process. I knew it was humiliating to Jim to be
stuck by Wesley, and that made me feel all the more vindicated.

When I returned to work on
Monday, my tan slacks were loose and the hems were dragging on the
floor. I might have to find a safety pin to hold them tighter against
my waist.

I sat in my office reviewing the
upcoming schedule of events. We had a reception on Wednesday for a
major donor to the university, then another reception on Friday for a
well-known speaker on medical forensics. I hated the events part of
my job and wished it would just go away.

I hadn’t told anyone in the
office about my impending divorce. Frankly, I was embarrassed to tell
them; I felt somehow I would lose my standing with them, would
somehow lose status. I guess that sounds ridiculous, but that’s how
I felt.

Wesley called at four on Monday.

“
Jim wants to know what your
demands are,” he said. “Let’s go high with that and ask for the
moon.”

“
Okay,” I said. “And I want
him to pay my legal fees.”

“
Nothing would give me greater
pleasure,” Wesley said. “So here’s what I propose, given that
he’s a cheating son of a bitch. Let’s ask for the house, three
quarters of the stocks and investments, four thousand in alimony a
month, and he assumes all debts incurred during the marriage. That
includes your car and any credit card balances.”

“
I don’t want to stay in the
house,” I said.

“
You need to stay in the house
until this is over,” Wesley said. “Don’t leave the house. He
could reclaim it.”

“
Is the house considered one of
the debts incurred during the marriage?” I asked.

“
It most certainly is,”
Wesley said. “He’ll have to assume the mortgage and sign a quit
claim giving you full ownership of the property.”

“
Okay. Well, tell him my
demands, then,” I said. I was going for blood.

“
One more thing, Amy,” Wesley
said. “And this is the icing on the cake. I want to name Kimberly
Williams as a co-respondent.”

“
What does that mean?” I
asked.

“
It means that we’re saying
she is responsible for the dissolution of your marriage. It means
that we can depose her and ask her questions about the affair. She
will be sworn in, and if she lies, she will be in contempt of court.
If it goes as far as a trial, which I doubt, it means that she will
be called to the stand, sworn in, and she will answer questions from
the judge. Not a pretty picture.”

I had never even considered that
Kimberly could be held accountable! But the thought of it gave me
great pleasure.

“
Do it,” I said.

Wesley filed an amended complaint
that day naming Kimberly as a co-respondent. He emailed the filed
document to me. After reading it, I didn’t think that Jim had a leg
to stand on.

Chapter
Eight

Jim was acting as his own
attorney in the divorce, and, as the old saying goes, he had a fool
for a client. I couldn’t even imagine what Kimberly felt at that
point, knowing she was named as a co-respondent, having to get an
attorney to protect herself. Unless Jim was filling that role. I
supposed he was. I wondered if it was all worth it to Kimberly. Was
Jim worth all of the legal entanglements she found herself in? I
imagine it put quite a pall on their relationship, and that made me
happy.

Wesley called on Friday to say
that Jim had agreed to almost everything in my demands. He wanted the
stocks and assets to be divided fifty-fifty, and he wanted to pay
three thousand a month in alimony.

“
This is even better than I’d
hoped for,” Wesley said. “We aimed high and you’re getting what
I consider a good deal. But I want to see what his assets are before
we agree to this. I’ve heard he’s made some smart investments.”

I hadn’t heard anything about
smart investments. I realized how little I knew about my finances
with Jim.

“
So,” Wesley said. “I’m
asking him to send proof of his investments. After we review that,
we’ll make the deal. Looks like you won’t have to go to court
after all.”

I was relieved. I didn’t want
to sit on the witness stand recounting how I had discovered Jim in
bed with Kimberly in our own house. It was a degrading experience.

“
And he’s going to pay your
fees?” I asked.

“
Oh, yes. He’s paying for all
of that. I’ve gotta say this is the easiest divorce I’ve ever
done. He must really feel guilty.”

“
I guess so,” I said.

I went home and cried as soon as
I stepped through the kitchen door. I was angry at Jim, yes. And I
was angry at Kimberly for thinking she had a right to screw my
husband, and in my own house. I was angry at myself for knowing
something was wrong in our marriage, knowing that Kimberly Williams
had something to do with the eventual downfall, and not confronting
it. Not dealing with it.

But, I had to admit to myself
that my marriage with Jim had been over long before he hooked back up
with Kimberly. He had been working late for years before that
happened. And I had been getting fatter and fatter. I’m sure I
wasn’t attractive to him anymore.

It was beginning to dawn on me
that my declining relationship with Jim had something to do with my
weight gain. That the unspoken problems between us had caused me to
put up a wall of fat as surely as he put up a wall of work. We had
each dealt with our problems in our own way instead of dealing with
them head on. Instead of talking to each other. Was it any wonder,
then, that he had sought solace in the arms of Kimberly Williams?
Would I have sought solace from someone if it had been offered? I
didn’t know the answer to that. I know that I made a vow with Jim
on our wedding day, for better or for worse. I hope I would have
remained true to Jim if I had been tempted by another. But I couldn’t
really say that for sure. No man had looked at me for years.

And I certainly did know what it
was like for men to look at me with appreciation. In the early years
of my marriage, I had occasion to walk past a construction site when
I went downtown and I got the whistles and catcalls. I just flipped
my hair then, totally confident in my looks as I strode down the
sidewalk in my tight skirt. And there was the director of the
development department, when I first starting working there putting
Jim through law school. He made it clear that he found me attractive,
which was gross, of course. I hated him and fantasized about filing a
sexual harassment claim against him. But I was working for Jim, for
our future, so I ignored it.