The Sweetest Revenge (6 page)

And now, at the age of
thirty-seven, I was grossly overweight and my husband was divorcing
me so he could be with an exotic beauty. I had nothing to fight that
with.

On Wednesday of the next week,
Wesley called to say he had Jim’s assets and was emailing them to
me. I opened the PDF and was astounded to see that Jim had stocks and
annuities and other holdings that I didn’t understand. But I
understood the bottom line. Jim’s assets were worth over eight
hundred thousand dollars. I was stunned. Why hadn’t Jim told me
about that?

I called Wesley. “I’ll take
the fifty percent of the assets and everything else he’s offering.
But I won’t budge on the alimony. I want the four thousand a
month.”

“
Good girl!” Wesley said
excitedly. “Good girl.”

And so that was that. Jim agreed
to the deal. I felt it was to protect his precious Kimberly from the
legal system more than it was to reimburse me for the hell he’d put
me through. But it was better than I had hoped for. I was going to be
all right financially, and that was a good thing because I didn’t
know then what awaited me.

Chapter
Nine

It took a good month for
everything to be settled with the divorce agreement, then another
month after the judge signed the papers for it to be all said and
done. And then, I was divorced from Jim.

By that time, I had been foraging
in my closet of past sizes to find clothes to wear. My 1X size
clothes were hanging on me and I moved to my size 16 clothes. Each
item was like discovering a new world. I had forgotten about that
attractive cream-colored suit I used to wear. And the tan suit with
the aqua top peeking out of the jacket. And the black suit I used to
wear with any number of tops. Black was so versatile. I had a whole
new wardrobe, gleaned from my own closet.

People at work started commenting
on my weight loss, wanting to know how I did it. They were all ears
to learn my secret. Finally, one day I said to Carly, who was the
latest person to compliment me, “It’s the divorce diet.”

“
What?” she asked perplexed.

“
Jim and I got a divorce,” I
said. “That’s the best diet I’ve ever known.”

“
You’re kidding,” Carly
said. She seemed truly surprised.

“
Nope,” I said. “Not
kidding. It just became final the other day.”

“
Why didn’t you say
anything?” Carly wanted to know.

“
I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m a private person and didn’t want to talk about it. But now
there’s no reason for everyone not to know that I’m divorced.”

“
I’m sorry,” Carly said.

“
No need to be sorry, Carly,”
I said. “It’s for the best.”

I hoped that Carly would tell
everyone else in the department about the divorce. I was counting on
that, actually. I didn’t want to have to tell them myself. I still
found it embarrassing.

I worked at my job every day and
went home every day to face an empty house. I still didn’t know
where Jim was living, and I really didn’t want to know. I wondered
sometimes if he missed his house, the things we had bought for it,
the times we had spent there together as a couple. I guessed he was
too obsessed with Kimberly to care about the life he had with me.

I cried sometimes when I thought
about Jim with Kimberly. It was a hurtful thing to have my husband
find someone else and leave me to the memories of our marriage. I
doubted myself, at times. I wondered what would have happened if I’d
forgiven him that day I had walked in on him with Kimberly. Could we
have somehow gotten past that? Would he have stayed with me if I had
forgiven him when he had his arms around my legs, pleading? But I
didn’t think we would have been able to repair our marriage after
that.

And my parents! I haven’t even
mentioned them in all of this. I was grateful that they had bought a
house on the coast after my father retired from the bank. I’m glad
they didn’t see me as I crumbled. I had to screw my courage up to
call them to let them know about the divorce. I just simply said that
Jim had cheated on me—I didn’t want to lie to my parents—and
they understood that I had no choice but to divorce him. Otherwise, I
think they would have questioned it. I have no idea what Jim told his
parents. Surely not that he had cheated. They had always liked me,
but I don’t know what he told them. Maybe that I had cheated! The
thought of that possibility filled me with rage.

So, I went to work every day and
I went home every day. I didn’t have anything else to do. None of
our friends contacted me. I was especially hurt that I didn’t hear
from Bitsy, Sam’s wife. I guess I had thought of her as my best
friend, but I had to face the fact that she was the wife of one of
Jim’s partners. I wouldn’t be hearing from her. The lines had
been drawn. Still, I was disappointed in Bitsy for not even checking
in with me.

But I did decide to sell the
house and rent a condo. Blond Ambition recommended a friend of hers
who sold real estate and I contacted her. Melissa Cambridge came to
the house that next weekend to look it over and get some idea of an
asking price. She walked through the rooms and oohed and ahhed with
appreciation.

“
This is a highly desirable
area,” she said after her tour. “It’s close to the university
and to downtown. Plus, it’s historic. I think we can ask four
hundred thousand for it.”

My jaw dropped open. “Are you
kidding me?” I asked. Jim and I had paid two hundred and fifteen
thousand for it when we bought it.

“
No, I’m not kidding,” she
said with a smile. “That’s what these houses are worth now. Plus,
you’ve got that fantastic acre yard with woods and a little creek
running through it. Believe me, we can get the price.”

Melissa stuck a For Sale sign in
the yard before she left. I looked out the dining room window at the
sign for a while. When I turned around, I tripped over Midnight, who
had crept in silently to sit behind me. When I tripped, I put my
other foot out as my automatic instincts led me to do. That other
foot, the stabilizing one, had bent in the most excruciating way as
the momentum catapulted me over.

I lay on the floor for a few
moments, crying with the pain. I tried to stand up, but that was
impossible. I could not put any weight whatsoever on that foot. I
crawled to the den and pulled my cell phone off of the coffee table.
I didn’t have any friends anymore, not really. I didn’t know who
to call, so I called Carly.

Carly came over right away. She
came straight through the front door, which was still unlocked from
when the realtor was there. She found me on the floor, writhing in
pain.

“
Let’s get you to the
emergency room,” she said. “I’m going to pull around to the
back door. Do you think you can get yourself over there? It’s the
closest door.”

“
Okay,” I pushed out through
my vocal chords.

Carly went back out to move her
car. I crawled from the den to the kitchen. I sat up when I got to
the door and barely reached the doorknob to unlock it. Carly opened
the door, but I was blocking it. I crawled away so the door could
open fully.

It was all so humiliating, having
Carly have to get me and sit with me for hours at the emergency room.
I was grateful to her, but humiliated. I was her boss, and I was in a
very weakened situation. But, bless her, Carly stayed with me as they
x-rayed my foot, determined I had broken it, then placed a temporary
cast on it. They also gave me some fantastic painkillers. On the way
home, Carly stopped at an all-night drug store and got my crutches
and painkiller prescription.

I sat on the couch on Sunday,
taking my pain pills as often as I could. On Monday, I called the
director of development, Sheila Stevens, to let her know what had
happened. I told her I’d be out a week at least. She didn’t sound
happy about that. She didn’t even offer any sympathy for me.

On Tuesday, I clumsily went out
the door on my crutches for my orthopedic doctor’s appointment the
hospital had made. Luckily, I had broken my left foot so I was still
able to drive. If I had broken my right foot, I would have had to
rely on someone to take me. I was eternally grateful I didn’t have
to call Carly again.

I hauled myself into my car and
drove to the doctor. I really wished I had a wheelchair, that’s how
bad the pain was and how hard it was to navigate with the crutches.
But I managed, huffing and puffing up to the reception desk.

The nurse removed the temporary
cast the emergency room had put on and had my foot x-rayed again,
even though they had the x-rays from the hospital. More money to
charge to the insurance company.

“
How much do you weigh?” the
nurse asked.

“
I don’t know,” I said. I
really didn’t know anymore.

“
Guess,” she said.

What a heartless witch. “A
hundred and fifty,” I lied. She wrote it down without comment.

When the doctor came in, he
confirmed the break in my foot. He also said that, given the black
and blue that had spread on my swollen foot and ankle, that I had
torn ligaments. I would need physical therapy, starting the next
week.

“
I can give you a plaster cast
or a removable cast,” the doctor said. “You can’t take a shower
with the plaster one.”

“
I’ll take the removable
one,” I said.

I had no choice but to go home
and begin to heal. If Sheila thought I was on some kind of vacation,
she was sadly mistaken. If she could have seen me hobbling around on
my crutches, she might have understood. I had to remove my cast and
crawl into the shower, where I had shoved a plastic stool to sit on.
There was no one to help me. That’s when the full realization of
having no husband hit me. No one to help me. I was on my own.

I suffered through the week
watching daytime TV and movies at night. I got up from the couch as
little as possible. Midnight sat in my lap most of the time. I was
grateful for her companionship. It was all I was going to get.

When Monday rolled around again,
I knew I had to go to work. I had become proficient with my crutches
by then, and could even go up and down steps. I had practiced on the
back door steps for days. I still had a lot of pain, but I had the
painkillers. I made my way painfully up the steps to the
administration building where I worked.

Sheila wasn’t there yet. I was
glad about that. Carly saw me going down the hall on my crutches and
came to help me. She really was a sweet girl. I was grateful to her.

I had appointments with the
physical therapist every day that first week back at work. I had to
leave at three, which really seemed to piss Sheila off. Hell, I was
doing my best. Since when was it a crime to have an accident and need
physical therapy?

The atmosphere in the advancement
department had taken on a decided chill. It was obvious that Sheila
was angry with me, but there was nothing I could do about it. After
three weeks of therapy, I was doing much better. But I was still on
crutches and would be until I no longer needed the cast.

I did my work every day,
overseeing the communications department and assigning tasks. I wrote
and edited copy for the annual alumni magazine, as I had done for
fifteen years. I oversaw the production of brochures and postcards. I
did everything as I always had, because once I was ensconced at my
desk, I put my crutches to the side and got to work.

After a month or so, the cast
came off permanently but I had to walk with a cane. I felt like an
old lady as I walked down the hall to my office. I’m pretty sure I
saw pitying glances my way. After a week limping with the cane, I
felt that I would always have a limp. I couldn’t imagine not
walking with a limp, it had become so much a part of me. I imagined
that I would have a cane forever, and if not forever, then definitely
when I got older.

Sheila had become more and more
edgy. She had taken to arriving at the office at eight, and if I was
a few minutes late because things were more difficult for me to
manage, she said something about it. Sheila’s attitude did not go
unnoticed by the rest of the staff. They began to alienate themselves
from me. It was subtle, but obvious. There were no more chats in the
coffee room, for example. I hobbled in, got my cup while staff
members were huddled together, not acknowledging my presence. I had
lost power all around, even though I was the head of the
communications department. Carly was the only one who spoke to me.

And then came the day that Sheila
called me into her office. I walked out of my office, using my cane,
and walked down the hall to Sheila’s office. I felt the eyes of the
staff on me as I made that long trip. I walked into to Sheila’s
office.

“
Close the door,” she
commanded after I entered. I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

I closed the door and sat down in
the leather chair opposite her desk. Sheila sat there with her hands
folded and looked at me.

“
Your performance has not been
satisfactory for the past several months,” she said without any
preamble. “We are going to have to let you go.”

Anger boiled up in me. “Are you
kidding me?” I said trying to control my rage. “I’ve been here
for fifteen years! I’ve given my all to this department.”