The Sweetest Revenge Read online

  But I did not get my wish. As Director of Communications for the university, I was expected to attend Kimberly’s art show. I dreaded it. I tried to think of ways to get out of it. I would call in sick that day with a terrible flu. But in the end I knew I’d have to do it. My entire department was counting on me. I decided I could hide out at the reception, send the twenty-six year-olds to gladhand her. That was doable.

  I didn’t mention Kimberly to Jim. That was the last thing I wanted to deal with. Maybe Jim didn’t even care, I told myself. But then he mentioned it to me!

  “I see Kimberly Williams is having a reception,” he said one night as he wolfed down his lasagna, late as usual. I had wolfed down my food earlier, as usual.

  “So?” I said. The communications director couldn’t think of anything better to say than that.

  “So, are you going?” Jim asked.

  “I have to go,” I said. “It’s my job.”

  “Can I come?” he asked. “I’d like to see her paintings.”

  Yeah, I just bet you would, I thought. You’d probably like to see some other stuff too.

  “It’s going to be boring,” I said, hoping to deflect him.

  “But I know her!” Jim said. “I want to come.”

  “Do what you like,” I said, getting up from the table and going upstairs. Bastard!

  Carly had done such a good job with the promotion of the reception that even Jim knew about it.

  So, I went with my department the night of the reception, having forced myself into a size 1X black suit. I wore my flat black shoes. I pulled my brown hair back into an unattractive ponytail. I cringed as I walked into the room, wanting to run to the bathroom and hide.

  And then I saw her, sitting on a couch with Linda, the events coordinator. Kimberly was resplendent in her peacock blue dress. Her trim legs were crossed neatly and she laughed at something Linda was saying. I knew in that instant that there was no way I was going to meet her. No way.

  I turned to Blond Ambition. “I’m feeling so sick, I need to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  She looked at me. “You haven’t looked well all day,” she said.

  Well, that was nice. I haven’t looked well! But, honestly, I didn’t think I’d looked well for years.

  “Can you and Carly handle things for a while?” I asked weakly.

  “Of course. You go take care of yourself,” Blondie said.

  I went into the bathroom and sat on the velvet settee. I hoped no one would come in for a while. And no one did. Gave me time to think about how I was going to get out of this situation. The president and vice presidents of the university were going to be in attendance! I’d better have a good excuse for my absence.

  I could hear the room filling up outside the bathroom. A couple of women, one I recognized, came in to use the facility and refresh their make-up. They looked at me on the settee.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. Markum asked me. She was a donor to the university and attended all of the events, even though she must be ninety.

  “I’m not feeling well tonight,” I said. “I need to just rest up a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Can I do anything for you?”

  She was sweet. “No, thank you,” I said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Thankfully, she left the bathroom then with her young friend.

  After another five minutes or so, I cracked the door to the bathroom and looked out into the reception area. My heart lurched when I saw Jim talking to Kimberly. Dammit, he’d gotten there earlier than I expected.

  I knew for certain that I was never going out there. I called Kate on her cell phone and got her voice mail.

  “Kate, please call me,” I said. “I’m really sick.”

  Twenty minutes and several bathroom visitors later, Kate finally called me.

  “Your husband asked me where you are,” she said. “I told him you’re not feeling well.”

  “Thanks, Kate. This is worse than I thought. I’ve got to get out of here and get home. Can you tell Jim for me? I can’t go out there this sick. And can you handle everything in my place?”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “I’ll be happy to handle it. You just get yourself home.”

  Relieved, I slunk out of the bathroom and out the back door of the gallery. It was raining lightly when I walked out, through the parking lot to my car. But I didn’t care if I got wet. I was humiliated. As I drove home, I started to wonder how I was going to keep my job if I couldn’t even do the tasks I was responsible for.

  When I got home—sweet home—I poured myself a glass of wine and went upstairs. I turned on the TV in the bedroom and started watching Out of Africa. I lay there for a long time awake, but Jim never called me. He knew I was sick, but he never called. The reception was over at nine and he should have been home shortly after that.

  But he didn’t come home after that. I fell asleep at eleven and Jim still wasn’t home. I don’t know when he got there.

  I woke up at seven the next morning and Jim was already gone, probably to the gym. Unlike me, he liked to keep himself fit. He showered and changed into his suit at the gym, which was two blocks from his office. I wouldn’t see him until that evening—if then.

  I decided I wasn’t going to work. Make my illness stick. I didn’t really have anyone to call to say I wouldn’t be in since Sheila was out of town on an advancement trip. I was the head of my own department, so I called Carly.

  “I’m too sick to come in,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked with concern.

  “I’ve got some sort of stomach bug. I’ve got fever and chills. It’s awful.”

  “Do you think you should go to the doctor?” she asked.

  “I will if things don’t get better soon,” I said.

  I felt a pang of guilt when I hung the phone up. I made myself a breakfast of bacon and eggs to make myself feel better. I watched the “Today Show” as I sipped my coffee. When that was over, I sat at my computer and went on Facebook.

  Dammit! Carly had already posted photos from the reception. She must’ve taken them with her phone because the university photographer was never that quick in getting our photos to us.

  And there was Jim with Kimberly. He was in a lot of the photos. He had stuck by Kimberly like glue! I was enraged. He hadn’t even bothered to check on his sick wife! Yeah, I wasn’t sick—except sick at heart—but he didn’t know that. He had chosen to stay at the reception, laughing it up with Kimberly and being her escort for the evening. In front of my co-workers. I was humiliated.

  I ate some ice cream. I watched game shows. I ate some cookies. Jim called around three.

  “Hey,” he said jovially. “Carly said you were sick last night and then you were asleep by the time I got home.”

  “Why didn’t you call to check on me?” I blurted out.

  “I didn’t think you’d want me to bother you,” he said. “They said you were hanging in the bathroom, so I thought. . . .” He trailed off.

  “You’re a real prince,” I said slamming the phone down.

  Jim texted me later to say he had to work late on a brief and not to wait up. He’d get supper brought in.

  And that was how it went after Kimberly Williams arrived in town. Jim became busier than ever. He couldn’t make it home for supper anymore most nights. That was when I tried the HCG diet, and that was when I failed once again to regain my youthful figure.

  And then I found him in bed with Kimberly Williams. I recognized her instantly as she pulled the chenille spread up to her chin in a desperate attempt to hide her nakedness, her dark hair falling across her shocked face, Jim’s naked body beside her, his white butt like a cleaved moon.

  Chapter Six

  On my second day of spring break, I stripped the bed in the spare room where I had found Jim and Kimberly and put everything, including the pillows, in a large plastic bag. I even put my grandmother’s chenille spread in the bag because it was tainted
and I could never look at it again. I hated Jim for that. I carried the plastic bag to the trash.

  Then I lugged the mattress down the stairs and out the front door. That wasn’t easy to do. The mattress kept falling over. Finally, I dragged it across the front yard and set it on the curb. I went back inside and pulled the box springs out. That was easier than the mattress because it was stiff. My rage at Jim helped me drag it along to the street.

  The bed itself was on a metal bed frame and had no headboard or footboard. I unscrewed the screws from the frame and, piece by piece, carried the frame to the curb. That was all I could do. I couldn’t put the spare room on the curb, but I would have if I could have. I went back up the stairs and closed the door to the spare room. I would have to figure it out later.

  My heart was beating hard as the adrenaline pumped through me. I wasn’t through yet. I went to Jim’s closet and pulled all of his clothes out onto the bed. I emptied his dresser of underwear, T-shirts, and socks. I put everything into plastic lawn bags and drug them downstairs. I put them in the car trunk and drove downtown.

  When I was in front of Jim’s building, I texted him. “I’ve got your clothes down here,” I wrote. “You can come get them because they’re going on the sidewalk.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply. I lugged the bags out of the trunk and sat them on the sidewalk in front of Jim’s building. I was pulling away when I saw Jim coming out the front doors.

  And then I went home, depleted. I had done what I could.

  I spent the rest of spring break sleeping late, staying up late to watch movies, sleeping late again. I wandered through the house during the day, taking note of all the things that needed to be done. The entire house could use a paint job, for example. One of the kitchen cabinet doors didn’t latch properly anymore. The patio had developed a crack that seemed to be getting larger every day. The landscaping was overgrown. The roof was looking worn and leaked in the laundry room. The house was falling down from neglect! One of its owners had been eating herself to a level of fat she had never envisioned and the other owner was immersing himself in his job and his mistress.

  Even though I was on spring break and could eat anytime I wanted to, I didn’t. My appetite never came back that week and I subsisted on toast and scrambled eggs. Once, I made myself a hamburger but could only finish half of it. I didn’t deny myself the wine, and I drank three bottles of chardonnay during that week.

  And then it was Monday and time to go back to work. When I forced myself out of bed that morning, I realized that it had been a wasted break. I had accomplished nothing. I had been nowhere interesting. I had just watched TV and slept. I felt dejected as I pulled my black suit out of the closet.

  I felt dejected as I pulled the zipper up on the pants, expecting to force it as I always did. But the zipper slid up its track easily. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hips and stomach looked smaller. I pulled on the white tank top that squeezed around my stomach, but it slid on smoothly. The jacket, which always felt tight around the arms, felt relaxed and comfortable. I had lost weight!

  Feeling confident, I chose low-heeled black shoes, which I hadn’t worn in a year. I felt so good, that I bothered to apply some make-up and lipstick for the first time in forever. There wasn’t much I could do with my hair without being late, so I pulled it back and put a clip in it.

  “You look different,” Carly said when I walked by her desk toward my office.

  “I do?” I asked.

  “Yes. You look. . . .” She groped for the right word. “You look confident,” she finally said.

  I’d take it.

  I expected to hear from Jim as soon as spring break was over, but he didn’t contact me that Monday. Or the next day or the day after that. By the end of the week, I realized I’d been expecting to hear from him. Expecting him to beg me to take him back. That had empowered me in a way I had not realized until he didn’t call me.

  I felt deflated. I had been counting on his protestations of love. His apologies. And now I wasn’t getting it. It dawned on me that he was still with Kimberly. I had refused him, and he was staying with Kimberly.

  Then I remembered that I told Jim I’d call him, or my lawyer would. But I couldn’t do that. He knew how to call me! If he wanted me back so bad, he should have called me. But he clearly didn’t even want to.

  By the second week back at work, I knew I had to get a lawyer. I called the only one I knew to call. Wesley McKinley, Jim’s archenemy. Wesley was a barracuda divorce lawyer and I knew he’d be happy to go up against Jim.

  I met with Wesley on Tuesday afternoon in his downtown office on the seventh floor of the bank building.

  “Let me tell you what I want, Wesley,” I said sitting in a chair in front of his desk. “I want the house, I want Jim to be responsible for all debts, and I want a thousand dollars a month in alimony.”

  “Let me tell you what I’m gonna get you,” Wesley said in response. “I’m going to get you the house and make Jim responsible for the debts. But I’m gonna get you four thousand a month in alimony, plus one half of all financial assets.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked, incredulous. “That’ll break him.”

  “And that’s the point,” Wesley said with a smirk on his face. “He did you wrong and now he’s gonna pay. That’s how it works in this business.”

  “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?”