The Sweetest Revenge Read online

  “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 wor
king for Jim, for our future, so I ignored it.

  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.