The Wages of a Divorcee's Sin

Jere got out of the car and went around to hug her and said, "Hello Dear Daughter, my you look nice today!"

"Hello to you, Daddy, thanks for the treat of you serving me lunch - and I just hope you are not serving coffee Heh heh." Both laughed at that corny joke since Kathy was a barista at Starbucks.

The young man had moved away from her as the car pulled to the curb in front of her, but just stood watching the two of them carefully.

Once driving away he asked, "Do men hit on you a whole lots?"

She replied, "Oh yes. It's both embarrassing and painful. My embarrassment comes from trying to adjust to the idea that men find me attractive; and it's painful because I cannot respond positively to those who impress me - like that young man, for example. I have gone out of my way to be 'ugly' the past ten years so I would not be attractive to anyone. I have had lots of unprotected sex starting in the 7th grade. After I was infected with the Type 2 Herpes virus in the 11th grade, I continued to have sex with the worst kind of boys and men. So now, reprogramming myself is difficult and frightening because I cannot follow through and develop a relationship with a nice man. What did Grandpa say about that, 'The Wages of Sin....'?"

He replied, "I read somewhere that there is no cure for Herpes, but that there are healing salves and to some extent, suppressants. Is that the current situation?"

"Well, sort of. I have joined a support group and their latest word is that protected sex with an infected - or a carrier - victim with no oral-vagina contact results in flare ups at about the same rate as, say, getting an occasional fever blister on one's lips for those who have the Type 1 virus. If I ever get close to a man it will necessarily be a very special kind."

He asked, "In what way must he be 'special?'"

She replied, "He probably will be a carrier of Type 2 himself and we both will need to sleep separately during times of flare-ups. That is difficult for a young man whose system is spewing testosterone like a fire hose. More importantly, he must have lots of relationship savvy and those kinds are few and far between."

After arriving home, he took her on a tour of the condo. She was especially impressed with a view from the master bedroom of the yachts tied up in the Marina below them. When they got to the smallest bedroom Jere pointed to the clothes hanging in the closet and volunteered, "My Lover is a University Professor of post-doctorate Mathematics who is right now a visiting professor in Heidelberg, Germany - and her last instruction to me was to donate these clothes of hers to Good Will. So, since she is about the same size as both you and your Mom, the two of you should feel free to take and wear anything she left behind that you choose."

"Oh thank you, Daddy. That will save me a lot of money if I can wear them - not to mention Mom, who has no money to spend on clothes."

He continued, "We bought this place JTWRS. So far she continues to make her half of the mortgage payments while I make my half plus I pay all the associated expenses. This will continue until she either returns or finds Number 8 - that is a private joke between us. She will return in another year or so unless she and some man fall hopelessly in love. Of course I am hoping she will return so during the interval I remain as celibate as the Pope is supposed to be. If she doesn't return life will go on and I will buy her share of the condo as I can afford it now because I like living here."

"Do you love her, Daddy?"

"No. She doesn't love me either but we fit each other like a comfortable pair of shoes and will cling to each other emotionally until either or both of us are swept off our feet by someone new."

In the living room they sat down and he dug out the wedding album of her Mom and her Dad. As they flipped the pages he said, "Speaking of 'spewing testosterone like a fire hose,' I was doing that when these wedding pictures were taken - ahh 'There was a time....,' but now its just a trickle." Both had a big laugh at the corny joke.

While eating the lunch Jere had earlier prepared, he asked, "How do you like living with your Mom, Kathy?"

She stopped and looked straight at him and said, "In a word, it's awful! We are crowded as there is not enough bathroom or closet space and when we watch TV we endure what the landlady likes - which is not what either of us like. In addition to that we get on each other's nerves big-time because I personally don't like Mom at all - and I am sure vice versa is true. Yet, she is my Mother and stood by me in my darkest hours - and there were lots of them - so we endure each other's company."

He asked, "Have you made any friends who might want to share an apartment with you?"

She said, "There is one lady friend and we are becoming close friends, but she lives with and cares for an aging and declining Mother herself. So no candidate roommates yet."

"Mind telling me how much you personally pay for rent and utilities?"

She told him the dollar amount and he said, "You do have a tight budget because coffee shops have to control their employee expenses. But you look better so you must have been eating some better food."

"Yes, and I work out as well."

After lunch he drove her back to the Subway stop. Before she got out of the car he said, "Think about something, Kathy. For the living expense you currently face each month, we might get along well enough for you to rent my small bedroom from me. If you did that, you would be faced with adjusting to my structured life style which is decidedly different from the one you described as your Mom's landlady."

"What kind of adjustment are you referring to, for example, Daddy?"

"For starters you would need to sign a one-year lease agreement that is legally binding - just in case you reverted to the Kathy you use to be. That way, I would have legal recourse to take action if needed. You would have to keep your room and bathroom clean and neat, make up your bed each morning, and adjust to standing in the cold and heat waiting for the bus that would take you to and from the subway stop. If you were to find Mister Wonderful, copulating in my Condo may or may not offend me and probably would - you certainly must agree to not revert to wanton sex while you lived in my home. You would need to adjust to a structured existence with low volumes on music and TV, etc."

She said, "I think making those changes would be a radical change in my whole life. My thinking tells me its the right thing to do, but sometimes I still get urges to 'party' without bounds when that personality surfaces. I will think about it because the last thing in the world I want to do is to hurt or disappoint you further."

After she opened the car door he said, "I will prepare the paperwork anyway. So if you decide to take up my offer why not pack your things and ask your Mom to accompany you next Monday to help carry them. I will treat the both of you to lunch. If you don't feel up to it, don't worry just show up yourself for lunch like today. You two can also try on some of El's abandoned clothes before I donate them if you wish. How is that?"

Just before she closed my car door she said smiling brightly, "I will see you next Monday, one way or the other. Thank you, Daddy."

———-

The following Monday at the subway station passenger zone he waited along with several other drivers who were picking up someone. Soon people were streaming out of the station as a train had obviously arrived. The last two passengers out of the station were his daughter Kathy and her Mom, Megan, both loaded with luggage. Jere popped the trunk and got out to open the two car doors, smiling at them as they rolled up the luggage. Her Mom sat in the back seat after the luggage had been stowed and Kathy sat in the front. He said to the two ladies, "I didn't have time to fix lunch so I suggest lets stop by Panera Bread and pick up some take out so we can enjoy lunch at home?"

Kathy replied, "That would be wonderful."

Stopped at a red light he looked over his shoulder and asked his ex-wife, "Greetings Megan. Are you settled in now and ready for the winter that will be on us in another month?"

She smiled brightly and said, "Before I answer that, thank you so much for including me in your invitation, Jere. Yes, I am as ready as I can be. As for how I am doing: a lot better than I thought I would be by now. The prospect of having more room with Kathy moving out is really a welcomed change, though I will miss her, of course."

Jere asked, "Are your courses going well?"

She replied, "One of the schools provide a grader, and at the other I do the task. But I do the teaching while sleepwalking because they are elementary courses I have taught for years."

Arriving home, just as he had unlocked the front door his office phone rang. He said to the both of them, "Will you unload the car while I catch that?"

The phone call was from a client and the conversation lasted 13 minutes but he made an appointment to visit the company the next day for details and rejoined the ladies. When he stepped out of his office and looked into the small bedroom both ladies were there looking at El's discarded clothes with the luggage neatly stacked up nearby. In the dining room sat the Panera sacks with the food and he noticed that Kathy had already signed both copies of the lease agreement and her Mom had witnessed them. After the two had come into the dining room he jokingly said, "Neither of you have learned how to write and haven't changed your hand-writing style over the years." This seemed to have broken the ice and all three of them relaxed and sat down to eat.

The conversation flowed freely, and in time Jere asked, "Megan, any luck with finding 'Mister You'll do?' candidates on the World Wide Web?"

She chuckled and said, "Of the two Internet dates I met for coffee, one, at least, didn't walk on his knuckles. You know, Jere, Internetters routinely lie, I think, and usually do so by painting a best case picture of themselves and omit essential information. This makes the first 'date' a pissed off event for both because the two are sitting across from each other and both are bewildered because this is not what either expected. All of our married life you harped on truthfulness and completeness, sorry to say, I then took offense as my preference was to be diplomatic and show my best side. You should know that the admonition you gave me about lying 8 weeks ago changed me a great deal. For one thing I changed my dating profile on the internet." She reached into her purse and brought out a sheet of paper and continued, "For example, here is my on line dating personal profile when I first signed on. I encourage you to bring up my profile now and compare the two to see just how radically you affected me. The URL is on the back if you decide to do it."

At that point, Kathy stood up and said, "While you guys are talking I will try on a couple of outfits your lover left for you to donate, Daddy," as she went into the small bedroom.

Megan said, "But in a related development, I have been spending four hours on Sunday morning on the Premature Baby floor at St. Josephs for the past two weeks now - and I look cute in my volunteer uniform, so I am told."

"You look very 'cute' to me today, Megan, but it might be because I am horny."

Megan looked at him pleasantly surprised and said, "I would have thought a local celebrity would be surrounded by ladies indirectly selling pussy still. No?"

He replied, "I have no complaints about the quantity offered, it's the quality."

She then asked, "What kind of relationship do you have with your Lover, if I may ask?"

"Right now, not any. She left to take a two year visiting professorship in Europe 10 months ago and she will be working for 14 more - I have hopes that I will be invited to spend Christmas holidays with her but the phone could ring at any time and she could announce she had found 'Number 8.' Let me explain. I became her 'sequential monogamous' seventh lover after her marriage destructed and she was my first committed lover since my and your divorce. For those reasons she called me 'Number 7' while to me she was 'Number 1.' We fit each other so well until we bought this condo JTWRS and really enjoyed our life here. But, this academic opportunity that puts her just about number 1 in her game on the planet was something we both didn't want her to turn down. So I was sad because I would miss her but glad for her opportunity. If you are wondering, we are not in love with each other - rather we are just fuck buddies who happen to fit personality wise."

She asked, "Jere, do you want more than that out of life, ever?"

"Yes, Megan, and you and I both thought we once had that when we were first married, didn't we? Being productive plus loving and being loved by someone whose view of the universe is mutually compatible is what life is all about. People like you trying to fix the planet, however, engage in a 'duck and cover' game as they search for a meaning to their unhappy life. The reality is that the tireless do-gooders only fuck up society even more, plus they slowly die from dry rot inside of themselves. Worse than that: the lot of the targeted 'less fortunate' is always made immeasurably worse. I didn't grasp this at the time we got married - or there never would have been a wedding - but now its clear to me."

She said, "You have just identified the other major change in my life. Had you told me this 11 years ago you would have only bored me. Today, it's right on, and every time you talk I feel the tension inside me letting go because now I am beginning to understand the world. It makes me shudder to think that an educated person like me could have been so disastrously wrong. Thank you."

At that point, Kathy came into the dining room with three garments over her arm and said to her Mom, "I can wear these. But, there is a suit in there that would look very cute on you. Its slightly large for me."

Megan said, "O. K. I will look at it."

He said to his daughter, "Well, Dear, anything unusual happening at Starbucks?"

"Well, I got a 25 cent raise on Friday and I bought some shoes that make prolonged standing easier on my legs and back. I find that evening work is preferable because I got to miss the soap opera programs the land lady likes on the one eyed monster in Mom's apartment. I promise you that the TV in my room here will never be heard by you - I will keep the door closed and the volume low when watching."

Megan walked back in modeling a suit that El wore and Jere stood up because she looked stunning. He had forgotten just how sexy her boobs were with which she filled out the top - this was different from El who wore a padded bra when dressed up. He said, "Wow. I had forgotten just how marvelous you look."

"Thank you, Doctor Jenkins. If you will take me to the subway station I will wear this and take the clothes I wore here on the hanger. I am going straight to the classroom after I get home, as I am interested to see if I get another compliment."

He said to Kathy, "Why don't you unpack while I chauffeur your Mom. We can plan a daily routine for both of us at that time, O.K.?"

"Fine. Thanks, Daddy."

After a silent trip he pulled the car up to the curb at the station and turned to look at his ex-wife. He said, "Megan, I....,"

Reacting to his delay collecting thoughts, she held his hand and asked, "Even though I am a damaged woman, my downfall had nothing to do with love and sex, but everything to do with a scatterbrained woman who was chasing the latest and hottest thing going in Humanities academia at the time. It had everything to do with my pursuit of that hollow ideal and was sold to me by a loser. I fully understand that now. Given that, would you afford us the opportunity to get to know each other again - the way you and Kathy have gotten to know each other?"

Jere did not answer her because he suddenly thought of something else and forgot her question.

When Jere returned home he and his daughter spent three hours discussing and writing down routines and the required chores and a time line each of them would function. His daughter quickly grasped the ground rules and went along with them quite willingly. He was feeling less trepidation about his decision to invite her to rent a room. As they sat down to dinner afterwards, He raised his wine glass and said, "A toast to our new father- daughter relationship. Kathy, thank you for undergoing your radical changes during the past two months and our success in living together is a very big risk for both of us. But, should we succeed the rewards will be wonderful if you stay the course. And just maybe, screwing your head on right just might have the effect of your winding up in the arms of that 'special' young man you referred to in our first meeting."

She replied, "I am once again almost a whole person and will not mind walking to the bus stop and continue to be among the best baristas employed by Starbucks while I question everything and trust no one more than my judgment. Thanks for making life possible the second time."

Alone in his office later he read Megan's personal dating profile sheet that she had pre-printed. It was rife with expressions like "A PhD English teacher, I like intense discussions and counter point repartee on philosophy, politics, religion, and romance." She had a phrase like, "

I seek an educated friend and companion who will work with me to build a relationship that is something more."

He pulled the URL up on his computer she had given him to access her profile currently and the first thing he noticed was the snapshot that really flattered her. For the first time he read her personal information with interest:

"Recently relocated here I am a PhD English Lecturer and intellectual in her early 40s. If you are well educated, possess good mental and physical health, capable of using your reasoned judgment to guide your choices, and too brave to lie either directly or by omission, I want to meet you. The woman shown in my profile picture is me and was taken this past July 4th. Diplomatic-types who just 'seem to be' will be wasting my time - and yours - so please don't respond."

He was pleasantly surprised by her profile. His thoughts were, "The Megan I remember always just gestured approximations when discussing something important, but look at this. Wow! Being fired from her make believe world just may turn out to be a banner event in her entire unhappy life. This is great Megan, and if I didn't know you already I would compose a letter that convinced you that I am your dream come true. The reality is though that I do know you and I wonder if the real Megan or the wannabe Megan is expressed on this dating site?"

Recalling her teaching schedule for her classes, He texted her, "Impressed w/ ur current profile. Would you like to have dinner and dancing w/ just me Marriott Saturday night? I pick you up say 7:00?"

Her reply came back in less than a minute, "Yes. I will be ready..." and she gave me a Quincy address which the GPS showed it to be near I-93.

——-

Saturday evening the traffic had been light going South and he recounted the events of the week. He was very happy that Kathy had jumped right into living up with her agreement and by Thursday their moments together were light and humorous. He had thought a lot about Eleanor Parkman and kept hoping for an invitation to visit her in Heidelberg over fast approaching Christmas Holidays, as he was starved for communication with her - not to mention her jumping his bones. He reasoned, "Since I videoed her last, surely she will contact me soon."

Jenkins pulled up in front of a very large house that had to have been constructed in the early 1900s. His first thought was that, "Surely there was plenty of room for three people in that monstrous house." Then he noticed that most of the structure was darkened and concluded it really was either too dilapidated and too expensive to maintain more than just three or four rooms. That would account for them being squashed together - his best guess was all occupants even shared a small working bathroom. He stood up and was about to walk up the broken sidewalk to the front door when Megan came bounding out from a side door, holding a stylish shoe bag. For one fleeting moment he felt sorry for her living in such primitive conditions, but then reasoned - "Ahh it's the wages of sin, I guess. She has been here nearly 4 months and I am sure her bleak unhappiness has taught her some very important lessons about life."