Switcharoo!

Switcharoo!

The genesis of this story is one simple image that I wanted to build a story around. Somehow, it turned from a revenge story to something a bit more troubling. I am beginning to believe that writing is a voyage of discovery where we think we know what lies ahead, but then somehow, we arrive someplace just a bit different. Anyway, this is a revenge story of sorts.

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Of all the old fart judges in all the courtrooms in all the towns in this country, I get a seventy-year-old paternalistic activist, part-time preacher who thinks that divorce is a sin and women need to be protected no matter what they do. My lawyer called it the luck of the draw, but it felt more like a red-hot poker shoved up my nether regions. I caught my wife in bed with her boss. It wasn't just any old bed; it was the bed that I slept in every damn night, although I don't sleep there anymore! Then she tells me she's going to continue, and if I divorce her, she'll take everything. What nonsense has she been reading?

Nonsense indeed. Then I get a judge who quotes scripture instead of the law, and he orders twenty sessions with a marriage counselor because "Every marriage can be saved."

I told my lawyer I was thinking about draining the accounts and running for the border, but he said that Mexico isn't as friendly toward Americans as it used to be. I was actually thinking Canada just to throw them off the scent but given what's going on these days I'd get a better reception in Mexico.

My lawyer said the judge can't force us to stay together, so if I go to counseling and remain adamant that I'm not taking her back, he can't make me.

"Yeah, but he can control the division of the marital assets, right?"

My lawyer just shrugged and nodded.

"Oh that's just great!"

So I sucked it up and went to marriage counseling. The judge picked the therapist. You can see where this is headed, right?

We began the first session with a prayer. I prayed for deliverance.

My cheatin' wife sat on one end of a two-person sofa and I chose a chair.

"William, please join your wife on the sofa."

"No thank you. I am more than comfortable where I am."

"Please, I insist."

"You can insist all you want, but I am fine where I am."

She did not like me!

"Very well. My name is Doctor Janice Bentley, and I would appreciate it if you referred to me by my title. I find that a certain degree of formality works best in these situations. I'll call you William and Beverly."

Well, I wasn't going to let that pass. "Excuse me, Doctor Bentley, but I was looking at your credentials on the wall of the waiting room. I saw a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree, but I didn't see a Doctorate. Where did you earn your PhD?"

She avoided the question. "I am a licensed practitioner, and it is most appropriate that you call me Doctor."

"I see. Well I have a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering, so I'd appreciate it if you called me either Sir or Mister Stevens."

Now she really didn't like me!

"Very well. Now, Beverly, why don't you begin by explaining why you are here today?"

That went on for about thirty minutes. She cried, she begged, she explained, she made abundant excuses, but she never apologized. Meanwhile, I was grabbing the arm of my chair and trying to rip it from the seat.

"That's all very interesting, Beverly. So this was a one-time mistake, and you feel that your husband should forgive you and move on?"

My wife was nodding so hard that I thought her head might pop off and roll across the floor.

"And what about you, William? Have you ever..."

"Sir."

"What?"

"I asked you, Janice, to call me either Sir or Mister Stevens."

I saw the color in her face and started thinking this might actually be fun if I could contain my anger long enough.

"Mister Stevens, have you been the perfect husband?"

"Perfection is unachievable, Janice. You of all people should know that. However, I have been a faithful husband who tried to meet the needs of my wife whenever possible."

"What do you mean I should know that?"

"Well, you have been divorced, haven't you? You are familiar with imperfection." I had researched our therapist.

It was then that Janice blew her cool. "I lost a child and then my husband and I drifted apart. I am not the one who needs counseling, William, and I would appreciate it if you left my personal life out of it!"

"Well, it's just that I thought you might have a unique perspective on the matter of perfection. That's all."

I don't think this first meeting was going the way she expected.

We continued on like that for the remainder of the fifty-minute hour until we were dismissed with homework. That homework included thirty minutes each night of sitting together and talking about our feelings where we were directed to try to understand the other person's point of view. I did the homework, but I sat in a chair across the room slowly drinking a cold beer. The beer was therapeutic.

We progressed that way with two meetings every week. Some were joint and some were one-on-one sessions with "Doctor Bentley". The joint sessions were frustrating, but predictable. The one-on-one sessions drove me nearly to violence. This woman hated me and the feeling was mutual.

As I told you, every session started with a prayer, and after the first two sessions I was told to lead the prayer. Well I'm no stranger to prayer. I've been going to church all my life, but it wasn't whatever sanctimonious denomination she belonged to. So I offered up a spontaneous prayer for deliverance from my enemies, was chastised for it, and was never asked to lead the prayer again.

Our sessions with the three of us became mostly a matter of Dr. Bentley soliciting perjurious testimony from my wife while they both gave me knowing nods as if to say, "See, child?" I used the time to examine her bookcase from across the room, and every time I scanned the shelves my eyes fell on a six-inch plaster figure of a Revolutionary War soldier. It was crude and obviously done by a child, but it brought back memories of when I was a child. I had a few rubber molds, and I would make plaster casts of soldiers and animals that I would paint. They looked awful, but I loved them.

They talked while my lawyer and I remained busy. We were not waiting for the counseling sessions to end. Instead, we hired a private investigator to follow my wife, and it didn't take long to establish that she was still seeing her boss. They were creatures of habit, and my lawyer knew the law, so photographs were mostly taken in public places with a few taken between the cracks of not-quite-closed motel curtains.

When all our ducks were in a row and we had what we needed, I took one eight-by-eleven photograph of my wife trying to walk on the ceiling while her boss drove her head into the headboard (is that why they call it "headboard"?) and put it in a manila envelope. It had the date and time stamped on it.

Our next meeting turned out to be our last. Beverly was testifying that it was a one-time mistake while Janice coached her from the sidelines. There was talk of forgiveness and how it would never happen again. That's when I decided the time was right.

"Tell me something, Janice. Are you lying to me, or are you just believing the lies my wife is telling? It matters to me because either you can't be trusted because you are dishonest, or you can't be trusted because you're too gullible, and I feel I have a need to understand which it is."

I did tell you she didn't like me, right? By now her contempt was evident and there was no effort to hide it.

"I will not allow you to insult me in that manner, William!"

I wanted to ask, "Well, in what manner would you like..." but I had bigger fish to fry.

"It occurs to me that there is a fundamental flaw in the way these sessions are constructed. I risk my freedom which is what I hope to gain by divorce. Beverly risks the life she enjoys where she only works part time and still has the freedom to spend more than she makes. You risk nothing. That doesn't seem right to me. You have no skin in the game."

Doctor Bentley crossed her arms and tried to stare me down. "And what do you think I should be risking?"

"I'm glad you asked that, Janice." I took the envelope from my briefcase and dropped it on the coffee table between us. For a moment, both women were focused on that envelope with unspoken questions as I walked toward the bookshelf. "I've been admiring this plaster figure of the soldier. Did your son make it?"

Her demeanor changed immediately. "Yes, it's the last gift he gave me. He was five and he died unexpectedly about four months later."

"I'm sorry to hear that." I was starting to regret my decision, but this had to end. I picked up the little soldier.

"Please don't touch that! It's very fragile!"

"I know. I used to make them myself when I was a child. One by one, each fell off a table or my bureau and broke." Then turning back to Doctor Bentley and my wife, I asked, "So now tell me. My wife keeps saying that it was a one-time mistake that she deeply regrets, and it will never happen again. Is that right."

I got a very weak "Yes."

"And you keep saying that it's true, and that I should forgive her and move on. Is that right?"

No answer this time.

"Here is what I propose. If you still contend that it was a one-time mistake, open the envelope in front of you. If you are right, I will agree. If you are wrong, I will break the head off this little plaster statue."

"NO!"

"Yes, Janice." I raised my arm with the edge of her desk inches below and glared at her. "This is your skin in the game. If I am wrong, I lose something. If my wife is wrong, she loses something. If you are wrong, you need to lose something, too."

She was falling apart in front of my eyes. Her emotions bounced back and forth between terror and rage. I still couldn't tell if she knew the truth, but she had enough one-on-one sessions with my wife to figure it out if she wanted to.

"Open the envelope, Doctor Bentley."

With her hands shaking, she looked down at the manila envelope as if it were a snake that was coiled and ready to strike. Slowly, she picked it up, opened it, and looked at the photograph inside.

"Make sure to see the date and time. It was just one hour after our last session."

While she was doing that, I slipped the statue into my pocket and withdrew a copy. It was a poor copy, but close enough and as close as I could make it from memory.

Her hands began to shake as she dropped the photograph to the floor and cried, "Please! No!"

Too late. My hand swung down, the head of the statue snapped off, and then I threw the remains against the brick wall where is shattered into fragments.

Doctor Bentley dissolved before my eyes and collapsed to her knees, weeping uncontrollably.

What scared me was that I didn't feel a thing, not one damn thing.

I walked back to my chair, fetched my briefcase, and walked from the room. Once out in the waiting room, I approached a very distraught secretary. Reaching into my pocket, I withdrew the figure I'd removed from the shelf and placed it on her desk. "Tell Doctor Bentley that I'm not as heartless as she is. Did you hear me? I'm not as heartless as she is." And with that, I left the office of Doctor Janice Bentley never to return.

The next day she filed her report with the court stating that the marriage was irredeemable and I was soon a free man. The judge didn't like it, but even he had to follow the guidelines set forth by the state.

Beverly tried to apologize after that, but what is the value of an apology from an experienced liar and cheat? I packed up my life and moved two states away to another office with the same company where I do much the same work and got on with my life.

I thought about those days in the weeks and months after that, and what I remembered most was that I destroyed a woman's heart using the love she had for her dead son, and I felt nothing. Sure, I despised her. She was a tool used by my wife in a system that did not value honesty, but I destroyed her, nonetheless. That was when I went into honest therapy where I spent a year of hard work and self-examination trying to fix what was broken in me. I even sent two sincere letters back to my old town. In one I wished my ex-wife a good life and suggested that maybe next time she should try honesty in her relationships. Okay, I wasn't entirely healed at that point. In the other, I asked Doctor Bentley for forgiveness. I explained that I was a desperate man trying to escape the pain of betrayal and deception, and I did only what I had to do. I heard later that she changed fields and became an advocate for abused children. I hope she finds comfort in that.

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Okay, that image with the plaster figure and switching the original for a copy has played in my mind until I had to write a story around it. I hope it wasn't too silly, but sometimes you need to exorcise the demons so you can be rid of them.

I know that some readers will hate that last paragraph, but sometimes healing includes forgiveness. Anger can be as great a burden as pain, and very often we live happier lives if we just set it down as we strive to be better versions of ourselves.