When Love Goes Bad Read online

  Annie and I followed her as she weaved in and out of the rows of tables, finally pointing to an empty one close to the dance floor. Annie and I nodded that that one was okay, and we all sat down.

  It didn’t take long for the men to start asking us to dance. Three single women sitting alone are prime targets for “boot-scootin’ cowboys.” When the bandleader announced that the next one was going to be a line dance, we all hustled onto the dance floor. What better way to be seen by everyone and to let the men know what really good dancers we were? We were having such a good time, we figured we could fake what we hadn’t learned in our class. And with the dance floor so crowded, no one noticed if we made a mistake or skipped a step, anyway.

  Throughout the evening, a couple that seemed so smooth and made all the fancy turns look like melted butter, caught my eye. He was tall, about fifty-five, and dressed in a brightly colored, starched-and-ironed shirt and deeply creased jeans. His white Stetson really made him look sharp. His partner was a petite woman with strawberry-blond hair about shoulder length. She wore a fancy, red-laced, country-and-western style dress with red cowboy boots. How good they looked together! She just melted into him when they slow danced, and they were by far the best waltzers on the floor.

  About midnight, as Mary, Annie, and I were getting ready to leave, I told them to hold up for a minute—that I wanted to do something before we left. They watched with puzzled looks on their faces as I walked out into the middle of the dance floor.

  “Excuse me,” I said, putting my hand on the man’s shoulder to get his attention. “I just want to tell you what wonderful dancers you two are. I have admired your dancing all evening.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” the man said.

  “Yes, thank you,” the lady added with a big smile on her face.

  “I don’t remember seeing you here before,” he remarked. “Is this your first time at The Watering Hole?”

  “Yes, my two girlfriends and I just finished taking dancing lessons, and we came to try out what we learned.”

  “Have you had a good time?” the woman asked.

  “Yes! We’ve had a ball! But I better get off the floor so ya’ll can finish your dance. I just couldn’t leave without telling you two how good you are. ‘Bye, now!”

  “What did you do?” Mary asked on our way out to the car.

  “I told that couple how good they looked dancing.”

  “That was a nervy thing to do!” Annie said with a silly giggle. “Connie, you’ll do just about anything!”

  “Not anything, Annie. They just looked so much in love and the way he held her and the way she looked into his eyes when they danced, I just wanted to meet them and let them know how nice they looked out on the dance floor. Anyway, they thought it was a nice compliment. They liked it.”

  All the way home while Mary and Annie talked, I was thinking about how the woman had looked into his eyes. It had been a long time since I’d looked at a man that way. Maybe someday, someone would come along for me again.

  But that night, as Mary and Annie drove out of my driveway, I returned back to my dark, empty house. My kids were both grown and gone, so I had the whole house to myself. For a while, after the kids had first left home, I’d enjoyed the quiet. But now, the silence was so lonely.

  The next morning, Annie called and suggested that we go dancing again next Saturday night. She said she’d had a wonderful time and just couldn’t wait to go again.

  “Sure,” I told her. “Call Mary and tell her. I’ll drive again.”

  The next Saturday night, we all tried to talk at once as our excitement built on our way to The Watering Hole. Mary had called ahead and reserved the table where we’d sat before; she’d described to the lady on the phone that it was in the fourth row from the door, right in the middle of the stage line, on the front row. Sure enough, when we got there, we had the same table.

  “May I have this dance?” I heard as someone touched me on the shoulder from behind.

  Looking up into the eyes of the stranger whom I’d complimented on the dance floor the week before, my mouth dropped open. “Uh . . . I guess so,” I replied slowly, looking around for his date.

  Totally confused, I followed him out onto the dance floor, and we began a slow two-step. He made small talk as we danced, talking about how hot the weather was, and how crowded the dance floor would be before the night was over.

  “Yes, that’s why we came early tonight,” I told him. “We called ahead and had our same table reserved. We thought that we would come early and leave a little earlier than we did last week. Mary likes to get up and go to church on Sunday mornings, and she had a hard time getting up after we stayed so late last week.”

  “Thank you for the nice compliment last week.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Where’s your lady? Is she not here yet?”

  “Well,” he said hesitantly, “she’s not my lady. We both live in Shelton, and it’s so far to drive that she asked if she could buy the gas and ride with me every week. We’ve been coming for about four or five months together, but she called me this afternoon and said that her mother was sick and she was going over to take care of her tonight. So I came alone. I’ve been coming out here for about five years now.”

  The song ended and he walked me back to the table. “Thank you for the dance,” he said as he tipped his hat.

  “Well, what was that all about?” Mary asked with anticipation after he strolled away. After filling them in on the scoop, a line dance was in progress on the floor, and we joined in. Then, after I’d had several dances with other cowboys, the stranger appeared again.

  “This is a waltz,” he said. “Did they teach you to waltz in that class you took?”

  We danced six or seven times that night. He finally told me that his name was Earl.

  By the time the month was over, we were an item on the dance floor at The Watering Hole. Within six weeks, we were dancing every dance, and he had joined our table. I never knew quite what had happened, but the woman he’d been giving the ride to kept coming, only she drove her own car now. She gave me dagger looks every time she walked by our table. Once, I ran into her in the rest room, and she snidely said, “Well, I guess you’ve won.” And then she was out the door.

  She evidently left the dance hall, as I never saw her for the rest of that evening. In fact, I never saw her again after that night. I suppose that should have been a warning to me, but at the time, I just thought that she was mad because she didn’t have her ride anymore.

  Mary, Annie, and I continued to go dancing every Saturday night, and Earl made a permanent reservation for our table; he was always waiting for us when we arrived. Six months into the relationship, and after we had been sleeping together for two of those months, he told me one night that he was married. He said that his wife had a disease that couldn’t be cured, but that it was not terminal. He said that she did not like to dance, so she’d agreed to let him go to The Watering Hole as often as he wanted to.

  He’d learned to dance in a class offered by the continuing education department of the community college close to his home. His wife had known all along that the strawberry blonde was riding with him, but since they were church friends, she didn’t care. He was a cop and put in a lot of overtime. The times he’d driven in to see me at my house, he’d told her that he was “working a double shift.” Since he took care of the money and the bills, she didn’t know how many hours were on his paycheck, so he got away with his little escapades.

  I listened to his story, and suddenly, I felt that there was more to the strawberry blonde than he was telling me. Now, suddenly, I thought I knew what she’d meant when she’d told me in the bathroom that I had “won.” They’d had a thing going, and once I’d come along, he’d dumped her for me. Although I made excuses for him and tried to put her out of my mind, her words were always there, in the back of my mind.

  About a year and a half into the relationship, he had divorced his wife, and bought a house th
at he was remodeling for us. By this point, he’d asked me to marry him and move there to the town where he worked. He was close to retirement and did not want to have to change jobs, so I agreed to commute to my job, as I did not want to lose my retirement, either.

  One hot August evening, we were married at a local senior citizens’ dance with all his friends watching—in total shock. Only the man who performed the ceremony, a judge and regular at the dances, knew that we were getting married there that night.

  We both wore jeans, western shirts, and our cowboy boots. How shocked everyone was when the judge told them all to take their seats around the dance floor, because he had something to tell them. Then we walked up in front of him, and he began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. . . .” The secret was out.

  And what a fun evening it turned out to be! Everyone hugged and laughed, and we were the talk of the dance floor.

  For a month, everything was wonderful. But after four short weeks, I knew I had made a mistake—

  An awful mistake!

  He began to be very domineering. He would tell me where I could go and where I couldn’t go. I liked to walk in the afternoons after I got home from work and on the weekends, in an attempt to keep my weight down. He would tell me that I didn’t need to be out “walking”—that men were gawking at me, watching me walk. He told me that he liked me just like I was, and that what I needed to do was stay in the house.

  When I would cook something special, as I often did—a cherry pie, for instance, he would say, “Patsy (his ex-wife) could really bake a mean cherry pie,” as he sat thinking of her with a faraway look in his eyes. Never once, though, did he compliment my cooking.

  After we were married, I found out that I was, in fact, his third wife, not his second. I found out quite by mistake when his mother started talking about “Linda” over Sunday dinner. Then I found out that he had two daughters by her, and that they refused to see him. In fact, he had not seen them since they were small children, and now, they were both grown and married. Throughout our marriage, I never met them. Earl claimed that his first wife was an alcoholic, which I also found out was not true. In fact, she did not even drink. But then, he had to make himself look good. He never took the blame or responsibility for anything. That was his way in life.

  Several months into the marriage, I realized that Patsy was calling the house several times a day, and that he was calling her. I knew it all along, really, as he would let things slip, such as that she had done something or other, or said something about their kids (he and Patsy also had two children, a boy and a girl, also grown and married), but it wasn’t until we got a caller ID machine that I had actual proof. I would come in from work and either he’d been working in his workshop all day and had not come to check the machine and she had called several times trying to reach him, or he had answered the phone and forgotten to erase the record of the times of day when she’d called. So, I would come home and find that she had called him four or five times in a single day. Before long, though, after I’d confronted him several times about talking to her, he just got smarter and made sure that he erased the machine. Then I knew for sure that they were still talking, so I set him up.

  I would call home from my work at different times during the day and when I got home, I would ask him if we’d gotten any calls that day. You see, my number at work wouldn’t register on our machine, but it would show that we’d received a call, and the time it was received.

  He would say, “The phone hasn’t rung all day. Look for yourself. There are no messages on the caller ID.”

  Sure enough, there wouldn’t be. Not even any of mine. Thus, I knew he had erased the calls. I did this several times, until I got tired of hearing him lie to me, right to my face.

  At first, we would go out to eat or dancing with couples who were his friends. But gradually, he put a stop to that. From then on, he wanted to do nothing but sit at home in his recliner and watch TV. I’d always had such a good time when we were out with our friends, but I knew by this point that he was extremely jealous and possessive. He didn’t want any man looking at me, not even his friends.

  On one occasion, Mary and her new husband had come to town and called us to meet them at the local steakhouse for lunch. They were so excited to see us, and I asked Earl if we could pay for their lunches as a treat for my good friend. The very idea of this infuriated him.

  “Hell no! They can pay for their own damn lunches!”

  Once we got to the restaurant, he was as mad as a stuffed toad. He hardly spoke to them. He ate, never looking up, and when he quickly finished, he turned away from the table, crossed his legs and arms, and refused to enter into the conversation. I was so embarrassed.

  Then Mary asked if they could come out to see our house and visit for about an hour or so. I was tickled to have some special time with them, but it made Earl even madder. All the way to the house, he wouldn’t say a word. Once we were home, I told Mary’s husband that they could watch the ball game, and she and I would go into the kitchen and talk.

  Well, we had a great time catching up on everything. But Mary called me later to say that Earl had not said a single word to her husband during the two hours they were in our home, and that he’d said that he would not ever come to see us again. I understood, but I was so hurt for them—and livid with Earl.

  Only on one occasion did Annie ever come to see us. She had also remarried by then, and Earl treated her new husband with the same rudeness and coldness. Her husband was a long-haul truck driver, and all Earl talked about was how sorry and trashy truck drivers were. Then while Annie and I were in the kitchen, getting dessert, he threw in some really nasty digs to her husband about Annie being a “loose woman.” Needless to say, they never set foot in our house again.

  Indeed, my life as Earl’s wife became one embarrassing event after another. Every time we would go out in public, he would completely ignore me. He would not walk with me; he’d either rush ahead, or drop behind.

  He retired shortly before our seven-year marriage ended. The department gave him a big retirement party, inviting people from other agencies, people from the courthouse such as judges and the mayor, and of course, all the family and friends.

  I bought a new dress and shoes for the party and really fixed my hair in a special way. Before we left the house that evening for the party, he said, “You look awful in that dress. You look fat. Why don’t you just wear a plastic garbage bag? Maybe it’d fit you better!”

  My heart was crushed, but I knew I couldn’t let myself cry and ruin my makeup. As it was, we were ready to go out the door when he said it. So I just shoved it down into my gut like I usually did and went on, knowing I could fall apart and cry when the party was over.

  All that evening, everyone complimented me on what a beautiful dress I had on, and how nice my hair looked. The judge told me to stand at the front door of the reception hall and shake people’s hands as they came in to welcome them. That really made Earl mad for some reason; he looked like he was going to explode. And all of the pictures and videos taken at the party would later reflect just how mad he’d really been.

  After he got his food in the line at the buffet tables, he went over and sat with someone else instead of sitting with me. As the ceremony continued, he would not even talk to me; he acted like he was there alone. Everyone noticed his coldness and went out of their way to be kind to me. After all, most of them had worked with or known Earl for over thirty years; they knew how nasty, contemptible, offensive, cruel, and unkind he could be.

  About a week after the party, Earl insisted that I buy a cell phone so that if I ever had car trouble, I could call for help. Sounds sweet and concerned, doesn’t it? But it didn’t take me long to figure out the game. I was a teacher, and my arrival time at home was different every day, especially since I had to commute in heavy traffic. Well, once I got the cell phone, Earl would call me every day at about the time when he thought I’d left work, eager to know how long it would b
e until I got home.

  “What time will you be here?” he would ask.

  One day, I came home and the pillows on both ends of the living room couch were smashed into the ends of the couch. We never sat in the living room unless we had formal company; we always sat in the recliners in the den.

  “Who was here today, Earl?” I asked him.

  Shocked by my question and the fact that I’d asked it, he quickly told me that “a girl” had come by, “selling magazines.” When I asked him more questions like I really knew the truth (I was bluffing), he told me that she’d stayed for about two hours. I think he thought that the neighbor across the street, whom I’d become good friends with, had somehow told me all.

  “You mean to tell me, Earl, that you invited her in, and she stayed for two hours, selling magazines? Don’t give me that, Earl. You don’t even read.”

  “Well, we just got to talking, and she just kept on talking.”

  “A girl,” I said. “How old was this girl, Earl?”

  Again, thinking that Hazel across the street had probably called me to tell me, I could tell he felt like he couldn’t lie to me and say that she was twelve. “Oh, I would guess she was about twenty-five or thirty.”

  He never knew that all I learned, I learned because the couch pillows were smashed.

  Then he began taking two-week, three-week, and finally month-long “trips” across the country and eventually into Canada on his newly purchased Honda motorcycle. Before long, I found out that he was taking women with him; the motorcycle helmet that Earl had allegedly purchased for me smelled of perfume, and due to my severe asthma, I could not wear perfume. And just why would he take my helmet on a trip that he was going on alone? Men sometimes just don’t think.

  On his trips, Earl would go to a nearby store or a phone booth and he would call me every few days, just to erase any suspicion. But by this time, I knew all of his lies, and I could recognize the tone of voice he used when he spewed them out.

  Seven years into the marriage, I had grown numb, but in my heart, I refused for this marriage to end in divorce. I had felt like such a failure after my first marriage had ended so violently, although it was hardly my fault; my first husband had run around on me, too, for most of our marriage.