When Love Goes Bad Read online

  Then she turned her famously dazzling smile my way. Lisa Marie was standing in the midst of the audience, but even from that distance her smile warmed me. Despite myself, I relaxed under its welcoming glow.

  “Please welcome Grace to our show,” she said, pausing for applause. Gerry always said I was a bit slow on the uptake, but even I could tell that the audience felt warmly toward me. On the other hand, the hostility toward Gerry was palpable. I was confused.

  Then Lisa Marie marched up onto the stage, stood before me, and took my hand.

  “I know this is going to be difficult to hear, Grace, but you know that your husband asked you to appear on the show because he wanted to tell you something.”

  I nodded. Gerry had never shared with me what that “something” was. Now my head was swimming. In the background I sensed the audience’s uncomfortable silence. To my left Gerry was squirming in his seat, a sickly smirk that I had never seen before on his face. And in front on me, Lisa Marie, in all her glory, looked sympathetically into my eyes. I had never felt such a foreboding in my life. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and find myself back in my comfortable bed in Indiana, awakening from a bad dream.

  But this was real all right, and there was no way to stop the juggernaut once it had begun.

  As my eyes adjusted to the lights the audience came into view. It seemed that the entire audience was looking at me as if I was a sacrificial lamb. Surely, it couldn’t be that bad. Gerry had brought me here to work on our marriage. Why would the audience feel sorry for me? How many of them were in perfect relationships?

  “Grace.” Lisa Marie’s soft, measured voice brought me back to the moment.

  “Yes?” I smiled.

  When I watched Lisa Marie’s show at home I had been struck by her sincerity. While some of the talk show hosts egged their guests and audiences on, tried to get them to put on outrageous displays, Lisa Marie was known for her compassion and for her ability to keep things dignified, at least more dignified than her competitors. That was why, when I noticed the almost sickly-sweet expression on her face, I went cold inside.

  “Grace.” Her voice was soft again, gentle and imbued with pity. “You know that Gerry brought you here to tell you something.”

  Somehow, I managed to nod.

  Lisa Marie turned her gaze, this time as steely as that of a drill sergeant, to my husband.

  “Okay, Gerry. If you still want to do this, now is the time.”

  Gerry, who had always been a touch vain, preened and pulled himself to his full six feet. “I’m ready, Lisa Marie. Boy, am I ready!”

  Despite the roaring in my ears I heard the rumble of the audience.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Grace.” He turned to me with the face of a man I did not know. I’d seen him critical before. I’d certainly seen him smug, but this was different. Now the face of my beloved husband was mocking, even downright cruel.

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I might as well just say it. No just trying to spare your feelings.” He flashed a warning stare at the audience. “I’ve found someone else and I want nothing more to do with you.”

  I honestly don’t remember what I felt at that time, though I’ve relived it a thousand times in my mind. What I do remember most is the stunned disbelief. The devastation would come later. I also remember that amidst the audience’s bellows, Lisa Marie asked Gerry to explain. I deserved an explanation, she said. I suppose she was trying to help, but it didn’t feel that way. Her prodding seemed to give Gerry permission to let loose.

  “You know, ever since I married you, you’ve been nothing but a burden. When we first met you were fun but the second that ring went on your finger you started killing me with your clinging and demands. ‘Spend more time with me. Tell me what you’re feeling. Why can’t you stay home more,’” he mocked. “I tell you, it’s enough to make a man crazy.”

  “Is that why you turned to another woman?” Lisa Marie asked.

  “Damn right. And not just one, either.” He looked me in the eye. “You’re so stupid, Grace. You had no idea that I’ve been cheating on you from the first. And don’t you all dare to judge me,” he said, responding to the audience’s reaction. “If you all had to live with that every day, you’d cheat too.”

  My eyes flooded with tears. Gerry shook his head.

  “And don’t turn on the waterworks. You do that every time you don’t like something. Maybe I fell for it the first thousand times, but now it just makes my skin crawl. It’s no wonder I turned to other women for relief.”

  That’s when Lisa Marie had the “other woman” brought out. She was not the type of woman I would have thought could steal my husband from me. Crystal Manning may have been tall and slim but with her peroxide blonde big hair, barely-there leather micro-miniskirt, six-inch stilettos, and what must have been entire jars of makeup on her harsh face, she was the total opposite of me.

  Worse, she was mean. After kissing my husband—a long, deep kiss that spoke of real intimacy—she turned on me.

  “You bitch,” she hissed. She stood up and stalked back and forth. I leaned back in my seat to get farther away from her. This woman was frightening. I feared for my physical safety. She obviously felt no sympathy for me or any shame for having stolen my husband.

  “Don’t you even try to act all pathetic,” she continued. “Me and Gerry, we know how you are. He only married you because he felt sorry for you, but enough’s enough!”

  She turned on the audience when they yelled their disapproval.

  “You know nothing about it.” She ran her hands sinuously down her toned body, jerked her head toward me and sneered. “What red-blooded man would stay with that when he could have this?”

  Lisa Marie stepped in. “That’s enough. This may be the end of Grace and Gerry’s marriage, but that’s no reason to ridicule her. Grace has feelings, too.”

  That statement only served to egg her and Gerry on.

  “I don’t care about her damned feelings. This creature’s been dragging me down for years and I just want out.” He stood up, bent over my chair, and yelled directly into my face, “You hear that, bitch? I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  Now reseated, Crystal was nodding her head and preening. “And don’t think you’re going to get a penny out of him, either. Once Gerry gets rid of you, we’re taking off for Florida—in your car!”

  That’s when I saw Lisa Marie hovering over me.

  “You haven’t said a word, Grace. I know this has been a dreadful shock for you, but is there anything you want to say to Gerry?”

  With that they had to pan to a commercial because that’s when I fainted dead away.

  I never saw it coming. My marriage was the one thing in life I was sure of. I loved Gerry and he loved me. It was as simple as that. At least I thought it was.

  I’m not saying that everything was perfect, but, then, only marriages in storybooks are flawless. But how could Gerry have been so unhappy that he was willing to humiliate me on national television? If things had been that bad, how could I not have known he’d been having an affair for over a year? Only in retrospect did I see the signs, and then only with difficulty.

  Which scared the living daylights out of me. What was wrong with me that I had been so blind, that even after the show, with the knowledge of hindsight, I was barely able to perceive that my marriage had been in trouble? Who was I kidding? My marriage had not only been in trouble; apparently, it had been a total sham. And I hadn’t had a clue.

  Oh, my God. Every time I thought about it I began to shake. I had never been the most confident person in the world to begin with, and then to find out that the one thing in life I had been sure of, the one thing I had taken pride in, had been nothing but a charade. Suddenly, my whole world was turned on its head. Nothing made sense anymore. I didn’t even know who or what I was.

  It hadn’t always been that way. At least not in the eight years since I’d met Gerry. Before that . . . well, those were d
ays I didn’t like to think about. Growing up in an alcoholic family makes it hard to feel secure and to have a good sense of who you are. The men I’d been involved with before Gerry had treated me badly, a few had even hit me, and nearly all had confirmed my own opinion of how worthless I was. Certainly, none of them had any intention of marrying me. That’s why I had been so grateful that Gerry was willing to take a chance on me.

  I had worried that I might end up alone, passing my days at some dead-end job and coming home to an empty apartment, falling asleep only to do the same thing all over again. Nightmares of an empty, solitary future had plagued me since I was a child.

  In the early days, Gerry treated me like a queen—flowers, dinners out, compliments, enough to make my head spin. Within three months we were married. There were those who told me I didn’t know what I was doing, that I’d jumped at the first man who had treated me well, but in my heart I knew that Gerry was the one. On my wedding day I vowed to do everything within my power to make him happy.

  And I was happy, too. So what if Gerry stopped showering me with gifts, stopped doing little things to make me feel that I was the center of his life. How many men continue to lavish the same attentions on their wives that they did before the wedding? The day-to-day realities of married life make that impossible, but it really didn’t matter. Still, I tried to make Gerry feel as special as he had made me feel when we were first dating. My friends were forever telling me that I spoiled Gerry to death. I should let him pick up around the house once in a while, do a load of laundry or heat up the occasional frozen dinner when I wanted to have a night out with the girls, but I never saw the sense of that.

  Sure, it was true that I worked, too. With overtime and all I guess that most weeks I worked more hours than Gerry, whose work was often subject to layoffs, but I took pride in being able to work outside the home and take care of my home as well.

  He wanted for nothing—nothing, it seemed, except to get away from me. But why did he have to tell me this on national television, in front of everyone we knew and cared for, not to mention millions of strangers? In the days after the show that question nagged at me endlessly.

  Now, I’ve watched television talk shows for years, some good, others bad. Sometimes while watching those shows where the participants do bizarre things like whacking each other upside the head with their chairs, I wondered if the whole thing was staged. I’d even seen unfortunate women sit there in stunned silence or seething rage while their men revealed the most unbelievable secrets to them, and to millions of people watching at home. I confess that often I’d decided that the whole show was a put-on. No woman could be that blind not to have a clue that her husband was a child molester, had three other wives, had once been a woman or whatever other staggering secret they had chosen to divulge on national television. The shows must be staged, if not with professional actors, than at least with real people willing to pretend.

  Well, I’m here to tell you, that is not the case. Maybe it happens, but at least for me the emotions, the facts and the pain were all too real. I honestly had no idea that my husband had been cheating. That woman walking onto the stage was the first inkling I’d had that my marriage was in trouble. Pitiful, huh? Pitiful, but true.

  Since the show so many people have told me that they weren’t surprised that Gerry could do something like that to me. It seems like I was the only one blind to his discontent. I was stunned. What was it that everyone but me was seeing? Or was it just that everyone’s looking at things with the wisdom of hindsight? I’ll tell you the story and you judge for yourself.

  My parents had always told me that, plain and timid as I was, I’d be lucky to land a husband at all. I lived up to my vow to be the best wife I could be. I kept the house spotless, something that was important to Gerry. I know that many husbands don’t care much about housekeeping. I know that my sister’s husband doesn’t care so long as he has clean clothes and the house is more or less picked up. But Gerry was a neat freak. He loathed dirt and clutter.

  One day after we’d been married a few months he arrived home from work to find a sink full of dirty dishes, two loads of laundry waiting to be done, and a layer of dust on the furniture. He blew up. Who could blame him? I could easily have done a load or two of laundry before leaving for work and there was no excuse for the dust. How long does it take to run a duster around a three-room apartment?

  After that, Gerry never returned to a less than perfect home.

  I knew that even though he didn’t say too much about how well I took care of him, he appreciated it. Some of my friends said that husbands didn’t need their wives to wait on them or to do as much for them as I did, but I knew that Gerry was one man who needed and appreciated being cared for.

  “I couldn’t stand it myself,” my sister Gail said to me.

  “It’s not so bad.” I had just finished repainting the bedroom and was taking a short break before hanging the new curtains I’d made. “It’s a small room, so it didn’t take too long to paint.”

  Gail grunted. “Maybe not if you had just slapped a coat of new paint over the old, but that’s not good enough for your Gerry. Oh no, nothing would be good enough but that you strip off the old paint, then sponge paint the walls to perfection.”

  “Gerry didn’t ask me to do that,” I said defensively. “I saw a show on how to sponge paint and I thought it would look nice. Besides, now that he’s away hunting with the boys, it’s a perfect time to get the work done.”

  Gail raised an eyebrow. “And how do you explain the homemade curtains?”

  I shrugged. “Homemade curtains just add a nice touch to a room.” There was no need to tell my sister that Gerry had thrown a fit the previous week about my spending and that after buying the paint with my overtime money I didn’t have enough left over for store-bought curtains.

  “If you ask me, you’re too good for Gerry.”

  I loved my sister, but she had never been fond of Gerry. I had given up trying to convince her otherwise, but I didn’t have to listen to her criticize him, either.

  “You only think that because you won’t let yourself to get to know him.”

  Gail snorted. “Oh, I know him, all right. I know more about him than I wish I did.” She looked like she was about to say more.

  “What?” I prompted. I had no desire to hear her badmouth my husband, but if she was going to dangle tantalizing tidbits in front of me she could hardly expect me not to nibble.

  This time she shrugged. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.”

  I stared at her for a few seconds, watching her squirm under my gaze, then backed off. My interest was piqued but in reality I had had enough of Gail’s jabs at Gerry’s expense. Whatever she had been about to say had most likely been just another nonspecific putdown.

  “Well, don’t just sit there. Help me hang these curtains.”

  She looked relieved. “After that delicious lunch you served me it’s the least I can do!”

  Gerry’s reaction upon returning home wasn’t exactly what I had expected.

  “What the hell’s been going on here?”

  The words stung, but from the look on Gerry’s face when he walked in the door it was obvious that the hunting trip had not gone well. It was probably because of Dan, a new guy one of the others had invited. I’d never met him but from the way Gerry talked about him I could tell that he was not an easy man to get along with.

  “Oh,” I said. “I just took the opportunity while you were away to spruce the place up a little.”

  “Spruce it up?” He grabbed the beer I offered and headed for his favorite chair. “You know I hate green. What in hell made you pick that pukey color, anyway? And what’s going on with all those swirls? The walls look like someone heaved on them.”

  I hurried to his side with the sandwich I had made, his favorite, rare roast beef with heaps of mayonnaise, and flipped on the television, tuning it in to the sports station.

  “I can change the color if you don’t
like it.”

  He looked up from the football game just long enough to snort. “Right! And spend more money that we can’t afford. Just leave it. With everything else in this house, I suppose I can live with a color that turns my stomach.”

  I sighed. I’d known that Gerry hated green and I supposed that the particular shade of green was too feminine for him. It was no big deal. He was just a temperamental man.

  “Temperamental?” Gail looked at me like I had three heads. “We’re talking about the same man here, aren’t we? Tall, dark wavy hair? Square-jawed? Gerry? Your husband Gerry?”

  Sometimes Gail could be so snide. It had never suited her and it didn’t suit her now. For the most part I’d learned to ignore Gail’s criticisms of Gerry.

  But not today.

  “You’re too hard on Gerry,” I said, trying to control my temper. “If you knew him like I know him, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”

  Gail rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to tell me again about his miserable childhood, I’m not buying it. Neither of us grew up easy, and you don’t see us walking around with chips on our shoulders.”

  I inhaled deeply to calm myself before replying. “Gerry does not have a chip on his shoulder. Sometimes things are just hard for him. You know he didn’t have any good role model growing up. He just doesn’t know how to act sometimes.”

  “That’s no excuse for a lack of common decency. Even an ape would know better than to treat his wife the way that man treats you. No matter how he was brought up.”

  “What do you mean?” I could feel my face burn hot.

  “Come on now, Grace. I know you think the sun rises and sets on Gerry, but even you must be aware that he treats you like dirt.”

  “If you mean the way he ignored me at Carolyn’s wedding last week, I can explain that.”

  “It’s not only that, although that was disgraceful. I was so embarrassed for you. But what about the way he talks to you? And the way he expects you to work every hour of the day and then come home and wait on him hand and foot.”