In the Closet

While Abraham was out of town, I had the first productive weekend in quite awhile. My recent wardrobe update led to my closet and drawers being stuffed. Every time I visit my mother's, I bring a bag of stuff to get rid of, but I wasn't as diligent in getting rid of clothes as I had been adding them.

I geared up my Pandora station and I tried on everything in my closet. I didn't feel good in the color brown, so everything brown went into the donation pile. So did some Forever 21 shirts that I had since I was 21. Sweaters that looked worn out. Pants that, sigh, no longer fit. In the end I donated 2 pairs of shorts, 3 skirts, 13 pairs of pants and 57 shirts. I could outfit someone with an entire wardrobe in what I was trashing. The devastating thing was that my closet didn't look any different.

I called my mom. "I've been working all day and my closet is still full. I mean, it's no longer stuffed to maximum capacity, but it certainly doesn't look minimalist like those magazine articles do."

"I know the feeling."

"I counted everything I'm donating. I'm getting rid of 57 shirts."

"WHAT?!" my mother screeched. "You have 57 extra shirts!? What are you wearing? Are you sitting on the phone with me topless?"

I laughed. "No I assured you there's probably triple that still in my closet."

"You're sick," she said. "You have a disease."

The following morning I lugged everything to her house. We sat on the floor of her living room with piles of my crap surrounding us. She made me take 5 shirts back, arguing they were too nice. Then she shopped for herself in my castaways, pulling out another small stack of shirts.

"You know," she said. "This isn't a lot of stuff. You could have done better; you're not ruthless like me."

"Look around, mom, 57 shirts!" I hollered.

So I think I may know where my clothes hoarding may have originated. My mother thought 57 sounded like a large number of items, but then said it wasn't much when it was in front of her. Not to mention she made me take some of it back home.

My mother disappeared upstairs to retrieve her donations. She returned with a pair of shoes and three measly shirts. Then she tossed a Bible on the pile.

"Mom." I knew what it was.

"It's not staying in this house any longer," she quipped.

It was my ex-step father's Bible that was given to him by his deceased mother. Her scrawl dedicating the book to her son was on the inside cover.

"I will mail it to his friend. You can't donate it."

"Why? He doesn't have any kids to pass the book down to. When he dies, that family lineage ends.

"What does he need a Bible for? He's a terrible person," she continued. "What if someone else needs a Bible?"

"Mom! I'm sure there are enough Bibles in the county. If someone wants the Lord's words, they can get them!"

"Fine," she gave up. "I'm not letting you waste your money mailing it though. His friend's house is by the donation center. But you’re the one who is getting out the car and stuffing it in the mailbox. And I'm not coming to a full stop."

"Fair enough."

We drove to Goodwill. A friendly man helped me lug the heavy garbage bags of clothes from the SUV. I got in the car while my mother signed for the tax receipt.

"God bless you!" he waved at us.

I giggled. I knew that the man saying "God bless you!" for donating our clothes, on a Sunday no less, was enough to guilt my mother into doing the right thing.

My mother mumbled as she got into the car. "Did you hear him?" she muttered.

"Yes!" I laughed.

As we approached the friend's neighborhood, my mother grew anxious. I may have been with S for 2 years, but she was with her ex-husband for 20. It is taking her longer with her relationship than it took me with mine.

"My throat's tightening," she said.

I needed to fill the silence. I needed to chatter to distract her, but my mind was blank. The only thing I could think of was this.

"So I read this weekly cleaning article on the Internet. This woman answers people's questions on how to clean things, like old radiators or humidifiers. And one person wrote in and asked her how to clean a leather sex swing. Can you believe that? So she walked into a general leather shop and asked the proprietor how to clean a leather sex swing. That must have been embarrassing!"

To make this conversation clear, my mother and I don't have the relationship where we talk about the things that happen behind closed doors. I've never actually told her I've had sex.

"A LEATHER SEX SWING, MOM," my voice rose as soon as I realized what I was rambling about to my mother. "Anyway, she said that to clean leather sex swings, just take it to the dry cleaner. Apparently those people have seen everything. Hoo boy!"

And then I repeated the phrases "leather sex swing" and "dry cleaners have seen everything" about three more times while my mom white knuckled the steering wheel.

I'm just hoping my mother blocked this out with the rest of the trauma of dropping off the book.

Independence Day

Up until about 18 months ago, I had a step-father. He came into my life when I was 7 or 8 and remained there for 20 years. There were some incidents when I was younger; we weren't close. He never told me he loved me and I reciprocated. I'm gutted as I think about that now. That man lived in my house for 20 years as a father figure but never bothered with the father part.

When I fled my terrible, no-good relationship and moved home, I quickly put together that my step-father was cheating on my mother. No one believed me. My therapist told me I was too traumatized and consequently overly sensitive. My mother said the same thing to that effect. But I knew. And every suspicion I had turned out to be right.

Once again I had to flee. I fled the house I grew up in and moved into my present apartment to avoid witnessing the divorce in person. My therapist told me it would have been too hard on me because my own wounds were still so fresh.

My mom once told me that because I had the strength to get out of my relationship, I gave her the strength to get out of hers. And since then, our lives have run parallel to each other. As I watched my dog recover from my relationship (she would shake and hide while I was being attacked), I learned that animals are affected by negative energy as well. So I wasn't surprised when after my step-father vacated the house, animals started showing up.

My mother lives on a large plot of land with several gardens and a small orchard. First, she started spying turtles, then rabbits. Then one day she stopped mid-sentence on the phone to bang on the bay window. "Damn deer," she muttered. Then a hawk took up residence in a tree behind the sunroom.

"It's like you're Cinderella!" I laughed.

Everyday on the phone, I heard about a new animal that appeared. A coyote. A bear most recently.

"Why are they all coming to dinner at my house?!" my mother exclaimed.

"Easy. It's because he's gone. The bad energy is gone, so the animals are coming out."

My mother didn't believe me. She said it was because she was too busy with the relationship and never noticed before. Then the orchid in the sunroom bloomed. That flower hadn't bloomed in 10 years. It made a believer out of my mother.

***

I haven't seen or heard from my ex-stepfather since I moved out of the house again almost 2 years ago. Since before the divorce. I was angry over the lying and cheating. Home was supposed to be a safe place for me after I was beaten down, but it wasn't. I knew things. I knew things that would get him fired from his job as a school teacher. My mother begged me not to say anything, saying that his time would come eventually. I didn't want to trust the Universe. I wanted revenge just in case the Universe failed me yet again, but ultimately I listened to my mother.

Two years to the day after we got confirmation of his cheating, which ironically was Independence Day. My mother got a letter in the mail. It wasn't addressed to her. It was addressed to him. And it was sent from the county where he taught school.

My mom walked inside the house, hands shaking. Not daring to mess with the letter, she walked over to the lamp she does her mending under—the highest wattage fluorescent bulb. She held the envelope against the bulb. The red letters were illuminated.

NOTICE OF TERMINATION.

He was fired. I asked my mother how hard it was to be fired as a school teacher. She listed all the different ways teachers are removed from schools or pushed into administrative roles. She said something egregious had to have happened to receive a notice of termination.

Her friends had finally picked up on my Internet stalking skills. They looked up the Facebook profile of the woman that my step-father cheated on my mom with. On her wall, she announced that the relationship was over. The same week that he was fired, he had to move out of her house that they lived in with her three children. More damage to more children, I thought. Although two years of exposure isn't as bad as twenty.

I didn't trust the Universe. I wanted to push for the firing years ago. My mother told me to wait for it, and she was right. The Universe mailed the letter to her house, ensuring she would find out. She feels validated in her feelings. She felt like he was a bad person and she received confirmation from both his boss and his girlfriend.

***

I mentioned that our lives have been running parallel lately. The same day that she received the letter in the mail, I received a phone call. From S' step-mom.

Divorce

My mother says my step-father left with a whisper, not a bang.

They were arguing over some item that my step-father's parents gave to my mother. My step-father wanted it back and my mother teared up because the item had significance to her family.

My stepfather shot back at her, "Don't you think this is hard on me too?"

And that's when my mother, who has held this secret since July 3rd, opened her mouth and revealed everything. She told him that she knew he was cheating. She described the video the detective shot of him feeding the other woman's cats. How he went to Home Depot and mixed paint for her. Watered her plants. She detailed every lie he told this summer. He was cutting her lawn when he said he was testifying in court. He spent a week at her house when he said he was in my college town for a conference. She told him that she knew about the 400-something text messages they trade a month and told him what times he sent them at. She expressed her disgust when my brother was moving out of the state and we had a last family dinner and he spent the entire time standing in the parking lot talking to her. "So," she said. "I don't think this is nearly as hard on you."

My step-father would normally defend himself and say things like she made him feel like he was never good enough. She made him do it. And he would never admit to lying. My step-father has been a closet smoker for 10 years and still won't admit to it.

But this time, he said nothing. He stayed silent as she revealed everything. He let her finish. And when she was done, he walked away.

My mother helped my step-father move out of the house.

When he was done and handed the keys back to her, he said he was sorry and never meant to hurt her. He then cried.

It's been nearly three weeks since he moved out and we haven't heard from him. We don't expect to hear from him ever again. But the peculiar thing is, he still hasn't signed the divorce papers.

Served

My mother kept her promise to me and did not serve my step-father with divorce papers until I moved out. She waited two days after I moved out.

She packed a bag and kept it in her car for emergencies. Hid extra sets of car keys by the garage door and made plans to stay at a friends house after he was served. She wouldn't step foot in the house unless someone was with her, so I found myself driving out to the suburbs on a regular basis to be there with her.

When we stepped foot inside the house, a handwritten note awaited my mother on the counter.

Sorry it didn't work out. Let's divide the assets without wasting money on ambulance chasers.

Bottom line: he didn't care. He checked out of the marriage long ago and my mother felt like even more of a fool for staying as long as she did and being so worried about him smashing the house.

He still doesn't know we know about the affair. It's supposed to be top-secret, confidential information until the end of the divorce proceedings when my mother demands most of the house my step-father already declared was "legally half [his]."

We knew he was partially checked out by having the affair. But when I got the last of my stuff on moving day and leashed up the Femme Fatale to go to my new apartment, my step-father did not say goodbye to me. My step-father loved my dog so much that he would insist on walking her to the car and petting her in the backseat and saying his goodbyes. Afterwards, he'd hide around the back of the house to mourn her leaving. This time, however, he didn't acknowledge either of us even when I stood at the door and called goodbye to him. And this was a week before the divorce papers were served.

I climbed the steps to my childhood bedroom. All of my afghans didn't make the move and still laid folded on a shelf in my closet. I walked in my now-empty bedroom and saw a single frame sitting on my barren dresser. It was the frame of the Femme Fatale that had been sitting on my step-father's bathroom counter since she first lived with my parents the summer I came home from college with a puppy. He returned the picture of her. That's how done with the marriage he is. The things he used to care about—me, my dog—aren't even worth a paper memento to him anymore. I already ran it by my therapist last week and she agrees he just doesn't care.

And it kind of sucks your father figure for the last 17 years can't be bothered. Just like your real father couldn't be bothered and found a new family. Like, what's so wrong with my mom and me? It's stirring up some deep-rooted rejection inside of me. Because when it's a family, you're not just leaving your wife. My mother may have filed the papers, but she was not the one to leave.

Watched and Weary

My mother went out of town this week for the sole purpose of having a private investigator put on my step-father to get photographic evidence of him cheating for leverage in the divorce. My newest designated job was to sit at home and call the PI whenever my step-father left the house.

The PI started calling me at work before I even left for the weekend Friday afternoon. "I'll be home at 6," I told them. "I'll let you know what's going on then."

I jogged in the (empty) house and snapped the leash on the Femme Fatale's collar. I had a busy night ahead of me: happy hour with the friends at 6:30, followed by an 8:00 movie. Right on time, my phone rang.

"I just got home from work and he's not here," I breathlessly told them.

"Yeah, we know. We saw you."

I stopped in my tracks. I knew my mother hired a PI and yet I still felt jolted and scared. I knew they would be watching various places. I just didn't know they would see me. I stammered, quickly trying to remember if I picked my nose or adjusted my underwear while running into the house and if this moment was forever caught on tape now. "You're saw me?" I screeched.

The female investigator of the team laughed. I felt somewhat comforted that the female member called me. If it was the male member, I don't know if I would have recovered quickly, if at all. It was scary knowing someone saw me and watched me without my consent. I mean, I knew, I just didn't put two and two together.

"Man, you're good." If I knew about the PI and still didn't notice them, then my step-father wouldn't have a clue.

The PI asked all the places he could be, because he was nowhere to be found. "I don't know what to tell you," I said. "He lies about everything so I don't know where his regular places are."

I was left with the instructions to call them when he returned home. Only when I got home at 10:30 p.m. from my movie, he still wasn't there. I called the PI.

"He's still not here. I didn't know if I should call you or not," I told them.

"Oh we know," the PI responded. "We're watching him right now. He's at the woman's house. He's been here since we last spoke. we have tape of him mowing her lawn, feeding her cats, and working on some project together in the kitchen. He's even went to Home Depot to get her a can of paint. They kissed as he walked out the door, but it was quick and daylight and we're not as bold during daylight. We have enough evidence to show intent on cheating even if we don't have any intimate moments."

"Will that be enough in court?" I asked.

"We believe so. Just don't tell your mother, we don't want to upset her yet."

Knowing the truth and seeing the truth are still two different things for me, because I was still shocked. Even though I saw the phone bill and the text messaging records, I was shocked.

I've had about all the drama I can take for one year. The worst part is it isn't even close to being over. My mother wasn't going to serve my stepfather with the divorce papers until I moved out, per my request. I asked her since I was moving out earlier than expected, was she going to have him served earlier. She said yes. It's hard pretending, she said.

Not only is it hard, but it's exhausting. The sight of my step-father disgusts me. I won't go near the living room or the couch he's always sitting on. The confidence I gained with the return of Christopher is slowly slipping away. It's harder to be happy these days; I have to actively pursue it. I'm sleeping more, yet still don't feel rested.

I'm weary.

How Google ended my mother's marriage

I arrived Friday at lunch time to my mother's house. I had just left Christopher's (aka my girlfriend's house for movies and margaritas according to the story I gave my mom when I left) and I was in a good mood. Christopher liked me. He liked me in the snuggle in his sleep, play with my hair and kiss me on the forehead kind of way.

I was standing in the kitchen with my mom, chatting about nonsense when my step-father got off the couch for no reason and picked up a table he was supposed to carry into the basement the day before. He was so nasty and unnecessarily mean about it that it snapped me out of whatever I was saying. My mother was silent, but my gut instinct took over before I could give it a second thought, I yelled something to the extent that he was being an unreasonable jerk. I don't remember exactly what I said, all I know is that he single handedly changed the whole mood of the house with his actions and he was taking it out on my mother.

My step-father slunk out the back door and got in his truck and left the house. I was angry. It wasn't my place to be angry and insert myself into their marriage, but I could only take so much while living under the same roof and experiencing the same tensions.

My mother was visibly upset that he just took off. "You said you two are under the same cell-phone plan?" I asked.

"Yes, but they don't place the calls on the bill anymore. Besides he pays it so I don't get to see it," she said hopelessly.

I told her all about the world of on-line accounts, something I knew neither of them had experienced yet. I sat down at my mother's computer and created a T-mobile on-line account under his name, but linked to her e-mail address.

The first thing that came up was that they were over their shared minutes. A scroll of the mouse showed that they haven't been over their minutes in the last six months. My mother used 100 minutes; my step-father used 950.

Another thing I learned is that he spent $50 last month in text messages alone. Text messages at 20¢ a piece to one phone number. The text messages started at 8 in the morning and went to 1, 3 and sometimes 5 in the morning. A quick scroll through the calls showed that this number was dialed frequently too. Like say, every time he walked my dog at night and that time he left our family dinner at a restaurant and was gone for 40 minutes.

I was busy clicking and saving copies of the bills to my mother's hard drive while she stood at the printer making copies. "But how do we find out who he is calling?" she asked.

"We have two options. One, go to a pay phone, dial it and see if a man or a woman answers. Two, spend $5 at any of the cell-phone pay directories on-line and they'll tell you everything there is to know about the person, including how much she makes a year," I informed her.

"I don't want it traced to my credit card."

"We'll use mine," I offered. My mother handed me a $5 bill and I stuffed it in my wallet as I pulled out my bank card. I found the most reliable looking site and entered my credit card information. My mom began ironing clothes with her nervous energy.

I hesitated on the final click to get the report. This was a big deal. It was proof of both her and my suspicions. I inhaled, held my breath and clicked.

"Her name is T----."

My mother gasped and clapped her hand to her mouth, the other hand still holding the steaming iron. "She works with him." My mother goes through the list of all the things he's said about her and even mentions she met her 10 years ago. "Those last company functions, he didn't invite me to them," she says as she's processing the information.

"Mom, will you please stop ironing his shirt. You just found out he's cheating and you're still ironing his clothes."

She ignored me. She's a nervous cleaner, just like me.

My mother finally gets angry enough and finds his credit card statement and steams it open with the iron. All those company conferences he's been attending all summer were lies. When he said he was in one city, his credit card statement said he was spending money in another. There were no hotel charges for the conferences either. And the time he didn't come home and left his wedding ring at the house? The charges said he was in the same city as her.

"This is what I needed," she said. "This is what I needed to get out of the marriage."

"Mom, why aren't you upset or crying?" I asked.

"The tears will come. They'll be later. Now it's time for action." She made copies of the records. "If I divorced him without proof, he'd get half of everything. He'd get half of our family money and I would get half of his debt. With this, I can keep what's mine. I paid for this house, not him."

Meanwhile I sat at the keyboard. A quick company directory search showed that this woman was not laid off her job like he said about a month ago. He was calling her to help her find a job, he said.

"Now I need a divorce lawyer," my mom said as she put his credit card statement back in the envelope.

"You have to put the address in the envelope window," I pointed out.

"Oops." She fixed the envelope. "I want my old coworker's lawyer because he was such a shark, but I stopped talking to her because the divorce got so ugly." She ran through all the different ways to find out which lawyer her old friend used, "Maybe I can have my other friend she doesn't know call and ask for her friend."

I thought for a minute. "Mom, what county did she get divorced in?"

"The one I live in, why?"

I furiously typed until the county superior court records were in front of me, "because divorce records are public." Another quick search and I was writing the name and number down of the lawyer my mother wanted.

My mother stared at me, her mouth hanging open. "How do you know all this? What you've done in 5 minutes with 5 dollars would have cost me thousands to hire a detective to do the same thing."

"Easy," I said. "I'm single."

She didn't understand me.

"Whenever I started dating someone new, my friend and I would go to the surrounding 3 counties' web sites and search for that guy's arrest records. And when you've been screwed over by a few bad boyfriends, you learn the benefits of on-line accounts and pay cell-phone directories."

I had managed to impress my mother.

My step-father still hadn't returned home. I began to think that it was my anger at him that blow the whole cheating thing wide open. If it wasn't for my anger, my mother would still be blissfully unaware. Well, she'd still be ignorant.

I began to feel guilty. I was the catalyst for my mother calling the divorce lawyer. If it wasn't for me, she would still be married. I ended my mother's marriage.

But she wanted to know the truth. She already did in a way. Folding his laundry last week, she found a new pair of underpants in a new style. "Men don't buy new underwear unless they're cheating," she had said.

And we both knew the lies. Driving a cousin to visit his sick grandmother and not returning for four days. A conference that started on Sunday, the Lord's Day here in the Bible Belt. His upcoming court testimony for the next five days in which he'll put eight cops in jail for fighting at a restaurant he was eating at years ago. Oh please.

But my mother's marriage is ending, and I feel responsible.

Old Patterns (or how I've become Nancy Drew)

I've been feeling a lot of anxiety lately over living with someone who just lies and sneaks around all the time. When I originally told my therapist this, she said she won't prescribe me anything because she wants me to feel pain. Instead, she taught me breathing exercises and told me to keep an anxiety kit—something to distract me, focusing on the five senses to bring me back into the present&—on me at all times. I've tried the breathing thing, but the fact I have to breathe differently because I'm so damn upset makes my chest pull even tighter and causes me more pain. And the kicker is, it's not Scott that I'm living with who just lies and sneaks around all the time. It's my step-father.

The day my mother left to go out of town, my step-father said he was going outside to cut the hedges. I made myself dinner and decided I wanted dessert enough to get in the car and drive to the store. As I was leaving my driveway, I saw my step-father standing in a hidden part of the yard still in his teaching clothes and talking on his cell phone. And he looked busted when he saw me. He didn't wave or acknowledge me other than the oh shit look on his face. When I came home from the store, chocolate pie in hand, my step-father had at least moved to the proximity of the hedges, but was still on the phone.

I was sitting on the couch crocheting myself a scarf six months early when he came in the house. I silently wound the lime-green cotton around my index finger when, unprovoked, my step-father explains to me why he was on the phone. "The computers at school are down and I'm the only person who can fix them, so they were harassing me to help them," he explained, going into more detail.

What you don't know is a) my step-father has had no computer training. He's a math teacher. b) It's a county rule that the custodians leave, lock the door, and turn the security system on by 9 p.m., and it was way after 9. c) I find it hard to believe that my step-father, who has no administrative role, would be the only person who can run the school computer system when county has their own tech guys. So I'm concluding that my step-father is a big, fat liar in this case.

I pursed my lips, pretending to concentrate on the leaf applique in my hands. "Well, I'm going to the grocery store. Do you want anything?" he asked.

"Nope. I already went to the store tonight." He should remember, hounding me about my whereabouts when he first came in the door.

And then he was gone for hours, just like Scott. A fifteen-minute trip lasted over two hours. I packed up my yarn and was fixing to head to bed when he came back home with exactly one item, a bottle of Arizona green tea. I know this because I snuck in the kitchen and checked his bag, just like I did when I didn't trust Scott.

Things escalated when I found his wedding ring on the couch Saturday morning. I already knew what had happened before my brain had time to process it. I had arrived home to an empty house Friday night at midnight and I was already asleep before he came home. And he was already gone again when I got up at 8 on Saturday morning. Which means my step-father wasn't wearing his wedding ring.

I fumed and my anxiety and chest pains returned. I frantically called my mother 500 miles away and told her about the phone calls and the ring in the couch and how he is out not wearing it right now. "But how would his ring fall off while he was sleeping on the couch?" she asked. "He wears his college ring on top of his wedding ring."

"That's because he wasn't wearing his wedding ring. Based on the ring's placement in the couch cushions, it would only make sense if it fell out of his pocket!" I cried, feeling like Nancy Drew.

My mother sighed, resigned to the whole situation. "I could ask him about it, but he'll only lie. What's the point in bringing it up if he'll never tell me the truth anyways?"

We ended the phone call, but my mom felt the need to call me back and explain. "If I leave him, I'll have to give him half of the house, and I'm not willing to do that when I used my house that I had with your father to pay for this house, and I'm the one who paid the mortgage off. He's not getting half a house for free."

This time I sighed. We've had this conversation before.

I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. If my mother knew the truth and didn't care, there was nothing I could do. You know, other than taking my step-father's wedding ring and keeping it until my mother returned home, making him sweat a few days for not wearing it in the first place.

But, to make things worse, he never came home that night. He left early Saturday morning, not wearing my mother's wedding ring, and never returned. Never called me nor my mother. Look, I know my thinking may be skewed from what I just went through, but I don't think I'm reaching far to make conclusions. I'm feeling the same anxiety I felt with Scott, and I'm not even in this relationship. I've fallen into the same patterns of checking up on people when I don't trust them. It makes me feel bad, like I haven't tried to move on and do better for myself. I feel stuck. Helpless. Hopeless.

At noon on Sunday when he still didn't return, I called my mother again. She was a little more concerned, but still resigned and wished him an early death. That may sound the worst of all, but I felt that way with Scott. It was when I thought there was no other way out of the relationship and I felt trapped and desperate. I wonder if my mother feels this way about my step-father: trapped in a relationship she no longer wants to be a part of.

It makes me wonder how I got here in the first place.

Losing My Words

"I'm not a scumbag."

I took a sip and looked at him. I didn't really know what to say to that. I met him in a bar. There was a guy passed out on the other side of the table we were sitting at. Chances are he's a scumbag. Instead of responding, I remained silent.

"When I first came up to you, you narrowed your eyes, took a long drink, and asked me evenly, 'So what are you, the wingman?'"

I nodded.

"I told you I'm nobody's wingman. I do what I want to do."

I nodded again. The line made me laugh-- he won points for that.

"I went to the bathroom and you started talking to another group. I came back and asked you why. You said you didn't think I was coming back."

I didn't remember this, but I was on gin and tonic number six. It sounded exactly like something I would say, so I chose to believe him.

"When I kissed you, you pushed me away. You liked that I kissed you though."

I didn't think I pushed him away. Did I? Was it subconscious?

"I have been nothing but decent to you, and you are acting like I'm a scumbag. I just want your number. An e-mail address. No pressure."

Before I could respond, E charged up, "Is he being a douche?" She looked at him accusingly, "Are you being a douche?"

"No," I cut in. "He's been nothing but decent." I used his words; I still didn't have any of my own. Pacified, E returned to her own man of the night.

"I'm not a scumbag," he repeated.

Anxiety rose up in me, overtaking my entire body. I couldn't even give him my e-mail address.

***

Sunday morning I was sitting in the dining room of my mother's house. My mother was sitting Indian-style on the carpet, crying in front of an open window. My step-father had lied to her again. This was nothing new: I found my childhood diary a month before and apparently I've been writing since I was nine years old that my mother wanted to leave my step-father.

"I'm a prisoner in my own house," she cried.

My mother has always had a flair for drama.

"I paid for this house. If I leave him, then he'll get half. Half of my house. I love my house. It's the prettiest prison I could have."

Again. Flair.

"Maybe I'll just use reverse psychology on him. I'll feed him fatty foods and buy him cigarettes. That way he'll get cancer and die."

While I almost fell out of my chair for what my mother just admitted to me, she seemed to like the idea, "My friends' husbands lost the battle to cancer in about three months. That's not very long."

I debated saying she would feel really terrible if he did actually get cancer and die. That watching someone suffer is never fun. But I was curious to see how far she would take things.

"I think he has sleep apnea. Do you know what that is? He isn't getting enough oxygen when he sleeps. He could stop breathing and die from that. That would be quick."

No wonder. No wonder I end things over mouth-breathing and lava lamps and bad kissing. No wonder I spend more time testing men than I do trusting them. No wonder the idea of getting hurt by them gives me anxiety attacks. No wonder I am such a mess.

No effing wonder.