Leaving Salt Lake City

by Matthew Timion

  Manny and I only had a few months together before he was to move to North Carolina. He was still only four years old and I was willing to sacrifice my own desire to raise him daily for what I felt was the best for him at the time. I could see that what I had to offer was not the best for him. The plan was for Jessica to move to North Carolina with Manny in March right after his birthday.

  During this time period Vince and Jessica continued to incite more drama in our splintering community. After our separation and her accusations that I was having sex with Nadia, previously one of Jessica’s best friends, people began accusing Vince of playing a role in our divorce. I still didn’t know what was true, but I decided I needed to take the side of the mother of my child in order to make parenting easier for Manny. This choice was extremely easy to make. My son was much more important to me than people I saw once a month. This decision, however, made it appear to some people I was siding with Vince and Jessica. Since they were already viewed as pests in our group, this association caused further alienation from the people who were only coming to my aid.

  In one particular online exchange Vince lashed out at James, who attended our wedding, calling him a “faggot." Yes, James was in fact gay, but it had nothing to do with what they were arguing about, which was my divorce and Vince’s involvement. Because of this final straw Vince was banned from the community. He was an outcast after years of harassing and tormenting people in our community.

  The person who ran the online community threatened Vince saying if he came back the police would be notified. Vince contacted me and tried to get me to ensure that the police would not be notified. He needed to ensure the threats against him were not serious. The law being involved would affect his employment and his custody of his children. Whatever his job was for the military, he was required to have a clean criminal record. Vince then told me, “contacting the police could affect my job and the custody of my children. I will do whatever is necessary to ensure this doesn’t happen, and I think I know what you mean by that." Was he telling me he could kill someone for attempting to protect his friends from harassment? After a little prodding, yes, murder was exactly what he was insinuating.

  Jessica came to the rescue with a solution to Vince’s problem. Considering her renewed affiliation with the CIA, she was able to contact a number of people she knew from work. The people she reached out to were known for doing, shall we say, morally questionable things. I was told people in the CIA often times help each other in situations like this. Our friend who was threatening to contact the police lived just a few miles away from us. According to Jessica, four of her co-workers went to this man’s apartment, slashed all four of his tires, and pissed on his windshield. “That should send a clear message,” she boasted to me over shots of tequila. As she laughed I realized her formerly infectious laughter had become frightening laughter.

  Who was this person? Who did I get myself involved with? A woman who had thugs destroy someone’s car? A person with a boyfriend willing to fly out to Utah and kill someone for threatening to call the authorities due to harassment? I was honestly frightened. I started having second thoughts about sending Manny to live in North Carolina, but if Jessica and Vince were willing to go to such an extreme over an Internet argument, what extreme would they go to in order to ensure they had Manny? If my phones really were tapped I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. I felt helpless and all I wanted was a way out.

  Jessica was growing impatient with her move, wanting to be closer to her new found thug in shining armor. I couldn’t wait for her to leave. Luckily she changed her plan to move from March to January. She was moving sooner than I expected. Thank God.

  Even though it was Jessica’s year to take our son for Christmas, she was kind enough to let me take Manny for his last Christmas with me before holiday visits would become all we had. Manny and I drove through the snow down to Southern California to spend the holiday with my family. Jessica had plans to visit with Vince in North Carolina. After driving for hours, watching the road and attempting to entertain a four-year-old who was clearly bored by out of his mind, my phone rang. It was Vince.

  “Hello?" I answered. Even though I hate talking on the phone while driving I figured Vince wouldn’t be calling unless it was important.

  “Hey man, this is Vince. You need to get Jessica out of here man.”

  “I’m driving and over two thousand miles away." What was I really capable of doing? Besides, why was this my problem?

  “You need to call a cab and get her out of here now." He was almost yelling at me, annoyed I would not help.

  The phone went silent. He hung up. I called back. No answer. I looked at my phone and dialed her brother in Colorado.

  “Hello?" He knew it was me something I could determine from the hesitant nature of his voice. I was surprised he answered at all.

  “It’s Matt. Something is going on with Jessica and Vince. Can you call him and figure it out? He said he needs her out of there now. It doesn’t sound good.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you back.”

  It wasn’t until later that night, after arriving in Southern California, that I heard back from her brother. He managed to get ahold of Vince and the same conversation was repeated. “Just get her out of here. She’s going crazy." Vince also hung up on him. Jessica’s brother called the police, who came to Vince’s house and gave Jessica the choice of going to jail or getting a hotel room.

  Vince called me later and told me that she was extremely drunk and suicidal. She was trying to get Vince to enter into a suicide pact with him while his two daughters slept in the next room. He refused to join her ticket for two to eternal sleep. His refusal caused her to have a complete meltdown. Whenever he picked up a phone she would swat it away or hang it up. After we both acknowledged that she was in the CIA, he told me that something work related caused the meltdown.

  I thought I was done with all of the drama. Why was I pulled back into it? What made me Grand Central Station for my ex-wife, her boyfriend, and her family? I was just trying to enjoy Christmas with my son and my mother.

  The next day I received a call from Jessica around noon.

  “I don’t want you to be surprised when I come home, but I have a black eye.”

  “What?" I started to realize most of my initial replies to her were always one syllable words asking for clarification.

  “Vince didn’t hit me, but I cannot talk about what happened on the phone.”

  I drove back to Utah, and a day after I came home Jessica came home to her basement apartment. She immediately asked to talk. We each took a shot of tequila, which was a peace offering she purchased for me to soften the blow of what she was about to say. I stared at her very black eye, which you could clearly see despite a pound of makeup attempting to cover it up.

  “I was freaking out at Vince’s house, and I’m sorry you were involved.”

  “It’s okay,” I replied. I’m always the supportive and understanding type.

  “Here’s what happened. Before I went to North Carolina I had to stop in New Jersey for my other job. I had to kill someone that had turned over." By this point she was in tears, bawling. Her emotions were real.

  “What happened?" I was in a state of disbelief.

  “He was a really good guy Matt. I knew him. We used to talk about our kids and families. He just got in with the wrong group and the Agency needed him gone. I went to his house while he was having a party and I took him up into the bedroom. With the lights out, I slit his throat and left.”

  I had nothing to say. How was I supposed to respond to that?

  “I freaked out at Vince’s because I couldn’t deal with it. When the police sent me to the hotel my CIA contacts met me there. They knew all about what was going on at Vince’s house, probably because they tap your phone.”

  “What did they say?" I imagined two muscular men confronting my 5’3” ex-wife in a small hotel room.

  “They were trying to make me calm down. I couldn’t c
alm down, so I punched one of them in the face and broke his nose. He then punched me right in the face and knocked me out.”

  Once again, I had no response. It was like she was living in an action movie.

  “I was acting up. I deserved it.”

  I found out that years ago during her initial stint in the CIA, killing people is what Jessica used to do. She was a trained assassin, and I was so paranoid at the thought of the CIA tapping my phone I didn’t know what to think or how to act with her around.

  “We all have nicknames in the CIA,” she continued, “Mine is ‘trigger.’ That should tell you how good I am.”

  | TWENTY THREE |

  Saying Goodbye

  Winter 2007

  Jessica, whose other job I still had no way of confirming, still had not signed the divorce paperwork. She told me she would get around to signing the papers after she moved to North Carolina. One day she was in the basement complaining about how much noise I made, and then in what seemed like an instant she was out of the house. She was gone. She packed up her new truck, one I helped her purchase after she had totaled her smaller car, and drove across country with her dogs to her new home. The majority of her possessions stayed behind, packed in my garage. Her things would fill my garage for almost a year.

  Hoping that her absence would stop the chaos, the threat of phones being tapped, the fear of CIA thugs coming to my house and slashing my tires, I relaxed with my son. My life was starting to get scary for me at this point, but this had nothing to do with her secret life or post-assassination meltdowns. It was the beginning of 2008 and the housing market had crashed. My job was working with construction companies in Southern California (where the market crash hurt the industry the most). The company I was working for went from twenty employees down to five. I was laid off. Just six months after forming a family I was accused of being a child molester, I lost my wife, I lost my job, and soon my son would be living two thousand miles away from me. If I didn’t find a job quickly, I would also lose my house.

  The only positive things going on at the time was when my website promoting fuel efficiency started becoming popular. It’s popularity amplified after it was mentioned on 60 Minutes and MSN Money. The rising cost of gasoline helped too. The years I poured into the website were finally paying off. I knew it couldn’t last forever. I had been following gasoline prices for years now, and I had started to notice a trend. The prices couldn’t stay this high forever, not with it being an election year. I took action and sold my website. I was able to live off of that money for a few months while the dust settled. I also started collecting unemployment for the first time in my life. Since my previous job was in such a niche market, it was nearly impossible for me to find a new job, although I tried relentlessly.

  I took this time to give myself a much needed vacation from the turmoil that had become my life. I still visited with Manny’s therapist and I still got him to and from school, but when I wasn’t applying for jobs I started religiously watching television shows. I channeled the emotional turmoil of my life into ten seasons of Stargate: SG1, which only took me a few weeks to finish. I spent more time trying to get the basement ready to rent out, considering my financial situation made paying the entire mortgage by myself a difficult task.

  If it wasn’t for that time I had to myself, I would have cracked. Everything was different, and I had to ask myself if I was the type of person who would adapt and make the situation work, or if I was the type of person who would let my bad situation get the best of me. I was the former, not the latter. It was time for a change.

  The first change I made was becoming extremely frugal. I needed to simplify my life. My goal to live cheaply would require me to change my spending habits. I would buy used and be as thrifty as possible. I would barter for items. I would try to grow my own food if possible.

  But how was I going to live off of little money when my mortgages would exhaust my monthly income? Finishing the renovation on the basement was my only option. I needed to get the remodeling done myself so I could rent it out. Had I put more time into it I am certain I could have done it, but living cheaply took a lot of time and planning. I didn’t have the time or energy to hang drywall when I was busy bartering with people to get free food.

  Since I was unemployed I had the time to be more frugal, but I was never the best at planning. I did stick with the simplifying though, and I still buy some items at thrift stores. Spending hours a day coordinating how to barter the guy down the street out of some pears from his tree, or trying to get my neighbors to give me some eggs from their chickens was something I couldn’t do. I wasn’t motivated enough, probably because I still had a small nest-egg of money from selling my website.

  Living on unemployment and not being too careful of my purchases (despite every intention to do so) started to have some casualties. I sold my prized Honda n600. The only memory I have of this car now is the tattoo I received of it burned on my forearm. Months of getting new parts, installing new upholstery, etc. were all wasted. I also had to sell my Honda Fit. Finally, I reluctantly sold the 1989 Honda Civic. If saving money and being frugal was my goal I opted to stay with the car with the best fuel economy and the lowest insurance. My quest for the perfect car was now reduced to a quest of affordability. Dreaming about what could be would have to wait until I got past being broke.

  I kept selling things, which was part of my desire to simplify and also get some cash. I was removing the clutter and removing the stress. I had the time and energy to focus on Manny’s emotions with the divorce, which was no easy task.

  A local radio station was having a contest to be a fill-in host for a week on their popular morning show. I was still out of work, and since I had always wanted to work in radio I gave it a shot. I sent in my audition to their producer. I also sent them a copy of a radio interview I did for a popular Los Angeles based radio show. The interview was titled Ask a Mormon, and I hoped the combination of this clip and my audition would make me a shoe-in for this position. I waited to hear back. Nothing. Nada. I listened to their show every day and heard they were looking for unpaid interns. My heart was so set on the idea of being on radio that I applied.

  Since I could no longer find work in my profession, I decided it was time for a career change. Radio had always been something that fascinated me and I was certain I had natural talent. Getting in the building by being an intern would be my first step. Working in radio wasn’t something I could do with my son around as my hours would start at five in the morning. Fully pursuing that dream would have to wait, or my schedule would need to be more flexible.

  After talking with the producer of the morning show, Richie T. Steadman, for a few minutes he told me I had the job. He wasn’t picky. My experience editing audio was more or less all he needed from me. This was my shot at the big time and I had every intention of making it work. Fantasies of having my own show flashed through my mind. Local celebrity status would be granted. I was certain it would help me get women too. I initially worked from nine until eleven in the morning. This would be my regular routine until Manny left. After Manny left for his new home my plan was to amaze and wow everyone with my long hours of unpaid dedication.

  As Manny’s birthday approached I prepared for his party. I also packed his bags and was getting him ready to move away from me. Jessica was flying in to attend Manny’s party and then would fly out the next day with Manny back to North Carolina. The night before the birthday party the phone rang.

  “MATT!” A drunken Jessica yelled into the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “These motherfuckers won’t let me on the plane! They said I had too much to drink! I only had ONE BEER! Motherfuckers, I only had ONE BEER! I have a receipt.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “You can help me sue these assholes." Her speech was slurred. “My dad’s lawyer is Robert Shapiro!”

  “The same guy who defended OJ Simpson from murder charges?”

  “Yes, I’m going
to sue this fucking airline.”

  My classy wife, the divorce paperwork still was unsigned, was stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare airport for the night because she couldn’t control her drinking enough to make it through a layover. If she was punched in the face by the CIA for acting up in North Carolina I wondered what her punishment would be for public intoxication.

  “I just want out of here Matt. I just want to come home.”

  Did I hear her right? Home? Was Utah, and my house, home to her? Was there a chance she would be coming home and not going back to Vince? I was willing to forgive the past if she wanted our life together again. I didn’t know what she meant by

  home , but I did know one thing: she was drunk. She was so drunk that airline employees noticed it, which said a lot. I envisioned her telling random people, “I don’t know why everyone thinks I slept with Vince!”

  | TWENTY FOUR |

  Living the Dream

  Spring 2008

  “Today I got mail from Jessica. I miss her so much.

  Right now though, I honestly think that we’ll make it through this.”

  -private missionary journal, Matt Timion, July 6, 1998

  I haven’t changed a single bit. Looking back on my journals from when I spent two years as a Mormon missionary to the Philippines, I’m the same person. The above quote is from my journal, just six days into my missionary experience. I had a girlfriend who I left behind. She was named Jessica, of course, and she was going to wait for me. She was seventeen, I was nineteen, and she was going to wait two years for me to come home and then we would be married. We were going to have kids, attend church, and be happy. She used to send me letters signed “Jessica Timion.”