Leaving Salt Lake City

by Matthew Timion

  I was on the phone with Courtney one night. We talked almost every night. While talking with her and cooking dinner I heard a blood curdling yell. “Nooooo!” I heard Alan screaming and then something was thrown against the wall.

  “I need to let you go,” I told Courtney.

  I opened the door that divided the upstairs from the downstairs and saw Alan slumped on the landing of the stairs crying.

  “Alan, what’s wrong? What happened?" His cell phone was on the floor next to him.

  “It’s my mom, she’s dead.”

  “Oh my God." In times like these, there are no real words to help people. All you can do is be there for them and listen.

  “She was in a car accident with my brother. He’s in the emergency room.”

  I quickly realized that Alan’s mother and brother were in the hospital where my ex Krystal was a nurse. Expecting to be ignored, I called her. She did answer. I asked her to keep an eye out and let me know of anything she could. She agreed.

  “Do you need a ride to the hospital?" If I were in his situation I wouldn’t want to drive.

  “No, I can get there. I just need to get out of here.”

  I knew the feeling.

  Over the next few days the hospital saved Alan’s brother’s life. As a result of the accident Alan and his siblings each received a settlement from the driver’s insurance company that killed their mother. Alan had enough money now to pay me back and get his own place. Moving out wouldn’t happen overnight, but it meant I was going to be alone in the house again (minus the child, the two cats, and the door-eating dog).

  Salt Lake City wasn’t working for me, or perhaps I just didn’t know how to make it work. I needed to get out of there badly. I had no idea where to go, or even how to do it. I felt so helpless. I needed a real change.

  | THIRTY SEVEN |

  A Way Out

  January 2010

  After months of job searching, on January 15th I received a job offer as a recruiter. I started on February 1st. The job proved to be worse than I had imagined. Not only were the expectations ridiculous, but the management was unethical. I was used to bad managers, but never before had I been so verbally abused and honestly sexually harassed. The owner blamed his brash style on being from New York (he was really from New Jersey, which I imagine he was ashamed of) but the truth is he was just an ass. I started looking for an escape from my new job too. I began applying for jobs again elsewhere. It would take me a few months of searching before I could get out of there. Until that time I would have to keep my head down and do my best, which wasn’t really that great at all.

  As February rolled around I sent Courtney some roses for Valentines Day. It was the least I could do for the person I was seeing half a country away. I wished I could have done more. She regularly flew out to see me and Manny to visit for a weekend and all I could afford to do was send flowers. I felt like a complete loser.

  I started to get the impression that no matter what I did in my life, I was wrong. I couldn’t be there for my girlfriend. I couldn’t afford my bills. I couldn’t even afford to get Manny new clothes as I bought them all used. It was just one thing after another, and I was still the only one carrying all of the weight. I had no one to hold my hand some days.

  Manny’s birthday came again. We had a house filled with his friends from school and the neighborhood. Once again Jessica wasn’t there. At least this time she hadn't promised she would be there. Jessica’s family was also nowhere to be found. I am sure they received the “no contact order” from Jessica. She did not want me near her family because she couldn't control the flow of information. The year prior Jessica’s father and stepmother had sent a card for Manny’s birthday. This time around they sent nothing.

  Manny always had nothing but great things to say about his mom, and her absence didn’t seem to phase him. When we were training to be foster parents, the teacher warned had us that foster children will often overly idealize their biological parents. They will tell stories about how wonderful their biological parents are, and sometimes they will even talk about their parents as rock stars or superheroes. Sadly after adopting and abandoning Manny, Jessica had taken the role of the absent biological parent.

  Manny would talk about how great Jessica was. He would have her pictures on his wall when I was the parent doing all of the work. I was also the parent who received the talking back, the punches, the kicks, and the insults: Manny told me that I was the worst parent in the world. It became difficult not to tell Manny that his mom wasn’t the person he thought she was, but I bit my tongue. I justified this by telling myself that I would only tell the truth if he asked. This was smart because I could almost guarantee that my son would never ask, “Dad, is my mom a pathological liar?”

  On March 20th the phone rang. I looked down at the small screen on my phone to see if the caller warranted being talked with. It was Vince.

  “Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to talk to you. Jessica is totally fucking nuts.”

  “Yeah, I know." He could have told me the sky was blue, and I would have responded the same way.

  “The cops came here last night. We got in a fight, and I punched her. Her dad and brother flew out to get her out of here.”

  “What?”

  “She has been pushing me and pushing me for so long. She kept hitting me, and I couldn’t take it any more. I snapped and hit her back. Matt, I’ve put the last three years of my life into this relationship.”

  “Three years?”

  “Yeah, we started dating in May of 2007.”

  “You realize we were still married right?”

  “She told me that you filed for divorce. She called me in April telling me how much she wanted to fuck me, but I wasn’t cool with that because you were my friend and I didn’t want to screw a married woman." Suddenly I remembered Jessica vanishing during Evelyn’s costume party and talking on the phone in the gazebo.

  “Was it during a party?”

  “Yeah, she said she was at a party and it was the anniversary of her mom’s death or something. She said she always drinks on the anniversary of her mom’s death.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t even talk about divorce until after her work trip to Oregon.”

  “That wasn’t a work trip Matt. It was a vacation with me.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “And her trip to South Carolina, which she told you was a deployment for work, was to see me too. I swear Matt, I thought you guys were already divorced.”

  “She had me convinced she was CIA.”

  “Yeah, I fell for that one too for a while. I think it was just her way of going out and fucking other dudes. I know she’s been sleeping around on me too.”

  I wasn’t shocked. I was upset, however, that it took three years for me to get validation of the feelings I felt so long ago. I knew something was off with our marriage. I knew Jessica was cheating, but I had dismissed my suspicion as something being wrong with me. I thought I was chemically imbalanced. It turned out I had been right all along. Vince continued.

  “Dude, just keep her away from your son. She latches on to men and uses them up. As soon as her looks fade she’ll latch on to Manny and do the same thing to him.”

  “I agree." I pictured an adult Manny happily being controlled and emotionally abused by his mother. He would give her money, a place to live, cars, anything just to receive the validation from her that he was loved. The thought frightened me.

  “I lost my girls because of her. Her bullshit cancer story made my girls cry for days. Then she never talked about it again." I was just glad that she had told the story to someone else too. He continued, “I think my kids were so freaked out by her all of the time that they chose to live with their mom over me. They couldn’t handle her anymore, and I don’t blame them.”

  Vince told me that after Jessica had come back from overseas her behavior continued like it had before. He had had enough and was ready to kick her out and end their relationship. He was about
to break up with her. Then she was suddenly diagnosed with cancer. In his mind, she had made up the story in order to get sympathy and to avoid being sent packing. It apparently worked.

  The phone conversation continued on for a while, and we started putting pieces together. We discussed Ricky Bobby, Jessica’s short lived ex. I told Vince how Jessica had told me that she and Vince had broken up after her rape.

  “What?!?! We never broke up. Well, maybe for a week or so, but we got back together soon after she was in Qatar.”

  “She was messaging me about guys as late as December,” I told him. I scanned my email and found messages from her about guys she was trying to date. I knew she had slept with at least one of them because she had asked me to deactivate her Facebook account. Before doing so I had read her private messages. She had told me she and Vince were “only friends.”

  This was why Jessica never wanted people talking to each other. When people talked to each other about her they found out the truth about her. I now had confirmation Jessica had been cheating on me while we were married. She had been sleeping with Vince and planning her escape all along. She had waited for the adoption to be finalized before she ended the marriage.

  What kind of person would do that? Who in the world would act that way? Worse yet, who in her right mind would allow me, her husband, to take the blame for the divorce when she was the guilty one? How dare she accuse me of being unfaithful when she was the one who was unfaithful all along?

  Vince wrote Jessica a letter that he posted on Craigslist’s Rants and Raves section. He knew Jessica would read his message because it was posted in her favorite section of the popular website. Vince sent me an email with the contents of the message.

  From: Vince

  Subject: Re: Thought you might like this.

  To: "Matthew Timion"

  Date: Sunday, March 21, 2010, 11:32 AM

  This is the email I want to send her, but I've been sitting on it. I'm not sure there's a point at this point. I posted it in the CL rants and raves section because I have to do something with all this shit that's inside of me.

  Dear Jes,

  I am the biggest dipshit in the world. Three years of your lies, distortions, manipulations, and cheating. When you love someone so much you're willing to abandon common sense & intuition and give the trust that isn't deserved over and over again.

  As much as I'm hurt right now by your lies, manipulations, and cheating (yes, you did, multiple times) I still love you, and because I know you read this site you need to do the following or you will repeat this behavior, and you will continue to be miserable and ruin another man's life:

  Stop drinking at all costs. You cannot drink. Not even a beer.

  Keep going to therapy at all costs.

  Get meds to manage your brain chemistry.

  Do you want to know why I was going to leave the country? I'm sure you do. I have to get away from you. And in all fairness, I can't provide you with whatever it is you think you need from a partner to balance out. The only way I'll be normal again is to ensure you and I aren't together. You make others as miserable as you are. You say the most outrageous things that only a dupe like me would believe, and then when things don't pan out... I have a drink. I'll tell you why I started to drink. It was to deal with you; your behavior, your lies, your manipulations. They say women are ruled by their emotions, but I think men are ruled by their heart, too. It's been my heart, a good heart, that has kept me in this horror of a relationship.

  Now you'll destroy the man you cheated with. It's inevitable.

  You'll destroy the man that you're currently interested in.

  You'll destroy the next one, too.

  You'll make them crazy with insecurity claiming that they're being controlling when in reality they're right; your incessant need for male attention translates to feeling "confused" and making a "mistake" that "doesn't mean anything". Well, woman. It means something. It means something to the man on the other side of your actions. If this is the life you want then by all means keep doing the thing that makes you and everyone else miserable. If you want to be happier than you are now, then you have to make sacrifices (booze and male attention), and find healthy outlets for your energy. I hope you do. I really do. You're a very beautiful woman, so you'll continue to have opportunities to meet a variety of men. Pick wisely next time, and act wisely next time.

  As for me? I'm good looking enough, motivated enough, and focused enough to have a good life again and I will find someone that will be everything you weren't: Honest, Loyal to a Fault, and Healthy.

  I'm glad I put the pieces together. I'm glad I saw incontrovertible proof of your lies. I'm glad I talked to enough people to sort out the lies from the truth, and wow, there was a lot of deceit. Now I have the opportunity to find something and someone that I deserve. I wish I could have had that with you, but looking back it was always an impossibility. You're completely incapable of normalcy, but I hope that changes. I really do.

  Love,

  Vince

  His email was followed up with a note to me.

  Matt,

  Count your blessing, dude. I know you might think you were wrong, but all she did was move onto another vulnerable male once she was done fucking you up. I think she clued into my personality type, and is somehow attracted to men that she subconsciously knows she can control. I'm not sure. It's either that or she's a fucking bull in a china shop that destroys everything she touches, and can't understand the consequences of her behavior. Someone always bails her out. She'll find another man. It's inevitable, and the she'll hide her craziness for a while, but it will come out little by little until it consumes everything, and then she'll start over.

  You. My friend. Caught a break. Because I can fucking testify that the last three years has been mostly Hell. She really fucks a dude up.

  - Vince

  It had been a little over a year since I found out about the real Jessica. Jessica the liar. Jessica the cheater. Because of what I knew about her ,everything Vince told me was not surprising. Putting pieces together about the secret life she had while we were married was not shocking.

  Jessica had simply used me and Vince to get what she wanted. While Vince told me about the DUI charge she had against her, describing her vehicle as a “mini-bottle grave yard,” I could not help but remember the mysterious bottle of vodka Krystal found a few months back above my refrigerator. Jessica the drunk.

  I sent Vince an email with a link to an old episode of NPR’s This American Life, titled, “Liars." It was about this very subject. People who lived with pathological liars and later had to pick up the pieces. One of the people interviewed said and I’m paraphrasing, “You try to regain some control. You try to put all of the stories into two piles: truth and lies. Then you start realizing that there is a third pile: I don’t know. By the time you’re done you start to realize that almost everything that person ever said to you goes into the I don’t know pile.”

  After talking with Vince that day I symbolically took some items out of the I don’t know pile and put them into the

  Lies pile. I went to bed that night with a smile on my face. I knew that I had done nothing wrong. The divorce had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with Jessica being a crazy person. Before we got off of the phone, Vince told me that he would sign a statement attesting to Jessica’s detachment from reality and why she was dangerous. “Anything I can do Matt to keep her away from your kid I will do to help.”

  | THIRTY EIGHT |

  An Exclusive Club

  March 2010

  I was like a newly born-again Christian. I had to share the new knowledge I had just learned with everyone I knew. I had to tell every one of my friends who had been there and listened to my woes over the last few years, every family member, everyone. I had to say, “You see? Do you see? I was right all along! I did nothing wrong." However, my audience already knew I was right and Jessica was a nut. The only person who hadn't known the sad reality was me.
Finally I knew. I’m certain my mother and Courtney were sick of hearing about my ex-wife, the liar. Always supportive, they kept listening anyway.

  Vince and I talked a lot over the following weeks. We chatted online. We emailed. I kept learning new things about my marriage. For example, while we were married and she had been locked in the bedroom she was talking with Vince. They talked every night. She wasn’t talking with her friend like she said. I knew it. The feeling of justification and some sort of holy righteousness overcame me. Because of the incident where Vince punched Jessica, they were scheduled to talk with the police. Vince called me after the meeting with the authorities.

  “Dude, we went to the courthouse and the prosecutor dropped the charges.”

  “Why?" I was hoping something would stick. A paper trail would be nice.

  “I just don’t need this, man. Because of her and all of this shit I’m moving out of state. The Army told me I can resign or get transferred. I’m moving to Alabama. I’m done.”

  “How was she when you saw her?”

  “She looked defeated. The detectives figured out almost everything she reported to them the other night was a lie. The charges were dropped on the condition she wrote a letter to the arresting officer and apologized for lying.”

  “Defeated?”

  “She only said a few words to me. She told me that none of this matters and it’s all pointless. I think she’s suicidal again.”

  I had never wished death on anyone in my entire life. I remembered back to years before when Jessica was suicidal and questioned if Manny would be better without her. I started to wonder if maybe Manny’s life would be better without her influence. I knew my life would be better if she was not involved. But back then what I knew about her was so limited. Sure, I had my doubts of her faithfulness, but after Vince called and filled in the pieces, I had confirmation. I had a real life person talking to me on the phone. Vince continued.

  “I called her dad to tell him she’s suicidal. He basically told me that I was scum and that if he was here he would kick my ass. He told me I’m a disgrace to the uniform. I don’t know man. I’m washing my hands of this. I’m done.”