Clarity - Day 3

The Beginning of the End

Sometimes clarity arrives when you least expect it to. 

Picking up clothes that were strewn around the bed for the laundry, I lifted my husband’s white dress shirt to discover a big, fat, lipstick lip print on the collar. Blood red. Definitely not mine. 

Where the hell had that come from?
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I stood, staring, as other recent memories I had buried came flooding back. 
The pile of Penthouses (not even Playboy, Penthouse!) buried in the back of his closet that I’d found looking for some shoes he was missing. “Oh, I just read those for the articles…” What articles? Penthouse was not known as quality reading. 

Brain said, “Stuff it down.” 

He’d come home late from work and had missed dinner several times in the last month. I’d gotten phone calls. “I’m going out with the guys for a couple of beers after work. I’ll be late.” You never go out with the guys.  What’s that about? 

Brain said. “Trust him.”

The long scratches, clearly from fingernails, down his back last week. “A secretary at work was giving me a back rub because my shoulders were tight. I must have looked tense. I guess her nails were really long?”  

Brain said, “Stuff it down. NOW.”

​More and more excuses came rushing back, up into the cold light of morning.
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Slowly, still clutching the shirt, I started to slide down the edge of the bed toward the floor. By the time I got to the ground, I was shaking from head to toe. I felt like throwing up. 
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He’d lied to me before, early in our marriage, about dropping out of school. He’d promised he’d never lie like that to me again. And yet, here was unmistakable evidence that he’d done just that. 

Brain said, “Quick! Emergency! Not happening! Stuff it down.”

Heart and Courage and what was left of my inner Strength said, “NO.”

His footsteps bounded up the steps. “Hi honey, is that laundry ready to go downstairs, yet?”