A Good Yarn Page 0,10
it's no good. I didn't mean for this to happen." There was a pleading quality in his voice, quickly replaced by anger. "Damn it, Bethanne, don't make things any more difficult than they already are." As if he'd planned this for days, he opened the closet door and extracted a suitcase, which he set on the bed.
"You're...leaving?"
He answered by opening his dresser drawers and lifting out his clothes. Bethanne winced as she watched him drop a stack of neatly folded undershirts on the bottom of the suitcase. Grant was extremely particular about his T-shirts, which had to be folded just so. He was meticulous about every aspect of his personal appearance and that perfectionism extended beyond his hair and clothes.
"Where...where will you go?" Her head was crowded with questions, and it seemed the most inessential ones rose to the surface first.
"I'm moving in with Tiffany," he announced.
"Tiffany?" she repeated, and why she should find humor in the midst of the most horrible moment of her life, she would never know. All at once she was laughing. "You're leaving me for a woman named Tiffany?"
He glared at her as if she were truly demented and just then perhaps she was. "Go," she said, almost flippantly, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. "I just want you to go."
As if to prove her point, she'd marched all the way down to the basement and collected a second, even bigger suitcase, which she hauled to their bedroom. As she climbed down and then back up the stairs, she racked her mind, trying to remember if she'd ever met this Tiffany. To the best of her recollection she hadn't. Grant's office was filled with women, but she'd never suspected he was capable of such treachery. Although she was panting by the time she'd dragged the large suitcase up two flights of stairs, she didn't pause for breath, her anger carrying her.
She flopped the empty suitcase carelessly on the bed, and a cloud of dust spread over the white comforter, which she ignored. Then she threw open the closet door, grabbed his suits around the middle and yanked them out, still on their hangers. Unceremoniously, she shoved them into the suitcase.
"Bethanne!" he shouted. "Stop it."
"No," she bellowed at the top of her lungs. Then, more quietly, she asked, "How long has this thing with you and Tiffany been going on?" When he didn't reply, she demanded, "How old is she, anyway?" Once she'd started on this line of questioning, she couldn't stop. "Is she married, too, or am I the only one being tossed aside?"
Grant refused to meet her gaze.
"A while?"
Again Grant refused to look at her as she packed his suitcases. She'd begun just throwing in his clothes but had quickly reverted to habit - folding, straightening, arranging.
"A month? Two months? How good is she in bed?"
"Bethanne, don't."
"How long?" She wouldn't stop until he told her the truth.
Grant released a laborious sigh as if her relentlessness had broken him down. "Two years."
"Two years!" she cried, consumed with rage. "Get out of this house."
He nodded.
"Get out, and don't come back." In that moment she meant it. But not long afterward, she'd desperately wanted him home again. It embarrassed her now to remember how frantic she'd been to win back her husband's affection. She'd been willing to do anything - see a counselor, beg, bribe, reason with him. At one point, just before the settlement hearing, she would've given up ten years of her life for Grant to return to his family.
But when Grant moved out of the house and in with Tiffany, he had no intention of returning. She'd nearly been destroyed by that. Eventually she'd had to accept it: Grant was never coming home. He didn't love her anymore and nothing she said or did would change his mind.
Her marriage was dead, and burying it had virtually obliterated her self-esteem. If not for her children, Bethanne didn't know what she would've done. Andrew and Annie needed her more than ever, and only for them did she continue.
When she'd finally made an appointment with an attorney, the man had been straightforward and helpful; what seemed like a fair financial arrangement had been settled upon. Grant refinanced the house for the third time and paid off their cars and their credit card bills with whatever equity he could extract, so they were both essentially debt-free. He was instructed to pay alimony for two years, plus child support until the children were out of high school.