Eleven Words

I can still hear her spitting my name at me like it’s poison, the absolute worst thing you can call anyone, “Lila!” The harshness of her voice slamming down my first syllable, bitterness saturating the timbre of her voice, which for once in my experience lost its contrived Minnie Mouse saccharine. I literally felt her venom through the distance. In truth, it was the shortest, lamest dress-down in the history of the world. She didn’t even call me a whore, and you can bet all of your cryptocurrency that if I found out another woman had been entertaining my husband, she would need therapy by the time I finished with her. But my husband has no need to seek extracurricular experiences, and we have honesty and trust in our marriage, to the degree that when Sharon called (Sam had called me earlier and given me a heads up, warning me that she would be “horrible”), I put her on speakerphone so Matt could hear every word she said. Most of them were Lila. We were on the call for 51 seconds, and she spat my name at me eleven times. I can’t think of a single time that I’ve used someone’s name that many times in conversation with them, even the marathons that leave me staring at the clock in disbelief. Anyway, not only was she hissing and spitting my name like a rabid squirrel, but she failed to take verbal ownership of Sam, didn’t refer to him as her husband, so I knew in the moment that it was curtains for that marriage and probably could have spared him a ton of unnecessary grief and effort trying to reassemble something shattered beyond repair. You see, it wasn’t just that he cheated, it was that he cheated with me.

As you can guess by her hyperbolic repetition of my name, she’s got a psycho complex about me, and I’ve been safely out of state for an entire decade. Decades, that’s where her jealousy originates, the decades that Sam and I have waltzed, tangoed, and slam danced in and out of each other’s lives would fill the most comprehensive dance card ever printed. So maybe I did email Sam a fabulous photo of me in a beautiful, transparent azure bra, showing my tattoo, my amazing breasts (hey, the good lord blessed me with a truly spectacular rack, 100% natural), and my shoulders with my blonde hair just brushing those blue satin straps, head cut off (for obvious reasons). If our roles had been reversed, I would have really let her have it, but this pathetic little girl in her fifth decade of life merely demanded, “Lila, why did you send Sam a picture of your boobs? What were you thinking, Lila?!?” That’s where I would have said my husband, and I damn sure wouldn’t have been asking any questions I already knew the answers to, spotlighting my own weakness to an adversary, but I wouldn’t have even made the phone call; I don’t verbally confront my intellectual superiors.

I was prepared for the call, but it was brand new news to me that she had seen more than one email, and it dawned on me that Sam’s dumb ass hadn’t dumped his trash or sent folder before his business trip to Detroit, when she went spelunking through his accounts. I later learned that he didn’t know how to empty folders, again confirming my belief that roughly 95% of the population isn’t smart enough to cheat without getting caught. So I was caught off guard by that question that I had no intention of answering honestly. I replied in a monotone, “I suppose I wasn’t.” She probably would have had a seizure or stroke if I had said that I knew it had been a long time since he had seen a set worth looking at. Sometimes it’s kind to lie.

The word count on Sharon’s use of my name turned out to be even with the total number of words I spoke, including hello. The next and final word I said was “crystal” after she asked if she had made herself clear. Again, an honest answer would not have been productive; she would have spun into a tizzy if I had told her the truth, that women like me don’t answer to girls like her.

Before we got to the final words, I was instructed to never talk about her “health” (she can’t fuck) and to never ask anything of her ever again, which is hilarious because I’ve never asked a single thing of her—the back child support owed to me paid for her honeymoon(and you should have seen me roll my eyes when she came down the aisle in that Disney princess dress at forty years of age). I also helped get Sam out of jail when Fulton County wanted to keep him there, and that’s just the tip of the giving tree.

Girls like her? Maybe it’s mean of me to call her a girl, but she couldn’t have children. I had a daughter with Sam a decade before he met her, and she hates me for that, even though Sam was about the worst deadbeat dad ever, abandoning us for seven years after his mother died. We were never married; in fact, Sharon wasn’t his first wife, and he cheated on his first wife with me, too. No, she wasn’t the first person he cheated on with me. We’ve had many affairs over the years, almost always ending badly, with him cutting me out of his life completely. Until he starts missing me again. Sharon even came between Sam and our daughter, jealous of a child because she wasn’t hers. I’m a step-mother, too, and I put a hell of a lot more effort into my relationship with my husband’s children than she ever put into a relationship with Tatum.

I can’t describe the force that pulls Sam and me together and pushes us apart, but I know that it’s so strong, and there’s so much water under that bridge that Sam and I can never be together forever, although we will always love each other. We break each other’s hearts, intentionally, carelessly, and unwittingly, each in their own turn, the carelessness somehow being the most painful. Why do I keep going back to him, keep letting him back into my life? Because I can’t not. I resist it as much as I can, even went a whole decade this last go ‘round, but I always surrender. When I’m in his arms with his mouth on mine, the entire rest of the world vanishes. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a dumpster and the Biltmore Estate with his mouth crushing mine, his hands on my shoulders and in my hair. He sets me on fire, always. The only thing that changes is the nature of the fire–pure, animal lust, or pure animal bloodlust. There’s definitely nothing civilized about any of it.