So, you want to hear the story about what happened, right?

I shrug. It doesn’t matter what I want Frank wants to, needs to tell his story.  I haven’t seen him in years, so I listen.

He sips from his cup and takes a deep breath.

You remember how I told you about my first wife, Kelly, the lying, cheating whore.  Right?  Well, a few months after our divorce, I began dating. Anyway, my sisters set me up with a friend of a friend. That was Lisa.

She seemed great and we really got along. We dated for a few months and then she began pushing to get married. She insisted it made sense and she eventually convinced me. So we got married. And things were great for a while.

You see, she has a son and a daughter about the same ages as my own kids. Her daughter was great and my daughter really got along well with her. The son was a different matter. He was a handful from the beginning. Lisa said he had ADHD and was taking the divorce kind of hard. His attitude was never that good, and only got worse. At school he was repeatedly suspended for behavior problems. Lisa moved him to another school. But the same issues happened again. He got sent home for days at a time for fighting, and sat around playing X-box all day. When he got angry, he kicked holes in the walls his room. He did it so many times I stopped fixing them. 

You know me. I wouldn’t let any kid get away with that, but Lisa let him get away with murder. I tried not to intervene. The few times I did she lashed out at me for interfering. He was put on meds and then more meds.  Nothing seemed to work. Just before being expelled, we moved him to a school for troubled kids. The focus was all about structure and not scholastics.  It occurred to me that he was never going to leave the house. He’d just get older and angrier and my wife would be taking care of him as long as she was alive.

Meanwhile, Lisa got angry at me. She blamed me for judging her. She blamed me for being distant. She wouldn’t talk. We went to marriage therapy and that didn’t do any good. At Thanksgiving my mother, with the best of intentions, took her aside and urged her to not let the problems of a child get between a married couple. From then on Lisa resented my mother. She took to actively berating me and picking fights. We had one at her brother’s house on Christmas Day. The next day she told me she didn’t know why she ever married me. I told her I wanted a divorce. I moved out of our bedroom and into a room in the basement. The day I officially left she told me she hated me. She’s mentally ill … just like her son.  I just know it.

I’m at a loss for words.  “I’m so sorry Frank.”

It’s OK.  I live in Norfolk now.  My son lives with me half the week.  I have a great relationship with him.  He asked me the other day if his mom cheated on me. I felt I owed him the truth … and told him everything.  

He over-annunciates every syllable of the word “EV-VERY-TH-ING”

He looks at his phone and announces he needs to go pick the boy up from soccer practice.

Let’s get together again sometime.  Next time you can tell me about what’s going on with you.  

That was September.