My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs (8 page)

When Marc and I became engaged, his father (yes,
his
father) insisted that I have a pre-nuptial agreement drawn up to protect myself and my home from Marc’s ex-wife. Unfortunately, when I refinanced the house to pay off some of Marc’s collection accounts after we were married the lender insisted that Marc’s name be put on the loan and the deed—thus voiding our pre-nuptial agreement. Marc immediately agreed to draw up a post-nuptial agreement, but at that point I never imagined we would be divorcing, so it was something that just kept getting postponed. When I finally realized over a year later that our marriage was not what I thought it was the post-nuptial agreement became a priority. Marc, however, now refused to sign unless it specifically stated what he would get in the event of a divorce. Considering that he came into the marriage with less than nothing, I was tempted to tell him he would leave with exactly what he came in with, but I needed him to sign a quit claim on the house and didn’t want to start an ugly fight over it. I still didn’t believe that we would get a divorce. This was supposed to be my “happily ever after” urban myth. We just needed to work out the bugs with our relationship and how he dealt with his ex-wife.

When Marc told me that Marie would be picking Ryan up at the house, I told him that was not going to be possible. She could come to the city if he just didn’t want to spend the time or money to drive to meet her, but she was not to set foot in the house and he would need to make other arrangements with her. Angrily he left the room and two days later he told me they would be meeting the following Friday morning at 10 a.m. in Lake City since she was apparently living in Florida again.

The Wednesday before they were to meet, Marc and Ryan went out to the base where he was assigned to play pool at his squadron club house. For whatever reason, he left his cell phone behind—something he had never done before since it was almost an extension of his ear most of the time. When it rang unexpectedly, it startled me and when it later beeped signaling a message was waiting, I did something I had never, ever done before with any friend, boyfriend, or husband. I looked to see who had called.

See, trust for me is a big thing. Trust and honesty. They were things I gave unconditionally (notice the important use of the past tense verb there). They were things that I expected to get in my relationships as well. I respected Ryan’s privacy in his bedroom and with phone calls to and from his mom. I also respected Marc’s privacy with regards to the computer (which I bought), his email account, or cell phone even though I paid all the bills for them. I never went through his dresser drawers or his closet. I never thought I had a reason to—even when he acted secretive or blatantly lied to me about money I thought that he was just embarrassed about his financial problems. So when that little voice inside my head started to scream at me to listen to the message, especially since I was paying the bill for it, my first impulse was to tell it to shut up.

But it persisted… and I listened to the message.

Marie had called and left a message asking for directions to the house because MapQuest only gave her directions to the main street in town. The whole “meeting in Lake City” was just another lie. At that moment, I committed myself to divorcing him.

I deleted the message and deleted the calls on his cell phone’s missed call log. When they returned from playing pool I said nothing about the call and acted as if nothing was wrong. The next day when I went to work, I told my boss I had a situation I needed to take care of on Friday and would be taking a day of vacation. Saturday I had been scheduled to teach a writing seminar at the university where I taught part-time. I cancelled it.

Friday morning Marc and Ryan were up early. I should have been too… if I was going to work that is. Instead I listened to them moving things around in Ryan’s bedroom and fell back to sleep. When Marc came in and shook me awake, saying that I was going to be late for work, I just rolled over and said that I wasn’t going to work—I was taking the day off to get some things done around the house.

I wish now I had a picture of his face at that moment. It was one of those priceless moments when everything stands still and even the Earth stops spinning for a few seconds.

While I lay in bed for a little while thinking about the panic in his eyes and the shock on his face, I overheard him downstairs arguing with his ex-wife on his cell phone. He and Ryan spend the rest of the day whispering back and forth, stopping whenever I came into the room. When I asked when they were leaving to meet his ex-wife, he said the plans had changed and they would be meeting her on Saturday instead. I said fine, and went about my day doing chores and catching up on letters. I also started to inventory every single thing in the house and mark things with an “M” that I was willing to let him take when I asked him to leave. When he asked me at one point what I was doing, I told him we really needed to get the post-nuptial done and so I was listing what he would get if we ever divorced just like he wanted. He didn’t ask me anything again the rest of the day.

The writing seminar was to have started at 10 a.m. on Saturday, and the drive to Lake City was almost two hours away, so Marc and Ryan left the house around 8 a.m. Saturday morning. I called him at 10:30 a.m. to find out if he was on his way home yet, and after a confused answer that no, he said they were still talking, and he asked why I wasn’t in my writing seminar. When I told him I had cancelled it and would be home all day, he was silent as I went on to tell him that when he came home, he needed to start packing because I wanted him out of the house within two weeks and that I was filing for a divorce.

As it turned out Marie was homeless and had been living out of a rental car for several weeks. They had counted on using my “trust” in them against me—knowing that I respected 72 Ryan’s privacy and would not open his closed bedroom door unless invited in by him. Their plan was to sneak her into the house while I was at work and let her stay in Ryan’s room. For how long I don’t know.

She never did come to the house, and Ryan didn’t go back to live with her. Marc and Ryan moved out two weeks later. Before the divorce became final he admitted that he had never really loved me. He just needed someone to keep him in the lifestyle to which he had wanted to become accustomed to. He just wanted someone to get him out of debt and support him enough so he could get custody of his son. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since then.

Trust. Respect. Honesty. Those are critical things in a marriage, in a relationship of any kind. I was crushed.

While my marriage was disintegrating, my father’s health continued to get worse. In mid-October he was admitted to the hospital for a collapsed lung. Two weeks later my divorce was final. Dad was in the hospital for 37 days, getting out the Monday before Thanksgiving. By mid-December he was put in hospice care and died three months later. It took me almost a year to settle his estate and sell the house.

My entire share of the proceeds went to clear up the debt that Marc had left me with. By the end of the year, I was free and clear of all the debt and almost back to where I had been before I met him. It was almost as good as getting a “do-over” if there hadn’t been the memories of them, the “what ifs,” and the doubled mortgage payment.

After Marc and Ryan left two good things did happen (as if them leaving wasn’t good enough!). The first thing was that my stress-induced pain started to lessen. The second was that Trooper stopped throwing up.

He was still afraid, but when he suddenly stopped throwing up, I began to realize that something had been going on with him that involved Marc and Ryan. My previous marriage had been controlling, manipulative, verbally and emotionally abusive. For almost ten years I had lived in fear of him—fear which manifested in physical illnesses—illnesses that had miraculously disappeared within three months of leaving him. Fear.

What a powerful emotion that is. We will rearrange our lives just to avoid something we are afraid of. We will suffer humiliation, pain, loss, and do things we thought we never would because of fear. We will put ourselves last just to keep that fear at bay.

Finally, something I could understand.

C
HAPTER
7

Mystery Solved

I’ve come to believe that things always happen for a reason, and we don’t always know the reason right away. With finally figuring out Trooper’s issues and helping him through those, I also had to face some of my own issues and resolve those in the process.

That summer I had enrolled in a holistic animal care course through a distance learning college. My goal was to learn as much as I could to try to help Tink. She continued to develop bladder stones and was getting bladder infections every three or four months. Tink’s spine and hips were also giving her problems and I suspected she had arthritis and hip dysplasia. Because of her impaired liver and the shunts, the vet had to be very careful what kind of medications she was given since even the smallest amount of the wrong thing could prove fatally toxic for her. I was hoping that the certificate program would give me alternatives for her that would supplement what the Vet was recommending. At the very least I hoped it would give me enough information to ask the right questions and understand the answers and options.

Both dogs were my practice subjects and they willingly let me practice massage and Tellington TTouch techniques on them. Trooper absolutely loves to have his paws massaged now and will close his eyes and drool while I work on them. I read about aromatherapy and ordered flower essences that I hoped would rid Trooper of some of his fears, soothe some of Tink’s pain, and also lift some of my depression and grief. I researched natural and Chinese herbs and supplemented their food with them. I put everyone—cats and I included—on organic foods that were holistically prepared. I practiced acupressure points on Tink to try to alleviate her hip pain.

I had also picked up several books by animal intuitive consultants after watching the Pet Psychic on the Animal Planet Channel. My hope was that they would help me learn how to communicate with Trooper so I could understand his fears and the origin of them. While he had stopped throwing up, he continued to be afraid of almost everything, and of almost every man we encountered. Only a few men were able to get close enough to touch him at that point, and I worried about what would happen if he ever broke free from his leash again. No one would be able to approach him to help me catch him, and if he were injured in his flight of fear, he might do more damage to himself by continuing to try to get away.

I read one book in an entire weekend, then two others while trying the exercises they gave for learning how to intuitively communicate with animals. I had been talking to my companion animals my entire life, but never even thought they would—or could—communicate back to me. The little idiosyncrasies of their personalities often made me “think” they understood or were responding to what I was saying, and I would sometimes attach human emotions to their behaviors. But to actually communicate with them—as in a two way conversation—I just didn’t think that was possible. Looking back now at all I have learned I can see that I had been having “conversations” with my companion animals all along, just sometimes, as in the case of Snookums, I wasn’t listening.

I tried one book’s exercises with Trooper, and at times it felt like I was beginning to “feel” some of what Trooper’s fears were, but wasn’t sure it was really him—and not just me imposing my own thoughts and emotions onto him since I was so close to him. I was also still deeply hurt by how Marc had used me. In desperation I went to one of the websites to learn more and finally sent an email asking for a consultation. Within a few days we had set up a date and time for me to call her and she would communicate with Trooper.

I have to admit that even though I had read all of her books by then, I still scoured websites and did a search on her name looking for complaints or indications of fraud. I found nothing but praise for her, but I was still hesitant. I just didn’t know what more the animal intuitive would be able to tell me about Trooper that I didn’t already know. I was still skeptical of the whole “two-way conversation” idea.

It turned out that I didn’t have to worry about what she would tell me… it was what Trooper would tell her!

I called her at the appointed time and we chatted for a few minutes. I had emailed her a picture of Trooper, but had really not told her anything else about him—or me. I felt that the less I told her about us, the more I would be able to validate because she wouldn’t have any knowledge unless it was something that she had received from Trooper. As she left the line briefly to talk with him I watched Trooper’s sleeping face to see if there would be any indication that someone was telepathically communicating with him. I don’t know what I expected to see… a startled look or his ears perking up, maybe. But he continued to sleep, oblivious to me.