Patricia celebrated her thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with Hamilton by surprising him with a vacation in sun-soaked Greece. He had always told her that it was a destination he wanted to visit, and she felt elated that she could make his dream come true. It had taken her over a year to save up surreptitiously, but it was worth it.
She loved him more than life itself, and lived for those magical moments of intimacy and shared secrets. The Greek holiday went by in a blur of love, passion, warmth and companionship.
Just two weeks after their return, that bubble of bliss burst spectacularly.
Her twenty-three-year-old son, Evan, who had a speech impediment and was thus extremely self-conscious, inexplicably received a strange picture of his dad with another woman. Hamilton was in the arms of a woman Evan had never seen before, and they were obviously extremely familiar with each other. She had her arms wrapped around his neck while Hamilton was smiling proudly into the lens.
Evan was upset and was at first reluctant to show the photo to Patricia, but eventually his sense of morality compelled him to let his mother see it. Evan’s suspicions about the photo were raised by the caption: Love of my life!
Evan wasn’t living at home anymore and called his mom up, asking her to meet him at Jake’s Restaurant in Tokai. Patricia had not the faintest inkling of how disastrous the day would turn out and looked forward to seeing Evan. After Evan had ordered a small Caesar salad starter, he gathered his courage and proceeded to break his mother’s heart into innumerable pieces that could never be reassembled into the same heart again.
“Mom,” Evan began hesitantly, “I need to show you something, but it isn’t anything good.”
“Evan,” Patricia said cheerfully, blissfully ignorant of the grenade about to be tossed into her face, “you sound so serious, honey. Is everything okay?”
“No, Mom. It isn’t. Here,” he said abruptly, shoving the picture of his dad and his mistress facedown across the table to her. He reasoned that it would be like ripping a plaster off quickly to lessen the pain of anticipation by giving her a cold shock without forewarning. He was wrong.
“What is this?” Patricia asked in a studied manner. She had seen the caption and had already gleaned the truth, but her heart needed to hear it from someone, even if it came from her sensitive and kind son.
“Dad is having an affair with a waitress he met in Hermanus. He’s been seeing her for nearly six months now, but I only learned about it after your return from Greece when this woman first sent me a text message, and then this photo as evidence of her affair with him,” Evan blurted out. Then he went silent, all the words he had stored up having spilled out of him, leaving him empty and spent.
Patricia was crying but unaware of it. She only became conscious of her tears when Evan handed her a napkin to dab her moist cheeks. Then he came to sit next to her, hugging her awkwardly and whispering, “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
Patricia knew she would confront Hamilton immediately, for she was not a weak or timid woman. She had a core of strength within her that had allowed her to deal with Evan’s condition in an effective, competent manner, and she had also depended on this inner fortitude to help her family get through the tough times when Hamilton had been unemployed for nearly a year. In fact, she was livid at his deception, but although she was devastated by his betrayal, she did not fall apart. On the contrary, she was determined to salvage the marriage if it was still salvageable, or make Hamilton pay dearly.
She didn’t know what transpired the rest of the afternoon, for when she next came to her full senses, she was sitting in a dark kitchen and waiting for her deceitful husband to come home.
“Love,” Hamilton said as he walked into the murky kitchen to find Patricia sitting in the breakfast nook, “why haven’t you switched on the lights? What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked and threw the light switches.
Hearing him call her “sweetheart” was the final twist of the traitor’s knife in her already destroyed heart. She stood up slowly, walked over to where he was standing at the kitchen counter and said, “Are you having an affair? And don’t try to deny it; I’ve seen the picture. Just tell me for how long it has been going on.”
Hamilton showed neither a shred of contrition nor shame. In fact, he seemed to be a proud adulterer, for he said very curtly, “Nearly a year. I was planning to tell you and file for divorce, but then you took me to Greece and I couldn’t see myself spoiling the holiday. I’ve wanted many times since our return to tell you, but I kept postponing it for one reason or another. I didn’t know Anna would contact you –”
“Don’t you dare use her name in my presence!” Patricia interrupted him, her voice rising so loudly that their cocker spaniel jumped in fright and ran from the room.
“I gave you everything. I helped you get your Business Degree by being the sole provider throughout your studies. I supported you fully when you decided to quit your job to start your own company, and this is the reward I get?” she ended, her voice breaking as her heart bled anew.
Hamilton only looked at her in such a supercilious manner that Patricia wanted to strike out in rage at him and gut the pig. Instead, she did the unexpected.
“I want you out of this house tonight. I’ve already packed two bags for you. You can collect the rest of your crap later in the week. I’ve asked Evan to sleep here tonight and I want you gone before he arrives. You have chosen to throw away years of love and a family for some slutty gold digger and filthy sex, and I wouldn’t take you back even if you begged me to, not after God alone knows where your lips and pecker have been!”
“You have no right to talk like that about her!” Hamilton shouted, his face turning crimson and his hands balling into fists. “You don’t even know her and yet you’re judging her,” he added. Before he could continue with his defense of Anna, Patricia spoke in a suddenly mild and serene tone.
“Any woman who wittingly and purposely sets out to have an affair with a married man, and then relishes the idea of breaking up that marriage by using an innocent boy as a means to her devious ends, is nothing but a slut and a Jezebel. And you deserve exactly such a low class, immoral woman because you’re a coward, a consummate liar, and unfaithful in every sense of the word.
“Does the dumb cow even realize that if you could cheat on me with her, you could so easily cheat on her with another woman?”
Without waiting for Hamilton’s retort, Patricia walked out of the room, holding her back straight and her head high. She could hear the faithless bastard talking, but she didn’t register a word of what he was saying. Her mind had shut down; her heart had temporarily turned to stone. Her soul felt weighed down by overwhelming sorrow, burdensome betrayal, immense guilt and a profound world of loss.
She knew the marriage could never be saved, and was determined to fight Hamilton in court for every last piece of whatever they owned. She would die first before she would allow that whore to get her hands on a single coin.
Three years later, Patricia had woven the broken threads of her life into a beautiful tapestry by focusing on her work as Head Designer at mememe. She had heard that Hamilton had lost his business, his waitress had left him for a richer man, and Hamilton was now destitute.
Her wounded, deeply scarred heart had been mended as if it had never been cut into countless ribbons of pain when she had through pure chance met Brent again, her high school sweetheart. When he had seen her sitting in Kauai, he had smiled down at her in wonder, and the years in which they had been apart and not seen each other had vaporized like mist before a breaking day.
Patricia was savoring the warm Italian sun on her skin when she heard Brent approach. It was his idea for them to spend their honeymoon travelling through Europe, but Greece was definitely not on the itinerary.
Brent sat down next to her on the golden beach sand, then leaned over and passionately kissed her. After the hungry kiss, she gazed at his older but handsome face, and marveled that the balance had finally been restored to her universe.
Image: Claudio Schwarz (www.unsplash.com)
