The Day Everything Fell Apart

part one

The day that everything fell apart, a sharp rap on the front door drew me out of the kitchen to the porch. It was barely 7:30 in the morning, in April 2010, and the three older kids were getting ready for school. Dressed in their school uniforms, gathering library books and homework, they were trying to find socks that matched before the bus arrived. The baby, my shadow, clung to the leg of my pajama pants. On the steps out front stood most of the police force of our small town. I thought someone had died.

The detective presented a search warrant and I felt my heart in my throat. I could feel the kids gather around me from behind, whispering. They were close enough to touch. “Mom… What’s wrong? Why are they here?” They pressed in around me. I didn’t know how to answer that. I just looked at the kids with all the reassurance that I could muster then turned toward the door, politely asking that the officers wait to come into our house until after the bus picked them up. They waited unwillingly; all of the uniformed officers and several vehicles, some undercover and some with lights still flashing, filled our driveway and the grass out front.

The kids weren’t afraid, although perhaps they should have been. Our oldest at 10, who now (ironically) talks for a living, remained silent and stoic. The second kid, at 9, was all too happy to tell everyone at school how the police were at his house that morning, as if there could ever be a welcomed or positive reason for that. Their sister, age 7, believed me when I told her that everything would be ok. She climbed on the bus with her brothers. I had to wonder, though. How would this ever be ok?

Once the bus rumbled away, the detective and the rest of the officers began their search. They pushed past me into the house as I stood in the doorway and I watched the bus go, imagining how the situation must have looked to our neighbors and other passersby. I could see my kids’ faces in a row, in the bus windows. I felt like my heart was breaking, like a piece of me was dying, like I may as well have been naked.

Just one person hadn’t been home that morning: the one responsible for this stark humiliation. He was in New York, on business. I called him and he answered casually. “The police are here,” I had said, my heart hammering in my chest. “They have a search warrant for the house and the office. Maybe don’t come home for a while.” He didn’t.

Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so strong, that I hadn’t tried to protect him. I could have been hysterical...I actually should have been; it would have made sense. I should have said “Get home and help with this mess that you made” or “I’m taking the kids and heading to my parents’ for a few weeks while you figure this out.” But I did neither. I handled it, as usual. Because that’s what good wives do, and I wore the wifely role of “helpmate” like a coat, or some kind of badge of honor.

Once we hung up, I sank into the couch, on top of a mountain of clean laundry, next to the baby, who was watching TV. Blonde haired and chubby, at almost four years old, he was sucking his fingers. They were poked through holes in his blanket, which had turned a dirty gray color where it should have been white. It needed to be washed, but it didn’t matter at that moment. What he was watching on TV didn’t matter. The crumbs on the carpet and general messy state of the living room didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the police were here and they were looking through everything. While the baby was distracted, I laid down in the pile of laundry and sobbed.

A steady stream of officers carried things from upstairs through the living room and out the front door, taking any pieces of our life that could be incriminating. I didn’t even care what they took; maybe they would take it all and we would start over, somehow? Over the previous months, my husband had become someone I didn’t recognize, although the disintegration started years before then. He had become the worst version of himself, belligerent, and I was determined to find out why. While he was traveling, an easy search of the office revealed an external disk drive, which I had plugged into the side of my laptop. Files with no specific names had appeared and I clicked one after the other, horrified by what I found. Videos of people I knew. Friends, who had visited our home, obviously unaware that they were on camera. What the actual Hell?

I told two people what I had found. My best friend, and, when he returned home, my husband. It hadn’t been the first time that I had to confront him, my heart in my throat as I said “What is this?” The first time had been in 1998, after about a year of marriage, when I innocently stumbled onto a file of porn on our computer. It was full of images that, as a new wife, were scarring. We were 24 years old, and had waited until marriage to be intimate. He was the only man I was ever with. In my naivete, I thought I would be enough. I was deceived; I felt insufficient and sad. My husband had no explanation or defense. We began therapy the next week.

Soon the detective came to find me where I sat, lost in thought, partially engulfed by the laundry. He wanted to talk at the dining room table. Still in my pajamas and braless, I dried my tears, wiped my nose on my sleeve and sat in a chair across from him, my arms folded over my chest, concealing what I could. The officers were still in the process of discovery; uncovering all kinds of ugliness, probably some I didn’t even know of. The detective asked me questions that I don’t recall. I only remember hating him, and making no effort to hide it. I asked if I needed a lawyer. He gave me the “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” speech, which only made me bristle further. I told him what I knew, without embellishing, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of having gotten me to say more than I had intended.

I knew why they had come. They were here because my best friend had called them. I was so confused. Why would she do this? Looking back, I don’t know how she went through with it. She had been my person since 5th grade and we had shared all the things. Countless sleepover dreams, the Prom, each others’ weddings, the births of each others’ babies. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t know there was more to the story.

A few days later, the truth came out, as my husband confessed. He and my best friend had been intimate on at least three occasions, over the summer of 2008, and they hid it for nearly two years. I was reeling, betrayed by the two people in my life who knew me the best. When it had counted, nothing had mattered. Not vows, or history, or girl code. Not even love. Why hadn’t any of that mattered- why hadn’t I mattered to either of them- when these opportunities presented themselves? They could have done the right thing. They could have kept the vows that they had made, or told the truth, countless times over the past two years. I can see now that their deception had cracked the foundation; calling the cops just ruined what was left of this ravaged life and closed the chapter on a 25 year friendship. She had a front row seat to the disaster she helped cause, and had to live with herself. She had to know she would have to live without me, forever. And I would have to learn to live without her.