Spring Training and Divorce Season Pt. I

In the spring of 2006, newly remarried and in graduate school in Miami, I decided to make the trip to Tampa with my friend Ollie and catch a Yankees' spring training game.  My father-in-law, Ed, lived and worked in St. Pete and his daughter, my second wife, April, worked for him, making the 45-minute plane ride most Sunday nights and flying back on Thursday.  It was a nice arrangement.  Daddy paid well, and having her away supplied the time I needed to work on my thesis novel.  Which is what I did, writing around the clock, in-between classes and my work as a TA.  I figured my wife was safe.  I mean, how much trouble could she possibly get into living with her father?

But April wasn't working for her dad when Ollie and I made that trip.  It wasn't always weekly, her work, more a charity of her father for his newly graduated daughter.  He was a good man.  Sometimes she'd take weeks off if her help wasn't needed.  This time, I seem to remember some catastrophe in her life. I t's hard to know what exactly, since April lied about everything.  If she had an apple for lunch, she was liable to tell you it was an orange.  I'd met a few people like that in my life, and they are impossible to deal with, not because you know they are lying--liars like this are their own unique breed--but precisely because you don't know that they are lying.  Your internal bullshit meter peaks and you feel conflicted inside, but you can't really tell why.  Is it indigestion?  Are you coming down with a bug?  Rarely, do you automatically go to, "I wonder if my wife is a lying whore?"

When Ollie and I made it to Tampa, I'd called April, and she was distraught.  If I remember correctly, and I very well may not, she'd had a falling out with a friend in Tampa, a co-worker for her dad.  This friend, a woman, was a single mother/part-time stripper who had been carrying on an affair with another co-worker, Todd, who was married with kids and a supposed "good guy."  But who knows the truth? Since these "facts" came from my ex-wife.  She could've been the one having an affair with one of them.   Or both.  All I know about this guy, Todd, was that he was in town (Miami) the night of the Springsteen concert at the Hollywood Hard Rock, a solo acoustic set in support of his low-key Devils and Dust, and this fucktard was the jackass who got drunk and wouldn't stop screaming "Glory Days!" all night.

I offered to turn around and come back.  She said she'd be OK, and to go to the game with her dad, which I'd really been looking forward to.  I'd ever seen a spring training game and as a lifelong Yankee fan, it would be pretty cool to see Legends Field.  And I was looking forward to spending time with my father-in-law, just us guys.  Ollie overheard the conversation.

"You're a good husband," he said.