The Sweetest Revenge (2 page)

“
Are you sure, Amy?” he asked
one last time before he went out the door.

“
I’m positive,” I said.
“I’ll have my lawyer send you the papers.”

Jim walked out the door into the
night.

I didn’t even have a lawyer.
Jim was my lawyer! But I would have to get one. A good one.

I finally got myself off the
kitchen floor, which took some doing. I was so fat, I had to put my
hands down on the floor to heave myself up. Then I went to the stove
and proceeded to cook both steaks in butter. I zapped a huge potato
in the microwave and put a half of a stick of butter in it when I
pulled it out. When the steaks were ready, I ate both of them at the
kitchen table, giving Midnight more scraps than were good for her. I
shoveled the buttery potato into my mouth in between bites of steak.

When I had eaten everything on my
plate, I went upstairs and threw up.

***************

The next morning I rolled out of
my martial bed that hadn’t seen sex for about six months. I walked
into the bathroom and assessed myself in the mirror. It was not a
pretty sight. My eyes were crusted and puffy from crying, my face was
flushed, and my hair was a matted mess. I had one day to pull myself
together so I could attend the funeral the next day. Dammit, I just
wanted to wallow in my sorrow. I had a whole week of spring break to
do that and I resented the funeral I had to attend. Resented the poor
departed Mrs. Richmond and resented her still-living geezer son,
Keith Richmond, who was the reason I had to attend the funeral in the
first place.

After I fed Midnight, I made a
piece of toast for breakfast. I wasn’t very hungry after the night
I’d been through. I sat at the table and picked at the toast while
I drank cups of black coffee.

I checked my phone. Jim had
called three times and left two voice mails, both pleading with me to
take him back. He also sent a text saying the same thing. I ignored
all of his communications. Why did he want me back anyway? I had
gotten so fat. Surely he didn’t find that attractive. I had been a
svelte twenty-two-year-old when we married fifteen years ago. But the
years of marriage and Jim working toward partner and us trying for a
baby had caused the pounds to pile on me with all the stress. I was
doubled in size.

I spent the day on the couch
watching TV with Midnight on my lap. At five, I poured my first glass
of wine. I knew I needed to eat something, but I had no appetite.
That was a miracle in itself. I finally forced myself to eat a
sandwich because I knew I needed to if I was going to get through the
funeral the next day.

I didn’t cry that night when I
went to bed. I was resigned that my marriage was over. And I just
wanted it to be over. I was humiliated. The only pride I felt was in
throwing my husband out of the home we had made together.

***************

Kate would be there to pick me up
at ten and I still didn’t have anything to wear. Finally, I
squeezed myself into a pair of elastic-waist black pants, a white
knit top, and a matching black jacket. People were wearing pants to
funerals now, so I felt okay about that. It’s all I could come up
with.

The doorbell rang. I grabbed my
purse and opened the door to Kate, who stood there on the front porch
looking resplendent in a black skirt suit and her rolled shiny blond
hair. I felt like an old hag standing next to her.

We talked about work mostly on
the hour and a half hour drive to the mountains. Kate said her
boyfriend was already at the beach and she would drive down herself
just as soon as she had taken care of attending the funeral.

“
What are you going to do over
the break?” she asked me, innocently, and probably not really
caring very much.

“
I’m going to take care of
some projects around the house,” I said, lying, “and watch some
good movies on TV. I just need a break.” There was no way I would
tell Kate about the recent demise of my marriage, my cheating
husband, and how I had thrown him out.

Kate’s GPS took us to a little
chapel in the mountains. Cars were parked all along the road leading
up to it and we had to park a long way down. We trudged up to the
chapel, Kate in her heels and me in my flats.

The chapel was so small, it
couldn’t contain all of the people in attendance. It was
standing-room-only, and Kate and I stood in the back. I expected to
hear the organ playing the sad songs of funerals, but I was mistaken
in that.

A violinist sat in a corner near
the casket playing the most beautiful music I had ever heard. The
casket was covered in a blanket of red roses and flowers were three
rows deep on either side of the casket.

Kate and I had arrived right
before the service, thankfully. Get in, get out, I thought.

And then the lights dimmed in the
chapel. Candles flickered on either side of the casket. The minister,
wearing dark robes and a shiny golden scarf that hung down on either
side of his chest, approached the podium and microphone. He read from
the book of Psalms, my absolute favorite book. We all bowed our heads
in prayer for the lost Mrs. Richmond.

I stole a look at the program.
Mrs. Richmond’s son, Keith Richmond, the geezer, was going to do
her eulogy.

I saw a man not much older than
my thirty-seven-year-old self walk to the podium. This must be a
family friend, I thought. The chapel was quiet. And then he began to
speak.

“
I was sixteen years old when
my father died,” he said. “I had my driver’s license and I
thought I had the world by the tail.” Chuckles from the audience.
He smiled.

“
That’s when I learned what
my mother was made of,” he said. Was it possible this was Keith
Richmond? Yes, it was totally possible. Why else would he be talking
about his mother? Mrs. Richmond must have been over forty when she
gave birth to him.

“
She took over Richmond Timber,
and she taught me everything she knew. I sat by her side in the
office, learning about the business. And her acumen took the company
places it had never been, even when my father ran it.”

Tears were starting to fill my
eyes. I wasn’t expecting such a loving tribute from Mrs. Richmond’s
son. Not at all.

“
But that’s not all she
taught me,” he said. “She taught me about the value of education.
She taught me about music and art. She said it was important for me
to be well-rounded. She also taught me about helping others. And
today I am announcing that I am going to establish an endowed
scholarship in her name at the Wellington Institute of Arts and
Sciences, my alma mater.”

The funeral attendees erupted in
applause then. I pulled a Kleenex from my purse and dabbed my eyes.

“
I want to celebrate my
mother’s life and her accomplishments today,” Keith Richmond
continued. “I hope you will join me in the reception area outside
after the service.”

The violinist began to play “Ode
to Joy” as Keith Richmond left the podium. Everyone filed out of
the pews, heading toward the doors. Kate and I stood where we were
until the aisle was free. We followed the crowd around the church to
a spring meadow. Tables were set up with appetizers and punch.

“
We need to talk to him to let
him know we were here,” Kate said. She was young, but she knew how
it worked.

We walked to the tables laden
with food and put stuffed mushrooms, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe,
spanikopita, fried chicken tenders, and chicken salad on our plates.
A young woman who couldn’t have been more than eighteen handed us
cold cups of punch at the end of the line.

I wasn’t very hungry, but I
nibbled at the food on my plate and drank the punch.

“
He’s over there by the
tree!” Kate whispered intently. “Let’s go talk to him so we can
go.”

I wondered then if Kate was
already so jaded by her annual fund job that she had been untouched
by the service and the eulogy. But I understood that she had a
boyfriend waiting for her at the beach, that she had given up the
beginning of her spring break to attend this funeral. I did
understand all of that. She was still very young and inexperienced.

Kate grabbed my arm and led me
through the crowd and stopped right beside Keith Richmond. He was
talking to and elderly man. We waited. Then Keith turned his sad eyes
our way.

“
Mr. Richmond,” Kate said
extending her hand. “We’re from Wellington. We’re so sorry for
your loss.”

Keith took her hand and said,
“Thank you.”

I extended my own chubby hand and
he took it in his hand, not in a handshake; he cradled my hand and
put his other hand over it.

The tears were still fresh in my
eyes, threatening to fall.

“
It was a beautiful service and
a beautiful eulogy,” I said, choking up on the word eulogy. I
thought I was going to start crying. He looked at me with his gray
eyes of sorrow and I looked at him.

“
Thank you,” he said
sincerely. “I appreciate your coming today. This was my mother’s
church her entire life. I felt it was appropriate to have the service
here.”

“
Very appropriate,” I said.
“Please let us know if we can do anything for you.”

And then it was over and Kate was
walking up to the front of the church and down the road where we had
parked. I followed her.

“
I’m glad that’s over,”
she said when we got in the car. “I thought it would never end.”

“
I thought it was nice,” I
said.

“
Oh, yeah,” she said. “It
was nice. I’m glad we came.”

I didn’t believe her.

Kate talked about her boyfriend
all the way back to Marshall. I listened and said “uh huh” and
“really?” and all of the stuff you say when someone is
monopolizing the conversation. But I kept thinking about Keith
Richmond and his remembrance of his mother and his sad silver gray
eyes. I was grateful when Kate dropped me off at my house.

“
Have a great break,” I said.
She waved goodbye as she drove down my driveway. It had been a long
time since I’d been on a spring break vacation at the beach.

Chapter
Three

Midnight was sitting by her food
bowl when I walked in the kitchen door. I opened a can of her
favorite blend—beef and liver—and put it on her plate. She
started to eat like she hadn’t eaten in a week.

I took my phone out of my purse
and turned it back on. I had forgotten to turn it back on once Kate
and I were in her car. Didn’t matter. There was only one person who
wanted to get in touch with me and he had left a voice mail and four
text messages.

I texted Jim back: “Please
don’t try to contact me anymore. I’m on spring break. I’ll be
in touch when it’s over. Or my lawyer will.”

Jim texted back right away: “Ok,”
he wrote.

It was nearly eight o’clock by
that time. I looked in the refrigerator and found a full bottle of
chardonnay, a head of lettuce, and a container of blueberry yogurt. I
ate the yogurt leaning against the kitchen counter, then poured
myself a glass of wine.

The house felt a little lonely,
but peaceful. Gone was the tension that I now realized had been
plaguing my marriage. There was no one to please anymore, and I was
relieved about that. I walked up to my bedroom and kicked off my low
heels and stripped off my black suit that had begun to feel
cloistering. I grabbed a pair of sweat pants out of my drawer and put
on an extra large T-shirt. My stomach stretched the fabric of the
shirt.

Back downstairs, I took my glass
of wine out to the patio and sat in a chaise. Until the past few
years, we had eaten dinners on the patio when the weather was good
and hosted parties out there with our closest friends, which always
included Sam, Jim’s partner, and his wife Bitsy. The woods
encroached fairly close to the deck, giving an intimate feel. That
night, I enjoyed that even more than usual.

After an hour outside, I went
back inside for a blanket and my iPod player. Back outside, I lit the
lantern on the table beside the chaise and listened to The Beatles
and Jason Mraz and everything in between. I sipped my wine and poured
myself two more glasses before I went back inside to bed.

The next morning, Monday, the
first real day of spring break, I made myself a piece of toast. I had
no appetite at all, but I didn’t feel exactly sick either. I just
didn’t want to eat. Couldn’t eat. I was already eaten up with
anger. But mostly I was eaten up with hurt.

I sat down at my computer in the
den and brought up Google. I keyed in Kimberly Williams, as I had so
many times before.

When I met Jim at a party in our
junior year of college, he was with someone he had been dating for a
couple of weeks. Jim and I kept bumping into each other—in the
kitchen where the food was, on the porch where the keg was, in the
hallway that led to the bathroom. After a couple of encounters, we
started laughing when we saw each other.

“
You again,” Jim had said,
laughing on about the fifth or six encounter.