Break Ups - Part 3

I don’t know what’s gotten me into writing about Break Ups that happened to friends I  knew personally… rather than clients who hired me out of the blue. Perhaps the cases that involved friends touched me deepest and therefore come to mind first.

Clients are clients.
Friends are friends.
And when the two paths cross, the cases become more complex… and the memories more poignant and life altering.

In this Break Up, Part 3, I was way too personally involved. I should have known better, though I was a new investigator then.

It was the first time I was a third party observer to the decline of a couple’s marriage. And they were the first couple that befriended me after my first marriage ended.

My husband had just walked out after our 15th wedding anniversary -- not for another woman I was told. Just because I was who I was.
Personally, I think the other woman concept would have been easier to process.

Everyone told me it was a midlife crisis on his part. I didn’t care. I just wanted the marriage back, my family in tact. I wanted marriage therapy, he didn’t. So after 15 years he was gone. I knew not a soul who had been divorced. I did not move in such circles.

There was a five year gap then, in my single-hood. During those years,  I will confess, I was officially a man hater.

We had two daughters between us and we stayed civil for their sake while I sank deeper and deeper in the quagmire of the betrayed, the great gaping hole of nothingness left by a man I loved who simply stopped loving me.

I decided then all men were screw-ups.
My brothers, both married and very much in love with their wives said I needed to get a grip on my man hating. After all, my father was loyal to his wife. No one in our family ever experienced a divorce. Most of my family and friends considered my ex-husband’s move an aberrant one.

Hating men at that time did not turn me to women. Instead, I just chose to hang with myself a while, to become a primo investigator while I got to know who I was, because I married so young. At 21.

15 years later and single, I chose to build a new life for myself. Inch by inch. Brick by brick.

Five years later, I met  a guy the exact opposite of my first husband. He too had been burnt by his wife who was…. let’s just say… two French Fries shy of a Happy Meal.

Neither of us ever planned to marry again. We did anyway. In fact, we eloped. It’s been 10 years now and I am happy as a clam. I think he is too. I am happier with husband number two than I was with husband number one. So maybe husband number one did me a favor.

I write this not to point out the potential upside to Break Ups. But to illustrate a bigger point I am about to make.

Case in Point

In that five-year gap, or window, after my first husband walked and  I became a man hater, I was alienated from all my married friends.

When you’re single or divorced, the couples you knew when married disappeared. Single friends with boyfriends stepped away; scared I would target their beaus. I felt like a leper.

Single  men would hit on me and I would accept offers of dinner, but no more, which pissed them off to no end. I just didn’t trust the guys.

So lonely old me, post divorce and pre new husband, strolled into a sushi bar one day and sat next to the nicest, sweetest couple about my age. I had my P.I. license for only a short time.

She was a young, attractive, all American college graduate who loved her parents and brother. She worked for a big company, spoke fluent Japanese and we were sushi compadres to the max. We both ate Uni topped by raw quail's egg. I never met another woman who did that.

He was a rich, good-old-boy with a GED and self-educated, who owned  real estate, fixed cars… an all-round, good looking, good guy. They knew I was alone, they knew I had no real friends. They befriended me.

I went out of my way to place my loyalties with the female part of the duo, we will call “Christy”.

Her husband, we’ll call  “Johnny”, liked me a lot as a person, though it was clear he loved his wife intensely and never once made a move to me. Nor I to him. I appreciated that because I was still a man-hater then. 

I felt quite safe in their presence as we hung together, went out, ate out, and visited each other’s homes. She was the kind of friend every woman would want, non-judgmental, creative, loving, funny, generous, thoughtful.

Or so I thought. It was just a mask.

The Plot Thickened

It all started with a phone call.

“He pushed me out of a moving car!” she screamed one summer morning and cried at the same time.

“Who did?” I asked. The investigator in me stepped right in.

“Johnny!” she shouted. “We had a fight and he said get out and pushed me out of the car while it was still moving!!! I’m bruised all over, you should see.”

I told her to come by my house immediately and I would take pictures and talk to her about this. I would interview her, get the all the facts straight, and then we would assess whether to call the police, bet to the hospital, what.

So she came right over. I photographed dark bruises down her right side, her hip, her butt, and her leg.

I took notes as she described how she said something he didn’t like and he said the  “F.U.” thing and pushed her out of the car.

She again asked if I thought she should call the police and have him arrested.
I suggested she to go to her mom’s and stay there with her kids while I sorted this out.

I printed the photos, called Johnny, and asked him to meet me for coffee. He was sullen. We sat in the coffee shop and I showed him the photos. I asked for his version of the story, he said just four words.  “She’s nuts. She jumped.”

I didn’t expect that.

Then he cut loose.

He said he didn’t want me to know this really, but she is truly a psychopath, he said. She loses her temper, screams at him and their sons all the time, insults him, degrades him, hits him and calls him filthy names in front of the boys.

He said she jumped out of the car when he said the 1.8-carat diamond ring he bought her when they married was not big enough. She wanted a 2 pointer; he told her they couldn’t afford a bigger one. They needed to start saving for the kids’ future.

I was perplexed.
Loyal to my female friend yet more loyal to the truth.

I suggested they hold on calling the police until  we get them into therapy and see if they can work things out.
So into therapy they went.
We all stayed friends. Things calmed down for months.

One day, I took a little overnight road trip with her to a concert at the Columbia Gorge. I was driving, she was my passenger. There was a police roadblock up ahead due to boulders in the road.

The officer held up his hand and said, “Stop!” authoritatively.

She yelled out the window at the cop.
“ F.U.” she shouted and I was blown away.

“What the hell are you doing?”  I asked her angrily.

“I didn't like his tone.” She replied.

“What tone?”  I responded, “He’s a cop trying to make sure you stop before you get hurt.”

“Bullshit” she said, “He could’ve have been nicer about it.”

“Look,” I replied.   “I’m an investigator. I respect cops. You’re in my car, my passenger and you had no right or reason to talk to him like that. You also put me and my license, in harm’s way.”

“Then F. U. too, then,” she said back to me.

That’s when I realized the friend I knew for a year wasn’t really the friend I knew for a year.

Her aberrant behavior was intermittent and continued through the two-day trip.

I saw no drug use except the usual amount of her drinking.

On this road trip, we stopped by my friend’s bar in a resort we stayed one night in. My friend Will used to be a government investigator and my mentor, we always remained friends.

As Will, the bar owner and I watched, Christy downed three tequila shooters and I stopped her on the fourth. She wandered away from the bar and over to the dance floor where she sidled up to some smarmy dude who bought her two Bacardi 151 shots.

My buddy Will the bar owner asked me  “Isn’t your
Friend married?” as we watched her remove her shirt revealing her bikini top underneath.

“Yes,” I said, “Time for an intervention. “

Will and I as we both walked to her, we each grabbed an arm and led her outside. From there I took her back to our condo for the night.

She was in a blackout and offered little resistance. I tucked her in her bed, fully clothed, and sat beside her until she passed out. I watched her sleep a while then climbed into the twin bed next to her. I didn’t sleep that night and there was little conversation as I loaded her in the car drove her home the next morning.

She did say one thing to me an hour into the ride home after she puked three times into one of many plastic bags I had in anticipation of her hangover.

“My husband’s an asshole.” Christy said.

“Christy, you were the asshole last night, “ I replied. “And if Will and I hadn’t stopped you, you would’ve cheated on your husband with that guy in the bar and ruined your marriage.”

Her reply was her same old, same old… “ F.U.”

My reply was, “Fine, but you be careful. Because some day, some single woman is gonna’ see what a great guy Johnny is and steal him from you.”

That was definitely the wrong thing for me to say.

I didn’t mean “me” stealing him  because I didn’t want him. I knew they both had herpes, not my cup of tea.
I was just giving her a warning.
Instead, my warning triggered a paranoia that resulted in her going off her birth control pills without telling Johnny.
She got pregnant with baby number three and got even crazier.

After that road trip, Johnny called and told me she was more verbally abusive than ever and wanted out and wanted custody for the sake of his sanity and his sons.

He said he needed my help. He was a tough guy, embarrassed, and ashamed. He thought no one believed a woman could abuse a man. I said I did.

I suggested he get a tape recorder or VCR, accidentally leave it on one day, and see what he gets. (In two party consent states this would be illegal. I was a naive investigator then.)

Sure enough, he did just that.
He called me.
He said he was coming over, and wanted to play something for me.

It was the sound from a VCR that was in another room. So it captured only sound no video.

And the sound it captured was mortifying.

She called him every name in the book, criticized the size of his “manparts”, called him impotent in front of his kids, told him she could screw anyone she wanted and he was a failure.

I could hear the kids in the background crying “Mommy, Mommy, stop yelling.”  Clearly, she was out of her mind. Meantime, Johnny kept trying to calm her down.

“Now what?” he asked me after he played me the tape out.

I suggested first he take the tape to both sets of parents, hers and his, and play it for them with her present.

That happened and it was obvious to all.
Intensive therapy was in order, the parents concluded. I suggested a psych ward and DSHS involvement.

Things went downhill from there.

She convinced everyone but me she had been taking pain pills, her behavior was an aberration. She apologized… did a 360 behavior wise… played June Cleaver to Johnny’s Ward Cleaver for just enough time to suck him back into the marriage, get DSHS off her back, and push me out of the friendship.

Last time I heard from them was from him.
Once.
They were leaving Seattle because their two dogs were poisoned and she said the area had “bad vibes”.
Personally, I think she poisoned the dogs. She always hated them and Johnny brought them into the marriage.

They moved to Oregon.

Johnny cut off all contact with me, maintained contact with a mutual friend who became my source of info. That mutual friend was also convinced Christy was nuts and might kill Johnnhy one day just to get the life insurance and the bigger diamond ring.

Ultimately Johnny and Christy got a divorce. He walked away from everything just to shut her up; he got half custody of the boys.

Then she got into Meth and he got full custody of the boys.

Last I heard she lost all her teeth and all her money and was living in the trailer with a Meth cook.

Meantime, Johnny sold used trucks while training to become a bounty hunter.


Lessons Learned

Lessons learned by this investigator in this Break Up story are this:

People are never who they appear to be at first. There are masks beneath masks.

I also learned to be careful with loyalty.
I chose my loyalty in this case I chose the wrong side. Hers.
Now I take no sides until the evidence reveals itself.

This was the last domestic I ever did for either side of one couple I considered a friend.
Clearly, a conflict of interest.
And a conflict of truths.