At Least It Can’t Get Worse (Or Can It?)

My husband had lost his mind.

Yes, we’d had a horrible argument. Yes, I said I was leaving him. Yes, he’d hacked into my email account and discovered the cyber-relationship that had gone further than I’d planned.

But there was no reason for him to involve our teenage daughters.

I ran down the hall behind him, screaming, "What are you doing? This doesn’t involve them!" I tried to grab him, to get the papers containing my clandestine correspondence away from him as he headed up the stairs.

The girls had witnessed the fights, the silences. They had seen Rick storm out of the house. They had seen me cry. They had heard me say the night before that I was leaving their father, but they didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect this.

"Your mother wants to leave me for this woman," he called, over my wails, thrusting the pages in Abigail’s face.

"I don’t want to see it, Dad," fifteen-year-old Abigail muttered, tears in her eyes.

Christine was in the middle of it too, screaming, "Leave her alone! Leave her alone!"

The two girls often fought each other like tigers, but if one of them was attacked they defended each other just as ferociously.

Rick was becoming nearly hysterical, the girls not far behind him. I was a mass of black anger.

"Why are you doing this? Leave them out of it! It’s none of their business!" I yelled. "Are you trying to destroy everyone?"

"Why not?" he asked, looking at me coldly. "You have." He threw the papers on Abigail’s bed and stormed back downstairs.

The girls were both crying, so I tried to comfort them. "It’s all right," I said, not knowing how it could be.

"Are you a… lesbian, Mom?" Abigail asked.

"It’s not as simple as that," I said, as she turned and shut the bathroom door.

"Is it true?" thirteen-year-old Christine asked. "I don’t mind if it is, but I want to know."

"Yes… no… it’s hard to explain," I faltered.

I’d never been asked these questions before, never been confronted with labeling myself in such a way. I didn’t feel I fit such labels.

Christine put her crutches under her arms and went back downstairs to her abandoned breakfast.

I sat on the stairs waiting for Abigail to come out of the bathroom. "Are you okay, honey?" I asked when she did.

"Yes, Mom," she said softly, although I could hear the tears in her voice. "I have to get calmed down. I have finals to take today, you know."

"Okay, I know. We’ll talk when you come home then. Do you want me to get you some breakfast?"

"No, Mom, I’m fine. Why don’t you check on Christine?"

Christine didn’t want to talk either. She turned up the volume of Saved by the Bell when I walked into the room.

I certainly didn’t want to encounter Rick again, but I seriously needed coffee now, so I walked past him and into the kitchen.