Mentoring the Mistress

Not long after I filed for divorce, I took a trip with my sister and her twins, Faith and Grace, who were four at the time. My job, riding shotgun, was to keep the Disney movies playing. Since my children are out of the Disney stage, I’m a little out of touch with the current animated superstars, so they attempted to educate me. My sister described the little fish Dory in Finding Nemo.

“What did Dory say, girls?”

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!” they yelled in unison.

Just keep swimming. It’s the perfect divorce mantra.

On the same trip, we made the requisite toy-store stop at one of those outlet mall junk stores that sells the toys the big guys can’t unload. Grace picked up a Barbie doll called “Erica,” the spitting image of the other woman, the one I'd dubbed the "moderately intelligent Latina" after I discovered my husband's AdultFriendFinder stating he liked Latinas and that intelligence was only "moderately important" to him. Erica even had the same waist-length kinky, streaked hair.

I tried talking my niece out of Latina Barbie. I offered to buy her the store, but she was hung up on “Erica.” So I grudgingly paid for the trashy doll. We got out of the store, and Erica’s clothes promptly came off. And then I was ordered to put her dress back on. Great, I get to see Erica’s Latina titties. I was happy to note that they were better than the set my husband’s new hottie possessed.

“Now brush her hair,” Grace ordered.

“Oh, sweetie, I hate to tell you, but her hair’s tangled. I’m going to have to rip out a few chunks.”

Of course, Erica’s at the bottom of the closet by now, facedown and naked. Her hair’s been cut off with a pair of fingernail clippers. She’s wondering what happened to all the love and attention she was promised at the time of purchase. And Ken’s busy writing his next AdultFriendFinder ad.

A couple of weeks after Erica, I stumbled across a book on the paperback table at Barnes & Noble. Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps sounded like the self-help I certainly did not need, but a morbid sense of curiosity mixed with a demented sense of humor demanded the purchase. The author’s recommendations: date Mexican men, learn to cook Mexican food, and mentor an at-risk Latina.

I suppose I could go out with a Mexican man (Rafael Nadal is Latin, would he count?), and I already cook a mean fajita. The suggestion that caught my fancy, however, was the mentoring.

Suppose I meet and mentor my husband’s Latina. I could introduce her to my three teenagers, the crazy dogs, the parasite-riddled cat, the pet snake, and the Lithuanian exchange student. Then I could show her the toenail clippings he leaves on his nightstand for me to discard. I could teach her how to change the sheets when he comes in so drunk he wets the bed. And then she could retrieve his underwear from the front yard after the dachshunds pilfer through the gym bag he left in the garage and literally air his dirty laundry in front of the whole neighborhood.

I could set her alarm for six o’clock every morning to make the kids’ breakfast and pack nutritious lunches. Meanwhile, his ass is still snoring . . . and most likely not in her bed. He’s been out all night with some other little Latina who’s the backup to the backup gal.

I’d say she qualifies as an at-risk Latina. But I'll pass on the mentoring and the attempts at becoming Latina. Being me is good enough for me.

Measuring Intelligence

One evening in early November 2005, Morgan walked into my bathroom. I was sitting on the floor of my closet packing for my annual Christmas-shopping trip with my sister to the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Morgan was wearing an Abercrombie t-shirt with the words “Dependently Wealthy” on it. She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned against the doorframe, and with her eyebrows arched as high as they could possibly get, said, “Mom, I need to know one thing. Are you and dad planning on having any more kids?”

I laughed. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Just answer the question, Mom.” She cocked her head to the side and waited for my answer.

“Sweetie, you know the answer to that. Of course we’re not planning on any more children. Now tell me why you’re asking.”

My children were fifteen, twelve, and ten at the time. All three were in school, straight-A students, and could take themselves to the potty. A baby was definitely not in the picture.

Morgan had been using her father’s computer. She said, “I hit Dad’s favorites page, and you know what popped up? A vasectomy reversal site.”

Shit.

But I didn’t say a word. I just sat there looking up at my daughter and letting the tears well up in my eyes.

Then she said, “Mom, how much more are you going to take?”

She left the room, and I sat there feeling like a limp dishrag. I couldn’t cry because that would mean I would have to explain to my husband what was upsetting me. Finally, I moved to the bathroom sink and was washing my face as my husband walked in. Now a budding developer who had applied for zoning permits to build a community of ranch-style condos in our town, he commented, “The county is giving me problems again. The Water Authority wants to put more conditions on the zoning approval I’ve already gotten.”

“You may have to sue them,” I said, and he agreed.

I continued the lather in order to hide my face from him, and after a moment, he left the room. Seconds later, he stomped back into the bathroom, threw his hands up in the air, and with his face twisted in fury, yelled, “You don’t give a rat’s ass, do you?”

“Huh?” I answered, looking up from the towel I was using to dry my face. Honestly, I thought I’d given him at least a rat’s ass worth of concern when I’d said he might have to sue the county. What, did he want me to go buy a posterboard and make a sign and picket the next Commission Zoning Meeting? The man was making it extremely difficult for me to keep my cool.

“My businesses are going bankrupt, and you don’t even care. But you’re going to care in about two months when I file for bankruptcy. And that’s when I’m going to know that you’re only married to me for the money.”

He turned and left the room. I heard the alarm beep, meaning he had left the house, and I knew that, just like every other night for the past several months, he would not return.

The next morning, I called a lawyer, and that afternoon I was seated in his office. I needed a divorce; of that I was certain. But he needed to know what I was seeking in the divorce, and I said, “Everything I deserve.” The problem was that if we were in the financial trouble my husband was claiming, I had no idea what to ask for. We left that section blank, my attorney assuring me I was entitled to half and that we would find out, in the process of discovery, just how much half was. He promised to have the petition for divorce filed and ready to serve him within one week. Fortunately, I would be at the Mall of America when he was served, and my children would be at their grandparents’ home, where they would be sheltered from seeing a sheriff at the door.

On the flight to Minneapolis, I remembered that he had always used his birthdate as his email password. When we landed, I went straight to the tiny business center in the Minneapolis Airport Hilton and logged onto his email, something I could have easily done all along. I spent the next two hours and $75 printing out emails. It may have been the best money I’ve ever spent.

There was an AdultFriendFinder alert. “You have three new flirts.” I clicked onto his profile to discover that my husband of eighteen years and the father of my children was single with no kids. Not only that, he was also a young professional in his early thirties (lie) who had never had time to commit to a relationship (a lie unless marriage doesn’t count as a relationship) because he was extremely busy in his professional life (half true). No children (lie). 195 pounds (huge lie). Additionally, he liked all things Latin – music, food, and women. In fact, he was looking for a Latin girl, and this is the God-honest truth, intelligence was only “moderately” important to him.

Another email contained pictures of what must have been the girl of his dreams. She was Latina, and, as proof that she was, indeed, “moderately intelligent,” she was gainfully employed as a shot girl in a strip club. In the picture, she was baring her boobies, and the pictures were courtesy of a professional photographer who was courting my husband’s investment dollars. Basically, the asshole paid for her Glamour Shots!

Hey, Einstein, you’re considering a vasectomy reversal so that you can have a child with a moderately intelligent woman. Did you know that vasectomy reversals are rarely successful ten years after the vasectomy? They’re going to have to stick a needle into your scrotum to suck your semen out. And they’re going to mix it in a little Petri dish with the eggs from a woman with the intelligence of blue-footed booby bird. Just for the fun of it, I took your picture and hers and put them into one of those cool computer programs that shows you what your children will look like. Your kid is going to look like your scrotum.

As crazy as it sounds, I felt a wave of relief in that moment. Knowing that the divorce was inevitable and that I’d only beaten him to the attorney’s office was absolution for a woman still trying to do everything exactly right. I felt better knowing I wasn’t the bad guy. But as I digested all what I had just found, I began to feel like the moderately intelligent one for not seeing what had been right under my nose for so very long.