Dear Jon Stories - part 5

For part 4, click here.

I got home from my family reunion probably around 6 or 7 pm. Not only was Jon not waiting in my driveway for me, there were no messages on my answering machine at home, no messages on my voice mail at work, and no emails from him all day. The lack of emails tipped me off. He often sent me emails all day long as they couldn't be traced, he could do it right under his wife's nose. He had multiple secret email accounts that she never knew about.

I started leaving voice mails for him at work, and emails, but got no response until late in the evening on Sunday when he called me at home. This was completely out of the norm. His first words were, "My wife is letting me call you."... Let that soak in for a minute. I knew this was going to be bad if his wife not only knew he was calling me, but was "letting" him.

He told me about how he and his wife had gotten a babysitter and went to the city (NYC) for the day and evening on Saturday. They had a really great time and he thought he had fallen in love with her all over again. They were really going to try to make it work this time. He couldn't explain it, but there it was. Remarkably, I didn't flip out. I wished them well. I really only wanted for him to be happy, and if he was going to be happier with his family, then good luck to them. Of course, I didn't really feel that way completely. No one is that magnanimous except when it's a really cheesy chick flick.

But wait, there was more.

He told me that she had been after him for months to find out my full name and where I worked. As a gesture of good faith to prove to her that he meant it this time, he totally and completely threw me under the bus. He told her every single little detail that she wanted to know about me, right down to what school my kid went to. That's when I lost it. He had told me stories about how kooky she could be, and I knew I was in for a shit storm in retaliation. I'm now certain I deserved all that I got and much more, but at the time I was naive.

I told him I didn't care whether they made it work or not, I wanted nothing to do with him ever again. He was not to call me at work for any reason or I would let everyone, and I meant everyone, know about us. No phone calls or emails when he changed his mind, nothing ever again.

So instead of him calling me, his wife started. I didn't pick up my phone at home, and she would leave me messages until she ran out of space on my machine. When she ran out of space, she would start leaving messages at work. She would sometimes leave 2-3 long drawn out messages every night. I don't know where she found all those words to say, but it would go on forever with barely a pause for breath. About how perfect they were for each other, how they listened to and loved all the same music, how they read the same books, how they had never had a fight in 13 years before this. None of that was true except the never fighting part, which still doesn't seem natural to me.

I sometimes think she was trying to talk herself into believing that they were going to make things work. She also threatened that if I ever got between her and her husband again, she was going to come to CT and kick my ass. She swore she would make my life a living hell, including but not limited to calling my son's Catholic school and telling anyone who answered the phone that his mother was having an affair with a married man. She had kinda gone off the deep end, just a little. Not that I blame her, now. She needed an outlet for all those angry feelings and she wanted to keep her husband. She couldn't direct those feelings at him for fear of driving him away, again.

Around the same time, my boss called me into his office and told me that he knew Jon and I were having an affair. Apparently the same cell phone bill Jon had worried that his wife would find was eventually submitted to the company on his expense account. The expense bills went through my boss before they went to corporate. While Jon paid for his personal calls off the bill, my boss happened to notice that a lot of calls after business hours had a CT area code. Nosy bastard that he was, he looked up the number. Lo and behold it was one of his employee's home numbers. He told me that my personal life was my own, but it was not to interfere with his office. If Jon showed up in the office for any reason, I was to tell him that he was not allowed to sit in my "pod" (Pussy boss couldn't even tell Jon himself. Believe when I say pussy boss shows up again later in this story.).

Without confirming or denying anything, I assured him that I would remain professional at all times. My boss told me that the only reason he thought to look at the phone records was because he already suspected something was going on. My curiosity got the better of me, and I asked why. He said, "because your faces both light up every time you look at each other". Sigh. At that point, I told him it had been over for weeks. He asked, "Then why is our voice mail system still getting several calls a night from New Jersey?". I promised him I would take care of it.

After work that day I called Jon on his cell phone. He was surprised to hear from me, he wanted to start talking about everything, telling me how wonderful it was to hear my voice, blah, blah, blah. I cut him short by telling him I had a few things to say to him and that was it. I told him what my boss had said, and again that he was not to call me at work for any reason. I told him to give his wife my email address and that she was to stop calling me at work unless she wanted me to smear her husband's "good name" through out the company. I knew she wasn't very computer literate and the emails would be much harder for her to send me than the rambling voice messages she left me.

I had never responded to any of her voice messages, even I knew at the time that she needed to get it out. I masochistically saved all of them and replayed them over and over because I knew I deserved everything she said to me. It was like pouring salt into my own wounds - I thought it would make me stronger, make me get over him sooner. I didn't realize I was deliberately hurting myself, nor did I realize I was only prolonging getting over him by doing so.

I ended the phone call by asking him to tell his wife two things for me. The first was that if she actually did come up to CT to try to kick my ass, I would defend myself. I was 10 years younger than she was and I took Cardio Kick Boxing three times a week - she should expect that I wasn't going to slap and pull hair. The second was that she could threaten all she wanted, but if she ever did anything to hurt my child, I would come looking for her instead.

They actually both left me alone for about 2 months that time.