Foreshadow and Irony

***I know I wrote about going forward and not dwelling on the past, but I need the closure of putting those unhappy events in writing. I wanted to do it over at the other blog but I was warned a few months back by a relative to not write about it, because it would give me . . . cancer. (That person was not my parents.) Well, I disagree. I think writing it down is part of the healing process. Also, the vile man kept his family away from the filth. Unknowingly, we were his beard. The children and I provided him the cover-up of a family man. It was like living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I had no idea that he was doing what he was doing, though I did get the creeps sometimes. I thought he was cheating on me with other women (turns out he was doing that too).

I didn't tell any relatives about this new blog, that way I don't have to censor myself and should I end up with cancer, someone will not be able to tell me "I told you so".

Please bear with me on occasion, when I feel like writing about the past. Sorry, this is very long . . .***


I was sitting at the dinning room table with three strange men staring at me. They wanted to sit in the breakfast room, but I told them my children ate at that table and I just could not sit there and be told about the filth.

My mouth was dry and my head was pounding. I had already been on the road for 45 minutes, headed north, when the call came on my cell phone from the detective who arrested the vile man. I didn't take the call because I thought it was going to be the lawyer that the vile man had asked me to call, which I refused to do. When I checked my voicemail, it was the detective, informing me he was at my house and wanted to talk to me.

Visions of SWAT vans and police cars surrounding my house immediately flashed before my eyes. I think I saw several local news stations and maybe even Geraldo Rivera at my door. Instead of calling him back, I did what any normal, 44 year old woman whose husband had been arrested does. . . I called my daddy.

"Dad, there is a detective calling me and he wants to talk to me! Will you call him back and tell him I'm too afraid to go back because the weasel is going to kill me for not bailing him out of jail!!!"

I was still headed north.

I kept thinking of me having to drive down my street with throngs of reporters sticking their microphones toward my car window. I could not be on television looking like I did. Earlier that morning, I took an aerobics class at the Y and it kicked my butt. When I got home, instead of showering, I made coffee, blogged and decided to lie down for my sinus headache. I also took sinus meds, hence the dry mouth. On top of that, I had sweated buckets after getting off the phone with a weasel and ran around the house gathering things to throw into the mini van. So, I basically looked and smelled like shit.

A few minutes later, my dad called me and tried to talk me into going back home and cooperate with the detective. So, I told my dad to have the detective call me back and I would talk to him.

Me: "Hello."

Detective: "This is Det. Nice."

Me: "I'm not coming back!!! Can't you get a search warrant?! Please! That man is going to kill me for not bailing him out of jail and I'm embarrassed about you being in front of my house! What are the neighbors going to say?!!!"

Detective: I'm not in a police car, I'm in a Ford **fill in some cheap economy sized model***. Your neighbors don't have to know anything unless you tell them." **Insert five minutes of him begging me to turn around and go back.**

I called the detective when I reached my street and told him what I was driving and that I would pull up in my driveway. I also told him that I needed to get my dog out of the car and to please not pull their guns on me.

He thought that was funny, assured me he didn't have his gun with him and that I was a victim.

I was surprised how quiet my street was. No media, no SWAT vans and no police cars.

After getting the kids' small poodle out of the car (he was carsick) I carried him to the front lawn where I greeted Detective Nice.

No fancy designer suit on this guy. (I gotta quit watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent.) He was wearing blue jeans, an untucked button down shirt and a baseball hat. His cohorts (the two other police officers) were also dressed in blue jeans. They all followed me into my house.

We sat down and Det. Nice tried to put me at ease and joked that he thought I was going to be getting a large dog out of my car and was surprised to see a small, hairy poodle in my arms all limp like.

Det. Nice was the good cop.

Sargent Baldy played bad cop. (I say that, because he rolled his eyes at something I said. )

But all three of them were very nice and assured me, that the children and I were victims of the vile man.

I spent three hours with those men, listening to them tell me what a sick man, vile man was. When they were leaving, they all mentioned how relieved I looked and not just because they were leaving.

I was relieved . . . and not just because three police men were leaving my house. The relief came, because I knew we were free of the vile man.

By the way, the vile man's arrest was kept out of the media. No newspaper mention nor was it on the 10:00 news.

On January 6th, I met Detective Nice once again. This time he was sitting in front of me in the courthouse. He was sitting next to the lovely lady he worked with who was the keeper of police records. I had already met Lovely Lady at my temporary order hearing (pre-divorce thing) last August. She was so supportive.

Had I passed Det. Nice on the street, I would have never recognized him. He had on a suit and no baseball cap. He looked exactly like Tony Soprano and/or the actor who portrayed him. I loved the Sopranos.

I wanted to hug this man - a good full frontal hug too! (I never give frontal hugs because of my big ahems, so my hugs are more shoulder hugs with my big ahems not touching the person I'm hugging.) Thankfully I didn't try to hug him because he was standoffish and a little unfriendly. Not because he didn't like me, but because he was having to sit in a courthouse, waiting to testify at my divorce trial and I wasn't supposed to be fraternizing with the witnesses.

The lovely lady turned around and explained that Det. Nice was nervous because the vile man's criminal attorney (who brings their criminal attorney to a divorce trial?!) would have the opportunity to cross examine him and it didn't look good if he was seen talking to me. She said he didn't want to hurt my feelings.

I said oops, I'm sorry and leaned back into the courthouse pew. But Lovely Lady said she could talk to me because all she had to do was hand over the big thick vile file on the vile man to the judge.

After lunch, Det. Nice realized we probably would settle and not go to trial. So he turned around and talked to me. I told him a story called "Foreshadow and Irony" (see, I went through all the above mess just to tell you the following, and it might not even be considered irony, because, I wasn't all that smart in high school.)

The day before the vile man was arrested, I had just seen my parents off with the children. They would be visiting my parents for ten days. Ten days without children! Anyway, it was early afternoon and I turned on the TV and watched an HBO documentary about Roman Polanski (another vile man) and the trouble he got himself into before fleeing the country. Something about his narcissism, reminded me of the vile man. I even googled Roman, after the show ended, to read more about his vile troubles. And I'm not talking about the murder of his wife in the late 60's, I'm talking about what happened a few years later.

The next day, the vile man was arrested for similar troubles.

He spent eight days in jail, before he bailed himself out using credit cards. While in jail, he called my parents' home every night. We never answered the phone. In a weird way, it was soothing to know he was still in jail (thanks to caller ID).

When I finally did talk to vile man, a couple of weeks later, he told me he went to meet Det. Nice (not knowing Det. Nice was a detective) to beat him up and keep our children safe from men like him (Det. Nice's undercover persona). After my hysterical laughter died down, because I had already heard that excuse several times on Dateline's to Catch a Predator, I told him: first, our children were never in danger of internet villains because I monitored their internet usage. And secondly, the man vile man went to beat up, to protect his children from, ended up being the man who would set us free and protect us from vile man. I think that might be called irony.