She smiled wryly. “I’m surprised he didn’t give up and divorce me. He didn’t though. Joe told me years later that he felt he deserved the punishment. Anyway, while I was a horrible wife, I was a good mother, and we acted as if all was well for the sake of the children.”
Mary took another sip of coffee and then said, “We probably would have stayed like that till his death if things had just continued as they were going. As it was it went on for fifteen years.”
“What happened to change things?” Dante asked with curiosity.
“I found out about one of his children. A son,” she said quietly. “An angry fourteen-year-old who showed up at our door one day. His mother had finally told him who his father was and he wanted to confront him. He was faced with me first.”
Mary peered down at her coffee mug. “I was furious. There I was unable to have children of my own and Joe had gone and had them with another woman. Not only that, but he’d just abandoned him. I didn’t know what made me angrier. I hired a private detective to find out if there were any others and . . .” She paused and swallowed the bile rising up in her throat at the memory of how she’d felt when the detective had given his report. “Joe had at least four children by four different women that he knew of. The one boy I’d met, and three girls. There may have been more though; he couldn’t be sure. But he was sure that Joe wasn’t a part of their lives. He’d just been dropping his seed and leaving it to grow as he danced on to the next victim.”
Mary glanced to Dante and smiled wryly. “Joe admitted that most of the women he had affairs with had no idea he was married. He said a friend had helped with that. I’m guessing now that it was Dave, but Joe wouldn’t tell me who it was at the time. I suppose that was to prevent me outing Dave to Carol. Joe would only say he was just a chum from work. But he told me that they went out together to meet women, often double dating. A woman who met two male friends hanging out didn’t imagine that he would be married and carry on an affair with his friend’s knowledge. And his “chum” backed up any story he gave to explain why he couldn’t see her at certain times, or why she hadn’t met his family or any other friends.”
Mary shook her head with remembered disgust. “Of course, once the girlfriend started pushing for those kinds of things, it was time to end it and move on anyway in his mind. Or if she got pregnant,” she added grimly. “As far as Joe was concerned, birth control was the woman’s problem and he always asked if they were on the pill when they started up. If she said no, he moved along. He wanted no chance of having to explain why he had condoms in his wallet when we weren’t having sex. So, they were all supposed to be safe, and if a woman got pregnant, he was sure she was just trying to force him into marrying her. Joe claimed he offered to help with an abortion and if she refused, it was “sayonara sweetheart.”
“He really was a bastard,” Dante muttered.
“Yes,” Mary agreed solemnly, “And I was a total psycho bitch.”
“Mary!” He gaped at her with dismay, and she smiled slightly.
“I was,” she assured him. “I was making his home life as miserable as possible. For instance, he traveled a lot then and one time when he was gone for two months, I bought the kids a cat. Joe was deathly allergic to cats. But the kids had had it for two months by the time he returned. He could hardly take it away from them then. He had to get an inhaler and start taking allergy shots twice a week just to be able to breathe at home. Joe hated shots.”
“Diabolical,” Dante said on a laugh.
“Hmm. I did other things as well.”
“Like what?” he asked with amusement.
Mary considered the various things and said, “Oh, if I knew he hated something, I made it a lot for meals, saying I was sure he’d said he’d liked it last time. If he liked something, I never made it again. I deliberately used his razors on my legs so the blade was always dull when he went to shave his face. I constantly washed his whites with reds to turn them pink. I bought him the loudest and ugliest patterned shirts and ties every birthday and Christmas and then acted wounded if he didn’t wear them. And I used to cook him something with mushrooms in it as his meal before each flight. It didn’t matter what, so long as it had mushrooms.”
When Dante glanced away from the road to give her a confused look, she explained with amusement, “Mushrooms gave Joe gas, you see. Which made the flight miserable for him. Gas expands as the plane climbs in altitude and causes terrible stomach pains.”