Defiled Read online

  “Let’s do it. File a petition.”

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, write everything down for me, all the incidents that might indicate mental instability, and include the names of any witnesses we could call. I’ll run it past my partners, see if they think it’s a good idea.”

  “Thanks, Tony, but be careful what you wish for. I could write War and Peace and not cover it all.”

  Tony jotted another note on his yellow legal pad. He said, “Were you planning a divorce too? Did she beat you to the punch?”

  “No, I didn’t want a divorce, but I think she’s been cheating on me. I wanted proof or a confession or an apology. Something.”

  He looked at me in disbelief. “You’d stay with her just to get an admission she cheated?”

  I turned back to the window. It was hard to think with him staring at me. To the world beyond the window, I said, “I’d hoped she’d morph back into the woman I dated.”

  Tony laughed as though he had heard a joke. “Single women and married women are two different species, and they only evolve in one direction.”

  Turning around, I said, “I want to countersue for divorce, take away her advantage as a plaintiff, and I want a restraining order too. You can serve her at the country house. The process server knows the way out there.”

  Tony swiveled to face me. “You’re turning this into something it doesn’t have to be.”

  “Trust me on this one, Tony. We’re not doing Vietnam—incremental escalation—we’re doing Desert Storm—shock and awe.” I looked down at my lawyer, sitting in his big executive chair. “We have to let her lawyer know you’re not a pushover. If she’s going to intimidate you, she’ll want you to know up front she’s going to turn you to mush.”

  Tony drew a deep breath. “This is a good time to let you off the hook if you want to go a different way on counsel. We’re buddies, and this lawyer/client thing is a little uncomfortable for me. You know there are guys out there, sharks like de Castro, that you could hire.”

  “No, Tony. I want to go through this with someone I know and trust.”

  Tony looked pleased and maybe scared too. “Okay, but if this starts going south, you can change at any time. No offense taken.”

  I patted my buddy on the shoulder. “We’ll make you famous—the guy who beat Bobbie the Castrator.” At that moment, I actually believed it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At six-thirty a.m., Tony’s phone call woke me from a dream in which I was lost in a large convention center and couldn’t find my colleagues. Down passageways, into the basement, through spaces reserved for hotel employees, I had searched in vain. What would Freud say about that? How about, Randle seeks allies for his battle with Carrie?

  “What are you doing, Tony? There are still stars in the sky.”

  “Sorry, mate, but I’ve got a, ah, meeting in a few minutes, and I thought you’d want to know that we filed your counterclaim yesterday … in case you hear from your wife.”

  Tony playing golf again. Fitting me in between his tee times. “You send the process server out there? Embarrass her the way she did me?”

  “No, the countersuit is your answer to her complaint, so we filed it with the Clerk of the Circuit Court. The service, if you want to call it that, was a copy delivered to de Castro by messenger. That’s how it’s done once both parties have representation.”

  I rolled out of bed and stretched. As I headed to the kitchen, I said, “Okay, step one in our defense. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me. It’s like firing on Fort Sumter. It’s gonna start a war.”

  The way I remembered it, Carrie had fired the first shot, but I didn’t quibble with the analogy. For divorce lawyers, the plaintiff’s complaint was merely a demand for a settlement. The reaction to the demand initiated the battle. I popped a Gevalia coffee pod into my Keurig.

  “A war is what we want, Tony, not a surrender.”

  I took my coffee outside to the screened porch and settled onto a chaise lounge chair.

  Tony covered his mouthpiece and said something to someone at the golf course. When he came back on the line, he said, “I’ve got to run, Randle. Do you have anything else for me on this fine morning?”

  It annoyed me that Tony had forgotten he had initiated the conversation. “Yes, I want the rest of my stuff from the country house. I’ll need movers to help me.”

  “Can’t you just leave the stuff out there till mediation?”

  “No, Tony, there won’t be anything left. It needs to happen ASAP.”

  He sighed. “Okay, I’ll draft a motion.”

  “Thanks. Go break a hundred.”

  “Yeah, a hundred-dollar bill.” He hung up.

  A second cup of coffee had me fully awake when Jamie, my daughter, called. I said, “I was getting worried.”

  “Sorry, Dad. I’m on the night shift, and I sleep during the day. Just leaving work now.”

  “Guess you got my message? Carrie served me with divorce papers on Monday.”

  “Good riddance. Should have happened a long time ago.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it. Let your feelings out.”

  “I’m not trying to be mean, Dad. Your life will be a thousand percent better without her. Let her have the money. She’s like those lottery winners who are broke in a year. You can always make more money.”

  “I’m running out of time to do that, but I’m glad you have confidence in me.”

  “Does this mean I can see you without seeing her?”

  I hadn’t seen my daughter in more than six months and only a handful of times in the last two years. She wasn’t fond of Carrie, and she wasn’t all that fond of me. “Sure,” I said. “Tell me when.”

  “How about Sunday? I have to work tonight and sleep tomorrow, but I’m off tomorrow night.” She paused for just a millisecond. “I’d have to bring Mom. She’s spending the day with me.”

  Jamie was referring to my ex-wife, Glenda. I said, “Okay. Why not?”

  “One thing you have to promise, Dad: Don’t charm her socks off. She still talks about getting back together with you, and now there’s an opening.”

  “But she’s happily married, right?”

  “Yes, and he’s a good husband for her. So don’t mess it up.”

  It took several hours to write The Mental Health History of Carrie Marks—ten thousand words recounting every odd and scary event during our marriage. The more I wrote the more I remembered and the more I had to write. The act of writing it down on paper was cathartic. I’m not crazy; she’s crazy. I attached the Word document to an email and sent it to Tony.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After three days alone in the beach house, I imagined myself to be a balloon on a string. Some little kid had lost his grip, and now I was floating higher and higher and farther away. It felt like unrestrained freedom, and it felt like a loss of control. My desire for control was stronger than my desire for freedom. I was scared.

  I didn’t realize it was a Saturday until Carrie’s sister, Connie Tomkins, called and told me it was. She said I should get out of the house and join her for lunch at the International Plaza in Tampa. Connie frequently asked me to lunch to share work gossip that was of little interest to the rest of Carrie’s family. Usually I found a way to graciously decline. Today I didn’t feel magnanimous or sociable. I was still recovering from the idea that Carrie had planned the divorce for months; however, I wanted to hear what Connie knew about Carrie’s plans, so I agreed to meet her.

  After I hung up, I shaved, showered, and dressed in my best business-executive-on-a-day-off duds and drove across the causeway to the Westshore Drive exit. Around the back of the International Mall, past Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus, stood a row of restaurants I frequented—sometimes with business associates, occasionally with my daughter.

  I left the Bronco with the valet and walked to the open-air tables in the courtyard. After a bit of searching, I found Connie sitting under an umbrella at a Cheesecake Factory table. As I wound my way
through the tangle of tables, Connie stood to greet me. She wore a silk blouse the color of dried blood over linen slacks and flats. I walked into her embrace and got kissed flush on the mouth. Diners at nearby tables might have assumed we were lovers. Connie always kissed me as though she were my girlfriend, even in front of Carrie.

  We sat at a round wooden table, both of us on the same side of the umbrella post growing out of the middle. The umbrella was open and tilted to shade us from the early afternoon sun. Hiding our nerves, we exchanged small talk while the pink elephant waited nearby. When the waitress appeared, Connie ordered a salad and sweet tea and I ordered guacamole dip, hot and spicy, and a Blue Moon.

  Connie was the “business manager”—the accountant—for a community hospital in Manatee County. She also played multiple roles within the Tomkins clan—fixer, tour guide, family bank, and more mother than aunt to Travis, my stepson. As Connie jabbered about work, I surveyed my sister-in-law. She was a few minutes older than her twin, an inch taller, and ten pounds lighter, but otherwise a carbon copy of Carrie without the paint, the glitter, and the breast augmentation. She had short hair the color of West Texas tumbleweed—the color Carrie’s would have been without help from the salon—and the high cheekbones and prominent brow that were the products of Cherokee blood mixed into the Tomkins gene pool a hundred years ago. Today she had left several blouse buttons unfastened. There wasn’t much to see—a hard white sternum and a bit of black lace bra—but it was far more than I had glimpsed in the four years I had known her.

  Connie had married her college sweetheart after graduation, and the mistake had lasted only ninety days. She hadn’t dated anyone in the four years I’d known her. Nonetheless, if she tried a bit harder, she could attract men. But, unlike her sister, whose primary endeavor and only talent was attracting men, Connie made no overt effort to attract the opposite sex.

  The food arrived but Connie continued to regale me with minutiae. Her mother, Annabelle, had grown feeble, her health failing. “I don’t have time to take care of her, and Daddy doesn’t know how, so Carrie has been an angel, over there all the time.”

  Yeah, right. I scooped guacamole with tortilla chips, smiled at the right times, made eye contact, and waited for Connie to get around to the real reason for doing lunch. At one point, I thought a skanky young man with limp, long hair, sitting at a table across the aisle and behind Connie, had used his smartphone to take a picture of us. For a while, I watched the young man surreptitiously, but he never looked our way again.

  Connie noticed that I was distracted and looked back over her shoulder. The young man looked in our direction, and Connie must have made eye contact with him, but she made no comment. Instead she said, “You’re not listening to me, Randle. The whole family is devastated by the divorce.”

  “You didn’t know this was going to happen?”

  “We knew there was trouble in paradise, but we hoped you guys could work through it. Everyone likes you, Randle, so it will be a shame to lose you.”

  “I didn’t file for the divorce. Carrie did.”

  Connie took her time to consider that as the waitress appeared and asked if we wanted to see a dessert menu. I ordered another Blue Moon.

  When the waitress departed, Connie resumed the conversation. “Carrie says you forced her into it. You were controlling her, spying on her, accusing her of things she didn’t do.”

  I scoffed at Connie and said, “A divorce has been Carrie’s plan for at least six months. She prepared for this like a general prepares for an invasion.”

  Connie made a hurt sound as she sucked air. “You’re wrong. Carrie loved you, and she’s brokenhearted that she had to file for the divorce.”

  The young man with the smartphone got up and left without looking our way.

  “Divorce wasn’t her only option. I convinced her to see a marriage counselor, but Carrie didn’t think it was fair that I brought up the issues I had with her. She thought marriage counseling should be about her problems with me, so she refused to go a second time.”

  “I heard about it. You refused to compromise.”

  “Compromise is a lose-lose proposition; neither person gets what they really want.”

  “All you wanted was sex.”

  The hostess seated a couple with three small kids at the table next to us. I waited for the commotion to settle and then leaned closer to Connie so the neighboring table couldn’t overhear me.

  “Is that what Carrie says? What we discussed was Carrie’s inability to care about anyone but herself. We all know what a lack of empathy implies.”

  Connie glared at me. “Carrie says that was a smokescreen, and you wanted to embarrass her in front of the counselor. You know she has issues with sex because men come on to her all the time, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it—let them do whatever they want or fight them off.”

  “Predators and victims identify each other instinctively. Carrie invites men to come on to her with the way she dresses and the way she behaves because it boosts her self-esteem when men want to get her into bed.”

  Connie reacted to my words as though she had been slapped. Although we couldn’t be heard over the racket at the next table, she leaned in close and whispered, “Carrie discusses her problems with a professional.”

  “Her clinical psychologist? Those sessions are like sugar pills for Carrie. I went along once to see what it was like. Carrie cried on the woman’s shoulder and blamed the rest of us for everything that’s wrong in her life.”

  Connie slowly leaned back in her chair, her eyes wide, her mouth forming an “O.” After she gathered herself, she said, “When we were kids she blamed me for the things she did. She’d wet the bed and blame me, but Momma knew who did it. Another time she killed the cat and hung it from the clothesline. It was just a stray so Momma didn’t do anything about it.”

  Carrie had always depicted her childhood as a fairy tale so I was shocked by these revelations. And I knew what animal cruelty implied.

  “See, Connie, she’s been sick since she was a child.”

  “Carrie takes her mental health seriously now, takes her medications, sees her counselor regularly.”

  I spun my beer bottle around and picked at the label. Carrie wasn’t diligent about her mental health, but it wasn’t worth an argument with Connie. “Sorry, Connie, I’m not going to give in to her because of her mental condition.” In fact, I’m planning to exploit it.

  Connie became irate and huffed and puffed like a cartoon dragon. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Randle: From a sister-in-law who loves you, stay away from Carrie until this is over. Don’t violate your restraining order. Don’t go out to her house or confront her about anything. Do you know she has a gun?”

  With all the bombast I could muster, I said, “Yep, and I’ve got a bigger one. I have a protective order too. If she shows up on my doorstep, I’ll blow her away. There are laws in Florida that make it legal.”

  “My God, you’re both scary.”

  “Well, forgive me for being indignant. Little pipsqueak threatening me with her peashooter. If you care about her, take that gun away before she gets hurt.”

  “Stop antagonizing her. You didn’t have to file a countersuit.”

  So that’s why we’re having lunch. “The divorce wasn’t my idea.”

  “Now we’re going in circles.” Connie sat back and waited for me to finish my beer. When I was paying attention, she said, “She seemed so happy when she found you. What happened?”

  I had considered that question hundreds of times. “Neither of us got the person we thought we wanted. Carrie thought she wanted a business executive—a guy with no dirt under his nails, a classy guy with some money who could improve her social status and make her life easy. In reality she likes roughnecks with a pickup and a gun rack, guys who listen to sad country music.”

  “She tried that twice. Both ex-husbands are good ol’ boys.”

  I leaned back in my chair and thought about that. “Phil Simm
ons seems like the right kind of guy for her.” Simmons had been Carrie’s second husband.

  “He cheated on her.”

  “And she cheated on him for revenge.”

  Connie looked like she had just been told that Santa isn’t real. “She told me she’s never cheated on any of her husbands.”

  “That’s a lie. She told me how she punished Phil. She felt bad about seducing a married man, but she had to screw somebody and he was handy.”

  Now Connie looked like a deer in the headlights. Absentmindedly, she stroked her neck, tugged at her blouse. “Look, Carrie’s not easy, I know that. On the other hand, the divorce can be easy. She doesn’t want a big fight in court, Randle.” Connie waited for a reaction, but I didn’t give her one. “Is that what you want? A big show to embarrass the family?”

  The waitress arrived with the check, wanting to turn the table over and line up her next tip. Connie said this one was on her, and I surprised her by letting her pay it.

  Knowing Connie would pass it along to Carrie, I said, “She can have a divorce, but she’s got to be held accountable for her behavior. We’ve charged her with inappropriate marital conduct.” It felt strange coming out of my mouth, like a line from a movie.

  Connie straightened her collar. “She didn’t do anything wrong, Randle.”

  “Then she has nothing to fear.” I stood. Lunch was over for me.

  Connie remained seated, holding me in place. “Why waste your money on lawyers and countersuits? Drop your suit and save the money for yourselves.”

  I leaned on the table for effect and said, “I filed the countersuit because Carrie won’t negotiate in good faith unless she feels threatened. I take it from our chat today she feels a bit threatened.”

  “You should feel threatened too.”

  I continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “The lawyers are scheduling a mediation session. If we can reach a reasonable agreement, this will all be over.”