Jen was 5 years my senior, with three children. In the first 6 months we were "together", I was moved from the plush surroundings of the upstairs flat, to a makeshift room in a corner of the basement,that was recently vacated by her oldest daughter. The room had a spacious closet made of plywood, and shared two of the basements brick and mortar walls, with two plywood walls rigged together with two by fours. There was a door affixed to the room that could be locked in my absence. It was there I would spend the next year.
During the first 6 months I lived there, her mother died, in a rest home. Her Father died, in the hospital nearby. Her oldest daughter got married. And her sister's special needs child died of complications due to his illness, relative to birth defects.I stood by her through all of this, believing deep in my heart of hearts that these shared milestones in her life were bringing us closer together. It had never occurred to me that these events would merely continue to push me further away, as she retreated further, and further into her own private Idaho of sorts. You can imagine my surprise 6 months later when she asked me to marry her.
We were married that August of 1996.
Once we were married, almost immediately, her family began to question the timing of or relationship, and began to assert that I was interested in her, not for Love and such,but for the house she had just inherited. This was not true. In fact, I made enough money then to buy a house for us, and frankly could have cared less if she sold the house we lived in, and split the money with her kids, or siblings.
They worked this theory on her, to the point that 6 months after our wedding, I received divorce papers.
It was only then that I was allowed to move in to the apartment upstairs with the lovely kitchen, front room, dining room, bedroom, and full bathroom. In exchange, I paid the mortgage payment.
She would visit me from time to time, and alluded to a reconciliation that would never come to be.
Night after night I'd lay there, alone grieving for the Love I'd lost. The Love I'd never really had to begin with. My thoughts turned to Penny.
I had spoken to Penny over the years that I was in that awful situation, and she knew I regretted our breakup. She assured me over and over that we were a much better fit, and went out of her way to prove herself with lavish gifts and gestures, trips to the Fox theater, and wooed me till my resistance was gone.She would meet for coffee, or drinks and dinner.Convinced I was doing the right thing, Penny and I moved in together, and were married in August of 1999.
She had never been away from home. Never had a serious relationship. She had lived with her Mother and Sister, in the house she grew up in, since 1966.This was her big chance to escape the confines of home and move out.
She knew all about Jen, and how devastated I was by the divorce. She seemed like the obvious choice, and at the time I thought I was correcting a grievous wrong I had done her years before by choosing Jen over her. And honestly, who could blame me. She was a "Good" Catholic girl, who'd never been married,she was very pretty, and was the exact opposite of the other women I had been with, who had brought so much baggage to the table, that I felt like a desk clerk at a hotel. Nothing could have prepared me for the way it would all turn out.
To be continued...
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