Your Story, My Story

by Connie Palmen

The moment I drove away from my marriage, I was declared an outcast, a character others could accuse and vilify to their heart’s content, and the person leading this hot pursuit was my own wife. The first inkling of what my future would hold reached me via my parents. Shortly after my departure, they’d received some hate mail from their daughter-in-law in which their son was depicted as an adulterous liar and a hypocritical traitor who had abandoned his family in a most cowardly fashion to give full rein to his infantile, irresponsible, egotistical sexual appetites in London, where he’d taken up with a whore who, afraid of losing her fleshly beauty, had aborted so many pregnancies from her parade of lovers and husbands that she was now as infertile as a patch of barren ground. In the meantime she’d been left all alone to care for two small children—their very own grandchildren, mind—and their son had intentionally lured her away from the city, safely concealing her in this backward hinterland where she was deprived of any help or assistance from friends or family, while her faithless husband—now lionized for his poetry thanks to her ceaseless efforts—spent money in London earmarked for his family’s support, squandering it on expensive hotels, women, champagne, and caviar.

He is surprised by this? Really?