My Wife's Li'l Secret (6 page)

Mortified, that’s what I was.

Even though I had been a member of SWAT, I wasn’t a violent person. Sounds contradictory, I know, but I grew up learning from my Dad that women were to be protected.

In fact, it was because of my nurturing ways that my mother, on her deathbed, asked me to move to Australia and take care of my sister Arena, whose ex-husband was making her life hell.

So, for me to allow my beautiful little daughters to be hit by their mother, to be slapped in the face for taking too long to fetch a
beer,
to be backhanded and wet their pants in terror, made me want to walk up to my wife and punch her in the face. Seriously.

Her behavior was inconceivable, totally unacceptable, and it had to cease.

We needed to have another talk. A long one.

First, I needed to cool down before I did something I regretted. After changing out of my clothes, I dived into my pool and furiously did laps.

Fifteen minutes later, a little spent and calmer, I sought out Liefie, hoping she had calmed down so we could talk instead of fighting. “We need to finish our talk,” I said.

Her response was to throw me a look of contempt.

“Your behavior just tells me that you have some shit going on and I’m wondering if you’re on drugs or having an aff –”

She whirled around to glare at me. “How dare you accuse me of having an affair? You horrible …horrible …” her face spasmed with revulsion, “
person
. You get out of this house now!”

“Liefie, what the fuck? I’m discussing things with you. That’s what two people do when they have a prob –”

“You disgust me,” she spat.

“I disgust you? I disgust you? Seriously?”

“Yes! I can’t
stand
you!”

To hear my wife say that…it felt like I had been tasered.

I disgusted her. Imagine that.

“Since when, huh? Since when do I
disgust
you, Olga?” Yes, I was calling her Olga again, not Liefie. She didn’t deserve any terms of endearment.

Her eyes raked over me, slowly as if she was seeing me for the first time, making me flinch under her scornful gaze.

“Since the day I met you!” Every word she uttered through her clenched teeth was filled with loathing, and for a few moments, I withered under her hate and revulsion.

Even though I was cloaked in hurt
and
fury at her revelation, I didn’t believe her. I knew that Liefie loved me. Or
had
loved me.

The kind of love we shared in the past was not something that could be faked. It was real and genuine no matter what she said. I was convinced of that.

Encouraged by my silence, her vitriolic spewing continued, arms akimbo. “You make me sick, you know that? Sometimes I can’t bear to look at you!” She appeared to have been waiting for an opportunity to unleash on me. “I don’t even want to fuck you anymore; haven’t you noticed?”

The giant
No Entry!
sign on our bed? Oh yes, I had noticed. How could I not?

I had made excuses for her physical and emotional withdrawal from me, blamed it on her grieving the loss of our son. I was shattered by his death; I expected her to be even
more
affected by it. But all the while she was repulsed by me.

But what is the best response to your wife confessing that she can’t stand you, that she thinks you’re a loser, and that she doesn’t want to fuck you anymore?

I had no idea. I had never been in a position like that before.

It would have been acceptable if I had returned the
compliment
, said,
you disgust me too, you dirty hoe
, because at the moment, I was truly disgusted by her dressing, her vile behavior, her spitefulness toward me, and her apathy toward our daughters.

“What? Cat got your tongue?” Her manner was so mocking and unnecessarily antagonistic; it added to my confusion. I stared at her in disbelief.

“You should leave this house for a while. Go away.”

She seemed hell bent on breaking me with her words.

“Nobody wants you around. You should go. Just leave.” She wriggled her red fingernails nails toward the door. “Go!”

For a while I stared at the stranger in front of me for a few moments, feeling like I was on a
Wife Swap
episode or something. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be my wife, the woman who asked me to listen to a Celine Dion song a few months ago because it echoed her feelings toward me.

But it was
my
wife talking to me like that. Unfortunately.

“Fuck you!” I finally said. “This is my house. I will not leave. You don’t like it,
you
get the fuck out of here! Take your mooching brother and beat it! Go to Ukraine. Stay there. You’re not doing much here anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to be missed or something.” I started to back away. “And by the way, you’re looking old. Like a hooker for sure. Totally unfuckable, maybe that’s why I didn’t bother to
try
to get into your panties. I'm turned off by the way you look, by what you’ve become.”

Turns out my razor-sharp jab did the trick – she went ballistic.

“I HATE YOU!” she screamed, and threw a set of wooden coasters at me. I ducked and the coasters crashed against the wall behind me. “I wish you’d die!”

“Yeah. Well, tough shit, I’m not dying anytime soon, so go fuck yourself.” I never dreamed I’d ever speak to my wife like that. She wasn’t someone who ever used foul language; she was always chiding me about my profanity because of the kids. There I was, totally disrespecting her and not feeling bad about it in the least.

The whole picture was wrong.

Then dickhead Viggo, who was shirtless once again, ran into the kitchen and took her away, urging her all the while to calm down.

He led her into his bedroom and shut the door. I didn’t know why he was eager to keep the peace. Maybe he was afraid that if they left and headed back to Ukraine, his gravy train would be derailed and one pack of Camel’s would have to last a month!

Alone, I thought about her harsh words. Me leave my house?

I had bought my house with money from the proceeds of the sale of my last house, which I bought
before
I met Olga. How dare she treat me like a boarder?

What I picked up most from our heated exchange was that she wanted me out of the house. She wanted me out of her life, it seemed.

As my fury subsided, my feelings of hurt deepened and I suddenly felt cold – even though it was a warm day.

After all that I had done for us, for her, for her family...

I wanted her to be happy, so yes, I
had
to work hard and long on our new business to get it off the ground. Hard work paid off – within months of starting our business, Bear and I, with the help of a hot-shot attorney named Bradley Murdoch, were lucky enough to land a lucrative contract with the Department of Defense.

That in turn led us to secure another profitable contract with the Australian Police for all their CCTV footage.

Soon, Bear and I landed contracts for three shopping malls. All this in the space of just two years, and I was able to provide a comfortable lifestyle for my wife and my daughters. Clearly, it wasn’t enough for her.

All the signs of a woman having an affair were there: keeping her phone close to her at all times, walking out of the room before she answered the phone, dressing like she was a teenager, shunning her doting husband and her precious children ...

I had to face reality – there was someone else in her life who made her happier than I did. Than I could.

My wife, who I had loved with all my heart (past tense because at that moment, I didn’t know if I still loved her), had changed from a loving, caring wife and mother into a total stranger. A nasty, parasitic wasp with a venomous sting who buzzed menacingly around my home and around my head, and the only way I could handle her was by means of a fly-swatter.

My wife had to be having an affair. If she was, where the hell was she getting the energy from?

Raising two kids under the age of four and running a home was exhausting, but it seemed like she was full of energy since Viggo arrived on the scene.

But wait, she wasn’t really tending our home, remember?

She was doing the bare minimum around the house, so of course she had energy left to party.

I did everything around the house: cooked, cleaned, shopped, and took care of the kids. I was forced into becoming a house-husband with a full-time job. Unheard of.

Not only was it exhausting, but my personality had changed; I had lost my buoyant spirit, was angry all the time, and felt as if every day was Monday.

It had to stop. If the woman didn’t want me, she could leave. I would make it without her. It would be a struggle to handle two little kids and my job, sure, but somehow, I would make it.

The finality in my mind and my heart made me feel blue, and suddenly it was like the weather had changed – dark, angry rainclouds sans a silver lining had suddenly appeared and threatened to stay.

With a heavy heart, I decided to put my wife under recorded surveillance, hoping to prove my suspicions and give me something to hang my free-floating paranoia on. Proof. Facts. Evidence.

Olga knew what I did for a living, but maybe she had forgotten.

That was fine by me. The last thing I wanted to do was remind her that I had access to surveillance cameras.

I secretly installed a GPS tracking device on my wife's Ford Explorer, bugged the inside of her vehicle for audio, and installed hidden nanny cams throughout the house.

When I managed to get her phone to plant a bug in it, it was password protected. That stumped me. Since when did she feel the need to password protect her phone? She knew the password to mine. Oh, yes, she was having an affair. I would imagine that every single person having an affair would password-protect their phone.

I attempted two passwords; both were unsuccessful. Not wanting to alert her with a phone barring, I decided to leave out the phone. Of course, I could have simply asked her for the password, but I didn’t want to raise any suspicion; I would find a way to get to it later.

Maybe I was being paranoid. In spite of her recent more than questionable behavior, Liefie was a family woman, a warm and sincere person who shared the same family values as I did. Of that, I was certain.

Then there were these stories that floated around – foreign women (mail-order brides mainly) getting hitched to you, pretending to love you, then after two years when they achieved permanent residence in Australia, you came home to find all the locks on your doors changed. You’re locked out of your home and served divorce papers at work. The mail-order bride then moves on with half your fortune to some other sucker.

Liefie and I had been married for five years, so that clearly wasn’t the case.

I’m paranoid, I thought. She’s not having an affair. This is Liefie we’re talking about. She just can’t be.

Hence, I expected to see footage of her stopping off at a local watering hole, having a drink or five during the day, or off to some nightclub in King’s Cross, because Viggo was the type to enjoy that kind of sleaze.

It would serve her right if she got a DUI, I thought. That would mean she wouldn’t be able to drive, so she’d simmer down and spend more time at home with the children.

Wishful thinking.

In spite of her telling me I disgusted her, in spite of her being basically AWOL as a wife and as a mother, I never forgot just how good a mother she once was to our children, and deep in my heart, I wished for her to return to us.

Why?

Because I loved her. She was once someone I chose to spend the rest of my life with. She was once someone who wanted me and couldn’t stop touching me, couldn’t stop kissing me.

“You are so beautiful,” she said the first time we kissed. “Inside and out. A beautiful man.” I had never been called beautiful by someone like her before and at that moment, I wanted to be even more beautiful for her. Just for her.

Just thinking about the life we once shared, the dreams we shared, the hopes he held, brought back the rainclouds.

****

Saturday evening and once again, I was alone with the kids.

Olga, dressed in spiky heels, a shiny top with no straps, a skirt with a front slit that threatened to show her crotch when she walked – something she clearly wasn’t worried about – took a shiny purse I had never seen before, and around 4 p.m. left her house, her husband, and her children, and went off to party with her brother and his friends.

I was not told where she was going, and I was not invited to join them.

Sure, I burned when I noticed her getting dressed, heard the hairdryer, smelled Coco Channel (I bought it for her), got a waft of Carl Lagerfeld’s aftershave Viggo was using (my aftershave that Liefie had bought me months ago), heard the hurried click-clack of her stiletto’s on the tiled floor and the excited whispering between them both. I noted the way her phone constantly rang and heard her answer and speak in Russian, making me believe that friends were waiting impatiently for them, and finally watched them hurry off into her Ford Explorer with two bottles of vodka she had bought earlier on.

Bought with my hard-earned money.

She didn’t even give me or the children the courtesy of a goodbye, just got into her Ford Explorer and drove off.
Raced
off.

All I could do was console myself with the upcoming footage I was going to watch later on that evening when the kids fell asleep. A week of recorded surveillance.

I ordered pizza for the kids, read them a bedside story, and tried to put them to bed. The buggers wouldn’t sleep and blackmailed me into reading them three more stories and …I had to do the voices too!

Finally they fell asleep, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My search for whisky had proved fruitless; Viggo had drunk it all!

Muttering under my breath, I grabbed the only Crown Larger left in the bar fridge, grabbed a slice of super supreme pizza, sat at the dining table in front of my laptop and hit
play
.

And that’s when my world really shattered.

****

I expected to…I don’t know, maybe worst case scenario, see my wife
having
an affair or fraternizing with scum, some dirtbag who liked women with pierced eyebrows and red lipstick.

Maybe, just maybe I’d catch her making out with him or heaven forbid, catch footage of her having sex with him. I had opened that door, so I had to be prepared to handle what I saw. And I was.

What I didn’t expect to see was her having sex, in my house, in my bedroom, in my bed, with her brother.

With Viggo.

The man living with us, the one I had brought into my home? That one.

The man driving her four-wheel drive that I paid for.

The one using her credit card whenever he needed.

The one who siphoned all my booze.

The one who walked around shirtless, with just a pair of shorts and a bulge in it. That one.

The one she pranced around in front of semi-naked because he was her brother.

Shell-shocked, I hit pause and jumped to my feet.

“Fuck!” was all I could mutter as I wore the carpet thin with my pacing. “Fuck, fuck fuck! Fuuuuuk!” I was dreaming for sure, I told myself.

The footage was sickening and sordid, and I couldn’t bear to watch it, but like the way you’d peel at a scab and wince when it bleeds, I found myself hitting play again.

My wife was completely naked, crouching between her brother’s legs and making a popsicle out of his dick, her long, blonde hair falling like a curtain all over her face.

I watched him reach down and grab her hair into a makeshift ponytail, like I usually did. For visual purposes. Most guys want to see a woman pleasure them. He appeared to be no exception.

“Uuurrrgggghhh!” Revolted, I hit pause again and paced.

Liefie with another man.
Olga, not Liefie!

Liefie with her brother. Her
own
flesh and blood.

Two people in a consanguineous relationship, secretly engaging in sexual acts – if that isn’t incest, what is?

Incest. What a horrifying word.

There was no way I could
ever
be with Olga after what I had seen.

My marriage was finished.

Then and there, five years – over.

I would have to move out of our house ASAP, I told myself. I couldn’t live like this. Not another day. For a few moments, I sat with my head bowed and silently held a funeral for my farce of a marriage, because it had to be a total sham.

As the minutes ticked by, practical issues surfaced. My girls! I would have to say goodbye to seeing them every day with shared custody. That cut so deep, my eyes filled with tears.

They were my life, my joy, my world; how could I ever be denied of seeing them every day?

I took the stairs two at a time, crept into their bedroom, and watched them sleep. Angels, that’s what they were. Beautiful, blonde angels. With a leaden heart, I dragged myself downstairs in search of my drink.

Liefie and Viggo...

Olga
and her brother, not
Liefie
. She was no longer Liefie to me.

My beer was finished. I searched around for some whisky. Nothing. Viggo, the fuck, had drunk it. I combed the place for wine, whisky, anything. Nothing. Every bit of alcohol had been finished by the jerk who had cuckolded me.

After what I had just seen, I desperately needed a stiff drink. But I had two kids sleeping upstairs, so leaving the house to buy some alcohol was not an option.

I called Bear. He took his time answering. Whenever he was home with his family, he always ignored his phone.

Lucky for me, he answered. “Big Mac? How are you, maaaate?” Bradley had started off calling me MacMillan, then Mac for short, then Big Mac, then just Big, mainly. After that, everyone other than family called me Big.

“Bear…Bear…”

“Big? What’s wrong?”

“Bear, I need a huge favor,” I said. “I need whisky. Can you bring me some?”

“Sure, what’s up? Everything okay?” He sounded worried.

My mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emitted. I guess I didn’t know how to verbalize the ugliness of the situation, how to explain my repugnance at what I had just seen.

“Fuck, Bear! I don’t know how to explain it to you, don’t know where to start. Come over and see for yourself.”

A short pause followed before he said, “Be there in five.”

After thanking him, I hung up and wore the carpet out with my pacing.

Liefie and her brother…