The Sign (or two)

As I have mentioned before, I don't go to church, but I do pray at least twice a day. The other day, somewhere in between the Gratitudes du Jour and the Everyman Pleas for health, happiness and safety, I asked for a sign. I had been struggling with a work issue for a few days -- they had asked me to pretty please increase my work hours by a mere 100 percent -- and, of course, I have been struggling with The Marriage issue for ... oh, about 100 years.

I pray all the time for guidance, but this time I was really feeling desperate for something a little more ... obvious.

So I go about my day. I coerce my son into some grocery shopping, and we go to a store we don't normally go to. (I had an ulterior motive for this -- I had my husband's debit card for groceries, and I wanted to print out a bank statement at the ATM there, since I never see them otherwise. They no longer are mailed to the house. I have no idea where they are mailed.)

Anyway, we get our grub. (The statement was maddeningly vague, and I didn't want to stand there and push ATM buttons all afternoon with my son wondering what in the blazes I was doing.)

In the parking lot, we debate whether we should stop to pick up some photos on the way home, or go later in the day. We decide to go sooner rather than later, down a road we don't normally take.

On the way, my son says, "There's Dad's truck." I have no idea what he's talking about. But he thinks he saw it in the parking lot of a semi-abandoned natural-gas-power-whatever plant. I think he's kidding. Or mental. But he's not.

"Turn around!" he says. "I saw his license plate." How he could do this, at 40 mph, I'll never know, but he's sure.

I turn around, and we pull into the parking lot.

He's right.

My husband's truck is parked at a power plant in the middle of the work day. My son thinks it's funny. I know it's not. (Back story: When my husband's affair first came to light, my son spotted Dad's truck in the local Park And Ride lot. And no, I don't know why or how he can pick that thing out so easily. It's just a stupid blue truck. Turns out my husband was "car pooling" to work with his adulterous mistress. Later, for some reason, he said they had to stop -- I think this was an attempt to soothe me -- because people at work were talking.)

Anyway, back to the parking lot. We try to call my husband at work, but he doesn't answer. I am shaking. It's like I just discovered The Affair all over again, and everything has come crashing back -- the betrayal, the lies, the sneaking and the arrogance and the unbelievable stupidity.

Amazingly, I do not share any of this with my son. This might be one of my proudest accomplishments ever. It would have been SO easy to tell him everything right then -- that Dad is NOT car-pooling with his buddy J; instead, he's been lying to both of us for more than 3 years, and here is further proof -- and not only that, but he has left it parked here for YOU to discover.
(Which leads to this overwhelming thought: Now when I DO finally divorce my husband, my son will think it's all his fault for seeing the truck parked where it shouldn't be.)

Somehow we make it to pick up the pictures, and I reach The Cheating Dickwad on the phone at work. He's a little surprised when I ask him what time his "car pool buddy" will be bringing him back to his truck at the power plant. He's even more surprised when I tell him we'll be there, waiting, so he can explain this situation to his son. (No. I would not. And did not. But I did enjoy letting him think I might.)

Anyway, after I get home, take half of a happy calming pill and call my mother, it hits me: You want a sign, Hon? How about an empty adulterous truck? Yes, that'll do. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

(Anti-climatic, anti-dramatic denouement: My son asks Dad why his car was parked there, and Dad says he's car pooling to save gas, and, upon further questioning -- I just love it when my son shows sparks of that journalism gene -- gives up that it was with a friend from work named P. My son says, "What's his name again?" Bless his heart. I am relieved to learn from this that he has not met The Mistress.)

I have Book Club that night, and although I'm still kind of a wreck, I decide to go for the distraction and for normalcy's sake. We're talking about "The Lovely Bones." Somehow we get on the topic of marriage and hardship. The leader of the book club says, "You know what the right thing is, of course -- for better or for worse." Everyone nods and agrees wholeheartedly.

Yes, I get it, in all its delicious irony. It's another sign. And it's pointing in the opposite direction.