My husband holds up a book and exclaims "Space stickers!". Accompanied with a startlingly bright smile, I'm disarmed for a second and smile softly back. "Cool" I say. But as quickly as the smile comes it slips away, and I turn back to cooking dinner to hide the shutters that I am sure have come down over my eyes. Because in that brief second my heart is both simultaneously filled with love for my husband, and also with...fear. Sadness. Dismay.
Truth be told, I am not certain that the little girl he is wrapping that children's book about space for is even going to make it here to her daddy's house to unwrap this gift, and all the others, that her father has lovingly wrapped and placed under the tree for her.
She turns five in just under two months. I have thought about things long and hard and have concluded that everything started going really bad after LB received an email from his ex in March of this year, begging him to solve her financial problems for her. In short, she asked him to do some things that he ultimately could not do.
For you to take control of the properties, whether in your name or mine. You can pay the mortgages, receive the rents and you deal with the management of the properties.
She outlined to him what she wanted him to do, the rents, the values; her plan. She admitted to feeling foolish for having let things become out of control. She confessed she wasn't even sure how it had happened.
She was certain of one thing, though, and it was that LB had to come to her rescue. If he didn't, her only other option would be to declare bankruptcy, claiming that she would be sure that this would lead to homelessness for her and Maddie.
She ended the email with a sense of awareness that what she was asking was huge, but also, that she was asking anyway.
I know all of this is a big ask and I will pretty much agree to any terms, please please please can you help.
And then she sealed it with a kiss and clicked 'send'.
Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock these past 18 months or so would know of the financial crisis of the
sub prime mortgage market that has hit America, and of the effect that it has had on the UK markets and economy. To make matters worse, LB works in this industry. Competing businesses in his industry have gone under, and while he works for a market leader, he and his colleagues will not make annual bonus this year, and they have taken pay cuts to boot.
In March of this year, it was becoming very clear to LB that his once lucrative career was on rocky ground. Like I have to justify this to anyone, but LB was in no position to help his ex in the way that she wanted.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, LB's ex wife hasn't had to declare bankruptcy. One would imagine that if things were as dire as she made out in her email, she would have had to have made good on her claims by now. In fact, since she sent that email, she has been on a holiday to the Caribbean. Go figure.
But since LB's polite and factual expression of regret of not being able to help his ex out in March, relations with her have taken a turn for the worst (despite everyone around these parts thinking it hardly possible). And since our trip to Australia, of which the contact issues with Maddie were negotiated around in good faith many months previous, things have gotten so bad his ex has told him that next year will see an extreme reduction in the amount of time Maddie will be spending with her father.
Her justification? She says Maddie doesn't like school and it's because she misses her mother. That she needs to be kept with her mother during time that was traditionally LB's to make up for the fact that she is seeing her mother less; because of school, and because LB's ex has had to start working part time to pay for that Caribbean tan.
Except, we've been told by Maddie and her teacher that she loves school. There were some tears at the very start, said her teacher, but they ended months ago. Yet his ex is still clinging to her story, making such extreme claims that she will have to take Maddie out of school completely on Fridays, and that she will regrettably have to turn down work on those days...
Whoa, Nelly.
I've got your number.
What an elaborate attempt at manipulation that one was! While other people might have just been shaking their head in disbelief and confusion, keeping abreast of the ex wife's subterfuge is almost my career these day. You see she would think that by targeting the one thing she knows LB feels strongly about for Maddie, education, she would surely get his attention. LB would be forced to sit up and do something at this point, and perhaps he would offer some sort of financial assistance.
He was supposed to say 'Oh no, don't take Maddie out of school. Here, let me pay you for that day so that you can be there in the morning and there in the afternoon for her, maybe that will help her settle down'.
It is no coincidence that relations with his ex have stooped to an all time low since she has had to start work. It comes as no surprise to me; though I still reserve the right to be disappointed and alarmed by her atrocious behaviour.
This is not the life she imagined for herself, and by God, someone is going to have to pay. That someone of course being my husband. Except in her anger she has lost sight of something important...
Those familiar with dealing with people who project their issues on to others might know some of what it feels to have a strange and blindingly angry woman throwing around accusations of your feelings and intentions that are actually direct reflections of what she feels and of what she wants to do. And then to have that woman plotting and scheming to protect herself from all the terrible things she has convinced herself her ex husband is planning to do. Layered on top of the constant elaborate attempts to milk more money from a man who is already too generous, and you have a recipe for abject misery. For everyone.
If I were a religious woman, I would pray to God for help. In fact, I'm not a religious woman and at points during this year, I have prayed. If I thought it would help, I would pray that 2009 would see some sort of breakthrough. Because I don't care for gold and riches (though they'd be nice!), but I do care for continuation of the gentle love I see shared between two people; one big, one small.
If there is a God, then a little girl will not be robbed of her father in 2009.
13:29
