Stranger than fiction.
3:52 p.m.
Last night during dinner the phone rang and a friend of my daughter’s, who is also a friend of mine, frantically beseeched me to do something. He had stopped at a payphone (not everyone carries mobiles) and called me collect (they’ve put the price up to 50� a call now) because he had seen police cars heading towards his neighbourhood and was convinced that they were for his house. The plan we decided on was that if I did not hear from him in 20 minutes I was to call his home, and if there was no answer, call the police.
Now that I have your interest, I will give you some background.
Once upon a time there was a man who liked women, or rather, sex with women. He was married and produced several offspring but the marriage ended in divorce because he could not reserve his genitalia for one partner and always had a mistress on the side. (That reminds me of a joke about a prostitute and an appendectomy, but this isn’t the time or place.) After the end of that union he got himself another partner, a petite, pretty woman 20 years his junior who taught school, and they proceeded to set up house together. She gave up her career in order to raise children and keep their home, and on the surface everything appeared very respectable. This couple, however, never married and never applied for civil union status.
In the rest of Canada, a couple cohabiting for two years or more are considered to be living common-law and all the rules and regulations adhering to marriage pertain to them in the event of a dissolution of the relationship. This protects the partners when it comes to division of property and child custody and support. It’s very civilized. In the Province of Quebec, however, there is no common-law. A couple is either married or awarded civil union status, for which they can apply after a year of cohabitation, which then gives them the same rights and privileges of marriage and/or common-law. But, in the case of the couple under discussion, this was not done. For approximately 30 years they have been living as man and wife with no papers (or strings) attached.
As mentioned previously, this man could not limit himself to one sexual partner. He liked the appearance of respectability and stability that a “wife” and family gave him, but throughout the 30 years in question he always had a mistress concurrently. His wife (for lack of a better word and in order to dispense with the quotation marks) was sometimes aware of these indiscretions, but truly loved her husband and stayed with him “for the sake of the children” of which there are three, the youngest being my daughter’s friend, now age 23.
The man has always been the kind of person who never really cared if what he was doing affected those he loved, especially his wife. He made many decisions that affected the family, such as choice of domicile, house, schools for the children, without any regard for how anyone else felt. The house in which my friend now lives is not one which his mother wanted--she felt it was too big--but the father bought it anyway. At least he put it in her name, so on the deed she is the sole owner. This was not done out the goodness of his heart, but as a tax dodge. His most recent folly was to build a house in the country to which he expected his wife to move and abandon the city where her family and friends are. He never discussed this with her, just expected that, as the good little woman, she would do what he wanted. This was causing quite a bit of domestic strife which my friend had made me aware of quite some time ago. It was also not endearing him to his father.
However, the shit hit the fan a couple of months ago when the mother went to the country house which is still being finished and found her husband in a state of choler. He was awaiting the arrival of his mistress and was not pleased that his wife had shown up at the same time. A huge blow-up ensued, and there was no longer any secret about the man’s parallel life. The older and younger sons were aware of the situation, but the mother didn’t want their sister to be apprised of it as she had just had a baby and had much on her plate and didn’t need the extra stress in her life. Everyone thought that was ridiculous, but acceded to her wishes.
This is what happened yesterday. The mother took her son out for lunch and her husband came in with his mistress to the same restaurant. She wanted to make a scene, but her son just wanted to go home. Eventually they left, went shopping and his mother seemed outwardly calm. When he asked her if she wanted him to stay with her, she said no, the situation was not any worse than before. He didn’t believe her, but went to work (he works a later shift at a call centre) and called home on his break, getting no answer. He called again at his supper break and his father picked up, saying his mother had tried to burn down the house and had pointed a gun at him. In the background he heard his mother screaming, “It’s all lies!” When he arrived home, the police were already there and were taking her into custody.
His father had come home and found his mother’s car parked in the driveway, uninjured, but with a huge dent in the garage door, as though she had rammed it. When he came around the side of the house, he looked up and saw his wife standing on the balcony, aiming an old rifle at him which was found loaded. (I do not understand why people have guns in their houses, period.) After the gun aiming incident, he tried to get her out of a closet where she had taken refuge. My friend thinks that it was she who called the police even before his father entered the house. She was removed to the police station to be evaluated for mental competency, which will determine if she is able to stand trial. My friend suspects she will be deemed unfit and sent to the mental ward of the local hospital.
In his opinion, his mother was performing some kind of ritual with the candle, not trying to burn down the house. Burnt matches were found from the basement to the third floor; the candle was very old and dried up and she probably had to light it again and again as she climbed the stairs. According to his brother, she had had a previous episode when they were very small children (my friend does not remember this) also brought on by their father’s infidelity. She had covered the walls with the names of the three children in a ritual act of repossession or as a protective charm. He was unaware of his mother practising ritualistic magic before this.
The father is now talking about starting a new family with his present mistress. He is 70, she would be around 40. Through all his infidelities, the mother has stood by her man, not leaving him when she should have, always keeping a semblance of a stable environment for the children. Now she has nothing, she is totally dependent on him financially. Even though the house is in her name, she would not be able to afford its upkeep or pay the taxes on it. Her husband more or less taunted her with that when she threatened to leave him a month ago (an empty threat, apparently, as she tried to reconcile and to improve the relationship between him and her youngest son, who has in effect said, “I have no father”). My opinion at the time was that she should sell the house and live off the proceeds without him. But she loves him and would not do that.
So now she has done something exceedingly stupid (pointing a loaded weapon at someone is a criminal offence) which will get her locked up no matter what (either in jail or in a psych ward). My friend says of his father, “I just feel like he effectively ruined my mother’s life, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to that. Also, I’d much rather consider my coming into this world as a freak accident of genealogy than as a part of a consequent cause-and-effect pattern connecting me to him. The only way I would ever speak to him again is if he gave away all his posessions, preferably to my mother, and spent two or three years doing penance someplace safe from his indefatigable libido, potentially in a Dominican monastery.”
Now that would make a good story.
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