2025/02/07 - The ChumMaster

The verdict is in! My first collaboration with Sunnie ("The ChumMaster 2000") fell flat.

One of my favourite exercises as a writer is to see whether a cheating wife can suffer some punishment and still be forgiven. Trying to have a story balance the BTB with the RAAC is no easy feat, as I've come to find out. Everyone has their own idea about how much punishment is too much, or not enough for that matter.

For everyone who said that the story sucked because you would have punished the wife more viciously, or for everyone who thought that a husband who fights to save his family from a confused wife is too tolerant, irresolute and cucky, I have heard your words of constructive encouragement.

Here I give you "The ChumMaster 2025."

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Fifteen years are come-and-gone. Matt had made it to the age of 49, and Annie was now 47. They had made it past the big bump in the road. The kids had grown up in an intact and loving home. Colin was 20 and in college. Molly was 23, had got her degree in electrical engineering and was working her way up the ladder at Matt's electronics firm. Oh, and she was engaged to be married. Annie continued to do the work she loved, writing reviews for the local newspaper's arts and entertainment page.

The survival of the Nolan household had not been one of those "stay for the sake of the kids" marriages, with all the coldness and bitterness one might expect. Matt and Annie had finally cleared the air. First of all, 15 years back, Annie's boy toy Tim McCormick had left town for a job in Providence and after a year there had moved to a career in sports journalism in New Jersey, for a few years in print media, and then as sports reporter for a Philadelphia television station. He had that handsome, athletic face that was just made for sports TV. Fortunately for Matt, he never had to see that face on his TV in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Matt had originally given Annie a few weeks to adjust to the departure of McCormick from her life, and then had decided to have a come-to-Jesus moment with her.

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That moment took place in late July, 2010.

It had been more than 4 weeks since Annie Nolan and Tim McCormick had been introduced to the horrors of the ChumMaster 2000. 3 weeks since days and days of uncomfortable workplace avoidance between the two lovers came to a head with McCormick's abrupt departure. They avoided the break room. They avoided lunches together. They avoided their ritual of walking together to their cars at day's end. Lately, Matt had been randomly showing up unannounced for a surprise lunch or for an impromptu supper. Annie and McCormick had barely spoken a dozen words to each other over those last days. So Annie didn't know he was leaving. On that last day, Annie walked out to a waiting Matt.

Before they got the chance to discuss supper plans, a nervous Tim McCormick bravely ran out the door after her.

"Annie, Annie... wait up!"

Matt stood his ground and instinctively moved away from his car and took a step toward his approaching rival. Annie stood uneasily just behind Matt's left shoulder. Tim stopped a few steps from Matt.

"Hey, Matt..." he began.

"Timmy Mac," Matt tersely replied.

The naughty wife and her playmate suddenly grew eyes the size of tea saucers at the realization that Matt knew Annie had given him a pet name.

"I'm leaving." McCormick had come outside to say these words to Annie, but ended up saying them to Matt. "Today's my last day. I start Monday as sports editor in Providence. Got the U-Haul all loaded up. I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

A rattled Annie uttered not a sound.

"Well, I guess congratulations are in order, McCormick! And to think, I never got that chance to take you out fishing! Tell you what... next time you come back to Yarrowport, I'll take you out."

Just in case the ambiguity of being "taken out" was lost on McCormick, Matt fixed him with a firm handshake and added, "In fact, the next time I catch you here in town, I'll make it a point."

Not letting go of McCormick's hand, Matt pulled him close. Close enough that it looked like the beginning of bro-hug. Close enough that Matt could put his other hand on the back of McCormick's neck and squeeze half the life out of it.

Close enough that Matt could put his mouth next to McCormick's ear and whisper the words that Annie would never hear. "Am I making myself clear, old chum?"

At which point Matt stepped back from a sheet-faced McCormick, cordially pumped his hand and enthusiastically wished him well. Annie still cowered behind Matt. "Annie, aren't you going to wish your colleague good luck?"

She was a pillar of salt.

Matt stepped behind her and guided her by the arm and shoulder to Timmy Mac. "Tell him goodbye," he said breezily.

She was stood there with her arms by her side.

Matt lost his breeziness. "Annie! I said to tell him goodbye."

He gave her a slight push toward her paramour. She virtually stumbled into his arms. Matt was going to make them do this. Right in front of him. He was going to make this as uncomfortable for the two of them as he knew how.

McCormick refused to engage. She had her arms positioned defensively in front of her midriff. So McCormick got this over with. He placed his hands on her forearms, but you could have fit a small vehicle between their torsos. They simply would not hug.

"Annie, it's been a pleasure working with you."

It cost McCormick nothing to say that. He already knew that Matt knew. The pleasure was common knowledge.

"Do well here at the Gazette. You're good at what you do. Take care of your family. Give them 100 percent. Your kids and your husband. I'm sorry, Annie... I hope I didn't make too much trouble for you. Anything else I have to say, I've already said a hundred times. Be well, Annie."

He was fighting back tears. Matt just stood there sternly with his arms folded, alternately watching the scene and averting his eyes.

"Timmy, I've got to get back to my family. I love them dearly," and loudly enough for Matt to hear, "I love my husband. I'm sorry, too. To everybody. So best of luck to you at your new job, and wherever life takes you."

She took one last look, dropped her arms, turned around and walked into the arms of her husband. She closed her teary eyes and held them closed against Matt's chest. She kept her closed eyes buried in his shirt as she listened to Timmy's footsteps fade in the distance, listened to the faraway closing of a car door, listened to the starting of an engine. She didn't pull away to face the gentle daylight of the summer's evening until the sound of the motor had faded into the undistinguishable din of life in Yarrowport.

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Three weeks of renormalization followed. A zen of peace had fallen on the Nolan household. But the peace was generally disturbed by the subtle sound of eggshells being walked upon. Annie wasn't eager to talk about it. She was hoping it would all just go away. Matt was not going to let things go. But he was the type of guy who favoured a measured response. He would choose his moment. The tension couldn't go on indefinitely, though. The ghost of Tim McCormick seemed to live with them. When he felt that the time for the measured response was come, Matt made his plans.

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On this beautiful late July morning, Matt and Annie left the kids with family. His sister Kate lived in town with her husband and their daughter. Matt and Kate's parents lived nearby and loved to take all three of their grandchildren when Matt and Kate both needed a break.

Matt had booked a room at a charming inn on the waterfront in the Prince Edward Island countryside. They flew into PEI that morning, arrived at the inn just before lunchtime, checked in, unpacked, and went downstairs to the dining room for a nice lunch overlooking the sea.

The mealtime conversation was light, limited to how beautiful the place was, the lovely inn, the stunning view, their nice room, nice to get away without the kids, and so forth. But the elephant was still in the room. Tim McCormick was still sitting at their table. Matt and Annie had yet to have The Talk. It was why Matt had brought her here. And Annie probably knew it, too.

Matt got the ball rolling. "Looks like a beautiful beach. Let's walk off that lunch."

Annie nodded contritely. "Yeah, I need a good walk."

He took her hand and they walked silently through the sand along the water's edge. After about 5 minutes, they had reached an area secluded enough to afford them some privacy. Spotting one of the intermittent grass tufts that dotted the sandy landscape, Matt said "Let's sit for a minute."

Annie instantly felt uneasy. She expected that Matt might sit side-by-side with her, that he might put his arm over her shoulder and admire the view. But he turned his body toward her and broke all physical contact. She couldn't bring herself to face him, so she continued to look out over the sea, while Matt looked at her profile. After a few moments of silence, she turned her head to look at him, saw the look in his eyes, and turned her head back toward the water.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

"I'm sorry, Matt."

He said nothing.

Annie began to tremble. "I've been so bad to you."

"I know."

"Oh god, I don't know what happened to me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." And then came the wracking sobs.

Matt resisted the urge to reach for her. It was too soon for comfort. She would need to earn that.

"You're the best husband in the world. I don't know why I would... oh no... O god no. Oh God, please help me. Oh, baby I am so sorry..."

And now she just rambled and sobbed. Within a single sentence she went from talking to Matt, to God, to herself, and to no one in particular. There was just no communicating with her at this point. Her brain circuits were overloaded and random stuff was coming out of her mouth. She fell to her side and lay there trembling in the grass, muttering a stream of incoherencies, to the extent that her sobbing would allow.

She reached a crescendo, then began to recover. First the wailing stopped, then the weeping slowed down. Annie had not stopped crying completely, but was able to gather herself somewhat and sit up.

"I could tell you knew something. The way you acted, some of the things you said and texted. You knew all along..."

"I found out 6 months after it started. I just knew you were pulling away from me and all I had were bits and pieces of info. As I started to put the pieces together, I was in shock. I was in denial. The shock and denial kept me inactive. It was like a nightmare. I couldn't put one foot in front of the other. My wife wouldn't do that, My wife says she loves me, It can't possibly be happening. Then one day I snapped out of it, to a certain extent anyway. I went to Plymouth to head you and McCormick off at the pass. I got there just in time."

Her eyes got big and she tried to swallow. "You knew who it was even that far back... knew about Tim... of course you did. You knew I was up to no good... stands to reason you knew who. Why did you wait 6 months?"

"I was still putting things together. I wasn't sure until I got to Plymouth and the motel clerk told me that McCormick was the one who booked your original room there."

A look of shock registered on Annie's wet face.

Matt forged ahead. "Within a couple of days I knew everything. How long it had been going on, where you did the deed... by the way, get rid of that Volvo. Every time I see it in my garage it makes me sick. Get it the fuck out of my house."

Annie was frightened by this first indication of the anger that lurked below the surface. That temporarily halted the tears. Compounding her fright was the realization that Matt knew she'd been carrying on her trysts in her SUV.

After a pause, he carried on. "I know that the kid was in love with you and wanted you all to himself."

More shock. Matt just seems to know more and more. With each of these revelations, she felt her grave get deeper and deeper. Heaven knows how she would cope if he knew more than he was letting on. She prayed that he only thought that he knew "everything."

"Matt, is that why you brought me here? Are you going to break up with me now?"

"I came here to get some clarity. I don't know what I want to do. You were clearly torn between me and McCormick. Well, I'm torn between keeping you and dumping you. When I put it in those terms, I'm sure you understand. Most of all I came here to get answers. I came here because I didn't want to have this discussion at home or anywhere near there. I wanted to be as far removed from the scene of the crime as I could practically get us."

"Ask me anything. I owe you the truth at the very least. I don't care how much it hurts me. I deserve it. I'll ask one thing, though. Don't ask me stuff that's going to hurt you. You've suffered enough. You don't deserve any more."

And then she wailed with remorse. Matt gave Annie a chance to catch her breath.

"Okay, Annie. The obvious question. Why?"

She paused, tried to gather herself, shook her head from side to side without looking at him. In a surprisingly deep and firm voice, she replied "I don't know."

"No!" he snapped at her, causing her to jump. "I told you I came here for answers. I Don't Know is not an answer. Not. Good. Enough. Once again, why? Why did you think it was okay to betray me. To betray your family, your own kids?"

She started to shake at the implications of having wronged her kids. She counted herself as a good mother.

"Every time you made plans to go off and give that asshole a blowjob, what made you think that it was okay to do that?"

As Annie listened to him voice intimate details about the specific sexual conduct with her boyfriend, she felt that the world was closing in around her. She wrapped her arms around herself. Matt knew that body language. She did that whenever she tried to protect herself from having to face a hard truth.

Matt was having none of it. "Why, dammit, why?!"

She nodded. "Matt, I know that I Don't Know isn't an answer. But the truth is I'm trying to understand it myself. I remember the story you told me in the Plymouth motel about that older Italian woman you met at the airport."

Aha. She had indeed listened to Matt's story that night in the motel. It had been a total fabrication, one he made up on the spot, one made with a view toward teaching her a life lesson about the benefits of fidelity to one's spouse.

"Matt, you told me that when you met her, you felt you'd been struck by lightning. When I met Tim, when he stopped being a roving reporter and started working in the office as as an editor, I felt some of that same lightning."

Shit. Now the larger lesson of the story Matt had told her was taking a back seat to one of the lesser details. The message that Matt had meant for Annie to take away from his story was that Matt turned down the Italian woman out of love for Annie and their kids. But the thing that Annie took away from the story, was how easy it had been for Matt to form an instant infatuation. Now it was biting him in the ass. It was now Annie's justification. And the two of them reached a conclusion at almost the same moment.

"Annie, the big difference is that I walked away from my lightning strike."

"Yes. And I didn't. Matt, I wish I could tell you why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that your Italian woman flew away that day and didn't come back. Tim and I saw each other at work day after day after day. I was getting hit by lightning every day. He pursued me day after day. I can't say that he made me want him. I wanted him from the start. If he'd flown away after the first lightning strike, we wouldn't be having this chat. But it was constant, and I found it hard to resist. No! No! It's truer to say that I didn't really try to resist. I was drawn to him. It was strong. It hadn't happened to me since you and I first met. There were no temptations during all the years of our dating, engagement and the first ten years of our marriage. Not one single solitary guy. Then, bam, out of the clear blue sky, this happens."

"Why him? He's a kid, for heaven's sake!"

"Well, now we are getting into what I begged of you before... don't ask me stuff that will hurt you..."

"Okay. I get it, Annie. Him being a younger guy was part of the allure."

"Please, Mattie, please don't let this bit hurt you... it's not a failing on your part. Ask any woman in her thirties... if a younger guy tells her she's hot, especially if she's got kids that make her feel that she's too tired for any guy to find her hot, especially one as young as she was back in her fondly-remembered glory days... ask her what that does to her. Yes it was flattering. But it wasn't the whole thing. It was a perfect storm. He's handsome, he's charming... are you sure you want me to go on?"

Matt, eyes cast to the ground, nodded nervously.

Annie went on. "He's sexual, he has an aura, and there was, I don't know, a real connection? Except for you, it had never happened before, and is unlikely to ever happen again. It was a one-in-a-million thing... two-in-a-million if I count you."

She regretted the words the minute they left her mouth.

"Gee thanks, Annie. Thanks a fucking lot. I feel so special now."

She began to fully fathom the depth of the damage she'd done. Matt had never treated her as anything less than one-in-a-trillion. She had fallen far short in her behaviour toward him. She fell apart again as she understood now that she had blown apart her whole world. She began to go over sideways again as her body racked with her sobs.

"So I imagine that you expect me to keep kissing the lips of a cheating whore who let that boy cum down her gullet. Am I right? How about that pussy of yours? Do you expect me to go down on you after he slobbered all over it?"

She wept and shook her head from side to side. Trying to shake the reality out of her brain. Trying to escape the relentless truth. Matt thought it fortunate that he'd selected a relatively desolate stretch of beach to have it out with her. As she wailed, he prayed that her voice didn't carry.

"So, Annie, you get to do whatever you want. You get to have an affair, you get to treasure the memory, you get to miss him and his magic tongue. Or you get to forget all about him if you decide that's what you want. You get to do whatever you want to that makes things more tolerable for you going forward. But what do I get to do?"

"How do I get rid of the pictures I've allowed my imagination to paint? How do I ever get to see you again as the woman I thought I had? When I look at our wedding photos, or the pictures of us holding our newborns, how do I reconcile the look of pure love on your face in those photos with the face of a slut who took another man's dick in it, another man's cum in it? How do I ever trust you again? How do I trust you to not do similarly stupid things when the kids are in your care? What happens now to my life... my happiness... my peace of mind? Who gives all that back to me?"

Then Matt fell silent. He'd asked a lot of questions and gave Annie time to process. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the sand at her feet. For the longest twenty seconds she said and did nothing. Then she slowly shook her head from side to side. Matt waited. Then, as if an epiphany was at hand, she suddenly nodded and gave a bitter chuckle.

"Please enlighten me, Annie."

"Okay, Matt," she began with a note of self-derision in her voice, "I can see one of my problems right now. After everything you just said, the thing that jumped right to the top of my mind was you calling me a slut. Not that I didn't deserve it. But my first thought should have been to answer the questions about you. How do you heal? How could I have been so bad to you! Our kids! The real meat of the matter. How could I have a look of love in my eyes in those photos and then do what I did!"