The one bright spot during this time was the acquisition of a female golden retriever puppy. Devastated at the loss of Gidget, we did not plan to bring another puppy into our household, especially since Gobi was a geriatric nine years old. But the vet convinced us that a puppy would keep Gobi active and prolong his life, so several weeks later, John and I chose a wiggling pile of soft blond fur that we christened Gaby. We bonded with the puppy immediately. This was during one of my father’s hospital stays, and on the way back home with Gaby, we pulled into the hospital parking lot. I emptied my large purse, stuffed the fluffy pup inside, and with the bag held snuggly under my arms, John and I snuck through the lobby and up the elevator to my father’s room. There, I closed the privacy curtain and placed Gaby next to him on the bed. The smile on my father’s face was worth the effort.
One afternoon, at the start of December, I pulled into the garage and noted that John’s car was not there. Inside the house I found a note attached to the refrigerator. “Have an emergency trip to San Jose. Back late this afternoon.”
I started the teakettle and was pulling out a tea bag when the doorbell rang. I clicked the security lock and opened the door about five inches. Two stern-looking faces peered at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“FBI, ma’am,” the taller one said as he flashed his badge and handed me two business cards. My hand trembled. The cards looked official enough, but I still didn’t open the door. “We’re looking for Mr. Perry. Is he home?”
“No.”
The shorter agent reached into his jacket, pulled out a white legal-size envelope, and thrust it through the crack. “We have something for him. Will you accept it?”
I’ve always felt in awe of and inferior to the police. Now the FBI was at my door. I was nervous, confused, and evasive as my heart pounded in my chest.
“No. You’ll have to come back another day.”
I slammed the door. It reminded me too much of a couple of months back, when I had accepted an envelope for John at the door. It was a summons from a bill collector. John got angry with me and told me never to accept anything from someone I didn’t know.
I needed a drink. I made my way to the bar, fixed a rum and Coke, and relaxed on one of the stools. I spun around to look into the room, at all of John’s Navy nostalgia hanging on the wall ... seven historical Navy prints, the DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP flag, the porthole mirror, John’s medals.... John’s medals? I couldn’t believe my eyes. The case with John’s military medals was gone.
Maybe he’d put them on the floor. I slid off the stool to look behind his chair. They weren’t there. I looked next to the Wurlitzer jukebox and into our liquor closet. Not there either. I gave up, grabbed my drink, and sat down on the couch to watch the evening news. Gobi and Gaby joined me, one on each side, and laid their heads in my lap. About half an hour later, I heard the back door open. “I’m home,” John called out. The dogs barked as they ran into the foyer.
“I’m in the family room.”
“How’s my gal?” he drawled as he sauntered over and kissed me on the forehead.
“Not good,” I said. I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. “Look at the cards on the bar.”
John picked them up, scanned them, and flipped them back on the bar. “Don’t worry about it,” he said nonchalantly. “It might have something to do with Bruce Wenden. The FBI is investigating him on securities fraud. I told him he had to be careful when looking for investment capital.”
“Is that where you were?”
“Yeah, he called me, all upset, so I went down to talk with him.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?”
“It happened so fast. I had to get down there. Sorry, I just didn’t have time to call. At least I wrote a note.”
His explanation seemed reasonable enough, and he was home safe and sound. I remembered what else bothered me. “Where are your framed medals?”
“They’re gone?” He walked over to the empty spot on the wall. “Must have been one of your godson’s friends at the surprise sixteenth birthday party we gave him last week. He said he wanted to borrow them for a school project or something.”
John slipped into his recliner chair, hoisted his feet into the air, and clicked the remote to turn on the television. Strange, I was more upset about the missing medals than John seemed to be. Why would he lend them out and not say anything to me about it? I went into the kitchen and called my godson. “He said no one borrowed your medals,” I reported, walking back into the family room. “I’m worried about what happened to them.”
“Oh, I just remembered. Guess my brain is fuzzy from the long drive home. I took them to the frame shop to have the frame fixed. It was coming apart at one corner.”
“Why would you leave all your medals in it?”
“Don’t be a worrywart. They’ll be fine. Come on, let’s fix dinner. Do you want grilled steak tonight?”
We walked into the kitchen and started dinner together. My world was spinning out of control and I couldn’t find the button to shut it off. The payment from Jason was now nine months late. I still had not met John’s family. John continued spending. He had cancelled his appearance as the guest speaker at the Navy ball during Fleet Week. The medals disappeared and the FBI appeared. For each instance, John had an explanation, with enough of a kernel of truth inside to make it seem plausible. Still, I felt unsettled; although I couldn’t pinpoint the uneasiness, I knew it was there, a small voice whispering in my ear. For the second time in a month the voice had broken through. Once more, without thinking, the words tumbled from my mouth. “John, who are you?”
“What!” He slammed the refrigerator and stared at me.
“Who are you?” I repeated.
“You asked me that in October,” he said, “when I was in Madrid on business, and you called to let me know you were okay after the Loma Prieta earthquake.” John walked to the sink and set the package of steak on the blue tile counter. I put my hand on his arm. He recoiled at my touch. I looked him in the eye. He glanced away. But I would not give up.
“You told me you would answer my question when you got home, but you never have. Some days I feel I don’t know you anymore,” I said, grabbing the romaine to fix the salad. “Coupled with my dad’s illness, it’s draining me emotionally.”
“You know who I am.” He laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
I tore the lettuce into tiny bits into the plastic bowl, harder, faster, then froze and glared at John. “No, I don’t believe I do. I’ve never talked to your family. Jason hasn’t paid the two hundred thousand dollars. After eight years of marriage I still don’t have my military ID. Now the FBI shows up at our door.”
“You know there’s a good explanation for each one, don’t you?” he snapped. “Lady, you’re something else.”
“But you promised and...”
“I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.” He turned away abruptly and strode toward the foyer, but at the door he yelled in pain and crumpled to the floor, his knees landing hard on the oak parquet. “Damn leg!”
I ran to help him up.
“Get away from me,” he commanded as he crawled toward the brick planter. “You don’t care about me.” He righted himself and limped upstairs. John’s health had continued to worsen. Didn’t he know I cared for him? After all, I was the one who’d insisted on getting the new spa to soothe his back and legs. I would just have to be careful how hard I pushed him. I set the salad bowl in the refrigerator, made us both a drink, and went upstairs to smooth things over. It was what I did best.
That evening, I didn’t realize that the FBI standing on my porch was the beginning of what I now call my Crazy Year, a time when unusual events gnawed away at my sanity, leaving me feeling confused and unsure of myself, when all I wanted was a loving and financially stable marriage. I had no reason to suspect that the FBI visit had anything to do with John. And the missing medals? Why would I think they might be connected to an official investigation? I don’t know what I expected John to tell me—but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that John was a lying, devious psychopath with a different agenda for our marriage. So I ignored the whispers in my ear. That evening, as I soothed the situation over once more with John in our office, I made a mental note that I had to try harder to change John’s nonchalant attitude toward our finances. When I did, everything would be fine. I disregarded the warning signs as the storm gathered momentum.
Looking back, I now see that my outlandish behavior with John developed as it did over the years because I had been caught in the crazymaking web of a master psychopath. I had lost my sense of self. Although I realized deep inside that I was drowning in a turbulent storm, I didn’t know how or where to yell for help. So I did the only thing I knew. I relied on my planning skills and organizational ability to try to change John; an impossible task, I know now, because no one can change another person, let alone a psychopath with no conscience.
As stressful as my life had been with John up to now, it paled in comparison with what was to follow during the next year.
Nearly a month later, near midnight on New Year’s Eve, we slipped into the steaming spa in our backyard. John poured champagne into our Waterford hocks, and I gazed at the clear winter sky while I melted into the warm water.
“It’s almost the new year. Here,” John said, handing me a glass.
Neighborhood firecrackers popped in the air. “Happy New Year,” we chimed together as our glasses clinked. John bent over and gave me a long, passionate kiss.
My lips quivered as I remembered the past month. John and I had plunged into the holiday spirit and the traditions we created together. We elaborately decorated our two artificial trees and set out the collector Christmas village. We bought and wrapped presents for each other and family and friends, bustling about and keeping busy. I hoped the activity would quell my continued uneasiness. I could blame it on holiday stress. It didn’t work.
Deep down I understood the source of my depression. John had continued to be evasive. He had not answered my question but did offer a ray of hope. On the night we returned from my father’s birthday celebration, I was feeling upset after seeing how crippled my dad had become since his stroke. John sensed my pain. He promised he would reveal who he was on New Year’s Eve, in the spa. A special time for a new beginning, he said.
Now, as our lips separated, I waited for John to begin. The frosty winter air hung silently between us. I wanted to break the ice.
Patience, Barbara, patience,
I admonished myself. I knew I had to be careful, so I decided to jump-start our conversation with something that had been developing over the past several months but which I had only recognized in the last several weeks.
“John, you’re not going to Silicon Valley anymore, or talking to the East Coast. Is it getting to be too much for you? Do you want to retire?”
John hung his head. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “I just don’t have the stomach for all the political games with our different customers anymore.”
“We can plan around it, if you want to stop working. We could sell this house and move back to Antioch. With our profit here, we could be comfortable. We’d just have to cut back our spending.”
“I don’t want to talk about moving.”
“Well, what gives?”
John told me that clients of our Two Star Incorporated no longer needed John’s services. The news hit me hard. “Is that why you started playing so many sweepstakes?” I gasped.
“Yeah, I thought I could get lucky and bring in some money that way.”
“That’s gambling! You’ll never get ahead that way. Besides, we don’t have the extra money to buy ten magazines, let alone find the time to read them all, and you need to stop buying that stuff from the United States Purchasing Exchange.”
“You have to make a purchase to be entered in their sweepstakes.”
“John, it’s all crap. No quality, and definitely not anything we need. What we do need is a feasible plan, not a plan based on Lady Luck.”
“Back off. We have some money due. It should make you happy that I still have a commission check coming from the sale of some surplus equipment for Foxboro.”
I dropped back into silence and gulped down the last of my champagne. John quickly refilled my glass. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just wait and see.”
“Just wait and see? Like tonight, when you were going to tell me who you are?”
“You’re right. I made a promise. Now don’t interrupt me,” he said, putting his finger to my lips. Words spilled out of his mouth and I couldn’t believe my ears. I became nauseated, then angry. It was the same old story of being born in Costa Rica on his family’s finca, of being the black sheep. On and on, through his marriages, and children, and military exploits, he tried to cast his spell, but this time I wasn’t buying. My delight at a new beginning vanished into disgust.
“Same old shit,” I spat when he finally stopped. “I’m getting out.” He grabbed my arm and held me. I didn’t move.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve told the truth all along. I don’t know why you don’t believe me.”
“I guess because you’ve never proved any of it. There’s never any family to talk to. There’s no military ID. There’s no money from Jason. You name it, you haven’t come through.”
“Please be patient, Barbara. I love you very much. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. It will all work out. I’ll think of something.”
“With all your assets, you should have been able to do something by now,” I ranted. “And, speaking of assets, we don’t even have a comprehensive list of what they are. What would happen if you died?”
“If I get the list together, will you be happy?”
“I wouldn’t call it happy, but it would be a step forward.”
“My attorney from Long Beach is coming to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. I’ll get together with him and put it all down. I promise.”