every night. I don’t know what I did to cause it, but I won’t give him a divorce, not ever. And you shouldn’t either. What God has put together, let no man put asunder.
Rhonda
It’s not just men. My wife had an affair with her professor. When she told me about it, she was laughing like she thought it was funny. I got so mad I put my fist through the wall. She called the cops and told them I was going to hit her. I wasn’t, but she filed a restraining order against me. Now she has the house, and I can’t even see my kids. I’m back home and living with my parents.
Alan
Ali paused a long time over that one. Was it possible that Jasmine Wright was married and this was a message from her husband? No, Ali decided, finally. That would have been too much of a coincidence, but it was interesting to have Alan’s point of view and to realize that male victims of infidelity suffered just as much as their female counterparts did. The big difference for men was that they had fewer places to go to unload their troubles. They were expected to tough it out no matter what.
He gets to unload here, Ali thought, and shipped Alan’s comment to The Forum.
Dear AliR,
Once you’re unfortunate enough to step into the world of ALS you’ll find it’s a very small one. It’s like you get on a road that only runs in one direction. When you start out, you meet others who are following the same path. You ask them for directions and suggestions, so you’ll know what to expect along the way. Some people travel the road faster than others, so someone who started out late may leapfrog ahead of someone who was diagnosed earlier.
You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but my sister, Lisa Kingsley, knew your friend Reenie. They met in an ALS chat room. At the time Reenie’s diagnosis hadn’t been confirmed, but she was looking for options. She wanted to know about the treatment Lisa was taking. It was very expensive, but I believe it helped Lisa for a while and I think she was encouraging Reenie to try it.
Lisa is gone now. I know you’re grieving over your lost friend, but I can’t help but think that perhaps Reenie made the right choice-for her, anyway. Living with ALS is hell. So is dying of it.
You and Reenie’s family have all my best wishes and sympathy.
Louise Malkin
Lubbock, Texas
Ali read through that one several times, blinking tears from her eyes as she read. Finally, rather than posting it, she simply wrote back.
Dear Louise,
Thanks for being in touch, and thanks for your kind wishes. And please accept my condolences on the loss of your sister.
I’m curious about the kind of treatment Lisa was receiving and where. Can you tell me anything about it? I asked Reenie’s husband but he wasn’t able to tell me much other than he thought it was based somewhere in Mexico.
Regards,
Ali Reynolds
The next e-mail had no salutation and no subject line.
You are a bitch. Why would anyone want to hear what you think about anything? You want other women to be just like you and the one who threw her poor husband’s remotes into the water. You must think that was a cute trick even though her husband probably had to work a long time to earn that equipment and she wrecked it just like that. I wouldn’t let my two-year-old get away with that let alone my wife.
How dare you print such crap? How many women, with good, caring husbands, read your stupid blog and decide it’s time to take their children and run? If my wife ever did that, I would beat her within an inch of her life.
Speaking of my wife. I know she has been visiting your site and you are putting bad ideas in her head. If she tries to leave me, I swear I’ll come looking for you. Someone needs to pull the plug on you just like they did on your friend.
Watching
A chill passed over Ali’s body as she read the words, and the fear she felt must have communicated itself to Samantha. The cat stopped purring abruptly, raised her mangled head, and peered warily around the room.
Ali read through the message again. This wasn’t the first time she had received a written threat. You couldn’t be in the news business in this day and age without people sending threats filled with vulgar language and simmering hatred.
For years Ali had driven home late at night, traversing LA’s freeways at a time of day when there were plenty of nutcases on the road. She had taken the course work necessary to be given a license to carry, and she had her own slick little Glock 26 stowed in the bottom of her bright pink Coach handbag. It was there primarily because, at the time she and Chris were loading the Cayenne for the trip to Sedona, she hadn’t taken the time to sort out the contents of her purse. Right now, though, she was glad it was there, and she was grateful that she’d spent time at a shooting range learning how to use it.
Ali glanced around the room and wondered about the thickness of the walls in Aunt Evie’s manufactured home. Would they stop a bullet? she wondered. And what about the hollow core metal door? It had once seemed substantial enough, but now it looked lightweight and vulnerable. Would it be strong enough to withstand the charge of someone trying to push his way into the house?
It was one thing to receive that kind of threat when you were housed in a television station with security guards stationed all around and with cement bollards blocking the sidewalk entrances. And you didn’t worry that much when you lived behind the tall electronically controlled gates of Paul Grayson’s wall-enclosed mansion on Robert Lane, either. But when you and your son were staying alone in a mobile home parked at the very edge of town, high on an Arizona mountainside…
Ali understood that some of the people issuing those threats were nothing more than harmless kooks venting their spleens in a media world destined to ignore them. But others were definitely dangerous. Ali hadn’t the slightest doubt that Watching was one of the dangerous ones.
Her next thought was to delete Watching’s message and simply let it go, but after a moment of consideration, she didn’t do that, either. Somewhere in the blogosphere was a defenseless woman with a two- year-old baby who was living with a very dangerous man-a man who was busily tracking the websites she visited and the messages she sent and received in the presumed privacy of her personal computer.
Through the years Ali had done numerous special appearances for YWCA events and for organizations dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence. As a result she had learned far more about the subject than she wanted to. Ali knew, for example, that the most dangerous time for abuse victims is just before or just after they make the decision to leave. That’s the moment when, valid protection orders be damned, women are most likely to be slaughtered by their abusive mates.
And the mother of that two-year-old, deep in the misery of her awful marriage and desperately weighing her options, would have no clue that her husband knew exactly what she was doing, down to the last betraying keystroke.
That left Ali no real choice. She had no idea what the woman’s name was or where she lived. Ali had no way of knowing if the woman in question was one of the blog correspondents whose words she had posted on the Web. Even though Ali knew the woman’s e-mail address, writing to her directly would be far too risky. If Watching found something from Ali in his wife’s incoming mail, he’d probably go berserk. On the other hand, if she posted Watching’s e-mail to The Forum, there was a chance that perhaps the woman would read it and recognize it for what it was-a direct threat to her and to her child.
Ali shipped Watching’s e-mail to The Forum and posted her own accompanying comment:
On the day we take our wedding vows, most of us naively assume that our marriage really will last forever. We truly believe that whatever traps and problems that befall other couples and lead them to divorce courts won’t
