Chapter 05: Broken Up with Odell

Linda and Odell Broken Up?

Since July, we had had lots of fun and enjoyed each other’s company, but let’s face it, we had problems.

First was the distance. Dating someone who lived 90 miles away was a real problem, and it was made worse because I had a leased car and had to worry about the mileage I was putting on it. I made the mistake of mentioning that to Linda and she went through the ceiling, feeling that I cared more about the car than I did about her.

Linda did not like the fact that I liked to keep things simple. While she liked being elaborate, I try to treat everyone the same. Linda wanted to treat different people different ways. If someone was a police officer they were dirt, if they were a waiter then you act another way, etc. Everyone was in a different category.

Rules were huge in Linda’s life. The funny part of that was that Linda believed that since I tended to follow the rules, paid my taxes, balanced my checkbook, showed up when I said I would, and tried to keep my word, I was rigid and not a free spirit. I felt this was funny, because I never knew anyone who was more obsessed with rules than Linda.

Rules about how everyone should dress, eat, talk, almost anything she had a rule for. But she was a free spirit, because if someone were to tell her a rule, she had another rule that said, “break it.”

Another problem I had was that I had had grandparents who had been alcoholics, and I knew that I did not want to be involved with that kind of problem. I did my best to rationalize this. I felt that Linda was technically an alcoholic, but not really. Her life was not out of control, and she only drank sometimes, even though she knew she should not ever drink.

I wanted to believe that there were two kinds of alcoholics and Linda was the good kind. But there is only one kind of alcoholic, and sometimes addiction takes time to totally destroy a life.

With all these problems, soon after New Year’s Linda and I broke up. Now most people would have an image of breaking up that was different from what happened.

Usually, the two people stop seeing each other. They do not spend each weekend at the other person’s house. They stop having intimate relations with each other. They even have time to see other people.

Well, none of that happened with Linda and me.

Linda still came to my house or I went to hers almost every weekend. Yes, our more adult activities continued as well. Linda was much more interested in the personal pleasures now that we had broken up.

One weekend in January, Linda came to my house with a goal. She needed a computer. She wanted me to help her get one.

I am a computer programmer, and I work all day on computers, but I do not know where the best place to get a computer is. That is what the IT department is for.

So we spent all day Saturday going from store to store looking for a computer that Linda could afford. Linda wanted to be able to get on the internet from home. She was tired of going to Betty’s to get on the computer.

We were driving around and I mentioned to Linda that I had heard a rumor that Hillary Clinton had had John Kennedy Jr. killed. Linda was shocked by this and told me that I should never tell that to anybody.

It was not that Linda liked Hillary. It was that she was afraid of the way people would react if they thought I believed it. I told her that I did not think that Hillary had, but why would I want to hide myself like that. I felt that hiding myself like that would be lying.

We spent the next four hours arguing over what it meant to lie and conceal oneself. We never came to a conclusion. Linda and I had very different opinions on being open to the world.

Linda wanted to be minutely selective about what she showed the world, I think to a destructive degree. I, on the other hand, wanted to let the world know who I was, and to hell with those who did not like it.

This secrecy was an obsession with Linda. She wanted to control the image the world had of her. One of the things that Linda kept hidden from everyone was the fact that she sucked her thumb.

She did not want anyone to know. Sometimes we would be driving on the freeway and she would turn to face me in the driver’s seat so that no one outside could see what she was doing. When we were in the ER, she would have me watch to see if anyone was coming so she could suck her thumb.

She would not even tell her therapist or sisters. I never understood why she felt she should be ashamed of that.

During the winter and spring Linda went back to school. I helped her study math and philosophy. She did very well. She was always a smart person.

She was planning on earning her RN, or perhaps becoming a therapist.

Several things were going on in Linda’s life. One of the biggest was that Linda, with the help of her father, was suing the guy from Texas.

Linda told me all about the lawsuit and how her father had a friend who was a lawyer who was helping her with it. She told me that in February she was supposed to give a deposition, but found out that the guy was going to have to be in the same room with her, so she backed out.

In the middle of February, Linda called me in a panic. She had received a letter from this jerk in Texas threatening her life, telling how much fun he was going to have killing her.

Linda was terrified and came to stay at my place for a few days because she felt safer there.

When she showed me the letter, I called the FBI and they had his parole revoked and he was sent back to jail for two more years.

Now that he was in jail, Linda felt safe enough going ahead with the lawsuit. Linda’s father came out to Astoria to take her back to Texas for the deposition.

A few days after Linda had left for Texas, I called her phone just to hear her voice on the answering machine. I was shocked when she picked up the phone herself.

“Hello.”

“Hello Linda, sorry, I dialed your number by mistake. I thought you were in Texas.”

“We missed our flight and we could not get a seat on another flight until tomorrow.”

“So, is your father staying with you?”

“No, he has a room in Astoria. But right now, he is asleep in the chair in the front room.”

“How are you doing?”

“I think everything is going to be OK, but I am frightened. I do not know what it will be like to see him again. By the way, my father wanted me to thank you for taking such good care of his little girl.”

When she got back, she told me all about the trip, how this guy was in handcuffs the whole time, how much she did not enjoy her time in Texas because her stepmother was there, how she missed me, and the things she thought about doing to me.

She went into great detail.

The amazing thing about all that she told me was, it was all a lie.

Linda never sued the guy. At the time, she was secretly working with him and the Texas Board of Paroles trying to see if, when he was released, he could be released to Oregon.

I did not find any of that out until much later. There was a lot going on in Linda’s life around now that was a lie.

I was living on a constant diet of lies and I had no idea.

Linda called me one Saturday.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Odell.”

“Linda, how are you doing?”

“I am doing okay, but I just got off the phone with my father. He tells me that he has invested the money I got from my grandfather and SSDI with T. Rowe Price and that I currently have a little less than $1,000,000.00 in the account. He suggests that I use some of it to buy a house. What do you think?”

This was a strange phone call, as I knew that Linda was constantly broke, living on the money she got each month from SSDI.

I said it sounded like a good idea, but there were other things he should do first, like setting up a fund or an annuity so Linda would have a better income.

With that kind of money, she could retire. She could also get better insurance and the treatment she knew she needed.

We talked for over an hour making plans for Linda’s money.

She also had a fictitious love affair. She told me all about this eighteen-year-old from school who wanted her and she wanted him.

She went into graphic details of what they did and when.

This was one of the few lies I ever caught her in. She told me that he had gotten them a room at an expensive hotel for one of their evenings.

It sounded good, but eighteen-year-olds who go to school and pump gas for a living just do not have the kind of money needed for the kind of evening she told me about.

She finally admitted that she made that story up because she wanted us to get back together and she wanted me to be jealous, which I was.

Finally, in April, it became clear that this being broken up simply was not working.

If we were going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, at least we should say so.

I spoke to Linda about getting back together, but she was tentative about it for a while. Finally, she told me that she wanted to get back together as well.

Then she told me how she had finally decided that she wanted to be with me and had given up on the guy in Texas.

I was so thrilled that we were back together that I did not think about what she said about the guy in Texas, or how she had tried to keep a guy that had sent her death threats in her life.

In fact, Linda was terrified of the guy. She used to have night terrors about him breaking into her apartment and killing her cats.

She had had sleeping problems since the rape. She had to take meds and use ear plugs to sleep, and this guy made everything worse.

She made it a point not to let him know where she was living in Astoria, even using a PO Box rather than having mail come to her apartment.

But each time she went to the post office, she was frightened that he would be waiting there for her.

She had even legally changed her name so that he would not be able to find her.

I knew that simply saying that we were back together was not going to fix the biggest problem we had in our relationship. That was, of course, distance.

If the last few months had proved anything to me, it was that I loved this woman and wanted her to be a part of my life.

So after a few weeks, I asked her to move in with me.

Linda was thrilled, and we quickly started making arrangements for Linda to move from Astoria to Vancouver.

Part of the arrangements was to get her apartment cleaned. Linda was never a neat person and hated housework.

But her apartment was something else. She had a one-bedroom and had only lived there a few months, but there was junk piled everywhere, with just a small path running from the bedroom to the front room.

Her refrigerator was so disgusting that while I was cleaning it, I threw up.

But the biggest problem I found was something that I did not understand.

I found unopened bills all over the place, under the bed, in the cabinets, stuffed in the chairs.

Linda, it seemed, had simply stopped paying her bills.

She owed the phone company $600. She owed the power $500. She owed everybody. Doctors, cable, rent, on the apartment she was living in and one she had lived in before.

I found out later that when Linda would get her check from SSDI, she would go out, buy new clothes, and celebrate.

Then, as the month went on, she would return anything she could, just to have money to eat.

When I say eat, I do not mean get food at the grocery store. I mean she had to go out to eat. Linda would not cook.

I did not have any idea how bad the whole money thing would be until May, when she was moving in with me.

It was a Saturday and we were moving the small stuff from her place to mine.

We had loaded both our cars and were driving from Astoria to Vancouver.

A few miles outside of town Linda got pulled over.

It would not have been a big deal. The officer was worried because she seemed to be tailgating me. She explained that she was following me.

The officer was going to let her go until he ran her license and found a warrant for her arrest.

Linda’s habit of not paying her bills had come back to bite her.

She had received a parking ticket a few weeks earlier and had failed to pay the $5.00.

Now she was going to jail.

The officer explained to me what was going to happen and told me that I could go to the jail and see if I could bail her out.

I got to the jail, they buzzed me in, and I felt like I was a prisoner myself, locked in the waiting area.

They processed Linda and it turned out that she was lucky.

They were full that night, so they let me bail her out for $85.00.

I would like to tell you that Linda was thrilled when she got out.

But the fact was that there was something very wrong.

When they brought her out she was shaking.

I helped her to the car but she was not able to get into it for a few minutes.

She just walked around talking to herself, making very little sense.

After she calmed down, she was able to get in the car and I started to drive.

I was only able to go a few blocks before she insisted that we stop.

She got out of the car and walked around until she could calm down again.

We must have gone through this sort of thing five or six times.

At the time I did not know it, but she was on the verge of a psychotic break.

This was the same behavior she had had while in Texas.

It took some time, but we managed to get back to her car, and once she was in control of her own environment, she was able to drive and get back to my place.

Finally Linda was moved in, and I loved having her there.

Unfortunately, this narrative makes it sound as if there were no good times.

But there were. Just being with her was a good time. Her beauty, her wit, her charm made things better.

My parents live in California, not far from Linda’s sister.

Once a year they come up to the Seattle area to hold a conference.

That weekend, I normally drive up to see them.

Well, this year, I brought Linda.

I had no idea how stressful this would be to her, or just how much Linda depended on knowing what was going to happen.

They call it concreteness of thinking.

Linda needed an image in her mind of what was going to happen, or she was not able to deal with a situation.

Heaven help you if what Linda thought was going to happen did not happen.

We got to the hotel.

Linda thought we would check in, then go to our room and she would get ready before she met my parents.

I did not know that was what she was expecting.

I had to find my father before we could check in. He had made the reservations and was paying for the room.

When Linda found out, she started yelling at me.

She was simply not able to deal with a change in plans, at least not when she was under stress.

There were many incidents like this throughout the weekend that made it a hard weekend.

I think, though, that the hardest part for Linda was the evening my mother took us to the Seattle Space Needle.

As I said, my parents were putting on a conference, so we could spend time with one of them and then the other.

My parents each year would bring one of my nieces or nephews up. This year, it was Alex.

While we were eating, Alex needed to be taken to the restroom.

My mother asked me to take him.

As soon as we had left the table, she turned on Linda and demanded to know when we were going to get married.

I know that Linda never forgot that and was always a little afraid of my mother because of it.

Money was a big problem. I hate for that to be true, but it was.

For example, Linda had stopped paying her car insurance and they dropped her.

Now insurance is something you pay for, but hope you never need.

Well, Linda was driving home from visiting friends in Astoria when she found out just how much she needed it.

She was on I-5 when she hit something.

We never found out what it was.

We found some gray fir cracks in the radiator.

She managed to drive home but there were thousands of dollars in damage.

Then I found out that she was uninsured.

Well, Linda sold everything she could think of, but it was still not enough to pay for the damage.

So, I loaned her the money to fix the car.

Linda had told me that she had used drugs in her past, but she had no desire to use them again.

That is what she told me in the beginning of our relationship.

After she moved in with me, things changed.

One afternoon, Linda called me at work.

She told me that she was having terrible cravings for cocaine and we needed to find her a CA meeting.

That night, we went to a meeting near our house.

This should have been another warning sign for me.

But I took it completely differently.

Instead of warning me of Linda’s problem, I saw it as a confirmation that she had it under control.

She knew when she needed help and knew how to find the help she needed.

This reassured me.

It was clear that Linda needed a much better income than the $800 a month she was getting from SSDI.

It also seemed to me that Linda should be able to work.

So I encouraged her, and she started looking for a job.

I think Linda really liked the idea of going back to work and getting over her disability.

She applied all over the place and soon we had a new problem.

Linda needed clothes to wear on a job interview.

Linda’s fiction about her father having money for her was also continuing.

In fact, Linda had told me that she had phoned her dad and that he was going to send her some money to pay back the money I had loaned her, and to help her get a new outfit for work.

I was starting to get suspicious about the “daddy has money for me” thing.

It really did not make sense, and I was not interested in Linda for the money.

Linda got a call from our local hospital for an interview.

Now she really needed that outfit, and asked me if I could lend her the money for it.

I was nervous about this and asked her:

“OK, but could you just call your father and make certain that he has mailed the check?”

“Sure, can you loan me your phone. Hi, Dad. Odell and I are on the way to Nordstrom’s to get me a suit for my job interview. I wanted to check and see if you mailed me the check. You have. That’s great. Well, say hi to Mom, I have to go.”

When Linda handed the phone back to me, I checked, and sure enough she had called her father.

What I did not know was that while she called, he never answered, and she was speaking the whole time to the sound of the phone ringing.

I took Linda out and we got her a killer interview outfit.

I know that men are not supposed to like shopping.

But I do like taking my woman out, dressing her up, seeing her put on something, and finding the best outfit for her.

Linda had a new black suit, white blouse, pantyhose, shoes, even pearls, fake.

She was set to interview for any professional position.

And it only took a few hundred dollars.

Well, dressed to the nines, Linda aced her interview and was hired as a unit secretary for Same Day Services.

Linda loved her job.

It was only part time and she would not be making so much that it would affect her SSDI.

So it really helped the money problems, but it also helped Linda.

She felt for the first time in years like she had some control over her life and was not a slave to the government.

The only drawback was the shifts.

Part of her job was to cover when other people were going to be out.

So some days she would work from 6:00 am till 2:00 pm, others from 11:00 am till 7:30 pm.

The worst days were the days when she worked till 7:30 pm one day and had to start the next day at 6:00 am.

But she loved it and was good at it.

Finally, for the first time in years, she was succeeding.

Linda started work in August of 2000.

Toward the end of August, Linda took a trip down to California to visit her sister.

I do not know all the details of what happened down there, but I do know that when Linda came back she wanted to know where she stood and where our relationship was headed.

I wanted to know the answer to those questions as well.

Several times in the past Linda had told me that she was not interested in getting married, to anyone.

But I had already made up my mind that I was going to find out for sure.

If things kept getting better and we were still together by Christmas, on Christmas Eve after the midnight service, the most romantic night of the year in my opinion, I was going to ask her to marry me.

That was the plan, anyway.

The morning after Linda returned from her sister’s, I drove her to work and we talked.

Linda said:

“I am worried. Can you tell me what we’re doing? I mean, do you think we have a future?”

“Well, I have been thinking about that too. I have been thinking about how wonderful it is to have you with me in my life.”

“Yes, I like being with you, but I do not know what is going to happen.”

“Well, you told me once that you did not think you ever wanted to get married. But I was planning to ask you to marry me on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh God, really, that is wonderful.”

I spent the day thinking about it.

The whole point of asking her on Christmas Eve was that it would be a surprise, and now the surprise was ruined.

So there was no point in waiting.

When she got home from work, I got on one knee and asked her to be mine.

She said yes.

Then I called her father and asked for the hand of his “little girl.”

Next: Chapter 06 - Linda and Odell Engaged

Previous: Chapter 04 - Linda and Odell at First

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