"SHIT," Caroline Jarrett spat out loud when her left tennis shoe clipped the coffee table in the middle of her claustrophobic living room.
"At least you didn't do it with your sandals on like the other day," she chided herself, trying to rub the pain from her foot as she fought the overwhelming urge to kick over the 4-legged nuisance in front of her. "You lived in the same house for 19 years...and now... you have to get use to moving around in this Goddamn bandbox...you should have at least made sure the walls were padded before you signed the lease."
19 years in the same house, 24 years in the same marriage, both numbers that conjure up images of consistency and permanence.
"This... is... just... fucking...crazy," Caroline let out a long sigh before collapsing down on the sofa.
Resting her feet on the same table she had almost toppled to the floor a moment earlier, Caroline allowed the quiet surroundings her to slowly calm her frazzled nerves.
"Nice life you've made for yourself, Darling," she mocked, mentally surveying the fallout of her current lot in life for the 12 millionth time since the divorce.
"You went from owning a 4 bedroom 3 bath house to this fucking third floor condo... just like that... just like that," the 44 year old mother of three spat, once again tempted to send the coffee table through the opposing wall.
"Man cheats on you for the last 10 years and you didn't have a clue...pretends to be the perfect Husband and as soon as your youngest kid turns 18 he springs the news that you've been living a lie for your entire adult life...said he didn't want to have the kids deal with it while they were growing up...you dropped out of college your Sophomore year for the Bastard when he knocked you up... you did the right thing and married him and next thing you know...your pregnant again... and then again...3 kids in 4 years and any chance at having a career of your own... right down the toilet," Caroline's bitter mantra played like a broken record inside her head.
"Even when the kids got a little older and you wanted to go out and get a small part time job to help with the bills, build a hint of a resume and make some connections, he would say, 'Oh Honey...we're doing fine...' and you would always say... 'Alright,'... so when he walked into the kitchen a year and a half ago... three weeks after your Daughter turned 18 and casually lays the divorce papers on the counter while youre fixing dinner and says he's found someone else...what in the Hell are you supposed to do? "
"No college degree...No job experience...No child support and not even a penny of alimony because of that fucked up male judge...not that I want a penny of that Motherfucker's money... just what in the Hell was I supposed to do!"
Just as her sobs of frustration and hurt were about to bubble to the surface however, Caroline looked up to the three decade old picture of her now deceased parents on the wall. Gaining enough strength from their smiling faces looking down on her to ward off those tears of failure she so wanted to cry, Caroline bit her lower lip and reminded herself just how strong and resiliant they had raised her to be.
Born in 1959, just as the nation's racial disharmony was coming to a head, Caroline often reminded herself how charmed of a life she had been blessed with growing up. Reared in a middle class home in the suburbs of Chicago, unlike many of her friends from childhood, she was never at a loss for quality role models at home.
Watching the craziness of the Sixties unfold nightly on the family's black and white tv as a small child, Caroline inherantly knew being a black person in America could be a daunting task as she grew into adulthood. In many ways however, she had been sheltered from the worst of the hardships. Growing up in a house where both her Mother and Father had good jobs with the Chicago school system, poverty was never an issue and opportunity seemed to abound.
The third of five kids, Caroline learned how to fight for everything she earned, whether it was at the dinner table or in the classroom. A steller student, Caroline had been accepted by several major colleges before deciding to stay close to home and attend the University Of Loyola. It was there, two months into her Freshman year at a fraternity party, she crossed paths with a 22 year old Senior by the name of Steven Jarrett.
Wanting to keep Caroline's focus squarely on her academics while she was growing up, her parents were loathe to the idea of her dating seriously as a teenager. Her virginity intact when she went off to college, Caroline intended to keep it that way until she met the man she was going to marry. And that's exactly what she did, only it occurred much quicker than she could have imagined.
Initially, Caroline thought she could handle playing with fire. Men, especially the upperclassmen were all over her from the day she stepped foot on campus. Of all the guys she encountered however, she found herself smitten with Steven from the word go.
While she had committed herself not to be the easy lay that so many of her fellow college friends had been, Caroline couldn't shake the feeling that there was something special between her and the soon to graduate Senior hunk.
Her virginity taken a few weeks before Christmas of '77 in Steven's bed, Caroline had made the bold step of bringing her new boyfriend around to visit her family for the Holidays. By the time he was about to graduate the following Spring and had landed a job at one of Chicago's major architectural firms, Caroline had fallen hard and completely for him.
When Steven offered Caroline the chance to move into his new apartment, despite her parent's adamant objections, she quickly jumped at the chance. Less than three months after that, barely into her second year of college, Caroline missed her first period. Two months later she was married and expecting, and her schooling had become an unfortunate afterthought.
Not that she regretted a moment spent with her children, being there everyday to both send them off to school and then welcome them home, Caroline took great pride that all three had developed into fine young adults and that each of them were in line to get the diploma she never had a chance to. But with all three now grown and out of the nest, and no longer having a Husband to attend to, Caroline was left, at the relatively young age of 44, with no real sense of identity or purpose.
Doing the best she could to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, Caroline enrolled herself in a series of computer and networking classes at a local business college. While she had given up the hope of getting an MBA and maybe running her own Fortune 500 company, she still felt there was enough time, and gas left in her tank, to make a dent somehow in the world despite the personal quagmire she had found herself in after the divorce.
While taking those initial computer courses, Caroline met a couple of other women in similar spots as hers and one of them had asked her to take an introduction to paralegal class so she would at least have someone she knew to study with. Caroline ended up taking to the course load so well she decided to get her paralegal certification and soon after landed an entry level position at the real estate law firm of Graham, Sisler and Probst.
The $28,000 a year she was hired at quickly jumped to $32,500 after an initial review. Not a lot of money for the urban environment she was living but more than enough for Caroline to get her feet underneath her and help rehabilitate her scarred self esteem.
______________________________________
While the job at the law firm had been a good thing for Caroline, it was nothing compared to the joy 47 year old David Conrad Sisler derived from it. Fresh out of law school, Dave was hired as a lawyer at the firm at 25, gradually worked his way up the corporate food chain and was promoted to a full fledged partner in 1997.
Staring aimlessly out his 20th story office window one lazy late Fall afternoon, enjoying the first hint of a spectacular mid November sunset, Dave couldn't help but chuckle at just how good he had it.