The Beginning of the War Against Me - Part 1 - I'm not Paranoid, No Need to Call My Therapist. Sadly, It's All True
The Beginning
Peter and I met in August 1993. He had hired me to work in the jewelry store in Cincinnati that he and his mother owned so that he could run their Lexington shop. It was pretty much love at first chat. Within 2 months we had already discussed marriage, although I told Peter that we could not be officially engaged until Christmas-time because I knew my parents would think I had lost my mind. It seemed like a dream-come-true, I was walking on air for months. We stayed up talking all night many nights. We burned up the phone lines and the highway between Cincinnati and Lexington. It seemed so perfect. It was perfect.
Then along came my mother-in-law to be. She did not seem to like me. The first expression I ever saw on her face was a sneer. I truly believed that with time, and once she saw how much I loved her son, she would change her mind. But it only got worse. She was curt with me, she talked behind my back. Little things, like not telling me my lipstick was smeared from eating a bagel until I had already helped a customer, begin to add up.
One morning during the beginning of my employment, I was scheduled to open the store with another employee. Without warning me, Nancy told the other employee he did not have to work that morning. I was able to get into the store because the bench jeweler was already there but I did not know the safe combination. After waiting for 10 minutes for the other employee to show up, I began to get anxious. I called him at home but got no answer. I finally found Nancy's home number and called her. She was very short with me and aggravated that the store was going to be opening late. She claimed that she could not remember the safe combination and would call me back. After a few minutes she called me back and on the 3rd try, she provided the correct combination. Before hanging up, she told me to hurry up and get the store open. I frantically put the jewelry out and opened the shop. I was terrified. I knew virtually nothing about jewelry and very little about how the shop was run.
That afternoon when the employee finally came in, he removed one of the diamond wedding rings from the display case without me noticing. He walked over to me and asked what happened with the ring. I was distraught, had I somehow been robbed without noticing? I knew that I had shown a ring in that case to a man, could he have somehow stolen the missing ring? I began searching all over the shop for the ring, convinced that any second they were going to call the police and blame me. I did not know if I could be sued for the missing ring, or exactly what would happen. Peter and his mother might never forgive me, this could be the end of my dream relationship. Near tears, I spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the ring. Suddenly I noticed that the ring was back in the case. I realized that the other employee had hidden the ring and played a very mean trick on me. He was standing behind the case smirking.
Was it just the employee being cruel to me? After all, Nancy had authorized his morning off, leaving me alone as the sole responsible employee, and without the safe combination. It all seemed like too big of a coincidence to be an accident. I suspected that she was in on the whole thing with this employee. If after he orchestrated this whole cruel charade and after being so irresponsible to leave me alone to open when he knew that I did not know the safe combination, well then any normal boss would fire him right? If Nancy fired him when she learned of what he did to me, then she wasn't involved in the cruel trick.
The employee wasn't fired. I told Peter that I had to break up with him because I did not want to spend my life in a family with a mother-in-law who hated me. The parents of my past boyfriends had always loved me, in fact I am still in touch with some of them today. I could not conceive of the future rolling out with such dislike, hostility and disrespect. Peter swore up and down that she just needed time to get to know me. Once she got to know me, she would warm up to me. She really wasn't a bad person, she just needed to know me better. I believed him, after all it was his mother, he must know her pretty well.
I tried to get to know her better. We, the three of us, scheduled lunch and breakfast dates. I tried to start conversations with her, but she would change the topic to something about which I knew nothing, like the financials or past jewelry shows they had attended. She spent a lot of time running down Peter's ex-girlfriend, telling me she looked like a giant grape in her purple outfits. I have since learned that the woman was a size 4, hardly a grape. At the same time she would talk about how great it was that Peter's ex was an heiress and was able to take him on luxurious vacations when they were together.
When she wasn't running someone down, she was discussing her dating and sex life in gruesome detail. I was completely unaccustomed to a parent discussing their sex life so freely with their child and in front of a virtual stranger. Peter was embarrassed. I heard about the dating service guy who cried after they had sex, the customer she dated, the guy who wanted her to dress up in sexy outfits and high heels, the guy who talked dirty during their encounters, the supplier she went out with, the guy from Beaver Liquors who had the double entendres on his t-shirts, the guy who always drank too much and smelled of liquor during sex, and on, and on. Frankly I was unable to be casual during these conversations and I am not very good at hiding my feelings--the looks on my face probably spoke volumes. I do not think she appreciated my disgust at her antics and never-ending experiences. On "Sex and the City," it's funny. When it's your mother-in-law to be, it's not funny.
But it got even worse. There was a guy, "Mr. Wong," who lived in the apartment above her apartment in Cincinnati. She talked about him a lot. "He was nice, he was cute, and he drove a BMW." Peter and I thought this was great because she might settle down and the sex escapades and talk would cease. For a few weeks we did not see or hear from her. We were busy too, with the beginning stages of wedding plans. Then she called because she wanted to meet for breakfast. She and Wong had gone on an "interesting first date." We would meet and she could tell us the story. Now my interpretation of an "interesting first date" was maybe they went up in a hot air balloon, or he used special connections to go backstage at a concert, or maybe he took her to a unique part of the city. I couldn't have been more wrong.
They were on their way to go out to dinner when they were rear-ended at a stoplight by a woman driving a Cadillac. Instead of getting out of the car, Wong panicked and flew through the red light saying, "Oh shit." The car pursued them and continued to rear-end them, at one red-light the woman was slowly pushing them into an intersection with cross traffic. Wong pulled to the side and eventually made his way into a police station parking lot with this woman following them. She turned and left before charges could be brought. As you may have guessed, the woman was a not-quite- ex-girlfriend who suspected Wong was up to no good and followed him.
I asked Nancy if she got a ride home with the police or what, saying she could have called us for a ride. "No," she said "it was very exciting and we went out to dinner anyway." "What?" I asked, "This woman could have followed you two the whole night and may now know where you live! You could be in danger!" She told me it wasn't Wong's fault that his ex-girlfriend acted that way and she wasn't going to blame him. Nancy became very aggravated with me and told me that it was fine, she was going to go over to the house Wong shared with his ex that afternoon to help him move things out. I told Nancy that I thought the whole thing sounded very dangerous. I asked how she could be sure that Wong wasn't just a married man who had an apartment on the side. She said Wong had spent the night with her a number of times in the past 3 weeks, that the ex-girlfriend refused to leave the house they had shared but had promised to let him come into the house and get his things. Nancy claimed the ex-girlfriend was not going to be there when she and Wong went to get his things so Nancy would be safe. She was very short with me and condescending in tone, so I dropped it. Peter tried to reason with her but she became angry with him too and the rest of the meal was very awkward.
We called her that night to see how things went and it had turned into a physical confrontation with Wong basically being beaten up by the woman while Nancy called the police on her cell phone. I asked if she intended to keep dating him after the violent episode and she curtly said, "Of course." I was floored when she next said that she wanted us all to go out to dinner together. Peter agreed and we were set to meet the man with the less than auspicious beginnings.
Peter and I arrived at the restaurant first and sat down to wait for Nancy and Wong. When Nancy walked in with Wong we were shocked to see a boy-faced man who looked to be no older than 19 years old. This was the "great guy" that she was putting herself in danger to date? It had to be a joke. But it was no joke. He was a year younger than Peter. Nancy later assured us that he was "all man." That was just too much information for us and we dropped it.
Wong claimed he did not have a job but did not elaborate on how he supported himself. He said he had rented the apartment next door to his own as an office in which to do development work on light rail trains in Japan. We asked what type of development work he performed and he said "magnetic experiments." Weeks later when we knew him better Peter and I privately joked that he probably took 2 magnets off of his refrigerator and in a 'development work' notebook recorded, "when pressed together in one direction they attract, when turned around they repel, interesting concept to develop."
As the weeks passed, we saw more of Wong who had huge amounts of cash. I asked Nancy if she ever discovered what he did for a living and she said he never discussed it. Peter and I became worried that maybe Wong was a drug dealer or something equally as nefarious. He never appeared as if he was on drugs, but we simply could not think of any other explanation for the amount of cash he constantly flashed. He claimed his parents were working doctors and his siblings were in college, he never went to a job at any time. We finally told Nancy our concerns about his steady stream of cash. She said she would find out what why he was so secretive and what he did for a living.
Wong was a lottery winner. Nancy claimed this explained everything; he was secretive because he did not want to be used for his money. I refrained from pointing out that he had not hidden his wealth, he flaunted it. The truth is that Wong probably did not want to be revealed as a good-for-nothing who happened to literally hit-the-jackpot, 5 million dollars worth. Wong spent the next few times we saw him desperately trying to prove how accomplished he was. He claimed to have attended NYU before dropping out to do his 'development work' with magnets.
However, I had spent a number of years dating someone from New York City and had spent time in the City. In talking, it was apparent that he had spent little, if any time in the City. Wong desperately tried to dig his way out of his lies and tried to claim that he went clubbing at the same club I had visited. This club was a multi-level club with a different type of music on each floor and 2 VIP rooms. I asked Wong which level had been his favorite and he picked the 3rd floor which just happened to be the hard-core rap level. When he saw the look on my face, he jumped up from the table to go to the bathroom. When Wong returned he was flushed and said, "Courtney, I think you are pulling my leg aren't you? You and I both know that the club has only one floor." "No, Wong," I responded "the club has at least 5 floors and the level you picked was the hard-core rap floor." Nancy was furious and did not look at me the rest of the afternoon.
Another time, I asked Wong how it felt to know that his wealth was the accumulation of all of these individual Ohioans contributing just a few dollars. He said he never thought about it. A recent lottery winner had just contributed a huge amount to charity and I asked him which charities he supported. Wong said he didn't believe in charities. Nancy shot me a nasty look across the table. What an irony considering Wong had scored the motherload with what could easily be considered a charity given to him without merit. Months later Wong proudly told me that he had given $50 to a charity and that "it hurt, so I won't be doing that again."
I am not sure why Nancy was determined for us to associate with Wong. Every time we went out with them as a couple, Wong's lies and ridiculousness could not be contained and Nancy became more and more angry with me. None of her wrath was for Peter, only for me, as if Peter could not possibly figure out on his own that Wong was full of baloney. Why exactly Nancy was willing to believe Wong's lies was simply beyond us at the time. Looking back, I know that for Nancy his fat wallet outweighed his fat lies every time. So much for him not being used.
In retrospect, I believe that Nancy knew before she dated Wong that he was a lottery winner. Gossip like that would be a hard thing to keep quiet in an apartment complex full of singles. Maybe all she knew was that he flashed a lot of cash, who knows? But lying and pretending to be ignorant about his income source for months would not be a stretch for her.
Instead of just going along with Wong's lies so Nancy could live the high life, I opened my mouth and exposed him as a liar and a fool. It was uncomfortable and embarrassing for her and she hated me for it. But of course, Wong is not the end of the War, he is just a part of the Beginning.