My son’s beanbag burst open while he was playing, and what fell out of it ruined my marriage.
I used to think people who said they accidentally discovered their spouse’s secret life were ignoring obvious signs. I thought there was always a strange phone call, a suspicious receipt, a sudden change in behavior, something they chose not to see. I judged those people quietly. I told myself that if anything were ever wrong in my own house, I would know, because I paid attention, because I was not the kind of woman who let things slide past her.
Then my seven year old son jumped onto his beanbag chair, the seam split open, and dozens of tightly rolled hundred dollar bills spilled across his bedroom floor.
At first I did not even understand what I was looking at. White foam beads were everywhere, stuck to the carpet, his clothes, even his hair, and mixed in with them were these little rubber banded bundles of cash. My son froze and stared at me like he thought he was in trouble. I remember his face more clearly than almost anything else from that day, the way his lower lip started to go, the way children brace themselves when they have broken something and do not yet know how large the something is. He had not broken anything. He had simply, by being a child and jumping the way children jump, cracked open the center of my whole life.
The beanbag had been a gift from my husband, Mark, three years earlier. He brought it home already assembled and made a big deal about no one opening the zipper because, according to him, those tiny beads would destroy the house. In some sense he was right. Something in that chair did destroy the house. Just not the beads.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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