Loneliness

Calgary, December 2021

“Your honor, I loved her, I really did, and I am very sorry it came to this,” said James Smith during the divorce proceedings against his wife Maria. “At the beginning, she was a ray of hope for me, a chance to rebuild my shattered life. But now this chance collapsed like a house of cards.” James was close to crying. He felt more than ever the truth about himself. He was an old, lonely, and unhappy man. Rich, but unhappy.

Why did it come to this? James asked himself that question many times. Why a successful businessman like himself ends up being lonely and bitter? Wealth is supposed to make you happy, and initially it did make him happy. He excelled at work, then started his own business and, against all probabilities, his company prospered and grew. He was hiring new employees and one of them was Barbara, who became the head of the marketing group. But she was more than that. She was also his friend, then his lover and finally his wife. All went well, and it didn’t matter that they were spending way too much time working and way too little time together. They enjoyed getting rich. But as time was passing, Barbara felt that life should be more than just getting rich.
“We are missing something,” she said one of those rare evenings when they were both at home.
“What do you mean?” asked James.
“How many times in the last month we had an evening like that?”
“I don’t know, maybe five times?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But we are happy.”
“You are happy.”
“So, what you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. I only know that the most important thing for you is your company. I come second.”
It was true, but James didn’t see it that way.
“But I love you,” he said.
That was also true, and Barbara knew it.

There was no solution to their dilemma. James couldn’t change and Barbara was tired of the hectic life. They didn’t need more money. So, one day came what had to come, what was inevitable.
“James,” said Barbara, “we have to talk.”
“About what?”
“About us. I know I am going to hurt you and I am very sorry, but I cannot postpone it any longer. I will be leaving you.”
“You will leave me? Why? Did I offend you in any way?”
“No, you didn’t, you were always nice to me. But I cannot continue with our lifestyle anymore. I am tired of the long hours of work, of endless meetings, of business travels and all that.”
“You can quit your job and stay home.”
“And wait every night for you to come home from work or to return from a business trip. Besides, it is too late for that. I have met somebody else.”
“You mean you have a lover?"
That was when Barbara started to cry. “O James, I feel so terrible. Yes, I do have a lover. You were always nice to me, and you don’t deserve this, but I cannot continue the way we live now. I am tired. You live for your company, it is your world, but it isn’t my world.”
“So, you found yourself some lazy looser who will take advantage of you?”
“No James, I would never go with anybody like that. He is one of those academic from their Ivory Tower, a prof with a good salary, regular working hours and just few trips to various conferences. I met him while doing promotion for your company.”
James felt that the whole world collapsed round him. “What will you do now?”
“I will resign from my job and move with him. And before you say anything, I will not argue about money. I know you are an honest, fair man and we will come to an agreement without lawyers. Also, I am not asking for divorce, but if you or I would want to remarry, we will have to go through it.”

That’s how it ended. Barbara moved out and James stayed in his big, luxurious house, all by himself, and it was hard. At night, lying alone in bed, he was imagining Barbara with the other man, how they are holding each other in their arms, kissing, making love. Why did it end up like this? James believed that Barbara was sharing his dream, the dream of creating a big, successful, and important company, but James was tragically wrong. Barbara didn’t share his dream, and he lost her. Could he keep her if he would sell the company? Probably not, because it would make him very unhappy, and it is difficult to live with somebody who is unhappy. Now the company was all what was left to him, and he immerged himself even more to work. He could find another woman, a replacement for Barbara, but he didn’t want to. James was afraid of another heartbreak. One-night stands or short adventures were OK, but he avoided serious relationship.

However, all that changed during one of his business trips, when he met Maria. She was a receptionist in the hotel where he was staying, she was young, beautiful, and smiling at him when he checked in.
“Do you have reservation, sir?” she asked with a slight foreign accent.
He did, and then he couldn’t resist asking: “What is your name?”
“Maria.”
“Maria, you are beautiful, but I am sure others already told you that.”
Next day he invited her for coffee and day after, just before he was returning home, they had a dinner together. He felt ridiculous, she could have been his daughter, but the evening was pleasant. She was telling him about her planes for the future, about her homeland, and James was listening and imagining Maria to be his daughter, the daughter he never had because of the hectic life with Barbara. Next day, when he came home, he sent her e-mail, she replied, there were more e-mails and then, on a spur of a moment, he invited her to visit him during her holidays. “You are crazy,” his friends were telling him. “She is too young for you. She could be your daughter. Besides, she is just after your money.” They were right about the first part, but not about rest. Maria wasn’t a gold digger. Surely, it will be nice to be pampered by a rich man, but she had no other intentions.

The visit went surprisingly well. James took her to good restaurants, they went to the usual tourist attractions and yes, they made love. Finally, James could hold in his arms a woman to whom he felt more than just a sexual attraction, just like he was holding Barbara so many years ago.
“Will you come back?” he asked while driving her to the airport for her return flight.
“I will.”
And she did. Many times. Then came a day when James contacted Barbara and asked her for a divorce.
“So, you found someone, and you want to remarry. I am really glad for you.”
Barbara meant it. She never stopped feeling guilty about abandoning him.
“You are crazy,” kept saying again his friends. “She will take your money and then will drop you for a younger man.” And again, they were only half right. Maria wasn’t after James’s money. She truly loved him. He became her husband and was also a fatherly figure which she never had during her childhood. James felt the same way about her. Maria was not only his wife, but she was also an image of a daughter he never had. The age difference was not yet a problem. The only thing James insisted on was not having children. In his mind he already had one child, her, and he considered himself too old to be a father of a new baby.

The first step in Maria’s new life was to improve her qualification. It wouldn’t make any sense to stay home a had nothing to do. She enrolled in university courses, got a degree in business administration, and found a good job, but not in James’s company. He learned the hard way that business and marriage don’t mix. Years went by and the age difference started to show.
“Let’s go to the movies,” was Maria’s usual suggestion. They went, but James didn’t enjoy it. For him all the movies were too long and too loud. Once a year they also went for holidays to various beach resorts.
“Let’s go dancing,” Maria asked in the evenings when the music was blasting.
“You know I cannot dance. Go by yourself, I am sure you find somebody to dance with.” She always did find somebody; she was still beautiful.

At home the routine was slowly changing. In the early days of their marriage, it was James who was working long hours and Maria was waiting for him, sometimes complaining about it. Now it was the other way round. James was working less and less, delegating the responsibility of running the company to other people, and Maria was working more and more. At least that’s what she was telling him. One evening, while waiting for her, aimlessly wandering through the house, he saw Maria’s laptop, still logged into her e-mail. He knew he shouldn’t read it but couldn’t resist. It was a mistake. He found out what he wasn’t supposed to know. The e-mail was full of letters to her lover, about their meetings, and comments how happy she was. James had the awful feeling of ‘here we go again.’

When Maria came home late in the evening, James showed her the laptop.
“You left it in your room.”
Then, with a cruel replay of the scene with Barbara so many years ago, Maria started to cry.
“I am sorry James, I know I am hurting you, but I couldn’t help it. You were always nice to me, and at the beginning you were a good husband and a fatherly figure, but now you are just a father to me. You are not husband anymore and I need a man of my age with whom I can do what I like to do, for example to go dancing. I can be your daughter but not your wife.”
“You aren’t my daughter, and I am not your father. I cannot have a coffee with you in the afternoon knowing that you will spend the night with your lover. It would hurt too much. I want a divorce.”

And that brings us to the beginning of the story. James was standing in front of the judge, explaining to him what happened and how he found out. When it was Maria’s turn to speak, she didn’t deny anything.
“Your honor, I always loved my husband, but in last few years he wasn’t a husband anymore. When we met, I was twenty-five and he was fifty. Now I am forty-five and he is seventy. I need a man of my age. I suggested I will be a daughter to him, but he rejected it. Therefore, I accept his demand for a divorce.”

There was not much else to say. The judge granted them the divorce, everybody left the courtroom and James was standing there alone, old, and unhappy. He realized more than ever that money cannot buy happiness.