Masterpiece in Progress by Smith, TL (snow like ashes txt) 📕

dancing or playing card games at his place. Typical young people stuff.  His roommates had a whole bar set up in their garage.  Complete with craps table and poker table, jukebox, and stocked bar.  It was impressive.

I hated it when he had to go out on the road because that meant days of not hearing from him. (This was pre cell phone days).

When his roommates realized things were getting serious, they pulled me aside one night and told me he was not a truck driver, he washed trucks at the truck lot one of the roommate’s dad's owned.  I was so embarrassed.

I thanked them and confronted Jerry. I was livid, hurt, shamed. I mean, were they all laughing at how stupid I was to believe him?

I quit taking his calls for a week or so. He showed up at my house one night at 11pm. I could tell he'd been drinking and that upset me too that he was driving. He begged me to let him explain. I sent him home and told him to call me when he hadn't been drinking.

He called the next day and I agreed to hear him out. It was then that he told me he was embarrassed about his job. He also said he'd been married before and had a child. I had wondered how a 26-year-old man hadn't been in some kind of serious relationship, but he had told me previously that he hadn't. So, another lie.

But then he told me how a girl like me could never fall in love with a guy like him, divorced, no good job, no car, nothing to offer and my heart broke for him. I had no idea then that his mom had put him on a plane with $100 bill and sent him away before he wound up dead or in jail.  And I wouldn’t find that out until YEARS later.

I told him then, "No more lies, EVER." "I will not forgive you again."

A few weeks later his roommates fired him and kicked him out of the house (supposedly for allowing me to stay over the one night I ever stayed there).

They threw all his belongings (which wasn't much) out by the dumpster. I helped him gather them and took them to my house (my mom's house). But I knew my mom, and there was NO way she was going to let him stay with us.

He slept on the park benches in our mobile home park (in California they aren't "trailer" parks, they are mobile homes and having seen both, that is an accurate statement.)

After about 5 days of doing this, I begged my mom to let him come live with us, he could sleep on the daybed in the front room. After some back and forth, tears, rules, she agreed.

He moved in and slept on the daybed in our living room for a couple weeks.

I'm sure my mom knew that he would sneak into my room at night, but if she did, she never let on. Within a month, we were sharing my bedroom and living together as a couple, with my mom.

Jerry got a job building cabinets and I got a job working for a national pizza chains national commissary. Thankfully our jobs were close to one another since he didn't have a car, we shared mine, that my mom helped me get.  He would drop me off at work early, go to work himself since he had to be there earlier than me, then pick me up after I got off.

Things were good, we enjoyed each other's company and helping my mom at the same time. I made sure my mom had nothing to do at home as far as housework went and Jerry handled the lawn. (It wasn't that much lawn in a mobile home park, but we only had a manual push, blade, mower so it wasn't easy).

He never proposed to me, but there was always talk of marriage and we had started planning a wedding for the next year. Then I found out I was pregnant. That kind of pushed up the wedding.

I was 3 1/2 months pregnant when we got married in the clubhouse of the mobile home park. His family couldn’t be there, so my mom made sure to send his parents flowers. I remember him telling me that one of his buddies at work asked him why he was getting married when there were so many girls in California. That should have been a clue to me that that was his own insecurity about this marriage coming out. He was just using his friend as a scapegoat. I didn't realize this though until MUCH later in life, like just a few years ago.

My grandpa also got him feeling no pain BEFORE the actual ceremony and I was kind of upset about that, but figured this is just what guys do, so I let it go. And my brother was there, at the wedding, but told me I didn’t have to marry him.  That I shouldn’t marry him.  But I did.

During those pregnant days I can only recall one time that we had a minor disagreement and he left the house, in my car. This was LONG before cell phones, so I was frantic wondering where he was. By the time he returned I was nearly inconsolable crying. He told me he had gone to wash the car, but in my mind I just knew he had just left. I don't know why then, but every time he or my mom were late I was sick and frantic with worry. Like, in a crazy way, frantic. I would learn later this was a form of anxiety and ptsd.

I can't remember him going to any doctor's appointments with me, but by then, he had made supervisor at his job and I knew he really couldn't get away. At