wasn’t. Not at the time. They were just engaged. Whether or not Dena knew he was engaged is anyone’s guess, although I don’t see how she would have. Engaged men don’t wear rings, and it’s not as if Dena asks a man a lot of questions before inviting him into her bed.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s completely fair. But if it makes you feel better, let’s say she did ask him if he was involved with anyone else. What are the chances he would have told her the truth?”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But…you just said this was before they got married?” A couple took the table next to us and I scooted my chair closer to Leah so we could continue our conversation in quieter tones. “If she knew her fiancé was messing around, why did she go through with it?”
“Apparently Chrissie didn’t find out about what Tim did until after the wedding. God only knows how it all came to her attention. Of course if she had hired me to plan her wedding, I would have been able to alert her to the problem. I can always spot a cheater.”
“Leah, you were married to a cheater and you didn’t have a clue until he announced he was leaving you for a twenty-two-year-old.”
“Well, I learned from that,” Leah snapped. “Now I can spot a cheater from a mile away. Of course, I didn’t get within a mile of Tim. I’ve never even met the man. But if I had been allowed to plan the wedding I would have seen right through him and then—”
“And then there wouldn’t have been a wedding to plan,” I said irritably. Listening to Leah chastise another woman for marrying a cheater was like listening to Lindsay Lohan complain about reckless drivers.
“Perhaps there wouldn’t have been,” Leah said with a shrug. “On the other hand, perhaps they would have worked it out. It’s not as if she’s left him now that she knows.”
“And yet she’s still after Dena?”
“Yes.” Leah fingered the stiffly starched collar of her pale blue linen shirt. “That part’s understandable.”
“How? Dena’s not the one who cheated. Tim is!”
“Yes, but Chrissie’s not married to Dena,” Leah pointed out. “If Chrissie puts all the blame on Dena’s shoulders she doesn’t have to worry about finding a good marriage therapist or divorce attorney. Focusing all her bad feelings on Dena helps her salvage the good feelings she has for Tim. Really, Sophie, it’s Psychology 101.”
“Leah, I took Psych 101. There isn’t a textbook in the world that names scapegoating and the displacement of blame as good coping strategies.”
“All right, fine. But are you honestly going to tell me that you’ve never done it? You’ve never blamed your ex-husband for all of your problems?”
“That’s different!” I shot back.
“Why?”
“Because…because he’s fair game. Ex-husbands were put on this earth to be blamed for things. That’s just the way it is.”
“Really?” Leah asked, raising her eyebrows. “Did they teach you that in psych class?”
“Oh, shut up,” I responded without any real vehemence. “How do you know all this anyway?” I asked as I took a sip of my drink.
“Two years ago, only about a month before she put MAAP together, Chrissie cornered me after one of our board meetings. She said she had been researching Dena Lopiano and apparently she found a picture of me standing next to her on a Google image search. She wanted to know if I was aware that the woman she presumed to be my friend was really a home-wrecker.”
“And what did you say?”
Leah shrugged. “I told her that Dena wasn’t anything of the sort. She’s just a tad slutty, that’s all.”
“Leah!”
“Are you honesty going to tell me I’m wrong?”
“You can be extremely promiscuous without being a slut.”
“According to what dictionary?”
I gripped the edge of the table and then quickly drew my hand away as I discovered the hardened lump of someone’s old gum. “Oh, that’s great. Do you have one of those antibacterial wipes?” I asked as I examined my fingers with disgust. Leah wordlessly pulled out the requested item. That’s the thing about moms: they’re always prepared for the yucky stuff.
“I’ll wait while you throw that away,” Leah said, pointedly staring at the used wipe.
I wrinkled my nose at her before dutifully getting up to find a trash can for the wipe. When I got back Leah had her iPhone out on the table.
“Tell me more.”
Leah brightened, clearly happy that she would be allowed to continue to dish. “After confronting me about the whole picture thing, Chrissie told me that she had recently learned about the little tryst Tim had with Dena. I assured her that the affair couldn’t have been long-lived since, until her recent arrangement, Dena has never stayed with a man for longer than one full moon cycle. But Chrissie went ahead and put together MAAP anyway.”
“Okay, but Dena’s been faithful to her polyamorous relationship for…well… about a year and a half now, so whatever was going on between Dena and Tim is over. Shouldn’t Chrissie be getting over it, too?”
“One would think,” Leah agreed. “But it would appear that time hasn’t healed this wound. At. All. In fact it appears that Chrissie’s wound is ulcerous.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chrissie’s been upping the stakes of the battle.” Leah picked up her iPhone and started punching things into it. “Last week she posted an article on a conservative online Web site called The Virtuous Journal. Now, you know I have nothing against conservative magazines. I’ve voted Republican all my life. But this particular site is…to the right of Rush Limbaugh.”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“And yet it is.” Leah was still madly pecking and stroking her iPhone. “And can you believe that Chrissie actually sent me a link to the article she wrote for them? Ah, here it is. Take a look.”
She handed the phone over and on the screen was the article. I started to skim it but the pure acidity of the words slowed me down. “Oh. My. God.”
“I told you she was wretched.”
But I wasn’t really listening to Leah anymore.
Miss Lopiano and her fellow pornography peddlers have made it their life ambition to make smut a major part of the American way of life. She has purposely chosen to be a social liability; a disease we should try to cure ourselves of.
I stopped reading and stared at Leah. “She’s flat-out telling her readers that the world would be a better place without Dena!”
“That does appear to be the point.”
“And
