After our 'wedding' we celebrated with dinner and talked vaguely about our future plans. Dart's father had lived in a mobile home in a low-income mobile home park. He passed away years ago. The mobile home was Dart's technically, but he wasn't sure what the situation was with all the back lot rent that was owed on it. We would investigate that and see if there was some way we could reclaim it without paying a fortune.
I went home to my weekly efficiency apartment still buzzing from the whirlwind adventure of the day. I felt giddy. Maybe I did love Dart. He'd swept me off my feet. I was looking forward to building a life together.
Boy was I dumb.
I wasn't just dumb for marrying lying ex-con after only dating him for one month. I hadn't even thought of the real implications: we were both still incarcerated. My time at the half-way house wasn't up for another two weeks. I still had to check in once a week and turn over 25% of my pay. Dart had months to go yet. Getting married was not allowed. Once we were released and our probation started we were not supposed to have any contact with other felons. Being outright married to one was a violation that could get us put back in prison.
We never had a honeymoon. The next day I got a call on my cellphone at work. When I saw it was my probation officer my heart sank. My world came crashing in. What the Hell have I done?
Dart and I had the same probation officer. We'll call her Madge for her first initial and her badge. I answered the phone with my hand trembling. She got right to the point.
"Did you marry D_____ Art_____ yesterday?"
I went quiet. My mind was racing trying to think of a way out of this. Why was I so stupid stupid stupid!
"Well, did you or not?"
"Yes."
"Come to my office immediately after work. Do not go home, come straight here, do you understand me?" (Again, I paraphrase these quotes based on memory. I remember having to race there right after work that day.)
She hung up and I called Dart. I was panicking. I started talking to him a mile a minute about what just happened. He was cool as a cucumber.
"It's all right. It's all right. It's going to be okay."
"How did she even know?"
"I told her, Annie. I had to. You know I had to."
I had a cold sweat. I couldn't process what was going on. Why was he so calm about this? We could be thrown back into prison! Why hadn't he thought this out? Why hadn't I?
Well, Dart had thought this out. He'd been in the system his whole adult life. He knew a few things I didn't: 1. Someone with his record wasn't going to get violated over something trivial. 2. If we did get violated it was for a rule violation, not breaking the law. We'd only go back in for 30 days.
The risk didn't matter to him. Getting me tied to him permanently was all that mattered. Why? Was it because:
A. He needed a meal-ticket.
B. He wanted to con me out of every penny I made, or
C. He was an abusive man who needed a woman to subjugate.
The answer is D. None of the above.
Dart married me because he loved me. I can say all I want about his bad decisions, his askew thinking, and his constant scheming, but I know he loved me. He still does. He found a good thing in me and was desperate not to lose it.
Our situation with Madge was to his advantage. He told me that we had to sell our marriage to her in order to prevent us from getting probation violations.
He said something like, "Look, we're two people fresh out of prison, trying to get our shit together, and we found strength in each other. Let her know that we knew what we was doing. We knew. We had to go on and do it because otherwise she might not have let us. And we're going to make it, you know? We love each other. We going to be looking out for each other. Shit--we just doubled our chances of staying straight."
He gave me a good pep rally. The two of us went to see her together. I was totally gung-ho on the idea of convincing her we'd done the right thing. I went in there and poured my heart out. I'd found a lost soul in Dart and I knew I could support him. He professed to her that he loved me with all his heart. We went back and forth, on and on, battling her distrust and disgust. We stuck together. Our passion didn't falter for a second.
In the end she said she would have to talk to her superior to decide what action to take regarding our violation of the rules.
"When are we going to know if our probation is revoked?" I asked.
"You'll know if you're revoked if the marshals come to your office to drag you back to prison."
Ugh. It's moments like that when I feel like my stomach has literally dropped out of me and hit the floor.
After that she told us to leave, and we went to while holding hands. As we were going she said:
"I don't know what my supervisor will say about this, but if you two fuck this thing up in the meantime," she wagged her finger between the two of us, "you can just assume you're revoked."
And that's how Dart managed to keep me married to him until the end of our probation periods.
Obviously we never got revoked over the marriage. She didn't contact either of us to let us know what the final decision was, but we knew we were in the clear when she gave the approval for us to move in to the mobile home together.
This 'thing between the two of us' failed pretty quickly. Dart felt it was safe to show his true colors. Our first fight was over me sending him texts from work, but then not taking his calls. I couldn't be on my cell at work. I was just sneaking him messages. He got pissed off that I wouldn't also sneak away to talk to him. Dart doesn't understand technology. He refuses to text, email, or do anything online. He also hates it when I'm in control. He feels he has to reassert himself.
He left me a scathing voice mail setting the rules for how we would communicate from now on. If I couldn't talk to him 'like a human being' then don't send him 'little messages.' He said something like he knows I think I'm all important at my little office job, but I'm not so important that I can't get up and go outside for five minutes to take a fucking phone call. He ended by making it clear that there wasn't going to be discussion over this. No more fucking texts. I had to call him.
He was nasty and I was pissed. I was also sick over it. I knew right then I didn't want to be with this man. If we weren't married I would have just broken up with him and walked away. What the fuck had I done with my life?
I didn't talk to him for two days. I went into the spare bedroom and closed him out. He was too proud to come crawling to me. The tension in the air was nauseating. It made my shoulders ache.
On the third day I'd had enough. I took some deep breaths and sat with him at the kitchen table. I told him we weren't going to work out.
He acted shocked and wounded. He said of course we would work out. We just had a tiny little spat. It was nothing.
I said he'd called me a bitch and acted like a dictator. Not acceptable. Not going to work out.
Dart did something he often does, he rewrote history. "No, no, no. First off, I never called you a bitch. Now listen, listen..." He stalled by repeating himself. "All I was doing was trying to get us to communicate better. You can't have conversation where one person says something and you can't say nothing back. You get shut out, like a door slamming right on your face. It's heart-breaking, you know? Communication is important, and I was just trying to make sure we worked things out. That's all I said."
I was not impressed. I took out my phone and played the message for him. I could tell from how he nervously wet his lips that he had not considered my ability to do that. He really didn't understand how cell phones worked. Technology just let me do the impossible: win an argument with Dart.
"Okay," I said. "We done with the bullshit? This isn't working out. Getting married was a stupid thing to do. I'll pay for the divorce."
"Divorce!" He was shocked again. "You want us to both get violated?"
"I'm not going to stay your wife."
"Then just be my fucking roommate! Jesus, Annie. You know what that woman said. You may not give a shit about me going back to prison, but you'll end up revoked too!"
I was frustrated but he had a point. We went into a long discussion about the feasibility of just staying roommates. It made sense financially (so I thought at the time) and would keep us from having to deal with the wrath of Madge.
I moved into the spare bedroom. We were going to be friendly roommates. Nothing else. (Yeah right.) As soon as his probation ended we would be getting a divorce.
With that plan in mind we moved forward.
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