Catherine Berchtold

Double Check Your Instincts When Your Expecting During my fifth month of pregnancy, I lost my balance while taking a shower causing shampoo to get into my eyes.  Once I regained my balance, I grabbed the closest thing I could find to wipe my eyes, which just so happened to be my husband's used washcloth hanging on the shower rod.  I marched in place and pressed the washcloth to my eyes until the burning stopped.  To my surprise, I saw a row of short, black lines on the wet rag when I pulled it away from my face.  The five lines were about an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide.  They looked very similar to the mascara marks left behind after I washed my face at night.  I knew Eric didn't wear mascara so what could the mystery marks be?  After finding them, I checked my husband's washcloth daily.  Everyday I found the same thing.  The number and shape of the lines varied a bit but their presence were consistent.  As my belly grew, so did my suspicions.  It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what he was doing.  The picture ran through my mind like a clip from the six o'clock news.  The mindless secretary with the plunging neckline to her navel couldn't manage changing the ribbon or adding paper to her printer.  The hero enters.  Everyday he conquered her printer.  His only payment was a peek or two at her cleavage.  On a Sunday morning, I finally got the nerve to demand an explanation for the black marks.  I waved the washcloth in front of his confused expression. "What is this?!" Silence. "I want to know what these black marks are." "Grease.  I worked on the car yesterday and cleaned the grease from under my nails." I stared him down.  I knew he was lying.  Oh, but the boy was lucky.  The Golden Child had an excuse.  I didn't dare tell him that I'd been checking his washcloth for weeks.  He would probably say something stupid, like due to the pregnancy, my hormones were messing up my emotions.  He left me with my thoughts in the bathroom.  I realized he hadn't blinked once during the entire conversation.  How long does it take for a person's eye sockets to dry out, anyway? I got in the shower and pondered the situation as soap bubbles slid across my navel innards and dropped to the tub's floor.  I assumed they landed on the tub's floor.  I couldn't say for sure.  My stomach hid the view. That's when it dawned on me that it couldn't be the mindless secretary.  If that were the case, the marks wouldn't be on his washcloth on Sunday and Monday mornings.  That left only one conclusion.  My husband had been wearing my mascara and/or eye liner.  He was a closet cross-dresser.  I had heard of women finding out things like this after they were married.  I just never thought it would happen to me. I kept silent about my devastating discovery but continued my daily checks.  When I could hold it in no longer, I confronted Eric.  "I want you to know that I know, you're lying.  And one of these days, I'm going to figure out where the black marks are coming from." His jaw fell open and he stared at me with eyes the size of the sink bowl.  His bottom lip quivered as if he was trying to speak but I didn't have the patience to wait. I elbowed passed him.  "That's all I was going to say." A few minutes later, Eric poked his head into the kitchen and asked me to come upstairs with him.  I followed along like an obedient wife should. As smooth as David Copperfield, he whipped out a washcloth and dangled it before my eyes.  "You're washcloth has the marks, too.  That's because it's mold coming off the shower rod." "Oh.  That's strange. Who would've thought?"

Copyright © 2000 Catherine Berchtold All Rights Reserved