That was TJ.
Terry came to see Tom one day. He had been dating, Penny, a woman he met in a bar. He told me once years before that he only dated married women so he wouldn't get caught and be forced into marriage. I don't know at the time of this "affair" if she was married or not but she had been. She had two kids, a little girl and a boy. She had the girl but the husband took the boy. I didn't know it till later that the husband took the boy because Penny was very cruel to him. She said she didn't like little boys.
They had stayed overnight with us one time before this and they had slept in the same room of course. They were adults and Tommy was too young to know what was going on. She had her daughter with her. I can't for the life of me remember that girls name. She was a little brat.
The kid comes down in the morning and wants breakfast. I asked her what she usually ate for breakfast. She said anything she wanted. I asked her if her mom was awake and she said no, so out of the dumbness of my heart I asked her the trick question. "What do you want for breakfast?"
She wanted toast, eggs, bacon, coffee and cereal. I said, "Are you sure because that's a lot of food for a little girl and I don't think you're mom lets you drink coffee."
"Yes she does," she said back to me. "I drink it every morning."
Still being dumb, I made her two toast, two eggs, three strips of bacon and a bowl of dry cereal and gave her the coffee. She played with it. She tasted the coffee and spit it out on the table. She ate the bacon and then walked away.
Her mom came downstairs and I told her the whole sorry story. She gave the kid hell for lying to me, but that was it. I still had to clean up the mess and the food was never eaten. I was sooo glad to see them leave.
To get back to where I was, Terry told Tom that he'd gotten himself fixed a month or so before that and now Penny said she was pregnant. He wanted Tom's advice on whether he should marry her or not. I think we both told him that there was a chance the kid could be his but there was also a chance it might not be.
I told him that he could still be a part of the baby's life even if he didn't marry the mother. The fool went back and told her that.
From then on I was shit. She took every opportunity to mess up anything I had planned.
They did get married. She had the kid and whose it was, I couldn't tell but Terry loved TJ and thought it was his.
They came to every family event.
She would take over any conversation I was having. She fawned over the grandmas. She would sit in Grandpa Million's lap. That drove Grandma Million to, shall we say dislike her?
I made a beautiful centerpiece for the Thanksgiving table. I'd seen it in a magazine and I knew I could do it.
I took a styrofoam cone and stuck it to a stand. I covered it with green lettuce leaves. I made stuffed green and black olives and stuck them on the tree with toothpicks. I did the same with cherry tomatoes but I didn't stuff them. I took a slice of starfruit and put on the top. Around the tree base I lined up stuffed celery and logs of different cheeses. I thought it looked great.
Penny sniffed her nose at it and told her daughter not to touch it. It was made to eat not to just look at but it didn't matter. My feelings were hurt. Yes, in those days it was real easy to hurt my feelings.
Penny would pointedly suggest that I'd look better if I cut my hair, if a lost ten pounds, if dressed differently. These weren't quiet talks on the side. She'd come out with this at the dinner table. All eyes would go to me like they were judging me according to her statements.
After dinner the women would sit around the table and talk with the others smoking. The men would go out to the garage and talk men things. Penny went out with the men on the excuse she needed air. Her daughter, of course went with her. Janice and Grandma Million and Barb all told me not to let her get to me. They told me they cared about me and my tree was beautiful. Grandma Million said Penny was pushy and she didn't like the way she hung on whatever male was available.
The kicker came at Christmas. I wasn't supposed to know about this but I found the card in Toms jeans when I did the laundry. She gave him money to get him and Tommy something. My name was not included. I didn't want her money or her gift but that really cut me to the quick. Tom never said a word about it. He never even told me he had gotten that card. I felt that made him a consenting party to my humiliation. I do realize now that he probably didn't even notice I wasn't on it and had put the cash in his pocket and forgot the whole thing. It could have happened that way.
Janice had a family picnic in the summer following that. I don't remember what I brought but it was not even tasted by anyone but me.
Some time shortly after that three different people told me that Penny was treating TJ bad and they were worried about him. One was Diane, and another was Diane's mother Ruby. They filled me in on Penny's history. They also warned me to keep Tommy away from her and never trust her.
Penny and her ex-husband lived near them when they were married. Penny's father lived around them, too. One afternoon the baby boy was crying in his crib. Ruby was visiting at the time. Penny grabbed his ankle, pulled him sharply to the bottom of the crib and slammed him back up so that his head hit the headboard of the crib. I never knew the child so I don't know if it gave him brain damage a lot. I was told he cried a lot. I can see why.
Diane was sitting at the table on another occasion and the boy was just sitting up on the carpet. He was slouched a little. Diane told me that Penny took a ball point pen and rammed it hard down and up his spine while yelling at him to sit up straight.
They had told the husband about these events and others they'd seen. Still he didn't divorce her. She finally told him she was leaving and she took the daughter with her. She said she didn't want any boys so she left him with his father.
I never saw her do anything that cruel with TJ but she did yell a lot. Sometime after Tommy and I left Ohio the last time I heard that first Penny and Terry got a divorce but the daughter was still living with Terry. I thought that was a bit odd until someone told me the reason they got divorced was that old sex with a minor thing again. Terry and his step daughter were getting it on and she caught them.
I can't imagine how all these people could live like this. When the younger sister of Kelly stayed with Kelly's husband the school tried to put a stop to it. They were told in court that was a normal thing and there was nothing they could do about it.
I was really believing there was something in the water except for the fact that I drank it too. Maybe I was immune to what ever it was?