“I can’t leave him until at least November, when his child support is paid off,” my friend told me. She is married to a man who has two grown children, for whom he at one point owed $36,000 in back support. He is, to the casual observer, a great dad, a conscientious husband, and an earnest worker. Only because Michelle is my lifelong friend do I know that he also can be inflexible, proud, and fearful of the intellect of others. I introduced them. I don’t feel responsible. I just feel sad.

(Please note that all names in this story have been changed. If you are the ex in question, or anyone else who things they know these folks, please maintain their anonymity.)

Jerome and I worked together at a store in the Denny Regrade neighborhood, by KOMO and the statue of Chief Seattle. We commiserated often about being lonely “dogs” in the world of love. I had been recently divorced, or perhaps was in the midst of the proceedings. I was trying to figure it all out.

I can’t exactly remember when Michelle and Jerome were married, but I do remember the night they met. We were in my apartment on the Queen Anne counterbalance, getting high with my ex-husband. It was a good time. The ex and I were having fun. Michelle and Jerome excused themselves, went to Jerome’s apartment across the street, and I didn’t see them for 3 days.

Later that year, they moved into an old Victorian on West First Avenue in Lower Queen Anne. Everything was good. They got married. They moved to Edmonds when they started their family. Eric came along, and several years later, Nina.

Then Michelle began telling me about the things Jerome had gone through in his year in Seattle prior to getting the job where I met him. He had left an ex-wife and two kids in DC and come to Seattle. He had lived on the street and was eventually taken in by a Korean man who gave him a job. He sometimes smoked pot and sometimes smoked crack. He didn’t pay his child support for a year and a half.

Jerome is well groomed. He has an amazing body that belies his age; he’s in his early 50s and you wouldn’t think he was past about 40. He is polite to people, has a great sense of humor, and ironically has a solid sense of family. What he doesn’t have is the ability to forever deny the crack pipe, the ability to put aside his black pride in favor of family pride, or the ability to respond instead of react. He seems to have an emotional event horizon that is forever pouring over the ledge of adolescence, rather than accepting change and growth as part of life. He has his ways of problem “solving” and can’t entertain any other ways of doing things.

Michelle is now having friends tell her that they will hang out with her, but not if her husband is there. Jerome got angry that the kid they were babysitting tried to bite his daughter (skin wasn’t broken), and got his pride all in a knot and had it out (verbally, somewhat angrily) with the kid’s dad. The kid’s dad is a lawyer, and since he feels Jerome might sue him if anything happens, now Michelle can’t watch the guy’s kids and, here’s the nasty thing, she no longer gets free childcare from this guy and his wife.

With Jerome having a significant portion of each month’s check garnished for support, Michelle has had to take part time work in a nursing home. She needed that free childcare in order to make ends meet. She is the most frugal, inventive home manager I know. She tolerates dealing with WIC coupons and food stamps and all the bullshit that goes with working poverty. And now the childcare is gone.

She is calculating her flight, thinking carefully of how to get out without losing her kids or her living situation. She is tired. She is jealous of my childlessness. She is finding joy in her children despite her circumstances.

I commend her. I don’t know what else to do.