From Infinite to Kamikaze: A Novel

JUNE 2000 - KIM

My alarm woke me up at 7 on the dot. I was still slightly hungover from the day before but forced myself out of bed. The empty bed that I had learned to get used to. I could probably count the number of times Marshall and I had slept in that bed in this house on two hands. If he wasn't in the studio at all hours of the night and sleeping during the day, then he was traveling for one reason or another. It was a horrible excuse, but it was one of the reasons I had connected with John so quickly. He was fresh off a divorce and feeling lonely, and I felt like I wasn't even married since I never saw my husband. Put those two together....

I felt guilty about it though, to some extent. I knew Marshall had cheated on me during The Warped Tour last summer and during his European tour that fall. I knew because I knew him. When he wasn't cheating on me, he called all the time and was suspicious of everything I was doing. When he was cheating, he basically left me alone. He would still call every night....but mainly to talk to Hailie; saying hi to me was like an afterthought. And when he would come home, he expected everything to stop and revolve around him. And when it didn't, he'd get super suspicious. Where was I? Who was I with? Why did I take so long? The crazy part was, he accused me of doing the exact same type of shit when he was on tour. Called me controlling and paranoid. He was such a fucking hypocrite.

I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth before pulling on my outfit for the day: a pair of jean shorts, a T-shirt, and my ADIDAS slides. My head and stomach were still fucked up from all the coke and alcohol I'd had the day before, so I was all about being comfortable today. I felt guilty about leaving Hailie with my cousin Jenny for two days, but I rationalized that it was better than leaving her with Dawn, and I needed those days to decompress after all the shit that had happened that weekend. Getting caught kissing John, getting arrested, Marshall also getting arrested the night before that, and him beating the shit out of John. And John wasn't a small guy by any means. Marshall was way smaller. How he knocked him out, I'll never know. Part of me was turned on by his aggression, but most of me was pissed at what was happening. If I was really honest with myself, I was probably mostly pissed at being caught. It put us on more of an even playing field, which took away my upper hand. And while I didn't have any hardcore proof that Marshall had cheated while he was on the road, except for some hearsay shit I had heard about an underage girl in Sweden, he did actually see me kissing someone else with his own eyes, which would be hard for me to deny.

I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and made my way down the hall to Hailie's room. "Wake up baby," I crooned into her ear as I pushed her blonde hair out of her face. 

She stirred gently before sitting straight up. "Is it morning?" she asked groggily.

"Yes it is. And you're gonna be late for school if we don't hurry so...up and at 'em," I said, walking over to her dresser. I pulled out an outfit for her and laid it on her bed. "Go potty and get dressed and I'll go make you some breakfast. Waffles are okay?" I asked.

"Yes! With syrup!" she smiled.

"Okay," I chuckled. "Waffles with syrup it is. I'll see you down there."

I picked up the dirty clothes off her floor that I had tossed there last night after picking her up late from Jenny's. Thank God for Jenny. I really needed a couple days to myself to cry and bitch and get fucked up after the shitty weekend I'd had. Jenny was a godsend. She had taken the kids, Hailie and her own 3 kids, to the pool all day Sunday and had even taken Hailie to school for me yesterday. It was the last week before summer break and she was only in preschool so I wasn't super concerned about her missing a day but Jenny had insisted on taking her.

I went downstairs and was grabbing waffles out of the freezer when I noticed Marshall sleeping on the couch. I panicked for a moment, wondering how I was gonna explain what he had seen. But then rage started to well up inside of me for everything he had put me through in the last year we'd been married. The cheating that I knew was happening but hadn't proven yet, the lyrics in his songs, the sheer public humiliation. But I knew he wouldn't wanna fight in front of Hailie and frankly, I was in no condition to start a screaming match, so I kept my cool and decided not to say anything just yet. I continued prepping her breakfast and started packing her lunch.