I was thinking about how this whole cycle of abuse and rumour spreading started and why it happened now, at this point in my life.
I supected Jeanne Dubois was behind the whole thing but couldn’t figure out a motive for why she would want to destroy my reputation and upend my life.
One night after we broke up, I was overtired and couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for hours, drifting in and out of sleep—not really dreaming so much as raving, the way one does when in a fever. And then it hit me.
I sat straight up in bed, shocked that I didn’t see the resemblance before.
Jeanne Dubois was Roxie Segal, a girl I dated eighteen years ago. It seemed absurd, but it was true.
I was a boyish looking Third year student in university and she was a freshman. I was twenty-two and she was eighteen.
I roomed in a Yorkville flat with a friend, but he went back home for the summer and Roxie and I spent that summer in the Village living the bohemian life and falling in love.
As the fall session of my courses began, a rift opened between Roxie and me. The differences between us were too much to overcome and I broke off the relationship.
Roxie took it hard and was inconsolable. I finally gave up phoning assuming that she came to terms with the situation. But perhaps she did not.
Is it even conceivable to think that a person would harbor a grudge for almost twenty years?
Martin Wallace looked directly at me and replied, “Sometimes a life event is seen as a watershed of sorts—and if you’re right, if this is the same girl, perhaps even now as a woman in her mid-thirties, she sees you as causing some kind of trauma in her life.”
“But it’s so improbable—how could she possibly orchestrate this situation with so many unforeseen variables?”
Wallace chuckled. “You’ve read Shakespeare—how many of his evil protagonists are able to use their genius to be opportunists?”
“What do you suggest I do—confront her?”
He shook his head. “What I would do is hire a private investigator to check her out—get all the facts, before you confront her or make unfounded accusations.”
Two weeks later I was able to put together some of the puzzling pieces of this riddle.
It seems Roxie married a Rene Dubois—a History professor from Laval University in Quebec. The marriage lasted less than a year and Roxie—now Jeanne Dubois, moved back to Ontario and completed her doctoral studies.
Nothing seemed to go right in her personal life—there were several common law relationships, but academically, Jeanne flourished.
She was hired at nearby York University and kept her eye open for positions at the University of Toronto. Apparently over the course of two years she had made several inquiries before landing the job in my department replacing Harold Davies for the year.
The P. I. through his sources also traced some payments made by Jeanne to another Toronto private investigation service notorious for spying on cheating spouses using hidden cameras and various surveillance techniques.
It seems that for over a year, Jeanne was gathering intel to discredit me, but longed to get up close and personal to deliver the final blow.
When the opportunity presented itself in Harold Davies’ sick leave, she leapt at the chance—a perfect opportunity to seduce and reject me as she felt I did to her.
But her revenge went further than just hurting me—she wanted to destroy me by attacking my reputation and rendering me unemployable.
Martin Wallace suggested I avoid confronting Jeanne directly but to go through my attorney threatening her with a lawsuit and criminal charges unless she resigned her post at the university and crease and desist all her defamatory activity.
Surprisingly, Jeanne complied, probably content with the payback she managed to accomplish and the scars she left on my life.
It’s been six months now since the end of the affair. Harold Davies has resumed his duties and I’ve learned through colleagues that Jeanne has left to teach in southern France for the year.
I have no idea what personal suffering I caused Jeanne in her past—I regret whatever pain I inflicted on her and hope she finally is able to recover.
It makes me think of the myriad slights, rebuffs and rejections we all endure and how we often victimize others either knowingly or unknowingly as we live our lives.
This sordid affair has made me more sensitive to others’ feelings—and as for me, I’m struggling on trying to learn from this horrendous experience.
And yes, I’m still picking up the pieces.
