by Maisey Yates
“I am not some wife beater, and the cops treated me like one. And it was in the damn paper, everyone knows.”
“I’m sorry, are your own actions embarrassing for you?”
She searched his face for something. Some shame. It wasn’t there. There was just the cool, low burn of his anger.
“You know that this isn’t a one-way street. Marriage never is. We’ve been married for a long time, and it never came to that until recently. Didn’t you ever ask yourself why that is? I’m stressed, and you like spending my money, but you’ve never done a damn thing to try and help me out when my job got more stressful, and started paying better, too, which you benefitted from. What are you off doing? Having coffee with your friends, working on this quilt thing with your mom and your sisters. We’re your family. We are more important. I’m more important. And if I come home from a long day of work and I don’t have my damn dinner...”
“You hit your wife.” She felt like she was having an out of body experience. “When you come home from work and you don’t have your dinner you hit your wife. And you hit your son. And you know what, David? I might have been weak enough to be talked into going back to you a couple of times if he hadn’t told me that. But so much of what I was doing was to protect them. Because I’m scared. Because if you go to jail what am I going to do? You’re right. I do spend your money.”
She let out a ragged breath. “I’ve let you take care of me. But because I did that, I started to belong to you, and the more that you thought I belonged to you the more you thought you could do whatever you want with me, and the more I thought maybe you were right. Some women... Some women can trust their husbands to take care of them and they really damn well do it. They don’t lay a finger on them. They’re safe, and their homes are sanctuaries and their kids are treasured, and I wanted that so much I decided that we had it. We had it except that I didn’t feel safe. Except that you hurt me. And I decided it was a separate thing. So separate that I walked into a quilting session with my mom and my sisters with a bruise on my face and had somehow convinced myself that I could talk my way around it. That I could justify it away. But you hit me. In the face.”
This was her moment. No matter how scared she was, no matter than it hurt. This was her chance to say what needed to be said. “The drywall in our house is crumbling from the places where you shoved me against the wall. None of it’s normal. And none of it’s right. And you are that man. You are. It doesn’t matter that you’re a doctor. It doesn’t matter that you’re successful. You hurt me.”
“Let’s talk about it, then,” he said, his tone suddenly conciliatory. “I never felt good about it, Avery.”
“There’s nothing to say. We passed talking the first time you used your fists instead of your words. The opportunity to fix it was done. I wish it were different. I really do. I wish you were different. But you’re not. And that’s what I’ve had to accept. That’s what I’m working on accepting. And if I were you, I would leave now. Because whatever happens after this there’s going to be a divorce. And if the police have to come arrest you again, none of that is going to go your way.”
“Are you threatening me?”
She bit back a wave of rage. Because escalating it wasn’t going to help. But she wanted to. She wanted to hit him, but she wasn’t going to. But oh how she felt free. And gloriously justified.
She was just bitter and angry now. That she had been made to feel afraid of him. And none of it was her choice. It was all him. He had dumped this on her, on her life. And she had never thought that accepting she was a victim could be any kind of position of strength. But it felt like one now. Because it made everything clear.
All the confusion, all the conflicting emotion that she had felt for the last couple of years was melting away.
Being his victim meant that she wasn’t his wife.
It meant accepting that whatever he might call love, it wasn’t love. It meant accepting that he couldn’t be her husband. And it meant releasing herself from her obligation to him. From any guilt she felt over not fixing it, over not being better.
There were gray areas in marriage. But not when one person was a predator, and the other person was prey. He was the one who had demolished that other lane. He was the one who had turned it into a one-way street. And she wasn’t going to feel guilty about it.
She just felt... Uncoupled. Brilliantly. Gloriously.
“Go away. I am considering getting a restraining order, and I really would hate to have to, but if I do, then this is going to be a crime.”
“Avery, you bitch.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I should have been a bigger one earlier. The man I love isn’t real. He was a fantasy that I spun out of my own dreams. And I’m halfway to hating you for what you did to me. To your children. But I’m not going to let myself hate you. Because I’m not going to let you make me into a toxic person. I’m not going to let you make me into anything. I’m going to make myself into something. And it’s going to have nothing to do with you. Now go away. And don’t make this unpleasant because there are a lot of people here. And all these kids over there, their parents know you. So don’t make it worse.”
And it was the one bit of power she had, that much was clear, because he took a step away from her, and she could tell he didn’t want to. That was another thing that hurt, right then.
He could control it. When he was more worried about the consequences, he could control it. Which meant that he had never really cared all that much about her, and never seen her as a threat. Just an outlet for his temper tantrums. If he could stop himself now, he could have stopped himself any of those other times.
“Goodbye,” she said, forcefully.
And he left.
He left, and the kids never noticed that he was there. He left, and she stood there, watching them. Smile and laugh and be kids. This was new, and it was scary. But there was normal in it. And it would be better. She wasn’t mourning her marriage. Because the marriage that she believed in for so long didn’t exist. She was sad about something she never really had. She had constructed dreams and fantasies and had been convinced that her desire to make them real had done it.
But it had never been real. Not really.
It had never been perfect.
And neither had she. That melody that had pushed at the edges of her mind a few weeks ago came back to her, like sunshine pushing through storm clouds.
And it suddenly became clear. It was a song her mother sang to herself often, usually while washing dishes.
Avery had never once, in all of her adult life been tempted to sing it, least of all while doing dishes.
I sing because I’m happy.
I sing because I’m free.
For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.
But it was there now, suddenly like an anthem in her soul.
I sing because I’m free.
27
I had a new audition and I didn’t get it. I haven’t had anything new since that first role and Sam is getting harder and harder to live with. Whiskey makes him mean, and there’s always whiskey. When I look out the window, the lights still glitter, but they feel dim now.
Ava Moore’s diary, 1924
Hannah
“What do you mean you cheated?”
“There’s not a whole lot to tell,” she said. “That’s what happened. I had sex with someone else. And I had been doing it for a while before I broke up with you.”
She was shaking. She felt sick. Dirty and disgusting and everything she always felt when she dragged this up. She had spent a lot of years justifying it. Telling herself that it had to happen. It was the price she paid.
And there was no use being upset about it. No use regretting it. There wasn’t.
And it was his fault, because he had pushed it here. Because he was asking for things that she couldn’t give. Again.
“You just never really knew me, that’s my point. So while this has been... It’s been really good. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But you never really knew me. You thought you did.”
“I don’t know what to say, Hannah. I don’t really know how to react to that. But it was nineteen years ago. I can’t think that what you did when you were seventeen has much to do with what’s happening between us now.”
Except she could see on his face that it did.
That it had reshaped the image he had of the girl he had once loved.
God knew it had reshaped her image of herself.
And she had spent years trying to twist it and tease it to make it into something else. To make herself feel different about it. And then she had just quit thinking about it altogether. And she had turned it into fuel. Because there was nothing she could do about it. There was no other choice she could go back and make. So it just had to be. She had to accept it. And she had to use it. And she would use it now.
It was the only way to survive this. She needed him to hate her.
“What happened? Who was it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, wishing she hadn’t eaten. She was going to go ahead and say this, she should’ve known that she needed an empty stomach. Because she wanted to be sick.
“I mean, you’re the one that brought it up, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to matter. You’re trying to make it so I don’t... What, want to get to know you better now? Because I’m not proposing. I’m telling you that I have feelings for you.”
“Based on someone you thought I was. But I was keeping secrets from you. That’s the point. It doesn’t really matter what happened.”
“Bullshit it doesn’t. It matters. It matters because you’re still hanging on to it, at the very least. If you thought it meant nothing, why would you tell me?”
“Because I know it means something to you. Sex doesn’t mean all that much to me. I hate to break it to you.”
“You’re a liar. You’re just a liar.”
“I’m not a liar. I don’t care about this kind of thing. I told you, relationships... I don’t believe in them. Not for me. Not for people like me.”
“What is people like you? Because before when you said things like that, I thought that you meant people who were really driven. People who had goals, and all of that. But that isn’t what you mean, is it?”
It tore at her, ripped at her stomach. Her skin was crawling, and she wished it would go ahead and just crawl off.
“I wasn’t going to get the scholarship,” she said. “I had to get an extra letter of recommendation. I had to have intervention. I wasn’t good enough. Marc said that... He said that it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough. It’s just... Other people had connections. And I didn’t have any. And about how I was going to have to do a little bit more to prove how much I wanted it. I didn’t want to. Because of you. And he... He said that that was just me being like every other stupid teenage girl. Giving all this stuff up for a boy who didn’t even support her.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t get that out of my head. Because I knew you didn’t want me to leave. I knew you didn’t. I... I knew you didn’t want me to leave. But Marc did. He wanted to help me. And he kept telling me that I was meant for it. And that he...he said I was different. Special, and that my music made him feel things that...that were wrong but he felt them, and I owed him. For making him feel that. For what he was doing for me. And eventually I just... I couldn’t see why I wouldn’t? Because he was offering me something and somehow the way that he talked about it, it didn’t feel like it was cold or calculating to hold the letter back if I didn’t sleep with him.”
“I’m sorry,” Josh said, his voice shaking. “Is this your violin teacher Marc?”
“Yes,” she said, the word a whisper, and she hated her solar plexus for not backing her up on this. For being filled with shame when she was trying to be defiant.
“He was in his forties,” Josh said. “He was older than we are now.”
“It’s not... That’s not the point.”
“He coerced you into having sex with him. You were seventeen. Dammit, Hannah, he raped you.”
“He didn’t,” Hannah said, that word echoing in her head like a gunshot. She hated that word. “I said yes. I said yes every time I went for a lesson in the end because he was doing what he said he would for me. Going to get me the scholarship. And I... It felt good. When I said yes it was because he was touching me. And it didn’t feel bad, and he kept offering that letter. I said yes. I’m not a victim. If anything I’m a prostitute. I paid for my schooling, just not the way I planned on it. But he wrote me that letter, and I got that scholarship. And because of that I got my job in the orchestra. I was supposed to have everything. Everything. Not just first chair. Principal chair. I was supposed to get all of it. Because I proved it, didn’t I? How much I wanted it. I wanted this more than anything.”
“Hannah,” he said. “I wish you would’ve told me.”
“Are you joking? If anyone would’ve found out, that would’ve ruined everything. That would’ve compromised my scholarship and... It was already done. It was done. And I needed you to not mourn a girl who didn’t exist. A relationship that didn’t exist. Because that’s who I am, Josh. I took something that was really special to you, and that was a first for us, and I made it currency. And I... I was still with you while it was happening. And I felt so awful. I really did. And I wanted you to be absolutely free of me. I did not want you to miss me. And that’s why I was so mean. That was why I ended it like I did. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you to imagine some sweet romance where there wasn’t one.”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I am furious at him. If that asshole is still alive I’m going to drive out to wherever he is and tear his head off.”
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop trying to put the blame for what I chose to do on someone else. I’m not saying that he wasn’t inappropriate, or out of order in some way. But he didn’t hold me down and do anything to me.”
“He held your dream over your head like a bully and asked you to jump for it, Hannah. He might as well have held you down. He might as well have.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to keep the sound of distress that was building in her chest from escaping. This wasn’t working. It wasn’t going the way that she wanted it to. None of this was okay. It was supposed to push him away and it wasn’t.
It was supposed to make her feel... She didn’t know. She was searching for some way to be hard-edged and confident about it. Like she was a woman who’d made a choice with the asset she possessed at the time. Because it was worth it. Because the end goal was worth it. But instead she felt small and sick and dirty. Instead, she felt seventeen and scared.
And she wanted him to hold her and tell her that he loved her anyway, and she hated that. She hated all of this.
She’d stopped being scared a long time ago. Stopped being sad.
At first she’d felt devastated by how easy it had been for her passion to be twisted and used against her that way but then...she’d found the right story. One that didn’t make her feel small or afraid.
One that made her feel powerful. Special. And she’d clung to it.
“I can’t see it your way,” she said. “But I have to... I have to succeed. Or it was for nothing.”
“Your life is about more than trying to justify the actions of one bastard. If you want to succeed because you want to, that’s fine, Hannah. That has always been part of you. But the thing is, it’s only part of you. You were never special to me because you were going to be successful. You were just special to me because you were you.”
“That’s not enough for me. It’s never been enough.”
“Hannah... We need to sit down and talk about this. Have you ever told anyone about this?”
“No,” s
he said. “I put it away, and I left it here. Along with everything else. Along with you and everything, and the only reason I’m even thinking of it now is because I was stupid enough to get sucked back into this. Because I was weak. Because I didn’t get the principal chair position, and everything started to feel like it was falling apart. And none of it matters, because Avery is a victim. Avery’s husband hit her. And we have to deal with all that. This isn’t the time for me to go picking at old wounds. It’s just... It’s just the principal chair thing really sucked. And it’s you. And otherwise I never think about it. I’m fine.”
“Is this supposed to push me away?”
“Is it not?”
“No. It’s not. I should’ve been there for you, Hannah. I wish I would’ve known.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I was seventeen and an idiot. Maybe I would have been mean to you. I hope to God I wouldn’t have been. I really do. But I can’t say for sure that I would’ve been what you needed. But I want to be. I want to be now.”
“What I need is space. And if my story doesn’t make you want to leave, then maybe me saying this is done will.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“I said no.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands and taking a step back. “I’m not going to try to talk you into anything. But if you need me, you come to me. If you decide you want me, you know where to find me. I know it’s easier for you to try to burn it to the ground, to pretend that you don’t have an option. So that you can focus on that one thing out in front of you. But I’m always an option, Hannah. Even if it’s just as a friend. If you need something, I’m there.”
She turned and walked away from him, into the house, shaking.
And she tried, she tried so hard to see that one goal, that one end point, that one thing that had been driving her all this time.
That prophecy of her being special come to fruition.
And she could still see it.