I never slept soundly when Lilly was with Cal and Lana, and I kept my phone by my ear on my pillow at maximum volume.
I worried less about brain tumors and more about my daughter.
Six months earlier, over the summer, Lilly had asked to spend two consecutive weeks with her father. Jake was on night shift and it was just me. I’d been on the edge of sleep when my text alert sounded. Picking up my phone, I squinted to see the words.
Lilly: Mom wake up
Lilly: Mom
Lilly: Mom
I tried calling and the line went to voicemail immediately. I called again, and this time Lilly picked up.
“What’s wrong?” I fired immediately.
“Dad and Lana are fighting- like with their fists,” she rushed, under her breath.
“What?” I demanded, throwing the covers aside and racing for the door.
“I tried to get Dad to stop, but he- he spit in her face, and was choking her-”
“I want you to stay in your room and lock the door. I’m calling 911. Does he have his gun?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t think they’re locked up, so I don’t know...”
“I’m calling 911 and then I’m calling you right back. Stay in your room.”
The panic churned in my stomach and vomit burned my throat. I managed to make a shaky call to 911 and tell them to go in fully prepared.
Guns, alcohol, temper- the whole nine yards.
I called Lilly back and told her to stay on the line with me as I made the drive to her father’s house.
Cal and Lana had moved into the same neighborhood that Cal and I had lived for ten years. I was appalled when they did it, and so were all the neighbors I’d made as friends. Cal was so self-absorbed that he fully believed that our former friends welcomed him back into the community, despite our very public separation and Lana being the “other woman.”
A few of our friends seemed to welcome him back, and a few more actually played nice with Lana. Most texted me privately to promise that they still showed me support. I tried not to think in terms of allegiances, since I really wasn’t close to too many people in our neighborhood. I spent many block parties and bonfires inside our house, feigning one excuse or another. If I ended up going to a gathering where Cal would be drinking, I’d watch him the entire time, counting his beers, checking his mood, and driving myself crazy monitoring our situation to determine if he’d reached the point where his temper would flare, and I’d get the brunt of it at home.
If I stayed home, I could get the kids to bed and pretend to be asleep myself when he stumbled in, hopefully preventing screaming and violence.
It was a delicate balance.
I was a nervous person back then.
That’s the irony of an abusive relationship- you never quite know you’re in it until you’re out of it- mostly because your abuser is there to tell you you’re overreacting.
Overreacting. Being dramatic.
It never happened.
It didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen all those times. What are you talking about? You’re blowing things way out of proportion. You always get so dramatic. It’s always all my fault, right, like you had nothing to do with it. With what?
It didn’t happen.
Throw a hot iron at you? Didn’t happen.
Throw a computer monitor at you? The old dinosaur kind that weighed twenty pounds? Didn’t happen.
Throw a full gallon of milk at you and then force myself on you? You’re imagining things. You can’t rape your wife. Get over yourself.
Grab you by the throat while you’re six months pregnant with our child? Nope. Slam on the breaks and veer off the highway in anger with all our children in the car? Choke you against the wall while our three children watched?
Didn’t happen.
Threaten to sleep with other women? It’s your fault for being fat.
Actually sleep with other women? You don’t give me enough attention.
I learned later about gaslighting, a technique that a toxic person used to confuse you. Make you question your own reality. Lessen the seriousness of his offenses.
I spent so many years questioning my reality.
I was starting to feel that way in this house, with Virginia. Confused. Tired. Unable to connect the dots but knowing in my gut that something wasn’t right.
Both Lana and Cal had covered for each other with the police that night, lying to say that there had been no physical fight. Later, even after the police and Child Protective Services and her child psychologist and everyone assured Lilly that they knew it happened, they believed her, and they knew her father and stepmother lied, she still questioned her own reality.
Lilly, my twelve-year-old little girl, was left wondering if pieces and parts of her life really happened.
And Cal did nothing. He wouldn’t validate what happened to his own daughter, because that would mean getting in trouble with the police, or child protective services, or losing the precious reputation he still believed he had. Cal would rather let his youngest child, the only kid left who really gave a damn about him, live in disruption and confusion than to admit what happened. Cal was incapable of being a man.
Cal was a coward.
And nothing happened. Again.
Nothing except Lilly would never spend the night at their house again.
Over my dead body would she ever spend the night there again.
Or over Cal’s dead body, all cut up, inside a tote by the curb.
“You’re the biggest fucking mistake I ever made,” Cal seethed at Lana, and I continued to listen through the walls.
“Oh, I know, here we go again. Lizzie was a perfect wife and mother and I’m a piece of shit,” Lana replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
I shook my head, disgusted with her. If he says these things to you repeatedly, why do you stay? Christ woman, have some dignity!
Why did I stay?
Lana stayed. She hid the fingermarks and bruises on her neck from the police. I’d joked with Jake once about her keeping turtlenecks in her closet just for my 911 calls. Like she had a dickie collection, in various colors and styles, and she’d whip one out and pull it over her head to tuck into her t-shirt for when the authorities arrived and it was time to lie.
“Why are you wearing a dickie, Miss?”
“They’re stylish and versatile, officer. Why wouldn’t I wear a dickie?”
Jesus Christ, they worked. Cal and Lana worked. If Jake and I were Yin and Yang, Cal and Lana were oil and water.
It took a long time for me to realize that Cal had a Madonna-whore complex, and a long time for me to understand I would never be good enough for him in the bedroom because of it. We met when I was still a virgin, and I gave birth to his children. I was firmly rooted in the Madonna zone. As I got older and my sexual desires grew, I realized that Cal had a problem (one of many.) In his rages he’d waver between calling me a prude and a whore. I was a prude because I wanted nothing to do with him when he was sickeningly drunk and horribly abusive. I was a whore when I wanted sex.
He wanted me to initiate sex, but if I did, he was turned off.
Square peg in a round hole.
In turn, I was never satisfied with him. I’d go to great lengths to finish whenever we did have sex. I’d always fake it to make it end and give his ego a boost, then finish myself off in the bathroom while he snored in the bed. Sometimes I’d do it right next to him while he slept, thinking of anyone but him. I joked once to myself that each of the kids would have different fathers if I’d been fucking who I’d actually been thinking of at the time they were conceived.
Cal couldn’t have desire with love, or love with desire. Sigmund Freud would have a lot to say about Cal. A narcissist by definition, and many narcissists had this complex.
Lana the Whore was the best thing that ever happened to him. I wanted to knock on the door and thoughtfully interject, and I giggled out loud at the thought.
Falli
ng in love with Jake showed me that there was not a line in the sand. There was love where there was intimacy. He could adore me and please me at the same time.
Cal was the fucked up one.
Cal fucked me up along the way.
I suddenly developed a penchant for rape fantasy after Cal raped me once. I wanted sex but had too many morals to step outside our marriage. So, when Cal would roll over on top of me, I’d go back to the time he forced me.
When I said no, but he didn’t stop.
I imagined he was forcing me every time after that so I could stop feeling guilty about wanting sex from a man- any man- even this monster I’d married.
I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. With Jake, everything was different. I was present with Jake. Jake was the man I made love with. I was never afraid. I was never in survival mode. I was free to explore my sexuality and he supported it. Encouraged it. He found me desirable whether I was packing him a lunch for work or asking him to tie me up in the bedroom.
Cal fucked me up, I knew it.
“Your first wife was a whore. I’m a whore. Why the fuck didn’t you stay with Lizzie if she’s so fucking perfect?” Lana fired. She tried to sound angry, but instead whined her words to him.
I almost laughed again.
His first wife wasn’t a whore, Lana, you simple fool. His first wife was pregnant with their first child and something happened.
Cal would never be clear.
Something happened.
First, Cal told me they went in for an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. Then, one drunken night, he told me he’d pushed his first wife into a wall, and she’d started to bleed. Then he told me he’d caught his first wife on the couch talking to a friend of hers- a man- and his first wife was having an affair with him, so his first wife took a bunch of pills to kill their baby.
He always emphasized first, as though the numbers after her would be inconsequential.
The stories changed depending on what he was drinking, how much he’d had to drink, and how he wanted me to feel about him.
Defensive. Sorry. Apologetic that he had a problem with hurting women and needed therapy.
It wasn’t until a year after our split when I really began to think about Cal’s first wife.
What really happened?
Cal threw something. I could hear it hit the wall. “I should have fucking stayed with her. You’re a bitch.”
A bitch. I did laugh then. I laughed because that used to be one of my names.
Lana was a bitch now, but she was so much more than what I ever was.
A whore.
A cum-dumpster.
Good for a fuck up the ass while he told her how worthless she was.
Two legs to fetch him a cold beer.
“Lizzie.”
Jake’s voice pulled me out of the reverie of my sickening thoughts. I didn’t hear our door open.
“I’ll be in in a sec,” I promised.
“You can hear them from in here. Come in with me, sweetheart.”
Patient. Empathetic. Jake knew I hated Cal but loved listening to anything slanderous about Lana.
I obeyed, something I did rarely in my life but most often with Jake. Jake was my rock. He was solid when I was liquid lava.
The door closed behind us with a soft snap.
“They’re a mess. Come here.”
I obeyed again, because I wanted Jake’s arms around me. I wanted his warm breath on my neck, and one of his enveloping hugs that were like a love letter and a trip to the chiropractor, all in one. I moaned with pleasure as he squeezed.
I laughed at my cracking bones. “I’m super tense. I didn’t realize it.”
“That’s because you’re so fucking perfect, Lizzie,” he teased, kissing the top of my head.
I rolled my eyes, backing away to search for his lips. “Too bad he just now figured that out.”
“Too bad for him. Lucky for me,” Jake replied.
We landed on the bed, and he propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me.
“What is happening?” I managed, unable to truly articulate my confusion.
Jake read me as easily as he always did. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to leave you alone here. Something doesn’t feel right. Just when I convince myself this is just a bunch of really bad luck, I get a feeling. Like something is wrong. And I know you said you think Virginia is creepy, but I’m concerned it’s more than that.”
“You mean, like she’s a homicidal maniac who lures unsuspecting couples into her inn to murder them in her basement?”
“Like exactly that.”
I chuckled. “Well, the police officer was here and seemed to know her really well. She even made soup for his wife. I mean, clearly she’s not in trouble with the law.”
“Oh, you mean Officer Doofy.”
I laughed. “Hey now.”
“What? You can’t tell me he didn’t fit the exact profile of the incompetent, unsuspecting officer in every horror movie we’ve ever seen.”
I shrugged as he worked his magic fingers over my legs, through my tights. “Well, get out of here with her friend and get us help. I’ll keep your gun on me.”
“I want you with me,” he insisted. “Even if we have to just hike out of here. I’m not leaving you behind.”
“She likes me, Jake. We’ve talked. We spent a long time talking about her daughter and... if she was even capable of violence, I don’t think she’d hurt me.”
“My mind feels all heavy. I’ll be honest with you. I feel like she drugged that soup.”
I laughed then, narrowing my eyes. “Okay, now come on. Really?”
“Lizzie. We both immediately came up here and passed out. Like, unconscious. My dreams were weird. Were yours?”
I thought of the messy emotional soup in my brain, shaking my head. “Of course they were, I’m stuck in a house with Cal and Lana. I can’t get to my kids. I’m a wreck.”
“Well, don’t eat or drink anything she makes going forward. Drink water from the tap.”
“The tap?” I cried, pretending to be horrified. Jake smirked, giving my hip-butt area a teasing swat.
“Yes, the tap, city girl.”
“I’m a country girl now,” I reminded him, smiling into his kiss.
The heaviness in my head created a pleasant cloud. Maybe he was right. Maybe Virginia was so desperately lonely that she was sabotaging our attempts to leave. Maybe she had drugged our soup and we were stuck in a muddied state of confusion.
Maybe we were just exhausted.
Jake pulled my tights off and I tugged at his shirt. He slipped it over his head and lowered his lips to mine. He had incredible shoulders and lats, the kind you earn from hard work, not hours in a gym. My tongue met his and he pressed his body to mine, and that was all it took for me to be wild for him.
And that was normal. A look across the room made me burn. He could brush his fingers over my cheek and I was both school-girl infatuated and turned on at the same time.
“You give me butterflies,” I’d told him, right after we met.
“I promise to always give you butterflies,” he’d said.
He meant it.
When we’d first met, I had thirty-two days until my dissolution hearing. Until the paperwork was official and Cal and I were no longer legally wed. One day into my relationship with Jake, it became clear that we were both sexually attracted to each other.
When I explained to Jake I needed to wait to be intimate with him until the papers were filed and I was no longer Cal’s wife, he was both shocked and pleased. Later, he said that was how he knew that he could trust me to be faithful to him, when even after all that Cal had done to me, I was determined to hold on to my fidelity.
Those were the hottest days of my life.
He’d drive me to beg for him. To moan and thrash and to give in, to plead with him to give in. He refused, sometimes losing control, but always above the sheets. He promised to respect my wishes, no matter
how hard we fooled around in those days before the official court hearing.
He drove me absolutely mad in the best way possible.
I hadn’t meant for my morals and values to be a woman’s trick, the kind of Anne Boleyn and Henry Tudor passion that sent nations to holy war. But my choice had become just that. I set fire to a forty-one-year-old man, one who had never had to wait for sex in his entire life.
And the fire never extinguished.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Virginia called with a knock on the other side of the bedroom door. “I’m getting spotty cell reception if you’d like to try. Just wanted to let you know, Lizzie.”
Jake kept kissing me, but I backed away, reaching for my cell phone.
No bars.
“It’s like she knew we were in bed,” Jake groaned.
He stiffened, and then backed away.
I met his eyes, then let my gaze wander over the walls of the enormous turret room.
The oil portraits that lined the walls returned my stare. Every eye was focused on the bed. Men. Women. Children. All unsmiling, all staring deadpan into the lamp-lit room.
All staring at us.
“What if she can see us?” I said, under my breath in one exhale.
Jake reached for his shirt, sitting up on the bed.
“Like I said. Something isn’t right,” he repeated.
I thought of a tour I’d taken as a child with my grandma through Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house. He was a talented architect who built homes and buildings, often using the natural terrain as part of the infrastructure. This home had been built into a waterfall.
During the tour, the tour guide had mentioned that the owners of the home had a peculiar son who had specifically requested peepholes be cut into the guestrooms. He wanted to be able to peer through the hole to see what the guests discussed behind closed doors.
There was even a peephole in the shower.
Of all the things about that house, I remembered that the most.
“Let’s pack up and wait for her friend downstairs. You can sit on my lap in the car if you have to. I’m not leaving you here,” Jake said.
I scrambled for my tights, nodding in silent agreement.
ABOUT HER Page 8