I nod. “We can handle it. Larry will be home before long.”
“Maybe he can move my car. I parked down the street, but maybe he could put it somewhere less detectable. I don’t know why that seems like the right thing to do, but it just does.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“He’ll probably come by here.”
“What do you want us to do? Should we just not answer?”
“Maybe Larry should answer,” she says. “He might be less angry if someone actually talks to him.”
I nod. I don’t have to question whether Larry can handle Mike. I don’t even have to ask him whether he’s willing to do it. I can rely on him for anything. How do I keep missing that?
Around six o’clock, we brace for Mike to start calling since he should be getting home from work at any moment. Larry’s out moving the car and Amy and I are sitting around the coffee table with Emma, coloring with her and talking in code. Amy says she’s been reading tons about “the issue.” “It’s been comforting to be able to look at it sort of objectively, almost like I was back in school, even though I’m sure it was a defense mechanism to approach it in such a clinical way. Whenever Emma naps, I’d ‘study,’” she says.
“I don’t know. I guess I just firmly believe that everyone deserves a second chance,” she tells me, helping Emma color a picture of a bunny in her coloring book. She puts down her crayon and begins to pick at the chipping polish on her thumbnail.
I have to think hard about how to respond. “Amy, you deserve to be loved in the way that you love the people in your life. You’re the most generous, kindhearted person I know. You can have more than this.”
She just stares at me for a moment. It’s hard to tell whether she agrees with me. “I’d bought him a stack of books on Amazon,” she says. “The titles alone were hard to take—things like Violent No More. I was so proud of him when he started reading them. A few Saturdays ago, I was out sweeping the front stoop and he came down from his office. I thought he’d been catching up on bills. He had one of the books in his hands and he had this excited look on his face that I haven’t seen in years. ‘You wouldn’t believe all the stories in here from guys who sound just like me,’ he said. He felt like he could’ve written the stories himself, and he said it gave him hope that he really could change. He was so optimistic, and he was working so hard, reading for a couple of hours every night before bed and even marking passages with a highlighter like he was studying for the MCAT again.”
She stops and looks at Emma, who’s happily singing to herself: “I’m bringing home my baby bumblebee. Won’t my mommy be so proud of me?” Amy joins in for a few verses and Emma’s face lights up.
“But then about a week ago, I noticed that he’d dropped everything,” she says. I’m amazed at how she can shift her attention from me to Emma and then back to me so quickly, but then I realize that this is probably how she’s survived the past three years. “He just stopped reading the books as if all of the time he’d spent had been nothing but a short-lived hobby he could easily abandon,” she says. “Every night, I keep lying in bed, waiting to hear the sound of him lifting one of the books off of the table, but they just sit on the nightstand untouched. Instead, he flips through his Sports Illustrated or one of his medical journals. When I finally asked him about it a few nights ago, he told me he was just taking a break—he needed some time to let everything he’s been learning sink in. ‘This is intense stuff, Amy,’ he’d said.” She raises her eyebrows, resigned. “As if I wouldn’t know.”
I reach out and squeeze her wrist. I’m holding back tears. I can barely look at her.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one who should see someone,” she says. “I thought about making myself an appointment earlier today. He’d never have to know. I have a secret stash of cash in a tampon box under my vanity. There’s nearly nine hundred dollars. I’ve skimmed it off of the grocery budget, collected whatever I’ve found crumpled in a pocket while I did laundry.”
Hearing this makes me so happy—she has actually thought about getting away.
“I’m hungry, Mommy,” Emma says.
“Oh, I’ll get something for you, honey,” I say, feeling my spine crack as I pull myself up from my spot on the floor. “What would you like? A banana? Some crackers? Dinner is almost ready.”
As I’m walking to the kitchen, I hear Amy’s phone ring. When I turn to look at her, she nods at me. She holds the phone for a minute—she’s deciding whether to answer it, I can tell—and then she presses a button to make the ring go silent and puts the phone down on the couch behind her. “Emma,” she says, running her hand over her little girl’s hair. “Emma, baby. Come give Mommy a hug.”
About an hour later, Amy’s putting Emma to sleep upstairs. Larry and I are sitting on the couch, where we’re ostensibly watching the college basketball game on the television, but I couldn’t tell you who’s playing, much less what the score is. My head is spinning, thinking about all of the scenarios that could play out tonight. What if Mike goes absolutely nuts? What if he has a weapon? Amy’s phone keeps vibrating on the table in the corner. I asked her thirty minutes (and countless calls) ago if she might just want to turn it off, but she shook her head no. “I need to keep it on,” she said, in a way that didn’t leave room for negotiating. Each time it stops ringing, she waits a few seconds, picks it up, checks the voicemail, and puts it back down. When I ask if she’s okay, she just nods.
Finally, as we knew it would eventually, the doorbell rings. Larry looks at me, squeezes my knee, and gets up from the couch to get the door.
“Larry, do you really think we should answer?” I’d like to call the cops, if Amy would let me. She doesn’t want to call the police until she thinks it through. I can’t imagine that she hasn’t already spent hours turning over her options, but I’m not about to debate her on this point. She’s here.
“I’ll just crack the door,” he says.
From my spot on the couch, I have a perfect view of the foyer but I can’t see the front door, which suits me fine. I’ll get all that I need to see just watching Larry’s side of the conversation, and I don’t trust what I might do if I get face to face with Mike. Larry clears his throat as he unlatches the bolt. He keeps the chain lock in place.
“Where is she?” I hear.
“Hey, Mike,” Larry says.
“Where’s Amy?” he barks.
“Mike, listen,” Larry says, his voice steady. “We’re going to figure out a way to work this out, but you just can’t see her right now, man. She needs some time.” I know that he hates Mike with every drop of blood in his body and would probably love nothing more than to punch him right now, but he’s as calm as if he were mediating an argument with his grandmother. His basic goodness fills me with simultaneous pride and shame that I’ve been the way that I’ve been with him.
“Hey, man,” Mike says, mocking Larry. “I need to talk to my wife right this minute. Let me come in!”
“You don’t need to do that right now,” Larry says, gentle and firm. He shifts closer to the door—he’s blocking Mike’s view into the house.
“I don’t think you understand—,” Mike says. And just then, Amy comes down the stairs. She quickly glances at me and then walks to the door, putting her hand on Larry’s back. “It’s okay,” she says.
I jump up. No, it’s not, I think.
“Amy! Amy!” Mike yells when he hears her voice. I walk to the threshold between the living room and the foyer. I can feel my anxiety rising like a rash spreading over my skin.
“Amy, I can handle this for you,” Larry says. “You don’t have to talk to him.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “I can do this.”
Larry reluctantly steps aside. He comes to me and puts his arm around my shoulders. I grip his hand in mine. I wonder if Mike knows that I’m standing here. I can’t bear to look at him. His voice changes the moment Amy appears in the doorway. “Ame, what are you doing?” he
says sweetly, as if she’s a child he’s just caught playing in the flour bin.
“Mike,” she ekes out. “I’m just—I’m really, really disappointed.” She’s crying now.
“Disappointed? How did I disappoint you?”
I dig my fingernails into Larry’s hand and he hugs me tighter. That bastard. Listening to them, I realize that the dysfunction in their relationship goes far deeper than I imagined.
“We had an agreement about the counseling, Mike,” she says, curling the fingers of one hand around the molding on the doorjamb.
“That’s what this is about?” He laughs. “Oh, Amy, come on,” he says.
“Mike, I need an explanation,” she says, gathering herself. “It’s hard for me to believe that you’re committed to this if you’re not going to get help.”
From the way that he groans, I can tell that he’s not taking her seriously. I grip Larry’s arm—it’s the only thing that’s keeping me from flying to the door—and then I hear what he says next: “Listen, I know this sounds ridiculous, but when it comes right down to it, I’m a guy.” He laughs. (He laughs!) “It’s hard enough for me to talk about my problems, and if I’m going to talk to anyone about them, it’s going to be to you.”
“Larry, we have to stop this,” I say, my voice shaking.
Amy is crying again. She almost looks like she’s buying this.
“Amy, I promise you that I’m as committed as ever, but I want you to help me, not some stranger. You have the same credentials as these people. I remember when you were working, how good you were with those kids. Who could help me better than you?”
“But, Mike, you need to see someone who really knows this stuff,” she says, her voice small. “Doctors who specialize in…it. You need counselors whose reference books aren’t a stack of textbooks from the midnineties.”
Or perhaps a counselor who isn’t the direct recipient of your abuse, I think, my head now on Larry’s chest. The even beat-beat of his heart is a sound as steady as a metronome. I hug him tighter, his shirt balled in my fists.
“Amy, I need you,” he says. “You’re my wife. The love of my life. The mother of our sweet, sweet girl. I know that we can get through this. Can’t we? Can’t we work through this together?”
I can taste the bile in the back of my throat. I can see now how he’s playing her. Worse, I can see that she’s under his spell.
“I need some time, Mike,” she says.
He gasps. “Time for what?”
“I just need a little bit of time to think,” she says.
“Do you love me, Amy? Do you really love me the way that a wife is supposed to love a husband?”
“Of course I do,” she says. She’s appeasing him now. “Of course, Mike. Of course.”
I let go of Larry and step forward a bit. Her eyes dart toward me and then back to Mike.
“Just give me a little bit of time, okay?” she says, wiping her nose with the edge of her sleeve.
“But Amy—”
“Just a little bit of time,” she says again, stepping back. She’s starting to shake. Her voice is cracking.
“Amy, come on—” He’s angrier now. I look over at Larry. He walks to the door and Amy, thank goodness, looks relieved to have his help.
“Mike, we’re going to go now,” Larry says, wedging himself between the two of them. “Why don’t you take a little time to cool down now, okay?
“Larry, this is between—!”
“Mike, it’s okay,” Amy pleads, crying again. Larry is closing the door. I rush to Amy’s side, and she collapses into me.
Early the next morning, Amy and I sit out back, sipping coffee on the stoop that leads down to my courtyard. Neither of us slept all night; I’m sure of it. I didn’t even bother to go upstairs, opting instead to lie on the sofa under a quilt that Babci had made for me before I went off to college. I felt like I needed to stand vigil. And I’ll admit that my worry had also bubbled over into actual fear. I dead-bolted the doors and turned on the alarm system for the first time in years. I wasn’t putting anything past Mike. He’d continued to call Amy all evening until she finally, mercifully, decided to turn off her phone sometime around midnight.
At some point I did finally doze off, but the sleep was hardly restful—I had a horrendous nightmare. Amy and Mike were in their living room, watching Jeopardy. The dream started out just tepid and ordinary—Alex Trebek saying, “In August 2005 this ‘Siberian Siren’ became the first Russian ranked number one in women’s tennis,” and Amy responding, “Who is Maria Sharapova?” But it quickly turned ugly, even grotesque, to the point that now, sitting next to Amy and watching her drink from my mother’s chipped NPR coffee mug, I can’t help but see what my subconscious put her through. In the dream, she asked Mike if he wanted to play, because back when they were dating, they often cuddled on the couch in Amy’s apartment and halfheartedly called out the answers while they zoned out at the end of the day. Mike responded by throwing the remote control down on the table, sending it skidding off of the side onto the floor.
And then it began: She started to plead that she missed him, and he responded by berating her—she was fucking stupid, an imbecile, a sad excuse for a woman.
Her head suddenly jerked backward, forced by his fist at the nape of her neck, a handful of her hair in his hand.
“Stand up,” he said. His voice was even, like he was giving commands to the family dog.
It was as if I was her, feeling every merciless blow. She concentrated on sounds. If she listened to the sounds, it would help drown out the pain. The leather on her skin. Contestants buzzing in with their answers. That’s correct!
Her leg.
Her back.
I woke up convulsing with sobs and worried that I’d woken the whole house and would have to explain the reason for it.
“Baby, don’t pick any of those, okay? Just look at them,” Amy calls to Emma.
Emma is sitting on the brick patio in sparkly purple children’s sunglasses, running her fingers over the petals of the white pansies that I planted last fall. It’s cool, and the brick is damp beneath my bare feet, but the air is bright and crisp and holds the promise of spring. It’s going to be a pretty day.
Amy must be thinking the same thing because after she takes a sip from her coffee cup, she says that this time of year always makes her homesick. “In North Carolina, spring comes early and stays late,” she says, holding the mug with both hands. “Here, there isn’t the same assault of azalea blooms on every corner, daffodils and tulips suddenly poking up like fireworks around everyone’s mailboxes,” she says longingly. “I love that time in spring when every time you go outside in the late afternoon, you can smell someone firing up their grill.”
I can tell that the thought gives her comfort, and her musing makes me think of my dad. On weekends during the summer between middle school and high school, when I should have been at sleepovers, prank-calling boys and playing “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” Dad taught me how to grill on the old Weber in our backyard. Mom may have been the main cook in the family, but when the weather turned warm, there were few things my dad loved more than a barbecue. We grilled ribs and shrimp skewers, barbecued chicken and burgers. Mom would sit off to the side in one of our mesh lounge chairs, sipping a wine spritzer from a Solo cup while she pretended to read a magazine but mostly chided my dad whenever I got too close to the fire.
“A few weeks ago, we decided that we’re not going home to my parents’ house for Easter,” Amy says. “It will be the first time I’ve ever missed it. Mike complained that he was just too exhausted from work to make the trip for a short weekend. You should have heard the disappointment in my mother’s voice when I told her—and then, of course, as soon as I hung up the phone, she called my sisters, because Celia and Claire both called within twenty minutes. Mom said she’d made Emma a new Easter dress, with little cotton-tailed bunnies smocked along the neckline. My sisters were planning an Easter egg hunt for the kids. But Mike
didn’t want to go.”
She drums her fingers along her coffee cup. I hear the beep of my next-door neighbor’s car lock and see her race down her back stairs to her Volvo in the driveway behind her house. “I guess I might go now,” she says. “I’d convinced myself that it was no big deal to miss it and that I needed to make some memories in my own home. I thought that if Mom and Dad knew we were having trouble, they’d tell me that that’s what I needed to do. Stay home and focus on my own family.”
I’d met Amy’s parents enough times over the years to know that they were the type of couple you might see featured in one of those magazine stories about what makes marriage last, the two of them posed with their arms around each other’s baby-boomer-sized waists. Her parents were sweetly, uncommonly romantic; the kind of Hallmark card couple that it was hard to fathom could exist in the twenty-first century. Amy told me once that they still hold hands in the car and raise their glasses to toast each other when they go out to dinner. They set a high standard. Thinking about it, I realize that this might be part of why Amy’s kept her abuse a secret for so long.
“Ame, when are you going to call your mom and tell her what’s going on?” I ask.
She sighs in a way that confirms my new theory. “You know, I’ve thought all along that I could handle this on my own if I just made my family my priority. I thought that bearing this one secret was the right thing to do, because it would all resolve itself soon enough. It would be just a little blip in our history, a hiccup. I know that sounds crazy.”
Yes, it absolutely does, but nothing surprises me anymore—that’s what I want to tell her.
“You know, my biggest nightmare, next to something happening to Emma, is failing at marriage,” Amy says. “Lately, things haven’t been so bad that I worried that Mike would fall into his old habits, but I have found it harder and harder to convince myself that things are as they should be. We eat dinner in near silence, talking to Emma instead of to each other. It made me think of when I was in middle school, and my girlfriends and I would make crib notes of conversation topics before we called the boys we liked. I’ve felt—for years, really—that I need a cheat sheet to figure out how to talk to my own husband. The other night at dinner, when Emma stopped eating, she looked up at us and said, ‘All finished!’ My first thought was, ‘Yup, you said it.’”
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