Fire in Me

by Dawn Mattox

  “My affair with Paige wasn’t about you, Sunny. It was never about you. Guess that’s kind of good news and bad news, huh?”

  Silence.

  Oh, look, an elephant!

  “I’ve done a lot of soul-searching lately. I think, part my actions go back to Megan and Crystal.” Deep breath and a shrug. “Not that my behavior is their fault. I take full responsibility. Over the years I have had to wonder, deep down inside, you know; What kind of man has a wife run off with his sister?” Chance swallowed hard.

  Teresa Hurley came to mind. It occurred to me, as painful as it had been when Logan cheated on me with other women, I could not imagine how I might have felt if Logan had been cheating with other men. For that matter, I doubted I would be testing the waters of reconciliation with Chance if he'd had an affair with Travis instead of Paige.

  Head down, eyes shut, Chance tried to explain. “I think I wanted to assure myself that I was still a man. That women still found me desirable... sexual... a real man.”

  It was a déjà vu trigger. Always upset by Logan’s real woman taunts, I hotly resented the implications of a real man.

  Law-enforcement training uses traffic-lights to symbolize present-danger awareness. My mental green light blinked straight to red.

  “What are you saying? I wasn't enough woman for you? I am not a real woman, but Bubble-Breast is?” Chance flinched as I lashed out. “I'm sure it doesn't hurt that she's a plus-size slut with a zero-size butt,” I choked on a lump of emotion, “and years younger than me.”

  Silence filled the air, broken only by the occasional splash of fish leaping for their dinner before falling back into their dark, watery world.

  Chance’s failure to make an immediate response only confirmed my worst fears. Now I know the problem in our marriage – I am not a real woman, and my husband is not a real man. I felt the first tentacles of a migraine taking hold. I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid to say anything as I teetered on the brink of a vent-or-die moment.

  “Logan used to cheat on me all the time.” Just as I had learned not to discuss Chance's lesbian sister, Chance had learned that Logan was off-topic. “I felt dirty and used. He cheated, he lied, and he beat me. He... he raped me... in every possible way... and then told me I wasn't a real woman.” I glared at Chance with accusing eyes. “Those words went deeper and hurt longer than anything he ever did to my body.” My steam condensed into tears that stung, but Chance did not reach out to comfort me. This rescue was out of his league.

  Flesh wounds heal, but when hearts are broken and self-esteem shattered, it can take a lifetime to recover. Children who are raised with affirmations that they are loved, smart, and capable, grow up to become positive, inquisitive, and confident because they internalized the identity their parents gave them. The dynamics are the same when adults label their intimate partner with words like “fat, stupid, lazy, and worthless.” Emotional wounds always outlast physical ones.

  Chance turned his gaze away from me and stared across the lake. A tear formed in the corner of his eye as he worked his facial muscles and clenched his fists. It was as if we had lanced huge emotional boils that had been quietly festering in our marriage. The noxious release of poison brought an unexpected blend of pain and release.

  Finally, he spoke. “You never told me. I am sorry. Sorry I put you through this after all you went through with Logan. Sorry I hurt you. I tried to get you to talk about Logan but you always put me off. If I'd only known...”

  “Now somehow this is my fault?” I said, stiffening. “If you'd of known that I was a poor little victim of abuse you wouldn't have cheated on me? You wouldn't have told Travis about my private life? Now I have to deal with him on top of everything else.”

  “I didn't say that!” Offended, Chance grew defensive. “It's just that you're always so damned secretive. You won't let me help you.” He tossed the offense back like volleyball pro. “At least I could talk with Paige.”

  “Right, Chance. I bet you two did a lot of 'talking.' I was always available for sex. You never had to go shopping for it.”

  We sat in silence for a long time before he reached over and brushed a tear from my cheek.

  How could I expect Chance to understand the trust issues that victims of domestic violence and rape battle, especially when it comes to believing men? I had educated a hundred juries, but not my own husband. Longing for intimacy, I had nevertheless kept him at arm's length. Somehow, without ever explaining, I had expected him to understand.

  Chance softened. “I'm sorry. I should have thought. I should have known. We could have been so close.” He paused and considered his next words. “I guess there's a difference between being close and being open.”

  “And there's a difference between being open and being honest,” I added. “So tell me, why did you tell Travis that Logan is stalking me? I trusted you. That was private information. You had no right.”

  Chance looked defeated; his face fell, haggard and heavy with regret. “Because everything has changed. I felt I could protect you when we lived together. Now you're being stalked. You and I both thought Logan started the fire below the house, even before Mark confirmed it was arson. And now we know he's at least tied to it.”

  Dinner had lost its appeal, but Chance stayed on track.

  “I heard you looked at the sketch. Did you ID the arsonist?”

  I studied the napkin in my lap. I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to endanger Chance with what I knew either. I said nothing.

  “There you go again! Now, do you get it? You have never trusted me. You won't let me help you, so I thought maybe you'd trust Travis. I figured you can't hate me any more than you already do, so I did what I could to keep you safe.” He lowered his eyes and dropped his voice. Words tumbled over one another; “I still... love... want... you.”

  The ducks swam toward us, quacking as they bobbed and plunged in search of food. We had spent the day fishing and swimming, but now, like the ducks, we dove in search of substance, pulling up bits of our past from deep waters.

  It was dark when we docked the boat. By then I had disclosed details of my childhood, spilling my heart about the times my mother had left and the guilt I felt for loving my father. I told him about Logan. How we met, the abuse, the gang-rape he orchestrated at Sturgis, and that I had taken drugs. But I didn't talk about the guns—and kept quiet about the baby. Our relationship hung by a thread and I wasn't about to unravel it.

  Chance shared the heartache of his mother abandoning him. He told me he loved his little sister and how he hated leaving her with a drunken father when he enlisted. Then, home on leave for his dad's funeral, Chance said he’d rushed to marry his high school sweetheart and quickly moved Megan in with his teenage sister. He’d thought it was ideal: Megan had a job at La Spa Massage and Sports Club and Crystal could finish high school. Megan wouldn't be lonely, and Crystal would have a big sister. Within months of his return, they left him for San Francisco—together.

  Tunneling through the refrigerator for a late-night snack, I closed the door and stood face to face with a magnet entreating: Bless This Mess, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen anytime soon. In fact, I was pretty sure that God would never bless my mess.

  Closing my eyes and pointing to a page in the Bible for inspiration and direction wasn’t working anymore. I wondered how many more self-help books I would need to buy, teachings I would have to watch, and friends I’d need to consult before finding the spirit of forgiveness.

  I once believed that Chance was a gift from God. I had put my husband on a pedestal and romanticized that Chance was my guardian angel—not lowered from a helicopter, but repelled down from heaven above. The painful truth was... he was just a man. And I had expected so much more.

  CHAPTER 23

  Crazy Bob... make that Deputy Robert Martel... was animated as he waved his arms about, dramatically reenacting the story of his encounter with Tamsin Hunter.

  “I tell you, Sunny, I never
saw it coming. She's bleeding and screaming, ‘Help me! Help me!” he sounded like a shrieking freaking woman. “Then her brain-dead boyfriend gets in my face and forces me to whip out my mace. I tagged that sucker right between the eyes. He's rolling around on the pavement, cussing and calling my mother obscene names, so I jumped him, put him face down in the dirt and cuffed his sorry butt. Next thing I know, I have two hundred pounds of pissed-off—e’scuse my French—female riding and spurring me like a mechanical bull, screaming, ‘Stop it! Stop it!'“

  Bob froze mid-pantomime and shook his head as if I should be shocked; instead of crossing my legs and holding my sides in hilarity.

  Crazy’s story made my day. “Let me break it down for you.” I gasped, swiping the laughter from my eyes.

  A woman once accused me of being “completely unprofessional” because I integrated dark humor into my training seminar. Domestic violence is a serious subject, and violent acts should never be taken lightly. But truthfully, if I couldn't laugh, I would probably shoot myself. So I laughed, which is supposedly the best medicine after all.

  I tried to explain to Bob. “She wanted both; to be helped and for the abuse to stop, just like she said, and in the order she said it. She wanted your help to control the violence, and once you accomplished that, she wanted you to go away. She didn’t want him to go to jail and possibly get released and come home and beat her again for calling the cops.”

  Bob tipped his graying head, massaging his ear with his fingers as he concluded, “So let me get this straight. Next time Ms. Hunter needs help, I'll tell her to call you?”

  “It's complicated,” I agreed, as my stressed-out friend glanced down at his watch. “Sometimes it's all about the money: rent, food, drugs—whatever. And lots of women like Tamsin don't want their children thinking them as the evil mother who put their Daddy in jail.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “Okay, maybe I get it. But I still think she's still one crazy bitch.” And with that, he took his leave.

  “Get the fuck out of my face!” Tamsin Hunter had a temper that was perfectly reflected in her fiery red hair and 49ers T-Shirt. Her green eyes bulged, her pierced nostril flared, and a geyser of Shanghai Red started at the bottom of her XXX-size frame and rushed to the tips of her Woodpecker red hair do. Lucky she hadn't broken Crazy’s back.

  “Okay, whatever,” I said, acting bored and disinterested, spinning on my heels (literally) in front of the courthouse and walking away from her. I rated her a ten on my hostile-witness scale of one-to-ten. “I just thought you’d like to know what’s going to happen in court today,” I tossed back over my shoulder. If you want to catch the fish, you have to bait the hook.

  “Wait!” Tamsin chased me down the sidewalk. “What is going to happen in court today?”

  I explained that a preliminary hearing is not a trial. It is the court’s way of making sure the prosecuting attorney has enough evidence to take the case to trial, and “yes,” she would have to testify.

  “Victim Witness has several...” I began.

  “Fuck you! I don’t need another social worker!” She cut me off.

  “That’s good!” I countered with an attitude that resembled her own, “because I’m not a social worker. If you don't care about money and benefits, that's fine with me.” Again, bait and walk away.

  “Hey! You! Come back!” Now Tamsin was worried that I would leave.

  And so it went, repeating the bait-and-walk routine until it was time to go into court where she promptly sat with her very stoned, very best friend, who would become one of my client's in later months.

  At no time did Tamsin offer an apology for cussing me out. She was angry at the world, and I worked hard not to take her belligerence personally. As far she was concerned, life had dealt her a bad hand and everyone—other than herself—was to blame. Then too, she didn’t want anyone judging or condemning her party-hearty lifestyle. According to Tamsin, she had that part of her life “under control.” However, Child Protective Services had seen it differently and had placed her eleven-year-old twins in foster care, charging her with child endangerment because of her drug addiction and her refusal to leave her abuser.

  I sympathized with Tamsin. Really, I did. She reminded me of my mother. In fact, Starla had a great deal in common with Tamsin, and I could relate to her kids. I would never have forgiven my mother if she had put my father in jail. As an advocate, I can see now that Starla was stuck in a lose-lose situation.

  Statistics say that women who testify are seven times safer than those who do not. But it's hard when you are the one risking your life to put a violent man in jail—or alternately running away from everything and everyone you know and love. I knew those choices intimately from my time with Logan. And like my mother and Tamsin, I had chosen to run from my abuser instead of cooperating with the police.

  Is it possible, I asked myself as I sat through a series of preliminary hearings, that I have misjudged my mother all these long years? The thought rocked me.

  Like my father, I pretended that Starla’s absence didn't hurt. But it did. Angry as I was with Starla for abandoning me, I still felt sorry for her. I can never forget the times I hid under my mother's bed as she was beaten, sticking grubby little fingers in my ears, trying to shut out her cries as she begged my father to stop. Then I was gone—racing through mountains and plunging across wild rivers, running with the wind on the back of a wild mustang in my childish, dissociative fantasy world.

  By the end of court, I was thoroughly confused about how I felt about my mother. But I was not at all confused about my feelings for Lefty. I still loved my dad.

  Chained naked to a tree and held captive in the mountains for an entire summer. The story sounded more like fiction than fact. Things like this don’t happen outside of a Hollywood movie set, or so I thought. It turned out to be one of those cases that should have made headline news but ended up going nowhere.

  It was late in the day when Gayle, at the front desk, directed the woman down the hall and around the corner to my office. Surprised by a knock on the door, I set my briefcase beside the desk and tried to pretend that the knock hadn’t startled me.

  “Um, hi. My name is Erin Moeller. Are you Sunny?” she asked timidly.

  “You got me. How can I help you, Erin?” It was almost quitting time, and I had car keys in hand feeling tired and anxious to close shop. I was hungry and had spent the last hour mentally feasting on the leftover chow mien and pork fried rice packed into cute little cartons and calling to me from the back of my refrigerator.

  Erin was middle-aged, medium height, with a plain face and frizzy blonde hair that showed more than an inch of tired brown roots. She looked like she had been around the block a few times. Short skirt, lots of makeup, and blood-red nails the size of small daggers. She stood at my door fidgeting and glancing over her shoulder. My stomach rumbled as dinner plans faded into wishful thinking.

  “Come in and sit down,” I said, motioning her to the sofa. “Can I get you some water?”

  Spotting the keys in my hand, she took a step back. “Oh, no. Sorry, ma'am. I didn’t know you were leaving.” She turned to go.

  “No, no!” I lied. “I just got back from court. Please, sit down.” She flashed a tired smile of relief. “How can I help you?”

  “Well...” she took a deep breath and swallowed hard—never a good sign, but I was used to it. My job is kind of like working the ER of the legal field.

  Erin’s eyes scanned the room before locking on mine. “It’s my old boyfriend. He won’t leave me alone. He just drops in whenever he wants and demands that I give him a blowjob. He doesn’t even knock. He just walks in like he owns the place. I’m tired of it and I want him to go away.”

  Oooo-kay. It didn’t take long to lose my appetite as Erin continued to provide the graphic details of her relationship with Kevin.

  “Kevin had a thing for the dog. He followed me down here to Bangor, like what he had done to me up in the mountains was no big deal.
Then one day I walked in and caught him with the dog. I threw the bastard out.” Erin lifted her chin, her gaze as flat as her tone. She continued, “Bad enough he treated me like a dog. Anyways, he just keeps comin' back, dropping in and... pulling it out. I just can’t take it anymore. I wish he would go away and die!”

  Not good, but her remark was still a couple of notches below, “I’m gonna kill him.”

  “When did you first meet Kevin?”

  “Two summers ago. I met Kev over at Pigg's Liquor in Southside. We hooked up outside in the parking lot.” The corners of her mouth twitched in what passed for a smile. “Well, he was hot. Ya know what I mean?”

  Again, I offered her a glass of water nodding “yes” and thinking “yeech.”

  She ignored my offer and continued. “I have two little kids. I’m thinkin’ little Jake was ‘bout five and that’d make Tyger almost four. I was in love right then and there. Know what I mean? So we picked up the kids from their Grandma’s house. Kev didn’t care. He said to bring ‘em. So we all headed up to his place to party.”

  “And where was that?” I asked.

  “Somewhere in the woods up above Berry Creek. He had a trailer, ya know? He was doing some growin’. Well, we spent the night drinkin’ and shit... excuse me... Well anyway, I woke up the next morning and the SOB had chained me to a tree if you can believe it, out behind the shed!” She paused for a long while to collect her thoughts, lips pressed tight, eyebrows pinched into a V deeper than Butte Creek Canyon. “Then he fucked me. I mean, he’d do me whenever he felt like it. Made me do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Sometimes, we did it in front of his friends.”

  Here it comes, I thought, preemptively handing her a box of tissues.

  “Then, you know what? I'd have to do them too.” She continued with a flat affect, not exhibiting the level of emotion one would expect from such a graphic and horrific story. She continued, “Sometimes Kev would just take off and leave the kids and me for days. I’d hear the car start, and whoosh, he’d be gone, or else he’d take off with his friends.” Erin took the tissue and twisted it around her finger. “Jake—he’s my oldest—would bring me glasses of water, but he was only five ‘n too scared to walk out to the road all alone and get help. B’sides, I was afraid he’d get lost or eaten by a mountain lion.”