Ree
An icy wind blew in from the north, and I became a creature in hiding. The kids went to school, and I went right back into my curtain drawn home. There was a blistering pain in the depths of my heart when I drove by Lena’s house. It felt like I was subjecting myself to a nuclear heat to look over at it. I could feel my soul trying to evict itself from my body. This was a new prison my mother had put me in. I had thought that getting away from her, out of her clutches would have satiated my desire for freedom, but just her presence, her thick evil, less than a hundred yards from my person lets me know that she can put me in a prison whenever she damn well pleases, and judging by the fact she’s here, she damn well pleases.
Lena is at work, I know this. Therefore, I can deduce my mother is bolting from window to window like a feral cat trying to escape its suburban hell, waiting, watching to see what kind of a viral reaction she’s sponsored from me—garnering the meat for her next ridiculous email. I thought she might be pulling the puppet strings with Astrid, and now I’m beginning to think this is wickedness straight from the nectar. Of course, it’s her. She specializes in psychological torment. And as much as I was shocked to see Astrid buddying up to her, it pleased me in a sick way. She should be heavily exposed to my mother’s brand of psychosis. If she is very, very lucky, she will receive a full dose of her affection. Ultimately, everyone my mother’s necrosis touches dies a slow death. My mother in effect is the Grim Reaper, or in the least his right-hand man. A demonic entity in and of herself, who has mastered the skill of killing people long before they ever die. She is an ardent believer in suffering. She bows at the altar of misery and sacrifices pure souls to the cause each day. She is a purveyor of grief, a waking nightmare, a heated poker ready to strike anyone and everyone in her vicinity.
Bram was up early today. He had a restless night of sleep, while I wrestled it out with my nightmares right there next to him. He dotted my lips with a kiss before leaving, and I inhaled his cologne deeply as if it was medicine. Bram is the balm that can heal all of the wounds my mother ripped open yesterday. And, believe me, I find Lena just as culpable.
The spring sky is dove-gray and rife with misery. An ominous gloom has come to Percy Bay. A sure sign of foreboding, an omen trying to warn the residents of my mother the plague.
I make a cup of coffee—black, no sugar. I need to taste the bitterness, feel the burn—a literal palate cleanse to scrub the wickedness I inadvertently inhaled yesterday from my cellular structure.
Try as I might, I cannot put my mother out of my mind. I see her everywhere, drifting before me like a ghost, my reflection in the mirror—now that she’s melted away to nothing, the resemblance is horrifically uncanny. I see her floating there in my coffee as I stare at the dark water and taste her bitterness on my tongue. And that’s when the truth hits me, the building smashing over my spirit. There is no refuge from her. The earth is not big enough. There is nowhere left to run and hide. Her wings have the ability to darken every corner of this planet. But there is one thing that might be the panacea, and tragically, it’s my morbid fascination with my husband’s brutally murdered first wife. She is the one person who might be willing to swap places with me. Trading my mother for all those hammer blows she endured would seem obvious to the untrained eye. But my mother is just as lethal as a hammer. I should know. She’s been bludgeoning me for years.
Death would be quicker, Simone, and if it weren’t for my children, the husband we share, I would crave this, too.
I drag my coffee, my phone, and my striking resemblance to this newer version of the woman who bore me upstairs and to my closet. I don’t even bother slogging her notebooks to the bed anymore. Instead, I sit on a pillow on the floor, my coffee nestled next to a pair of high-heeled boots I haven’t worn in years, and I pull out the old composition book, riffling through it furiously as if it were a novel I couldn’t wait to finish in haste. The thought of finishing them invokes a sense of dread in me almost as deep as the one my mother is capable of inflicting.
I’ve grown to care about Simone. Her insecurities have become my own. Her hunger for life is contagious. I’d like to think that in some other lifetime we would have been friends. Good friends. Our children would have been siblings. I’m more than slightly infatuated with that bubbly, full of life redhead my husband once had everything with.
How could Bram be so ridiculous as to step out on her? After thinking about it for some time, I’ve determined that she’s misinterpreted the situation. Bram wouldn’t dare cheat on her, would he? Simone was vivacious, the mother of his children, so gorgeous she could have walked every runway in New York and Europe.
Before I was exposed to this intimate side of Simone, a small part of me used to believe that Bram had found in me someone younger than his previous wife, full of my own youthful innocence and natural curiosity that would invigorate his world. A small part of me believed that I offered him things that she couldn’t. That not only did I rescue him from his grief, but that I was a shiny new toy on a silver platter, something akin to a trophy wife upgrade. And here, after spending mere hours with the inner workings of Simone’s deepest thoughts, I can see I was nothing but a downgrade.
May 25th
Peter came home two days ago acting as if nothing had ever happened. As if his penis hadn’t just invaded some other woman’s vagina. He showered and changed, watched television with the kids, and had the nerve to call me a party pooper when I didn’t want to join them.
That night he accused me of sulking. Sulking! I wanted to laugh in his face. How dare he waltz back in here, having satiated his every dark desire, and expect everything to remain status quo at home.
Of course, he doesn’t know that I’m apprised of his dalliance. How frightening to think this is the way he always behaves when he comes home from the city. And to think I’ve played the role of “happy wifey” so perfectly before. I was right there with him, watching endless Disney movies on a loop. Ushering the kids to bed early so I could do my best to seduce my husband. And how ridiculously exhausted he would come home to us. Come to think of it, he never fell victim to my advances, always sighting his unusual fatigue.
Ha! No wonder he was so exhausted. He just came back from a marathon fuck-fest with who knows who for who knows how long. It’s a wonder he could get it up at all for me. I am the boring wife after all who offers up nothing but mundane sex, who forces him to live a desperately vanilla missionary position life, who bitches at him for not helping with the dishes, or meals, who nags endlessly at him to put up curtain rods, to fix the broken showerhead in the guest bathroom, to take the damned hammock out of the box and put it together so I can nap in the sun, blissfully unaware while he finds someone to suck his dick in New York.
Thank you, Peter, for redefining my life for me in such an amazingly (boring) way. I have been relegated to the bottom shelf, stored in a banker’s box collecting dust in the dark recesses of your heart.
Do you have a heart, Peter? I’m not so sure anymore. You make me feel as if I’ve gone the way of newspapers and you’ve moved on to digital, something far more faster, accurate, and urgent to scratch that itch between your legs.
Is she better in bed or just different? Or is it something basic, like the fact she’s simply not me? I get it. Men are hardwired that way. My own father cheated on my mother once. Of course, my mother, being the magnificent shrew she is, taught him a lesson he would never forget.
Perhaps that would be best. No messy divorce. No splitting the children between us. I am not a vase you get to smash against the wall when you don’t feel like using me anymore, once I’ve lost my appeal. Does my belly sag too much for you? Too damn bad. I bore you two children with a third growing blissfully inside me. That’s right, Peter. You’ve got your dirty secret, and I have mine—something pure and right that you are so willing to throw away for something reckless in New York. I have news for you, Peter. I haven’t gone out of fashion. I’m not done on this earth, and neither are our children. But once I’m done with the little lesson I’m about to set out—the only one who will be done will be you and that whore you cling to.
My heart pounds heavy against my chest as I reach for my coffee with a strangulating grip.
Simone was pissed and rightly so. And her poor mother. If Simone was apprised of her father’s indiscretion, then she certainly lived through that pain once. My own heart aches for her. Bram would never do that to me, would he? There is no possibility he’s hardwired that way.
All of those late-night meetings he’s been having with his brother come crashing to the forefront of my mind, and my heart lurches right up into my throat.
No. Couldn’t be. My Peter—Bram, he’s different. There isn’t even a lot of room in my heart to believe he did that to Simone. She must have seen someone who looked like Bram from behind. That’s the only logical explanation. Simone was hiding a pregnancy from him. Her hormones were going nuclear. Of course, her mind skipped to the bawdiest conclusion.
My hands warm over the covers of the journal as if it was her skin and carefully I peel it open once again.
May 27th
They say you can never truly know anyone outside of yourself and that even you are a mystery to your own person half of the time. What I stumbled upon this afternoon has eviscerated everything I thought I knew about Peter, about me, about who we really are. I’ve taken to putting you (my sweet salvation of a friend) in a lockbox. I’ve contacted my sister and shared my suspicions. She’s in Norway for work (traveling PR slut that she is) but promised to be back stateside soon to help me work through this.
I’m afraid I can’t wait. I’m afraid that I’m in danger. The kids are my first priority, of course, and I will watch them like a hawk. I’m ready to fire Kelly. Her incompetence is showing, a weak crack in the armor like that can cost us our lives. I need to figure out a way to move money from one bank account to another without arousing suspicion from Peter. I went online to some abused spouse forum and found that the best way to move money was to purchase gift cards from the grocery store. I can use them later to survive, then buy the kids clothing and shoes. My God, I’ll have to get a real job, interfacing with real people, and we both know how much I loathe people. That was not intended to be funny, but I can feel you laughing.
I can’t fathom moving from this beautiful house—our home. I won’t be able to contact the police until I have everything settled. But that poor girl. Strangulation is such a terrible way to die. How horrific to take a life. They’ll find him. And if they don’t, he’s given me the evidence to put him away for good. It’s in his shed—my God, Peter has always needed that stupid shed and for what? For the gardening tools he never uses? For that old dusty mower? We have a gardener. The signs were all there. So plain as the nose on my face. Help me, God. Help me survive this nightmare and bring my children to safety. I will spend the entire day trying to figure out best how to pursue this. Kelly will be with the kids and me at the lake. I’ll need her more than ever.
May 27th. That’s a day that will forever live in infamy. I turn the next few pages, but they’re all blank. I knew they would be. Simone lost two vital pieces of her heart that day. A horrible irony, considering she was readying to leave her Peter.
Tears roll down my cheeks, falling hot over my knees. I flip the sturdy book to the end, and two small newspaper clippings fall out. Newspaper. I can’t help but find the irony in that, too. The paper is yellowed around the edges, and as I turn one over, I see Isla and Henry staring back at me, expressive smiles, blushed cheeks, so full of life. I offer a weak smile right back at them. I wish they were still here. Lilly and Jack would love them. But would there be a Lilly and Jack? What exactly did Simone have on Peter? It all sounded so very cryptic. Who strangled the whore from New York? Surely she didn’t really think Peter was capable of such a crime. He’s hardly capable of sleeping outside of the bounds of the bedroom. As much as I love Peter—Bram, he is very missionary position in all areas of life, to borrow the analogy from Simone.
The second article slips into my fingers as if biding for attention, and I turn it over, my eyes glossing quickly over the words, manically eating them up while my insides do a revolution.
Dear God, no.
