Yes, because I have to protect my daughter, and I know he’ll assume I’m going straight to my parents’ house. He’ll head north, so I’ll head south towards the Pennsylvania border.
I hear him before I see him. His heavy breathing is slower. Shallower. He’s calming down now, reaching into the fridge for another beer. “Basket of goodies, huh? Yeah. Yeah, it could work out.” He follows me through the kitchen, to the garage, and lets out a wolf whistle. “I like those stockings, baby.”
Compliments. He hasn’t been complimenting me lately. Am I being too hasty? Things could already be changing.
“Thanks. I’ve been saving them for a special occasion.” My voice isn’t shaking. Is it?
“Why are you putting the big baby bag in your car?”
“I—I thought we had to take her with us since your mom can’t watch her.”
“Yeah. Yeah... But why do we need so much stuff? And we’ll take my car, silly.”
He always has to drive. So chivalrous, that’s what I used to think. So courteous, always chauffeuring me around. My friends call me a Passenger Princess, a trad wife, a lucky girl. Well, they used to. I’ve been so tired and so busy lately. I feel like I’m losing touch with everyone...
Now, I’m wondering... Is he really just controlling me? Has he been controlling me all along? Making sure that I can’t leave when we’re out together? He knows I don’t go much of anywhere with just Ari on my own. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just a lot with nursing, and being a first-time mom, and not getting much sleep... Matt’s always saying, “Why bother? Just have it delivered. I’ll get it for you.”
Man, on Halloween, you’re supposed to be in disguise, but tonight I feel like I can finally see under Matt’s mask. The “good husband” is the disguise. The monster is underneath, and I don’t know how much worse it will get, how many layers there are under his facade of upstanding, sensitive hubby who spoils his pretty little wife.
I hesitate in the garage of the little house we’re renting, a house we can’t really afford.
He’s waiting for an answer. Please let him get bored. Dismiss it as just something I’m doing. Please let him go back inside.
He doesn’t.
Please let me think fast.
“Well, she was sleeping and got woken up suddenly, so she’ll probably need a diaper soon. It might be a poopy one. I thought I should bring everything, just in case. And I—I loaded up extra outfits in case she has a blowout at the party. And I didn’t figure you’d want to do the drive-around-the-block thing. We can switch to your car after I have her good and asleep again.”
“Yeah. Yeah, good thinking. Okay, Stinkbutt.” He blows a raspberry on Ari’s forehead and smacks me on the rump. “Be back by quarter of six, Loretta. I don’t want to show up to Jackson’s late. You know him. He always has to get his little digs in.” Matt gives me a long, appraising stare. “I’m going to show up that fat cow of a wife of his. His tongue is going to roll out like a red carpet when he sees the fine piece of ass I’m married to.” Matt makes kissy noises at me, his voice light and laughing as his eyes rake over me. And then, like someone flipping a switch, the dark, nasty voice is back, almost making me recoil. “Jackson might be the manager and have a new in-home theater, but his wife is a massive porker. He’s going to wish he shopped around, especially when I show him what he’s missing.”
I swallow hard. He’s talking about one of our oldest friends so disrespectfully, with so much ugliness and mockery in his voice. I don’t dare point out that Shelby is stunning, sweet, and funny at any size, and that Jackson adores his wife and kids.
That’s a sign. A wife shouldn’t be afraid to speak around her husband. She should always feel safe, loved, and cherished.
That’s how I used to feel. Since I had the baby, I no longer feel that way. Not only that, but I’m starting to see that there were cracks in our relationship long before Arianna came—before we got pregnant, before we even got married!
I feel so lost. We still have days when we’re laughing and kidding, loving and kissing, marveling at our baby girl. But those days are getting fewer and farther between. There are more fights, more threats, more belittling words. The possessive jealousy and his insistence on “taking care of me” that I thought were adorable during college are now—frightening. With shaking hands, I put Ari in her infant carrier-carseat combo and tuck the checked blanket in around her feet as they squirm in her pink bunny suit.
“I won’t be late.”
I don’t say goodbye. I don’t think about the house I kept so perfect, even when I felt like crap with morning sickness or just an hour of sleep and cracked nipples, or the clothes and beautiful things I’m leaving behind, or the fact that I don’t have a job. The only thought in my head is to get out. Alive.
With Arianna alive.
What if he had kicked the crib hard enough to flip it over? What if he’d killed her?
Little Red Riding Hood and her precious bundle have to flee from the wolf in disguise—but Grandma’s house isn’t a safe place to go.
“Give me a sign, give me a sign,” I pray in a shaking voice, hands white on the wheel.
Arianna starts to fuss, overtired and startled.
I turn on the radio as I drive slowly around the block—and then turn toward the center of town. If, for some reason, I can’t get away, I need to have witnesses around me.
Ari’s cry reaches a sudden, unhappy screech.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay...” I turn on the music, and there’s a zap and crackle of static as I pass under the water tower, currently draped in orange to look like a giant pumpkin.
