“Okay…” I finally stammered. “Sure.”
Oliver drove us home in steaming silence and didn’t talk to me for two days. That was not the first red flag I ignored.
“He’sgood!” My voice cracks and I blurt something to cover it up. “Busy. We’re both so busy lately.”
We are indeed busy.Iam, anyway. I left him again this week.
“You hold on to that one,” Lynny says, giving me a playful tap on the arm. “He’s a keeper.”
Like hell he is. But it’s one thing to want to leave. It’s another thing entirely when it’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night and your fiancé is screaming at you, again, because you looked at the Uber driver too long, and your dress is too short, and you’re suddenly, startlingly aware that your confident, assertive fiancé is actually a controlling shithead who’s stealing pieces of you little by little and you’ve allowed it.
Maybe you weren’t even fully aware. I wasn’t. But that night, I looked into my fiancé’s eyes, and I saw my father. And I stumbled outside, exhausted and desperate, because I don’t fight. I don’t flight. I just freeze, and yes, I hate myself for it. In the movies, thewoman packs up her shit, leaves the house, and drains the joint account. Begins again.
But it’s been three days since I left, and all I’ve done is survive. I left in a daze and spent the last two nights in a hotel, lying on a double bed, staring at nothing.I didn’t even think to take Jessie.That’s how crazy I was. How crazy it makes you. It must have been how my mum felt. I think I finally understand how she could leave us behind.I understand now, Mum. I understand and I’m sorry.
“Thirty seconds!”
Smears of color. Hot lights. Cold hands.
All I can think about is the text I sent Oliver this morning as I sat on the edge of the hotel bed.I’m coming back to get Jessie.
And his response:
You’re not taking Jessie.
I feel like I’m choking. He bought Jessie, our golden retriever, as an engagement present. He’s walked her twice in three months and snaps at her when she gets underfoot. Poor Jessie is always flustered around him. So am I. I suspect now that Oliver just wanted the image of Jessie and of me. A compliant wife and a golden puppy for the shitty tabloid interviews he wanted us to pose for. And I wanted somebody who didn’t see my chronic people pleasing as an open door.
You’re not taking Jessie.
“Good morning, sunshines!”
Shit, we’re live. I glance into the camera, my face tight and terrified.
Joy wriggles in her seat, booming, “Somebreakingnews this morning…”
I feel like I’ve dunked my head underwater. Color, movement, lights,you’re not taking Jessie.
But then I hear something clearly, Joy reciting, “Beasts from the deep!”
I raise my head, staring at the flickering images of a grimy beach town.
My heart freezes. I know this place.
Joy booms, “A second shark has been spotted off a Victorian beach in four days. A great white shark was spotted just metersfrom the shore in Kangaroo Bay, a small fishing town on the East Coast.”
Lynny chimes in, “The last fatal shark attack took place off the coast of Sydney in 2021. A local man, Keith Walsh, was swimming in shallow waters when he was attacked by a great white shark…”
“…Melanie?”
The studio is silent as Joy calls my name. Her voice is round and soft, a bubble.
“What?” My voice is rough and heavy, a brick.
She raises an eyebrow, and her nostrils start to flare. I’m always deferential to her, off camera and on. Simpering, even. Sometimes I think that my entire personality is just a bunch of coping mechanisms. I spent our last show waiting to get a few words in, and when I finally did, Joy held up a ring-heavy hand and scorned, “Hush dear, thegrown-upsare speaking!”
“Oh, Joy, you’re sobad!” Lynny cackled.
Gentle ribbing, the producers said, defending them. It’s not personal.
