“First, I’ll teach you your lesson,” Dennis announced over my inner chant. “Then we’ll call Noelle down here, and we can all be one happy family.”
Over my dead body.
Most likely, literally.
But for Noelle, sitting innocent and vulnerable in Gemidgee...
I continued to grit my teeth.
Dennis was back, and so was the version of myself I’d played as his wife.
No more art. No more freedom. Just duty. The dreadlocks I’d been growing for ten years were scraped back into a tight ponytail that Dennis just had to settle for, since the alternative was cutting them off.
The only thing he hated more than my dreadlocks was short hair. So he decided he’d just have to endure “those Medusa ropes” until my new growth was long enough for me to get straight hair extensions.
Until then, isolation was the cornerstone of abuse, and he was determined to return me to his ideal: the meek, subservient wife he’d cajoled, insulted, and eventually hit me into becoming.
I was made to quit my job at the museum and only let out of the apartment for necessary errands, like grocery shopping and occasionally making special trips to the corner store for cognac and more cigarettes.
He paid for the rent, the groceries, and seven neat house dresses, like the ones I’d worn back in Saint Everette, to replace the carefully curated artsy capsule wardrobe I’d acquired over the last ten years. But the cigarettes had to come out of my quickly dwindling bank account.
He’d picked up a pack-a-day habit while in prison, so him needing to smoke was one more thing that was all my fault.
But I was grateful for the little time I got outside the prison he’d made of my cozy apartment.
He’d taken my phone, and we only watched what he wanted on TV, which was mostly sports. The constant drone of announcers discussing plays became the soundtrack of my captivity. I accepted smoke settling into the curtains, the couch, and my clothes. I got used to the ever-present headache that came with keeping my long hair in a tight bun.
Other than grocery and corner store trips, I didn’t get to see or hear much about the outside world. I didn’t know what movies were doing well at the box office or what shows were the hottest on streaming. I had no idea how Noelle was getting along after her breakup, or if Holly was still concerned about being able to continue to work in Canada after her divorce, due to licensing issues.
A couple of days before December 25th, a package arrived in the mail addressed to me from Noelle with “Don’t Open Until Christmas!!!” scrawled in her sloppy handwriting with a Sharpie marker. She must have sent it to me before she got put on leave—before I told her she couldn’t come down for the holidays.
Dennis ripped into it anyway, like the present was for him.
He frowned when he saw what it was.
A gorgeous neon-orange winter coat with gold buttons.
Then he pulled out the note and read it aloud.“Mom, you’re right. Here’s a warm coat for the warmest mom I know. Please think about how much you and not Linda deserve this every time you put it on. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Of course, he didn’t understand. Someone like Dennis could never understand. His lack of emotional depth had been the second major red flag.
“So what if he doesn’t have any poetry? He’s safe and reliable,” my sister, Joy, had pointed out when I called her in Germany where she was stationed while going back and forth with myself about whether to accept his marriage proposal—which had basically been a pitch about how he needed me to move in with him in Saint Everette and play the part of the dutiful wife while he campaigned to go from being their comptroller to their mayor. “Don’t you want Holly to have a father?”
Yes, I had, which was why I’d agreed to marry him. But Dennis had set a terrible example for Holly. After seeing what I went through, Holly had picked someone the opposite of Dennis. A useless Canadian who was happy to let her earn all the money while he sat back and pursued a dubious career as a street artist.I knew her marriage and divorce were partially my fault. I’d taught her to distrust the safe choice.
But the coat from Noelle was more than a gift. It was poetry I wasn’t expecting. For the first time since I’d stoically accepted my fate, I nearly cried again.
But I couldn’t let Dennis know how much Noelle’s thoughtful gift meant. He’d just find some way to use it against me.
Holding back my tears, I hardened my voice. “Orange doesn’t go with my new look. I don’t want it. I’ll send it back to her.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Dennis agreed. But instead of sending it back, he hung it up on the coat rack I kept next to the door.
Probably to mock me. Every time he left the apartment on vague errands, with threats of what he’d do to Noelle if I wasn’t there when he got back, I’d see that awesome orange coat hanging there. Gold buttons glinting like treasure I’d never be able to enjoy.
january
I spent New Year’s alone, watching people set off illegal fireworks on the street below. Wishing I could call Holly and Noelle. Even though there was nothing I could say.
