David snorts as he steps forward, closing the distance and grabbing her wrist. “Little bird bones. Think you can punch somebody with this thing? I said take care of yourself, not waste your fucking time. You wanna work out, use the treadmill I bought you. Swim some laps in your fucking pool. Don’t get all bulky and butchy. Jeanie’s built like a brick shithouse.”
She trembles and glances toward the stairs, checking that she can still hear music playing, even if the girls are no longer jumping around. She sees a shadow move and hopes it’s that wretched dog peeing on the banister but knows it’s probably Ella. She stares at the blotch of shadow and wills it to move, to go somewhere safe, but it remains firmly in place.
David spins her around and pulls her back against his chest, her back all along his front. He has an erection, prodding her spine, and the hot breath against her scalp is all beer. The world goes unfocused as he threads his other arm around her chest, sliding it up until his elbow perfectly frames her throat.
She’s gone from trembling to shaking now, her breath in little gasps. This is the point of no return, when nothing she can say or do will stop him. With his right arm cinched around her throat, he slides his left arm behind her head, grasps his own right biceps, and with infinite care and slowness tightens his grip.
He told her once that his dad called this the Cobra Hold, but she’s watched enough MMA with him to know that it’s a strangle. Time almost seems to stop. He holds her life in his hands, and she is caught in a moment of infinite horror, unable to move or fight or talk back or look at him or complain. As he slowly pulls it tighter, she can feel the blood in her veins pounding, going thick and sludgy, the world going hazy and dim.
She’s looked it up online. He’s cutting off blood flow to her brain. He could give her brain damage. Or kill her.
And they both know it.
Just as they know that this, what he does—it doesn’t leave bruises. No evidence.
She’s almost there, almost out, and she can’t stop the tiny little hitch of a breath that signals her giving up. For a moment, there’s nothing—no air, no sound, no her, no him, no time. And then, right before everything goes red and then black, he releases her and lets his arm slide down to her waist, a loving hug.
“I’ll tell Brian to tell Marissa to text you the place,” he whispers into the top of her head, his lips brushing that tender vulnerable place where her hair parts, her scalp now red and prickling as the blood rushes back in and he holds her up so she won’t fall.
Chelsea nods, the back of her head against his chest. There’s something almost comforting about it, something tender, the way he’s supporting her until she can fully stand again, and it makes her feel grateful, and she hates that. “Okay.”
He kisses her cheek. “Good. I’ll be in the man cave.” For a long moment, he pauses, as if expecting something more, but she can’t make the words work. “I love you,” he murmurs gently, a reminder.
Despite your many failures, she’s meant to understand.
“Love you, too,” she rasps, throat raw.
Without another look, he heads for the room off the garage, where he closes and locks the door. Chelsea leans into the counter, elbows on the cold granite, and silently cries. That, at least, is one thing she has learned to do exactly right.
5.
Brooklyn already fell asleep with Olaf curled against her on the couch in the playroom, but Ella is on the stairs, huddled down in the shadows, watching the kitchen from between the clean white spindles of the banister. Brooklyn thinks that when they do this, Daddy is hugging Mommy, because Brooklyn is five, just a little kid who still plays with Barbies. She makes Ken hug Barbie like this sometimes, even though their arms can’t really bend the right way.
“I love you so much,” she says as Ken smashes against Barbie. “So much you turn pink.”
But Ella knows exactly what is happening. And she knows what it feels like, because Dad did this to her once, too, when she stuck around too long after dinner on a Bad Beer Night and he yelled at her for getting a C on a math test and she rolled her eyes when he could see it. At first, she thought it was a hug, but when you tell someone to stop, they’re supposed to stop hugging you, and Dad didn’t stop. He whispered, “Shhhh,” in her ear, and then, “I bet you can’t escape.”
Ella remembers what it felt like, her fingers curling around his arm, pulling gently at first and then desperately, her nails digging in when she couldn’t make it budge. She remembers how she wanted to cough but couldn’t, wanted to scream but couldn’t. She remembers the feel of his curly arm hairs, the way thick muscle shifted against bone in her grasp. She remembers focusing on her mother’s face, seeing Mom’s eyes all big and bulgy like the goldfish Brooklyn loves in the big tank at the Chinese restaurant; her mind went oddly childish, at the time.
“That’s enough,” Mom said, more begging than warning.
But Dad didn’t stop, and things went very strange. Ella saw colors behind her eyes, dark red and then gray and then black, and she went to sleep, and when she woke up she was on the couch, and Mom had a hand on her forehead like she was sick. Dad didn’t apologize, and Mom didn’t explain it. They never spoke about it, and Ella figures her mom is probably as embarrassed by it as she is.
“Hurry up to bed,” Mom said that night, and then, softer, “Lock your door.”
And although Ella felt woozy and strange and her feet were wobbly, and although she felt like some small part of her died and she’d never say the word Daddy again, she skittered up the stairs and scrambled into her room like she was still a good girl doing the right thing.
Since that night, she knows: Don’t go downstairs when Dad’s drinking. And she doesn’t let Brooklyn go, either. Sometimes she sits on the stairs like this, both guarding them from her little sister’s interest in a bedtime snack and watching to make sure Mom is okay. She knows she can’t stop Dad, but somehow watching makes her feel safer. If something really, truly bad happened, she could call 9-1-1 and the police would come. But most of the time, Dad just talks and drinks, and Mom listens and says very little, and eventually Dad sways his way upstairs to bed, and by then Ella has already hidden in her room, her door locked. She knows the sounds of his feet on the steps, though, and she’s glad her room and Brooklyn’s room are on the far end of the landing instead of right next to her parents’ room.
This time, though, it’s worse than usual, and Ella has to keep watching. It’s like staring at a car wreck in slow motion, waiting for the right moment to run over and help. But Ella feels completely numb as she watches her mother’s face go deep mauve and then the sickly white of skim milk. If she called for help, things would only get worse, but if she doesn’t call for help when…if…