And now here she is, her face numb, her nails gelled long and thick with the tips painted a coy white, her toes on their way to being what David calls “slut red,” and she hates herself more than ever even if, deep down, she knows it’s David she hates. But there’s nothing she can do. She’s trapped with him, by him.
It happened slowly, so slowly she didn’t even notice it. The sweet crush became the perfect boyfriend became the distracted husband became the college freshman who stayed out too late partying before coming home to his pregnant wife, who was never invited out—for her own good, he said. He insisted they open joint bank accounts and she turn over any money to him, since he’s the planner and she sucks with numbers. He’s always wanted her to stay home with the girls. He won’t let her work part-time, and the essential oils and other attempts at entrepreneurship put her deeper in his debt instead of saving her from him. She has no income, no credit card of her own, no job prospects. No friends. He ran them off, too, jealously insisted he needed her at home, needed her to himself. Told her that was her job—to be his wife. Even Jeanie across the street barely responds to her texts now. There’s no one she can turn to.
And her mother?
Well, that would be like running away from a wolf and directly toward a lion.
Somehow, step by step, bit by bit, secretly and silently, he’s cut off every avenue of escape. Even if she tries to divorce him, he’ll get everything and probably manage to take the girls, considering his best friend, Brian, is an attorney of the vicious kind. No matter what her internet searches say about how mothers generally get custody and alimony, she knows deep down that David would rather see her dead than on her own with the girls and half the money that he considers all his. And her mother would only make things worse, somehow make any relationship problems into Chelsea’s failings instead of David’s abuse.
But—wait.
Is it abuse?
It must be. He puts her down. Restricts her money. Gaslights her. Strangles her while drunk and then, when he’s sober, swears he would never lay a hand on her. Tells her that the bruises are because she’s clumsy. Tells her, sweetly, that she’s forgetful and silly and stupid and getting fatter every day. Reminds her that his high school best friend is on the force and he knows half the policemen in their hometown.
According to an article she read on the internet, she lives with domestic abuse.
It’s hard to call it what it is, but it’s impossible to ignore that the violence is escalating. He used to just slide his arm over her throat and hold her there, tight, almost loving, but in the past year, he’s strangled her to unconsciousness multiple times. Sometimes she wakes up in bed, unsure how she’s gotten there, because her last memory is of a man so drunk he can barely get his own body through the bedroom door.
“Are you watching this?” Marissa squawks from beside her, waving her champagne flute at the big TV on the wall, where a grim-faced blond woman in a jewel-toned blazer reads a prepared statement about the bizarre attacks sweeping across Florida—and spreading beyond it.
The one in the Costco down the street that her mom mentioned was only the first of many, and every day there’s a new instance. There was one in Atlanta, another in rural Alabama. A snowbird on a plane from Miami to Philly killed a flight attendant with his bare hands. It’s happening in Central and South America, too, but the news anchor gives that only the briefest mention. This explains why Chelsea has seen more people than usual wearing masks, although plenty of people never stopped wearing masks after Covid, assuming the next deadly virus was just over the horizon.
A number flashes on the screen for several moments, and Chelsea is transfixed as the news anchor begs the audience to let the government know if they suspect someone is sick with—whatever this is. Unusual bouts of violence, arising from seemingly nowhere in otherwise healthy people. Anyone attacking someone else right now needs to be quarantined and studied so that scientists can figure out what’s going on and hopefully get ahead of the pandemic.
1-555-ALERT-US.
Chelsea wonders where that number goes, if it’s a specific branch of 9-1-1, people trained to ask certain questions, or if it’s like the phone bank she once helped with when a local kid got lost in the swamp with volunteers taking notes on old hotel stationery. Are the police in charge, or is it the CDC? It’s got to be some kind of disease. Doesn’t it?
A kid in Ella’s class nearly killed a fellow student in the lunchroom, and Ella told her all about it. The poor girl is traumatized from seeing it up close. The school counselor has set up group and individual sessions to talk about it, try to process it, but the kids are all too embarrassed to be seen talking to her.
Like these kids haven’t already seen horrible things. In movies, in videogames, maybe in their own homes. Chelsea knows that Ella has seen what David does to her, and that he’s choked her, too, that one, horrible time that she’s buried down deep lest it tear her apart. They never talked about it, she and Ella, but they have an unspoken system now. When Chelsea can tell it’s going to be bad, she raises her eyebrows and tips her head toward the foyer, and Ella hurries upstairs and keeps Brooklyn up there with her. She even taught Ella how to put a chair under her doorknob, just in case. She said it was for staying home alone, but they both knew the truth.
No child should have to do that, have to see that. No child should have to protect her sibling, much less herself. No child should have to lock herself in her room at night. No mother should let it happen.
But that puts all the weight on the wrong person. Chelsea has to turn this around.
No man should do that to a woman.
No one should do it to anyone.
An easy statement to think, but almost impossible to do anything about, in her position.
She’s trapped.
If she left, he would find her and punish her. He would cut her off from their money, repossess her car, which is of course in his name. Or use the law to hurt her. Or take the girls away from her. And the girls would live in a broken home, or worse—with him, unprotected—and they would think it was all Chelsea’s fault.
“Hon, you okay? This news shit freaking you out? You look like you’re going to rip the arms off that chair. Here. Take the remote. It’s a massager. It’ll relax you.” Marissa grabs the remote and presses a button, and the chair begins to knead Chelsea’s back in the worst possible way, like fists hellbent on finding the most tender spots on her spine and bruising them. She surges forward a bit, grimacing, angry, and Marissa hands her the remote, tiny gems winking on her long, freshly painted nails. “The harder the massage, the more good it does. You’ve just got to lean into it.”
Chelsea mashes buttons until the chair stops attacking her like waves made of bricks and instead lightly jiggles her, and as an elderly woman squats at her feet and begins the awkward dance of smoothing and trimming and painting her toenails, she sips her champagne and stares at the TV, at that phone number and the list of possible symptoms, and that’s when it hits her.