A bit of spittle flew out between his clenched teeth and landed as gentle as a snowflake below my left eye. He squeezed tighter. It would be another turtleneck day. Had I washed the brown one? His thumbs would leave two perfect blue ovals on the left side of my neck, tilted out like tiny butterfly wings. The thick fingertips were stacked on the other side, where the bruise would form a long, jagged line, more like the very hungry caterpillar.
Real terror doesn’t come at you like a fist in the middle of an argument, or a thump on the back of the head after you do something stupid. You can see those coming. Real terror is going to sleep thinking everything is fine at the end of an ordinary day, a day where you laughed over dinner and watched a late movie, and then waking up to this reminder that you don’t have to wake up. Not ever. Not if he doesn’t want you to.
His nose and the angle of his jaw looked foreign in the thick shadows, as though his German bloodline were written in an ink visible only by moonlight after being submerged in vodka and the hot breath of his rage.
His strawberry-blond hair, cropped short like he was preparing for a Special Forces mission, glistened with a light sheen of sweat. If his hands were free just then he would have wiped a palm back over his head and flexed strong jaw muscles in a way that had once made me say, “Oh, my.” His brow was low, shadowing his eyes into a dark mask. I tried to imagine his wispy, red-yellow eyelashes winking at me over a grin that meant it was all a joke. Just pretend. All in fun. He’d draw up the left side of his mouth in a smile wickedly handsome enough to make women want him and men want to be him.
Like he was reading my mind, his mouth pulled into that half smile, but paired with the intensity of his dark eyes, it was cruel, not a joke after all.
I froze. And I hoped. I hoped this would be one of the simple nights where reminding me my fragile life was in his hands was all he was after. Even when his fingers tightened and I realized that it wasn’t, that instead it was going to be one of the long nights he would later say he didn’t remember, even then I found things to hope for. Mostly, I hoped the kids would sleep through it, the four amazing little people who kept me drawing breath down through the circle of his hands.
My arms tingled, the nerves jumping with fire from the crushed pressure points on the sides of my neck. Hoping failed, and with barely a nod to the subtle difference between the blackjack-size odds of a hope and the Mega Millions long shot of a wish—I moved to wishing. I wished for the way he had been only hours ago. I wished I could wipe away the things that haunted him. I wished I weren’t so weak. And for three slow breaths in and back out, I allowed a wish I had pushed away every time until this one: I wished I could wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze just … like … this.
My peripheral vision blackened, and I ignored the things living in those dark shadows, the monsters of sharp-toothed reality. I never stared those things straight-on—the things most likely to happen. His shoulders twitched, begging to end the tension with either a full-out, final squeeze, or a release. He wore his favorite baby-blue T-shirt, so tight it showed every taut muscle beneath the soft fabric. Hours ago, I’d pressed my cheek against that shirt, his cologne soft and welcoming, his arm draped across my back and hand tucked into my waistband. I’d felt safe, loved. I’d felt at home.
The reality monsters crawled out from their dark places and up the sides of the bed, whispering truths that for the first time I found I wanted to hear.
He sprang upright, jerking his hands apart and up like he had the sudden urge to do jumping jacks. The nape of my neck tingled where a few strands of my long, curly hair had jerked back with him, tangled in his watchband. For a moment, he hovered like Peter Pan’s shadow, like no human could possibly be attached to the dark form with the thick shoulders beefed up during college ball. I’d been holding my breath, cutting off the air myself to keep some small scrap of control, and I was so light-headed the vessels over my ears pounded louder than his breathing. Fresh oxygen stung my lungs, and I was suddenly aware of the rest of my body, which had mysteriously vanished when the only thing that mattered was my access to another breath.
I wished for words, explanations, accusations, anything to put a name to what had gone wrong enough to spin an average day into a nightmare night. Vodka had played its part, it always did, but it was more than that. Lots of people had a little vodka without turning into a human claw machine, grabbing at their thin-necked wife amid the wrinkled, cardboard-colored sheets. Something was wrong inside his head. After all these years I’d figured that out, finally; I could see there was more wrong in his head for behaving this way than in mine for believing it could get better.
“The last straw,” he said.
Which always made me picture an icy lemonade in a tall glass with slices of real lemon and an old-fashioned red and white paper straw poking out the top, stained with lipstick. “It was just the last straw.” His hands went to the sides of his head, fingers twisted like they could tangle into his stubbly hair, and then pushed until his temples must have pounded like mine.
I was so happy for the interruption of his damned “Fi-fah” that I welcomed the inevitable appearance of the straw. Even though my mind screamed the question, I knew better than to ask, “What was the last straw? What, exactly?” Because he didn’t know any more than I did. No one likes to face their own crazy, irrational anger—least of all a crazy, irrational person. I zipped my lips. Bit my tongue. Held my peace. I knew better than to apologize, agree, or make any move at all.
“Don’t you cry, Cara. You attention hound. Don’t play like a victim. Don’t. You. Cry.”
I hadn’t cried in years, at least no more than an eye-dabbing tear over a poignant movie. But I started crying anyhow. Not because I was scared; of course I was scared, but that wasn’t what made me cry. My neck hurt, too, but I’d been hurt a lot worse, and I rarely cried just because something hurt. I’d delivered babies with no medication and kept so eerily silent the doctors were afraid for me. No, these tears were for my old mantra, because it had finally failed. Most of the time he’s good. And I love him, I had always told myself. I love him enough to stay.
But for the first time, I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him enough to stay. I didn’t hate him, though I knew I would have if I’d been lucky enough to be born a pessimist; rather, I didn’t feel anything for him at all. He had become a big, emotionless, black hole in my core. A hole that didn’t even sting when I poked at it.