The truth was, for years, she’d been waiting for George to leave her. Waiting for him to find a younger, fitter model. Someone who could match his libido. In a way it would be a relief, even if the shame would destroy her. The girls she went to school with—the ones who’d whispered about the new Range Rover she’d driven to the last reunion—would delight in the news of her abandonment. Goes to show, they’d say, nudging each other. Money can’t buy a good marriage. (Neither can poverty! Sonja would point out, if they were ever brave enough to say it to her face.) Sonja had a brief longing for her sister, Agnes. Once, she would have been able to discuss this whole thing with her. But she’d shut Agnes out for too long. She had a feeling that ship had sailed.
Besides, for the most part George was a gentleman. That was what she loved the most—the gallantry. The times when he’d hold out her coat for her to slip her arms into. The times that he called her “darling.” The nights spent on the couch watching House of Cards or Breaking Bad. Recently, after they’d watched the film Midnight in Paris, he’d looked at her with something resembling fondness and said, “Remember when we went to Paris? Why don’t we do that again? Just hop on a plane?” They never did hop on a plane, but she took it as evidence that things could have been worse.
“Everything okay?”
Sonja hated herself for jumping when Dagmar appeared in the doorway.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Do you need the room?”
“No.” Dagmar rolled over a wheelie chair and sat in it. “Actually I just wondered if you were okay. You seemed a bit distracted in the meeting.”
Sonja frowned. “Did I?”
“What happened to your wrist?”
Sonja glanced at her wrist. It was sore, perhaps bruised from last night. She’d worn her wrist brace to cover it up. “Oh, you know … tennis.”
“You’re limping a bit today too,” Dagmar said.
Sonja wanted to tell Dagmar to mind her own business. Instead she said, “Arthritis in my hip. You’ll understand when you’re old.” She smiled.
“I’m probably overstepping,” Dagmar guessed correctly. “But Theo was just saying we need to look out for each other. And I’ve been wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
Dagmar shrugged, raising her eyebrows with an expression that said You tell me.
Sonja continued to look baffled, partly because it was the game, and partly because she was baffled. How old was Dagmar anyway? Twenty-one? Was she actually having this conversation with her?
“Sonja. You’re constantly peppered with small injuries, you’re jumpy and defensive, you’re always distracted…”
“No, I’m not,” she said. Was she? “You think I’m being abused?”
“Are you?”
“No!” Sonja laughed.
It was funny. Dagmar thought she was being abused. But Dagmar just gave her a surprisingly all-knowing look. “You know that if you need someone to talk to, it would stay between us. I can tell you about your options.”
It was too ridiculous. They were the exact words Sonja used with clients who’d been hospitalized with injuries consistent with domestic violence. Sonja herself might have given Dagmar the verbiage when she started with them. Next she’d go into the “Abuse isn’t always clear-cut” part.
“Abuse isn’t always clear-cut, you know,” Dagmar continued. “And there are lots of different kinds. Verbal abuse. Sexual abuse. Physical violence. Any way that someone controls you is abuse.”
Sonja shook her head. But her mind caught on the words “sexual abuse.” She’d recited the spiel so many times but she’d never really thought about it. Sexual abuse. What was that, exactly? Then again, what difference did it make? She wasn’t one of those women who was admitted to the hospital with broken bones and black eyes (well, the broken wrist, but that had been an accident). She was simply submitting to her husband’s advances. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t refuse. She could, any time she wanted.
It wasn’t abuse.
Unfortunately she’d paused for too long. Dagmar looked victorious. “You’re better off alone, Sonja. It might not feel like it now. He might have threatened you, told you he’d hurt you if you tried to leave, but if you want to, you can get away.”
Sonja wanted to tell her that George hadn’t threatened her. That the truth was, she didn’t want to get away. She liked having a warm body beside her while she slept. She enjoyed the money—or at least, not having to worry about it. And his intelligence! When he delivered a keynote, people hung off his every word, and afterward people stood around, just trying to get close to him. That was the kind of presence he had. She liked being married to someone like that.
“If you’re not ready to leave, there are still things you can do,” Dagmar continued. “Reach out to friends and family so you know you’re supported. Most victims of abuse wind up isolated—through their own or their partner’s efforts. It’s important that you remain connected to loved ones so you have options if you do decide to leave.”
It was preposterous. Sonja wasn’t going to leave George. Still, she thought about her family. When was the last time she called her sister, Agnes? More than a year ago, at least.
“And when things start to get ugly—make sure you speak up. Tell him you don’t like what he’s doing and if he continues, you will leave. Even if you won’t leave him, you can leave the room or the house, if appropriate.”
“I appreciate your concern, Dagmar. But George is not abusive. Honestly, you’ve got your wires crossed.”
Dagmar’s expression didn’t so much as flicker. “At least document it, then. The wrist. The hip. Take photographs and e-mail them to someone you trust. Or to yourself. With dates and an outline of what happened. Then you’ll have it. In case you ever need it.”
Sonja opened her mouth to tell Dagmar, again, that she was wrong about what she was suggesting. But when they locked eyes something passed between them and then she didn’t feel the need to say anything at all.
33
Kate was feeling resentful even before David walked in that evening. She couldn’t help it. As she stirred the dinner she tried to talk herself out of it. It’s Jake’s birthday, she told herself. Let’s just have a nice evening. She pictured her anger sitting in her belly, a bitter seed, and then imagined removing it with her hands and flinging it out to sea, like she’d been taught to do in a meditation class once. But even after flinging it, it continued to burn just as hot in the pit of her stomach.
The irony was, this was how new mothers seemed to feel. When her cousin Stella had her baby, Kate recalled her saying that she couldn’t even look at her husband without wanting to punch him—something about his presence in the room just set her off. It was natural, Stella had explained, for new mothers to feel like this. It was the body’s way of preventing another birth before it was ready. Kate suspected it had more to do with hormones and the sleep deprivation, but oh how Kate yearned for those hormones and that sleep deprivation. Being angry with her husband for giving her a child was far preferable to being angry with him for not giving her one.
“Hey,” David said when he got home. He was home early from work, a quarter past six. “Is it just us?”
“For now,” she said. She was wiping down the bench, not meeting his eye. They were speaking civilly, like they always did, but there was an undercurrent. “Hilary, Jake, and Scarlett are on their way. Hilary is bringing a cake and I’ve made spaghetti Bolognese.”