AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
FEBRUARY 15, 2012
– Diary entry –
What a strange time this is. I have to think that way, try to examine it from a distance: Ha-ha, what an odd period this will be to look back on, won’t I be amused when I’m eighty, dressed in faded lavender, a wise, amused figure swilling martinis, and won’t this make a story? A strange, awful story of something I survived.
Because something is horribly wrong with my husband, of that I am sure now. Yes, he’s mourning his mother, but this is something more. It feels directed at me, not a sadness but … I can feel him watching me sometimes, and I look up and see his face twisted in disgust, like he’s walked in on me doing something awful, instead of just eating cereal in the morning or combing my hair at night. He’s so angry, so unstable, I’ve been wondering if his moods are linked to something physical – one of those wheat allergies that turn people mad, or a colony of mold spores that has clogged his brain.
I came downstairs the other night and found him at the dining room table, his head in his hands, looking at a pile of credit-card bills. I watched my husband, all alone, under the spotlight of a chandelier. I wanted to go to him, to sit down with him and figure it out like partners. But I didn’t, I knew that would piss him off. I sometimes wonder if that is at the root of his distaste for me: He’s let me see his shortcomings, and he hates me for knowing them.
He shoved me. Hard. Two days ago, he shoved me, and I fell and banged my head against the kitchen island and I couldn’t see for three seconds. I don’t really know what to say about it. It was more shocking than painful. I was telling him I could get a job, something freelance, so we could start a family, have a real life …
‘What do you call this?’ he said.
Purgatory, I thought. I stayed silent.
‘What do you call this, Amy? Huh? What do you call this? This isn’t life, according to Miss Amazing?’
‘It’s not my idea of life,’ I said, and he took three big steps toward me, and I thought: He looks like he’s going to … And then he was slamming against me and I was falling.
We both gasped. He held his fist in the other hand and looked like he might cry. He was beyond sorry, he was aghast. But here’s the thing I want to be clear on: I knew what I was doing, I was punching every button on him. I was watching him coil tighter and tighter – I wanted him to finally say something, do something. Even if it’s bad, even if it’s the worst, do something, Nick. Don’t leave me here like a ghost.
I just didn’t realize he was going to do that.
I’ve never considered what I would do if my husband attacked me, because I haven’t exactly run in the wife-beating crowd. (I know, Lifetime movie, I know: Violence crosses all socioeconomic barriers. But still: Nick?) I sound glib. It just seems so incredibly ludicrous: I am a battered wife. Amazing Amy and the Domestic Abuser.
He did apologize profusely. (Does anyone do anything profusely except apologize? Sweat, I guess.) He’s agreed to consider counseling, which was something I never thought could happen. Which is good. He’s such a good man, at his core, that I am willing to write it off, to believe it truly was a sick anomaly, brought on by the strain we’re both under. I forget sometimes, that as much stress as I feel, Nick feels it too: He bears the burden of having brought me here, he feels the strain of wanting mopey me to be content, and for a man like Nick – who believes strongly in an up-by-the-bootstraps sort of happiness – that can be infuriating.
So the hard shove, so quick, then done, it didn’t scare me in itself. What scared me was the look on his face as I lay on the floor blinking, my head ringing. It was the look on his face as he restrained himself from taking another jab. How much he wanted to shove me again. How hard it was not to. How he’s been looking at me since: guilt, and disgust at the guilt. Absolute disgust.
Here’s the darkest part. I drove out to the mall yesterday, where about half the town buys drugs, and it’s as easy as picking up a prescription; I know because Noelle told me: Her husband goes there to purchase the occasional joint. I didn’t want a joint, though, I wanted a gun, just in case. In case things with Nick go really wrong. I didn’t realize until I was almost there that it was Valentine’s Day. It was Valentine’s Day and I was going to buy a gun and then cook my husband dinner. And I thought to myself: Nick’s dad was right about you. You are a dumb bitch. Because if you think your husband is going to hurt you, you leave. And yet you can’t leave your husband, who’s mourning his dead mother. You can’t. You’d have to be a bibilically awful woman to do that, unless something were truly wrong. You’d have to really believe your husband was going to hurt you.
But I don’t really think Nick would hurt me.
I just would feel safer with a gun.