Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [87]
We started fighting about money as well, about the shop. After his dad died. He had a bad heart, too. He wasn’t as good as his dad had been with money. He wasn’t forward thinking. I was full of ideas. My dreams of my own shop might have been shelved when I had you two girls, but I had plenty of ambitions and plans. He didn’t like that, I don’t think. He had me in a compartment, and he wanted me to stay there. Wife and mother. Homemaker (although his gibes about that increased all the time). My not being able to cook wasn’t so funny anymore, and I was too tired to distract him with my skills in other arenas, like I used to. He would take business problems to his mum, not to me, and that drove me mad. It was like he was trying to keep me in my place, and I was frustrated and thwarted.
I think the death knell sounded when his mum got sick. I so wanted to do the right thing, but even when she was really, really ill, she didn’t like me, and she wouldn’t take help from me, and that drove such a wedge between us—me and Donald. He spent more and more time up there, and by the time she died, he was pretty much like a stranger to the three of us. I couldn’t get close to him. I couldn’t help him, and I wasn’t even sure I always wanted to. I was glad when she died, the old battle-axe (I know that’s terrible, but it’s true), and he knew I was, and he couldn’t forgive me.
The affairs started when Lisa was about ten, I suppose. He was replacing me, and his mother.
The first time he cheated, it was with a stranger—I never knew her name. Nor how they met, when exactly it started. It didn’t last long, and I honestly don’t think it meant much to him. Believe me, girls, details don’t help. The second time it was someone I vaguely knew. The third time it was a so-called friend. Meg, she was called. We weren’t really friends. We had children the same age, and so we went to the same playgrounds and sat on the same benches. That doesn’t exactly make you buddies. God—I haven’t thought about her for years. She wore French knickers. I should have known. But it was never really about the women. They weren’t cheating on me, were they? It was him. It was like he made it crueler every time. Brought it closer to my door. Made it more about me. I stopped thinking about it after that. I don’t know how many more there were. I ignored it. Which was pretty hard sometimes—eventually his attempts to cover up his behavior were pretty minimal. He goaded me.
When someone has cheated on you, it is easy—and almost obligatory—to blame them entirely. You have the facts, don’t you? You have the proof. It is THEIR fault.
It can take years for you to realize that you were in there, too.
When I first found out, I was shattered. Devastated. Angry and hurt. All the things you think you would be. But I was also ashamed and embarrassed. And it was that, more than anything else, that kept me in my marriage. For years. Long wasted years. Wasted for both of us.
He hit me once. Just once. Please don’t think that I was a battered wife. I don’t want you to see me that way, or him. Your dad was many things, but he was never a violent man. He had a temper, but shouting and ranting was as far as it ever went, until this one time. God knows I’d been violent toward him often enough, over the years. I’d thrown more things at him than I can count. Punched him, too. It really was just the once, and I’d provoked him, believe me. I was totally shocked. He’d never even raised a hand to me, and seldom his voice, before then. It was a slap—straight across the face. It was hard, though, and when I looked in the mirror I could still see the shape of his fingers, red and angry on my cheek. He was sorry afterward