Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [11]
The upside of being in a treatment center? Molly reassured me it was a respite for the fashion-conscious. I could rest knowing not only would haute couture police not patrol, they won’t even be allowed to carry weapons.
I eyed a stack of clothes that didn’t make the rehab cut. “You think I could plop down there, wave my arms like a wild woman, and make one of those snow angels?”
“Is Carl thinking maybe you should be making snow devils?” Molly didn’t even make eye contact. She just kept rolling my clothes and then arranged them in my suitcase like puffy, rainbow-colored sausages.
“Why? Has he talked to Devin?” The hope that hitched a ride on that question surprised me. I thought I’d suffocated it, left it for dead. But there it was—a gasp of promise. If Carl had said something to Devin, even an angry something, he was trying to make sense of this. And that would mean he wanted to understand.
Molly looked at me, and I read the disappointment in her eyes before she spoke. “No,” she said softly as if wrapping a brick in cotton made it any less painful when it hit you. “I just guessed …”
I tossed her a pair of socks. “It's fine. You guessed right. I’m the one who guessed wrong.”
A bag of mini-Snickers, a bunch of grapes, and a bowl of popcorn later, we declared ourselves finished, having experienced the delirium of the mentally exhausted. Mine, however, had been supplemented by vodka. Another of those “you’re such a good girl for finishing this dreadful task, you deserve a reward.” Clearly warped, but I’d had these conversations with myself for years. By now they seemed logical.
We wheeled my suitcases to the foyer and parked them near the stairs. I wanted to joke about waiting for the bus to pick me up for beer camp, but it didn’t feel funny. Not then. Not standing there with Molly, who had risked our friendship. What did I know of real courage? Mine came from bottles.
“I’m so proud of you. I’m praying for both of you.” She hugged me with a fierce tenderness, and before she let go, she whispered, “You’ll make it through this. I promise.”
I believed her.
I hoped it would be enough to start.
Journal 1
When I refused to sacrifice myself, I’d bear the consequences the next day. Carl would accuse me of being frigid, tell me I needed help.
In front of our friends, he’d say, “That little head of hers can’t even balance a checkbook. It's a good thing she's so pretty; otherwise, I’d wonder why I married her.” He’d tell them how he’d drag his hand across the antique foyer table to check it because my idea of clean was only one layer of dust.
In the bedroom, he would rage as if his anger could pierce my unwillingness. “A wife should want to make love to her husband,” he’d sneer. Wasn’t he generous? Didn’t he provide for me? He’d remind me that I didn’t have to work like some of my friends. I was the one who chose work anyway. Didn’t that count for something? He tolerated my overspending. “When are you going to be a wife? A real wife? What's wrong with you? When are you going to fix this?” The void left by those unanswered questions became our battlefield.
I slogged through every day, dreading the inevitable night. Knowing it would come again and again and again and again. We’d wake the next morning, and it would be the unspoken war between us. Me the prisoner. Carl the occupying force.
He wouldn’t relent. If he failed to capture my body, he would succeed in demanding my soul. Even when I won, I lost.
That morning, the one where I was going to have to walk myself into treatment, I heard the click of the door before I saw him stride into the bathroom. The thick glass of the sliding shower doors distorted his body—the body I once welcomed and invited to press against my own. Tender and careful and patient. I once longed for him. But not today. Not for many days after