The Other Side

by Lacy M. Johnson

  On my twenty-first birthday, he makes me breakfast in bed and pulls a giant package from the top shelf of the bedroom closet: a down duvet he bought in Denmark; he’s been hiding it all this time. That night, we go out to a comedy club with a group of his former students, and afterward we go out dancing. In the car on the way home, I roll the window down, close my eyes, and let the wind blow my hair into my face. I’m a little drunk and feeling happy and I reach over to rest my hand on his leg. I feel his hand in my hair so softly, his fingers rubbing the back of my head so softly, his hand pulling me toward him, toward his lap, pushing me down, down, down.

  On his fortieth birthday, weeks later, I throw him a surprise party and invite everyone from his department, from his poker games, the bartender from our favorite dive downtown, people from my classes, my teachers, the few friends I have made. He is genuinely surprised, I think, and touched. Everyone dances and drinks until it is nearly dawn. One friend says as he is tumbling out the door, You guys are such a great couple. You throw the best parties!

  The Man I Live With doesn’t come to my college graduation. He says he is staying home to get ready for the party, but when I get back to the apartment, nothing has been done. He disappears for longer and longer stretches of time, and occasionally messages appear on our voice mail from numbers I don’t recognize. One day I tell him I have been accepted for an internship at a literary magazine in town and the fight we have lasts for days and days. At one point I lock myself in the bathroom and sleep there all night. At another he’s cursing at me in every language he knows. He palms my face and pushes me backward onto the couch. I hit my head on the windowsill and see a flash, then darkness. I try to kick him away and he punches me in the hip. I turn into a puddle, dripping from the couch to the floor.

  In the morning, I say I’m going to my parents’ house for a few days, just to visit. I pack a few changes of clothes into a small bag, nothing to raise suspicion. He is playing backgammon on his computer when I kiss him sweetly on the cheek and walk out the door.

  He calls, days later, already very angry, though his voice remains calm. At first he tries to bribe me. Come home and we’ll plan a trip to South America. Then he pleads, and I can feel the decision slipping out from under me. He threatens to tell my parents what a slut I am. He offers to come get me. Finally, I hang up the phone.

  When he calls back, Mom answers and calls him a sonuva-bitch before slamming down the receiver. He calls back again and Dad tells him that he is bringing me, along with his friend, The State Trooper, to get my things.

  He isn’t in the apartment when we arrive—me, Dad, and his friend, The State Trooper—or as we stuff the rest of my clothes and books into big black trash bags and toss them in the back of the car. On the way home, Dad pats my leg and asks how I am feeling. I don’t hesitate to answer.

  Free.

  I get a haircut. I spend whole days writing in coffee shops with My Handsome Friend. I start an internship at the literary magazine, reading submissions from the slush pile, helping to load content into the website. I get a job processing used books at a warehouse. I shop and walk in the street. I run errands and buy groceries. Occasionally, I look over my shoulder and see him walk into or out of a building a half block away. Sometimes I leave through the back exit to avoid him. Other times, I stay right where I am. He approaches me, or doesn’t, or leaves a note on my car. Please come home. I crumple it up and throw it away. If he follows me, it’s always a few cars behind. I sign a lease on an apartment I’ll share with My Good Friend.

  One night, before we’ve moved in, My Good Friend drives me back to her place from a bar downtown, and we see a car, his white sedan, following close behind us as we trace the winding unlit road. She drives fast, turning and turning and turning, trying to lose him. We park on the street and run from the car into the house, where we crouch on the living room floor and peer through the blinds with all the lights out. The day I move in to the new apartment he corners me at the hardware store and says he’s bought two tickets to Venezuela. He would love to take me there, just to talk. Just one more trip. Just one last time. I owe him that much. I want to say, I don’t owe you shit. But I say nothing. I pretend I haven’t heard him. That he’s someone I’ve never met before. I turn my body and go.

  Did you ever, My Newest Therapist finally asks, holding the one list—its intersecting paths—in her hands, even once, tell anyone the truth about what was happening to you?

  No, not ever, I say. I still don’t understand it myself.

  [seven]

  THE DAY BEFORE I am kidnapped and raped by The Man I Used to Live With, My Good Friend talks me into coming with her to a Fourth of July cookout. A chance to meet new people, I think. As if relief might flow from unfamiliarity. I have a good time at the cookout, but I catch this strange man watching me each time I toss my hair to the side and take a drag of my cigarette. I find it a little creepy, this staring, but slip him my phone number anyway, and only as I am leaving.

  Three weeks later, after I return from My Older Sister’s apartment, after I begin seeing The Therapist and The Psychiatrist, and after I begin taking three different kinds of psychotropic medication, The Strange Man calls to say he’s having people over for drinks. He knows what happened but doesn’t say so. He doesn’t need to. I need to have a beer, to laugh, and tell jokes with new friends. I need to pretend nothing happened. My family disagrees. My aunt invites us all to her house for a little party—a cousin’s birthday—where my aunts and uncles and grandparents hug me as if I am an ancient porcelain doll, as if their embrace might shatter me to pieces. This is the only way anyone will speak to me: the jowly cheek pressed against my cheek, the words clucked right into my ear: I love you. The whole thing makes me want to puke. I leave my aunt’s party to go home and change: a skirt, a tank top, my favorite pair of flip-flops.

  In the apartment of The Strange Man, I sit on the futon in the living room listening to music. When all the other guests leave after hours and hours of drinking, it is either very late or very early, and The Strange Man gets up to make breakfast while I collect beer cans in a big black trash bag. We eat cross-legged on the floor, perched on a pair of pillows. After I’ve taken three bites of egg and two bites of hash browns, he leans across the plate to kiss me.

  It makes me want to puke. Then I am puking.

  I come out of the bathroom and find him already apologizing. It was too soon. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—not after what you’ve been through.

  I tell him to shut up. I take him into the bedroom and push him down on the bed. I pull his pants down around his knees. I pull my skirt up around my waist. I don’t kiss him and don’t let him kiss me. I’m not gentle. This is not lovemaking.

  He’s still apologizing when I pull down my skirt and walk out the door.

  I return to The Strange Man’s apartment night after night, week after week, to play out this same scene. If we’re not on the bed, we’re on the floor, or the futon, or in the car. Sometimes we’re in my apartment, or in a tent at a campsite, or stumbling through the alley after leaving the bar. Sometimes we’re at his parents’ house, visiting his hometown for a class reunion, or a birthday, or a wedding. It goes on like this until November, four months after the kidnapping, when he asks me to marry him. I’m not at all surprised by the proposal. I’ve staged the whole thing. I’ve sent My Good Friend to help pick out the ring. I’ve told him to take my Dad golfing, to ask for his blessing on the eighth green. I have put these exact words in his mouth: Will you marry me?

  I agree, not because I love The Strange Man, but because it’s what I need.

  One night, I drag myself home to my apartment after a long day of work. I have found a job as a marketing assistant at the university press, where I look for reviews of the books we have published and cut them out of magazines, or scan them, or type them into a Word document. Tonight, I have had to stay late for some reason or other, and when I leave the office, I stop at the grocery store for a pack of cigarette
s and a bag of rice. It is nearly dark outside, and with the blinds closed, it is very dark in the apartment. All the lights are off. I turn my key in the lock, open the door, and walk into the living room, heading for the kitchen, like usual.

  It’s me, says someone in a wolf mask sitting on my couch.

  It’s a man’s voice. A man’s body.

  I drop all the things in my hands. Everything inside me falls. I don’t scream or cry out because in moments I’ll be dead. There’s a knife in the drawer by the stove. I watch and wait for what comes next.

  The man’s body stands up, the mask comes off, and underneath it: the face of the man who will become My First Husband. A prank he thinks might be funny. He’s not thinking.

  It’s not funny, I tell him, already pushing him out the door.

  It’s too soon, My Therapist tells me in December, five months after the kidnapping. It’s our last session before the holiday break and she’s suspicious of my good mood, of the complete and sudden recovery. She asks how I feel now about The Man I Used to Live With, about all that happened. I say I feel sorry for him. He doesn’t need prison; he needs psychiatric help. One corner of her mouth turns up in a smile. Before I leave I say See you next week, though I never return. I tell My Psychiatrist that I feel very happy now and he agrees to take me off the medication. I’ve never seen such resilience! he exclaims, as he begins writing instructions on a pad of paper.

  But the truth is, I don’t feel happy. I don’t feel angry or sorry or frightened or sad. I don’t feel anything at all.

  It must be the medication, I tell myself. I’m getting married and I should feel happy.

  All I want is to feel happy.

  At the wedding, Mom cries and thanks God for sending someone to love me. Dad cries and reaches for her hand.

  It is June, eleven months after the kidnapping.

  In July, they file for divorce.

  Mom is the one who calls, breaking the news like she’s telling me the weather. I’m sitting on the futon in the apartment I share with My First Husband, a basket of clean laundry on the coffee table, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Mom is on the phone saying they’ve decided that now is as good a time as any. Everyone is healthy and happy. I crack a joke, say, Well it’s about time. I thank her for letting me know and hang up the phone.

  I light a cigarette and pick a shirt out of the pile. I’m crying, which doesn’t surprise me. It’s all I do anymore: cry, smoke, sleep. Today the crying makes me feel like a child: so naive, the hope that my parents might learn to love one another. To forgive. To be happy. To decide, once and for all, to stay together no matter what. All these years I’ve never understood what actually went so wrong between them. Now I wonder what, if anything, ever went right.

  In August, thirteen months after the kidnapping, I quit my job at the university press and quit the internship at the literary magazine and we move from the college town where there aren’t actually any full-time jobs for college graduates, to a city that is not really a city but rather a cluster of small towns. My Older Sister has bought a big house on a tree-lined street; we’ll find jobs and live in her basement until we get on our feet. We stack the boxes of our belongings in her garage, and we set up our bed and dresser and bookshelves in the basement room that is probably supposed to be a den. It has a den-like fireplace, den-like wood paneling, and den-like shag carpet on the floor. My First Husband gets a job as a carpenter, and every morning I wake to pack his lunch into a brown paper bag. He asks what I will do today and I say, Apply for jobs! but really I will go back to sleep. In the afternoons, My Older Sister leaves for work, and in the evenings, when I am alone in the house with My First Husband, I make dinner: pescado a la Veracruzana, the way I learned from watching The Man I Used to Live With. My First Husband and I eat on the couch watching television. Each night, after the first forkful, he grunts and says Damn, this is delicious, and then when he is finished he puts his plate or bowl on the edge of the coffee table, as if he plans to take it to the sink later. Each night, he falls asleep on the couch, the dirty dish still at the edge of the coffee table, where he rests his feet, his legs crossed at the ankles.

  On the nights when My Older Sister does not work, I make dinner for us. Sometimes we eat at the table like a regular family. Sometimes we go out to bars, where the three of us play pool over cheap beers. If the weather is nice, we grill in the backyard and eat at the picnic table. Sometimes My Younger Sister comes over to the house for dinner, making the short drive from the apartment she shares with other freshmen at her school near the center of the city-that-is-not-a-city, and the three of us stay up late into the night, long after My First Husband has fallen asleep on the couch. We sit outside in the dark, smoking cigarettes and swatting at mosquitoes, making fun of one another and either or both of our parents. We talk and talk and talk. But we never talk about what happened. Not about my mountain of credit card debt, or why I start drinking vodka before I’ve eaten breakfast, or why I can’t hold down a job. Not once.

  We celebrate Christmas at our house. My Older Sister’s house. It’s the first major holiday since our parents’ divorce. Mom arrives the night before, and after we ply her with wine coolers, she says she is eager to start dating. We convince her to put on makeup and fix her hair, and then we take her picture and post it on dating websites. In the morning, My Younger Sister arrives to help cook the giant meal. We are struggling to get everything prepared in time, My Older Sister whipping the potatoes, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, My Younger Sister burning her hand putting the rolls in the oven. I am checking the turkey, realizing too late that I have forgotten to remove the giblets. My First Husband’s parents arrive, with a laundry basket full of presents to set under the tree. Dad arrives last, in a new sweater the same color as his eyes: spring-sky blue, robin’s-egg blue. We’ve learned only days ago that he’s getting married again. Mom has told us how he came to the house and stood on the porch. He knocked on the door and she opened it just a crack, thinking he would ask if he could come back. I’ve met someone. We’re getting married. She slammed the door, hard, in his face. Sitting in My Older Sister’s house, at opposite ends of the couch, my parents have never looked better. He is tanner, thinner. He drives a new car. Her hair is shorter, higher. Her makeup looks perfect. Her crystal jewelry complements her purple raw silk top. The wine is opened. The food is served. For a few hours, nothing has changed. Our parents go the whole day without speaking.

  Two years after the kidnapping, one year after I marry a man I barely know, I am accepted to graduate school and My First Husband and I move from the house we share with My Older Sister to a nearby college town, and we rent an apartment that we have to ourselves. The apartment is on the edge of town, an edge I can reach out and touch: on one side there’s a yard, an apartment, a parking lot; on the other side there’s a sea of churning, rippling green.

  My First Husband has kept his job as a carpenter in the city-that-is-not-a-city and each morning he wakes before sunrise and kisses me on the cheek as he leaves for work. I take my time rising from bed, making breakfast, drinking coffee, choosing my clothes, showering, and pulling my hair into a bun on the top of my head.

  I walk into the room and sit in one of the student desks. The students file in, choosing seats, checking their cell phones for messages. The boys wear t-shirts and baggy jeans and the girls wear tank tops and short athletic shorts. One turns to me and whispers, Have you heard anything about this instructor? And I say, Yes, I hear she’s a real hardass, before standing and walking to the front of the room. You can call me Lacy, I say. Or if calling me by my first name makes you uncomfortable, “Goddess of the Universe” will also suffice. I ask my students about images in poems, or the role of gender in the work of lesser-known American novelists. I ask them about rhetorical purpose, and whether an audience’s context can change a text. When I ask, they answer. I ask and ask and ask. I have this way of always asking that keeps them looking for answers.

  I spend
each afternoon in the office I share with two women in the basement of the ugliest building on campus, grading my students’ papers, checking e-mail, reading stacks and stacks of books for the classes I take. In the evenings, my officemates invite me out to dinner, where we talk the whole time about otherness in British discovery literature, or feminist pedagogical approaches to composition and rhetoric. At these dinners, My First Husband starts trying harder and harder to drink himself into oblivion. I apologize for him. I make excuses: It’s the job, I say. It’s the commute. He’s under so much pressure lately. On the weekends, he wakes with a hangover and pops a handful of ibuprofen before flopping on the couch to watch NASCAR.

  Increasingly, I pick fights with him over nothing. Over his shoes on the coffee table, or the dishes he leaves in the sink. We fight about the clothes he leaves on the floor. We fight about the things he says or does not say while we are fighting. He can’t win these arguments. Anything he says, I turn around and use against him. I twist his words until he is apologizing and I am in a rage: slamming furniture against the walls, pulling his clothes from the closet and throwing them out the door. I feel horrified as I’m doing it but I can’t stop doing it. I do it for no other reason than because there’s no one here to stop me.

  The Second Therapist’s office above the student health center is lit by fluorescent lights. The space is so small that my knees nearly touch the knees of The Second Therapist, who faces me, his back turned to his desk, a pencil and a pad of paper in his hand. After he says hello, shows me the chair I should sit in, he tells me he’s a stutterer, though he doesn’t actually begin stuttering until I admit why I’m here. I say, I don’t want to have sex with my husband anymore. I’m having these terrible dreams. His expression does not change. He does not look up from his pad of paper. He asks me to t-t-t-tell him about the d-d-d-d-dreams. I tell him that two years ago I was kidnapped and raped by a man I knew. But I don’t want to talk about that, I say. He raises his eyebrows, continues writing. I tell him I want to talk about the panic attacks I’ve started having anytime I feel My First Husband reaching for me under the sheets. The Second Therapist tells me I should make an ap-p-p-p-pointment with a psychiatrist. Her tiny office is right next door to his tiny office. Her office is darker, the overhead lights turned off, the walls stacked higher with books. She asks why I am here. I tell her about the panic attacks, the dreams. I tell her I was kidnapped and raped by a man I used to live with. I feel so angry. Why am I always so angry? She looks up from her pad of paper, over her glasses, and asks how much I weigh.