by Erin Zak
“I know,” I sighed. “I thought I could handle it all myself.”
Mom turned, clicked the light on the bedside table on, then rolled so she could look at me. “So, you know your father and I aren’t happy.”
“What the hell, Mom? Did he do that to you?” She didn’t need to answer me. I knew he had. I heard the entire fight. But seeing the aftermath on her face was a completely different story.
“I don’t want you to think this has anything to do with you. You are why we have tried to make it work.”
“Has this happened before?” I watched her expression as I waited. “He’s hit you before, hasn’t he?” She blinked and winced from the pain even blinking caused. “Mom, how could he do this?” I was so angry in that moment that I was having a hard time breathing. “How could he?”
“Beth, baby, I’ll be okay.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“This is complete bullshit.” I heard her sigh after my curse word usage, but I didn’t care anymore. “You’ve raised me to be such a strong young woman. You preached and preached at me for years. ‘Don’t let men walk all over you. Don’t let anyone walk all over you.’”
“I still feel that way.”
“But you can’t do that for yourself?” I tried to get up and leave, but she reached out and grabbed onto my forearm. “What?”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Beth, please don’t. I know I’m a hypocrite.”
“We need to leave. You know that, right?”
She sighed. “Where would we go?”
I was at a loss. I had no idea where we would go, but we needed to leave. “I don’t know. Let’s go on a trip. Spring break is next week. Let’s leave early. We can go to Tybee Island, or we could go use the condo in Gulf Shores or hell, we could fly to Chicago and see Aunt Melissa. Anywhere but here.”
“He’s not coming back.”
“I don’t care, Mom. I don’t want him anywhere near you again.”
“Beth,” she said with a calm voice. “I’ll figure out what we’re going to do, but I’m not making any decisions tonight. We were both upset, and he overreacted.”
The idea that she was going to even consider forgiving him made me sit upright. I was outraged. “What are you talking about? You’re leaving, Mom. Period. Maybe we don’t know where we’re going to hide out while you get your shit together with a lawyer, but we are not staying here.”
“I realize you’re sixteen, but you should probably cool it on the curse words around me,” she said softly. I could barely look at her. Her eye was black and blue, and the bruise stretched down into her cheek. “I’m going to make the right decision. I promise you.”
“Mom—”
“No, honey, I am promising you.”
I sighed. She was being sincere, but I still didn’t trust her words. I looked down at my hands. I was clenching them so tight that I drew blood where my nails dug into my palms. “Okay.”
She repositioned herself and patted the spot next to her. “Lie down.” I did as she said and snuggled into her and Myrtle. “Tell me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “How do you feel now that you’ve found your birth mom?”
I looked at her. She was looking at the ceiling, and I couldn’t see the bruise on the other side of her face any longer. “I guess good?”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, I mean, we didn’t get to talk a whole lot. She was so standoffish at her apartment and in the car. I guess I assumed she would drop me off, and that would be the end of it.” I closed my eyes. “I really liked her, though. I think…” I paused. “I think maybe it’d be cool if she was in my life more. I mean, if you’re okay with that.” I watched for her reaction. I didn’t know exactly how to take the small smile that appeared on her lips.
“I’m okay with that,” she answered. She glanced at me. “She seemed genuine.”
“Are you at all concerned that she’s gay?”
A huff came out of her mouth, followed by a chuckle. “No? I haven’t really given it much thought.” That sounded like a lie. A poorly rehearsed lie. “Are you okay knowing that about her?”
I shook my head and said, “Yeah, of course. But I meant, like, do you think I could be gay?”
She finally looked at me. “Why? Do you think you might be?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really think I could be, but I guess I’d heard that it could be hereditary. Biology and all, right? So, wouldn’t it be able to be passed on? I mean, I’d never really had a relationship with a guy. I’d liked some of them, sure. This boy Dan was super cute, and he talked to me a lot, but I felt like one of the guys a lot of the time. We’d skateboard at the park, and I could do the half pipe as well as they could, so I fit in. And the girls I had in my life were super pretty and feminine, and yeah, maybe I might have been attracted to a couple of them over the years. Especially Tamara. But we weren’t even friends anymore. “No? But I haven’t really ever had a boyfriend, so…”
Mom smiled. It was the first time the smile felt real since before Jackie left. “I would love you the same no matter what,” she said as she moved my hair away from my face and pushed it behind my ear. “Wherever your life’s journey takes you, I hope you’ll always feel proud because I’ll be proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I whispered. She rolled over and turned the light off and then turned back toward me.
“Get some sleep.”
We lay there in silence for a few beats before I found the courage to ask, “Did you like Jackie?” Mom didn’t answer right away. Was she already asleep?
I finally heard her take a breath, and she said, “I thought she was completely unexpected.”
“Because you weren’t expecting to meet her?”
I heard her breathe out through her nostrils. “No,” she said. “Because she was…not what I expected.”
“In a good or bad way?”
“Beth, honey, you need to go to sleep. You have school tomorrow.”
Why wouldn’t she answer the question? I felt her reach over and put her hand on mine again.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, Mom.” I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but it was pointless. All I could think about was when we were going to escape. I wanted to get up and text my Aunt Melissa or check to see if our condo in Alabama was empty for the next however many weeks. Everything about our conversation made me want to spring into action. My dad was an asshole and apparently an abusive prick, my mom was frightened more than she was willing to admit, and my biological mom was unexpected.
What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to help? Where did I turn? They were all questions I was dying to get answers to, but as my mom gripped my hand as she drifted off to sleep, I knew I would have to wait until the morning. But I would definitely figure the answers out. No doubt about that.
Chapter Five
SUSAN
I heard Beth come home around three the next day. She shouted, “Mom!” from the bottom of the stairs, and when I answered that I was in my bedroom, she came flying up the steps.
“Goodness, honey, what’s going on?” I asked when she burst into the room panting.
“The condo is booked. So, Gulf Shores is out.” She threw her arms outward and looked around frantically. “And you’re not going to fucking believe this.”
I rolled my eyes. She had grown up so much in the past four or five years, but the cursing was something I had a hard time dealing with. “Is there even any use in reminding you that I’m your mother, and the f-word is off limits?”
“Um, probably not. Dad has already gotten to Aunt Melissa. I texted her, and she called me and said that he sent her texts and threatening phone calls about how if we come up there, he’s going to come up there, which is ridiculous, but whatever.” Beth plopped down on the bed and sighed. “She said she didn’t care and that we could still come. But she wanted us to know. He has no right to do that.”
/> “He has every right. We’re his family.”
“Mom!” Beth shouted. “Are you high?”
I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows at her.
“Ugh, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, Mom, come on. We cannot stay here!”
“I talked to your father today. He’s going to come home tonight, and we’re going to have a conversation. An adult conversation. I know you are not necessarily keen—”
“Keen? Are you kidding me? I cannot believe you are going to let him come back into this house after he hit you!”
I stood from the chair where I was sitting by the window and moved to where Beth was on the bed. “You have got to calm down,” I said softly. I put a hand on her leg, and she instantly started crying. “I promised you that I would make the right decision.”
“Make the right decision for you, though, Mom. Not me. And not Dad. You hear me?”
I laughed as I knelt down in front of her. “So, you’re the parent now?”
“I will be if I need to be!”
“I promised you,” I said as I reached up and dried the tears on her face with my right hand. “Please, stop crying.”
Beth breathed in deep and then let out a ragged breath. “I’ll never be okay with him being here again. I hope you know that.” She stood and moved past me, leaving my room completely. I heard her door slam.
“Great.” If she only knew the number of times he’d been violent with me…
I sighed and looked around my bedroom. When I was a child, all I ever wanted was a large bedroom with a huge, fluffy bed and a great window to sit next to so I could read and read and read. After years of scraping by in college and the first few years of my practice not taking off and Steven’s inability to not spend like an idiot, I finally had it. The whole house was what I always wanted. So, the idea of leaving and running away from the house and my life didn’t seem like an option. We’d gone through so much together. Especially in the beginning with the countless attempts at conceiving and the in vitro fertility treatments… I didn’t know why I thought that because he kept his anger to bruises around my biceps or on my wrists, I could survive it. As long as he wasn’t hurting Beth, I could stay. I could put up with it. I could even put up with him cheating on me. But the second his hand hit my face and the proof of his hostility reached the light of day, I knew it was time.
In the end, it wasn’t admitting that after twenty years of marriage we failed. Because I knew we had failed the first time he got angry at me, the first time he raised his voice at me, the first time he raised his hand at me, and the first time he actually followed through with the threat of violence. I knew it would never be the marriage I dreamt it would be. It was a sham. It was a façade for his fancy doctor friends, his stupid “keeping up with the Joneses” act that I fucking hated.
The last nail was finally in the coffin. Now all I needed to do was bury the damn thing. Unfortunately, divorce was never as easy as people made it sound. Especially when it involved separating from a man who didn’t love me; he only needed me. And that obsessive need was so much scarier than I ever imagined.
Beth was right. We would need to escape. We would need to run away and hope to God he wouldn’t find us. He wouldn’t let us leave quietly, and he would never stop trying to get me to change my mind if we stayed.
I heard the floor creak behind me, and I spun around. “Steven.” He looked horrible. He was in the same clothes from yesterday. His shirt was wrinkled, he had sweat stains under the armpits, and only one side was clumsily tucked into his navy-blue dress slacks. He was wearing his shoes, which pissed me off because he knew that I didn’t allow shoes on the floors upstairs.
“I said hello. You didn’t answer.” Steven took another step into the bedroom. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”
I stood, and within a second, he had bridged the distance between us and was hugging me. For the first time in a really long time, his touch did nothing to me. In the past, my anger would melt instantly the second his begging commenced. But now? All I could do was see Beth’s scared reaction after seeing the bruise. For some reason, her reaction made me want to stand up for myself and for her. I pushed away from him, my hands on his strong shoulders, and looked down. “I can’t, Steven.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
“I don’t want—”
“I know,” he said.
I looked up at him. “You called my sister and threatened her?”
“I’m not giving up.”
“Steven, no.” I took a step back from him because if I stayed that close, with that look in his eyes, I probably would have given in. Not because I still loved him or that I wanted to be with him, but because at the end of the day, I was weak and stupid and small.
“So, you’re going to end our relationship because I messed up once?”
I almost laughed. Almost. “What do you mean once?”
“Hitting you,” he said as he reached up to touch my face. I jerked away from him, and the flash of anger in his eyes was unmistakable. “Susan?”
“You don’t get to touch me.” I took a deep breath. “Ever again.”
Steven’s jaw clenched. “You’re going to flush our entire marriage down the drain?”
“You flushed this entire marriage down the drain the first time you raised your hand to me.” I crossed my arms. “I am not doing this again, Steven. I’m not. I’m not going to let you come crawling back this time. Beth saw this!” I motioned toward the bruise, and his face twisted as if he knew it had to be killing me, as if he had a goddamn heart that even fucking cared. “I don’t care what you do to me, but you will not drag my daughter through this. Not anymore.”
“Our daughter.”
That time, I did laugh. “Get out.”
Steven didn’t respond. He stood there expressionless.
“What is her name?”
That did it. There was the expression I was half hoping for, half scared of. If steam could come out of a person’s ears, it would be pouring from his.
“Whose?”
“You know damn well who I mean.”
He clenched his jaw again. This time the vein in his neck was sticking out. “You are unbelievable. I’m begging you to take me back. I’m promising I’ll be better. And you’re bringing up Natasha? This isn’t about her.”
“How is it not about her? You’re the one who has not only been abusive but also has been having an affair for the past however many years.”
He smirked. The mother fucker smirked!
I’d had enough. I didn’t want to listen to him or look at him any longer. I was sad it took me so long to finally reach my breaking point, but God, it felt really good. “Leave. Now.”
“No.”
“Steven. Leave, now.” I stood defiantly, my arms folded across my chest.
Steven continued to stand there. He was swaying now, his hands clenched at his sides.
“I am no longer putting up with you and how you treat me. Are you hearing me?” I saw his jaw clench, so I took a step back. There it was. I took another step back. The look. I knew that look and that stance better than anything in my life. I’d seen it countless times. It all depended on me what would happen next. If I stood there, he’d strike. If I tried to dodge him, he’d grab me. If I ran, he’d find a way to pick me up by the biceps and slam me against a wall until I relented. How fucking fucked up that he practically followed a playbook for domestic abuse.
“Don’t you dare do it,” I heard Beth say from behind Steven. He turned and looked at her. “Get away from her.” She was holding a baseball bat. It was horrifying that years of softball had prepared her for this moment. “I will swing, and you know I can get a homerun on a mean slider, so don’t even test me.”
Steven turned back to me. “You haven’t seen the last of me.” He turned and went to leave the room, but Beth was still in the doorway. “Elizabeth Weber, don’t make me move you.”
Beth glared at him. “I cannot believe you h
it Mom.”
“Elizabeth,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Beth, move.”
“You are an awful person,” she said softly. “Not only did you cheat on her, but you also hit her? How could you do that to her? To our family?”
Steven went to raise his hand, and I lunged at him. I grabbed his hand, and he almost picked me up off the ground. Beth moved out of the way as fast as possible. Her eyes were huge. “Dad?” she asked, her voice layered with pain; she was in tears instantly. My heart was breaking watching it all happen.
“Leave. Now!” I screamed the last word as I let go of him. He didn’t say anything as he brought his hand back down to his side and rushed past her, down the stairs, and out of the house.
“Come here,” I said softly, and Beth ran into my arms, dropping the bat as she did. The clang of the metal on the wood floor was deafening. She was crying so hard. I tried to hold my tears back, but I couldn’t. I sobbed right along with her. “We’re going to be okay. I promise.”
When Beth finally calmed down, she pulled away from me and looked into my eyes. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re leaving.” I walked over to my cell phone and picked it up. I quickly found my best friend’s phone number. She finally picked up on the third ring. “Veronica?”
“Susan. I haven’t heard from you in—”
“I’m leaving Steven.” I sat on the edge of the bed and felt the walls start to collapse around me.
“Did he hit you again?” Veronica’s voice was frantic. “Susan, tell me right now—”
“Yes. And he almost hit Beth.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said. Her voice was seething. “Are you okay? I can draw up divorce papers. Please tell me that’s what you’re finally doing.”
“Yes. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Suzie, honey, how have you done this for so long anyway?” Veronica asked. She didn’t need an answer, but I could almost see her sitting at her kitchen table, forehead in her hand, shaking her head slowly. “Why now? What happened?”
“Well, I met Jackie Mitchell,” I started with a sigh, then launched into the story of Beth running away, Jackie bringing her home, and Steven’s affair that I knew about but didn’t care about because at least it meant he wasn’t touching me. Veronica knew the details about the abuse. She knew he hit me, she knew I hid it, and she knew it was only a matter of time before I either found the courage to leave or… “I’ve needed to leave for years.”
