Page 45 of Stay Away from Him

What happened next was terrible. And it was my fault. I know that.

I cheated on Thomas. Before I even started writing in this journal, I betrayed him. Betrayed our marriage. Betrayed our family.

I should’ve started with that, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, even to myself. Couldn’t bring myself to write it.

I feel terrible. I hate myself more than I’ve ever hated myself before.

But is it really all my fault? Cheating is always blamed on the cheater—but infidelity happens for a reason.

If I shattered our marriage, brought it all crashing down, it’s because Thomas has been chipping away at its foundations for years.

Neglecting me. Treating me with contempt.

Turning our daughters against me. And refusing to listen to me when I tell him that something’s seriously wrong.

The world wouldn’t see it that way, I know. But I know the truth. Thomas shares some of the blame for this.

***

It all started the morning after our fight—the one where Thomas refused to go to a new therapist with me, accused me of endangering the family and his reputation, and then threatened me. After the fight, Thomas left and slept in the guest room, too angry to share a bed with me.

When I woke the next morning, I felt as though a heavy weight was pinning me to the bed, sitting on my chest, keeping me from breathing.

My depression was a physical thing, a thick, rancid sludge spreading through my veins.

I heard voices through the door—Thomas and the girls murmuring to each other as they got ready for work and school, whispering to each other to leave me alone, Mom’s having another one of her bad mornings.

As though my despair didn’t have a reason. As though it was something that just happened to me. As though it didn’t have a cause that Thomas refused to name, refused to admit.

When they left, doors closing and car engines droning away to nothing in the distance, I lay and listened to the sounds of the house.

Sometime after ten I finally pulled myself out of bed and went downstairs.

Maybe some coffee would help snap me out of this funk.

But when I opened the cupboard and looked at the half-empty bag of grounds, I realized that it wasn’t coffee I needed.

I went to the other cupboard and found a bottle of white wine. Poured myself a glass, unchilled. The taste didn’t matter to me—I wanted the buzz, the feeling of floating and sinking at once, the light oblivion that came with being just a little drunk.

Soon I had finished the bottle, and I still wasn’t out of my pajamas.

Shame washed over me as I tried to pour another glass and saw a few last drops trickle from the mouth of the bottle.

I didn’t feel better. I felt worse, my head feeling loose and jangly, like an old failing house whose joists and floorboards creak with every footstep, every gust of wind.

I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling as the room spun around me. I closed my eyes but didn’t sleep. Somehow the day passed away, minute by excruciating minute ticking by on the digital clock that sat by my bedside, and suddenly it was two o’clock in the afternoon.

My phone buzzed, and I looked at it.

Hey lady! Want to meet up for an afternoon drink before the kids get home from school?

It was Kelli. I didn’t want to see her, and the last thing I needed was an afternoon drink, after how much I’d already had—but in my shame, I thought that if I managed to get myself out of bed, if I showered and put real clothes on, then the day wouldn’t be a total waste.

That if I could claw myself to this one pitiful piece of normal functioning, there was hope for me to get all the way back to the way I’d felt the night before, when I thought I could see all the way from this hell I was living in to the bearable life I wanted.

I skipped the shower but managed to get some nice clothes on, ran my fingers through my hair, then got into the car.

Behind the wheel, I realized I was still a little drunk—not as bad as I’d been a couple hours before but probably still too drunk to drive.

But I backed the car out of the driveway anyway and then headed off down the road, concentrating hard to keep from drifting.

I’d barely made it a quarter mile when I saw the black car driving up tight at my back bumper, the police lights flashing on the dashboard. I panicked and almost swerved right off the road, hit my brakes too hard, but somehow managed to pull to the shoulder.

The man who climbed out of the car was in plainclothes, blue jeans and a navy polo. The car was unmarked.

“You had something to drink today, ma’am?”

I looked up at him, his face of angry authority wearing all the disapproval and contempt I felt for myself. Reflecting it back to me.

And I burst into tears.

I swear they were genuine. I wasn’t trying to manipulate my way out of a DUI.

It was all just too much—Thomas’s hatred toward me, my hatred toward myself.

The cop’s reflexive judgment against me: a lawbreaker, a drunk driver.

And imagining everything that would happen next.

Would I go to a holding cell? Would Thomas have to bail me out?

Would there be a mug shot, a court appearance?

I was only sitting in a parked car on the side of a quiet suburban road, but I felt as though the eyes of the whole world were turning to me in judgment.

I went on crying for a few minutes, looking at my lap, then glanced up again at the cop and saw his face transformed from disapproval to sympathy. There even seemed to be some guilt there, for being the one to make me cry.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I know this is bad—I fucked up. I’m a fuckup.”

“Hey,” the cop said, his voice quiet now. He reached his hand through the window and set it on my shoulder. “You don’t have to say things like that about yourself. You made a mistake.”

“My whole life is one big mistake,” I said.

The cop squinted, looked up and down the road.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked.

I told him my address.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you just turn around and go home. I’ll follow you to make sure you get there safe. And we can both forget this happened.”

I’d be standing Kelli up, but it was better than going to jail.

“Really?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m not really a traffic cop anyway. I’m an investigator.”

“An investigator?”

“A detective,” he said. “I was out taking some witness statements on a domestic disturbance when I saw you pass by. I don’t want to give you a DUI. I just want to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

I smiled. “Thank you, officer,” I said, my gratitude real, not feigned. I found myself noticing how handsome he was, the kindness in his eyes. Not like Thomas, whose superficial kindness masked contempt.

I drove home, and the cop followed me, just as he said. I put the car in the garage and then went into the house. I heard a knock on the door. It was the cop again.

“You change your mind about giving me that DUI?”

He shook his head. “No harm, no foul. I just wanted to ask—well, I’m not sure what I wanted to ask.”

He let out a little laugh and looked at his shoes. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I realized that I was making him flustered. I wondered if he might be attracted to me. It had been so long since anyone had found me beautiful, I’d forgotten what it was like, no longer knew the signs.

“Are you okay, I guess is what I wanted to ask.”

I shook my head, smiled. “No. Is anyone?”

He made a pained look. “I suppose we all have our struggles. But something in the way you were talking back there…” He trailed off, then cocked his head to the side, looked past me into the house. “Are you home alone?”

“I am.”

“And do you…do you feel safe? At home?”

I laughed. Of course I didn’t feel safe at home. Home, I wanted to tell him, was the place where the people lived who could hurt you the most.

“My family hates me,” I said. “And half the time I agree with them.”

“You have a husband?”

“Oh, he hates me the most.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t deserve that.”

I studied him, struggling to understand what he was trying to do by being so nice to me.

“You don’t know anything about what I deserve.”

“I know more than most,” he said. “I see a lot of things in this job. I know a good person when I see one.”

I was so overcome with gratitude that I couldn’t speak.

Still standing on the stoop, he glanced around, like he thought someone might be watching. “Look,” he said, reaching in his pocket, “I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to give you my card. In case you ever need to talk. Okay?”

He handed it over to me, and I took it from him, and in the instant that my hand touched the card, his finger darted forward and brushed against mine.

His face flushed red at his own brazenness, and his gaze dropped to his shoes again.

My cheeks grew hot too. He was cute when he was bashful. I glanced at the card. Derek Gordon.

I was still a little drunk and dazed at this man’s kindness toward me, the interest he was showing. But what happened next was my decision, all the same. It was something I wanted, something I made happen. On this, I have no excuse.

I reached across the threshold and grabbed for him. Pulled him toward me by the fabric of that tight polo.

And then we were kissing. I must have tasted terrible, the warm white wine stale on my tongue, but still, Derek Gordon opened his mouth, darted his tongue past my teeth. And then we were stumbling up the stairs and ripping at each other’s clothes.

I sat on the bed and pulled down his boxers, took him in my mouth. Above me he moaned, and I looked up to meet his eyes.

“Lie back,” he said, his voice rough. “I want to be inside you.”

I did as he said. “Be gentle with me,” I said. “It’s been so long since…” I trailed off, let the sentence go unfinished as he pulled my pants and underwear off, arranged my legs the way he liked. When he pushed himself inside me, I burst into tears.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“Keep going,” I said, and this, more than anything, is the detail that makes me feel guiltiest when I remember it.

I could have told him to stop. But I asked him to keep going.

***

Afterward, we lay together for a while, then put our clothes back on in silence.

“Can I see you again?” he asked as we crept down the stairs, walking softly even though we were the only ones in the house.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I need to see you again,” he said, amending his prior question.

“I have your card.”

At the door he stole one more kiss—gentle, affectionate.

I pulled away and pressed my fingers to my lips as I saw her coming up the front walk, her feet scratching to a halt on the flagstones, her face ashen.

It was Rhiannon.

She knew.