She took a closer look, too, at the paintbrushes and rollers. On closer inspection, they were obviously used but looked clean enough to suffice. And unless she wanted to make a trip to the hardware store and spend money she didn’t have, they would have to do.
She brought everything she thought she’d need to the kitchen before starting dinner. Tonight would be chicken, boiled carrots, beans. She added extra carrots to Tommie’s plate, but when he didn’t finish them, she reached over, eating them one by one. Though Tommie wanted to turn on the television again after dinner, she instead suggested a game. She’d spotted a box of dominoes in the cabinet in the living room, and though it had been a long time since she’d played, she knew the rules were simple enough for Tommie to grasp. He did; he even beat her a couple of times. Once he began to yawn, she sent him upstairs for a quick bath. He was old enough to do it alone—he’d lately started reminding her about that—so she let him be. Since he didn’t have pajamas, he slept in his underpants and the shirt he’d worn to school. She thought again about kids at school beginning to tease him and knew she’d have to find him something else to wear, as long as she could find bargains.
Money. She needed more money. Life always came down to money, and she felt her anxiety suddenly rise before forcing the feeling away. Instead, she sat with Tommie on his bed, read Go, Dog. Go! before tucking him in, and then retreated to the rockers on the front porch. Residual heat lingered from the day, making the evening pleasant; the air vibrated with the sounds of frogs and crickets. Rural sounds, country sounds. Sounds she remembered from her own childhood. Sounds she never heard in the suburbs.
As she rocked, she thought about the years she’d spent with Gary and how the sweet and charming demeanor that she’d fallen in love with changed within the first month of marriage. She remembered him sneaking up behind her to kiss her neck after she’d just poured a glass of wine. White wine, not red, and she’d collided with him when she turned. The wine splashed onto his shirt, one of his new ones, and though she’d apologized immediately, she’d laughed, as well, already planning to rinse the shirt before dropping it off at the dry cleaner’s the following morning. She was about to flirt with him—I guess I’ll have to get you out of that shirt, handsome—but even as the thought was forming, he slapped her across the face, the sound deafening and the sting intense.
And after that?
In retrospect, she knew she should have left then. Should have known that Gary was a chameleon, a man who had learned to hide his true colors. She wasn’t na?ve; she’d seen the TV specials and skimmed magazine articles about abusive men. But her desire to believe and trust had overridden her common sense. That’s not him, she told herself. Gary apologized as he wept, and she’d believed him when he said he was sorry. She’d believed him when he said he loved her, that he’d simply reacted. She’d believed him when he said it would never happen again.
But because she’d become a living cliché, her life descended into one. Of course, he eventually slapped her again; in time, those slaps turned to punches. Always in the stomach or in the lower back, where the bruises couldn’t be seen, even though the blows would leave her crumpled on the floor, struggling to breathe, her vision fading to a tunnel. In those moments, his face would turn red and the vein in his forehead would bulge as he screamed at her. He would throw plates and cups against the wall of the kitchen, leaving glass shattered around her. That was always the end of the cycle. The out-of-control anger. The shouting. The infliction of pain. But always, instead of ending for good, the cycle would begin anew. With apologies and promises and gifts like flowers or earrings or lingerie, and though she continued to hear the warning bells in her head, the sounds were drowned out by a burgeoning desire to believe that this time he’d changed. And for days and weeks, Gary would again be the man she married. They would go out with friends, and people would comment on their perfect marriage; her single girlfriends would tell her how lucky she was to have walked the aisle with a man like Gary.
Sometimes she even believed them. As time passed, she would remind herself not to do anything to make him angry. She would be the perfect wife and they would live in the perfect home, precisely the way he wanted it. She’d make the bed with the duvet straight and neat, the pillows fluffed just right. She’d fold and stack his clothes in the drawers, organized by color. She’d shine his shoes and line up the items in the cupboards. She’d make sure the television remote was on the coffee table and angled exactly toward the corner of the room. She knew what he liked—he made sure that she understood—and her days were spent doing all that was important to him. But just when she thought that the worst was behind her, something would happen. The chicken she cooked might be too dry, or he’d find towels still in the dryer, or one of the houseplants on the windowsill had begun to wilt, and his face would suddenly tighten. His cheeks would turn red, his pupils would grow smaller, and he’d drink more in the evenings, three or four glasses of wine instead of only one. And then the following days and weeks were akin to walking through a minefield, where a single misstep would lead to the inevitable explosion, followed by pain.