I’ll do anything.
Once again, Andy has left three water bottles for me in the refrigerator. I decide to save them for the next day, because it’s all I’ll get and I have no idea how long I’ll be in here. I’m going to save them for when I can’t stand it another minute. When my tongue starts to feel like it’s made of sandpaper.
The light situation is driving me completely crazy. There are two naked bulbs on the ceiling, and both of them are these ultra-bright lights. If I turn on the light, it is agonizingly bright in here. But with them off, it’s pitch black. I get the idea to push the dresser over below the lightbulbs, and I climb up there and manage to unscrew one of them. It’s a little better with just the single lightbulb, but still bright enough that I have to squint.
Andy doesn’t come back in the morning either. I sit in that room the entire day, worrying about Cecelia, wondering what the hell I’m going to do when and if I get out of here. But this isn’t a delusion. This isn’t a hallucination. This is really happening to me.
I have to remember that.
It’s bedtime when I finally hear footsteps outside the room. I’ve been lying in the bed, choosing the darkness option. When it was daylight, a few tiny cracks of sunlight had gotten through, and I could almost make out the shadow of objects in the room. But now that the sun has gone down, it’s pitch black again.
“Nina?”
I open my mouth but my throat is too dry to say anything. I have to clear my throat. “I’m here.”
“I’m going to let you out.”
I wait for him to add “but not yet,” but he doesn’t.
“But first,” he says, “there are going to be some ground rules.”
“Anything you say.” Just please let me out of here.
“For starters, you don’t tell anyone what went on in this room.” His voice is firm. “You don’t tell your friends, you don’t tell your doctor, you don’t tell anyone. Because nobody will believe you, and if you talk about it, it’s just going to be a sign that you’re having delusions again and poor Cecelia could be in danger.”
I stare into the blackness. Even though I knew what he was going to say, hearing it fills me with fury. How can he expect me not to talk about what he just did to me?
“Do you understand, Nina?”
“Yes,” I manage.
“Good.” I can almost imagine his satisfied smirk. “Second, from time to time, if you need to be disciplined, that will take place in this room.”
Is he kidding me? “No way. Forget it.”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate, Nina.” He snorts. “I’m just telling you how it’s going to be. You are my wife now, and I have very specific expectations. Really, it’s for your own good. I taught you a valuable lesson about wasting electricity, didn’t I?”
I gasp for air in the blackness. I feel like I’m choking.
“This is for you, Nina,” he says. “Look at the horrible choices you made in your life before I came along. You had a dead-end minimum-wage job. You got knocked up by some loser who didn’t stick around. I’m just trying to teach you how to be a better person.”
“I wish I had never met you,” I spit out.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.” He laughs. “I guess I can’t blame you. I’m impressed that you managed to unscrew one of those lightbulbs though. I didn’t even think of that.”
“You… How did you…？”
“I’m watching you, Nina. I’m always watching.” I can hear him breathing behind the door. “This is going to be our lives from now on. We will be a happily married couple like everyone else. And you will be the best wife in the entire neighborhood. I’ll make sure of that.”
I press my fingers into my eyeballs, trying to extinguish the headache that’s blooming in my temples.
“Do you understand, Nina?”
Tears prick at my eyes, but I can’t cry. I’m too dehydrated; nothing comes out.
“Do you understand, Nina?”
FORTY-SIX
Step Six: Try to Live With It
I crack the window open in Suzanne’s Audi so that the wind tousles my light hair as she drives me home from our lunch date. We were supposed to be discussing PTA issues, but we got distracted and started gossiping. It’s hard not to gossip. There are so many bored housewives in this town.
People think I’m one of them.
Andy and I have been married for seven years now. And he has kept every one of his promises. He has, in many ways, been a wonderful husband. He has supported me financially, he has been a father figure to Cecelia, he’s even-tempered and agreeable. He doesn’t drink heavily or mess around behind my back like so many other men in this town. He’s almost perfect.