Written by LM Fontanes
LISTEN | Artwork by Eileen Kineke
It took a while to figure out, you will one day tell me, but eventually you realized the worst things happen in silence. The apology that never comes. The pretending it never happened. No, actually, there may be one worse thing. The time he laughed at you after he went too far. With emptied voice, you will whisper to me about the joke he made then, that bruises improve your makeup skills, and how he repeated the same joke on and off for years. You stuck it out because of the kids and the chocolate Lab and the low-interest mortgage and because, like you’ll say, it took a while to figure out.
We’d become friends when you moved to town last year and I clocked the deal right away. I spotted the brittle in you that comes from living in so much absence. I wanted to pull you into my arms right then, whisper comfort into your trembling self. I resisted. A professional like me knows better than to start a discussion like the one you don’t know yet you should have. I’ve seen it with my clients and it’s impossible for me to turn off what my brain recognizes in your life. Your fragility braided with his casual ownership of your attention. And your body.
You’ll probably tell me a lot of things in the aftermath, though not all. You’ll hold back the worst humiliations and the tingling can’t-face-it fears for your babies. So, I start filling in the blanks with stories from my case files. Men like him don’t vary that much. The love-bombing phase. The entrapment crossroads. The endless never-good-enoughness that trails into an eternity of tenterhooks. Unless something else ends it. I’m wondering how long I can wait for you to talk.
In my long career I’ve only lost one client. I say lost even though that doesn’t capture the grueling erosion of personhood that preceded the last of the accelerating punishments she endured. I didn’t know any of that in the first sessions. She only talked about his precise control of the household and her failures. Because, of course, everything was her fault. His family acted like she was crazy—too sensitive, not adoring enough. I blamed myself for not connecting the dots. I couldn’t see the marks under the Prada scarf.
Today, when you called with gritted-teeth urgency, I realized how close I came to waiting too long. As I pull up to the intersection, there’s a scrum of cop cars willy-nilly along the street, giddy lights spinning. This town never sends one unit when they can send five and there’s no ambulance, so I don’t panic yet. As I glide toward your modern farmhouse, one of the patrol cars trundles past and I can see they’ve put him in the backseat, sullen and coiled. I glance away. The mugshot humiliation will arrive soon enough, don’t need to put myself in the crosshairs of his anger. Job one: get to you and pull up the drawbridge. For today, at least.
You’re standing on the porch, still in flannel robe and LL Bean slippers, as law enforcement scatters to their vehicles. Your fragile smile feels like a conversation long overdue and around the edges, the slow possibility of eventual healing.
In my phone, I’ve teed up some lawyers to suggest. But first, that hug. Then, we’ll talk.
.
LM Fontanes tells stories in multiple genres and across oceans. Words in or upcoming in Underbelly Press, Trash Cat Lit, Roi Fainéant, Frazzled Lit, Silly Goose Press, Temple in a City, Emerge Literary Journal, 100-Foot Crow, JAKE, 34 Orchard, Flash Fiction Festival Anthology, Thomasonian, and The Willowherb Review. Her work has been long-listed for The Smokey Award and other prizes.