At That Particular Time

I spent Saturday night awake downstairs on the sofa at BN2’s, my mobile phone in hand, ready to dial the police at every creak of floorboard. It was after midnight, we’d been arguing and for once I’d refused to stay up half the night apologizing and groveling and making promises. He told me, among other things, that I was on dangerous ground. He flicked on the light and yelled at me so loudly I shivered. My legs shook when I got out bed. I debated lying down on the floor of his 2-year-old daughter’s bedroom, because I didn’t think he’d hurt me there. Instead I went downstairs.

The next morning – as his daughter was watching Cinderella (oh irony, sweet irony – will my prince come someday?) – I left.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream. I didn’t tell him every nasty thing I’d ever thought, every resentment, every hurt. Several times over the week I'd tried to tell him how I was feeling, and he'd mocked me – mimicking my voice and looking at me with contempt. How horribly familiar I am with that look! In the weeks and months before that whenever I dared to tell him anything negative about how I was feeling, he’d told me alternately that my feelings didn’t matter (I remember him thundering this at me in Bucharest: "Your feelings don't matter!"), that he was the aggrieved party, and that I was selfish and self-obsessed and inconsiderate for not being able to put my own feelings aside.

Someday I’ll write the whole story, but the important part is this: I packed as much of my stuff as I could while he was giving his daughter breakfast. I’d hoped to avoid leaving in front of her, but I couldn’t stay even one more hour, let alone the one more day it would take until she went back to her mother.

They lay on his bed watching Cinderella, she dressed in her little blue Cinderella costume. I stood looking out the window, my back to the bed, crying. Finally I turned around and took one more look around the room I'd spent so much time in; a room I'll probably never see again. The bedside clock read 9:14 am, and I steeled myself to just do it before I lost either my nerve or my opportunity.

“I lay awake all night thinking about an action plan,” I told him. That was what he always demanded of me: an action plan for how I was going to prevent whatever I’d done from happening in the future. And it was always what I had done – all my fault.

He barely looked at me. “That was a waste – we could have been talking,” he said. He was angry that I’d refused to stay up arguing. In the past whenever I’d tried to refuse he’d steamrollered me, but I’d stood my ground the night before, just repeating with a calm I didn't know I had: "I'm sorry, I can't answer that right now." He’d been furious, referring to it as my “assertive crap.”

His eyes were half closed and he flicked them open. “I presume this is your way of saying you’re ready to talk?” he said.

His daughter spied my backpack and chirped, the way she did when I left for work: “Beth is leaving.”

I took a deep breath. “No,” I said quietly. “There’s nothing to talk about. Goodbye.” I walked out the door and toward the stairs.

He got out of bed and followed me, saying something about how he deserved an explanation and what kind of sh*t was this.

“I was physically afraid of you last night,” I told him, heading down the stairs.

“That’s a convenient excuse,” he snapped. Which is exactly what he’d said Friday when I’d tried to tell him my resentment and anger at his constant criticism of me was making me not fancy him. (We fought constantly about sex and how often he wanted it and how high he prioritized it, and on one night he’d even catalogued my physical defects that he felt interfered. If I’m making it sound cold and clinical, it’s because it’s the only way I can write about it just now.)

“I tried to tell you how I felt earlier this week and you mocked me and belittled me,” I said.

“I’m not having a conversation with the back of your head,” he said loudly. Maybe he yelled – I’m not sure. I continued on down the stairs, not turning around.

“Can you tell me in one succinct sentence why it is that you’re leaving?” he said (yelled?)

Again I breathed deep. I didn’t turn around.

“I’m unhappy,” I said calmly. “In fact, I’m miserable. I’m leaving your keys here.” I hung them on the hook, picked up my backpack and handbag, and walked out the door.

To be continued