Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“Why is Dad always busy ?” Now he was staring out the window. When he frowned like that, right before he was about to cry, he looked just like his father.

She drove the two hours to her hometown, stayed with her parents for the first time in years. Kevin didn’t like Paula’s parents, so their family visits were always quick and perfunctory. They’d meet halfway between their homes, have lunch somewhere. Kevin didn’t like her to spend too much time with them, even got angry when he thought she was talking to her mother on the phone too much.

And once she was with them for a while, in their home without Kevin, she understood why. When she was with her parents, she remembered what it was like to be loved and respected. She remembered what it was like not to have every move you made monitored, judged, and criticized. She remembered tenderness, intimacy. She remembered what it was like to be Paula. She expanded, stretched out her limbs from the box she’d been living in. She could breathe.

She’d wept at Janie’s funeral, couldn’t hide her sadness even though Cameron had his head on her lap and Claire slept on her shoulder. They didn’t seem to mind her sorrow, even appeared to understand that it was natural and right to mourn someone’s passing. They didn’t wail and fuss. Cameron rubbed her leg, and Claire cooed; they were flanked by her mother and father. For the first time in years, crying for her aunt who’d suffered so, and crying for what she’d allowed her own life to become, she felt honest. She felt safe.

After the kids were in bed and her father was firmly ensconced in front of the television, Paula’s mother told her about the money.

“Janie wanted you and the children to have what she could give. It’s significant. A little over a hundred thousand dollars. But she didn’t want it to go to Kevin. She was worried about you, Paula. And so am I.”

She started to tell her mother that everything was fine, that she was worried for nothing, that Kevin was just a difficult man to understand but that he was good to them and all was well. Except the words wouldn’t come. No more lies. But she didn’t tell her mother the truth, not the whole truth. She didn’t want her mother to be afraid. Paula just said she was very unhappy and didn’t know what to do, but that the money would help her decide. She told her mother about the account that was in her maiden name. She promised he wouldn’t find it.

“No one needs to be unhappy anymore, Paula.” Her mother said it in a whisper, looking down at the table between them. She looked so sad, older and more tired than Paula ever thought of her.

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I just mean that you have a right to be happy. And if someone is making you unhappy, you have a right to leave. This idea that we hold on to miserable marriages that erode our lives? It’s old-school. Life is too short.”

Paula was surprised by this; she’d have expected her mother to suggest couples therapy, to try to make it work for the good of the children, something like that.

“You’re happy with Dad, aren’t you, Mom?” she asked. She had always thought of her parents as being well suited, having a good marriage. It was important to her suddenly that this, too, wasn’t some illusion she’d maintained for herself. “You’re happy, right?”

Her mother patted Paula’s hand. “Happy enough, dear.”

Happy enough .

Over the monitor, Paula heard Claire coo. Paula held her breath, waiting for the cry that would herald the early end of nap time. But then she heard the baby sigh, her breathing return to its deep sleep rhythm. Paula felt her shoulders relax. It was a funny, impossible little trap of nature, motherhood. It muddled your brain with floods of hormones and sleep deprivation, kept you constantly busy tending to a million needs, had you forever thinking about the care of others. You could disappear into motherhood, forget completely that once upon a time you were an athlete, a graduate student, that you had ambitions to go into politics, change the world. That once upon a time you wanted to write. And even though motherhood wiped all that away like a cosmic eraser over the chalkboard of your life, it gave you something else-this crazy, blissful, adoring love that splits you open and redefines you from the inside out. Most of the time, in your mommy-addled brain, it seems like a fair enough trade-off. And maybe under normal circumstances it is, if you’re happily married, safe in your home. The kids aren’t small forever. There’s time to work later, when they’re both in school. And really, what could be more important and fulfilling than raising kids well?

But that wasn’t the problem, of course. Paula wasn’t worried about changing the world anymore. Her M.B.A. seemed more like a waste of time and money, something she did to satisfy her own hunger for accomplishment. Kevin had pushed her into it when they were dating. And since he was her boss, too, it had seemed like good advice. He’d implied that it would help when he was campaigning for her to become a partner in the consulting firm he’d formed with a bunch of his buddies from college. At the time business was booming. But now some of the partners were in personal bankruptcy. Major clients had sent their work to India. The company was struggling. And Paula hadn’t even pretended to work for them since Claire was born, even though ostensibly there was a job for her in human resources and recruiting when she wanted it. Every once in a while, she did some paperwork for Kevin or made calls on overdue invoices when the baby was sleeping. But all the employees had been laid off. Only the partners remained. She couldn’t care less about the company or about her stalled professional life. Those were luxury problems. What she cared about was that there was something wrong with Kevin. Something very, very wrong.

When did it happen? She often found herself wondering. She wanted a moment to point to, a reason. But if she was honest, the signs were there long before they married. They were so subtle, so easily explained away in the blush of early love. At least that’s what she told herself. How he always needed to plan everything-first their dates and vacations. It was romantic, wasn’t it? Until she realized that she didn’t have much to say about anything, even what movie they went to see. Then he started to buy her clothes-gorgeous, expensive clothes. Which was lovely, until she realized he didn’t want her to wear her old clothes anymore. Until he suggested that she stop eating bread to fit into a size six instead of size eight. You’re beautiful. I love you. I just want to help you be perfect . Even when her friends expressed shock and dismay at this type of attitude, she blew it off. It would be nice to be a size six for her wedding day. And who needs bread, anyway?

And then her friends weren’t good enough. If she encouraged him to see her friends with her as a couple, he’d have too much to drink and say the most awful things to them. You’d be pretty if you weren’t so overweight, Katie. Ever think about joining a gym?… You should be proud of your accomplishments, Judy. It’s just too bad someone else raised your kids . If she tried to see them alone, there would be an awful fight when she got home. Slowly her friendships started to drift. Then, suddenly, her family was white trash; they needed to minimize contact. Your cousin’s in jail, for God’s sake. Do you want your kids to grow up like that?

It wasn’t until they’d been married awhile, after she’d had the two children he’d demanded they have (two was the perfect number) and she was a slave to the house and the kids she loved more than her own life, that things started to get really bad. It wasn’t until she was well and truly trapped that things started to get scary .