Liv Constantine - The Last Mrs. Parrish

I flew up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door. Flinging myself on the bed, I screamed into my pillow. When I lifted my head, two marble eyes were staring at me from my nightstand. I picked up the glass turtle and threw it as hard as I could against the bedroom wall. It didn’t shatter, but merely landed on the floor with a soft thud. It sat there, appraising me with its reptilian eyes, perched as though it was preparing to crawl toward me and punish me for what I had done.

When you discover you are married to a sociopath, you have to become resourceful. There’s no point in trying to change him — once the pot is in the kiln, it’s too late. The best I could do was study him — the real him, the one hiding behind his well-polished veneer of humanity and normalcy. Now that I knew the truth, it was easy to spot. Things like the small smile playing at his lips when he was pretending to be sad. He was a brilliant mimic and knew just what to say and do to ingratiate himself into the affections of others. Now that he’d dropped the facade with me, I had to figure out how to beat him at his own game.

I took him up on his suggestion to take more courses at the university. But I didn’t study art. I bought the textbooks for the art class and figured I would read up on my own in case he quizzed me. Instead, I signed up for psychology courses, paying cash for them and registering under a different name with a post office box. The campus was large enough that there was little chance of my French professor seeing me while I was pretending to be someone else, but just in case, I wore a baseball cap and sweats to those classes. It’s worth noting that by this point in my marriage, these measures didn’t seem extreme to me. I had adjusted to a life where subterfuge and deceit were as natural as breathing.

In my abnormal psychology class, I began to put the pieces together. My professor was a fascinating woman who had a private practice. Hearing her describe some of her patients was like listening to a description of Jackson. I took another abnormal psych course with her as well as her class on personality. Then I spent hours at the university library reading everything I could get my hands on about the antisocial personality.

Interviews with sociopaths have revealed that they’re able to identify a potential victim merely by the way the person walks. Our bodies apparently telegraph our vulnerabilities and sensitivities. Spouses of sociopaths are said to have an overabundance of empathy. I found that bit of information hard to understand. Is there really such a thing as too much empathy? It had a certain poetic irony, though. If sociopaths are said to lack empathy and their victims to have too much, they would seem to make a perfect match. But of course, empathy can’t be divvied up. Here, you take some of mine; I have extra. And sociopaths can’t acquire it anyway — the lack of it is what defines them in the first place. I think they’re wrong, though. It’s not too much empathy. It’s misplaced empathy, a misguided attempt to save someone that can’t be saved. All these years later, I know what he saw in me. The question I still wrestle with is, what did I see in him?

When Bella turned two, he’d begun badgering me to get pregnant again — he was dying for a son. There was no way I would willingly bring another child of his into this world. Unbeknownst to him, I went to a free clinic in another town, used a fake name, and got fitted for an IUD. Every month he charted my cycles, knew exactly when I was ovulating, and made sure that we had even more sex during that window. We had a big blowout one day when I got my period.

“What the hell is wrong with you? It’s been three years.”

“We could see a fertility doctor. Maybe your sperm count is low.”

He scowled. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You’re the dried-up old prune.”

But I had sown a doubt; I could see it in his eyes. I was counting on the fact that his ego could never handle any threat to his virility.

“I’m sorry, Jackson. I want it as much as you do.”

“Well, you’re not getting any younger. If you don’t get pregnant soon, it’s never going to happen. Maybe you should get on some fertility drugs.”

I shook my head. “The doctor will never do that. They have to do a complete workup on both of us. I’ll call Monday and make an appointment.”

A look of indecision crossed his face. “This week’s bad for me. I’ll let you know when I have some time.”

It was the last time he brought it up.

I needed Jackson to be in a good mood. I’d been looking forward to having my mother here for Tallulah’s birthday party, and I had to work even harder to please him the entire month leading up to it so he wouldn’t cancel her visit at the last minute. That meant initiating sex at least three times a week, instead of waiting for him to, wearing all his favorite outfits, praising him to my friends in front of him, and keeping up with the growing piles of books on my nightstand that arrived weekly from his online orders. My books by contemporary authors such as Stephen King, Rosamund Lupton, and Barbara Kingsolver were replaced with books by Steinbeck, Proust, Nabokov, Melville — books he believed would make me a more interesting dinner companion. These were in addition to the classics that we were reading together.

It had been six months since Mom’s last visit, and I was desperate to see her. Over the years, she’d come to accept that we were no longer close, believing that I’d changed, that the money had gone to my head, that I had little time for her. It’s all what he made her believe.

It had taken everything I had not to tell her the truth, but if I had, there was no knowing what he would have done to us, or even just to her. So I went along and only invited her twice a year, for the girls’ birthdays. The inn kept her occupied for the holidays, which eliminated my having to tell her she wasn’t welcome. Jackson refused to allow us to travel to see her, claiming it was important for children to be in their own home during the holidays.

This year, Tallulah was turning eleven. We were having a big celebration. All of her friends from school were coming. I’d arranged for a clown, bouncy house, ponies — the works. None of our adult friends were invited, except Amber. We’d been friends for a few months by then, and I was starting to feel like she was family. I’d arranged for plenty of help to keep watch over the children. We’d have both nannies there. Sabine only worked during the week, so Jackson had hired a young college student, Surrey, to spend the weekend with us and help with whatever needed doing. However, Sabine wanted to be there for the party. I was telling Amber about the planning. She’d stopped by to return a movie she’d borrowed.

“I’d really love to meet your mother, Daphne,” she gushed.

“You will. I’ll have you over while she’s here, but are you sure you really want to come to the party? It’s going to be twenty screaming children. I’m not sure I even want to go.” I was joking, of course.

“I can help you. I mean, I know you have hired help and all, but it’s nice to have a friend too.”

Jackson hadn’t been happy when I’d told him she was coming.

“What the hell, Daphne? This is a family affair. She’s not your sister, you know. She’s always around.”

“She has no one here. And she’s my best friend.” I realized my mistake as soon as the words left my lips. Was she? I hadn’t had one for years. It’s impossible to be close to someone when you’re living a lie. All my relationships, except for the ones with my children, were superficial by necessity. But with Amber, I felt a bond that no one else could understand. As much as I loved Meredith, she couldn’t relate to how I felt losing my sister.