Til Death Do We Part

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Til Death Do We Part

Kate had planned on leaving Peter after the family’s annual vacation to Bear Lake. It had been almost all she thought about for the past year, before that she had been able to avoid her own thoughts, quieting them with a little red wine. Sometimes it took a lot of red wine, but Peter believed it was good for their hearts, so he kept the cabinets stocked with the finest Merlot thirty dollars could buy. As she packed the families luggage, and looked over her list to make sure she did not forget anything, she kept glancing at the white plastic bag with the blue Rite Aid logo on it. Her hands shook at the thought of what that bag could do to her life, at the power the contents held over her future. She continued packing, counting carefully and crossing off each item on her list. As she packed she was planning how to tell Peter she was leaving. She had been over several scenarios in her mind, each ending with the same outcome, her dead or her alone without her five year old daughter Leeny. It was these seemingly inevitable outcomes to her daydreams that had kept her paralyzed with indecision. Sighing, Kate picked up the Rite Aid bag and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and locking it.

As Kate pulled the blue rectangular box out of the Rite Aid bag, she was remembering last year, at the cabin on Bear Lake they rented each summer. Peter had discovered Kate had forgot to pack his favorite sunglasses, a minor offense to a normal man, but to Peter it was proof that Kate was not thinking of him and his needs. As Kate had apologized repeatedly, Peter had given her the signal, the hard cold stare, the look that warned her she was going to regret her mistake after Leeny went to bed. Peter had never harmed her in front of Leeny, so Kate had kept Leeny up as late as possible and then after tiptoeing out of Leeny's room, she had gone into the open area of the cabin and pretended to read, drawing out going to bed for as long as she thought she could get away with it. Peter called to her from the bedroom door and with reluctance and a resolve that she had to be quiet so Leeny would not wake up; Kate went to meet her husband.

Kate had learned there were two ways Peter would punish her when he thought she needed to have what he called, corrective behavior reinforcement. The first punishment would end with Kate pretending, until the bruises and cuts healed, that she had been clumsy again. Shaking her head, Kate would smile at anyone who asked and if any of those someone’s had been paying attention they would have easily seen the smile never reached her eyes. She would shrug and
stammer out some story about being unable to avoid walking into things. No one ever seemed to question this, busy with their own lives and problems, they would not notice the silent plea in her voice or the way she would say the words, hoping someone would pick up on the irony. Sadly, this was the punishment Kate had grown to prefer after experiencing Peter's second way of punishing her. Unfortunately for Kate, on this visit to Bear Lake, Peter chose the second punishment. This punishment was easier to hide from the world, but harder to endure and harder to hide from herself.

The cabin had soft flannel sheets on the bed, blue with green pine trees and brown bears lolling on a riverbank with trout jumping just out of reach. The sheets were on the bed when they had arrived and Kate was desperately grateful for whoever had placed them there and for the pretty scene she was now trying to escape into. Kate lay on her stomach, her face turned to the side so she could breathe, silently counting. Her body moving with each thrust, her eyes focused on one brown bear, tears slowly making there way past her nose, and eventually onto her lips. She tasted the saltiness of her tears, focusing intently on the way it mingled with the flavor of her cherry lip gloss. Kate felt the sting the tears made as they traveled past her bloody lip and fell onto her pillow. She had counted to 142 when Peter shuddered and fell off of her. Later, after she had taken a bath, applying ointment to the various parts of her that needed it, she gingerly pulled on her nightgown. She carefully chose the nightgown that would cover the painting of violence she now wore like a sign, if only someone including herself could read it.

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