Whatever It Takes (11 page)

During fall and spring sessions I was extremely busy but it was summer and there wasn’t a whole lot to do.  I checked the floor to see if there were any students who needed assisting.  There weren’t.  I responded to emails, checked my messages, and stopped by my mailbox all before eleven a.m.  I had just returned to my office when Anna, my boss entered.  She was a plump woman, with short blonde hair and a kind smile.  She greeted me pleasantly and then sat down to talk.

“There’s something I’ve got to ask you, Emma,” she said.  “You know how slow we get during the summer months and there just isn’t enough work to keep us all busy during this time.  The dean is demanding that we put some of the staff on furlough, just for the summer.”

My face showed what was I thinking.  I knew where she was going with this.

“Now, before you say anything, you have seniority over Josh so it would be up for you to decide.  You can choose to take the furlough or we’ll force him to take it.  I was only asking you because I know you’re more financially stable than Josh is, him still being a student and all.”

While Anna was right, I hated her for putting me in this position right now.  Josh was a sweet guy and he was working his ass off for his master’s.  He was putting himself through school and while he often joked about how poor he was, I knew it wasn’t far from the truth. 

How could I give up my job for the entire summer though?  It wasn’t the money, Gavin made enough himself to cover our expenses, but talk about shitty timing.  Taking a leave from work would only give me more time to dwell on our problems at home.  Visions of me on the couch with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and Oprah reruns on the tube flashed in my head. 

But I couldn’t make Josh lose the money.  He needed it much more than I did.  And so I told Anna that I understood and that I would take the leave of absence.

“Thank you so much, Emma,” she said as she stood to leave my office.  “You’ll be back in no time.  Besides, just think of how much use you’ll get out of that new pool of yours.”

Օ

That evening at home I was mixing a spinach salad when Gavin walked in the door.  After depositing his keys and brief case he came over to me and kissed my cheek hello like he did every other night in the last two weeks.  And like every other night, I let him but said nothing. 

“How was your day?” he asked, grabbing a beer from the fridge.

“Shitty.”  This was not my normal response.  All he usually got was a “fine”.

“Why shitty?”  He leaned back against the counter right next to where I was chopping.  He looked at me with genuine concern on his face and took a pull from his drink.

“The university is cutting back on positions from the library for the summer and  Anna has to force people to take a furlough.  I volunteered in Josh’s place.  He can’t afford to lose the money this summer.  I can.”

“That was very generous of you to do that for Josh.”

I shrugged.

“Well this isn’t so terrible, Em.  You know you don’t have to worry about the money.  You have the summer off to enjoy it now.  Use the pool, hang out with Diane and the baby and Yvonne.” 

His oblivion to the real issue here was making me more irritated.

“You don’t get it do you?” I snapped.

“Get what?” he asked.

I was done chopping and was angrily mixing the greens with two wooden salad spoons.  He stayed by my side with his beer.

“I have no distraction now.”

Gavin rubbed his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger.  “I see.”

“At work I had something to occupy my brain for half the day.  Now I’ll have all day to think about you fucking that woman.”

Gavin slammed the glass bottle on the counter and turned his back on me.  He was pissed off now.  Good.

He kept silent for a beat to contain himself and then turned towards me again.

“Emma, we’ve got to do something.  I thought time would make things easier but it isn’t, it’s making them worse.  I know how you’re feeling baby, but your anger isn’t going away, it’s getting worse if anything and I think we both know why.”

I did know why but I wasn’t talking about that with him.  I ignored him and moved to take the salmon I had marinating out of the fridge. 

“You want this grilled or should I put it in the oven?”  I asked him instead.

“Actually I’ve had a craving for pizza all day.”

I spun on him.  “Fine!” I screamed and threw the dish of marinated salmon across the kitchen so that it smashed on a wall and left a mess all the way to the floor.

In my head, I knew I was acting like a maniac but I couldn’t stop myself.  I grabbed the spinach salad and heaved it across the room as well.  A confetti of greens fell across the tile while the wooden bowl clattered loudly.  I searched fruitlessly for something else to throw and when I couldn’t get my hands on anything I just hung my head and clutched it in my hands.  I felt like I was going insane. 

Gavin, who up until then had watched in horror and sadness during my temper tantrum came to me then and embraced me.  I let him.  I even leaned into him a little.  I needed comforting and he was the only one I could get it from. I still hadn’t told anyone what happened and neither had he.  I also needed to feel him.  It had been so long and I missed his touch. 

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his waist, allowing myself to forget that I was supposed to be hating him right now.  I pressed my cheek against his chest and breathed him in, fresh laundry and Gavin.  I didn’t cry, not even when he started in with his apologies again.

“I’m so sorry that I’ve done this to you, baby,” he whispered.   He moved his arms soothingly up and down my back.  “I know you’re wound so tightly.  I am too.  Not being able to touch you and kiss you these last two weeks is taking its toll on both of us.”

I knew where he was headed again but said nothing.  I just kept breathing him in. 

“You need the release, baby.  We both do.”

He was talking about sex.  Sex was a stress reliever for the both of us.  Especially me with my issues.  After that one night when he proposed to me I’d discovered that giving up control to Gavin in the bedroom did wonders for my mental well being.  We didn’t always have sex like that, with him being so domineering, but anytime I was particularly strained the sex would make it better.  And Gavin always knew when I needed that from him.  In our entire relationship we hadn’t gone more than a few days without being together and two weeks was definitely having an effect. 

Taking my silence for acquiescence, he moved his hands to rub my back under my shirt.  I stayed put, still clutching him at his sides.  When he moved my hair to the side and kissed the side of my neck I tensed a bit and he noticed.  His mouth hovered for a beat, his breath warming me there, while he waited for me to protest.  When I didn’t he continued. 

He moved his mouth to just under my ear and I relaxed a fraction and sighed into his chest.  Angry at him or not, this felt good and, God help me, I needed it.  He lifted me from the floor and told me to wrap my legs around him.  I did.  He set me on the counter and took my face in his hands.  He searched for any sign of reluctance.  There was none.  He kissed me.  I let him.

It started out with small closed mouth touches of the lips.  Then Gavin opened his mouth.  That’s when I started to resist.  I kept my lips sealed shut, not willing to let him in.

“Open your mouth,” he told me.  It was half question, half command.  He pressed his mouth back to mine trying again but I didn’t give in.

“Open your mouth, Emma,” he repeated, this time a little more forceful than the last.  I still wouldn’t.  I wanted to defy him, wanted to fill him with rage.

“Open your goddamned mouth!”  There was no question as to if this was a command or not and now I obeyed.

He kissed me hard and it hurt.  I wondered if I’d have bruised lips tomorrow.  I took his lower lip between my teeth and bit down.  I didn’t draw blood but it he hissed in pain.  He pulled away from me and grabbed the hem of my shirt, ripping it over my head and then pushed me back so that I was lying on the cold granite.  Gavin removed his own shirt and then leaned over me and our lips continued to battle with each other. 

I was fine until he started to move down my body.  As his lips caressed the skin from my neck down to my navel, I closed my eyes and that’s when the images appeared.  Gavin doing this very same thing, only with Lisa, not me. 

I tried to shake it off by opening my eyes and watching him, forcing myself to realize this was happening now, him and me, no one else.  I watched as he moved to the waist of my pants and popped the button and even lifted to help him shimmy them over my hips.  But as his mouth met the back of my knee and my hands held tight to the edge of the counter, my eyes closed again and there they were.  It was like I was on the ceiling, looking down on Lisa and Gavin.  My stomach clenched and I pushed him away.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I repeated, struggling awkwardly to get myself to an upright position.  Gavin pulled away and straightened, his face dark and his eyes burning.  I slid to my feet and searched the floor for my top.

“Emma, come on, baby-”

“Shut up, Gavin!”  I turned to him, the anger back with a vengeance.  “I can barely look at you right now and you want me to have sex with you?  Everytime I close my eyes all I can see is you with her and I can’t... I can’t... I just can’t!”

Gavin grabbed his own shirt from the tile and stormed out to the patio, slamming the slider behind him.  The glass rattled violently in protest. 

I surveyed the mess left by my tantrum and moved to start cleaning it up.  Still sans pants or shoes, I stepped gingerly around the salmon, carefully picking up the larger shards of glass from the container it was in.  I grabbed a dustpan and swept up the remainder of the shards and food and then broke out the mop to clean up the marinade.  Gavin stayed outside the entire time.

10

When it rains it pours.  At least that’s what they say, isn’t it?  Well, they’re right.  The morning after my tantrum in the kitchen, I had decided it was time to talk to someone about what was going on.  I needed a third party’s perspective on the situation but I needed to be careful about whom to trust with the information.  Someone who wouldn’t make snap judgements, someone who would just listen to me, let me get it all out without becoming enraged, emotional, or critical.  My mother was out, there was no question about that.  While she tried her best to remain a part of my life, I still held some serious resentment towards her.  I only spoke to her five, maybe six times a year at best, and those were uncomfortable conversations.  I was just never able to forgive her for being a neglectful mother.  Besides, she was too flighty to talk to about this. 

My sister, Stephanie, and I were still close.  How could we not be when we basically took care of each other when we were kids?  But she was too close to me to talk to. If I told her I knew she’d cry and then demand that I leave Gavin and then swear to hate him forever.

I didn’t want this to get outside of the family just yet, so Diane would be ideal if not for the fact she was married to Gavin’s best friend.  After careful consideration, I decided my grandmother would be the one to tell.  She was much more of a mother to me anyway and I figured since she was the oldest person close to me she’d have more wisdom when it came to something like this than anyone else I knew.

So that morning, after Gavin had left for work, I made myself a cup of coffee, got comfortable on the patio and readied myself to finally tell someone our deep, dark secret.  My heart thudded in my ears while the phone rang and before anyone could even answer the call, I felt my eyes fill with tears and my throat get tight with emotion.  I expected that I would get upset just thinking about telling someone.  What I didn’t expect was for my mother to answer the phone at my grandparent’s home.

“Mom?” I whimpered, trying desperately to control my voice.  I did not want her to suspect anything was wrong because I certainly wasn’t telling her, but I didn’t want to lie.

“Hello, Emma,” she spoke.  She sounded tired and if she noticed I sounded off she didn’t acknowledge it.  

“What are you doing at Nana’s?”  I didn’t mean to sound so incredulous but my mother visited my grandparent’s house once a year.  On Christmas.  I am not ashamed to say that my first thought was that she had run out of money and had to move in with them.  Honestly, I had been waiting on that day to come.

“I was just about to call you,” she told me.  She paused and took a deep breath.  A cold chill went down my spine.  Something wasn’t right.  “Emma, Nana passed away early this morning.”

My breath whooshed out of me and I cried.  I listened as my mother told me that the night before my grandmother had gone to bed early saying she didn’t feel well.  My grandfather, who spent most of his time in front of the television, had fallen asleep on the couch.  At around four o’clock that morning he woke and decided to get into bed.  Nana had been too still, looked too pale, and when my grandfather tried to wake her, she was gone.

I hated the world at that moment.  I hated everyone and everything.  I wanted to scream bloody murder and smash everything in sight.  I wanted to curse God for taking someone I loved away from me when I was already fragile to begin with, and maybe it didn’t make any sense, but I hated Gavin at that moment, too.  He would be the one I would turn to in a moment like this.  Any other time, I would call him right away and let him console me, let him be the strong one while I grieved.  I didn’t want to, though.  On the contrary, he was the last person I wanted to speak to.  I didn’t want him to have an excuse to forget about what he did and put the focus on helping me get through this.  Without so much as a text that day, I left home and drove an hour away to be with my family.