Is this love, p.18
Is This Love?, page 18
I could see how easily you’d twisted little things into big, ugly events. Yes, I’d slammed the door of our bedroom during one of our rows. And yes, a picture had fallen to the floor. But not because of me. You missed out the bit where you’d followed up my slam with an almighty, full-body swinging of the door that rocked the walls of the room, and brought the picture that Corinne, my most recent ex, had made for me smashing down onto the floor. If I hadn’t been so upset by that, I would probably have laughed. It had been almost comedic, the way you’d thrown yourself with everything you had into making the door crash shut. It wasn’t funny now, though. Not now that you’d plugged that gap in your telling of this story with a big fat lie: that I’d punched the wall, and threatened to punch you.
It was mind-blowing, every time I read it. I started to pick out the lines that were real sucker punches, holding them up to the light, congratulating you on your art. Yep, that was a really good one. I had to hand it to you. I considered, for a long time, what you’d said. What it would have looked like, how it would have been for you to feel so threatened. I played it over and over in my head. Where I would have stood. What your face would have looked like. And as I did so, a different image swam to the surface, slowly crystallising behind my eyes, puzzling at first before, eventually, hardening into a picture in my mind’s eye that stopped me still.
I don’t know why I hadn’t remembered it until then. And even when I did, it still seemed unworthy of mention, in spite of everything that was going on. That you had hit me once, full in the face. That there had been punches thrown, yes. But not by me.
Does it count if you’re not frightened when you’re struck? If you experience someone’s fist in your face with disbelief rather than fear? Does that constitute violence? Does it count if you sympathise with the person hitting you, knowing your own capacity for a rigidity that drives them crazy? Does it matter that you’ve driven someone to the limits of their patience? If you don’t blame them, not one bit, when they finally lash out?
And is it violence, really, if you’re bigger and stronger than the person hitting you? If it genuinely doesn’t hurt? If you experience it only as surprising, and embarrassing, and sad? Does it count if you don’t really count it at all?
There was only one person that ever raised their fists to the other during our marriage. It wasn’t me. I remembered this not suddenly, but with a slow, dawning consciousness that crept across me, like long shadows at the end of a summer’s day, chilling the ground. It hadn’t been me. It hadn’t, ever, been me.
I sat still for a long time, replaying that fight. Your habit of coming at me, talking over me, grabbing at every single thing I’d ever done wrong and hurling it at me, all at once, in a deluge of accusations that left me unable to come up for air. It felt like grasping at smoke, trying to grab hold of the point I’d been trying to make before it was blown away by your approach. I’d never come out of a single argument with you feeling like I’d made myself clear. I’d never had an apology, even when it seemed so obvious to me that you’d been in the wrong. It was always me that ended up saying sorry, somehow. It was all so fucked up. How had it carried on like that for so long?
I had tried to explain, once, how unmanageable our fights were. I’d been drinking with Nancy, and I’d let slip that I’d slept in the spare room, again. And then I told her about you throwing a knife at me that Christmas, carefully keeping a smile on my face as I recounted the scene. Checking her reaction, clocking her disbelief. She’d been shocked that we’d even gone to bed on an argument, so I didn’t reveal how often that had started to happen. I was ashamed. I was ashamed, too, that I couldn’t fix the problem of our failed communication. Me, of all people, who prided myself on my articulacy. On crafting a good argument. It all fell apart in the face of your un-boundaried attacks.
And then I remembered something else. I had jokingly disclosed the details of that night you’d hit me to another friend. A friend who worked in a counselling service. A friend who didn’t think it was at all funny. Which meant that although I had been glib about what had happened – I don’t even remember how it came up now – I had had to recant, to say it was nothing, to fluff the ending. I remembered the look on his face. How I’d stopped laughing, and said solemnly that it hadn’t been right, it wasn’t like that, it was just a silly fight that went wrong. And then I remembered that he’d emailed me the following week, a message that had made me cringe. How I could come to him at any time if I needed to talk. How it was good to seek support. How he was worried about my safety. It was humiliating. I’d mentioned it to you at the time, an awkward confession of what had transpired. You’d met it with silence. I’d left well enough alone.
I had the email. I must still have the email. I returned to my in-box, scouring again to find this crucial piece of evidence. What if it wasn’t there? Had I deleted it to avoid this reminder of such a shameful part of our story? I found it, eventually, and felt a brief but still delicious moment of triumph. It didn’t disprove what you’d said about me, but it surely cast doubt on your honesty, if nothing else. That was enough for now. I let out just a tiny sigh of relief.
It was a bleak forty-eight hours. I took the occasional rest to sleep, fitfully, or to head out to the shop for packet sandwiches and junk food. I had to hand the house back over to you by Monday morning, and I needed to finish this epic rewrite of our lives by the time I let you back in here. I couldn’t make it through the week at work without having it set down in words. I needed it set out for my own sanity too, I realised. The more I reread the court order, the less certain I was of my own version of events. I had to get my side down on paper, in black and white, before I lost sight of it completely.
The stories of physical violence were the hardest to face up to. They were both so detailed and sufficiently vague as to make me question, over and over, if they had actually happened. You said that I would block you from leaving a room, which was true, only not in the way you said it. I would stand between you and the door, pleading. But I would never physically move or restrain you. Would I? If I couldn’t remember ever doing this, what would cause you to make it up?
Every time I got to this point – the point where I’d sit, puzzled, certain that some memory would surface to explain the confusion – I would remember, with a jolt, that it was a lie. You’d simply made it up. I hadn’t pinned you down, or threatened to punch you, or held you hostage. It was almost worse, this realisation, than if your accusation had been true and I had simply forgotten it. I didn’t want to believe that you were capable of such malice. How could I have fallen in love with someone so dishonest, so calculating and callous? But page by page, line by line, the court order you’d had served on me tore apart the you I had known. I really didn’t like the person left in her place.
There was one story I kept coming back to. It gnawed away at me. I read it over and over, feeling sick and frightened and furiously affronted. Not able, at first, to even set down my refutation of it. Again, some of the details were true and it was this – the inclusion of some part of what I knew was real – that undid me. It was true we had had a terrible argument that night in December. We had scuffled, on the sofa, just like you said. But it was you that had pushed me backwards, shoving me hard to emphasise a point you were making. I had raised my hands, palms towards you, to stop you from doing it again. You had come at me anyway, and my hands had stayed where they were, meeting the top of your chest and blocking you from getting nearer to me. I can remember the moment clearly. I was absolutely still, while you pushed your body against my still-upheld palms. I never moved. You had your eyes on mine the whole time. It was dirty, rotten and sordid. But it wasn’t what you had said it was. Nothing like it.
Whichever way you played this scene, it was grubby. In your version, I’d raised my hands to grip around your neck, and squeezed, until you were afraid you’d die.
Pretty grim, even by your standards.
In mine, I’d kept perfectly still until you’d pushed me further away, and I went upstairs to bed, alone. In despair. And just a little more depleted, a little less wholly me, than the day before.
The more I played this scene – over and over in my head – the more I could picture your version of events. I saw myself raise my hand to your neck, saw your body lift slightly upwards as I tightened my grip around you, locking my elbow out as my arm straightened in front of me. I saw the look of panic cross over your face, felt a surge of pleasure as you choked just a little, a sound catching in your throat as you made the effort to breathe. I knew I was being mad, and of course I was horrified by my imagining, but a part of me – a silent, private, beaten part of me – also delighted in it.
In time, this image became almost as vivid as my memory of what had really happened. I guessed this must be what had happened with you, too. That you’d thought it at first, then imagined it over and over, and then made it real by writing it down. By telling it to someone else. What a pity, for me, that you’d told it to a lawyer. And that the lawyer had told it to a judge. And that the judge had believed you.
I think it actually helped, that you’d told a lie that big and foul. It drove me. I returned again and again to the judge’s order that weekend, writing and rewriting my account of what had really transpired. Whenever I wavered, and thought of you, and wanted – still – to call you, to attempt a conversation, I conjured up the image of you dangling underneath my grip, and I could continue.
Thank you for that.
And by returning to your chronology of the abuse you accused me of, I began to also see how dishonest and manipulative you were. Through and through. I marvelled at how I’d missed it for all those years. Whenever I’d felt unease at something you’d done, I’d always made it make sense so that my image of you wasn’t altered. I was stupidly in love. Very stupidly.
Now, I was able to recall where some of the lies had sprung from. You said that I’d pushed you up against a wall and threatened you, and as I reread this over that awful weekend, I recalled you’d told this lie before. It came back to me clearly. We’d been out walking somewhere, and we were disagreeing about something we’d been discussing, and I’d spun you round, playfully, by the waist and lost my balance a bit. I stumbled into you and then immediately righted myself. But you’d said I was hurting you, that I’d shoved you against a fence on purpose. That I couldn’t win an argument by lashing out. I’d been so shocked that you’d said it like that, I hadn’t even protested. It was such a weird interpretation of reality, I’d thought you must be joking, but I said sorry anyway and filed it away somewhere inaccessible, in that part of my brain where the bits of you that didn’t make sense stayed safely away from everything else. Not troubling the delicate equilibrium I’d constructed so that we worked.
I remember you long ago at a party, whispering behind the backs of two couples who’d been the best of friends for years. Not just friends, you’d hissed to one of our most gossipy acquaintances: two of them have been sleeping together behind the other two’s backs. Didn’t you know?
You’d been so convincing, and anyway had known them all for so much longer than me, that I never questioned that you were telling the truth. I even found it a little bit funny, this sordid insight into their secret goings-on. But the gossip had got out, of course it had, and the subject of your lie had been so hurt that she had taken aside our loose-lipped friend in tears the next time we’d partied together. She couldn’t understand why such a lie had been spread. I was shocked. I asked you why you’d said that of them. And you told me you hadn’t, you’d only heard it yourself that night; you were as confused as I was.
I knew that didn’t make sense, but I felt muddled. I hated to think that you’d make something like that up, so I buried the memory. And now here it was, resurrected. A macabre visitor, come back to haunt me. Evidence of your capacity to tell stories with unhappy endings.
I think you felt an odd power in delivering these versions of other people’s lives. I think you enjoyed diminishing them through your slanted portrayals. I think all this now, but I understand none of it.
The court order said I’d lashed out at you over a burned dinner, when in fact you’d come in late, hurled a pile of accusations my way, and then manufactured a reason to storm upstairs and get into bed without an explanation or excuse. I’d pursued you upstairs, yes. And perhaps my fists were closed as I stood limply in the door of our bedroom, looking in at you through tears of frustration.
Because I’d spent all day prepping and cooking that dinner – a wedding anniversary celebration – and you’d simply not turned up. No call, no text, no contact. And then when you’d finally arrived home and seen what state I was in, you’d somehow managed to contrive things so I was the unreasonable one. So when you’d marched upstairs and got into bed, I’d pulled the duvet away from you, in order that I could see your face. I didn’t swing a punch at the wall or at you. I swung some high-quality John Lewis duck down off our bed, and then walked out of the room. I had just wanted to talk to you. It was always me, trying to talk to you. It was always you, refusing.
I had overlooked, for a long time, how isolated I had become inside the couple that was us. I didn’t disclose any of the chaos. I didn’t even think that it was chaotic, after a while. I just got used to feeling alone in your company.
Last May, we went to a big birthday bash at a place on the Kent coast. It was the worst possible time for me, I was so snowed under with work. I had a huge deadline to meet the day that we drove down there, and the day after the party I was due at another event in Spain, which I hadn’t even begun to prep for. I’d scheduled in the time I’d have on the flight to write the outline of what I was going to say. I was pretty full up. I was panicking.
I just wanted you to help me, a little. Instead, you were an arsehole. You knew how much work I’d had on, and how little time I’d had to think about the party. I had to make a speech, and sort out some of the live music, and I’d stupidly volunteered to sort out decorating the venue too. I felt totally overwhelmed, which I knew was stupid – it was only a party. But the bookending of the weekend with so much work meant I was feeling beyond stressed. I needed a hug, and some calming words. I needed you.
You’d started being a bit weird in the car, which I’d half-expected. You got edgy on weekends like this, feeling outside of an inner circle that I didn’t even notice was there. I hadn’t been too worried at first – I was used to it – so when we got to the pub on the beach I’d started to unwind, enjoying the soothing balm of a first cold beer. I was excited about the party, and I was glad to be with friends I hadn’t seen for a while. I always loved the build-up to a big night. I loved it that we all made such an effort to have a good time.
As I stood up to leave the pub, I saw you weren’t going to come with me. I knew then that you were going to make it a difficult night. You plastered on that fake ‘you don’t mind’ smile, making it impossible for me to say that I did. I really did. I was desperate to get back to our apartment and have some down time, with you, before I had to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening doing the set-up and helping things go smoothly.
I knew you’d make me feel needy if I said I wanted you to come. And you did. But you also got up, eventually, making it abundantly clear to me and everyone else that you’d rather stay where you were. I bit my tongue, keeping the peace, glad that you were coming anyway. I thought it would be OK once we got back to the rental. I thought you could help me write my speech for the birthday boy. I thought we could have some time alone. I even thought we might have sex. I really was a fucking idiot.
Instead, we got back, had a massive row, and I wrote the speech on my own, listening to you getting pissed in the garden below. Then I heard you leave the rental. Then I sat alone, bewildered, hurt and silent. Familiar feelings, all of them. After that, I went to the party venue and got on with my tasks. I noticed a missed call from you, and felt a surge of relief that you were reaching out. But you didn’t answer when I called back. It was yet another night where I’d have to act the role of your partner. Not actually be it.
And then later on, when you saw me starting to relax, you told me you wanted me to skip the after-party and head back with you. I’d hardly got going. I’d spent most of the party in organising mode, and just at the point when I’d started to have a good time, you wanted me to call it a night. It was so typically you. And I was so typically me, refusing to come to heel and staying out all night instead, judging it best to sleep on a friend’s floor than come in at a stupid hour and wake you. What were we doing? Wasn’t it so clear that we just didn’t fit together? Why did it have to come to this?
Control. That’s what it was all about, in the end. Your model for a marriage, learned from your dad, was of one person controlling the other. You were smart enough not to adopt the role of submissive wife – although you were playing a blinder in pretending – but not clever enough to perceive that you’d inherited these destructive patterns of behaviour from your parents. That’s what I began to conclude, anyway, as I wrote my painful rebuttal to your claims of abuse. If only you’d been to therapy, baby, instead of foisting couples counselling onto both of us. You can’t fix a crumbling house if the bricks you try to rebuild it with are shot through.
You’d reverted to type, then, when things started going wrong. Take control, ignore the pain you inflict, look after number one. Since you couldn’t control me after all, you took over the narrative of our lives, rewriting it so you came out of our marriage with enough money, enough sympathy, enough of a reason to leave in the way you did. I figured all this out as I untangled the stories you’d told, noting how you must have roped your sister in since she featured so many times in the telling of this alternative reality. Unless… was it really possible that you’d duped her along with everyone else?
I wrote down what had happened that day I’d dropped a Christmas present at her door – which you’d slammed in my face. It was true that you’d then come outside. You must have thought I’d left, but I was standing against a tree at the end of your sister’s path, willing my traitorous legs to solidify, to carry me away. They’d given way with the sight of you.
