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“What?” I asked with exasperation.
“Does he talk to you like that all the time?” She asked softly.
“Like Byron doesn’t talk to you that way?” I sounded defensive.
“No Gabby, he doesn’t. He uses his fists to get his meaning across. The words I think hurt just as bad if not worse,” my sister said with total honesty surprising me to my core.
Tears again. I sniffed. I won’t cry, I told myself.
“Why do you stay?” I asked sitting on the raspberry colored, overstuffed, velour love seat across from my sister who was sitting on the matching sofa. She had gained even more weight, which gave me pause to worry about her health both physical and mental.
She chuckled deep in her throat. Then tiredly, she replied, “I don’t know. Why do you? You
can come home.”
“You can too,” I told her.
“I know.”
We talked my sister and me. We had never been good at talking with each other. We usually spent the time we had together trying to outtalk the other one but tonight was different. Tonight, Michaela and I listened to each other. Tonight, we bonded because we had something in common. We were both abused wives. She was physically abused and I was emotionally abused. Why? We had parents who were solid in their love for each other and us. They had given us a strong sense of ourselves including a positive self-image. Why had we accepted this as a normal part of our lives?
At midnight Michaela was yawning. We didn’t have the answer to the question that nagged us. She walked to the front door sleepily. We had watched some of The Tonight Show together after talking ourselves out. It felt like old times except now Micki would go home to her husband and children and I would go upstairs to the bedroom that had once belonged to me a lifetime ago.
“Goodnight,” I told my sister at the front door. “You know you can sleep here tonight.”
“I don’t want to leave the kids. I love you Gabby.”
“I love you Micki.”
We hugged. She was my sister after all. It felt odd to me walking her to the door sending her home. We weren’t children anymore. We were adults with adult problems and decisions to make. She hugged me tighter in her arms. The roles had changed. Once I was the overweight unhappy one and she was the popular cheerleader. We were both unhappy but my body didn’t take the brunt of my unhappiness anymore. If anything I was too thin while Michaela ate her troubles by the pound.
Shutting the door behind my sister I switched the deadbolt to the locked position. Flipping off the outside light when I was sure that Michaela was safely out of the drive.
Leaning against the door, Kerry McCoy was on my mind. I went to the den where the phone rested on its cradle. I picked up the receiver. Could I do this? I dialed Esther’s number. My heart beat furiously against my ribcage. My blood felt like it was burning. One ring. Two rings. Three and a sleepy voice, deep and sexy answered. Kerry McCoy.
“Hello.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Hello,” he repeated.
“Kerry.”
“Gabby, everything okay?” He asked sounding more awake.
What did I say now?
“I need you.” The words tumbled from my lips.
“I will be over in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” I said hanging up the receiver in its cradle.
There were no goodbyes. He was on his way to me. For what neither of us knew. Neither cared. I grabbed a quilt off the back of the sofa in the den and went to the porch to wait for him. I walked across the wide expanse of the old Victorian’s wrap around porch and sat on the swing my Pop had built wrapping myself in the quilt I had snatched from the house.
Tilting my head back against the back of the swing I could see the star lit night as I swung back into the night air on the old swing. Millions of tiny twinkling lights blinked at me as my feet pushed me back and forth into the open air under the cover of the porch. The evening was clear. The sky the blackest I had seen. No moon only twinkling little stars. I was lost in their light and didn’t hear Kerry’s footsteps on the porch.
His hands touched my knees stopping the swing. I jumped in fright.
