Anita sat on the couch, her mind and heart in chaos; she sat there thinking of the perfect way to interrogate Jeffery and question him about his nonchalance towards her miscarriage. The ordeal began that morning just a few minutes after she sat down at her home desk to work, she felt enormous pain and decided to go to the hospital. When she stood up the blood streamed down with a current that kept increasing until she was in the hospital. The baby was no more.
She called him on her way to the hospital, but there was no answer. “He is in a meeting; Mondays are quite busy for him,” she thought, then sent him a text message to meet her at the hospital. “What’s this about?” was his reply to her text three hours later. By then, she had received the bad news and was at home with her face buried in a pillow soaked with tears.
Jeffery, the man of her dreams, the only man whom she had ever wanted; Jeffery, the only one who could manifest in her soul feelings of ecstasy that no drug could provide, yet, pull her into the darkest part of reality and give her a share of despair no one should be able to endure. Anita was able to endure it all as long as she could call Jeffery her own.
“Just give him the news and leave him be, don’t say anything, don’t argue with him” she advised herself still uncertain of the perfect way to ask him if he had a conscience. “The doctor said that I need rest, I don’t want to fight” she thought, doing her best to suppress the longing in her soul “All I need to do is to focus on myself, I know my worth, I am worthy” she whispered, finally able to dispel a small portion of her anxiety. As she began to relax, the door opened and it was Jeffery.
Ten years did nothing but make Jeffery look more handsome, the little grey hairs on his head and beard only made him look more appealing and charismatic. Though he was of average height, it was complimented by the impeccable way that he dressed and carried himself. “Honey you are home” Anita was desperate to stay calm “yes, I am, and you are…” the sombre expression on her face stopped him “who died?” he asked with partial sarcasm, it wasn’t the first time he had come home to a sombre looking Anita “our baby” she replied “I had a miscarriage today” “Oh” he managed to say relaxing into the nearest chair. “The doctor said that everything will be fine and that we can start trying again in a few weeks” ignoring the confusion in his eyes, she continued “he said a few weeks but I think we can start in two because I feel my body healing fast” she stated and waited for his response but there was none.
The silence was killing her but she was determined to keep her cool and not reveal how much she wanted him to hold her and say “I am sorry” but deep down, she knew. She knew that he was never happy about the baby, he was not happy the first five times that she got pregnant, and if he was not happy the fifth time, he was never going to feel the joy of procreating with her. In fact, the only reason why he didn’t jump and dance with joy was common human curtsy.
“I am going to take a shower” he stood up “that is all you have to say? Jeffery, I just lost our child and all you have to say is that??” Longing can be masked but add disappointment to it and a blue flame will blossom. Anita turned blue with rage, calling him every despicable name on earth, even the way that she called his name was bitter in his ears; he did his best to get away from her by locking himself in the bathroom but she found a way in and continued “you are not going to escape it this time, you are going to listen to everything I have to say” she pointed her finger at him like a gun and he stood there with a smirk on his face.
“If you have a new way of calling me a bastard, I shall listen but nothing you are saying now is new, please leave, I had a long day” Jeffery had a way of causing immense pain with simple words “you had a long day? And I didn’t? You do this every time it is time to have an honest conversation, you run away from the truth. The only time you can sprint like a tiger is when the truth is at hand, the rest of the time you are a stupid mouse waiting to be fed” her words were not easy to hear either.
“You want to hear the truth? Here it is” Jeffery was calm as always “I will never marry you; I will never marry a manipulative and controlling woman like you” he stopped for a second, this time the smirk was gone and his face was red “You stand before me, displaying your ‘mother in despair’ act to perfection when you and I both know that you don’t care” “I don’t care?!” She couldn’t believe her ears “please, what’s one miscarriage to a woman who has had four abortions”
Her silence was the only possible expression of what his words made her feel, the pain that one feels from continuous blunt force trauma to the head, one becomes unconscious in such an instance in order to keep the pain away but the pain without the injury did not make Anita unconscious. She stood in that bathroom with a ringing in her ear, you could say that the ringing developed as a way to protect her from hearing anymore from Jeffery.
“I did all those abortions because you wanted me to” she said quietly but Jeffery had closed the shower door and was whistling away under the water. “I did it all for you. Everything was because of you, to make you happy” this time the words wouldn’t even come out completely. She could barely move but she did move, she gently put one leg in front of the other until she reached the kitchen.
She climbed a kitchen ladder and opened a small cupboard to retrieve a handgun wrapped in a brown sweater. She admired the gun for a few seconds “I did it all for you Jeffery, I lived my life for you, to make you happy. I gave you my youth.” “What are you doing?” a voice startled the gun out of her hands, it was her friend Mercy.
“What in god’s name is that?” Mercy wasn’t sure what she was looking at until Anita in an attempt to push the gun away pushed it towards her instead “it’s nothing” Anita replied wincing at her failed attempt to hide the gun. Mercy’s eyes widened “What are you planning to do with this?” Anita said nothing but from the look on her face, Mercy understood that her friend’s terrible relationship had finally made her homicidal.
“I got your message this afternoon saying that you had terrible news, so I decided to see you about your message before I leave for London tomorrow, thank goodness your door was open when I got here” they were in the guest room, Mercy paced anxiously while Anita sat on the bed with a blank stare. “Mercy, I hate him, I hate him so much that…” “You want to kill him, yes, I figured that out from the gun” “No, I hate him so much that if I don’t kill him, I will kill myself because I can’t go on living with this amount of hate in my heart… this is too much for anyone to bare”.
Her words were honest and Mercy could sense what her soul had become. This was not the first time that Mercy was supporting Anita through a fight with Jeffery, but this time she was sure that if she left Anita alone with Jeffery for even a few minutes somebody was going to die. She sat beside Anita and declared “You are coming with me” “to where?” Anita asked “you are coming with me to London” Anita laughed until she realized how serious Mercy was “there is no way I am going to leave you here alone with that man. If you don’t come with me, I will cancel my trip and move in with both of you. Perhaps, one day you both have another fight and, in your quest to kill him, you miss and the bullet hits me instead, is that what you want?” Anita was mentally awakened by the urgency in Mercy’s voice “no” she replied “I am glad to hear you say that, now let’s go and pack your things”.
Mercy escorted Anita into her and Jeffery’s bedroom to help her pack her things but she was really a bodyguard. Anita left without saying a word to Jeffery, Jeffery didn’t care enough to ask and Mercy was thankful that she got Anita out of the house without any more incident. They left for London the next morning and twelve hours later they were driving past Big Ben. Mercy was a marketing executive for a cosmetic company, a job that took her all over the world, so her one month trip to London was not unusual but this time it was because she was with her best friend who had confessed to both suicidal and homicidal thoughts. She was bothered, afraid to leave Anita alone “after this month, what next?” Mercy was awake that night thinking, she watched Anita sleep soundly and just before dawn the answer came to her.
“Therapy. You want me to see a therapist?” Anita asked slightly annoyed “no, I don’t want you to see a therapist, I want you to talk with a therapist as a birthday present to me” Mercy’s birthday was in a few weeks “but I have ordered your birthday present” Anita insisted “I don’t want whatever you ordered. This is what I want for my birthday. This is all I want, please, I beg you” after a long silence Anita agreed, not because she believed that she was due help from a mental health doctor but the concern she saw in Anita express touched her. “If I sense any nonsense, I won’t go back again” “fine” Mercy assured her, they shook hands and the deal was sealed.
On her way to her first therapy session, Anita decided that she was going to be protective of her emotions and secrets; she wasn’t going to let anyone in the name of therapy get to know things to use against her. “The moment I hear ‘tell me about your childhood’ I am out of there” she thought. “Ms., we have arrived” the driver interrupted her thoughts. She paid him, drew a long breath, exhaled and exited the car.
It was a small but beautiful family home in Edgeware, something far from Anita’s expectations. She expected an assistant to welcome her in and lead her straight to a waiting room but a beautifully-dressed woman in her sixties welcomed her instead “I am Dr., Sloan Berry James and you are my first client of the day” the woman said with an enthusiastic smile. Anita smiled back whilst resisting an unexplainable urge to hug her, the scent of her perfume took Anita back to her grandmother’s vanity table, where she played dress-up as a little girl. Dr., Sloan led her to one of the most beautiful living rooms that she had ever seen. She wanted to comment on it but she kept it to herself, familiarity was the last thing she wanted between them. “Please have a seat while I prepare for you in the study, would you like something to drink?” Dr., Sloan asked “no, thank you” Anita was happy to sit in that living room and think of all the ways she could have decorated her and Jeffery’s living room. A few minutes later, Dr., Sloan ushered her to the study and the session began.
“So, Ms., Johnson, why are you here?” “To be honest, I am here because my friend wants me to be here” Anita replied “Okay, and why do you think your friend wants you to talk with me?” Dr., Sloan had an aura of peace, the kind that made a person instantly comfortable and at home in her presence “she wants me to talk with you because… because… she caught me in the act of trying to shoot my boyfriend” Anita watched Dr., Sloan carefully for a sign of condemnation but there was none.
“Your boyfriend. How long have you been together?” asked Dr., Sloan “ten wonderful years” her sarcasm was clear. “Tell me about your love story” “you mean how it all began?” Anita wished only to answer without volunteering answers that were not required of her “yes” Dr., Sloan replied, and then came a long moment of silence.
“Please give me a moment, I am thinking of how to start” Anita explained “take your time” Dr., Sloan said patiently. The question about her and Jeffery’s love story took her by surprise, it was something she never expected to be asked; something she had neither been asked nor thought about in years. She sat there for about five minutes pulling out memories long buried, memories of the first time she saw Jeffery Cane.
She was at a restaurant with friends and classmates celebrating their last day of university, as they took their last round of vodka shots for the night, in walked Jeffery and another man; she noticed him but thought nothing of it until they walked to her table and then Jennifer, a classmate introduced the other man as her boyfriend and Jeffery as a friend of her boyfriend. Anita was instantly smitten by Jeffery. He sensed it and sat beside her, they talked the whole night; the party turned into their first date, a 2:00am date. She remembered kissing him every time he glanced at his wrist watch to stop him from leaving; she also remembered him doing so constantly.
Anita used to think that the story of their meeting was a romantic one until that day in Dr., Sloan’s office. “What is a love story? And must it always begin in a romantic way?” Anita asked still unsure of how to begin the story. “There are no rules, love between two people can begin in any way, sometimes love begins with hate even” “I see” Anita said going back into the silence.
After their first date, she didn’t hear from Jeffery for a week; she called him and asked him out. They had a wonderful time together but she didn’t hear from him again after that for another week. Everything between them was great when they were together, their connection was intense but when they were apart, he was suddenly a stranger. At first, Anita believed that it was because they hadn’t made love yet, she arranged for that to happen, though a fantastic experience for Jeffery, it didn’t change much except for his frequent late night surprise visits.
One night, after a passionate session in her living room, she asked him about their status as a couple, he declined to give her an answer and it turned into a serious fight. Their cycle of fighting and making love continued for two years, when she started making subtle threats to take away a few business contacts that she had given him, he succumbed. They have been boyfriend and girlfriend ever since. A tale she once thought romantic had suddenly become a shameful one in her eyes. She could finally see that it was a story but it was not a love story.
“Love is not torture and does not make threats” she spoke mindlessly “what brings that to your mind?” asked Dr., Sloan “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about Jeffery and me, I don’t want to talk about anything” Anita declared. “If silence is what you desire, we can sit here in silence for as long as you wish, okay?” Anita nodded “would you like a glass of water?” “no” Anita replied. Although they sat in silence for the rest of the session, Anita’s mental turmoil was obvious; her mind was filled with words, questions, pictures of memories she wished never to see again.
“There she is” Mercy said with a huge smile as she entered their hotel suite, Anita laid on the bed, the T.V was on but it was muted. “So?” Mercy sat on the bed “so what?” Anita knew what she meant but she was in no mood to talk “your first session with Dr., Sloan, how did it go?” “It was intense” Anita replied, her eyes on the T.V screen as if she was truly watching something “will you go back next week?” that was all Mercy wished to know “yes” she replied “I have some questions”.
She did have questions. She wanted to know if she could salvage things between her and Jeffery, perhaps, they could go to therapy together and rebuild the foundation of their relationship. She wanted to know if they could forgive each other for everything that they had done to each other. It was as if something shifted in her brain and she could finally see how they both behaved in their relationship clearly. He was mostly cruel to her with his actions and she was mostly cruel to him with her words. She cringed at the memory of the time she told him that his selfish behaviour was the reason why his father left him and his mother as a child and also why his step-father abused him; Jeffery left the house that night and didn’t return for three months. Anita decided that Dr., Sloan was going to help her relationship.
“Ms., Johnson, I’m glad that you are here, since in our last two sessions we merely talked for twenty minutes combined; I thought you had lost interest”. Anita was enthusiastic in their second session, she told Dr., Sloan about the miscarriage and Jeffery’s reaction “but it’s not really a big fight for us, we fight like this all the time. I believe that we can fix it and I also believe that you can help us fix it. Will you, help us?” Anita asked politely like a little girl. “You said that you want a child badly, why then do you want to make things work with someone who doesn’t want to have a child with you?” Dr., Sloan asked and her question sent Anita back into the silence for the rest of that hour.
It was their third session and the energy in the study was unusual, it was heavy “I have been meaning to talk with you” Anita spoke slowly holding back approaching tears. “Anything in particular?” asked Dr., Sloan “I am sad” Anita said, finally letting the tears pour down, she cried. For unknown reasons, she felt comfortable enough to cry in the presence of Dr., Sloan. A unique experience. “I am a big fool” she cried still “why do you say that?” Dr., Sloan was careful with her tone “I am the greatest fool on the planet because… because” the tears didn’t stop and she didn’t try to stop them “because, I have been forcing myself down someone who has been trying to get me out of his system for the past ten years”.
This was the most difficult admission that Anita had ever made to herself and now to another “I don’t know what happened in my brain, especially after our last session. I feel as if I am just waking up from a comma” she continued “everything that I thought was, isn’t and my ten-year relationship, what I thought was a relationship” she drew two pieces of tissue paper from the box before her and dabbed her face. “The relationship I thought that I was in does not exist, it was an illusion, it is an illusion. That man never loved me” the tears mellowed. Dr., Sloan allowed for a moment of silence before asking “do you love him?” “of course I do, everything I did in our relationship I did to make him happy” Anita answered in a manner that revealed how ridiculous she believed the question to be. “What are the things that you admire most about him?” asked Dr., Sloan, Anita thought hard but could not provide an answer.
“Must I admire him to love him?” she asked, defending her previous answer “What are the things you love most about his character?” Thinking hard for the answer to this question made Anita realize further how much she despised Jeffery. “Most men know what they hate, few what they love” “a quote by Charles Caleb Colton” said Dr., Sloan, they both understood why she said it.
“Aside his looks, he possesses all the qualities that I hate in a person” Anita stated and began to cry again “why did I so easily attach myself to someone like that for so many years? I was afraid of leaving him, leaving him was going to kill me” the tears flowed and so did her words “Everything that man did in our relationship, the lying, the cheating, and downright wickedness was a way to tell me that he wanted out.”
She stopped to think and continued “to tell you the truth, I never loved him because there is nothing, absolutely nothing about him that I genuinely admire… nothing, except the fact that he is good-looking” she laughed “yes, I’ve been in a relationship with someone for ten years and I don’t even like him as a person. I always told my friends that I liked his business acumen and how successful it made him but that is a fat lie; Jeffery is where he is today because of me, because of the people I shoved down his throat, he knows it and I think that he hates me for it. He hates the fact that he cannot tell the story of his success without mentioning my name.” She stopped to wipe her tears “here I am, lying to you that I love him when I would have killed him if my friend didn’t come in unannounced. I hate him, I hate him Dr., Sloan and this hateful feeling has been accumulating for the past three years at least. I couldn’t admit it to myself because admitting it would mean the end of our relationship and I didn’t want to end it, I couldn’t even think of ending it” she finally stopped. “Why didn’t you want to end it?” Though she asked, Dr., Sloan already knew the answer. Anita sighed deeply “I can’t stand being alone”.
Anita threw Mercy a beautiful small birthday dinner party attended mostly by Mercy’s work colleagues. “I had a wonderful time” Mercy said, the party was over and they were sitting in the balcony watching the city quiet down beneath them “me too” Anita responded, thankful for the opportunity to do something nice for her friend. “I broke up with Jeffery yesterday” she announced softly, something she had been dying to do all night “really?!” it was impossible for Mercy to hide her joy but she didn’t make light of the event.
“I decided that it is better to be single and free than to be single and in jail” it was supposed to be a joke but neither of them laughed “are you alright?” Mercy asked “I will be” Anita answered “I will do everything I must to be fine” it was a promise that she had made to herself. “News number two” Anita continued “there’s more?” Mercy’s smile widened “yes there is” Anita replied “I am not going back home with you this weekend, I want to stay in London for a little while” Mercy’s smile dimmed “I want to get to know myself better and this place is making it easy” Anita explained “whatever you think is best for you, I support you” Mercy responded with a proud smile “I will miss you” “I will miss you too” Anita replied, she felt sad but she was sure of her decision. “Mercy” she called softly “yes?” “thank you” Anita’s gratitude was eternal “you are welcome” Mercy replied with a smile.
They sat in the balcony, their minds going through the past month and how tragic it would have been “I can’t believe that instead of breaking up with him, I decided to kill him” “I can’t believe that I was there to stop you” they looked at each other and laughed. Though a serious matter, their laughter was deep in their lungs, it was the kind of laughter that a soldier in battle laughed after evading a death he believed sure.
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