She felt like a failure as a mother and a wife, not realizing that there were other women around her suffering from the same affliction. They wouldn't talk about it for the same reasons that Marie did not. They were all too afraid of being judged.
Those first few weeks were hell but Marie pulled through and gained confidence as a mother. She felt she was a good mother, though her husband would tell her otherwise on many occasions.
She did her best to cook and clean despite the fact that she hated every second of it. She went to every PTA meeting and every hockey practice. She decorated
the house for every holiday and gave out plenty of hugs and kisses.
It wasn’t an act. Marie loved her son. She loved him more than anything on the planet and she was thankful for his happy face every day. He looked so much like his father. He had his golden eyes and Marie’s thick blonde hair. His nose turned up when he smiled and Marie took all the credit for that one. He was a beautiful boy and she adored him to no end.
Her husband, on the other hand, was a completely different story. She’d hoped for a fairy tale life but it didn’t seem like she was meant to live happily ever after. Her relationship with Robert fell apart soon after Richard was born.
The man was never around. He preferred the company of his coworkers at the bar to that of his wife and his son. No one batted an eye at it either. This was normal. There were few women in this small town who were in happy marriages. Everyone said they were happy but Marie knew it was a lie. She saw the same sad look in every woman’s eye that she had in her own. No one was happy, but you couldn’t admit it.
Divorce rates would have been through the roof if divorce had been acceptable. There were no legalities that kept women from divorcing their husbands, but sometimes social pressure held more power than law.
Like every other woman in town, Marie played with roll of the happy wife. She smiled at the other women in the grocery store and made small talk with them. She laughed at bad jokes and cleaned up after her drunken husband stumbled in from a long night at the bar.
Drinking wasn’t an uncommon hobby in these parts but Robert’s drinking habits got out of control, even by the lax standards of this small Tennessee town. He was soon known as the town drunk and their family was cast out from the social circles.
Richard went through high school without any friends, and the few women that Marie enjoyed talking to abandoned her. She was more alone than ever and so was her husband. Robert hadn’t ever been held accountable for his actions, so when he lost his job, his friends and the respect of everyone in the town, he took his anger out on his wife.
Robert would come home from his minimum wage job, raging and drunk from spending too much time at the bar again. Marie sent Richard to his room so that he wouldn’t bear the brunt of his father’s abuses. She was happy to take it for the both of them.
For a long time, it was just verbal. He’d scream at Marie while she cooked and even threw something occasionally, though it was never at her. He would break plates but he didn’t hit her for a long time, and the first slap was the last.
He came home in a particularly foul mood one day and started screaming at his now eighteen-year-old son. Richard had just graduated and was trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life. Robert had him cornered and was screaming at him about how he was wasting his life and Marie wasn’t about to let it continue.
She stepped in between them and before she could get a word out, she was slapped across the face. Her head snapped to the side and she could taste blood in her mouth. After a moment she wiped her lips and spit the blood onto the floor, rage boiling inside her.
Marie would never forget that feeling as long as she lived. It was soul crushing sadness mixed with an anger that made her want to wring his fat neck. The taste of blood made her all the angrier. Her breath was coming at a quickened pace and when she turned her head, he was already apologizing, eyes wide.
Apologies weren’t enough.
Richard had already run up the stairs and Marie told her husband that if he touched her again she would break his arms. Those were the last words she said to her husband that weren’t said through a lawyer or in a courtroom. She’d filed for divorce the very next day.
Chapter Three
While she was waiting for the divorce to go through, Marie had kicked her husband out of the house, forcing him to stay with his parents. He complied, hoping that this was a storm that would pass. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
As soon as the divorce was final, she packed up her things in a U-Haul and moved about four hours west to Nashville. She and Richard found a cozy little house in the suburbs that was being rented out and began their new life.
That had been two years ago.
Marie thought that leaving her drunken husband behind and getting out of that oppressive little town would solve all of her problems. She’d been severely mistaken. Moving to Nashville had been an easy choice but the life she was making there was far from perfect.
It was a struggle to keep her head above water and Richard didn’t make it any easier. Without any type of education beyond her high school diploma, it had been hard to find a decent job. She’d eventually started working at a local animal boarding facility. It was a large place with huge fields and a caring staff. She loved working there but wished it had paid a little more.
She’d started out as a handler but now worked as a manager over animal care. Her knowledge of how to train animals and her success rate made her an ideal employee. Marie liked her job at The Pet Palace but she wanted more.
Marie had begun taking classes at night in order to earn her Associate's Degree but it was slow moving and at thirty-nine, she thought being a vet might be too lofty a goal. She couldn’t give up without at least trying, though.
Richard wasn’t any help at all, either. He had inherited his father’s addictive personality but had chosen a much more damaging addiction. She never thought her bouncing baby boy would turn to drugs, but what parent did?
Heroine was Richard’s poison and when she found out, she’d kicked him out of the house until he got clean. He’d agreed to go to rehab and she’d helped fund the endeavor. His first stay lasted a whole forty-eight hours, and the last two times he’d managed to stay a collective month. Not near long enough to kick the habit.
With the threat of being homeless looming over his head, he’d returned to his mother and begged for her to let him back in. She was hesitant but couldn’t stand to see her son out in the cold. Now he was a bum living in her basement. He came out to get food and ask for money but that was all she saw of him. He spent most of his time in his room with one of his many girlfriends.
Her son's active sex life didn’t escape her notice. The thought of the type of girls he brought home disgusted her, but she’d given up on fighting him about it. He was going to do whatever he wanted and there was nothing she could do to stop him.