Public Secrets

stroke until she calmed again. Other times he would call her a fool, complain that she was disturbing his sleep, and leave her to tremble in the dark.
When he was careless enough to leave the remote by the bedside and the Abbey Road album on the stereo, she was too tired to care.
Dimly, almost dispassionately, she began to realize what he was doing to her. What he was making of her. The whirlwind ten weeks of the tour, and the man she had fallen in love with, were like a fantasy she’d created. There was no portion of him left in the man who kept her a virtual prisoner in the apartment.
She thought of running away. He rarely left her alone for more than a few hours, and was always with her when she went out. But sometimes, when she lay in bed in the middle of the night, she thought of escape. She would call Marianne, or Bev, or her father. They would help her.
Then the shame would take over, blistered by the doubts he’d so deeply embedded in her mind.
He didn’t use the belt on her again until the night of the American Music Awards when he and his group were passed over for record of the year.
She didn’t resist. She didn’t object. As he pounded her with his fists, she crawled inside herself, as she had once crawled under the kitchen sink. And disappeared.

In his rage, he made a drastic error in judgment. He told her why he had married her.
“What the hell good are you?” As she lay on the floor, fighting to hide from the pain, he rushed around the room, smashing whatever came to hand. “Do you think I wanted to get stuck with a spoiled, stupid, sexless bitch?”
He vented his frustration at having to sit, smiling, while someone else mounted the stage and accepted the award, his award, by hurling a Waterford cracker barrel. The exquisite glass shattered, raining down like ice.
“Have you done one thing, one bloody thing to help me? Everything I’ve done for you, making you feel important, making you believe that I wanted you. Putting romance into your dull, prim little life.”
Tired of breaking glass, he swooped down to pull her up by what was left of her dress. “Did you really believe that I didn’t know who you were that first day?” He shook her, but she remained limp, hardly focusing on his face. She was beyond fear now. Beyond hope. She watched his eyes, tawny and dark, narrow into slits. And there was hate in them.
“You were such a fool, Emma, stuttering and blushing. I nearly laughed out loud. Then I married you, for Christ’s sake. And all I expected was that you’d help me move up. But have you once asked your father to push a few buttons for me? No.”
She didn’t answer. Silence was the only weapon she had left.
Disgusted, he dropped her to the floor again. Though her vision was blurred, she watched him pace through the chaos of the room she’d tried to make a home.
“You’d better start thinking. You’d better start to figure out a way to make all this time I’ve spent on you pay off.”
Emma let her eyes close again. She didn’t weep. It was too late for weeping. But she did begin to plan.
Her first real hope of escape came when she heard that Luke had died.
“He was my friend, Drew.”
“He was a fucking queer.” He was trying out chords on the grand piano he had bought with his wife’s money.
“He was a friend,” she repeated, struggling to keep her voice from trembling. “I have to go to the funeral.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere.” He glanced up, smiled at her. “You belong right here with me, not at some fag’s death march.”
She hated him then. It amazed her that she could feel it. It had been so long since she’d felt anything. Strange, that a tragedy would make her finally accept what a waste her marriage was. She would divorce him. She opened her mouth, then saw his long, slim fingers run over the keys. Slim they were, but strong as steel. She’d begged for a divorce once before, and he’d nearly choked her.
It would do no good to make him angry. But she did have a weapon.
“Drew, it’s public knowledge that he was my friend. He was a friend of Johnno’s and Da’s and everyone. If I don’t go, the press is going to start by saying that I ignored him because he died of AIDS. It won’t look good for you, especially now that you’re doing that benefit with Da.”
He pounded on the chords. If the bitch didn’t stop nagging, he was going to have to shut her up. “I don’t give a flying fuck what the press says. I’m not going to a funeral