Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online

and took the children, not me, saying he needed some time with them alone to make up for all the weeknights he was out. I hated football anyway, so at first I didn’t mind. But over time, they returned from Birmingham or wherever the Clemson team played and communicated with references and inside jokes that didn’t include me. Sami covered her walls in Clemson sports memorabilia—pennants, programs, posters—and she announced that her life’s ambition was to be a Clemson cheerleader. Evan was going to be a quarterback.
    I became the target of constant criticism. My small flaws became large issues. The issues became irreconcilable . The air turned rancid and its stench blew and hissed in my direction on the breath of Nat and the children.
    Like any mother, I urged Samantha and Evan to do their homework, pick up their clothes and put them in the hamper, put their glasses in the dishwasher and turn out lights when they left a room. Nat used to say, Do as your mother says. Somewhere along the line he began to ask me why I nagged them so much. Eventually he said these things knowing the children heard him. Wipe up the counter, Sami became You’d better wipe up the counter, Sami, or SHE will go completely crazy.
    The children started calling me a nag, and Nat would say nothing. Later I watched his lips curl into a smile as they hurled words and insults at me I never would have spoken to anyone.
    They say that domestic abuse starts with sarcasm, then yelling. Next the shoving begins and then one day it’s a slap, then a punch. Women are murdered all the time because rage goes out of control. Nat raged over nothing. He began to say things like, This is my house and I can act any way I want. I would reply, There’s no place in a civilized world where you or I can act any way we want. His grumbling increased in exponential leaps with each rebuttal. Soon we were barely speaking. Then the pivotal event occurred.
    One day this past spring I put together a barbecue for the kids and their friends. School was almost out for the year. I was grilling what seemed like hundreds of hamburgers, slipping them in buns and arranging them on trays. The yard was crawling with youth, calling out to each other as they jumped in and crawled out of the pool. Sami was wearing a bathing suit that I thought was too skimpy. I just didn’t think that a fifteen-year-old girl needed to wear an underwire padded bra top with a teensy bottom that barely stayed tied on the sides.
    Every time I would ask her to tighten her bottom, Nat would snicker at me. It was very hot and humid and the heat from the grill made the outdoor cooking almost unbearable. I became fed up with him and his snickering and lost my temper.
    “What’s so funny?” I said.
    “You. You’re funny. Don’t you realize she doesn’t give a shit what you think?” He moved his face very close to mine and said in a low voice, “No one does, Becca. No one.”
    “Know what, Nat?” I whispered back to him. “ You’re a shit.”
    I could see that little vein in his forehead start to twitch, the one that twitched when he got angry. I didn’t think he would do anything crazy because we were surrounded by teenagers. I was wrong. He picked up a hamburger, still hot from the grill, and pressed it into my face with a shove.
    “Nat!”
    “You repulse me,” he said and walked away.
    You repulse me.
    Those words would bang around the inside of my head forever.
    From that moment on, we were finished. Our intimate life ceased to exist. But I wouldn’t give up. I begged Nat to make love to me, and when he gave in, he treated me like a whore. I had hoped that kind of closeness would bring some apology or some words of regret from him. But he never said a thing. When I finally said, Why? he looked at me with a blank face and said, You’re pathetic. The sadistic pleasure he took in insulting me in the most vulnerable moment was stark and plain. Still, I didn’t understand why it was all