What We Lose(11)

A few hours later, Peter returns home. He sets the table and pours us wine. He eats each bite through a satisfied smile, and I realize that, even if the chicken had been charred, or half-raw, I would never have known the difference from his face. To my taste, it is seasoned well but a little on the dry side.

We spend the next three days in bed except when we are carousing around the city, hand in hand, feeling like everything is brand-new and already ours.

On the plane ride home, I look at my calendar, making plans for my next visit. When I get home, I make the announcement. I call Aminah and my father. It’s official, real this time: I am in love.



A morning of Internet browsing leads me down a rabbit hole of research on serial killers’ wives. For every infamous man there are handfuls of women who become attached to him—who become infatuated, entangled, to small and more serious degrees. What strikes me—what is discomfiting, and what makes me return to these women long after this day—is the truly common nature of their relationships with these men. How close each of them was to death, or to the discovery of what her husband had done.

And then there are the strangest cases, of women who seek out men already accused, sometimes convicted, of crimes.

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Women who have married serial killers have given several different reasons. Some believe they can change a man as cruel and powerful as a serial killer. Others “see” the little boy who the killer once was and seek to nurture him. A few hope to share in the media spotlight or get a book or movie deal.

Then there’s the notion of the “perfect boyfriend.” A woman knows where he is at all times and knows he’s thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There’s no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time.

These wives often make significant sacrifices, sometimes sitting for hours every week to await the brief face-to-face visit in prison. They might give up jobs or families to be near their soul mate, and they will certainly be spending money on him—perhaps all they have.

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How common are their reasons for entering these relationships. How many times have I hungered for loyalty, for the feeling of being needed. From time to time, I wish that I could be the cause for someone to genuinely change.





I search eagerly for their photos and when I find them, I am struck by how normal and happy they look. How easily they could be someone I know. I search every inch of the pictures for hints of the horror that lurked inside their husbands, but there is nothing. There is never a hint, is there?



Death and pleasure we experience asymptotically. We spend much time working upward on the slope, and most people only sometimes approach the lines of pure pleasure or death, close enough to touch. Maybe once or twice in a lifetime, for each.

With Peter, at least some part of me is attempting to parse these experiences, to separate the liminal from the mundane, from my baseline. I need an anchor so that I’m not living so close to death anymore. I need to believe in life again.



Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.





I don’t sleep for two nights. Instead I am wide awake and tossing. Each day I feel less like the person I was the day before, my body hurtling so fast in one direction that my mind cannot keep pace. I can scarcely remember who I was before my body became like this.

I dream in bright, swirling colors. The dreams are so vivid that they linger with me long after I’ve woken up. I feel the same feelings that grip me at night while I’m at my desk, or on the subway. I will freeze, lost in them—scared, worried, or comforted in the same way—for hours.



I dream that I am married to my high school boyfriend, Jerome. We’re living in one of the small government tract houses that are on the other, poorer side of town. Jerome is his old self: carefree, arrogant, handsome as all hell. He doesn’t have a job, but goes out in the morning and doesn’t come home until late at night. I question him and find out that he is sleeping with one of the popular girls from our high school, who is living in a mansion on the nicer side of town. She is married to Leonardo DiCaprio (which explains the mansion), but is as unhappy as we are. For most of the dream, I am lonely, and when I find out about the affair, I am livid. I throw a vase at Jerome’s head and it breaks a hole in our living room wall. Jerome is terrified that I will kill him.





A few days later, in another dream, my mother and father are still living in my childhood home, and I am on the opposite side of town with Peter. We are happy. In this one, I am living with Peter in the same house from my dream with Jerome. My mother shows up to visit, and I am so excited to tell her about my new life. She takes me into a small bedroom at the back of the house, and I expect she will tell me how much she likes Peter and how happy she is for me. Instead, every time I try to speak to her, her image fades like she is appearing on a broken TV screen. Eventually, she fades away completely, and I’m left with nothing but the feeling of losing her all over again.



I dream that a hole opens up in the middle of the street and it swallows my father. He is just walking down the street one day, and then he is gone. I wake up crying, and there is no one for me to cry to. I spend the next few hours huddled in bed, and as soon as day breaks, I call my father.