Good Girl Bad (21)

Ever since he’d left, he still couldn’t explain it to himself, let alone anyone else. Why was he so afraid of her anger? She was never physically violent. But something in her demeanor, her lack of control, her ferocity was utterly chilling. Like maybe he did believe she might hurt him? Hurt their children to get back at him? He still couldn’t say with any certainty. All he knew was that he scrambled to do her bidding out of a real and genuine fear about what would follow if he did not. But whenever he tried to tell someone, to try to trace out the craziness of it, it sounded so utterly ludicrous that he felt ashamed.

Later that night, still in shock, still trying to work out how he had found himself in this position, with a wife who seemed to hate him, who seemed hell-bent on destroying him if he stepped out of her carefully prescribed lines, well he’d just seen this post on Facebook, some woman saying how controlling men were, how they should all be shot for the things they did to women, and he’d felt so powerless, so outraged, because his experience was the exact opposite, wasn’t it?

He was not some misogynistic jerk who terrorized his wife.

He was actually a spineless jerk who let himself get terrorized by her.

And he’d hit “message” on her profile and told her he hoped some hero would bend her over a table and fuck her with a kitchen knife, and he didn’t even think about it.

He didn’t know what he hoped to achieve. He wasn’t a violent person and he never, ever thought about hurting people, about causing anyone any pain. And it certainly wasn’t a way of convincing that woman that what she said wasn’t true. It made absolutely no sense, but do you make sense when your brain is clouded with fear, and confusion, and anger? When everything you thought about how a marriage worked was just not holding up against reality, and all the things you’d usually do as an adult to try to reason, negotiate, work through these problems was met with either gaslighting or more emotionally violent rage?

He just wanted somewhere safe to express his anger. And it wasn’t safe at home. And that poor woman, she was just an easy target in that moment, when he didn’t know where to put all his feelings, didn’t know who he could blame. And while he’d never condone it, he’d never try to defend it, he could think it through carefully enough to understand where it came from and know he would never repeat it. But he could see how he got there. As mortifying and awful as the whole thing was…he could understand it.

Lashing out is what powerless people do.

As he sits there though, all he can think about is the fact that he left his kids in that space, and never asked any questions about whether they were okay.

Of course Rebecca had told everyone that that was why they’d separated, made him out to be the violent, awful one. And that goddamn message, it was so much easier to hold up as a “bad thing” than the subtle things that Rebecca did, that he couldn’t properly articulate, that seemed so trite when he tried to explain them.

“Nate?”

Casey watched the emotions flash across Nate’s face and her mind is ticking over with all the questions she needs to ask.

Firstly, for someone who claimed his wife had a temper, why he looked so full of rage and anger himself.

But there was something else in there which makes her senses sit on high alert.

Shame.

She knows that shame can instigate all sorts of bad behavior, and she wonders if Nate is ashamed because he acted badly, or if he acted badly because he is ashamed.

“There’s something else,” Nate says, eager to move away from this topic, to move the spotlight onto other men. Worse men. “I overheard the girls fighting. Gen was telling Tabby that someone was too old for her and it was disgusting. I don’t know who they were talking about.”

Casey sits up very straight. “Have you asked her?”

“What?”

“Genevieve. Have you asked her who the man is?”

For a second Nate looks confused, then embarrassed. His cheeks flush slightly. “Ah, no. I didn’t think to. I mean, we asked if Tabby was seeing anyone. But I didn’t bring up what I’d heard.”

Casey looks at Nate thoughtfully. She thinks that if a father thought his sixteen-year-old daughter was seeing an older man, he’d be asking questions. Nate can’t seriously expect her to believe he just heard that, and let it go? She thinks about this for a moment, then tells him as much.

He does, however, look convincingly chagrined.

“The girls… I thought they wouldn’t tell me. They’re very loyal to each other. I don’t want to…disrupt that. I thought I’d just try to…work it out myself.” Nate’s embarrassment deepens, but he stumbles on, knowing how he sounds: “I thought Tabby might be going to see the guy on Sunday, so I waited outside the house. I know how it sounds. I shouldn’t have done it. And now, Christ.” Nate rubs his forehead.

“And?” Casey is disbelieving. What sort of father behaves this way? She actually can’t even answer that question. If Nate was wanting to control his daughter, he would have sat her down and demanded answers, not let her out of his sight. Was it weakness? It certainly seemed like stupidity. If you had a good relationship, you’d just ask a few questions, right? Try to guide, or at least understand?

“She came home on her bike about 10 p.m. She was coming from the west. She seemed calm. She didn’t see me.” He hesitates. He might as well come clean. Hell, he doesn’t know what to do with this information. He might as well give it to someone who might be able to make sense of it.