She could barely hear the dishes shatter on the suntan gold linoleum as her ears were ringing from the stinging smack across her mouth. She blinked back tears, her tongue probing the broken flesh that had scraped against her teeth. Her vision cleared for a brief moment before her tears once more blurred the man before her, her husband. He was shouting at her, but oddly enough she heard none of it as she winced. He had caught her completely off guard, she knew he had found out.
“You lying bitch!” she watched his mouth move, his face was reddening even more so. His lips quivered as his eyes became bloodshot. She watched him lose control, but said nothing. She didn’t even cry.
“What?” the room began spinning and she hardly felt her body collide with the floor, her head rebounding once before settling.
“Honey?” she heard him this time, he sounded worried. She winced at the pounding in her head, but found her senses returning rather suddenly.
“You hit me?” the interrogative made him stutter, his jaw slacked as he tried to come up with something to say. She choked forth tears and started to cry, on the edge of hysteria. He’d never hit her before. It was the first time she ever saw him pay attention to her other than as an accessory for evening dinners and fucking when he was in the mood.
“Are you…”
“I hate you!” she spat the words from her mouth vehemently. She saw him flinch at the verbal assault, it was the first time she ever raised her voice to him. She felt as if she finally had the courage to say what she had held back for ten years. All because of ice cream one day with someone she’d never met before.
“I’m…” he reached out to touch her.
“Don’t touch me….” she bolted to her feet and in a frenzy stepped through the broken dishes in her bare feet. She ignored the biting pain of having ceramic pierce the soles of her feet. She snatched up her purse, nearly spilling the contents onto the floor. The love letters were in there. She nearly ran from the front door, pulling her keys violently from the hook beside the threshold.
She ran, bare footed across the parking lot of her apartment complex and got into her car. She looked over her shoulder as the engine came to life, and saw him step out of their apartment. She pulled away as quickly as she dared leaving him standing there waving his arms at the rear of her car.
The crying only intensified as she drove through the traffic. She thought about ice cream funnily enough, but she was driving to the park. She reached inside of her bag for the cell phone, it began ringing before she even managed to get her fingers around it. She ignored it, the caller id displaying the house number. She opened and closed the phone quickly, clearing the call. Opening it again, she dialed quickly. The phone rang and she got the voice mail of her recipient. She threw the phone on the passenger seat and pulled into the park only a few minutes from her house.
As she leaned back in her seat and cried, she cursed herself for what she had done. The cell phone rang. She ignored it at first. “I’m not going to answer it.”
She imagined what the conversation would be like. He found out…….yes he did…he hit…no no you can’t do that…..I’m at the park…. He was always so terse. He would be angry when he saw her face, she looked in the rear view mirror and faintly brushed her fingers over the darkening flesh along her jaw. Her husband hit her really hard. She stretched out and curled up in the driver’s seat for a moment allowing herself to drift off into sleep. He would knock on the door when He arrived.
The thudding against the window startled her into wakefulness, she opened her narrow eyes to peer through the safety glass of the car. There he was smiling softly though his eyes betrayed his emotion.
