This is an oral history of Quinn, a mother with two children, living with her husband between New York City, and a country house they frequent on weekends and during summers.
Quinn met her husband when she was 23-years old and newly minted to New York’s streets. He was 9-years older and was completing his surgical residency. She says that at the time, she thought that the difference in age a good thing, but now she worries that the one or two years in difference between their generations, was enough to have set him in olden times and her in modern.
She had moved to the city intent in following the footsteps of Southern writers like Eudora Welty, and he was about to become the doctor he had spent years training to become.
She recalls the whirlwind of people, places and things — against the backdrop of his family, which was large and Italian lively. She remembers holding the hand of his Aunt Mame during Easter, a few months after she had met him.
She does remember walking in Gramercy, holding the hand of his aunt, and she does remember sharing with the aunt something he had said and the aunt patting her hand and her thinking, “if he has an aunt this sweet, he must be okay.”
The story of how she met him — the story has plagued her for years — she met him twice and the first time he had scared her, but the second time, he found a way to get her to speak and then he made her laugh.
He had written the words “I love you” on her back within a month or two of their having met. She just laughed then too, because how could he have possibly loved her so soon? He, who had hosted three models in his apartment when they had first met? He, who had never told another woman that he had loved them, had written, “I love you” on her back and she wasn’t sure what that meant,other than it must have been deeply felt by him.
She hadn’t meant to marry, but marry she did, and she married atop the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. There were radio interviews, and newspaper interviews and published stories. The interviews were a part of the reason she married him (when she hadn’t really meant to marry at all), and the interviews were a part of the reason she began questioning the rush to marriage — and, it did seem rushed. She had been asked to write an essay and that essay had been accepted to be married at the Empire State Building — her essay wasn’t even supposed to have been looked at. The Empire State Building had already chosen 14 couples to marry that year, but he asked her to submit an essay, so she had — and, then the Empire State Building phoned and they wanted to meet her and they did. Then, they were suggesting the couple get married on the ‘The Today Show’, which she absolutely refused to do, but there were those interviews and those newspaper articles and the elopement grew bigger than she had imagined.
“But,” she says, “it hadn’t really occurred to me that I wouldn’t marry this person — I just hadn’t fully determined I was ready…something didn’t fit “right”, but it fit mostly “right”. I thought, perhaps, there was something wrong with me — how come I didn’t feel ready to “marry” at all? He was a doctor and a doctor with a kind family, and, a man a bit older, who knew more and understood more. He loved me — what was wrong with me?” She says now, when looking back, she needed air — and, before she knew it, he had begun to consume hers. She said that she needed to be for a while — without worry of being this or that for another, and that mostly she was able to be and to be herself, but that things became complicated on the way to love.
She had left him several times during their marriage: twice during her two pregnancies and again following the birth of their second child. During her last attempt at separation, she filed for divorce. The divorce lasted for four years and has won acclaim in the court houses of New York City as being one of the longest running divorce trials ever recorded. She knows this because the Judge would let the courtroom know, every time he pulled out a motion to render judgement. She hadn’t wanted the divorce to last so long, but she had to wait so long in order to win custody and child support. There were so many dry seasons, when he was unable to make a payment for child support. She later learned through forensics that $70,000 had gone to estate planning, while she worried she didn’t have a box of pasta for she and the kids.
She had not asked for matrimony, although after twenty-years of marriage, the court had reminded her she was due. He and his attorneys had a way of placing the financial issues prior to the custody issues, and, as he was on supervision during the trial, there never seemed any hurry to get to the issue of child custody, which was the only thing she felt she must fight for.
She did eventually receive full custody. She received child support, although receiving it in an order and receiving it in cash or check are two separate things, entirely. She also received a lifetime no contact order of protection.
She thought she was to begin life again, and at times, she was both hopeful and fearful of what that life might look like, but she thought, “whatever the other life I had — the five-million dollar apartment, the views of Manhattan, the “life” that masked my real life — I knew I didn’t want that life anymore.”
She says that new lives do not begin again so sweetly, and this was the lesson she took from her almost divorce.
An event occurred in her life, after the divorce judgement had been rendered, but not yet filed, and she returned to him. She felt she had no choice and she was hopeful that maybe this time, she would understand him more.
Whereas, while before the divorce there had been violence — she says she maintained a sense that she held co-responsibility in the bringing of the “violent seasons”. She says she could never get a clear picture of what was wrong with their picture, but all she did know is that she could not go another day trying to figure it all out.
She says she believes this most recent period of reconciliation has opened her eyes to things she had not understood before. Before she had filed for divorce, she had accepted that something was wrong with her: there must be some deficiency within her that kept her from understanding him; which kept her scared, when others said she should not be scared, or others told her she was exaggerating a feeling; there must be something in her that created these feelings in him— maybe, if she were more compassionate, maybe if she gave into his needs more often; there must be something wrong in her that she could not choose either fear of him or concern for him, so instead she straddled both. this non-commitment to her feelings for him almost tearing her apart. She says the violence during the reconciliation has been so great, that what she had not wanted to accept, she finally had to accept.
“I am a victim of domestic violence. I still cannot believe that I am a victim of domestic violence. I should have known better, but I didn’t. I don’t think anyone does, but I should have known better. It was the only promise I made to myself when left home — I would never have a home where domestic violence was a part of the framework,” she says.
She says that she thinks it was her heart that did her in — “I’m looking at this person. I am aware that this person is doing horrible things. I know these horrible things are horrible to me. I know I deserve different — but, there is manipulation involved… suddenly, I am placed in a position where I must pity this person who is hurting me, or I’m told I must take the blame for the rage that just visited me. Or, he gets sad or he cries or he rages or he… he does everything except apologize. It gets confusing and somehow I get pulled back into this other person’s psyche — their needs, their wants, their desires, and, all I can say to anyone who tries to understand the dynamics of abuse, is it pulls you in and before you know it, you are a victim working to not be a victim anymore.”
Quinn’s Journal, May 9, 2020.
I woke this morning ahead of our daughter and our son. I almost always do.
My daughter and I have taken to sleeping together. Or, rather things have been tense in our home and she has taken to sleeping with me because it comforts her.
I have gratefully taken the opportunity to have her in the bed at night with me, because it slows the approach of my husband and because when I wake during the night, I see her sleeping and it makes me smile.
Sometimes, he comes in during the night. Sometimes he tries to do things with her in the bed. That’s when I jump up and lead him to other rooms.
At times, he stands over the bed staring at me. Sometimes, I open my eyes to see him crying over me. Sometimes, he is touching himself. Sometimes, he is touching me.
He has taken photographs of me sleeping for years — he used to pull up my gown or pull down my underwear and take photographs. I didn’t know it at first, but when I found the photographs, I asked him to stop. He didn’t.
During the divorce, he began waving those photographs around the courtroom. He wanted to demonstrate to the children’s attorney that I had “passed out” with our children present, so he used photographs he had taken of me while I was sleeping, with our children asleep next to me, with my gown up and no underwear, as proof of my having been drinking.
The judge was so offended for all of us, he sent my husband to his chair and issued an order that all photographs of me should be destroyed. I knew at the time, my husband would never oblige that order — and, following the reconciliation, I’ve come across some of those same photographs and I think, “I knew he never would never destroy them because I think I now know why he took them in the first place.”
The photographs he is taking of me recently are more graphic. I have seen photographs of his penis near my mouth while I am sleeping, my legs opened, with close-up shots of my private area. There is one photograph that troubles me: I look dead. In this photograph, my arms and legs are splayed as they might be outlined were the police marking a crime scene. I am wearing a dark shirt; I have no underwear — maybe, we had had sex earlier, but I don’t think so, which means he took my underwear off of me, without my knowing — which scares me, because that has happened; the room is dark in the photograph and the light from his phone has framed my head and his penis; but because of the angle, there is more penis in the photograph than me. When I first looked at the photograph, I said to myself, “That’s what I will look like, when they find me dead.”
He knows, as do prior therapists for him, that I am a victim of child sexual abuse.
I was molested as a child. I thought, at the age of 23, that I had overcome that part of my history. When I met him — he was 32 and gregarious and light — I thought, “let’s leave that part of my history behind. Life is short. Live happy.”
I used to ask him to sleep on the side of the bed nearer the door, so that I could sleep without worry that someone might appear in a door frame at some time during the night. Now, that person is he.
He recently took the lock off of the door to our bedroom, so I’ve started sleeping with a hammer. I’m worried he will force me to have sex with him.
There are three doors to the bedroom, and at night he walks back and forth on the deck or back and forth in our hallway.
When this happens, — when I hear his footsteps outside the door — I practice breathing. There have been nights that I have sat in front of the door, hoping that if he pushes it open, the weight of me will slow him down enough for me to run out the other door.
Depending on what his mood has been during the day, I find myself at night, often awake — worried that if I go to sleep, he will come in.
I stay awake and I ignore the kitchen for a drink and if I need to walk to the bath, I walk slowly, so as not to make the wooden floor make a sound.
He is a sleeping giant, who keeps a bottle of whiskey by his bed, and the slightest sound will wake him and those sounds invite him into this room.
He drinks his whiskey at night, checking Instagram messages to women he seems to have loved before, and I can feel his anger growing at me, “She is lucky to have me. She should want to have sex with me. Most women would feel lucky to have me.” These are things he says to me during the day, but at night, I hear him thinking these things and that scares me.
On this day, May 9, 2020, our daughter had walked out of the room and he had walked in. He began by shutting the door and giggling under his breath, “we never have a moment to ourselves.”
I read once that one should not listen to what a person is saying, but rather should focus on what a person is doing.
This one concept confounded me. “Aren’t their words important?” I thought.
Yes, words are important, but how a person moves, what they do, how they act, are all important too, and I’ve found myself concentrating more on his actions that his words.
As he walked into the room, my first thought was that he was trying to pretend joviality.
What else could it be? I do not pretend happy right now — at least sexual relations happy. In order for a calm house, I will wash dishes and I will cook dinners and meals, but I think he’s asking more that I can give.
Prior to the COVID matter, I had learned he had been bringing different women to our country house on his weekly trips there.
So many women he had over — women who were using my bed and my things — women who were leaving their touches for me to find, who were reading my journals and would later use those words against me.
I want to say to him, “It isn’t as if those things went away because COVID came.”
I want to say to him, “you chose other women, let’s just ease out of our marriage now”, but, I don’t say these things because he will say that nothing happened with these women, or he will say that these women were in need of a place for the evening and aren’t I selfish for not wishing to share our home (and, my husband and our house liquor) with these women — so many women in need. He talks of me to all of them. He hasn’t met one woman in the last fifteen-years, whose relationship wasn’t started on his obsession with me.
He says these women at our country house are “friends”, but they aren’t “friends”. Some are patients who became friends. Some are friends who became patients. All are in need of homes, escape from their tortured lives, and drink and drugs he can prescribe.
He holds out our home to them a carrot for respite to them, and then gets angry with me if I find some item they had left behind. And they do so often leave things for me to find. At first I thought I was going crazy.
I was hit when I found a doggie’s sweater that did not belong to our doggie, and, I was hit when I found the green iPod charger that did not belong to me, and, I was told I needed anti-psychotics when I found the underwear in our daughter’s room. I spent months thinking I was going crazy, but they were there. I know because when we took a trip down South, he had left his phone on a table and someone close to me had picked it up and had taken messages and taken screen shots for me — because they were worried for me.
He says nothing happened with these women. He always says nothing happens. For a very long time, I would believe him — nothing happened. Nothing happened. But, then I read his texts to them and theirs to him and I realized, so much happened, beginning with his words to them and his manipulation of them, and they of he. It seems a really dark and negative place to create a life, but create a life he has and create a life, at my expense, they all have.
But now here he was, in our room, smiling and telling me how we needed to find time for one another. He walked over and hugged me from behind. I tried not to freeze, because my freezing makes him angry.
He began rubbing my legs and my lower legs and he kept rubbing me.
I said, “I need to get to the kitchen.”
“The kids are fine,” he said.
“What else is more important than our taking a few minutes out right now?” he said.
I have been preparing for this moment for weeks because for weeks he has been doing these things… attempting to discover ways that we might take time for one another.
I just cannot bring myself to pretend anymore and I have thought of this moment over and over again.
There was another time, when I felt I had to fight. During the years, he has somehow led me to believe that he hadn’t done those things that other night — the night I fought, but I don’t believe that anymore. There have been other times I have had to fight, but that one night scared me more than most.
For years, I thought, is it possible he hadn’t done those things the other night I had to fight? Is it possible, it was a game gone wrong, that night? But now, with him standing behind me, I know I remember that other night.
He follows me toward the bathroom.
“You know how I get excited when you’re in the bathroom,” he says.
I walk towards our bedroom.
“Sit, sit,” he says.
“I think I’d rather get to the kitchen,”
“You’re actually scared of me. You’re actually scared of me. Let me touch you. You need warmth. We haven’t touched each other in too long,” he says.
He pushes me on the bed, his robe opened.
“You don’t need to be scared to me,” he says.
“My wife is actually scared of me,” he says.
He says he only wants to sit on the bed. I can smell the smell of his testosterone — which he applies daily because he was diagnosed with cancer in his 20s and his body does not make it well.
At this moment, I believe I have two options: I can give in to his reality or I can fight this to the death. I know it is coming. The moment where I must say “no”and say “no” with strength, because saying no nicely doesn’t get me far either — and, I’d rather propel myself toward death than these little cuts one at a time.
These two thoughts: whether to give in to him or whether to fight, occur simultaneously in my mind. My thoughts depend on where his mood is flowing. His mood flow is dependent on my compliance at any one given moment. It is a very delicate form of communications.
He begins to tell me of “my problems”.
“One of your problems, Quinn, is that you always …”
I think, “If he criticizes me once more, I will just get up. I can get up. There is no law which says I cannot just get up. I am allowed to get up. I am allowed to not like this and want to get up and that should be enough.”
And, then I think of the kids in the other room and I think of angering him and I do not get up.
He begins touching my body — all over my body, my chest, my behind, my stomach, my vagina…
“I really don’t want to,” I say.
“You don’t have to do anything. I can do everything,” he says.
“But I don’t want to do anything. We’re not at the right place,” I say.
He begins touching me in my private areas more aggressively.
He makes a vile reference to something that he says proves I am interested.
“I’m really not, right now,” I say.
He says, “You almost have to force you to…you know I almost want to force you to…”
And I say, “But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
I find myself pretending. I said I would never pretend again, but I cannot tell him how much I fear those words, because if he says the words, he has been thinking the words. I know he is thinking the words “force” and the more I do not agree to this sex act, the more “force” comes to the forefront of our discussions. It’s the way he grabs my wrists. It’s the way he holds me or pins me somewhere. There is always force.
He starts outlining my lips with his fingers. He makes references to my lips often, which makes me think of the photograph — the photograph where I look dead.
“Remember, when you used to say, ‘shhhhh…just let me look at you’? I want to look at you right now,” he says.
I do not want him looking at me right now. I don’t want him looking at me — I don’t want him making me look into his eyes, because I don’t like those eyes. Those eyes lie and those eyes do not carry truth.
He continues outlining my lips.
He says that there has been so much going on that we have not had an opportunity to speak. He says he has been up for hours waiting for me to wake without the kids or the dogs.
He says, “I’ve been sitting in bed thinking about these lips for hours. I’ve been waiting for days to find you by yourself.” I know he has, because he keeps appearing in rooms where I am, and his appearance startles me. He gets angry when I get startled, but his appearances are most… startling, I suppose.
The other day I walked into the bathroom and was staring at the panes on the door because someone had placed a towel over the panes which offered view to the backyard. As I was standing there trying to figure out if it had been him, I was saying to myself, “There is no way he is preparing…” — as I was piecing together the thought that he might have placed a towel over the door in for us, he had been waiting in a nearby room for at least an hour, until he heard my footsteps walking down the hallway toward our bath… He almost rushed in and because I had my earphones in I hadn’t seem him until he was upon me and I was trapped in one very small room with little way out.
He talked about my lips this day too. This day was scary and so that scary day has been added to this scary day, and here I am… again, scared.
I roll over on my side on the bed, half out of exhaustion — half hoping that he’ll just do this thing and let it be over, and half buying myself more time to think my actions through.
He begins touching me again.
He is touching me everywhere now.
“If only you…”
I realize I am laying on my bed with a man who is touching me on my vagina while he is telling me it will be okay.
I am not that child anymore.
He is touching me and trying to get between my legs and he flips me over. He likes to flip me about, quite often. Sometimes, it hurts and I have bones which fracture easily, and as he flips me over, I moan and he is angry now.
I think to myself that it may be a muscle. Two-days later, the muscle still hurts, but I wouldn’t dare tell him such a thing.
He grabs at me again.
I stand up and say, “it’s isn’t the right time. Try being nice… for a day. Start there — just be nice for one day.” He’s angry now and I can hear him behind me.
I walk into the kitchen and the kids are in their chairs.
I start to make chatter, as if none of the other had happened. I do this every day of my life — pretend that what has just happened, hasn’t just happened.
His father phones me and as I’m standing at the sink, organizing breakfast and dishes, and pulling my earphones out of the dishwater, he starts yelling in the background for his father to hear, “She hasn’t even fed her kids yet, dad. She hasn’t even fed her kids. What kind of mother is she?”
In that moment, when I see my kids who need to be fed, and I see an earphone in dishwater and I see him on the steps near the kitchen with the dog, I think — I know this thing just happened to me, and no one knows but the two of us. My children, who are hearing him say that I haven’t even fed them breakfast by 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday and my father-in-law, who only called because I had called him about a species of bird — these other people now believe that I hadn’t even bothered to get up for breakfast for our children.
The worst part of being a victim of abuse is the circles one walks in one’s head trying to figure out where they might have done something different, in order to avoid a bad thing. With him, I don’t think there is much I can do. I can tell myself that he wanted physical touch and he was trying in his own way to get closer to me, but I don’t know how to convince myself that he wasn’t screaming into the phone with his father that I hadn’t started breakfast, when he the reason I was late.
