Bent not Broken (41 page)

I can’t answer.

I can’t.

He will hate me.

The intensity of anger directed at me, anger that he’s entitled to feel, startles me, catching me by surprise. I have never seen Ben this angry before.

“Fucking answer me! I deserve a fucking answer, you cheating whore!”

Both of us flinch at his words.

“Both,” I croak.

The tears that are glossing his eyes spill over, and all I can do is watch them fall down his beautiful face. I want to go to him and apologize, ask for his forgiveness, but I can’t. I lost that privilege a long time ago. I deserve his fury, his disgust, his hatred.

As we stare at each other, letting the truth sink in, I face a stranger. Ben doesn’t look like the carefree boy I fell in love with. He looks like a ravaged man. A man who knows pain, the kind that can kill you, destroy you, drown you in a sea of darkness and hatred. I wonder if he will ever break through and heal?

“Do you love him?” He lets his words hang in the silence of the room. Lowering my gaze, I stare at my trembling hands. “For Christ’s sake, Cathy! Would you answer the damn question! Do you fucking love him? Yes, no? What is it going to be?”

“I…”

His body trembles as he groans.

“Yes. No…I don’t know. It feels like love when I’m with him. It feels…I’m happy when I’m with him, Ben. And that’s the truth.”

Ben gazes at me from the floor. I can see the tears in his eyes, hanging on his lashes, running down his cheeks. Licking some with his tongue as he wipes his face with the back of his hand, his stare never wavers.

“Do you love me? Do you still love me? And be fucking honest for once in your life.” Clenching his hands into fists, he murmurs to himself, “I fucking deserve it. This is bullshit. I can’t…I can’t.”

Well, here it goes. Maybe this will make him hate me, destroying all the love he has left for me. I don’t deserve it anyway. I need to destroy it so he can move on. And he deserves my honesty.

“I love you, Ben. I’m just not sure I am still in love with you.”

I see him flinch. Good. I’m glad. This is the only way for him to be free of me. For a moment, I wonder if there’s something essentially wrong with me. How can I hurt someone that I claim to love so much? Why am I doing this? How did we get to this point?

Because you took the easy way out when things got tough, Cathy. You didn’t fight.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it? Why did you fucking cheat, Cathy? And why did you continue to cheat? Was the sex that fucking good? Don’t you think that I hurt just as badly when you had the last miscarriage? Don’t you think that I wanted that baby just as badly as you did?”

I want to tell him it is because of the miscarriage. It has always been about them. The miscarriages were the oil, and Arsen was the fire. Together it scorched my crumbling marriage, burning it to the ground. I want to tell him that I am so confused and that my emotions are all over the place. That I have doubted our marriage for a while now. That I thought the baby was our second chance, but that is gone now too. I want to be honest, but his cruel questions are the morphine I need to numb myself so I can answer without feeling any remorse.

“I slept with him for the first time the night I told you I was going to meet Amy for drinks. He called me and said he wanted to speak to me about th-the miscarriage…he wanted to be there for me. I was so numb to everything. I couldn’t stand seeing your face, being around you. Your perfection was driving me insane. I met up with him, never thinking that I was going to sleep with him.”

“But you were attracted to him. I saw it. You must have known…that fucking song—it was for you.”

“Yes.” Sitting down next to him, I continue, “It didn’t start like that, Ben. We were just friends. But somewhere along the line, it changed. The first time it happened made me feel so good, so alive that I knew right then and there that I wasn’t going to stop. He f-fucked me, Ben. He didn’t make love to me. He made me forget, he made the numbness go away, he made me feel wanted, needed. I don’t know…I felt young and beautiful again—not so broken.”

I stare into his eyes. “With him, it didn’t feel like work. With Arsen, I was able to cry, be angry, hateful even, and not care about hurting his feelings like I did with you. H-he didn’t treat me like a china doll; he treated me like a person. Every time I tried telling you how I felt, how fucked up I was, all you said was that everything was going to be okay and that we were going to get through it.

“It was just too much, Ben. Too fucking much. Your perfection was asphyxiating me, and I couldn’t handle it. I think I grew to hate you, resent you, and Arsen made it all go away. With him, it was just me, Cathy. No wife, no failure, no nothing. Just me. And it felt so good. It was like a drug. I needed more, craved more, and the more I had, the more I wanted. The more I wanted him.”

I swallow hard because my next words are the hardest to admit, even to myself. “It started as sex, Ben, as an escape, but it’s not anymore. As everything was happening…I-I think I fell in love with him.”

Silence.

“D-Don’t think I’m trying to excuse my behavior because I am not. I know I was wrong, very wrong, b-but I’m trying to answer your questions as truthfully as possible.” I lower my voice to a soft murmur, “You deserve it.”

He begins to bang his head against the wall.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The constant thumping is driving me crazy.

Sitting there, I watch him hurt himself until I can’t take it anymore. I’m about to touch him when he swats my hand away as you would do to an annoying mosquito.

It hurts.

But I did this. I did this to Ben and to myself. I can’t complain that he’s repulsed by my touch.

When he finally looks up, he grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me aggressively. “Were you fucking careful?” he utters with disgust and fear etched in every syllable.

At first I don’t understand what he means.

Oh.

Shaking my head no, the look in his eyes says it all. He wants to kill me. Or Arsen. Or both of us.

“So, let me get this straight. He fucks you, comes inside you, and then you let me do the same? Now I understand the constant showering. You must be shitting me.” Silent, I watch his face as sudden realization dawns on him. Pinning me with furious eyes, his breathing accelerates. “Last night…you fucking needed to wash him off, didn’t you?”

Nodding, I begin to cry.

“You make me sick.”

Ben lets go of me harshly and stands up, almost as if close contact with my body will cause him physical pain.
The release of his strong grip causes me to fall back with just enough time to put my arms behind me to cushion the fall.
Turning around, he begins to shout angrily at me, his face red with anger and tears, “Did you ever think what this would do to me? Do you even,” he curses under his breath, “Do you even fucking care?”

My stomach tightens as he shouts at me. Each word is a punishing blow to the gut, robbing me of air, but I owe him the chance to get it all out—to punch me with his words, and break me with his anger. Call it atonement, but I must pay for what I’ve done. I just didn’t expect that honesty could hurt so much. That witnessing the consequences of your behavior and the mess you’ve made could be so painful. I alone should suffer the consequences of those choices. Not him. But sadly, he’s paying for them too.

“I did at first…b-but I stopped eventually.”

Ben is breathing heavily, and his stormy eyes are filled with anguish. “You need to leave. I can’t…I can’t…I can’t keep doing this to myself. I-,” He groans as he puts his hands around his head and begins to rock back and forth on his feet. In silence, I watch him for what seems an eternity, trying to give him space. After a few minutes, Ben looks at me.

“When you were broken, I loved you for the two of us, Cathy. For the two of us and I didn’t fucking care…I didn’t. I thought my love would be enough, I loved you that much. If you had asked me to cut my own arm off for you, I would have. I would have given you my whole fucking body, Cathy. Only for you. I should’ve never had to share you, Cathy. Never. I thought you were mine, like I’m yours. Or was. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is so fucking unbelievable.

“You know what? Let’s have the fucking truth. I’ve heard your pathetic excuses, how about you hear me out now? Let me tell you something, Cathy, I hope you’re happy because Arsen may own your heart, your body, but you’ll always be empty because I own your fucking soul. Your soul is part of mine and it always will be. I will heal, I will learn to love again, but you…I pity you.

“You say that you’re walking away from me and our marriage because of the strain the miscarriages put on our relationship.” He hits his chest painfully, “What about me? You think I wasn’t hurting just as much as you? Every fucking time I close my eyes, I can still hear the blood-curdling scream from that day. Sometimes I’m afraid to fall asleep because images of you covered in your own blood haunt me even in my dreams. You miscarried and lost the babies, Cathy. Well, I lost those babies too and I also lost my wife. I was left with nothing but memories.”

He pauses and wipes some tears off his face before continuing, “I wanted that fucking family too. You were able to retreat into your own head, hiding from everyone and anyone that cared for you. You stopped caring and I was okay with it. I was able to handle it because I kept fucking hoping that things would get better, that with time I’d get my wife back. Do you think you were the only one to ever doubt us? To want to give up on us? To want to hide? To wonder about other people? I’ve wanted to fuck other women too, Cathy, just so I could forget about you and remember what it feels like to be wanted, needed, again. But I didn’t. I loved you too much, and sadly, I still do, and I had more respect for our marriage, for you.

“All I really wanted was...I just wanted to hold you in my arms for as long as I could. I wanted that second or third or fourth chance for us to be whole again. That was all. So if you think you’ll be happy with Arsen, well good luck. But honestly, I don’t think you’ll be able to. You need to take a closer look at yourself first before you can be with anyone else, see why you couldn’t just open up to me and let me help you. But that’s not my problem anymore. I’m done. Just remember, Karma is a bitch.”

His painful words light an angry fire inside me, and I want to burn him with it. How dare he! Life has been hell for me since my last miscarriage, hell since the beginning of this whole mess. I haven’t been able to think straight since that day, not that it excuses my behavior. He wanted to know the truth, so I was giving him my own version of it, not once was I trying to justify my actions. I knew it was wrong the first time it happened, and I continued to know through the entire affair that it was more than wrong—It was unforgivable. But sometimes all the righteous reasoning in the world won’t stop you from making a mistake. Sometimes even holding onto someone as you’re falling won’t stop you from falling. Sometimes you just have to fall.

I am so angry at him, at myself. So guilty, so sorry, and so ashamed. But feeling shame suddenly makes me want to yell and scream and hurt him again and again. Shame makes me want to hurl things at him instead of apologizing.

Looking up from my spot on the floor, with tears falling down my face blurring my view, I answer him with the best that I’ve got. “Karma may be a bitch, but when he came inside me I didn’t care because I came so fucking hard that I saw stars!”

He stares at me, and the love I’ve seen in his eyes so many times before is gone. “You fucking whore…get out…get out!”

I did it.

I made him hate me just as much as I hate myself.

Now he can be free.

I stand up from the cold wooden floor of his office and walk to our bedroom. I need to go to Amy’s. I can’t stay here anymore. My marriage is over. Finished. Arsen was the fuel needed to burn my marriage to the ground, but I was the one who held the match in my hands the entire time.

Wiping my nose with my sleeve, I throw away as many of my belongings in the garbage as possible. I’m erasing my existence from his home. When I’m done, I leave the bathroom. Ben is standing by the large window facing our front yard, his back to me. With his head hung low in defeat, he’s gripping his hair so hard with his hands; I can see the muscles of his arms bunch up.

As I walk towards him, I notice his body slightly shaking. I want to pull him close to me and kiss his tears, tell him that I love him and that I meant the words I said last night, but what good would it do? It’s over between us.

My back now to him, I grab my coat and start putting it on when I hear him whisper, his voice raspy with tears, “The other night, when I didn’t come home…”

“Yes?”

“I almost fucked Kerry.” He takes a deep breath. “I want a divorce.”

Not turning around, I let the meaning of what he just said sink in. I poisoned Ben. I deserve it. With the fight drained out of me, I whisper, “I understand. I’ll come back tomorrow when you’re at work to get the rest of my things.”

With these words fresh on my tongue, I leave.

Walking out of the door.

Walking out of his life.

Leaving my sunshine behind and letting the darkness, disguised as freedom, welcome me in.

When I’m standing outside the house, I look up from the driveway to our bedroom window and see that the curtains are drawn. As I turn and start to walk towards the garage, it finally starts to rain, wetting my face. Licking my lips, I can taste a mixture of salt and rain. Funny, I didn’t realize I was still crying.

The agonizing pain begins to gather inside my chest, ready to explode with grief. I take a few steps but stop dead on my tracks and stare at the wet cement. Rain keeps falling around me, droplets of fresh water making the asphalt under my feet glitter like stars.

I want to go back.

I’ve made a terrible mistake.

It feels as if I left my whole heart, my whole being back in that house with him. Standing here lost in the past, the truth comes crashing down on me. I do love him with all my heart, and I have lost him. Forever.