Pictures of You

Chapter 82

82

Evie

I get settled on the grass overlooking the lake, turn my face to the sun, and take a deep breath in a fruitless attempt to ground myself. Then I open my messages. More spam has entered my inbox in the five minutes since I left the gym, and I scroll through, looking for Drew’s email.

I think of him often.

Even when things were amazing with Oliver in the early days, I never really felt like myself with him. I was always trying to be the person he wanted. Scared to eat in front of him. Worried about my body. Questioning every step, wishing I was different, or more, or better.

With Drew, I cared only about being alive in the world. I was present in the simplicity of our existence. Of course, at the time my immature teenage perspective interpreted this as comfortable. It couldn’t be romantic because it was so stress-free and simple.

Oliver scared me, in a way I thought was all part of falling in love. The intensity of it was so exhilarating I convinced myself it was real because it felt dangerous. But Oliver’s increasing vigilance over my life only pinched me further. He constantly chiseled pieces off me. Sculpted me into the woman he wanted. But he carved out everything inside me at the same time, and now there’s nothing left but the brittle shell I’ve become.

Where is Drew’s message? I’m sure I’ve seen these emails from Amazon already, reminding me of books left in my cart. Yes, I’m now back at messages that came in overnight.

I type his name into the search bar and it filters the inbox. No results. That can’t be right. The message from earlier should be there, along with others he’s sent me over the years. One telling me he’d had the tests done after we told him about Harriet. Further back, something about the arrangements for his mum’s funeral. They’re not there, though. None of them are. Including today’s with my photos.

I panic. I can’t even remember his address. He’s not coming up in contacts at all in my email app, so I switch to my texts.

There he is. I’m ridiculously relieved to see his name. Sad that the last messages we exchanged were four years ago, and only terse little snippets—me thanking him for doing the testing for Oliver. Him telling me he wasn’t doing it for him, he was doing it for his niece.

“He’s not seeing her,” Oliver had said, once she was home again. “Family only.”

“Drew is family,” I’d argued.

“Immediate family, I mean.” Oliver has always been intent on reducing everything to the smallest common denominator. Him and me. He’d been gruff and annoyed and all kinds of impatient. My pressing the issue about Drew had cost me days of silent treatment.

Drew hung around anyway. He never gave up on his niece. Then there were all the gifts he sent her, which she was never given. We don’t want to spoil her, Evie, just because Drew wants to buy her affections.

It makes me shudder.

Could you resend your email? I’ve lost it , I type to Drew now.

Message failed. Tap to retry.

I tap.

Message failed.

How could it have failed? I open the internet browser and type: What does it mean when a message won’t go through?

Result: You may have the wrong number. You may not have sufficient cellular service. The person you are messaging may have blocked you.

Blocked me? And recalled the email, perhaps? You can do that these days, can’t you? I wish I’d replied at the gym the second I received it. I’m not prepared for how lost I feel without access to him, even though it’s been years of struggling through on my own. Big tears well in my eyes and I choke down a rising sob. I just can’t understand how my life went so far off the rails. I should have left Oliver years ago—when he first started closing in my life, needing to know where I was, shutting out all the people who matter most.

I shouldn’t be almost thirty and crying in a park, wishing I was sixteen again and could go back and do everything differently.

I’m still having the existential crisis over my life choices when Oliver finds me. The car screeches into the lot, he slams the door, pulls Harriet out of the back seat, and tosses her onto his shoulders. I’d recognize his determined strides from a mile away. Determined, angry strides, in this case, even with his daughter in tow—though he has a knack for making everything feel fun with her, so she mistakes his mood for horseplay. Harriet squeals at his blistering approach. I wish he’d put her down, and I wonder what I’ve done now.

The fear dries my tears. I sense my body tensing. Preparing. Gathering what little strength I have left in my muscles and mind and soul. The adrenaline starts its well-worn course through tired veins, sick of the fight or flight. Craving peace, I put on my “everything is okay” Harriet face.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Oliver says when he reaches me, pulling Harriet down off his shoulders and scooping her through the air like she’s coming in to land. He did not. I’ve never been in this park in my life. He tracked me here.

“Evie!” she calls, giggling. Falling into my arms, a welcome beam of sunlight. “Daddy took me to the beach ! We had ice creams and went swimming and built sandcastles and he buried me up to my neck !”

I feel like he’s buried me up to my neck, too, and that I’m forever trying to extract my arms and dig myself free.

“We forgot sunscreen,” she confesses, holding out her little arms, investigating the redness.

“I put it on you,” he says, irritated.

“Daddy, you said not to tell.”

“Stop lying, Harri.”

She looks crushed and confused, and I ask her what flavor ice cream she chose—practiced sorcery designed to distract and diffuse.

“Come on,” he says, extending his hand and pulling me roughly to my feet by my wrist. He scoops up my gym bag and starts walking in the direction he came from, while Harriet grasps my hand and swings happily between us as we go.

“Let’s get milkshakes !” she suggests, hopefully. I’m about to say yes, when Oliver turns around and drops her hand.

“You had ice cream. We need to take you back to Mummy.”

It’s not drop-off time until five. I hope we don’t ruin Chloe’s plans for a relaxing afternoon. It’s a tough gig raising a child mostly alone, and I love having Harriet. I shiver at the idea of divorcing him and rupturing this second family of hers, even if we see her only every other weekend and during the holidays. Harriet is the only part of this relationship that is real.

As we follow Oliver across the park, I watch him unzip my bag, pull out a chocolate bar, and toss it into a bin as he passes. “You don’t need that crap, Evie.”

There are moments in life when everything comes into sharp focus. I’ve felt stuck in this nightmare for so many years that I blocked out much of it. You’d think it would be something big and obvious that would cause me to snap. His screaming at me for inadvertently leaving my phone on silent after going to the movies. Throwing a glass at the kitchen wall when I was home late. But in the end, it’s the simple act of flinging a Mars bar into a rubbish bin in front of his impressionable daughter, whom he’s just gaslit over sunscreen, that pushes me to a place where I’ve not only had enough but have dredged some lost pocket of courage I need to fight back.

We buckle Harriet back into the car and drive to Chloe’s. She lives in the kind of ramshackle rental I’d adore right now. A little two-bedroom terrace with vines running riot up the bricks, potted plants crowding the front steps, and nowhere near enough room for all their stuff. It feels like a home should.

She flings open the door in shorts, a T-shirt, and headphones, like she’s about to go for a run. “Oh, hi! I didn’t expect you this early!”

Harriet disentangles herself from Oliver’s arms and runs in to play with their new puppy. It’s all okay. Chloe will just have to reschedule her exercise. Everyone has to reschedule and rearrange and fit in.

“I thought you said you’d taken off the tracking app?” I say, as we walk back to the car after saying goodbye. It’s a bold statement, given the bad mood he’d been covering until we’d off-loaded Harriet. We’d argued over the app again recently, when I told him I was sick of him knowing my every move.

“It’s to keep you safe, Evie,” he says now. “That’s all I ever want.”

I’m not particularly unsafe. Not physically. At least not when I’m out in the world without him. Psychologically, I’m in real danger, but that’s his doing.

“You’re always underestimating risks,” he continues. “People get obsessed with things—and with people that they can’t have.”

He is out of his mind. I’d suggest a psych evaluation for delusions and paranoia, but of course he’d never go for that.

“I love you,” he tells me, for the millionth time. “I love you more than anyone else ever could.” He means Drew, of course. It’s always about Drew. In fact … right now, as I look at the jealousy contorting across Oliver’s face, the penny finally drops. The explanation for why I’ve never felt good enough. Why I’ve endlessly wondered what he saw in me and why he held on so vehemently to our floundering relationship when he could have released me and had his pick of anyone else that he wanted. It was never about loving me. It was about hating Drew. From the moment Drew reached in and pulled me out of that swimming pool away from him.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, Evie. I’m protecting you,” he says now.

We’ve been around this buoy a thousand times. We never get anywhere, other than into an angry mess, devolving into him going silent, eventually, and that is always the worst part. There’s power in silence. More power, sometimes, than when things are explosive.

We reach his car and he opens the passenger door for me. Always the gentleman in public. An elderly woman nearby nudges her companion, hand on her heart, and smiles in our direction. I can almost hear her thoughts: Look at that, Shirley! Chivalry isn’t dead …

Oliver’s brand of chivalry is going to kill me.

I get in and pull my seat belt on, feeling even further restricted.

He swings into the driver’s side, pushing angry energy into the car, his demeanor shifting again, plunging me into a familiar mental tussle as I attempt to work out what he wants from me and how I’m going to navigate my way out of this. Whatever I deduce is on his mind, it never seems to be that. Whatever steps I take to try to shift his mood, they’re always wrong.

So this time I do nothing. I say nothing to try to change him. I disengage.

Of course, that’s wrong too.

“What’s up with you?” he says as he drives out of the parking lot, too fast, and into the slip lane.

I stare out the window. Where would I even start in answering a question like that?

“I asked you what’s wrong,” he repeats, his voice firmer this time.

He misses the turnoff to our suburb.

I look at him now. “Where are we going?”

“For a drive. We need to talk.”

We need to talk. Such frightening words, usually. But so true in this case. And here is the opportunity I’m looking for to raise the topic I’ve avoided for far too many years.

He drives toward the freeway. It’s not in the direction of home. I piece together the route we’re taking and it looks like we’re heading out of the city. We can’t go away. I don’t even have a bag packed. I glance into the back seat to see if he’s thrown some clothes together for me, but it’s pristine and empty.

“I agree we need to talk,” I say, “but can’t we go home?”

“I feel like driving.”

It’s always whatever he feels like doing. I’m never included in decisions like this. It’s all so different from when we first got together and he put me center stage and did anything I wanted.

“Are you happy, Oliver?” I venture. I know it’s dangerous, and that’s confirmed when his fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

“What an odd question.”

“I mean are we happy?”

His foot pushes the accelerator and I grip the sides of my seat. “Are you happy, Evie?”

How do you tell your husband you are miserable and it’s his fault and you want out? Any time in the past when we’ve skated close to the topic of how we’re doing, I’ve backed away. I’ve never been able to say these words, because I’ve always been so scared of the ramifications if I did. But suddenly, today, maybe because of the reminder of Drew, I’m more scared of not saying this. More scared of the status quo than of worsening consequences. My life, if I stay with him, is over anyway.

A long silence later, and he’s heading for the Illawarra escarpment. Are we driving to Wollongong? Maybe he’s taking me to Kiama or something. I’m increasingly nervous and certainly not going to continue this conversation while we’re on this particular road. Macquarie Pass has always made me uneasy. Just a feeling I’ve always had on that mountain, ever since I was a kid. We’d go on coach trips for school excursions and I’d be terrified as the bus clung to the crumbling pavement, the ravine falling away to the side, fear stopping me from taking in the spectacular view of lush forest, sweeping into the valley, toward the ocean.

“You haven’t answered my question,” he says at last. He’s gripping the steering wheel so hard now the whites of his knuckles are gleaming.

“Can we talk about this when we get there?” I beg him.

He looks at me, and I wish he’d look back at the road. It’s treacherous.

“It should be a simple yes or no, Evie. You’re either happy or you’re not. I’ve given you everything you ever wanted.”

Does he know me at all?

“All I wanted was to prove myself academically and get a job and make a difference. And I’ve lost that.”

“Because you’re mentally unwell.”

He thinks he’s been loving and generous to let me step back while he took care of things. I thought he was, too, at the time. But wasn’t it just another way to keep me needing him? The more anxious I became, the more he seemed to enjoy taking care of me. My anxiety fed his need to be the one I depended on.

“Remember when we met?” he says. “You adored me.”

“You flooded me with attention. You helped Bree.”

“How?”

“Don’t you remember? You got that horrible website taken down.”

He laughs. “God, Evie, you’ve always been so gullible.”

What?

“Oliver, tell me you had someone else take that site down.” I can’t let myself imagine what he means right now. His decision to step in and do this for Bree was a major factor in the infancy of my crush. It was the gallant act that I clung to, once the gloss of physical attraction wasn’t enough.

He looks at me, veering off the road and back onto it, his driving getting worse by the second. “It took me five minutes to unpublish and cancel the domain name.”

This can’t be true.

“But the black eye? You said you got into a fight with the boy responsible?”

He laughs. “The black eye was from the brawl at the pool.”

I stare at him, while a kind of rage I’ve never experienced erupts. Oliver was behind that site? My husband. Responsible for all that carnage in teenage girls’ lives. And then he passed himself off as the hero and lured me into his web?

“Pull over, Oliver? I feel sick.”

But he speeds up, taking the corners even faster. And I realize the sick feeling in my stomach isn’t from motion. It’s from some uncanny, almost psychic premonition that this is about to end in disaster. Because I know I shouldn’t say this next thing. Not right here. I desperately want to stop the words even before they start pouring out of my mouth, but my brain has snapped and it’s as if I can’t undo the inevitable and, on some level, don’t even care.

“Oliver, I want a divorce.”