Jake pulled his shirt over his head.<\/p>\n
He did it slowly, avoiding my eyes.<\/p>\n
I sat on the edge of the bed and held the sheet around me.<\/p>\n
Diane stood near the door, waiting.<\/p>\n
She had the patience of someone who believed the outcome was already decided.<\/p>\n
\u201cJake,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we please not do this tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n
I wasn't sure whether I was asking him to stay or asking him to finally understand.<\/p>\n
Maybe both.<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm just going to talk to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those words had carried me through more arguments than I wanted to admit.<\/p>\n
I'm just going to talk to her.<\/p>\n
I'll handle it later.<\/p>\n
You know how she gets.<\/p>\n
Don't make this bigger than it needs to be.<\/p>\n
Each sentence had seemed reasonable on its own.<\/p>\n
Together, they had taught me that the easiest way to keep the peace was to accept whatever Diane wanted and deal with my feelings afterward.<\/p>\n
I had become very good at dealing with my feelings afterward.<\/p>\n
I could cry in the bathroom and wash my face before anyone noticed.<\/p>\n
I could sit through a family meal after a cutting remark and still ask if anyone wanted more food.<\/p>\n
I could smile at Diane while she criticized the way I arranged our home.<\/p>\n
I could thank her for a gift and ignore the comment that came with it.<\/p>\n
I had told myself I was being mature.<\/p>\n
I had told myself that every family had difficulties.<\/p>\n
I had told myself that Jake loved me, and that love would eventually make him see what I saw.<\/p>\n
That night, I began to wonder whether my patience had simply made it easier for both of them to continue.<\/p>\n
Diane folded her arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you coming or not?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jake glanced toward the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive me a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
She rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything has to be about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
I flinched before I could stop myself.<\/p>\n
It wasn't the first time I had heard something like that.<\/p>\n
But there was something especially cruel about hearing it while I was standing half-dressed in my own bedroom.<\/p>\n
I reached for my robe again.<\/p>\n
Diane didn't move out of the way.<\/p>\n
I looked directly at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need my clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n
She glanced at the chair as if she had forgotten why I might want them.<\/p>\n
Then she stepped aside just enough for me to reach past her.<\/p>\n
I took the robe and put it on.<\/p>\n
My fingers struggled with the belt.<\/p>\n
I hated that she could see my hands shaking.<\/p>\n
I hated that she had put me in a position where I felt I needed to hide it.<\/p>\n
When I finished tying the robe, I turned back toward Jake.<\/p>\n
He was pulling on his sleep pants.<\/p>\n
I couldn't believe that this was happening.<\/p>\n
Not in some unfamiliar place.<\/p>\n
Not in a house where I was a guest.<\/p>\n
Here.<\/p>\n
In the room where I kept my clothes, where I slept beside my husband, where I had believed we were allowed to be ordinary and safe.<\/p>\n
Diane watched him finish dressing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat's better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you acting as though he did something wrong by sleeping beside his wife?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mouth tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don't understand anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen explain it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She gave a small shake of her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't owe you an explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n
I almost laughed.<\/p>\n
Not because anything was funny.<\/p>\n
Because I had spent so much time trying to earn a place in her good opinion that I had forgotten how unreasonable the arrangement was.<\/p>\n
I had thought that if I was polite enough, helpful enough, and patient enough, she might eventually accept me.<\/p>\n
But acceptance wasn't what she seemed to want.<\/p>\n
She wanted the final say.<\/p>\n
And if I accepted that, she could keep moving the boundary whenever it suited her.<\/p>\n
Jake came to stand between us.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of you, please.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
Both of you.<\/p>\n
As if we had done equal things.<\/p>\n
As if one woman had not entered the bedroom in the middle of the night and pulled away the covers while the other had done nothing but ask for basic respect.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him that being neutral wasn't the same as being fair.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him that when someone crossed a line, refusing to name it didn't make the line disappear.<\/p>\n
But I was tired.<\/p>\n
And I knew he would hear my words as another reason he needed to calm everyone down.<\/p>\n
So I stayed quiet.<\/p>\n
Diane seemed satisfied by that.<\/p>\n
She reached for the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome downstairs, Jake.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me one more time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won't be long.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
He followed her into the hallway.<\/p>\n
I heard their footsteps moving away.<\/p>\n
Then a door opened and closed somewhere beyond the bedroom.<\/p>\n
The silence they left behind felt different from the quiet that had existed before they came in.<\/p>\n
Before, the room had been a place where I could rest.<\/p>\n
Now, every object seemed to remind me that I had no control over what might happen next.<\/p>\n
The bedside lamp was still on.<\/p>\n
The blanket lay on the floor.<\/p>\n
The sheet I had chosen with Jake was twisted near the foot of the bed.<\/p>\n
I bent down and picked it up.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, I held the fabric against my chest.<\/p>\n
Then I spread it across the mattress.<\/p>\n
I smoothed one corner.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
It was a pointless thing to do.<\/p>\n
The bed didn't need to be made at two in the morning.<\/p>\n
But I needed to do something with my hands, and I didn't know what else to do with the anger inside me.<\/p>\n
I sat down again.<\/p>\n
I thought about the day Diane had offered to help us buy the house.<\/p>\n
She had been pleased with herself.<\/p>\n
Jake had thanked her repeatedly.<\/p>\n
I had thanked her, too, and meant every word.<\/p>\n
I remembered how relieved I had felt when we realized we could move forward with the purchase.<\/p>\n
I remembered standing in the empty living room and thinking about the ordinary life we might build there.<\/p>\n
I hadn't imagined that I would someday feel like a visitor.<\/p>\n
The house had walls and a roof.<\/p>\n
It had rooms we could fill with furniture.<\/p>\n
But a home required something else.<\/p>\n
It required the belief that the people inside it respected one another.<\/p>\n
I had been trying to build that with Jake.<\/p>\n
I hadn't realized that he might still be waiting for his mother to give him permission.<\/p>\n
I looked at the bedroom door.<\/p>\n
Part of me wanted to go downstairs and demand that he return.<\/p>\n
Another part wanted to leave him alone long enough to see what he would do without me asking.<\/p>\n
I was ashamed of how much I needed that answer.<\/p>\n
A few minutes passed.<\/p>\n
Then more.<\/p>\n
I heard no shouting.<\/p>\n
No footsteps coming back toward the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Nothing that told me whether Jake was arguing with her, listening to her, or simply letting her speak until she was satisfied.<\/p>\n
I stood and walked to the doorway.<\/p>\n
I didn't go downstairs.<\/p>\n
I just looked into the dark hallway.<\/p>\n
For the first time that night, I asked myself a question I had avoided for months.<\/p>\n
What if Diane wasn't the only person keeping me outside the marriage?<\/p>\n
What if Jake had been helping her do it, one quiet decision at a time?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer that question yet.<\/p>\n
But I could no longer pretend I hadn't asked it.<\/p>\n
Jake pulled his shirt over his head. He did it slowly, avoiding my eyes. I sat on the edge of the bed and held the sheet around me. Diane stood … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39075,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39055\/revisions\/39075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}