A World in Us by Louisa Leontiades

Author:Louisa Leontiades
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Alternative Family
Publisher: Thorntree Press
Published: 2017-03-08T07:23:32+00:00

19

Elena left two days later. They had made up again. Regrouped. Rebonded. And I had heard it all through the thin walls of the guest bedroom. Furtive creaks of the bed interspersed with breathy sighs and the ultimate guttural moan from Gilles. I knew it well. But before it had made me happy. Now it was killing me. He accompanied her to the airport. Gilles was due back at six. Instead, a stranger came back at eight.

“You cut your hair! Your long curly hair,” I said. I felt truly bereft, in the same way that a mother regrets cutting her baby’s golden locks off and they never return.

Someone who vaguely looked like Gilles grinned at me.

“I wanted it to be a surprise. Elena says it looks really good.”

I said nothing more. But I looked so horrified that he dared not approach me. I turned and talked to the table.

“Your dinner’s cold. I waited for you to eat.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said warily.

“I thought that we would finally have a romantic evening together. I haven’t seen you alone in seven days.”

“We still can. I’ll heat it up.”

He didn’t get it. I had looked forward to being with him. I’d missed him. I’d longed for him. And if he had felt the same, then he would have come home to be with me just as soon as he could. But he had chosen to spend two hours longer than necessary cutting his hair.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

“What’s wrong, Louisa?” His tone was menacing. And he was prepared for a fight. Gilles, who never fought with me.

“You went and cut your hair,” I said sadly. I meant that he had spent the time away from me. But he misunderstood me.

“So what? It’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know you anymore,” I said. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why you do what you do. And now you don’t even look like you anymore.”

The man I had married was a poet and a dreamer. This man was shorn, muscular and dressed to kill. He and Elena had been shopping earlier that day.

I had seen the pattern of a two-person marriage played out again and again. And rarely had I seen a couple where the partnership was, or remained, equal. One was naturally dom­in­ant and the other was submissive — and if each was lucky, they played their roles happily, neither of them seeking to redefine themselves. In another workable configuration, one was dominant in some aspects whilst another took charge of still others. But more often than not, the couples found themselves imbalanced.

In at least one of my closest friends’ relationships, this dynamic had resulted in divorce. My friends were ostensibly strong women who had sought men to nurture, care for…and control, because they were so insecure that they needed to be needed. And when they fed off the neediness enough, they were strong enough to stand on their own two feet, and iron­ic­al­ly they came to despise what had become a parasite.

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