Woman Last Seen by Adele Parks

Author:Adele Parks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2021-12-01T16:58:20+00:00

23

Kylie

Wednesday 18th March

The room stinks. I stink.

Here’s the thing. I have been a better wife to both of them because I have two husbands.

Or is that just what I’ve always told myself?

When I was a child, it was always clear when my father was seeing other women. Unlike some sorry-assed adulterers he did not try to smother his culpability with compensatory acts of sorrow or regret; he did not buy my mother guilt flowers. He did not recognize his own fault and responsibility. Far from it. Instead he blamed my mother for not being enough for him. He punished her for making him stray. My father did not like to see himself as a bad person, an adulterer. He reasoned that she made him behave worse—be worse than he wanted to be—because he was somehow, on some level, forced into adultery because of her failings. Madness, I know. But his own particular brand of madness and we all have one.

Guilt and unacknowledged self-loathing meant he itched for opportunities to blame her, to find her lacking so that he didn’t have to blame himself. A poorly ironed shirt, a tea bag left in the kitchen sink, a differing opinion on a TV show could lead to a humdinger, knockout, nasty knuckleduster of a row. A fight. He never physically hurt her—he didn’t have to—his words wounded. Mortally. He would accuse my mother of being cloying and beneath him. This confused me later, after he told me there are women you marry and women you fuck. My paraphrasing. He said there are women who are something, others who are nothing. But in that case, what was my mother after he stopped being married to her? An ex-something? Was Ellie really the only something?

It didn’t matter what he said to Mum, how much he insulted her, blamed her, ignored her, he couldn’t make himself feel better—he could only make her feel worse, which was what he was running from in the first place; hurt feelings.

My mother was strongly disinclined to fight back. She often said, “Hush now, Hugh, you don’t mean that. Stop saying things you’ll regret.” But he would rail anyway, yell, blister, bark, squall for hours. Eventually, she learned not to fuel his fire with platitudes which he thought were cowardly, and over time she resorted to silence or tears. It was cruel. Hard to watch.

I would not be like him. I refused to be. That much I have always been sure of. I know what the universal opinion is of people who have affairs. They are unilaterally dismissed as bad, undisciplined, selfish. I love both men and I have always been good to both men. I married them to be something better than a common adulterer. People who have affairs always think they are so special, so groundbreaking and different, but they are not. They are ordinary, predictable, boring.

At least I am not that.

I would not have a constant seesaw of affection. Favoring one man because he was the first, the next because he was a novelty.

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