Liars

by Sarah Manguso

Then I married a man, as women do. My life became archetypal, a drag show of nuclear familyhood. I got enmeshed in a story that had already been told ten billion times.

When I told him I’d signed up for another round of lessons without him, he sat and cried silently without moving his face. Tears dripped from his jaw. I was surprised.

The money felt like dress-up. It was a costume. I didn’t need it, but it was good to have.

But being pregnant and materially dependent on my husband felt dangerous. Even using the word husband felt unsafe.

We can drop off the stuff and you can pick it up later. I said, That isn’t actually helpful.

Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry.

To hide how I felt so that no one would know, no one would be able to read the proof of my shame and humiliation, which by then I always felt for John so he never needed to feel it himself.

wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain. But I wouldn’t know that for another seven years.

John didn’t just need to win the fight; he needed me to agree that it was my responsibility never to say anything that might make him feel as if he’d ever done anything wrong. Feeling that he’d done something wrong really threatened his sense of entitlement.

On the one day John had to take the child to school, he forgot to pack a lunch. I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing.

With this book deal, you’re probably closer to being a bazillionaire than I am at this point. He sounded upset, but why? It was a windfall that would benefit all three of us.

Inflicting abuse isn’t the hard part. Controlling the narrative is the main

No, because the word of a liar is meaningless.

Whenever I’d told him he had to walk as if we were together, he’d said that it was my job to keep up with him.

fogged. He texted me about all the laundry and vacuuming he was doing, expecting praise.

insinuate himself into what the child and I did together, to poison it, or to claim it as his own.

began to understand what a story is. It’s a manipulation. It’s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.

I’d invested my time and sacrificed years of my career to a person whose next lover had haunted our marriage, who’d lingered on the edges of our wedding photos like an understudy.

A wedding vow is a mind game. You have to guess whether the person currently on his best behavior will someday value your physical, emotional, and financial health above the convenience of being able to just break the contract.

A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement. You can throw all your love and energy and attention down into it, and the hole will never fill.

But they won’t remember that he did it only to feed off their adoration.

Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control