A Happy Marriage

by A.R. Torre

I watch my wife eat her cereal and think about the first girl I killed.

If I ever kill my wife, I’ll make sure they find her body. She deserves that. She deserves everything.

It smells vaguely of cat, but I don’t see one anywhere, and there’s been no damage to the body. That’s the telltale sign of cats: they start eating almost 13immediately, which tells me all I need to know about having one as a pet. Dogs will starve to death beside their owners. Not cats. They start munching the ears first.

“Suicide victims don’t hide their phones.” An astute observation for a newbie. “Agreed.”

culpability

It doesn’t matter if Reese Bishop had four months left to live. Sometimes people want to die. Sometimes they need help. That’s what this is, period.

There’s an encyclopedia inside that head of his, with a heading and tab for each subject. His Dinah section could encompass three volumes, and includes every conversation we’ve ever had, any story I’ve shared, successes I’ve had, mistakes I’ve made. My preferences, my health details, my shortcomings and flaws. He loves it all, the good and bad parts of me, and while most husbands bitch about their wives’ shortcomings, Joe would never speak negatively about me to someone else. It’s one of the promises of our marriage, one I obey as staunchly as he does.

So much love between us. The relationship I’ve always dreamed of come to life. But he can never find out the truth of that year.

It isn’t a lot of work. It’s fun. He’s the best part of my life, and I’m the best part of his. It’s not by accident; it’s because I strive to make it so. I work my ass off to be the best part of his day, every day, without fail.

I didn’t have this with our mother. The hard right turn my life took at sixteen . . . that severed the lifeline between us. She wrote me off after 48that, and I’m still raw and hurt over how my entire family handled the fallout.

Is that how you treat someone you love? Is that what love from a parent looks like?

I mentally divorced my family after that, at least as much as a good Italian girl could. We have all the appearances in place now, but I know, behind the hugs and the kisses, the weekly dinners and the friendly c...

Paper thin. Douse it in water or blood, and you could break it with one gent...

Adults who are still dependent on and connected to their parents experience problems in their own marriages, poor connections with their own children, and a reduced ability to think and problem-solve for themselves.

He kissed me deeply and told me that I never had to worry about being loved again. That he would love me through the good and the bad, the beautiful moments and the ugly ones.

It wasn’t possible for me to fall further in love with him, but what did happen in that moment was that I fell a little bit in love with myself. And for a woman who had hated herself for over a decade, that meant everything.