A/N: If you're bored, you live in Ontario, or you're interested in seeing me attempt political satire, you should visit my profile. The sequel to Dirty and Sweet is also up there. It's Addisex and it's happy. The following is not happy. Be prepared.
Chapter Fourteen: Blue Period
When she was sixteen the idea of waking up to a rose on the pillow beside her would have seemed romantic. The glow of, early morning sunlight against blossoming petals would have been only one detail of a broader, rose hued fantasy, one note in the melody her girlish imagination composed.
Reality was harsher. The flower on the pillow beside her signified nothing more than a hallow apology, a token of remorse already fading, while the memory of what Derek had done to her was still fresh. Soon the petals would whither away. The flower was already dead, fatally injured and slowly giving up its struggle to live. It would shrivel and rot before the bruises on her arms faded. It was an empty gesture, a momentary pressing of lips against a wound that would take much longer to heal, a wound no amount of kisses could begin to repair.
Not that Derek hadn't tired to kiss her better, but that too had lost the glow of romance.
Sex had become an act of submission, a surrender. She yielded to Derek's nightly use of her body because she lacked the strength to resist.
He was gentle. He touched her lightly, stroked her hair, scattered kisses on her neck and shoulders. When his hands slipped down and parted her thighs he was firm but never rough and he moved slowly, carefully, above her. Still there was little tenderness in Derek's hesitant, apologetic attentions or in her own passive tolerance. Their sex was simply a constrained, deliberate brutality, thumb- screws instead of kneecapping, a mechanical, passionless rape the two of them perpetrated together.
As she lay beneath him she sometimes wondered why she went along with it. Maybe complacency was a way to inflict the pain on herself rather than waiting for Derek to do it to her. Maybe she just didn't see the point of resistance. Compliance seemed vulgar and left her feeling dirty and used long after Derek rolled off her, but the underlying sadness outlasted even that. She existed under a perpetual, changeless sorrow, whether or not Derek touched her. She suffered and sunk lower while Derek's apologies piled up around her, crowding in on her from all sides. A kiss, a caress, a tired phrase, a cliché, she would have traded them all for a little extra sleep, the chance to close her eyes again and die for a few hours more.
But she had a daughter who needed to be at school on time and any help from Derek on that front apparently wasn't part of his campaign to show her how sorry he was. He could repeat the words again and again. He could try to apologize with gifts that seemed sleazy, despite their price tags, gifts that cluttered her jewelry box and seemed to cheapen everything they touched so that even the things she'd inherited from her mother looked tarnished, worthless, fake. He could try to apologize with sex but he couldn't take the time to make a sandwich and put it in his daughter's knapsack before he went to work. Bonny wasn't the one he was trying to apologize to.
But she didn't do much better herself. Bonny was lucky to be dropped off on time with the necessary supplies in her bag and a hastily prepared lunch. Some days she fed her daughter entirely on packaged food.
Today she forgot about packing anything until in the car on the way to the school when Bonny discovered her lunch-bag was missing. She had some change on the dashboard and stuffed it into her daughter's hands when she dropped her off.
"You can buy something, right?"
As she drove away she couldn't help comparing her behaviour to Derek's, money in lieu of decent nourishment, gifts in lieu of a sincere apology. So now she was like Derek. She wasn't trying hard enough. Maybe she didn't care enough. Maybe she didn't love enough.
That night she tiptoed to the side of Bonny's bed and knelt down beside it. She rested her head on the mattress and watched her daughter's face while she slept. The familiar features were slack in sleep, her daughter's cheek squashed against the pillow, her mouth hanging open. She looked like a stranger. Addison stared at her, trying to find something she recognized in her face, trying to remember how she looked when she smiled, what her laughter sounded like. This was the same baby girl whose life was sparked inside her, whose first heartbeats echoed in her womb. This was the same baby girl who she sheltered for nine months, like a precious secret, deep in her body. This was the same baby girl she'd known closer and better than anyone else could know her, the same baby girl who knew her in ways no one else ever would. She should feel something when she looked at her.
She knelt staring at her daughter until her knees went stiff against the hard floor and every muscle in her back twisted into knots. It was cold in the trailer. She shivered in her thin, silk nightgown and barely felt the tears streaming down her cheeks. She was colder inside than out. She looked at Bonny, begging herself to see something she recognized and loved, digging for some hidden recess of feeling inside herself. Instead she found sadness, that strangling, mind numbing pain that coiled around her and squeezed until she was too tired feel anything else. She found herself choking back sobs and whispering,
"I'm sorry, Bonny. I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happening to me," to her sleeping daughter before she stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed onto the floor.
She lay there until early morning when she heard the approach of Derek's car. He'd called to say he'd be delayed in surgery the night before. Every muscle in her body protested as she dragged herself off the floor. She had to clutch the counter for support as the room swirled around her.
Derek found her in the bathroom. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. Chilly, early morning air still clung to his jacket and she shivered when he pulled her against his chest. He ran his hands over the goose-bumps on her arms and pressed another kiss to her neck.
"You're up early."
She nodded. "It gets cold in here in the mornings. I can't sleep."
"Mm. Well, since you're up... I was going to give this to you tonight, but," he turned her towards the mirror, "maybe you can wear it to work today." He swept her hair off her shoulders and gathered it at the base of her neck. "Can you hold that?"
She fisted a hand in her hair and watched in the mirror as he draped a silver necklace across her collarbones. He fastened the clasp, placed his hands on her shoulders and, looking into the mirror over her shoulder, told her she was beautiful.
She wondered what he was talking about. She looked sick. Her skin was pale, white almost, against the black lace edging her nightgown. Even her lips were pale. She could see bones that hadn't been visible before where the nightgown hung loose between her breasts. The eyes that stared back at her from the mirror were ringed with dark circles and glazing over with fatigue. They looked empty, hallow, like a dead person's eyes.
She watched hands she couldn't feel glide over her body, watched Derek lower his lips to her skin and suck at her neck. She watched tears gather in her eyes and slide down her face. When her breath hitched and sobs began to rack her body, Derek finally noticed.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" he whispered, turning her around and lifting her onto the counter. "Addison?" He placed a finger under her chin, tried to tilt her face and look into her eyes. She flinched and twisted away from him.
"Don't touch me."
"I need you to tell me what's wrong."
She refused to meet his eyes, staring instead at her lap where the silk nightgown was spotted with her tears. Finally she whispered,
"Why is it that I'm your wife and somehow I'm the one you treat like a prostitute? Or do you buy this stuff for your girlfriend as well?"
He stepped back and ran his hands through his hair. Unsure how to respond he muttered,
"Meredith and I are broken up."
She snapped her head round and glared at him eyes narrowed in mistrust.
"Since when?" she hissed.
He didn't reply but he could see she guessed the truth.
"Since you started fucking me again?" She spat the words laced with disgust. "You know, that is really twisted, Derek. You can cheat on your wife but you can't be unfaithful to your girlfriend? Is that it? And then you did that to me to make yourself feel better?"
"I didn't mean to do it. I'm trying to make things better."
"It's not working."
He sighed. "Well what do you want me to do?"
She drew a ragged breath, fixed her eyes on him and said,
"I want you to leave."
"Addison..."
She shook her head. "Please, just go."
"Okay."
She let her head fall back against the mirror and closed her eyes, listened to him exit first the bathroom, then the trailer, heard him start his car and drive away. Slowly her breathing returned to normal. She slid off the counter and collapsed against the wall as her legs buckled underneath her. Clutching the doorknob for support she eventually found her balance and got the door open.
Bonny was standing in the kitchen in her pajamas and house-coat, rubbing her eyes and trying not to yawn. She usually wasn't awake for another forty-five minutes. Her face was a mixture of fatigue and confusion, just beginning to morph into fear.
"Mommy, where's Daddy going? What happened?"
Addison struggled to breathe steadily, forced a smile and insisted, "Nothing happened. You need to start getting ready for school."
A/N: Hey, look what happened. Plot.
For those curious "Blue Period" refers to a part of Picasso's career where he painted a lot of depressing pictures of prostitutes. I've given the last two chapters art names. Chapter Thirteen: "Maskenstillleben" translates to Still Life of Masks. It's by Emile Nolde. I am an art nerd.