August 1981 – Fairfield, CT

Angela leaned close to the bathroom mirror to hook on a silver, dangle earring.

"Who are these people?" Michael asked from where he was sitting cross-legged on the bed.

"Just some friends," Angela said to the mirror as she put in the other one.

"Friends? You have friends? From work?"

"No. From the neighborhood. I met one of them at Jonathan's preschool tour, and she introduced me to the other lady." Angela tilted her head with her mouth open, and smeared on one last coat of lipstick.

"We have almost no time together, and you're going out with some 'ladies'? Who's the other one?"

Angela turned around. "Why are you interrogating me?"

"I just want to know where my wife is going, all dressed up, on a Friday night, when I didn't know anything about it."

"Michael, I didn't know you were going to be home. You're going four-wheeling with your crew this weekend."

"You think that's helping your case? And that's not 'till tomorrow morning anyway."

She chucked the tissue she'd blotted her lips on into the trash, and walked toward him. "I have to have a case?" she challenged. "And I didn't know when you'd be going – we don't really talk. I asked my mother to watch Jonathan, because I didn't know if you'd be here." She picked up her purse from the bed.

He got up. "You didn't ask."

Angela stared at him, considering. He's right, I didn't. Why didn't I do that?

I didn't care.

She exhaled, "You're right. I should've asked for particulars. But you know, you didn't talk to me before you made plans with the guys, either."

"You're always home on the weekend."

"Not anymore," she smiled.

Michael's eyes narrowed at her, and she breathed. "Look, Michael. You're probably getting up early tomorrow, so we're only talking about an hour or two before you'd head to bed anyway. I didn't overtly pick them over you. But they're good for me, like the guys are good for you. Can we please just have some fun with our friends this weekend, doing what we like to do? I want you to have a good time."

"I want to have a good time with you."

"For a couple hours. Then you're done for the weekend."

"I thought you wanted me to go."

"I do, but I don't want to not go out with my friends because you have a few spare minutes."

Michael paused, and stepped up to her. Looking down, he spoke in a low voice. "You bit me a little, there, honey." Angela froze. He held her gaze for a second. "You mean to show me those cards?" Then he turned and walked out of the room.

What was that?

That was scary.

He didn't do anything. Why was I afraid?


The shaking had stopped by the time Angela pulled up to Wendy's house, but she could still see goosebumps down her chest.

Wendy stepped her bright pink, strappy stiletto into the front seat and looked at Angela. "Damn." She looked in the back seat where Isabel was buckling her seatbelt. "If I ever look that good, promise me you'll take a picture and put it on a billboard!" Isabel laughed, and Angela managed to stutter a flat smile.

"You okay?" Wendy asked. Angela could see Isabel watching her from the back.

Angela shook her head, and made more of an effort to smile. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Let's go."

The atmosphere in the car was quiet, which felt odd even to Angela, the newcomer. They drove for a few minutes, then Isabel unbuckled.

She scooted forward, and put her elbows up on the two seats in front of her. "No, really. What's wrong?"

Angela glanced at Isabel in the mirror, then over at Wendy. She shook her head. "It was nothing."

"What was?" Isabel asked.

"I don't know," Angela insisted. "I don't even know what happened."

Nobody said anything for half a minute.

"She'll wait you out," Wendy let Angela know, nodding toward the back seat. "Just sayin…" she shrugged.

Angela exhaled a little smile. It's nice to have annoying people who care. She spoke tentatively, "Michael and I were kind of having a fight, I guess." Wendy and Isabel nodded, starting to understand. "A little bit - about me not staying in with him tonight. We didn't really communicate our plans well, and I didn't care to check. I'm not sure how it got to be such a big deal. It's just an evening, and he's always gone. Why can't I be sometimes? But anyway, I said something like I didn't want to miss an evening with my friends for a few minutes he could spare me – and it probably came out a little snarky. But then he came up real close…and said that I "bit him". He asked if I really meant "to show him those cards"…I don't know. He called me "honey", but the way he spoke was anything but endearing. It was just, I don't know…it felt…dark. Like, not what he said so much as how he said it. Like, he was somehow putting me on notice, or something." She put one hand out, explaining, "He didn't do anything. I know that. I just," she shook her head again. "I was just afraid."

"Sounds like something to me," Isabel said. Wendy nodded. Angela glanced back at her, hopeful they could help her make sense of it.

"What does it sound like?"

"Scary," Wendy said. Isabel nodded.

"Has he done anything like that before?" Isabel asked.

"No, not like that. That was weird. Really off-putting." The other ladies scoffed. "But he does freak out about weird stuff."

"Does he cuss at you?"

"Yeah, sometimes. But I've dropped a few, myself."

"Has he hurt you? Or made you do anything?"

"No, nothing like that. That's what I'm saying. This felt different than his normal fits. This was, I don't know – like, he's often in a whirlwind, but this time, he brought it to me, real close. I felt it… I don't want to make a thing about it - he didn't do anything – but…he's bigger than I am. And the way he was standing there and talking, I was suddenly aware of that. Whether he was reminding me of it or I just noticed, I couldn't tell you."

"What's been going on with you guys recently?" Isabel asked.

"Hmm?" Angela tried to watch the road.

"How's it been with you two? Mostly good? Mostly bad?"

"Oh, we're rarely at peace long. Something comes up, and pops the bubble of bliss we're in. And I'm just always trying to get back in the bubble. Why?"

Isabel nodded. "Because these things are cyclical. There's a that bubble phase you mentioned. Then there's tension. Then there's a blow-up. Then a reconciliation. Then a honeymoon phase, that you're calling a bubble of bliss. It goes round and round, but it also descends."

"Descends?...You mean it gets worse?"

"Yeah. Do you feel like it hasn't?"

Angela thought back. She saw bits and pieces of their time since they got together flash in her memory – his annoyance before he left for the desert, him yelling at her about the Alaska trip and slamming doors, the way she'd taken to freezing and huddling to herself 'till he went away… She started to feel tears well up in her eyes. She felt hot and convicted. "He's been scary before. But this is definitely the most afraid I've felt."

Wendy shook her head. "Yeah, that's not supposed to happen. All this talk about the man being stronger…" she scoffed. "You're the last one who should feel the truth of that, unless he's protecting you."

This is so embarrassing. I feel pathetic. Like a little woman who gets kicked around and can't take care of herself. Like, I've let someone down. Women. Jonathan. I'm supposed to be able to contend with men. I can in everything else... Angela took a hand from the steering wheel and wiped her nose with her bare arm. She used her other hand to wipe her eyes. Wendy dug in her purse, and handed her a tissue.

"Thanks," she sniffed. She took a shuddery breath, and continued to stare at the road.

Wendy put her hand on Angela's shoulder that was closest to her, and Isabel put her hand on her other one.

"This isn't your fault," Isabel told her. Angela's head tilted, and looked like she was going to rebut. "YES, even if you did something, and he got mad about it. He doesn't have a right to be threatening-" Angela started to speak again. "YES, even if it wasn't explicit. It's not right. It's not about technicalities. It's about the way you felt around him. That. Is. Legitimate."

Angela let out a breath. She swallowed. She kept breathing.

"You still want to go out tonight?" Wendy asked.

Angela thought for a minute. She let out a little laugh. "Not really. I just want to curl under a blanket and sip some hot cocoa."

"What a coincidence! I make the world's best hot cocoa," Wendy said with a hand in the air.

"The recipe's on the back of the cocoa tin," Isabel said dryly.

"But I make it. You never do," Wendy snuffed.

"Why would I? You make it for me," Isabel smiled, pleased with her victory.

Angela looked at her two new friends. "I feel awful, ladies. I don't want to ruin our night out."

"What ruin?" Wendy shrugged exaggeratedly. "We're hanging out. I've got booze."

"You know that's true," Isabel said with a dry raise to her eyebrows.

Wendy turned around to face Isabel, "You want a Shirley Temple, missy, keep talkin'…"

"Alright; I'm sorry!" Isabel said with her hands up.

Angela took grateful glances at these two ladies, who were clearly trying to ease the scene. But she didn't care. She liked them all the more for it.


Wendy ladled hot cocoa into three mugs, then spooned on giant dollops of freshly-made whip cream.

She called loudly into the living room. "Isabel! Come get your own! I'm not balancing three mugs of lava." She brought Angela's cup in to where she was snuggled on the couch under a throw blanket.

"Thanks, Wendy," Angela smiled, feeling a little silly, but still grateful for the luxury. Wendy smiled at her.

"Sure," she said quietly.

Isabel came back into the living room with her cup. "Thanks, Isabel," Angela said.

Isabel was still monitoring the sway of the liquid in her cup as she sat down. "You bet… Mmm, Wendy this is good!"

"You're out of vanilla, by the way," Wendy noted.

"Got it. Thanks," Isabel said before taking another sip.

Angela looked into her cup for a few seconds, then over at Isabel. "Do you see a lot of this kind of thing as a doctor?"

Isabel made a nervous glance over to Wendy, and swallowed. "Uh, not really. I mean, not the psychological part. I'm a surgeon, but I mostly work in the ER." Angela could see Isabel was uncomfortable, and thought for a few seconds.

"…not the psychological part? What else is-" she trailed off. "Oh," the realization came, and with it, a heap of shame. Angela looked down, and let out a shuddery breath.

"Hey," Isabel said definitively. Angela looked up. "This isn't your fault."

Angela stared at her for several seconds. Then she shook her head, clearing it. "Nothing happened, anyway." Both women sighed. "I just got scared."

Wendy looked sternly at Angela. "That is something."

Isabel's eyebrows rose slightly at Angela. "You're lucky she didn't smack the back of your head."

"She's holding hot cocoa," Wendy said with her nose in the air.

Isabel spoke seriously. "She's right, Angela. It isn't more than it is, but it is something. Don't devalue what you feel. It isn't a superfluous experience. It means something, and the truth of it will come out in one way or another. Best to just give it its due up front. Say it like it is: you were scared. And that matters."

Angela let out a heavy sigh.

"She knows what she's talking about," Wendy said seriously.

"I know, she's a professional," Angela said with an acknowledging nod.

Wendy looked at Isabel pointedly.

Isabel sighed, and looked at Angela. "My experience isn't mostly professional." Angela's brows dipped at her. "I've been through this myself. Mine never got to the ER level, thank God. But I could feel the descent. It wasn't linear, and I got the feeling it didn't have a bottom. We'd go up and down, and having been occasionally really down, most of the downs were kind of in the upper range. A lot of times, it really felt okay." Angela's head tipped back a little, actually understanding her confusing speech.

"But it was always there. That readiness. That feeling that I could never truly relax. I kept roping off more and more sections in my head of these parts of me that I just wasn't making available to him anymore - like that was a feasible way to have a marriage. It was lonely and scary. We tried to get professional help, but even in that, it felt like he was trying to work me over. And I got to the point where I just didn't want to live that way anymore." Angela nodded.

"I kept thinking I didn't want to ruin my kids' lives for nothing. I mean, what a self-involved excuse, right? 'I just didn't want to'," Isabel faux-mocked. "But that was taking a lot of liberty that I wasn't owed - namely, my kids' lives were already in a dangerous place. This was a terrible living environment. Everybody was walking on eggshells. My husband was always yelling about something, to people who weren't at fault. And he acted as if they were. I was getting depressed. My life was trudging by; I didn't have any aspirations anymore. My kids were often anxious. It was really bad." Angela looked down.

"Angela, I'm not saying you should do what I did. I don't know what the right thing is for your situation. But I'm absolutely positive you won't find it ignoring how you feel." Angela looked up at her. "Just listen to yourself, okay? She's not dumb."

Angela nodded. "Thanks." Isabel smiled. A few beats went by in silence.

Wendy leaned her head in to their dialogue, "Does she want to watch a movie?"

Angela laughed a little. "Yeah," she said, decidedly.

Wendy's face brightened. "What are you in the mood for? I've got The Shining!"

Isabel shook her head to herself. "Seriously, you have the worst taste in movies."

Angela laughed again. "Actually, a lousy movie sounds really good." Wendy stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, as Angela sat up, an impish look in her eye. "How do you feel about going out again? I saw a preview for this thing called, Condorman, that was just released, and I kind of want to laugh at my husband." Wendy high fived her.

Isabel laughed, "I don't get the reference, but I'm quite certain I'm the only voice of reason we have." She sighed, and dragged herself to standing. "Come on. Let's go."

A/N: Thank you SO much to steppinout87, bostonbarmaid, and markaleen for their invaluable help and ideas around Angela's character in relation to the important influence of girlfriends and the gravity of narcissism. You've all been talking me through this, and I'm very grateful. Cheers!