Inside Voices
Wendy Thornton

For the longest time after Arthur had
her
locked up, Sheree felt like she was stuck in a
bad horror movie. People came into her
room and talked to her, sometimes loudly, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying. Lips moved, sound came out, but no sense could be discerned. She cowered in her bed in the corner by the window, striking out at anyone who tried to touch her, alternately screaming and moaning.
Arthur came to see her and she was led into a big white room full of tables to meet with him. Lots of people sat around her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She heard him yell at her and she saw someone put a hand on his arm and lead him away. In her room, she lay on the bed, singing as loud as she could, inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds…
Gradually, she began to awaken from the nightmare. Sometimes she said hello to her caregivers. The therapists’ voices were soft, cajoling. One morning a nurse named Charlie sat on her bed and began to speak and she could understand him. “I want to help you get up,” he said. Charlie was a tall, thin man, with a wiry body and curly black hair. He pulled her wrists forward and though she tried to resist, he made her sit up. “You need to eat breakfast this morning in the cafeteria. You’re losing weight.”
“I get to eat with the other inmates?” Sheree asked.
Charlie laughed. “We don’t call them inmates. We call them residents.”
“Are they here voluntarily?”
“Some are, some aren’t.”
“Then if they have no choice, they’re like me – inmates.”
“You have choices,” Charlie said.
"Can I go home?”
“Eventually. You have to prove you’re okay, first. So how about some breakfast, eh?”
He tried to talk her into putting on clean clothes, but Sheree wasn’t ready to go that far, yet. One step at a time. She was so mad about being locked up, it was all she could do to keep from crying.
In the cafeteria, the other residents glanced her way as Charlie escorted her in, and sat her down at a table by herself. “Am I in isolation?” she asked.
“You’re alone because you’ve demanded to be alone for the past two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Sheree shrieked. The other inmates turned in her direction.
Charlie put a finger to his lips. “Inside voices,” he said. “Let me get you some breakfast.”
“I’ve been here two weeks? Really?” she whispered to him, and he nodded, then left to get her a tray of food from the kitchen.
She ate her breakfast alone, though she could feel the stares of her fellow inmates. She didn’t look up from the cold eggs, the crunchy biscuit and the rubbery sausage. As she ate the last bite, Charlie appeared at her elbow. “I’m going to bring you to a therapy session, now,” he said.
“No thanks, I want to go back to my room.”
“Not an option, Sheree.” Gently, he helped her to her feet and led her down the hall to another room. For some reason, she thought she’d be talking to an individual, but instead, she found herself being led into a room full of anxious-looking people, all sitting in a circle in lightly padded chairs. She sat silently as those around her talked. Gradually, she identified the leader of the group, the woman who kept everyone talking. Her name was Doris. Doris looked more with-it than the inmates. Her hair had been recently cut and colored, she wore a suit,and she smiled a lot. Sheree was embarrassed to be here in the crowd. All her therapy sessions lately had been private, one on one. Arthur thought all therapists were charlatans.
Leader Doris smiled in her direction and said, “I see you’re not dressed yet, Sheree.”
Sheree looked down at her flannel pajamas and shrugged. She hadn’t worn them in months. She bought them to wear after the last baby was born. Since then, she’d lost so much weight, they floated on her like oversized children’s pjs. When you wake, you'll have cake, And all the pretty little horses, she sang.
“That’s a nice song. Does it upset you when I ask you questions?” Doris asked.
Sheree sang louder. “Go to sleepy little baby,” she sang.
Doris frowned. “Okay, Sheree. We’ll talk tomorrow."
For a week, Sheree was allowed to sit in on the sessions without talking. When Doris tried to get her to speak, she sang her lullabies and put her hands over her ears. But eventually, Doris walked up to her chair, stood before her silently, and waited while Sheree sang herself into exhaustion. “Can I ask you a question?” the therapist asked.
Sheree looked up. “Can I stop you?”
“Why are you afraid to talk to us? We have your best interests at heart.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“We’re your friends.”
“You’re strangers.”
“Because you are keeping us at bay.”
“Supposed to be that way.”
Doris kneeled before her. “It’s not supposed to be that way at all. Please let us help you.”
In another week, Sheree admitted that she knew why Arthur had locked her up. “He thinks I spend too much time at the cemetery and not enough time at work,” she said. The group stared at her, open-mouthed, and for a moment, she enjoyed the feeling of being at the center of attention. Something she had missed once the babies died. With the first one, she’d been sad, but the medical professionals had swooped in and rescued her, reassured her. “You’ll have many children,” they said, patting her shoulders, drying her tears.
When she got pregnant the second time, her appointments had been weekly, her tests constant, her worries continual. And still it died before birth, at 6 months. And then there was the third one. He actually took a breath before he died. She swore she heard him cry, swore until Arthur told her there was no way, that he’d been born dead, that she was deluded. So it was.
“Sheree? Earth to Sheree?” Doris said kindly. “I asked, who were you visiting at the cemetery.”
“My children,” Sheree said.
“How did they die?”
“No one knows.” Sheree shrugged. “Callie died when I was three months pregnant, Leslie died at six months, and Devon died at birth.”
“Hey, Jeez, keep trying, you might get it right,” a man named Delaware smirked. Doris made him leave the group. The rest of the members shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
But Doris continued talking to Sheree as if nothing unusual had happened. “So you’ve had three miscarriages?”
“Yes. Although I don’t know if you call the last one a miscarriage since I think the baby was born alive. I mean, Devon was full term.”
“Devon?”
“That’s what we named him. The nurses said it would help if I named him.”
“And did it?” Doris asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, now I’m glad I have names for them because there were so many and I didn’t want to forget them.”
“Makes sense,” Doris answered.
“But my husband says that’s too obsessive-compulsive.”
Doris smiled slightly. “That’s what he said? Obsessive-compulsive?”
“He thinks I spend too much time thinking about the kids.”
“And do you?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But I don’t know how to stop.”
“I would think losing three children would be very traumatic. Why do you need to stop thinking about them?”
“I don’t just think about them,” Sheree admitted. “I go to the cemetery and hang out at their gravestones.”
The other group participants buzzed and nodded at this information. Finally, the crazy part of the confession.
“What’s so unusual about that?” Doris asked.
“I bring flowers.”
The banished patient, Delaware, who had quietly re-entered the meeting room, said, “I bring flowers to my mother’s grave.”
But Sheree wasn’t that easily fooled. He was a mean man and she wasn’t going to forgive him so quickly. “I bet you don’t go every day,” she snapped.
“You go every day?” Though he didn’t mean to, his voice held a measure of astonishment.
“It’s not for you to judge,” a young black girl named Tamerin said to Delaware. “You wouldn’t know how it feels. You’re a guy.” She reached over and covered Sheree’s hand with hers and the two women smiled at each other.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” Delaware leered.
Doris sat up primly in her chair. “Dell, you don’t want to have to leave again, do you?”
“No,” the older man muttered. He sat in the chair next to Doris.
Tamerin added, “I lost a baby once. Would not, truly truly would not know what to do if I lost a bunch of them. I don’t blame you for being obsessive.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Doris asked. “We all deal with things in our own way. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right or wrong.”
But Sheree remembered Arthur’s face the day he screamed at her, “Stop acting crazy! Just stop!” She didn’t tell the group this. Sometimes she thought maybe Arthur was right. Maybe she had been acting crazy. Maybe she wasn’t acting.
Once he told her that she’d taken too much time off work. “We have doctor’s bills up the ass from all those pregnancies.” She flinched at the term. All those pregnancies. As if he’d said, all those malignancies.
After her group meeting, Sheree met a different therapist, Avery, who made her paint a picture. She’d never painted before. She painted three small trees in a field of flowers. He told her the trees were quite beautiful. “Thank you,” she said.
“Do they mean anything?”
“No, they’re just trees.”
Avery nodded. “Nice.”
She hung the picture on the wall of her bedroom, next to the window. She liked looking out the window, liked standing before it while the sun streamed in and warmed her. Sometimes she would stand there for hours, but then someone would make her come out, make her go to this function or that one, sit in the TV room or have lunch, anything to get her together with other people. She didn’t want to be with others. She wanted to stand in the sunlight from the window and pretend she was still holding Devon. She never got to hold the others – only the last one. And he was warm and she thought he smiled at her. But Arthur said she imagined it. So it must be true. Because Arthur would never lie to her.
One afternoon, she found a bunch of magazines in the TV room. As she thumbed through them, one of the kids in an advertisement for organic baby food reminded her of Devon. He had the same dark eyes, the wisp of dark hair, and the smile she’d always imagined. Excited, she ripped out the page. Other residents in the TV room glared at her. “Sorry,” she said, “I want to try this recipe when I get home.” They liked that explanation, nodded and went back to their rocking, knitting, reading.
Later she found a picture that looked just like she imagined the two girls would have grown up to be. She cut those out, too.
She told the group about Arthur screaming at her, Arthur pushing her, Arthur dragging her from the cemetery by her arm, about the bruises on her arm. Arthur calling her stupid. Arthur calling her crazy. Arthur telling her he was going to have her locked up.
She decorated the walls of her room with the pictures. They comforted her. She became more social, talked to people voluntarily, painted more pictures, cut out more magazine photos. She began to feel strong again, confident. She could handle this. She could get through this.
One day during group therapy she asked Doris, “Do you think I can get out of here?”
“Do you think you’re ready?”
Sheree smiled. “I do,” she said.
“What about the pictures in your room?”
Sheree thought about this for a moment. “You know what,” she said, “I like those pictures. They make me feel close to my kids. Like they’re not lost. I’m keeping them.”
Doris smiled at her. “You know, I think you’re ready to get out. Stick to your guns, kid.”
Sheree wasn’t sure she knew what that meant, but she nodded as if she did.
The day she was told she could go home, Arthur came to pick her up. He walked her to his car, holding her elbow as if she were a little old lady. “So, you’re feeling better?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Sheree answered. “I feel like a new woman. Like a great burden has been lifted.”
“That’s wonderful, Honey,” Arthur said. “I knew that place would help you. They have a great reputation.”
“Well deserved, well deserved.”
Arthur continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, though. You’re going to have to go back to work pretty quick.”
She got in the car and watched as he loaded her suitcases into the back seat. She felt a sense of comfort as she saw him load the travel case which now held the pictures of her lost children. As he got in the car beside her she said, “Arthur, I’d like to try for another baby.”
Arthur started the car with a scowl. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. He pulled out of the parking lot of the rehab center and rolled carefully onto the highway. “You need more time to recover.”
“Oh, no, I’m recovered. Your little prison facility certified me cured.”
“Well then, let me put it another way. I’m not interested in going through this again. This whole thing has been hard on me.”
Sheree pursed her lips. “I understand,” she said. “I guess I never thought about it from your perspective.”
“Right. I mean, first you’re mooning around at the cemetery and then you end up in this expensive care facility and now you want to start all over again? Let’s not do it again. This is all just too costly.”
And there it was. He had no intention of trying to have a healthy baby. This time, the reason was financial. Next time it would be something else. There would always be another reason.
The road unfurled before them and the silence lengthened. The closer they came to their home, the more her stomach tightened. Finally, she touched him gently on his shoulder. “You know what Arthur? I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going home with you. Please drop me off at the Holiday Inn on the corner.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Arthur answered. “You aren’t staying at any hotel.”
Sheree took a deep breath, then said succinctly, “I am not going home with you, Arthur.”
“For God’s sake, Sheree. Grow up,” Arthur answered. He glared at her, then focused back on the road.
“If you don’t stop this car,” Sheree said quietly, “I will have you arrested for holding me against my will.”
Arthur smiled grimly. “Honey, you just got released from a mental institution. I doubt they’ll believe you.”
“I told them what you did, Arthur.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told them you abused me.”
“What? What are you talking about? I didn’t abuse you.”
She smiled at him. “Yes, you did.”
He started screaming at her. She watched his mouth move, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Inside her head, the voices of her children cried, Callie a feeble murmur, Leslie a spirited whimper, and Devon a full-throated wail that made her heart swell with pride. It was just so hard to hear them over Arthur’s ranting.
She put a finger to her lips. “Inside voices, Arthur,” she said. Arthur’s eyes seemed to bug out of his head. “No, seriously,” she reiterated, in a stronger voice, “I’m not listening to you anymore. I’m leaving you. There’s nothing you can do about it. Please stop screaming and take me to the hotel.”
They drove down the road at a ridiculous speed. Arthur pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn so fast the car was practically on two wheels, then slammed the brakes so hard she had to push against the dashboard to keep from hitting the windshield. She opened the door and jumped out.
Arthur jumped out, too, and came around the front of the car, screaming at her. “You’ll never get a single penny from me, you crazy bitch. I don’t know how you think you’re going to support yourself.”
She shrugged. Doris had told her there would be many months of counseling, much soul-searching. She didn’t look forward to searching her soul, didn’t look forward to finding the mysterious answer to her misery, the reason why now, as Arthur stood over her, his arm raised above his head, she had such a feeling of déjà vu. But it didn’t matter. He was in a parking lot full of people and he saw them. He put his arm down, reached into the back seat of the car and pulled out her suitcase and the travel bag filled with the pictures of the potential lives of her children and hurled them to the ground. Then he got back in the car and drove off with a screech of rubber. Sheree waved to him as if they were parting as friends, and said aloud, “Goodbye Arthur. You take care, now, hear?” She smiled at the open mouths of the strangers around her, picked up her baggage and started towards the hotel office.
locked up, Sheree felt like she was stuck in a
bad horror movie. People came into her
room and talked to her, sometimes loudly, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying. Lips moved, sound came out, but no sense could be discerned. She cowered in her bed in the corner by the window, striking out at anyone who tried to touch her, alternately screaming and moaning.
Arthur came to see her and she was led into a big white room full of tables to meet with him. Lots of people sat around her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She heard him yell at her and she saw someone put a hand on his arm and lead him away. In her room, she lay on the bed, singing as loud as she could, inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds…
Gradually, she began to awaken from the nightmare. Sometimes she said hello to her caregivers. The therapists’ voices were soft, cajoling. One morning a nurse named Charlie sat on her bed and began to speak and she could understand him. “I want to help you get up,” he said. Charlie was a tall, thin man, with a wiry body and curly black hair. He pulled her wrists forward and though she tried to resist, he made her sit up. “You need to eat breakfast this morning in the cafeteria. You’re losing weight.”
“I get to eat with the other inmates?” Sheree asked.
Charlie laughed. “We don’t call them inmates. We call them residents.”
“Are they here voluntarily?”
“Some are, some aren’t.”
“Then if they have no choice, they’re like me – inmates.”
“You have choices,” Charlie said.
"Can I go home?”
“Eventually. You have to prove you’re okay, first. So how about some breakfast, eh?”
He tried to talk her into putting on clean clothes, but Sheree wasn’t ready to go that far, yet. One step at a time. She was so mad about being locked up, it was all she could do to keep from crying.
In the cafeteria, the other residents glanced her way as Charlie escorted her in, and sat her down at a table by herself. “Am I in isolation?” she asked.
“You’re alone because you’ve demanded to be alone for the past two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Sheree shrieked. The other inmates turned in her direction.
Charlie put a finger to his lips. “Inside voices,” he said. “Let me get you some breakfast.”
“I’ve been here two weeks? Really?” she whispered to him, and he nodded, then left to get her a tray of food from the kitchen.
She ate her breakfast alone, though she could feel the stares of her fellow inmates. She didn’t look up from the cold eggs, the crunchy biscuit and the rubbery sausage. As she ate the last bite, Charlie appeared at her elbow. “I’m going to bring you to a therapy session, now,” he said.
“No thanks, I want to go back to my room.”
“Not an option, Sheree.” Gently, he helped her to her feet and led her down the hall to another room. For some reason, she thought she’d be talking to an individual, but instead, she found herself being led into a room full of anxious-looking people, all sitting in a circle in lightly padded chairs. She sat silently as those around her talked. Gradually, she identified the leader of the group, the woman who kept everyone talking. Her name was Doris. Doris looked more with-it than the inmates. Her hair had been recently cut and colored, she wore a suit,and she smiled a lot. Sheree was embarrassed to be here in the crowd. All her therapy sessions lately had been private, one on one. Arthur thought all therapists were charlatans.
Leader Doris smiled in her direction and said, “I see you’re not dressed yet, Sheree.”
Sheree looked down at her flannel pajamas and shrugged. She hadn’t worn them in months. She bought them to wear after the last baby was born. Since then, she’d lost so much weight, they floated on her like oversized children’s pjs. When you wake, you'll have cake, And all the pretty little horses, she sang.
“That’s a nice song. Does it upset you when I ask you questions?” Doris asked.
Sheree sang louder. “Go to sleepy little baby,” she sang.
Doris frowned. “Okay, Sheree. We’ll talk tomorrow."
For a week, Sheree was allowed to sit in on the sessions without talking. When Doris tried to get her to speak, she sang her lullabies and put her hands over her ears. But eventually, Doris walked up to her chair, stood before her silently, and waited while Sheree sang herself into exhaustion. “Can I ask you a question?” the therapist asked.
Sheree looked up. “Can I stop you?”
“Why are you afraid to talk to us? We have your best interests at heart.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“We’re your friends.”
“You’re strangers.”
“Because you are keeping us at bay.”
“Supposed to be that way.”
Doris kneeled before her. “It’s not supposed to be that way at all. Please let us help you.”
In another week, Sheree admitted that she knew why Arthur had locked her up. “He thinks I spend too much time at the cemetery and not enough time at work,” she said. The group stared at her, open-mouthed, and for a moment, she enjoyed the feeling of being at the center of attention. Something she had missed once the babies died. With the first one, she’d been sad, but the medical professionals had swooped in and rescued her, reassured her. “You’ll have many children,” they said, patting her shoulders, drying her tears.
When she got pregnant the second time, her appointments had been weekly, her tests constant, her worries continual. And still it died before birth, at 6 months. And then there was the third one. He actually took a breath before he died. She swore she heard him cry, swore until Arthur told her there was no way, that he’d been born dead, that she was deluded. So it was.
“Sheree? Earth to Sheree?” Doris said kindly. “I asked, who were you visiting at the cemetery.”
“My children,” Sheree said.
“How did they die?”
“No one knows.” Sheree shrugged. “Callie died when I was three months pregnant, Leslie died at six months, and Devon died at birth.”
“Hey, Jeez, keep trying, you might get it right,” a man named Delaware smirked. Doris made him leave the group. The rest of the members shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
But Doris continued talking to Sheree as if nothing unusual had happened. “So you’ve had three miscarriages?”
“Yes. Although I don’t know if you call the last one a miscarriage since I think the baby was born alive. I mean, Devon was full term.”
“Devon?”
“That’s what we named him. The nurses said it would help if I named him.”
“And did it?” Doris asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, now I’m glad I have names for them because there were so many and I didn’t want to forget them.”
“Makes sense,” Doris answered.
“But my husband says that’s too obsessive-compulsive.”
Doris smiled slightly. “That’s what he said? Obsessive-compulsive?”
“He thinks I spend too much time thinking about the kids.”
“And do you?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But I don’t know how to stop.”
“I would think losing three children would be very traumatic. Why do you need to stop thinking about them?”
“I don’t just think about them,” Sheree admitted. “I go to the cemetery and hang out at their gravestones.”
The other group participants buzzed and nodded at this information. Finally, the crazy part of the confession.
“What’s so unusual about that?” Doris asked.
“I bring flowers.”
The banished patient, Delaware, who had quietly re-entered the meeting room, said, “I bring flowers to my mother’s grave.”
But Sheree wasn’t that easily fooled. He was a mean man and she wasn’t going to forgive him so quickly. “I bet you don’t go every day,” she snapped.
“You go every day?” Though he didn’t mean to, his voice held a measure of astonishment.
“It’s not for you to judge,” a young black girl named Tamerin said to Delaware. “You wouldn’t know how it feels. You’re a guy.” She reached over and covered Sheree’s hand with hers and the two women smiled at each other.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” Delaware leered.
Doris sat up primly in her chair. “Dell, you don’t want to have to leave again, do you?”
“No,” the older man muttered. He sat in the chair next to Doris.
Tamerin added, “I lost a baby once. Would not, truly truly would not know what to do if I lost a bunch of them. I don’t blame you for being obsessive.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Doris asked. “We all deal with things in our own way. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right or wrong.”
But Sheree remembered Arthur’s face the day he screamed at her, “Stop acting crazy! Just stop!” She didn’t tell the group this. Sometimes she thought maybe Arthur was right. Maybe she had been acting crazy. Maybe she wasn’t acting.
Once he told her that she’d taken too much time off work. “We have doctor’s bills up the ass from all those pregnancies.” She flinched at the term. All those pregnancies. As if he’d said, all those malignancies.
After her group meeting, Sheree met a different therapist, Avery, who made her paint a picture. She’d never painted before. She painted three small trees in a field of flowers. He told her the trees were quite beautiful. “Thank you,” she said.
“Do they mean anything?”
“No, they’re just trees.”
Avery nodded. “Nice.”
She hung the picture on the wall of her bedroom, next to the window. She liked looking out the window, liked standing before it while the sun streamed in and warmed her. Sometimes she would stand there for hours, but then someone would make her come out, make her go to this function or that one, sit in the TV room or have lunch, anything to get her together with other people. She didn’t want to be with others. She wanted to stand in the sunlight from the window and pretend she was still holding Devon. She never got to hold the others – only the last one. And he was warm and she thought he smiled at her. But Arthur said she imagined it. So it must be true. Because Arthur would never lie to her.
One afternoon, she found a bunch of magazines in the TV room. As she thumbed through them, one of the kids in an advertisement for organic baby food reminded her of Devon. He had the same dark eyes, the wisp of dark hair, and the smile she’d always imagined. Excited, she ripped out the page. Other residents in the TV room glared at her. “Sorry,” she said, “I want to try this recipe when I get home.” They liked that explanation, nodded and went back to their rocking, knitting, reading.
Later she found a picture that looked just like she imagined the two girls would have grown up to be. She cut those out, too.
She told the group about Arthur screaming at her, Arthur pushing her, Arthur dragging her from the cemetery by her arm, about the bruises on her arm. Arthur calling her stupid. Arthur calling her crazy. Arthur telling her he was going to have her locked up.
She decorated the walls of her room with the pictures. They comforted her. She became more social, talked to people voluntarily, painted more pictures, cut out more magazine photos. She began to feel strong again, confident. She could handle this. She could get through this.
One day during group therapy she asked Doris, “Do you think I can get out of here?”
“Do you think you’re ready?”
Sheree smiled. “I do,” she said.
“What about the pictures in your room?”
Sheree thought about this for a moment. “You know what,” she said, “I like those pictures. They make me feel close to my kids. Like they’re not lost. I’m keeping them.”
Doris smiled at her. “You know, I think you’re ready to get out. Stick to your guns, kid.”
Sheree wasn’t sure she knew what that meant, but she nodded as if she did.
The day she was told she could go home, Arthur came to pick her up. He walked her to his car, holding her elbow as if she were a little old lady. “So, you’re feeling better?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Sheree answered. “I feel like a new woman. Like a great burden has been lifted.”
“That’s wonderful, Honey,” Arthur said. “I knew that place would help you. They have a great reputation.”
“Well deserved, well deserved.”
Arthur continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, though. You’re going to have to go back to work pretty quick.”
She got in the car and watched as he loaded her suitcases into the back seat. She felt a sense of comfort as she saw him load the travel case which now held the pictures of her lost children. As he got in the car beside her she said, “Arthur, I’d like to try for another baby.”
Arthur started the car with a scowl. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. He pulled out of the parking lot of the rehab center and rolled carefully onto the highway. “You need more time to recover.”
“Oh, no, I’m recovered. Your little prison facility certified me cured.”
“Well then, let me put it another way. I’m not interested in going through this again. This whole thing has been hard on me.”
Sheree pursed her lips. “I understand,” she said. “I guess I never thought about it from your perspective.”
“Right. I mean, first you’re mooning around at the cemetery and then you end up in this expensive care facility and now you want to start all over again? Let’s not do it again. This is all just too costly.”
And there it was. He had no intention of trying to have a healthy baby. This time, the reason was financial. Next time it would be something else. There would always be another reason.
The road unfurled before them and the silence lengthened. The closer they came to their home, the more her stomach tightened. Finally, she touched him gently on his shoulder. “You know what Arthur? I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going home with you. Please drop me off at the Holiday Inn on the corner.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Arthur answered. “You aren’t staying at any hotel.”
Sheree took a deep breath, then said succinctly, “I am not going home with you, Arthur.”
“For God’s sake, Sheree. Grow up,” Arthur answered. He glared at her, then focused back on the road.
“If you don’t stop this car,” Sheree said quietly, “I will have you arrested for holding me against my will.”
Arthur smiled grimly. “Honey, you just got released from a mental institution. I doubt they’ll believe you.”
“I told them what you did, Arthur.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told them you abused me.”
“What? What are you talking about? I didn’t abuse you.”
She smiled at him. “Yes, you did.”
He started screaming at her. She watched his mouth move, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Inside her head, the voices of her children cried, Callie a feeble murmur, Leslie a spirited whimper, and Devon a full-throated wail that made her heart swell with pride. It was just so hard to hear them over Arthur’s ranting.
She put a finger to her lips. “Inside voices, Arthur,” she said. Arthur’s eyes seemed to bug out of his head. “No, seriously,” she reiterated, in a stronger voice, “I’m not listening to you anymore. I’m leaving you. There’s nothing you can do about it. Please stop screaming and take me to the hotel.”
They drove down the road at a ridiculous speed. Arthur pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn so fast the car was practically on two wheels, then slammed the brakes so hard she had to push against the dashboard to keep from hitting the windshield. She opened the door and jumped out.
Arthur jumped out, too, and came around the front of the car, screaming at her. “You’ll never get a single penny from me, you crazy bitch. I don’t know how you think you’re going to support yourself.”
She shrugged. Doris had told her there would be many months of counseling, much soul-searching. She didn’t look forward to searching her soul, didn’t look forward to finding the mysterious answer to her misery, the reason why now, as Arthur stood over her, his arm raised above his head, she had such a feeling of déjà vu. But it didn’t matter. He was in a parking lot full of people and he saw them. He put his arm down, reached into the back seat of the car and pulled out her suitcase and the travel bag filled with the pictures of the potential lives of her children and hurled them to the ground. Then he got back in the car and drove off with a screech of rubber. Sheree waved to him as if they were parting as friends, and said aloud, “Goodbye Arthur. You take care, now, hear?” She smiled at the open mouths of the strangers around her, picked up her baggage and started towards the hotel office.