Morgan and I clung together at the front door, me still in my bathrobe, her in clothes from a day or two ago. She buried her head into my shoulder, shaking like a leaf. I worked my way slowly backwards, pulling her into the house, nudging the door shut with my toes. When I got her into the dining room, I made tea. Chamomile, her favorite. Morgan didn't get further than five feet from me, and when I poured the hot water from the electric kettle, she burst into tears. I wrapped her in my arms again, and we rocked together, me kissing her forehead, her skull. We sat, and I said quietly, "Talk to me."
Morgan brought the mug to her lips, her hands shaking. "We've been arguing. You knew that." I nodded, and she settled the mug down. I don't think she'd actually taken a sip. "He wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas. He was so... cheerful, I should have known something was wrong. I told him..." Her words crumbled, and I thought she might start crying again, but instead, she held her hands against her chin, one over the other, and drew a deep, shaky breath. "I told him if he was serious, I wanted us to go to therapy. That's what I wanted for Christmas. To try and mend things one last time."
I nodded encouragingly. I understood that.
She sniffed and sipped her tea, and this time I was certain it touched Morgan's lips. I wanted to wipe away a drop with my finger. Not the time. So very not the time. "He started listing all this other stuff. Jewelry. A new TV. A car. A trip to Europe. Just insane babbling, things we really couldn't afford, and finally I snapped at him that I told him what I wanted. He took my phone, and he broke it in half. Just like that. No warning. Douglas told me... told me he saw how long I'd been talking to you that one night, and that he smelled the sex when he came in. He figured it out, and I... I didn't try to deny it. I told him about listening to you sleep with Sarah and Jenna, and..." She gestured at her eye, smiling bitterly.
"Did he hurt you in any other way?" I asked
"No," Morgan said. She reconsidered, and held up her wrist. A few bruise marks glared against her skin. "That." I nodded, and she continued. "He started throwing my things. Everything, really. I think he would have hurt me more. I ran. I didn't grab anything but my purse and my keys. I've been driving since last night. Lionel, I'm so tired."
My girlfriends shuffled in, quiet as cats. They formed a loose semi-circle around Morgan, reaching out to brush her shoulders, her arms.
"You heard?" Morgan asked no one in particular.
Sarah said, "Yes. We didn't mean to, but..."
"It's okay," Morgan said.
Jenna said to me quietly, "The bed is made. We're going to give you two some time."
"Thank you," I said.
"Morgan, what can we do for you?" Yvonne asked.
"When I wake up, we can get to know one another," Morgan said. She smiled, but it was a wan thing. "I'm sorry to have-"
"No," Dakota said, squeezing her arm. "No. Absolutely not. You don't apologize for a thing. We're so glad to finally meet you, but it's shitty it has to be like this."
"You have a home here," London said. "Not just with him, but with all of us. We're serious. Anything you need, you let us know. We'll leave our numbers and our addresses here."
Morgan cried again, just a few more tears, and then I was guiding her upstairs as my girlfriends shuffled out of the house. The only clothes Morgan had were what she wore. I loaned her one of my shirts, and gave her the privacy to take a shower and change into it. When she emerged, she said to me, "Before I go to bed, can I see his room? I just... I just need to."
"Of course," I murmured, and walked her down the hallway to Isaac's room. She wandered through it, touching everything. His blankets, his pillows, his action figures, his books, his clothes. When she came back to me, she embraced me without hesitation, looking up into my eyes. I leaned down and kissed her, and she melted into me.
"I love you," she breathed against my lips. "I love you so much."
"I love you too. You're home now," I murmured back.
"Do me one favor?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"Don't tell him I'm here. I think it'll be fun to surprise him."
"You'll stay?"
Morgan stared up at me. "As long as you'll have me."
"Forever, then."
* * *
Morgan pulled the thick comforter up to her chin and rested on her side, curled up in the fetal position. I rested on top of the blankets beside her, stroking her shoulder through the material.
She opened one eye and looked at me before she slept. "You're going, aren't you?"
I nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
I thought maybe she'd try to tell me not to go, but Morgan knew me well. She held up her hands, and with a long breath, she plucked off her engagement ring and wedding band. "Throw these somewhere along the way. Somewhere ugly and terrible."
"I will."
"Kiss me again?"
I did, stroking Morgan's cheek until her eyes closed and her breathing evened out. I waited twenty minutes. There was no rush, and I wanted to drink in every detail of her. Then I was out of bed and moving. Not furious, not even angry. Just cold. I grabbed a shirt and a pair of boxers, and then I was rushing downstairs, snatching up my car keys and my wallet. Snow was falling again outside. Had to move, had to move, had to move.
Jenna opened her door before I could even knock. I said without preamble, "She's sleeping. I'm going back there. I need some of you watching and taking care of her. She doesn't have a damn thing, and if I know this asshole, I'm not coming back with any of it. If one of you could, take her shopping. I'll pay you back."
Behind her somewhere, Yvonne said, "Stop. She's family. Of course we'll help her." Jenna nodded too, and I kissed them both.
* * *
That trip back isn't something I care to relive. Once I got over the adrenaline, I was tired, but I kept on throughout the entire night, sometimes only making fifteen or twenty miles an hour through the snow. I drove through conditions bad enough that they closed down highways just hours after I passed. At times, I wondered what the hell I was doing, why I didn't stop at a hotel. I didn't know the answers then, and I don't know now.
Instead of going into the details, I'm going to lecture you.
None of my girlfriends argued with me. None of them tried to tell me to stay, that violence wasn't the answer. But here's the goddamn truth of the matter, and it's ugly, and it's bleak. Sometimes punching a fucker in the face Is justified.
That's not a popular opinion. We live in a society where modern culture has instilled in us a form of tacit pacifism. That we should let authorities handle it, except take a fucking look around you. There's no authority anymore. There's no culpability. No responsibility. No one is being made to suffer the consequences of their actions and we're burning for it.
I'm not talking about insane, unwarranted acts of revenge. I am talking about justice. About standing up when there's a wrong that's been done. A man touches his wife or his child, the odds are depressingly slim that he'll ever experience any sort of repercussion from it. The abuse will stand for a thousand shitty reasons. Maybe people don't know who they can call, who they can trust. I mean, fuck, look around you. Bad apples have ruined the bunch, and even a good cop can only do so much with a system strained to its absolute limits. Maybe the victims think it won't be any better without the abuser. Maybe they've just been abused so goddamn long they don't know any better, that they've stopped crying out for help to a world that keeps on ignoring them.
One in seven kids are abused. One in fucking seven. In the United States alone, there are over three million incidences of marital abuse. And that's just the shit that gets reported. How high does that number go when the wife won't talk about it? When she just takes it?
Their abusers know they can get away with it too. Oh sure, there are waves of victims getting brave enough to call them out, and those times are extraordinary. But abuse is, by and large, a silent crime done by cowards who know at worst a cop's going to come around and they'll have to pay a fine, and that's even if the cops listen to the victims.
Not every solution is to drive nearly a thousand miles and pop an asshole in the jaw. What I'm talking about is standing up and making sure people who do wrong are told that there are people who won't stand for it. You ever see the guy in a restaurant snapping at his wife and kids? Maybe the asshole at the store who treats a clerk like shit because he got overcharged for his merlot? Maybe the fuckwit on TV making fun of the disabled or women and the people around you laugh at it? Maybe the people you consider to be leaders keep moving their moral goalposts to match whatever greedy needs they have at the moment? Instead of rolling over and letting it pass, stand up. Say something. Tell them that shit isn't right, that it won't stand with you. Maybe you'll take a punch. Maybe worse.
The point is to try. Just try. It's not going to land you my six girlfriends and my stunning, lovely wife -- and oh yeah, spoiler here, but Morgan does marry me. If you're doing anything in life because you think it'll get you the girl, or the promotion, or the Internet fame, go fuck yourself. Stand up because you've got morals. Because you see something wrong and you don't want to be another lemming going along with it. Stand up because in this world, not many people are going to. Stand up because someone's gotta shout down the assholes.
Rant's over. I got there eventually. Douglas was at work. I drove there, I walked into his office, and I punched him so hard he crashed backwards on his chair and into a filing cabinet. When I stood him up again, I asked him for his keys so I could pick up the last of Morgan's shit. Like I thought, he told me through a bloodied mouth there was nothing left. He tried to goad me into another fight when his coworkers arrived, but I was done. The message was sent.
"When she divorces you," I snarled at him, leaning onto his desk, "you act like a man for once in your fucking life and you let her go without trying to hurt her again. You hear me?"
"Fuck you," Douglas said, but it was more miserable than angry, and when I walked away, he was sobbing.
* * *
I stayed at my parents' place. They were shocked to see me. I offered no explanation, except that Morgan would be staying with me, and that they could expect a bit of awkwardness there. Then I walked up to my old room, and dropped face first onto the mattress and slept until my mom's cooking woke me up again.
Once I wolfed down three helpings of cottage pie and drank about a gallon of coffee, I hugged them both. My mom gave me a small box. A small jewelry box, of the ring variety. My grandmother's, by means of my grandfather. She also sent with me a tin of cookies and fudge, and my father told me with honest-to-God tears in his eyes that he was proud of me. Don't think I've ever walked out of my parents' place with my head higher.
