The stack of computer discs Bill had given her was on the secretary desk. They were from a PC, so she dragged her old laptop out of the closet and plugged it in and booted it up. The discs dated back four years, to the time of Nancy Mathias’s marriage; each one had dates hand-printed on it, three months’ worth of entries on each. She fed the first one in, waited for it to download. Nancy Mathias’s diary. Dead woman’s diary. She sighed. This ought to be fun, she thought.
It wasn’t. All the entries were headed with the date and time they were written, which made the chronology easy to keep straight. But some were hard to decipher because the woman had been a sloppy typist and referred to people and places by their initials and didn’t use any apostrophes. And at first the entries weren’t all that interesting. Long descriptions of the Mathiases’ honeymoon on Maui, places they went and things they did after they got back to Palo Alto. Shorthand comments on art and art galleries-painting in watercolors had been the woman’s hobby-and somebody with the initials TQ whose impressionism she admired; on restaurants, plays, a ballet, weekend and holiday trips to some place called CV, wherever that was, probably a vacation home. Happy, chattery, lovey stuff. Almost every one had at least one reference to B-Brandon, her husband. Some of them were were embarrassing and annoying at the same time, like passages from a bad romance noveclass="underline"
Every time I look at him, even now after three years together, my heart leaps. I never thought I was capable of such total devotional love for any man. I loved J but it was nothing like what I feel for B. I would walk through fire for him, I would lie curled at his feet like a dog if he asked me to. I have no pride, no mind of my own where he is concerned. I have no life without him.
No man was worth the slave attitude. What if she’d felt that way toward Horace? She’d be a basket case right now.
The references to the Mathiases’ sex life were even worse:
B and I made love last night. Fabulous as always. He touches me so deeply in so many ways, with his hands and his mind and his soul. When he moves and swells inside me I feel as if Im soaring, as if there are two of me, one reveling in the moment, the other high above watching with tears of joy in her eyes.
Mercy!
The second disc was more of the same, only not quite as happy-sappy. End of honeymoon, back to reality. By the third disc, a few mild complaints started to creep in. He was critical of her opinions and her personal appearance. He demanded perfection and didn’t like to be questioned about anything. They didn’t make love as often; B was working long hours and he was so tired when he came home, poor baby. They didn’t go out much anymore. They didn’t go to CV together. B didn’t like her sister, her friends, didn’t want her to spend time with them away from home. Not that she minded, oh no. Whatever B wanted, B got.
It went on like that for more than three years, B tightening the reins until she was no longer seeing her sister or her friends, not going to CV by herself as she’d done a couple of times, not even going out of the house much anymore. Classic control-freak crap that got Tamara’s blood heated up. But Nancy Mathias had bought into it with no more than an occasional whimper.
B made me cry again last night. I said something that displeased him, Im not even sure what it was, and he berated me mercilessly. Voice of ice, stare of ice. I look in his eyes and I see myself shriveled and cowering there and as always it frightens me to abject tears.
By the fourth year she wasn’t much more than a good little robot, put away and waiting for the master to come home and turn on the juice. She didn’t mention her painting or art galleries anymore. The entries were now one long dull, repetitive chronicle of what she ate and drank, what she read, the music she listened to, the little errands she ran. And B, naturally. Hardly a single entry without his initial in it.
Early this year, too late, she started to wake up. His hold on her was so tight she was feeling the pressure in physical ways-menstrual problems and intense migraine headaches. Every third or fourth entry was an expression of loneliness, bewilderment, frustration. Fear, too, that led her to question his love and commitment, if not hers. Tamara paid closer attention. Now she was getting to the kinds of things Bill had asked her to watch for.
Sometimes he looks at me as if Im nothing to him. Less than nothing, a piece of lint on his coat that he might brush off at any moment. It terrifies me. What if he decides hes had enough of me, brushes ME off? I cant conceive of living without him.
He doesnt hate me, he cant hate me, but his eyes last night, oh God, as if he wished I were dead. Did I imagine it? I must have. I know he loves me. He never says the words anymore, but I know he does. Hed never hurt me. He isnt a violent man, he has never touched me except with loving hands. How could he hate me?
So he’d never slapped her around, beat her up. Big deal. What the bastard had done was bad enough. In some ways, even worse.
B told me again how useless I am. How many times now? A hundred, a thousand? I cant stand it anymore. I had one of my worst migraines ever, the pain so bad I vomited and then had to lie down with a wet cloth over my eyes. He followed me, stood over me, berating and accusing the whole time. Does he really think I have migraines on purpose just to annoy him? I cant make him understand. I dont think he wants to understand.
Tamara scanned through a dozen similar entries. Woman’d had plenty to complain about, all right, but complain was all she’d done. Why? Why hadn’t she walked out on the bastard, asked her sister or somebody for help?
Why did J have to die and leave me alone? I was happy with him, we had a wonderful life together; HE loved me as much as I loved him. If hed lived I would never have met B and sometimes now I wish I hadnt.
Well, there was the answer. Couldn’t stand to be alone. Weak, dependent, and so beaten down and disillusioned all she could do was throw pity parties for herself.
A mid-February passage caught Tamara’s attention:
B brought his new assistant home for dinner last night. He thinks the world of him, says he has a brilliant mind, and oh hes personable enough but there is something about him that puts me off. Im not sure what it is, other than a sly toadying quality and his physical appearance. Foolish to judge someone by his looks I suppose but you cant help an instinctive reaction. What kind of name is Drax anyway? Eastern European? It reminds me of Dracula. He reminds me of Dracula, the movie image, with his sharp teeth and odd eyes and leathery skin. I can imagine him in a swirling cape, his mouth all red with blood, and the image gives me chills. I haven’t said anything to B about this, I dont dare, but I hope he wont invite him to the house again.
No more mention of Drax the vampire after that. The rest of the disc was the usual dull litany of books read and films watched on TV and doctors’ and dentists’ appointments and whines about B and one small desperate expression of hope on a morning after he decided it was time he got laid again.
The next entries that jumped out were on the last disc. First of these was dated August 23:
Yesterday
Yesterday I
Oh God I cant write about it I can barely think about it.
Its so its just too I just cant
Gap of two days. Then: